Greg Mowry

Dr. Mowry was raised in Iowa and graduated from Iowa State University with B.S and M.S degrees in Metallurgical Engineering. While working Dr. Mowry capitalized on corporate continuing education opportunities by attending Stanford University in a non-thesis Electrical Engineering masters program with an analog electronics and magnetic materials emphasis. He later received his doctorate in Electrical Engineering from the University of Minnesota and minored in Modern Physics. Dr. Mowry spent his entire corporate career contributing as an inventor while building teams in fortune 500 companies as both an R&D scientist and engineer. His work focused on materials engineering, micromagnetics, nanotechnology (processing and design), laser optics, and biomedical engineering. Dr. Mowry also served as an entrepreneurial principle in several technical startups. In 2003 Dr. Mowry joined the School of Engineering at the University of St. Thomas.

Dr. Greg Mowry came to the University of St. Thomas in 2003 with 25 years of bleeding-edge engineering, research, and product development experience in nanotechnology based companies. Dr. Mowry has performed both fundamental and applied research as well as the engineering required to transform research concepts into successful high-volume products. His work spans multiple disciplines and includes fundamental research on the nano-devices used in HDDs along with the development of thin-film materials and PVD, CVD deposition techniques for materials used in mass storage devices and in optical coatings. He led the design teams that transformed nano-structures based on Faraday's Law into magnetoresistive based nano-structures. His has also performed biomedical research on implants and medical imaging systems. For the past several decades Dr. Mowry has served as an expert witness in several technology disciplines. He is named on 40 patents and has more than 36 publications in 4 different peer-reviewed technical fields. He has worked for fortune 500 companies such as Hewlett-Packard, Control Data, Seagate Technology and Boston Scientific. He has also been involved as a founder in several technical ventures.

More recently Dr. Mowry has focused his efforts on power, power electronics, and distributed hybrid alternative energy systems which find use in industry and in developing countries. His concern for the environment and the energy future of civilization has resulted in Dr. Mowry leading student project teams into countries such as Moldova, Tanzania, and Uganda where hybrid energy systems have been deployed - all for the common good. This work has also resulted in multiple patents for startup companies in the hybrid power systems and portable biodiesel production space. Dr. Mowry is the founding director of the St. Thomas Master of Science in Electrical Engineering program, the founding director of the St. Thomas Center for Microgrid Research, and the founding director of the Renewable Energy and Alternatives Laboratory (REAL).

Dr. Mowry is driven by the love of discovery, helping others, and turning concepts into useful products. He teaches a variety of courses such as analog electronics, electric machines, electromagnetic field theory, power systems, and power electronics at both the undergraduate and graduate level.

Sabbatical Leave: June 2012 - August 2013

For the past 10 years my research and humanitarian outreach has centered on alternative energy power systems and their deployment. One of the outcomes of this work has been the development and launch of a new technical masters degree program in electrical engineering with a significant power emphasis. In order to extend and expand my power related research along with developing a foundation for graduate level power research, a full-year sabbatical leave was requested and subsequently granted. Two high-level objectives were accomplished during my sabbatical leave. The first objective, which focused on large power systems at Xcel Energy was to study advanced distribution automation methods for use with distributed generation in a smart grid. The second objective was to continue my research on the development of small, robust, and reliable alternative energy power systems for humanitarian applications. Both objectives were achieved.