Professor Emeritus Hirofumi Akagi, a specially-appointed professor at Komatsu Collaborative Research Cluster for Innovative Technologies, was selected as a Luminary for the Energy Conversion Congress and Exposition (ECCE) of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), and his Luminary session was held in Phoenix, Arizona, USA on Tuesday, October 22nd.

The following is an English translation of a partial excerpt from Institute of Science Tokyo website (in Japanese).

The IEEE Energy Conversion Congress and Exposition (ECCE) was held in Phoenix, Arizona, USA from October 20th to 24th, 2024. This is an international conference which has been jointly hosted by the Power Electronics Society and the Industry Applications Society of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) every autumn since 2009.

The Luminary session was planned and held on Tuesday, October 22nd from 17:30 to 19:00. It is the second edition in this year, in which two prominent scientists were selected as Luminaries, following the last year. Specifically, they were John Kassakian, Emeritus Professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and Hirofumi Akagi, Emeritus Professor at Tokyo Institute of Technology. Three of a total of four Luminaries in the last year and this year were American, and Professor Akagi was the first non-American.

(Reprinted from Science Tokyo website)