Nihal Kularatna

Nihal Kularatna

DSc, BSc Eng (Hons)

FIET (London), FEngNZ, FIE (Sri Lanka), Senior Member IEEE (USA)

Nihal Kularatna is an electronics engineer with over 44 years of contribution to profession and research. He has authored ten books for practicing electronic engineers including the two consecutive IET Electrical Measurement Series books titled Modern electronic test & measuring instruments (1996) and Digital and analogue instrumentation- testing and measurement (2003/2008) and five Elsevier (USA) titles. His latest research monograph on sustainable energy and energy storage systems, titled Energy Storage Devices for Renewable Energy Systems: Rechargeable Batteries and Supercapacitors, will be published by Elsevier in 2020, summarizing his applications oriented research during the last five years, supervising many PhD students at the University of Waikato, New Zealand. He was the winner of New Zealand Innovator of the Year 2013 Award.

From 1976 to 1985 he worked as an electronics engineer at airports and digital telephone exchange systems. From 1985, he had a 16+ years of a successful engineering career at the Arthur C Clarke Institute for Modern Technologies, where he was promoted to the CEO in 1999. In the 1990s, he was an active consultant for a few US companies, including the Gartner Group, Technology Dynamics, NJ and many other organizations in his home country.

From 2002 to 2005 he was a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Auckland. He moved to University of Waikato in 2006. He acts as a member of the on-demand expert reviewer panel of the Ministry of Business Innovation and Enterprise, New Zealand (from 2005) and in 2014 he was appointed the Vice Chair of the DC Energy Efficiency Committee by the IEEE Power Electronics Society.

A Fellow of the IET (London), Fellow of Engineering NZ and a Senior Member of IEEE (USA) and a graduate from the University of Ceylon, during his long career at ACCIMT he was a winner of Presidential Awards for Inventions-1995, the Most Outstanding Citizens Awards-1999 and a TOYP Award in 1993.

In 2011 he was elected as an affiliated member of the Power Sources Manufacturers Association, USA. He is currently active in research in non-traditional supercapacitor applications, power supply topologies, transient propagation and renewable energy. He has contributed over 160 papers to learned journals and international conferences. His work on supercapacitor assisted (SCA) circuit topologies/techniques such as SCALDO, SCASA and SCATMA culminated numerous US, NZ and PCT patents and several more are pending.

He is presently employed as an Associate Professor in the School of Engineering, the University of Waikato, New Zealand. At international IEEE conferences and industry trade shows he frequently delivers invited tutorials, workshops and lectures on subjects he is passionate about, including the area of innovation and commercialization. His hobbies are gardening and car-grooming.