Daniel Fregosi, a Ph.D. student under Dr. Subhashish Bhattacharya, has been selected as a 2010 National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate (NDSEG) Fellowship recipient.

Daniel’s application was selected by the Navy from over 2,600 submitted applications that were received this year.  The NDSEG Fellowship is sponsored and funded by the Department of Defense (DoD).  NDSEG selections are made by the Air Force Research Laboratory/Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFRL/AFOSR), the Office of Naval Research (ONR), the Army Research Office (ARO), and the DoD High Performance Computing Modernization Program Office (HPCMO).  The American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) administers the NDSEG Fellowship.

Daniel was the valedictorian of the undergraduate class for the 2008-2009 school year.  He graduated with a 4.0 GPA and also serves as a mentor for the FREEDM Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) as well as being the president of the FREEDM Center Student Leadership Council (SLC).  He has also a MIT-Lincoln Laboratory Fellow and a Dean’s Fellow.

Dr. Subhashish Bhattacharya spoke of Daniel’s accomplishments saying, "He has been inspirational for our undergraduates to consider graduate school here." His current research is related to the development of  the Solid State Transformer.  The Solid State Transformer is a key device in the FREEDM System ‘smart-grid’.  It is designed to enable bi-directional, controllable power flow between a house and the utility grid.  This power electronics converter is realized with high voltage transistors, capacitors, and inductors, a high frequency transformer, and advanced control algorithms.  His focus on the research team is in determining potential control issues and designing algorithms to mitigate them.  Such control issues include regulating current and voltage when power is being supplied from a distributed source back to the grid or to a battery.

The NDSEG Fellowship covers the full tuition and required fees of the recipient for three years at any accredited U.S. college or university that provides advanced degrees in science and engineering. In addition, the NDSEG Fellowship will provides a yearly stipend.