Roberto Petrella was born in Pescara, June 26, 1971.
He received the degree in electronic engineering, with full marks and honours, in 1996 from the University of L’Aquila, Italy. He also received praise from the evaluating commission for the excellent results obtained in the development of a research and industrial project during the thesis work, that was oriented to design and development of a hardware and software of innovative digital-controlled electrical drives. During that period he was also granted from Texas Instruments for a project that led to the development of an innovative drive system for the compressor of refrigerators (i.e. Advanced Motor Drive (AMD) project), in collaboration with some industrial partners.
In the same year he has given some seminars in the field of Electronic digital systems and Electric drives on high-performance digital control of electric drives.
In 1997 he has got the Engineering professional qualification in the first session of State examinations.
In the same year he has got a grant from “Fondazione Filauro” for professional improvement in engineering studies abroad after winning a public competition.
In 1998 he has won the competition for Ph.D. in Electronic Engineering - XIII cycle, within the University of L’Aquila, starting immediately his research activity in the Department of Electrical Engineering.
In 2001 he received the Ph.D. degree from the same University.
He was with the Department of Electrical Engineering, as a research fellow in 1997 and as a post-doctoral fellow from 2001 to 2005. His research activity of that period has almost completely been devoted to sensorless and digital control of electrical drives, through the participation to some research project sponsored both from the national Minister of Research and from companies.
From August 2001 to November 2006 he was a permanent high-school electronics professor after having won the National competitive entrance examination in 2000. He took temporary leave to benefit from a 4-year post-doctoral fellowship position at the University of L’Aquila from 2001 to 2005. Immediately after he stayed for another year at school till November 2006.
From November 2006 to February 2016, he has been an Assistant Professor of electrical drives with the Department of Electrical, Management and Mechanical Engineering, University of Udine, Italy.
Since March 2016 he is an Associate Professor of electrical drives with the Polytechnic Department of Engineering and Architecture, University of Udine, Italy.
He is the only professor in the specific scientific area and is therefore in charge for all educational, teaching, research and organization activities.
He joins the research activities of EDLabNet (Electric Drives Laboratory Network), a network of research laboratories in the field of electric drives and industrial automation, participated by the University of Padova (seats of Padova and Vicenza) and Udine.
He was a member of the:
- National Organizing Committees of the International Conferences of the 3rd International Conference on Energy Efficiency in Motor Driven Systems held in Treviso, Italy, from 18 to 20 September, 2002;
- Organizing Committee of “Technology Day”, held in Udine on 13 October, 2009;
- National Organizing Committees of the International Conferences of the XIX International Conference on Electrical Machines (ICEM), held in Rome from 6 to 8 September, 2010.
From 2013 till 2015 he was a member of the department joint committee (commissione paritetica).
In the 2009 he was the recipient of the best paper Award at the Universities Power Engineering Conference (UPEC, Glasgow, UK) for the paper “Robust Grid Synchronization in Three-Phase Distributed Power Generation Systems by Synchronous Reference Frame Pre-Filtering”.
In 2010 he was the recipient of the 2nd Prize Paper from the Industrial Drives Committee of the IEEE Industry Applications Society for the paper “Automatic Tracking of MTPA Trajectory in Interior Permanent Magnet Motor Drives Based on AC Current Injection”.
In 2013 he was a Plenary Speaker at the IEEE International Electric Machines and Drives Conference, Chicago, USA.
In 2014 he won the “outstanding presentation” award at the Applied Power Electronics Conference, Fort Worth, Texas, USA.
From 2004 he was teacher for “1-Day Digital Motor Control Workshop” organized by Texas Instruments.
From 1999 he is member of IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc.) (as a “Student member” first and from 2000 as a “Member”). Collaborates to IEEE activities as a reviewer for IEEE Transactions on Industry Applications, IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics and IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems II.
In 2004 and 2005 he organized two technical sessions #32 “Sensors, Measurements, Communication & Fault Detection” and #1 “Intelligent control” within the “Industrial Automation and Control Committed” in “IEEE Industry Applications Society Annual Meeting” in Seattle and Hong Kong.
In 2005 and 2006 he was a professional consultant in the field of hardware and software design of power converters and drives. He interrupted that activity after having joined the Department of Electrical, Management and Mechanical Engineering of the University of Udine as an Assistant Professor.
His main research interests include modeling and control of power converters and electrical drives, measurement and estimation techniques for drives (sensor-less control), DSP-based systems for real-time implementation and, more recently, renewable-energy generation systems, i.e., grid-connected photovoltaic converters, co-generation systems, battery chargers for electric/hybrid vehicles and multilevel modulation strategies. He has co-authored about 95 technical papers and 2 International patents.