The ABB Research Award is named after Dr. Hubertus von Grünberg, who was the Chairman of the Board of Directors of ABB from 2007 to 2015.
Awarded every three years it is endowed with a research grant of US $300,000, making it one of the highest endowed global research awards by a corporation. The award is for postdoctoral researchers in the fields of energy, manufacturing, transport, infrastructure, digitalization or related fields. The grant enables the awardee to continue researching his or her topic for three years.
The first award, presented on 20th October 2016, was given to Prof. Dr. Jef Beerten from KU Leuven. He was awarded for his doctoral thesis titled "Modelling and Control of Direct Current Networks" leading to his postgraduate research project “High-Bandwidth Dynamic Interactions in Future HVDC Grids”.
The next winner of the award will be announced on 11th November 2019.The awardee is selected by a high-ranking international jury. Current members of the jury are: Dr. Hubertus von Grünberg, Prof. Nina Thornhill, Professor of Process Engineering at the Imperial College London; Prof. M. Granger Morgan, Hamerschlag University Professor of Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University Pittsburgh, Prof. Roland Siegwart, Professor of Autonomous Systems at ETH Zurich, Prof. C.L. Philip Chen, Chair Professor and former Dean at the Faculty of Science and Technology at the University of Macau, Taipa, Macau, and Bazmi Husain, Chief Technology Officer of ABB.
With the ABB Research Award in Honor of Hubertus von Grünberg, ABB aims to sustain high-quality research and encourage the development of future cutting-edge technologies and applications around the globe.