Ralph M. Kennel was born in 1955 at Kaiserslautern (Germany). In 1979 he got his diploma degree and in 1984 his Dr.-Ing. (Ph.D.) degree from the University of Kaiserslautern. From 1983 to 1999 he worked on several positions with Robert BOSCH GmbH (Germany). Until 1997 he was responsible for the development of servo drives. Dr. Kennel was one of the main supporters of VECON and SERCOS interface, two multi-company development projects for a microcontroller and a digital interface especially dedicated to servo drives. Furthermore he took actively part in the definition and release of new standards with respect to CE marking for servo drives. Between 1997 and 1999 Dr. Kennel was responsible for "Advanced and Product Development of Fractional Horsepower Motors" in automotive applications. His main activity was preparing the introduction of brushless drive concepts to the automotive market. From 1994 to 1999 Dr. Kennel was appointed Visiting Professor at the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne (England, UK). From 1999 - 2008 he was Professor for Electrical Machines and Drives at Wuppertal University (Germany). Since 2008 until his retirement in 2022 he was Professor for Electrical Drive systems and Power Electronics at Technische Universitaet Muenchen (Germany). His main interests are: Sensorless control of AC drives, predictive control of power electronics and contactless energy transmission. Dr. Kennel is a Senior Member of IEEE, a Fellow of IET (former IEE) and a Chartered Engineer in the UK. Within IEEE he is Treasurer of the Germany Section – furthermore he has been Distinguished Lecturer of the Power Electronics Society (IEEE-PELS) as well as Vice President Meetings of the same society. In 2018 Dr. Kennel received the Doctoral degree honoris causa from Universitatea Stefan cel Mare in Suceava (Romania). Dr. Kennel has received in 2013 the Harry Owen Distinguished Service Award from IEEE-PELS, the EPE Association Distinguished Service Award in 2015 as well as the EPE Outstanding Achievement Award in 2019. Dr. Kennel was appointed “Extraordinary Professor” by the University of Stellenbosch (South Africa) from 2016 to 2019 and as “Visiting Professor” at the Haixi Institute by the Chinese Academy of Sciences from 2016 to 2021. There he was appointed as "Jiaxi Lu Overseas Guest Professor" in 2017. In 2018 Dr. Kennel was appointed Guest Professor at Harbin Institute of Technology (HIT), Harbin, China. In 2019 Dr. Kennel was appointed „Honorary Chair Professor“ ("distinguished visiting professor") at Shandong University in Jinan, China.