Peter W. Sauer

2021 Marcia Peterman ECE Award

In recognition of outstanding service to the ECE department and its students, faculty, and alumni.

Peter W. Sauer obtained his BS degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Missouri at Rolla in 1969. He was married to Sylvia in 1969 and they have two children. From 1969 to 1973, he was the electrical engineer on a design assistance team for the Tactical Air Command at Langley Air Force Base, Virginia, working on design and construction of airfield lighting and electrical distribution systems. He obtained his MS and PhD. degrees in Electrical Engineering from Purdue University in 1974 and 1977 respectively.  He has been on the faculty at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign since 1977 where he taught courses and directed research on power systems and electric machines.  His main contributions were in modeling and simulation of power system dynamics with applications to steady-state and transient stability analysis. From August 1991 to August 1992 he served as the Program Director for Power Systems in the Electrical and Communication Systems Division of the National Science Foundation in Washington D.C. He was a cofounder of the Power Systems Engineering Research Center (PSERC) and a cofounder of PowerWorld Corporation in 1996.  He and M. A. Pai coauthored a textbook on “Power System Dynamics and Stability” in 1998. He retired as a Lt. Col. from the US Air Force in 1998 after 28 years (active and reserve) of service working on electric power distribution system design.  He is a registered Professional Engineer in Virginia and Illinois, a Fellow of the IEEE, and a member of the US National Academy of Engineering. He retired from full-time service to Illinois on Dec 31, 2019. He is currently the Grainger Chair Emeritus Professor of Electrical Engineering at Illinois. There is additional information on his career and publications at:  https://ece.illinois.edu/about/directory/faculty/psauer.

Current as of 2022.