Stephen Chou and Sergio Verdu, professors of electrical engineering, have been elected to the National Academy of Engineering, one of the greatest honors in the engineering field.

“The department is delighted that two of our distinguished scholars have been elected to the National Academy of Engineering,” said Peter Ramadge, chair of the electrical engineering department. “Both of these colleagues have won numerous awards for their scholarship and their election to the academy is a very well deserved honor and an excellent crowning recognition of their high impact scholarship and innovation.”

Chou, the Joseph C. Elgin Professor of Engineering, was cited for his “contributions to nanoscale patterning and to the scaling of electronic, photonic, magnetic, and biological devices.” Among other accomplishments, Chou is the inventor of a revolutionary technique to create the ultra-small features on computer chips using a nanometer-scale mold.

A member of the University faculty since 1998, Chou earned his Ph.D. at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1986. Since arriving at Princeton, he has founded two companies in central New Jersey, Nanonex and NanoOpto Corporation.

Verdu, who also is affiliated with the Program in Applied and Computational Mathematics, was cited for his “contributions to multiuser communications and information theory.” He was recently named the 2007 recipient of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Information Theory Society’s highest honor, the Claude E. Shannon Award, for his work in the field of information theory.

After earning his Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champagne, Verdu joined the University faculty in 1984. He was recently named to the engineering school’s Commendation List for Outstanding Teaching for the spring 2006 semester, based on student evaluations.

The election of Chou and Verdu brings to 21 the total number of faculty members in the School of Engineering and Applied Science who are members of the National Academy of Engineering. The two were among 64 new members elected to the academy this year, including Princeton alumnus Charles F. Zukoski IV. A professor of chemical engineering and vice chancellor for research at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Zukoski received his Ph.D. in chemical engineering from Princeton in 1985.

Faculty

  • Stephen Chou

Related Department

  • Professor writes on white board while talking with grad student.

    Electrical and Computer Engineering