Bodo
Bodo was born in Kiel/ Germany and grew up in a technical environment. In his early childhood he was already fascinated with electric toy trains, examining their design and devoted to their repair. Later, he received his engineering degree from Kiel University of Applied Sciences, the former "Kaiserliche Ingenieurschule". His professional life comprises decades of engineering, application design and marketing of power semiconductors.
Bodo's first role was with a Siemens company founded by Dr.-Ing. Rudolf Hell, a remarkable inventor and pioneer of the electronic printing industry. He then took up a new challenge at Wöhlk (a Zeiss company) building in-house capability for a fully automated factory that produced contact lenses.
He spent the following 12 years working for RCA, GE and Harris Semiconductor as a marketing and applications engineer assigned to Central Europe. During this time, he was fortunate to work with several talented individuals from whom he gained invaluable technical insight and the ability to sharpen his customer handling skills. His product responsibilities included Power Mosfets, IGBTs, Rectifiers, Optical switches and MOVs. Needless to say, he was exposed to a wide range of applications including automotive (primarily ignition), switched mode power supplies, linear power supplies, medical electronics, welding and numerous other industrial and consumer applications including space. It was here that he met and worked with Frank Wheatley, the inventor and patent holder of the IGBT, Fred Lokuta, Power Marketing Manager and Don Burke, Director of Design Engineering. These gentlemen provided invaluable technical and business insight which served him then and still today.
Initiating the first volume IGBT design in the world in the mid 80’s was one of his highlights doing application support for Harris semiconductor. It was followed by getting ignition IGBTs into combustion engines. Also the MOSFETs with high cell density in switches for battery driven tools have been successfully introduced for volume.
Bodo was a key member of a group of individuals who were charged with the responsibility to establish in house capabilities for the manufacture of power modules both dumb and smart with or without strategic partnering. In this role, he worked with a significant number of international producers of power modules. During this time he was writing and publishing many technical articles. Approximately 20 articles and papers dedicated to semiconductors have been authored and or co-authored by Bodo.
When Harris Corporation disappeared from the commercial semiconductor arena, for Bodo the natural next step was to devote more time to writing. His extensive past semiconductor experience and his many years on the PCIM Conference advisory board has given Bodo both the expertise and the experience to share interesting content to every issue of the monthly magazine.
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