The Age of Electricity: why AI-Infrastructure needs power electronics to usher in a paradigm shift in the electricity grid.

9:25 am - 9:50 am

Civilizational advancement has always been driven by our ability to generate, distribute, and utilize energy. Artificial intelligence is becoming one of the most impactful and decisive technologies in the recent history of humanity, with a potential we are only beginning to understand. Yet the unprecedented energy demand accompanying this innovation requires a fundamental rethinking of our power infrastructure, from generation and distribution to conversion.

It is becoming evident that conventional power grids, fossil energy sources, and traditional power conversion technologies cannot sustainably scale gigawatt data centers and physical AI. The transition toward DC grids, renewable energy, solid-state transformers and circuit breakers, and high-efficiency DC-DC converters is therefore an inevitable consequence of our AI ambitions.

This presentation will highlight how power electronics will be at the heart of this transformation and how these technologies will become the hidden champions enabling hyperscale data centers while making them more efficient and sustainable.

Key Technologies Covered

Wide Bandgap semiconductors
Power Modules
Solid State Transformers
Solid State Circuit Breakers
SiC JFET
SiC SuperJunction
Advanced Microcontrollers
DC-Power grids

Featured Speakers

Dr. Mehrdad Baghaie Yazdi

Vice President, Infineon Technologies

Mehrdad joined Infineon Technologies in 2022 as Head of the Application Marketing and Management Organization and is now Vice President of Systems, Applications and Software. Before joining Infineon, he gained more than a decade of experience in wide bandgap semiconductors, most recently as the Head of the Wide Bandgap Application Unit at ON Semiconductor. Before its merger with ON, he had established the interdisciplinary Power Solution Center at Fairchild Semiconductor, which engaged in high-end power device testing, technology development and application exploration with customers. Prior to that, he served as a lead engineer for power semiconductor device modeling, working on the first physically scalable electrothermal Models at Fairchild. While pursuing a doctoral degree in Solid State Engineering at the Technical University of Darmstadt, he worked at the Fraunhofer Institute for Adaptronics. He completed his Dipl.-Ing. in Electrical and Electronic Engineering, with a focus in Microelectronics and Photonics, at the Technical University of Vienna.

Mehrdad has over 60 publications in the field of physics, semiconductors and applications including papers, invited talks and workshop tutorials.