Welcome From The General Chair

It is my great pleasure to welcome you to the 2011 IEEE Vehicle Power and Propulsion Conference (VPPC’11). As the inaugural general chair of this annual conference back in 2005 in Chicago, USA, I am pleased to see our conference with an exceptional sustainable growth. I believe the biggest challenge, and at the same time the biggest opportunity, of our time is in the area of energy and sustainability. Transportation is at the center of this challenge and electrification of vehicles is the best sustainable solution to move forward. There is in fact an already evolving paradigm shift in transportation. Electricity is cleaner, greener, more affordable, and domestically produced. The sustainable solution for transportation includes generating electricity from Carbon-free and renewable energy sources such as wind, solar, and hydro and use the electricity in transportation. We should increase the electrification level of propulsion systems as much as possible and move toward all-electric as quickly as possible. This is our goal: Powering Sustainable Transportation.

VPPC is the flagship conference of IEEE for advanced vehicles and this makes VPPC of significant importance with unprecedented responsibilities. There is a dire need to educate the public, train the students, engineers, and scientists, research fundamental and groundbreaking solutions, innovate new technologies, develop cost-effective and better products, and finally commercialize more environmental friendly vehicles. VPPC is doing a great job in leading such monumental task from the technical side.

We have a terrific 4-day conference this year with a comprehensive program exceptionally attractive for the industry, government agencies, and general public in addition to the academic researchers and educators. For the first time, we have added four half-day educational short courses, which are of great interest for the industry. We have also organized an interesting public/media night, which is open to the public and media for free. The program also includes state-of-the-art tutorials and panel discussions. Keynote presentations are also among the highlights of the conference. Industry participation is significant through special presentation only sessions and exhibits in addition to numerous papers and panel presentations. With over 350 technical presentations, this conference is the main global technical event for the vehicle power and propulsion systems.

We have been working very hard to organize an excellent technical conference for you. I also hope that you enjoy Chicago while attending the conference. Chicago is a beautiful and diverse world-class city located in the center of the United States with a magnificent architecture and numerous cultural activities, restaurants, theaters, museums, shopping centers, sports teams, and much more.

I am enthusiastically looking forward to meeting you in Chicago and hope that you have a memorable experience.

Let’s continue our work in Powering Sustainable Transportation.

Warmest Regards,
Ali Emadi
General Chair, 2011 IEEE VPPC