M. Stanley Helm Professorship in Electrical and Computer Engineering
M. Stanley Helm
M. Stanley Helm was born on Oct. 28, 1911, in Decatur, Ill. He started his career at the UI as an instructor in 1938 after gaining four years of experience in illumination at Illinois Power Company and motor control at Midstate Electric Company in Decatur.
In 1946, Prentice Hall published his book with Carl Skroder "Circuit Analysis by Laboratory Methods." In 1950, he received the EE Professional Degree and continued his career as a Professor of Electrical Engineering. During this time he received numerous teaching awards from the University of Illinois and the electric power industry. His research made contributions to what has now become known as "power quality".
Stan retired in 1982, but continued to be active in the American Power Conference and the IEEE Power Engineering Education Committee. He also continued as the coordinator for the Power Affiliates Program in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. He served on the departmental alumni board from 1970-1995. He was recognized with the UI Loyalty Award and the 1996 Marcia Peterman ECE Award. He was a member of Tau Beta Pi, Eta Kappa Nu, Sigma Xi, and Sigma Tau and was a registered Professional Engineer in the State of Illinois. He died Jan. 21, 2003.
This fund was established in 2002 by alumni and friends of M. Stanley Helm to recognize his many contributions through over 65 years of service (1938-2003) as a faculty member in the ECE department.
Alejandro D. Dominguez-García
Alejandro Dominguez-Garcia is a Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he is affiliated with the Power and Energy Systems area. Also within ECE Illinois, he has been a Grainger Associate since 2011, and a William L. Everitt Scholar since 2017. He is also a Research Professor in the Coordinated Science Laboratory and in the Information Trust Institute, both at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
His research program aims at the development of technologies for providing a reliable and efficient supply of electricity—a key to ensuring societal welfare and sustainable economic growth. Specific activities within his program include work on: (i) control of distributed energy resources, (ii) power system health monitoring and reliability analysis, and (iii) quantifying and mitigating the impact of renewable-based generation.
He received the degree of “Ingeniero Industrial” from the University of Oviedo in 2001, and the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering and computer science from MIT in 2007. He also spent time as a post-doctoral research associate at MIT before joining the Illinois faculty in 2008.
He received the NSF CAREER Award in 2010, and the Young Engineer Award from the IEEE Power and Energy Society in 2012. In 2014, he was invited by the National Academy of Engineering to attend the US Frontiers of Engineering Symposium, and was selected by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Provost to receive a Distinguished Promotion Award. In 2015, he received the U of I College of Engineering Dean’s Award for Excellence in Research. In 2023, he was elevated to IEEE Fellow for contributions to distributed control and uncertainty analysis of electrical energy systems.
He is currently an associate editor of the IEEE Transactions on Power Systems and the IEEE Power Engineering Letters. He also served as an editor of the IEEE Transactions on Control of Network Systems from July 2018 to June 2021.