I am preparing for my M.Sc thesis and I am interested in integrated DC-DC converters for portable applications.
After doing some web search and discussing with some colleagues, these are the topics I found out till now:

1- SIMO (Single inductor multi output)
2- Control loop algorithms optimization
3- Fully integrated converters (Power converter with inductor on chip)

Are there other hot topics other than the previous three suitable for research?

Thanks,
Shady

carlgrace, do you know where I can read about the DC-DC converters without inductors that you mentioned?

Thank you carlgrace for your reply.
I see SC DC-DC converters looks promising for many researchers.

Do you know if it is still under research till now, or it began to be heavily used in the industry to replace inductive DC-DC?

Cheers,
Shady