Of the 74 new US members of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE), 18, or nearly 25 percent, have MIT connections. They include five MIT faculty members and 12 alumni. The NAE also elected eight foreign associates.
Election to the NAE is among the highest professional distinctions accorded an engineer. Academy membership honors those who have made "important contributions to engineering theory and practice, including significant contributions to the literature of engineering theory and practice" and those who have demonstrated "unusual accomplishment in the pioneering of new and developing fields of technology."
New members from the MIT faculty are:
Professor Dimitri P. Bertsekas of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS), who was recognized for "pioneering contributions to fundamental research, practice and education of optimization/control theory, and especially its application to data communication networks." Professor Bertsekas is also an MIT alumnus (PhD 1971 in EECS).
Rafael L. Bras, the Bacardi and Stockholm Water Foundations Professor and head of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, for "innovation in hydrological forecasting and hydrometeorology through application of new technology, probability and statistics, and for the advancement of civil engineering education." Professor Bras is an MIT alumnus (SB 1972, SM, ScD, CEE).
James G. Fujimoto of EECS, for "pioneering contributions to and commercialization of optical coherence tomography (OCT)." Professor Fujimoto holds the following MIT degrees: SB 1979, SM, EE and PhD.
Douglas A. Lauffenburger, the J.R. Mares Professor of Chemical Engineering and co-director of the Division of Bioengineering and Environmental Health, for "contributions in molecular and cellular engineering and for interfacing modern biology with engineering principles."
Nancy A. Lynch, the Cecil H. Green Professor of Computer Science and Engineering, for "the development of theoretical foundations for distributed computing." Professor Lynch holds the PhD (1972) in mathematics from MIT.
OTHERS WITH MIT LINKS
Additional MIT alumni/ae, former faculty and staff newly elected to the NAE are: David A. Edwards, who was a research associate in chemical engineering from 1993-95; Antonio L. Elias (SB 1972, SM, PhD, all in aeronautics and astronautics, and former assistant professor in the department); Lawrence B. Evans (former professor of chemical engineering); W. Daniel Hillis (SB mathematics 1978, SM and PhD in EECS, former adjunct professor in media arts and sciences); Thomas S. Huang (SM 1960 and ScD in EECS, and former associate EECS professor); Shirley A. Jackson (SB 1968, PhD in physics); Raymond C. Kurzweil (SB 1970 in humanities); Amos M. Nur (research associate, 1969-70); Kurt E. Petersen (SM 1975, PhD in EECS); Robert O. Ritchie (former associate professor in mechanical engineering); Sosale Shankara Sastry (former assistant professor in EECS); Guy L. Steele, Jr. (SM 1980, PhD in EECS); James M. Tien (SM 1972, EE and PhD in EECS).
A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on February 28, 2001.
