Slobodan Cuk 1

Slobodan Ćuk is an author, inventor, business owner, electrical engineer, and professor of electrical engineering. The Ćuk switched-mode dc-dc converter is named for him. For over 20 years, until January 1, 2000, he was a full-time professor of electrical engineering at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). In 1979, Slobodan founded TESLAco, which is currently located in Laguna Niguel, Calif. It had a charter to apply basic research results developed at Caltech to commercial, space, and military designs. This ultimately resulted in a family of hybrid Ćuk converters incorporated in the Orion spacecraft slated to land on Mars before 2030.

Other works produced at TESLAco include a multiple-output Ćuk converter incorporated in the F-22 Joint Strike Fighter plane; a heart defibrillator using a high-voltage step-up Ćuk converter, which was implanted in over 100,000 patients; and use of a similar converter by Ford Motor Company for HID lamps in their cars. More recently, the Ćuk-buck2 converter and PWM Resonant Ćuk converters have been patented and are available for license along with other patents. To date, over 50 patents have Ćuk's name on them. At the PCIM Europe 2011 conference, Leo Lorenz introduced Ćuk as a "father of power electronics." After five decades in the field, Cuk hopes to be remembered both as one of the founders of classical power electronics as well as a "father of modern power electronics."