This hidden champion of engineering is omnipresent in our day-to-day lives, be it in a car or an electric toothbrush, in a factory robot or in a fridge. Almost everything that consumes electric power has a controller inside.

And it is not just the applications that make it exciting. It is a most attractive field of research for anyone who is into mathematics or physics.

However, the universality comes at a cost: Its concepts are often not easy to explain. This, in turn, makes it tricky to identify the applications that could benefit most from new control methods.

At the Research Explanation and Application Laboratory (REAL) students and researchers work together to move cutting-edge research closer to applications. We put a strong emphasis on explaining research in a relatable manner. This helps to identify novel applications which students get to explore in their Master projects.