Madhu Chinthavali

Madhu Sudhan Chinthavali

Electrical Systems Integration Program Director

Madhu Chinthavali, Electrical Systems Integration Program Manager, was instrumental in founding the Grid Research Integration and Deployment Center, or GRID-C, at ORNL and has served in a series of leadership roles during more than two decades at the laboratory. He grew the lab’s power electronics and grid systems research expertise from a team to a larger group before taking the helm of the Electric Energy Systems Integration and Controls section. Chinthavali has managed ORNL’s energy portfolio at ORNL as program lead across multiple DOE offices and provided national leadership in helping DOE’s Office of Electricity establish the Power Electronics Accelerator Consortium for Electrification.

 

Chinthavali provides broad experience in developing many facets of power electronics technologies and innovative solutions for applications including vehicle charging, building energy integration, grid-tied energy storage and photovoltaic systems, and power flow control grid devices. He earned his master’s degree and doctorate in electrical engineering from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville while working at ORNL. Chinthavali has been recognized with multiple honors for leadership, technology innovations and collaboration projects.

  • UT-Battelle Leadership Award (2022)
  • Director’s Award for 2020 Federal Energy and Water Management collaboration to develop the EMPOWER Wall, which will advance state of the art energy efficiency technologies in federal buildings by helping to reduce energy use (2020)
  • R&D 100 Award, Special Recognition on Green Tech, jointly filed with Toyota and Cisco Systems (2016) 
  • Team Award, ORNL Awards (2016)
  • Best paper award from IEEE Power Electronics Society for “Vehicular Integration of Wireless Power Transfer Systems and Hardware Interoperability Case Studies” authored by Omer Onar, Steven Campbell, Larry Seiber, Cliff White, and Madhu Chinthavali, (2016)
  • Recipient of 40 under Forty: Knoxville’s best and brightest (2015)
  • DOE recognition for WBG and 3D printed Inverter (2014)

2015 Ph.D in Electrical Engineering, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN
2003 M.S. in Electrical Engineering, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN
2000 B.E. in Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Bharathidasan University, Tamilnadu, India