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Dr Matthew Priestley
Manager

Dr Matthew Priestley

  • Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) in Electrical Engineering at University of New South Wales (UNSW) in August 2019.
  • Bachelor of Engineering with Class I Honours (B.Eng.) in Electrical Engineering at James Cook University (JCU) in 2013, where he received the University Medal.
Research & Enterprise
Digital Grid Futures Institute

Dr Matthew Priestley is the Lead Technology Translator in the Energy Systems Research Group within the School of Electrical Engineering and Telecommunications. He is passionate about motor drives and power systems research. Matthew is particularly interested in drone motor drive research and has secured roughly $40k from the Digital Grid Infrastructure and Research Infrastructure Scheme to build a drone motor drive lab at UNSW. He is also interested in grid synchronization algorithms for power inverters in renewable energy systems.

Matthew has a passion for investigating innovative teaching methods to better deliver engineering content to students and is an Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. He has pioneered new methods for using short courses to implement a capstone experience using a $40k Education Investment Fund (EIF) grant in this area.

Matthew has also founded a technology start-up company called Motorica which patented specialized motor designs and a novel post-failure motor control technology. This company won acceptance into the UNSW Founders 10x Accelerator, (July to Sept. 2018) which is UNSW’s flagship accelerator. Matthew has also worked for a mining consultancy company during Feb. 2014 to Jan. 2015, where he performed electrical power system design, Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) design, equipment commissioning and Variable Speed Drive (VSD) protection duties.
E-mail
m.priestley@unsw.edu.au
Location
School of Electrical Engineering and Telecommunications (Building G17) Level 3, Room EE314
  • Journal articles | 2022
    2022, 'Inductive Power Transfer Battery Charger with IR-Based Closed-Loop Control', Energies, 15, http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/en15218319
    Journal articles | 2022
    2022, 'Predicting Bearing Fault in the Drone Freight Industry: Legal Liability in Australia', Journal of Air Law and Commerce, 87, pp. 299 - 299, http://dx.doi.org/10.25172/jalc.87.2.4
    Journal articles | 2021
    2021, 'Fault-tolerant strategies for open-circuit switch failures in open-end winding PMSM drives', JOURNAL OF ENGINEERING-JOE, 2021, pp. 621 - 629, http://dx.doi.org/10.1049/tje2.12073
    Journal articles | 2020
    2020, 'FOC Transformation for Single Open-Phase Faults in the Five-Phase Open-End Winding Topology', IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics, 67, pp. 842 - 851, http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/TIE.2019.2898588
    Journal articles | 2018
    Priestley M; Fletcher JE; Tan C, 2018, 'Space-Vector PWM Technique for Five-Phase Open-End Winding PMSM Drive Operating in the Overmodulation Region', IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics, 65, pp. 6816 - 6827, http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/TIE.2018.2795527
  • Conference Papers | 2022
    2022, 'Work-in-Progress: A Holistic Approach to Bridging the Gap between Power Engineering Education and Electric Power Industry', in IEEE Global Engineering Education Conference, EDUCON, IEEE, pp. 2044 - 2048, presented at 2022 IEEE Global Engineering Education Conference (EDUCON), 28 March 2022 - 31 March 2022, http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/EDUCON52537.2022.9766552
    Conference Papers | 2021
    2021, 'Improved power engineering curriculum: Analysis in a year 3 course in electrical engineering', in IEEE Global Engineering Education Conference, EDUCON, IEEE, pp. 701 - 705, presented at 2021 IEEE Global Engineering Education Conference (EDUCON), 21 April 2021 - 23 April 2021, http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/EDUCON46332.2021.9453908
    Conference Papers | 2020
    2020, 'A Gate Driver with a Negative Turn off Bias Voltage for GaN HEMTs', in 2020 IEEE 9th International Power Electronics and Motion Control Conference, IPEMC 2020 ECCE Asia, pp. 1083 - 1086, http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/IPEMC-ECCEAsia48364.2020.9367669
    Conference Papers | 2020
    2020, 'Implementation of microgrid virtual laboratory in a design course in electrical engineering', in Proceedings of 2020 IEEE International Conference on Teaching, Assessment, and Learning for Engineering, TALE 2020, pp. 509 - 515, http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/TALE48869.2020.9368350
    Conference Papers | 2018
    Priestley M; Fletcher J; Farshadnia M, 2018, 'Post-Fault FOC Transformation Matrix for Unequal Amplitude Currents during Dual Open-Phase Fault', in Proceedings: IECON 2018 - 44th Annual Conference of the IEEE Industrial Electronics Society, IECON 2018, Washington DC, pp. 653 - 658, presented at IECON 2018, Washington DC, 21 October 2018 - 23 October 2018, http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/IECON.2018.8591672
    Conference Papers | 2018
    2018, 'Torque ripple suppression for open-end multiphase PMSMs operating under open-phase faults', in Proceedings: IECON 2018 - 44th Annual Conference of the IEEE Industrial Electronics Society, pp. 731 - 736, http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/IECON.2018.8595142
    Conference Papers | 2016
    Mohd Said NA; Priestley M; Dutta R; Fletcher JE, 2016, 'Torque ripple minimization in dual inverter open-end winding PMSM drives with non-sinusoidal back-EMFs by harmonic current suppression', in IECON Proceedings (Industrial Electronics Conference), pp. 2975 - 2980, http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/IECON.2016.7793479
    Conference Papers | 2016
    Priestley M; Xiao D; Said NA M; Dutta R; Fletcher JE, 2016, 'Post-fault control strategy for IPMSMs with non-sinusoidal back-EMFs in an open-ended winding configuration', in IECON Proceedings (Industrial Electronics Conference), pp. 2879 - 2884, http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/IECON.2016.7793768

  • Secured $20k funding from the Digital Grid Future Institute (DGFI) scheme as a primary investigator to investigate the legal requirements for detecting bearing faults in drone motors.
  • Secured $18k funding from the Research Infrastructure Scheme (RIS) to construct a drone motor drive lab.
  • Secured $40k from the Education Investment Fund (EIF) scheme as a primary investigator to investigate how online short courses can be used to facilitate an authentic capstone experience.

  • Dean’s Award for Outstanding PhD Theses, UNSW, 2019 (for PhD graduates who have submitted a thesis that is in the top 10% of PhD theses examined).
  • Industrial Electronics Society (IES) Electrical Machines Technical Committee (EMTC) paper award, 44th Annual Conference IEEE IES (IECON), 2018.
  • Outstanding paper award for conference paper titled "Implementation of Microgrid Virtual Laboratory in a Design Course in Electrical Engineering" presented in TALE 2020.
  • Pitched and won entry to the Innovyz commercialization incubator program with the UNSW motor drive team. (Included six-month business development course).
  • Pitched and won acceptance into the UNSOMNIA 2021 media program.

Matthew’s primary research activities include:

  • Drone propulsion motor drive systems
  • Microgrid and grid-interfacing inverters
  • Grid synchronization algorithms for power inverter systems
  • Motor control
  • Multi-phase (five-phase and higher phase number) motor drive systems
  • Fault-tolerant electric machine drive systems
  • Health monitoring of electric machine drive systems
  • Electric vehicle traction drive systems
  • Electrical engineering teaching methods

 

Patents

  • M. Farshadnia, M. Priestley, J. E. Fletcher, “A machine, stator and method for design and optimization”, PCT Application, Application No. PCT/AU2018/050933, File Date: May 2018.
  • M. Priestley, M. Farshadnia, J. E. Fletcher, A method of facilitating control of electric motors”, PCT Application, Application No. PCT/AU2019/050569, File Date: May 2018.