Phuc Thanh Huynh

Illinois ECE PhD student Phuc Thanh Huynh, advisee of Professor Arijit Banerjee, has been named a 2021 Siebel Scholar. The Siebel Scholars program recognizes the most talented graduate students at top universities in the fields of business, computer science, bioengineering, and energy science. Each year around 90 students are selected based on academic merit and leadership potential and receive $35,000 in support toward their final year of graduate studies.
Siebel Scholars are examining some of today’s most pressing problems, advancing on solutions, and forming a lifelong community. Huynh is an Energy Science Scholar and wants to build a sustainable and energy-secure future.
Huynh is currently focused on the creation of a highly efficient, reliable, and compact electro-mechanical conversion system for offshore wind-energy harvesting. He also has an interest in electrical system integration and product diversification for wind farms.
“A globally sustainable future is essential and fascinating,” Huynh said. “As a power engineer, I have been innovating the renewable-energy harvesting technologies to produce low-cost and environment-friendly electricity. Interdisciplinary collaboration is crucial to broaden the impacts of innovations. Being a Siebel Scholar grants me access to a very unique personal and professional network that has the brightest engineering, science, and business talents. This community will provide me enormous resources to help speed up our transformation to a globally sustainable future as well as to spread my inspiration to the next generations.”
Outside of his research, Huynh has held multiple leadership positions. In 2017, he served as co-director for the IEEE Power and Energy Conference at Illinois, and in 2018 he served as the president for IEEE PES/PELS/IAS student chapter at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

For more information on the Siebel Scholars program, see https://ece.illinois.edu/newsroom/news/18927l from which this article was excerpted.