Every year, the IEEE Dielectrics and Electrical Insulation Society offers fellowships to eligible graduate students who are pursuing areas of work of interest to the society.
To learn more about the fellowship or apply for a future one, check out the Education portion of the DEIS website here.
Below are the 2026 fellows (in alphabetical order):
Callum Barrett
Callum Barrett received his BEng (Hons) in Mechatronic Engineering from the University of Manchester in 2023 before beginning a PhD in Electrical and Electronic Engineering at the same institution. His doctoral research investigates how mechanical, electrical and thermal stresses, together with polymer microstructure, influence water tree degradation in XLPE cable insulation materials. His work focuses on understanding the reliability of wet-design dynamic power cable insulation systems for floating offshore wind applications.
Project Title: “Exploratory Tracer Mapping of Pre-Water-Tree Moisture and Ion Localisation in XLPE Insulation for Wet-Design Power Cables”
Chunhui Bi
Chunhui Bi received her B.E. degree in Energy and Chemical Engineering from South China University of Technology, Guangzhou, China, in 2022. She is currently pursuing her Ph.D. degree in the School of Electric Power Engineering at the same university under the supervision of Prof. Congzhen Xie and Rui Wang. Her research focuses on the molecular engineering of polymer dielectrics for high-performance capacitive energy storage at elevated temperatures via charge transport regulation.
Project Title: “Molecularly Stitched Dual-Network Polyetherimide Dielectrics for Recoverable High-Temperature Electrical Insulation”
Sayantani Biswas
Sayantani Biswas received her B.Tech. degree in Electrical Engineering from the Institute of Engineering and Management (IEM), Salt Lake, Kolkata, India, in 2019, and her M.Tech. degree in Electrical Engineering from the University College of Science and Technology, University of Calcutta, India, in 2025. Since 2026, she has been pursuing her Ph.D. in the Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering at Birla Institute of Technology and Science (BITS), Pilani, Hyderabad Campus, India. Her doctoral research focuses on the design and development of GaN-based solid-state pulsed-power systems, with an emphasis on system architecture, scalability, control, and reliability. Her research interests also include high-voltage fast-transient technologies and their applications in dielectric investigations.
Project Title: “Reflection-Controlled Sub-10 ns Excitation for Quantifying Dielectric Breakdown Inception at Solid–Gas Interfaces”
Haoran Sui
Haoran Sui was born in Jiangxi Province, China in 2000. He received his B.Sc. degree in Electrical Engineering from Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, in 2022. Currently, he is pursuing a Ph.D. degree in the School of Electrical Engineering at Xi’an Jiaotong university. His research interests focus on Polypropylene-based cable insulating materials.
Project Title: “Space Charge Suppression in HVDC Polypropylene Cable Insulation: Enhancing Interfacial Compatibility via In-Reactor Long-Chain-Branched Copolymerization”
Feng Wang
Feng Wang is a Ph.D. Candidate in Electrical Engineering College of Electrical and Information Engineering, Hunan University. His research interests are Thermally Stable Ferroelectric Polymer, Polymer Nanocomposites, Dielectrics. He received the B.E. degree in Optoelectronic Information Science and Engineering from Taiyuan University of Technology in 2021, and the M.E. degree in Integrated Circuit Engineering from Henan University in 2024. He is currently working toward the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering with Hunan University, Changsha, China.
Project Title: “Molecular Conformational Selectivity for Predictive Design of Thermally Stable PVDF Ferroelectric Dielectrics”
Liangtian Zhang
Liangtian Zhang received his B.Eng. degree from Tianjin University, China, in 2023. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in the School of Electrical and Information Engineering at Tianjin University. His research focuses on failure mechanisms and performance enhancement of energy-storage dielectrics and film capacitors under extreme operating conditions, with particular emphasis on interfacial charge transport and capacitor reliability.
Project Title: “Dense Organic Interfacial Barriers for High-Performance Polymer Dielectrics.”