Alessandro M. Ferrero

Biography

A full professor of electrical and electronic measurements at the Politecnico di Milano in Milan, Italy, Alessandro M. Ferrero has pioneered methods for material and component characterization and power and energy metering. His work has helped improve power quality, especially for identifying sources that produce distortion and compensating for unnecessary current and power components.

In Europe, Ferrero has led in the use of virtual instruments. The measurement and instrumentation technologies he developed have been used to solve complex measurement problems in electric power systems under nonsinusoidal conditions by factoring in virtual instruments, digital signal processing and distributed measurement systems.

His contributions have been recognized worldwide as fundamental milestones in measurement science and practice. These include his interpretation of power definition based on Poynting-Park vector and hyper-complex algebra, as well as his landmark paper, Definitions of Electrical Quantities Commonly Used in Nonsinusoidal Conditions. His work allowed him to define new indicators for evaluating supply and loading qualities under nonsinusoidal conditions. At the same time, his mathematical approach, which is based on hyper-complex algebra, has provided an easier to use and more powerful framework for modeling such conditions.

Ferrero founded and chaired the first six International Workshops on Power Definitions and Measurements. Sponsored by the North Italy Chapter of the IEEE Instrumentation and Measurement Society, these workshops brought together the world’s top measurement and instrumentation researchers to exchange ideas and explore theoretical and practical applications in the field.

An IEEE Fellow, he is the associate editor of the IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement. He has published more than 130 papers in journals on instrumentation and measurement.

He holds a master’s degree in electrical engineering from the Politecnico di Milano.