Levent U. Gökdere received a B.Sc. degree in electrical engineering with a power major in 1985, an M.Sc. degree in controls in 1989 from Istanbul Technical University, Istanbul, Turkey, and a PhD degree in electrical engineering in 1996 from the University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA. He was a post-doctoral research associate in the electrical engineering department at the University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC from 1996 to 2000. He worked for industry for more than 15 years. Since 2017, he works as a lecturer and a research scientist in the electrical and computer engineering department at the University of Houston, Houston, TX. His research and teaching interests are in motor drives, power electronics and electric machines.