Winston Qin is a B.S. student in Electrical Engineering at Columbia University and an undergraduate researcher in Columbia’s Motor Drives & Power Electronics Lab (MPLab). His current work centers on designing PCBs to interface various C2000 microcontrollers with PLECS RT Box for hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) testing of distributed control schemes. He experiments with mixed-signal design, ethernet communication and DC-DC converter circuitry in his investigations and uses various laboratory instruments at the MPLab to perform meticulous testing and validation.
Apart from scalable HIL infrastructure, Winston is also broadly interested in electric traction, battery systems, and power converter topology in railway and EV applications. Having grown up in New York City, he is especially fond of the SPWM sounds made by the multi-megawatt inverters of accelerating subway trains. As an undergraduate student, he is the project lead of Columbia Locomotives, a 1/6th-scale electric locomotive engineering team competing at the International iMechE Railway Challenge. Winston is also Technical Team Co-Lead for Columbia's Engineers Without Borders—Ghana chapter and the Conservation Lead for Columbia Birding Troupe. In his free time, he is also an avid soccer player, trail runner, professional photographer and volunteer bird rescuer. You can find his best photography work at WinstonPX.com.