Three elected to engineering academy

Princeton NJ -- Three Princeton faculty members have been elected to the National Academy of Engineering, one of the highest distinctions in the field of engineering. The election brings the total number of academy members at Princeton to 14.

C.K. (Ed) Law, Bede Liu and Brian Kernighan were among 81 engineers chosen for academy membership in its recent annual elections. Membership in the academy honors those who have made "important contributions to engineering theory and practice" and those who have demonstrated "unusual accomplishment in the pioneering of new and developing fields of technology."

Law, the Robert Goddard Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, was honored for "outstanding contributions to the understanding of the fundamentals of combustion processes and theory and the applications in propulsion systems." He joined the Princeton faculty in 1988.

Liu, professor of electrical engineering, was cited for his "contributions to the analysis and implementation of digital signal processing algorithms." He has been at Princeton since 1962.

Kernighan, professor of computer science, was elected for "contributions to software and to programming languages." He came to Princeton in 2000.

"The election of these three outstanding professors highlights the distinction of our engineering faculty at Princeton," said James Wei, dean of the School of Engineering and Applied Science. "Since our engineering school is relatively small, we think it quite an achievement if just one of our faculty is elected in a particular year. To have three members of the faculty elected into this elite body in one year is unprecedented. Each of them has contributed in innumerable ways to their respective scholarly fields, as well as to the successes of our teaching and research programs here at Princeton."