Professor Bantval Jayant Baliga of North Carolina State University, United States, is the Winner of the 2024 Millennium Technology Prize for his innovation that has enabled dramatic reduction in worldwide electrical energy and petrol consumption.
The award recognizes Baliga’s leadership in the invention, development, and commercialization of the Insulated Gate Bipolar Transistor (IGBT). Since its development in the 1980s, the IGBT has been the most important semiconductor device for making electrical energy use and petrol consumption more efficient and less polluting during the last 40 years.
The efficiency improvements and reductions of fossil fuels consumption and cost, achieved by the IGBT, revolutionized the power industry. The innovation enables the worldwide green transition and mitigation of global warming by making electrification and the use of renewable energy efficient and profitable.
The technology has reduced global carbon dioxide emissions by over 82 gigatons (180 trillion pounds) in the past 30 years. This is equivalent to setting off carbon dioxide emissions by all human activity for three years, based on the average of the past 30 years’ time frame.
The innovation is used all over the world, for example in all wind and solar power installations, in electric and hybrid-electric cars, in medical diagnostic machines like X-Ray machines, CAT scanners and MRI units, in microwave ovens and induction stoves, in air-conditioning and refrigeration, and in portable defibrillators. Today, IGBT-based power converters and inverters dominate nearly every major application with a power rating between 1kW and 10MW.
Baliga and his team are currently working on two new inventions for further improvement of the efficiencies in the fields of solar power generation, electric vehicles, and power delivery for AI servers. Baliga is a Progress Energy Distinguished University Emeritus Professor at North Carolina State University, United States.
Learn how a tiny chip revolutionized global electrification, what the next steps are for the field, and why Professor Baliga is called the person with the largest negative carbon footprint in the world.
2024 Millennium Technology Prize winner Professor Bantval Jayant Baliga lectured on his groundbreaking innovation, the Insulated Gate Bipolar Transistor (IGBT), at the University of Helsinki on October 31, 2024.
Watch the recording below.
