2026 IEEE IES Awards Laureates Announced!
The IEEE Industrial Electronics Society has announced the 2026 recipients of the society’s awards! Congratulations to them!
IES would also like to express great appreciations to the IES Awards & Honors Committee chaired by IES Past President Terry Martin.
Dr.-Ing. Eugene Mittelmann Achievement Award
Recipient: Josep M. Guerrero
Center for Research on Microgrids (CROM), Huanjiang Laboratory, Zhuji, Zhejiang Province, China & University of Valladolid, Spain
Citation: For pioneering contributions to grid-forming and hierarchical control architectures of power converters, defining modern industrial electronics for sustainable energy systems
Josep M. Guerrero (Fellow, IEEE) received the B.Sc. degree in telecommunications engineering and the Ph.D. degree from the Technical University of Catalonia, Barcelona, Spain. Expanding his interdisciplinary research scope, he earned the M.Sc. degree in Psychobiology and Cognitive Neuroscience from the Institute of Neuroscience (INc), Autonomous University of Barcelona, in 2022, and the M.Sc. degree in Sleep: Physiology and Medicine from the University of Murcia, Spain, in 2023.
He is currently a Distinguished Senior Researcher with the Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Valladolid, Spain, and the Director of the Center for Research on Microgrids (CROM), Huanjiang Laboratory, Zhuji, China. From 2011 to 2023, he was a Full Professor with AAU Energy, Aalborg University, Denmark, where he founded and directed the Microgrid Research Program. From 2019 to 2024, he was a Villum Investigator supported by the Villum Fonden. Between 2023 and 2024, he served as an ICREA Research Professor at the Technical University of Catalonia.
Prof. Guerrero is a Fellow of IEEE for his contributions to distributed power systems and microgrids and was elevated to Fellow of the Chinese Society for Electrical Engineering (CSEE) in 2026. He was elected Academician of the Danish Technical Academy in 2021. He has published more than 1,000 journal papers, which have been cited over 150,000 times, and during ten consecutive years (2014–2023), he was recognized by Clarivate Analytics as a Highly Cited Researcher. He is the recipient of the IEEE Bimal Bose Award for Industrial Electronics Applications in Energy Systems (2021), the IEEE PES Douglas M. Staszesky Distribution Automation Award (2022), the IEEE Modeling and Control Technical Achievement Award (2023), and the Zhejiang Foreign Expert West Lake Friendship Award (2025).
His current research focuses on advanced power electronics, cyber-physical energy systems, and interdisciplinary intelligence. Methodologically, his work encompasses space and power electronics applications, cybersecurity, neuroscience-inspired artificial intelligence, machine learning, bio-inspired computing, and quantum communication for complex networks. These technologies are applied across diverse sectors, including terrestrial renewable energy integration and energy storage, maritime systems such as seaport microgrids and all-electric ships, aerospace platforms including more-electric aircraft and space microgrids, as well as smart medical systems and biological networks.
IEEE Bimal Bose Award for Industrial Electronics Applications in Energy Systems
Recipient: Hui Zhang
Beihang University, Beijing, China
Citation: For pioneering contributions to sustainable mobility via energy-oriented intelligent transportation systems and the energy-saving control and optimization of electric powertrains
Hui Zhang received the B.Sc. degree in mechanical design manufacturing and automation from the Harbin Institute of Technology, Weihai, China, in 2006, the M.Sc. degree in automotive engineering from Jilin University, Changchun, China, in 2008, and the Ph.D. degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Victoria, Victoria, BC, Canada, in 2012.
He is currently a full professor at Beihang University, Beijing, China. He was the recipient of the 2022 IEEE J. David Irwin Early Career Award, the 2017 IEEE Transactions on Fuzzy Systems Outstanding Paper Award, the 2018 SAE Ralph R. Teetor Educational Award, the IEEE Vehicular Technology Society 2019 Best Vehicular Electronics Paper Award, and 2025 SAE Forest R. McFarland Award. He is an IEEE Fellow.
IEEE Rudolf Chope Research & Development Award
Recipient: Guang-Ren Duan
Harbin Institute of Technology, China
Citation: For proposing parametric control and full-actuation control with industrial applications
Guang-Ren Duan is Fellow of IEEE, IFAC, CAA and IET, and Academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He received his Ph.D. degree in Control Systems Science from Harbin Institute of Technology (HIT), Harbin, China, in 1989. After a two-year post-doctoral experience at HIT, he became full professor of control systems theory at HIT in 1991. From December 1996 to October 2002, he visited the University of Hull, the University of Sheffield, and also the Queen’s University of Belfast, UK. He is the founder and presently the Honorary Director of the Center for Control Theory and Guidance Technology at HIT. From 2021 to 2024, he established the discipline of Control Science and Engineering at the Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech), Shenzhen, China, and served as the dean of the School of Automation and Intelligent Manufacturing at SUSTech.
