UC Berkeley press release

NEWS RELEASE, 2/24/97

Five UC Berkeley professors elected members of the National Academy of Engineering

by Karen Holtermann

Berkeley -- Five University of California at Berkeley professors have been elected members of the National Academy of Engineering, the largest number from the university chosen in the annual election in the past 20 years.

Membership in the academy is the highest professional honor for an American engineer.

The new members from the faculty are Alice M. Agogino, professor of mechanical engineering and associate dean of special programs; Chenming Hu, professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences; William E. Kastenberg, professor and chair of nuclear engineering; and Michael R. Stonebraker and Theodore Van Duzer, both professors in the graduate school and members of the electrical engineering and computer sciences faculty.

The UC Berkeley engineers are among 85 members and eight foreign associates whose election to the academy was announced on Feb. 14.

Their election brings the total UC Berkeley faculty membership to 73. Among academic institutions, UC Berkeley has one of the highest representations in the academy with more than 7 percent of total members being faculty or alumni.

The academy cited Agogino for applications of artificial intelligence to manufacturing, and for reform efforts in engineering education.

Hu was cited for contributions to the modeling integration-circuit devices and to the reliability and performance of very large scale integrated systems (VLSI) systems. An expert on integrated circuit and transistor design, Hu is recognized for his contributions to the physics and modeling of MOS device reliability.

Kastenberg, an authority on radioactive waste and nuclear materials management, was cited for contributions in the field of nuclear reactor safety.

The academy cited Stonebraker for development and commercialization of relational and object-relational database systems.

While a professor at UC Berkeley, Stonebraker developed Ingres, one of the first object-relational database systems. He was also a founder of the Ingres Corp., a pioneering company in developing relational databases.

Van Duzer, who heads UC Berkeley's cryoelectronics research group, was credited for the application of superconductivity to high-speed electronic devices and circuits.

Three UC Berkeley alumni were also among this year's new academy members. They are Hadi A. Akeel, mechanical engineering '66, senior vice president and chief engineer of FANUC Robotics NA Inc., Auburn Hills, MI; Paul H. Gilbert, civil engineering '59, '60, senior vice president and chairman of Parsons Brinckerhoff Quade & Douglas Inc., Seattle; and Hisashi Kaneko, electrical engineering '62, president of NEC Corp., Tokyo. Kaneko was elected as a foreign associate.

Former Berkeley professor Anthony G. Evans, currently serving a joint appointment on the faculties of UC Santa Barbara and Harvard University, was also elected to the academy this year. He was cited for contributions in the development and understanding of structural materials.


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