Peter Sauer, Grainger Chair Emeritus Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, died on December 27, 2022 in Urbana, IL. He was 76.
Pete joined the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign as a faculty member in 1977. At UIUC he taught courses and directed research on power systems and electric machines. His main contributions were in the modeling and simulation of power system dynamics with applications to steady-state and transient stability analysis. He authored/co-authored over 200 technical papers and a book with M. A. Pai, Power System Dynamics and Stability, which was published by Prentice-Hall in 1998. He retired from full-time service at the end of 2019.
During his tenure at UIUC, Sauer won numerous honors and accolades. In 2020 he received the IEEE Power & Energy Society Lifetime Achievement Award for his exceptional career-long contributions to power systems modeling and dynamic analysis, and for leadership in power engineering education. He received the 2022 IEEE Tesla Award “for contributions to dynamic modeling and simulation of synchronous generators and for leadership in power engineering education.” He was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2003.
Sauer was once asked what he loved about engineering. “I love that you get a chance to think big and think small” was part of his response. As an educator and mentor, his favorite quote was “Students are candles to be lighted, not bottles to be filled” (adapted from Plutarch).
Pete was so influential in his students’ lives that one former student, Bahman Hoveida, established a named professorship, The Peter Sauer – Bahman Hoveida Distinguished Chair in Electric Power, in his honor.