He is the author and co-author of six books and over 600 SCI-indexed publications, and is ranked No.1 in the subfield of Industrial Engineering and Automation in the 2025 Elsevier-Stanford “World’s Top 2% Scientists” program by Single Recent Year Scientific Impact. His research interests include both linear and nonlinear control. Particularly, he discovered in 2021 the mathematically generalized fully actuated system (FAS) models for general dynamical systems and established the FAS approach for control. He set up the technical committee on FAS Theory and Applications (FASTA) with both the Chinese Association of Automation and the Asian Control Association, respectively in 2022 and 2024, and also the technical committee on Fully Actuated System Approach with the IEEE SMC Society in 2025. In addition, he has also set up the annual International FASTA Conference, which has been held five times, with FASTA 2025 and 2025 both attracting more than 1000 participants. Presently, he is serving as the Editor-in-Chief for a book series published with Springer on Fully Actuated System Approach for Control and AI. He has served as general chair for several international conferences including the 23rd IFAC ACA Symposium, and FASTA 2022~2025, and has also been invited to give plenary talks at more than 40 international conferences, including IEEE ARM 2020, IEEE ICRA 2021, IEEE IECON 2023, SICE-ICASE 2006, SICE 2014, IFAC TDS 2021, CCC 2021, and CAC 2024.
He is the winner of several awards, including two State Natural Science Awards of China, the Grand Award of Natural Science in Heilongjiang Province, the Science and Technology Achievement Award of the Chinese Association of Automation (CAA), the Outstanding Contribution Award of Technical Committee on Control Theory, CAA, and the 4th Chinese Youth Award of Science and Technology, presented by the Organization Department of the Communist Central Committee of the CPC, the Ministry of Personnel of China and the Ministry of Science and Technology of China. Furthermore, his discovery of the FAS approach has been included in the 2023 Ten Major Scientific and Technological Progresses of China’s Colleges and Universities, organized by the Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China. Meanwhile, he is the winner of the Basic Science Center Program of the Natural Science Foundation of China, and leader of an Innovative Research Group of NSFC and a Changjiang Scholar Innovative Team of the Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China. He is the Chief Scientist of the Federation of Shenzhen Industries, a Member of the Science and Technology Committee of the Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China, and the Chair of the 8th Discipline Review Group for Control Science and Engineering, the Academic Degrees Committee of the State Council of China.
Prof. Duan is also an excellent educator who have supervised 85 doctoral students. Many of his students have become IEEE Fellows, or professors with other distinctions.
IEEE J. David Irwin Early Career Award
Recipient: Dong Zhao
Beihang University, Beijing, China
Citation: For outstanding contributions to the safety and security of industrial cyber-physical systems and autonomous aerial vehicles
Dong Zhao (Senior Member, IEEE) received the B.E. degree in automation and the Ph.D. degree in control science and engineering from Beijing University of Chemical Technology, Beijing, China, in 2011 and 2016, respectively. From 2017 to 2021, he was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow with the Institute for Automatic Control and Complex Systems, University of Duisburg-Essen, Duisburg, Germany, and the KIOS Research and Innovation Center of Excellence, University of Cyprus, Nicosia, Cyprus. Since 2022, he has been a Professor with the School of Cyber Science and Technology, Beihang University, Beijing, China.
His research interests include industrial cyber-physical systems, resilient autonomous systems, fault diagnosis, resilient control, and machine learning. His research has led to the development of cybersecurity technologies that have been successfully deployed in industrial practice through a cyber-security management platform for critical infrastructure and autonomous systems. He has also contributed to industrial cybersecurity through the discovery and responsible disclosure of multiple industrial control system vulnerabilities recorded by the China National Vulnerability Database (CNVD). Prof. Zhao has authored more than 80 peer-reviewed publications and has secured over USD 2 million in competitive research funding as principal investigator. His research has been recognized with multiple international Best Paper Awards, the First Prize of Natural Science from the China Simulation Federation (2026), the IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics Outstanding Associate Editor Award (2024), and the Second Prize of Natural Science from the Chinese Association of Automation (2023). He currently serves as an Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics, IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics, and Expert Systems with Applications. He has also held numerous leadership roles in flagship IEEE Industrial Electronics Society conferences, including Technical Program Co-Chair, Tutorial Chair, Publicity Chair, Technical Track Chair, and Session Chair, and actively contributes to several IEEE Industrial Electronics Society and IFAC Technical Committees.
IEEE IES Best Chapter Award
IES Tunisia Section Chapter – IEEE IAS/IES/PES ESPRIT SBJC
Citation: For recognition of Outstanding Chapter Activity in 2025
IEEE IES Best Student Branch Chapter Award
IEEE IAS/IES/PES Student Branch Chapter from the Esprit School of Engineering in Tunisia
Citation: For recognition of Outstanding Student Branch Chapter Activity in 2025