Prof. John Compter

Prof. dr. ir. John Compter was born in The Hague in The Netherlands, in 1953. He received the M.S. from the TU-Delft in 1976 and the Ph.D. from the T.U. Eindhoven in 1984. His industrial career started in 1978 at the Philips Research Lab, where attention was given to drive systems for industry and domestic appliances. In 1984 he joined Philips Hoogeveen with the electrical drives in domestic appliances as responsibility. From 1990 he is at the Philips Applied Technologies as chief technologist for electrical drives. He joined the TU-Eindhoven, Faculty for Electrical Engineering as part-time professor Mini-electro-mechanics from 1998 till 2002 and the Faculty for Mechanical Engineering as a part-time professor Electrical Drives in Precision Engineering from 2002 till 2005.

His interests include rotating and linear drive systems for semi-conductor production equipment, medical equipment, domestic appliances, servo-systems and the application of permanent magnets in general. He is involved in planar motor technology from the start in 1997 on, leading to a significant part of the more than 50 patents owned.

The general approach of his expertise is that the electric drive has to be considered as a component within a system, where aspects as dynamics, control, software, sensing, tribology and thermal behaviour have to be studied simultaneously.

Prof. Compter is author of the book "Electrical drives for precision engineering designs".