Panagiotopoulos, Tsui elected to membership in the NAE

Two distinguished faculty members were honored with a reception at Palmer House to celebrate their induction into the National Academy of Engineering (NAE).

Athanassios Panagiotopoulos, professor of chemical engineering, and Daniel Tsui, Arthur Legrand Doty Professor of Electrical Engineering, were recently elected to membership in the NAE.

The reception was hosted by Maria Klawe, dean of the School of Engineering and Applied Science (SEAS).

Dean Klawe congratulated the honorees and thanked them for their professional contributions to their respective fields.

“The honor of being elected to the NAE reflects positively on the SEAS because it affirms the superior scholarship of our faculty and highlights the collegial spirit that is needed to support these nominations,” she said.

Many of the best and brightest from the SEAS were in attendance, sipping drinks, nibbling hors d’oeuvres, and toasting the honorees.

Fellow NAE members from SEAS were eager to welcome the inductees into this elite club. The welcoming party included Professors Brian Kernighan of computer science, Ignacio Rodríguez-Iturbe of civil and environmental engineering, Chung K. Ed Law of mechanical and aerospace engineering, Dudley Saville of chemical engineering, and Bede Liu and H. Vincent Poor of electrical engineering. University President Shirley Tilghman also stopped by to offer her congratulations.

Professor Tsui was inducted for his contributions to the understanding of quantum physics of two-dimensional electron systems at semiconductor interfaces.

Professor Panagiotopoulos was inducted for inventing the Gibbs ensemble method of molecular simulation of phase equilibrium and developing computational techniques for studying complex fluids.

He thanked his research group and everyone who helped him earn the honor, and had a particular thank-you for Professor Tsui.

“I would like to thank Dan Tsui for being inducted this year as well,” he said. “Because when I need to explain this honor to my friends and family who don’t really know what the NAE is, I can just say ‘Well the other guy who got it this year also won the Nobel Prize.’”

Membership in the NAE is one of the highest distinctions in the field of engineering. Membership is reserved for those who have made “important contributions to engineering theory and practice” and those who have demonstrated “accomplishment in the pioneering of new fields of engineering, making major advancements in traditional fields of engineering, or developing and or implementing innovative approaches to engineering education.”

The election of Professors Panagiotopoulos and Tsui bring to nine the number of SEAS faculty members elected to the NAE in the four years of this decade. A total of 20 SEAS faculty members are now fellows of the NAE.