Three members of the MIT community — Charles E. Leiserson, Emanuel M. Sachs, and Grant H. Stokes — are among the 80 new members and 22 foreign associates elected to the National Academy of Engineering.
Election to the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) is among the highest professional distinctions accorded to an engineer. Academy membership honors those who have made outstanding contributions to "engineering research, practice, or education, including, where appropriate, significant contributions to the engineering literature," and to "the pioneering of new and developing fields of technology, making major advancements in traditional fields of engineering, or developing/implementing innovative approaches to engineering education."
Elected this year:
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Charles E. Leiserson, the Edwin Sibley Webster Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, for theoretically grounded approaches to digital design and parallel computer systems;
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Emanuel M. Sachs, a professor in the MIT Department of Mechanical Engineering, for contributions and commercialization in photovoltaics and three-dimensional printing; and
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Grant H. Stokes, head of the Space Systems and Technology Division at the MIT Lincoln Laboratory, for innovations in systems for space situational awareness and the discovery of near-Earth asteroids.
“It’s the depth and breadth of their scholarship and level of impact of the work that impresses me about our latest group of NAE members,” says Ian A. Waitz, dean of the School of Engineering and the Jerome C. Hunsaker Professor in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics. “Election to the NAE is one of the highest honors an engineer can receive from his or her peers.”
Including this year’s inductees, 134 current faculty and staff from MIT are members of the National Academy of Engineering. With this week’s announcement, NAE’s total U.S. membership stands at 2,275; the number of foreign associates is at 232.
At least eight MIT alumni were also named to the NAE this year, including Neal Bergano MS ’83; Frederick Chang ’91; Richard A. Gottscho PhD ’79; James E. Hubbard Jr. ’77, PhD ’82; David S. Johnson PhD ’73; Brian D. Kelley ’92; Michael Maloney PhD ’89; Molly Shoichet ’87; and Jennifer L. West ’92.
