Lei Gu Assistant Professor @ Penn Engineering

Penn Power Electronics Research Lab (PENGUIN Lab)

Welcome! We are a research group passionate about building circuits — especially in the field of power electronics. Our focus is on creating efficient, compact systems that power exciting technologies, including renewable energy platforms, AI hardware, Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) machines, semiconductor processing tools, robotics, and electric vehicles. Here are some highlights from our past work.

Our research is deeply interdisciplinary, drawing from circuits, electromagnetics, optics, piezoelectricity, semiconductor devices, and control theory. If any of this sparks your interest, feel free to reach out! Here are a few of the areas we’re currently exploring:

Innovative power delivery: Inductive power transfer, integrated optical power delivery and sensing;
Miniaturized energy conversion: High-frequency circuits, wide-bandgap semiconductors, integrated power management, piezoelectric passives;
Powering medical technologies: MRI, ultrasound, X-rays, and implantable devices.

Members

About Me

I am an Assistant Professor in the Electrical and Systems Engineering Department at the University of Pennsylvania. My research broadly focuses on power electronics, energy conversion, and medical devices. I am also a visiting researcher in the Circuits Group at NVIDIA Research, where I work on data center power delivery. Before joining NVIDIA, I worked with an amazing team on HomePod at Apple. I received my Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford in 2019.

(Here is a more formal bio in the third-person.)

Join Us

Postdoc opening in power management integrated circuits, open until filled

I expect to take on new graduate students in the near future. If you’re interested in working with me at Penn, please apply to the Penn Engineering graduate program and mention my name in your application. While I appreciate the interest, I receive many emails from prospective students and may not be able to respond to each one in detail. I usually take 1–2 new students per year and make decisions after reviewing the full pool of applicants in January. For master’s students, I recommend starting by taking my course ESE5800 or ESE6710.