Laban Lesster Biography and Net Worth

Mr. Lesster comes to Ideal Power with a career-long background of both technical and management experience in power electronics and power conversion systems. Prior to 1985 Mr. Lesster worked first in the power conversion group at the Westinghouse R&D Center, and subsequently at the Westinghouse ESSD Oceanic Division. As an Advisory Engineer he was instrumental in developing power electronics for power conversion, active sonar and propulsion systems for deep submergence vehicle and surface ship applications. In 1985 he became manager of Electrical Engineering and in 1992 as part of an ESSD thrust into commercial activity he was appointed to assemble and lead the technical team that worked in conjunction with Chrysler to develop and take to initial production advanced power trains for the Chrysler EPIC minivan. Following the Northrop Grumman acquisition of ESSD he returned to the Oceanic Division as Engineering Director of the 300 strong engineering department and then as Chief Scientist. In 1999 he joined SatCon Applied Technology as Engineering Director and later as General Manager. He resigned from his management position in 2002 to lead the design and development of a novel 2MW flywheel/doubly fed induction machine and diesel based uninterruptible AC power source. With the transfer of that and similar power electronics-based technology to RTC Systems in 2003 Mr. Lesster joined RTC in an advisory role and was active in hardware development of vehicle and shipboard pulse power, and power management applications as well as both wave energy and tide power energy conversion projects until his retirement in 2014. Mr. Lesster has BA and MA degrees in Engineering from Oxford University. In 1971 he received the Westinghouse B.G. Lamme Award for a year's study scholarship. He used this to study at Imperial College of Science and Technology in London where his thesis for the D.I.C was on control techniques for reluctance machines. Mr. Lesster holds 6 patents and several pending in the field of power conversion.