On the morning of June 10, 2026, the IEEE PELS Wuhan Chapter 2026 PELS Day Invited Lecture Series was successfully held in Lecture Hall B201, School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Huazhong University of Science and Technology. The lecture featured Professor Zheng Shen, Head of the Department of Mechatronics at Simon Fraser University, Canada, a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering, the U.S. National Academy of Inventors, and IEEE. The event attracted many faculty members and students, who gathered to explore cutting-edge topics in power supply for the artificial intelligence (AI) era.
Professor Shen has 37 years of research, industrialization, and teaching experience in power semiconductors, power electronics, and medium/low voltage DC distribution protection technologies. He holds profound academic achievements and extensive industry experience, including 23 US patents, over 400 academic papers, and two English monographs: DC Fault Protection: Basic Principles and Advanced Technologies and Wide Bandgap Power Electronics. He has served as Vice President of the IEEE Power Electronics Society and as Chair of several IEEE conferences, and currently serves as an independent director of Vicor, a renowned international power supply company.
The lecture, titled “Challenges and Opportunities in Powering GW-Level AI Data Centers,” focused on the rapid growth of data center electricity consumption from several megawatts to gigawatts amid the fast development of AI technology. It deeply analyzed the core challenges and opportunities facing the power conversion chain inside AI data centers. Professor Shen systematically elaborated and compared five key directions:
1. Power supply challenges and performance bottlenecks of GW-level data centers;
2. Technical advantages and application prospects of 800V HVDC (high-voltage direct current) power distribution architectures;
3. Technical features and optimization paths of vertical power delivery for GPU chips;
4. Design of a novel power distribution network architecture based on HVDC power distribution units (PDUs);
5. Key unresolved technical issues and future research directions in the field.
During the lecture, Professor Shen combined his extensive research and industry experience, explaining complex power electronics principles in accessible language and linking them to practical application scenarios in AI data centers. He not only reviewed the development trajectory of existing power supply technologies but also explored possibilities for breakthroughs, delivering a highly informative presentation with both academic depth and industrial value. In the interactive session, faculty and students enthusiastically raised questions about engineering implementation of HVDC, reliability design of new distribution architectures, and the application prospects of power electronics in AI computing infrastructure. Professor Shen answered each question patiently, fostering a vibrant academic atmosphere.
The IEEE PELS Wuhan Chapter is the Wuhan branch of the largest international academic organization in the field of power electronics. Established in 2018 and hosted by Huazhong University of Science and Technology, it received the IEEE PELS Global Best Chapter Award in 2020, the first time a chapter in mainland China achieved this honor. The Wuhan Power Supply Society is a key regional academic organization in the power electronics field in Wuhan, long supported by Huazhong University of Science and Technology. The joint organization of this academic event by the two societies will significantly promote power electronics academic exchange and technological progress in the Wuhan region.
