Professor Paul Lewin elected IEEE Dielectrics and Electrical Insulation Society President

Professor Paul Lewin has been elected the 2016 IEEE Dielectrics and Electrical Insulation Society (DEIS) President. Paul is only the second person from outside of North America to hold this position in the 52 year history of the Society.

He has been a Vice-President of the DEIS since 2012 and was officially elected as President for 2016 on Tuesday 20 October, during the recent Conference on Electrical Insulation and Dielectric Phenomena held in Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA. “My major objective as President, will be to work with the members of the Society to translate our agreed strategic plan into specific future projects and activities; that ultimately will further increase the value of society membership and ensure that the DEIS continues to be both highly relevant and successful worldwideâ€? said Paul, following confirmation of his appointment.

Paul is Professor of Electrical Power Engineering within Electronics and Computer Science (ECS), where he is also Head of the Tony Davies High Voltage Laboratory and Deputy Head of ECS for Education.

The IEEE – the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers – is the world’s largest professional association for the advancement of technology and has 39 Technical Societies including the DEIS, which has more than 2,200 members from 82 countries. As a technical society, the DEIS organizes and supports conferences and workshops around the world every year, publishes the IEEE Transactions on Dielectrics and Electrical Insulation (TDEI) and the IEEE Electrical Insulation Magazine (EIM) as well as developing and maintaining relevant IEEE standards and presenting awards in recognition of significant technical achievement. Over the last two years, Paul Lewin has had responsibility for overseeing the development of new DEIS conference and workshop activities in Asia. “Both manufacturing and research activity in high voltage plant and electrical insulation has significantly increased in Asia over the last decade and in response to this the DEIS has worked with national societies and universities to further develop its conference programme in Asiaâ€?, said Paul, “as a result new fully sponsored DEIS conferences include the International Conference on High Voltage Engineering to be held in 2016 in Chongqing, China and the International Conference on Electrical Materials and Power Equipment to be held in 2017 in Xi’an, China.â€?

As an active member of the DEIS, Paul has been an Associate Editor of the TDEI since 2008, has been a member of the DEIS Technical Committee on Condition Monitoring since 2011 and in June 2015 was the General Chair of the 33rd IEEE Electrical Insulation Conference (EIC) held in Seattle, Washington, USA, becoming the first chair from outside of North America in the 57 year history of the conference series. “I am confident that my wide experience of the Society’s technical activities and interests will be of great assistance when facing the challenges of leading the Society over the next 12 months,â€? said Professor Lewin.