Ying Jiang Hafner honored with the 2025 Uno Lamm HVDC Award
Features | 01.08.2025 | 3 min read
Championing the Future of Renewable Power
2025 Uno Lamm HVDC Awardee: Ying Jiang Hafner, R&D Corporate Executive Engineer at Hitachi Energy’s Business Unit Grid Integration
Ying Jiang Hafner, R&D Corporate Executive Engineer at Hitachi Energy’s Business Unit Grid Integration, has been named the recipient of the prestigious 2025 IEEE PES Uno Lamm High Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) Award. The honor recognizes her decades of innovation, leadership, and technical excellence in the development and application of voltage-sourced converter (VSC) technology, now a cornerstone of modern power systems that enhances grid stability, boosts flexibility, and enables large-scale integration of renewable energy.
Notably, Ying is the first woman to receive this award since its establishment in 1981 — a historic achievement and a powerful moment of recognition for female engineers across the energy sector, whose representation, particularly in energy, remains disproportionately low compared to their overall workforce participation.1
Ying boasts an impressive career journey. After completing her doctorate in electrical engineering at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden in 1998, she played a pivotal role in the development of the world's first VSC HVDC project on the Swedish island of Gotland in the Baltic Sea. This groundbreaking project, built upon Gotland’s legacy as the site of the world’s first commercial HVDC transmission link, was originally commissioned in 1954.
Throughout her distinguished career of more than 30 years, her innovative work has helped establish voltage-sourced converters as the technology of choice for connecting renewables, strengthening grid stability, and enabling multi-terminal HVDC systems that interlink power systems across borders.
A driving force behind each new generation of HVDC Light®, Ying’s work spans from system-level circuit design, control, and protection to hands-on commissioning of flagship projects. She has contributed to the development of BorWin1, the first HVDC grid connection from an offshore wind farm, Zhangbei, the world's first DC-grid with HVDC Light, NordLink, the first interconnection between Norway and Germany, and DolWin1, the first offshore HVDC grid connection connecting three wind farms in the North Sea to the German transmission grid. She has been central in designing the backbone transmission of the world’s first 100% renewable-powered grid.
Her pioneering research has resulted in over 30 patents and countless firsts, including the first black start capability in HVDC Light systems, which enables fast grid restoration in the event of a power outage, and critical control solutions for hybrid VSC-HVDC Classic schemes.
Ying has played a truly pioneering role in the development of VSC technology – an essential enabler of the global clean energy transition.
Her vision and leadership laid the groundwork for the systems we rely on today to transmit renewable energy efficiently and reliably over long distances. We are incredibly proud of her achievements. Ying’s work continues to shape the future of sustainable energy and inspires a new generation of engineers to live our values of innovation and collaboration.
This award – named after Uno Lamm, the father of HVDC and a former ASEA icon – was established by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) to honor both technical brilliance and the lasting impact of one’s work. Ying’s leadership, ingenuity, and resilience are vital in making the global grid cleaner, more interconnected, and more capable of supporting the energy needs of future generations.
Ying received the award during the IEEE PES General Meeting on July 29 in Austin, Texas. She joined a distinguished group of past honorees, cementing her role as an innovator who has continuously sought to inspire the next era of sustainable energy.
