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John Pappas has joined Texas A&M Engineering as the Vestas Director for the Texas A&M Wind Energy Center.
Pappas, who serves as the academic co-chair of The Wind Alliance technical committee, began his role in August.
The Wind Energy Center was formally launched in March 2010 and is part of the Energy Engineering Institute, a center within the Texas Engineering Experiment Station (TEES).
Pappas holds a master’s degree in electrical engineering from the University of Texas at Austin and is a registered professional engineer. He previously was part of the executive management team of the Center for Electromechnics, one of the largest research institutes at the University of Texas. Pappas served as program manager and director of business development as well as a principal investigator on numerous projects, attracting tens of millions of dollars in external funding.
His previous positions in private industry, in the federal government and as a principal in a successful start-up company have led to a wide range of experiences, including research and development, organization management and business development.
Pappas helped develop multi-gigawatt generators for electric accelerators, novel high-power converter systems, controls and measurement systems for high voltage power supplies, and advanced manufacturing processes for the oil and specialty materials industries. Additionally, he has served on national DoD advisory panels, served as a subject matter expert for the JASON advisory panel, chaired sessions at IEEE conferences and taught seminars on electromagnetic launch technology and pulsed power.
He is a member of the American Wind Energy Association and is the author of 25 refereed papers in IEEE and other publications.
The mission of the Wind Energy Center is to cultivate wind-related research within The Texas A&M University System, and to promote its unique capabilities across the wind energy spectrum, from nanostructured materials for next-generation blades and civil infrastructure to turbomachinery, power, aeroelasticity studies, CFD, wind forecasting, logistics, testing and evaluation and other areas critical to the wind power industry. | 
