Dr Matthew Priestley is the Lead Technology Translator in the Energy Systems Research Group within the School of Electrical Engineering and Telecommunications. He is passionate about motor drives and power systems research. Matthew is particularly interested in drone motor drive research and has secured roughly $40k from the Digital Grid Infrastructure and Research Infrastructure Scheme to build a drone motor drive lab at UNSW. He is also interested in grid synchronization algorithms for power inverters in renewable energy systems.

Matthew has a passion for investigating innovative teaching methods to better deliver engineering content to students and is an Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. He has pioneered new methods for using short courses to implement a capstone experience using a $40k Education Investment Fund (EIF) grant in this area.

Matthew has also founded a technology start-up company called Motorica which patented specialized motor designs and a novel post-failure motor control technology. This company won acceptance into the UNSW Founders 10x Accelerator, (July to Sept. 2018) which is UNSW’s flagship accelerator. Matthew has also worked for a mining consultancy company during Feb. 2014 to Jan. 2015, where he performed electrical power system design, Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) design, equipment commissioning and Variable Speed Drive (VSD) protection duties.