From ClemsonNews
Two new leadership roles for Johan Enslin are positioning him as one of the nation’s key experts in energy and power-electronics, while helping raise the profile of Clemson University’s innovation campus in the Lowcountry.
Enslin, who is the Duke Energy Endowed Chair in Smart Grid Technology at Clemson, began a term in January as program director for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy (ARPA-E). He is also starting 2024 as president-elect of IEEE’s Power Electronics Society.
The two roles will put Enslin in frequent contact with some of the nation’s leading engineers and scientists in both academia and industry. He will play a key role in guiding the direction of research into energy and the power electronics that are critical for a wide-range of technologies from the automobile to the smartphone.
Enslin is based at the Clemson University Restoration Institute on the banks of the Cooper River in North Charleston, where Clemson is working to expand its educational and research offerings, especially to working professionals interested in graduate degrees.
His new positions will give him a platform to spread the word about the campus, home to cutting-edge facilities that include the Dominion Energy Innovation Center, the Duke Energy eGRID, the Zucker Family Graduate Education Center and the Warren Lasch Conservation Center.
Enslin said the Clemson campus in Charleston is already attracting students from top universities, including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Stanford University, and that the visibility from his new positions will only help.
“We are in the same league,” he said. “I think we do better than most schools in energy, but it’s not that visible. I want to change that. Yes, we do a great job in football at Clemson, but we also have great academic programs.”
Enslin, a national leader in sustainable energy technologies, will retain his position at Clemson and continue to advise students while serving in his new roles.
