The National Academy of Engineering named three Berkeley Lab researchers to this year’s class of 84 new members and 22 foreign associates. They were elected in recognition of their distinguished and continuing achievements in original research.

Election to the National Academy of Engineering 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.”

This year’s class includes:

Robert J. Budnitz, scientist, Earth and Environmental Sciences Area. For advancement of seismic probabilistic risk assessments and their application to nuclear power facilities.

Gerbrand Ceder, Materials Sciences Division, and Chancellor’s Professor of Materials Science and Engineering, University of California, Berkeley.  For the development of practical computational materials design and its application to the improvement of energy storage technology.

Katherine A. Yelick, Associate Laboratory Director, Computing Sciences, and professor, electrical engineering and computer science, University of California, Berkeley.  For software innovation and leadership in high-performance computing.

This brings the total U.S. membership to 2,281 and the number of foreign members to 249. Individuals in the newly elected class will be formally inducted during a ceremony at the NAE’s annual meeting in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 8, 2017.

The full NAE release is available here: https://www.nae.edu/Projects/MediaRoom/20095/164396/165210.aspx