Francesco Pintacuda is currently the Rad-Hard Design Manager for Power Transistor inside the R&D Power & Discrete Group at STMicroelectronics. In his two seminaries' course he will illustrate the effects of high energy electromagnetic waves (X-rays, gamma rays, etc. ) and high kinetic energy particles (heavy ions, protons, neutrons and alpha rays) on Power Transistors. He will also discuss the characterization and test procedures which are performed on those devices. Reliability tests, once conceived mainly for space applications, are now becoming more and more important for terrestrial applications, such as electrical vehicles.