Research

Rachel's research is in power electronics, a critical technology that provides power to anything requiring electricity. In particular, she specializes in magnetics design and modeling, with a focus on high-frequency power applications. Rachel works on improving the energy efficiency and density of magnetics, as they're often the bottleneck in advancing power electronics applications and in enabling new ones to emerge.

Through her research thus far, Rachel has developed two types of magnetic component designs that can halve the energy loss of these components. These low-loss designs may help to drastically improve a wide range of power electronics applications, such as by reducing the energy used in manufacturing semiconductors or by accelerating the charging rate of wireless chargers.

Rachel is currently a graduate student researcher at MIT in Prof. David Perreault's Power Electronics Research Group.

Journal Papers

• R. S. Yang, A. B. Nadler, C. R. Sullivan and D. J. Perreault, "Permanent Magnet Hybrid Core Inductors for High Saturation Capability," IEEE Open Journal of Power Electronics, vol. 4, pp. 603-614, 2023.

• R. S. Yang, A. J. Hanson, C. R. Sullivan and D. J. Perreault, “Design Flexibility of a Modular Low-Loss High-Frequency Inductor Structure,” IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics, vol. 36, no. 11, pp. 13013-13024, Nov 2021.

• R. S. Yang, A. J. Hanson, B. A. Reese, C. R. Sullivan and D. J. Perreault, "A Low-Loss Inductor Structure and Design Guidelines for High-Frequency Applications," IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics, vol. 34, no. 10, pp. 9993-10005, Oct 2019. [open-access version]

Conference Papers

• R. S. Yang, I. Nikiforidis, N. Pucci, M. V. Joisher, P. Wagle, P. D. Mitcheson, and D. J. Perreault, “Design and Performance Comparison of Multi-Frequency Inductors for Megahertz Wireless Power Transfer,” IEEE Applied Power Electronics Conference and Exposition (APEC), Long Beach, CA, 2024. (outstanding presentation award)

• M. V. Joisher, R. S. Bayliss III, M. K. Ranjram, R. S. Yang, A. S. Jurkov, and D. J. Perreault, “High-Performance High-Power Inductor Design for High-Frequency Applications,” IEEE Applied Power Electronics Conference and Exposition (APEC), Long Beach, CA, 2024.

• R. S. Yang, A. B. Nadler, C. R. Sullivan, and D. J. Perreault, "Permanent Magnet Hybrid Core Inductors for High Saturation Capability," IEEE Workshop on Control and Modeling for Power Electronics (COMPEL), Tel Aviv, Israel, 2022. (best paper award)

• R. S. Bayliss III, R. S. Yang, A. J. Hanson, C. R. Sullivan, and D. J. Perreault, “Design, Implementation, and Evaluation of High-Efficiency High-Power Radio-Frequency Inductors,” IEEE Applied Power Electronics Conference and Exposition (APEC), Phoenix, AZ, 2021.

• R. S. Yang, A. J. Hanson, C. R. Sullivan, and D. J. Perreault, “Application Flexibility of a Low-Loss High-Frequency Inductor Structure,” IEEE Applied Power Electronics Conference and Exposition (APEC), New Orleans, LA, 2020. [open-access version]

• R. S. Yang, A. J. Hanson, D. J. Perreault and C. R. Sullivan, "A Low-Loss Inductor Structure and Design Guidelines for High-Frequency Applications," IEEE Applied Power Electronics Conference and Exposition (APEC), San Antonio, TX, 2018. [open-access version] (outstanding presentation award)

• A. J. Hanson, R. S. Yang, S. Lim, and D. J. Perreault, “A Soft-Switched High Frequency Converter for Wide Voltage and Power Ranges,” in IEEE International Telecommunications Energy Conference (INTELEC), Austin, TX, 2016.

Presentations

• R. S. Yang, A. J. Hanson, R. S. Bayliss III, C. R. Sullivan, and D. J. Perreault, “Strategies for Scalable Low-Loss Multi-MHz Inductors,” PSMA Magnetics Committee / IEEE PELS High Frequency Magnetics Workshop, 19 May 2020. [slides] [video]

Patents

• D. J. Perreault, A. J. Hanson, S. Lim, and R. S. Yang, “Wide-Operating-Range Resonant-Transition Soft-Switched Converter," U.S. Patent No. 10,700,589, June 30, 2020.

Thesis

• R. S. Yang, "Low-Loss Inductor Design for High-Frequency Power Applications," M.Eng. thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2019.

Research Fellowships

• National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship
• MIT E.E. Landsman Fellowship
• MIT School of Engineering Distinguished Energy Efficiency Fellowship