Welcome, NAE Members

The A. James Clark School of Engineering at the University of Maryland is pleased to welcome to its College Park campus several distinguished National Academy of Engineering (NAE) members who will be returning to or joining our faculty for the first time this fall.

Jeong H. Kim, Department of Mechanical Engineering

Jeong H. Kim

Jeong H. Kim returns to the Clark School as Professor of the Practice to engage in the life of mechanical engineering faculty and students, conduct research, teach classes and seminars, supervise student projects and thesis work, and interact with students in various programs related to technology entrepreneurship. The rank of Professor of Practice recognizes the impact of Kim’s contributions and prominence in the practice of engineering. His technical expertise in communications, wireless technologies, and broadband optical systems and devices, coupled with his understanding of market trends and forces, makes him an excellent role model for the Clark School’s students.

Elected to NAE membership in 2004, Kim has had a distinguished career as an engineering entrepreneur. In 1992 he founded a successful telecommunications company, Yurie Systems, and pioneered the development of a revolutionary Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) Switch for wireless applications, which became key in the modernization of telecommunications systems for today’s digital market.

C. Daniel Mote, Jr., Department of Mechanical Engineering

C. Daniel Mote, Jr.

Regents Professor and Glenn L. Martin Institute Professor C. Daniel Mote, Jr. returns to the Clark School as a full-time, tenured faculty member after serving a six-year term as NAE president. As president of the NAE, Mote was committed to ensuring highly competitive talent in the U.S. engineering workforce, facilitating public understanding of engineering, demonstrating how engineering creates a better quality of life, and engaging the academy in global engineering issues in support of national interests.

Elected to NAE membership in 1988, Mote also served as president of the University of Maryland, College Park from 1998–2010. His goal for the university was to elevate its self-expectation of achievement and its national and global positions through proactive initiatives. During his tenure the number of NAE members on the UMD faculty tripled, three Nobel laureates were recognized, and an accredited school of public health and a new department of bioengineering were created.

Deb Niemeier, Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering

Deb Niemeier

Deb Niemeier is the first of several endowed Clark Distinguished Chairs—a program established as part of Building Together: An Investment for Maryland—to be appointed. NAE member Niemeier has helped spur policy and regulatory changes through her groundbreaking research in the areas of vehicle emissions, air quality, affordable housing, and infrastructure funding. At UMD, her research will target aspects of the built environment that give rise to structural inequality, particularly within the context of climate change.

Formerly at the University of California, Davis, Niemeier joins the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering with an affiliate appointment at the Maryland Transportation Institute, established in 2018 to help foster solutions to interdisciplinary transportation problems by harnessing expertise and research across 11 UMD colleges.

Clark Distinguished Chairs will directly address the most critical research areas set forth by the 2020 Strategic Plan for the Clark School, including additive and advanced manufacturing, autonomy and robotics, and energy and sustainability. These faculty leaders will open new frontiers, creating a community of collaboration and excellence that gains momentum with every achievement in research and innovation.

Percy Pierre, Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering

Percy Pierre

Percy Pierre will join the Clark School as an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. He will assist the college in the mentoring of women and underrepresented minority graduate students, and in the recruitment of diverse faculty.

Pierre is Vice President Emeritus and Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Michigan State University (MSU), a community he has served for more than 28 years. He created and directs the Sloan Engineering Program, which recruits, helps fund, and mentors domestic engineering doctoral students, with an emphasis on underrepresented groups. He earned his Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Johns Hopkins University, and is recognized as the first African American to earn a doctorate in electrical engineering.

Pierre was elected to NAE membership in 2009 for his service as assistant secretary of the Army, contributions to engineering education, and leadership in creating the national minority engineering effort. He was the first MSU faculty member to be elected to the NAE while at MSU. His awards and honors also include a Lifetime Mentors Award from the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), recognition as principal founder of both the NACME and GEM, and a Distinguished Service Medal from the US Army, among other accolades.

Darryll J. Pines, Dean’s Office and Department of Aerospace Engineering

Darryll J. Pines

Clark School Dean and Nariman Farvardin Professor Darryll J. Pines is the newest NAE member on the Clark School’s faculty, elected in 2019. He was cited for “inspirational leadership and contributions to engineering education excellence in the United States” and is the second Clark School dean to be elected to NAE membership. Professor Emeritus of Mechanical Engineering and former Dean George Dieter was elected “for contributions to engineering education and materials design and processing” in 1993.

As dean, Pines led the development and implementation of a strategy to improve teaching in fundamental undergraduate courses and raise student retention, achieve success in national and international student competitions, place new emphasis on service learning and grand societal challenges, promote STEM education among high school students, increase the impact of research programs, and expand philanthropic contributions to the school.

Most notably, Pines was instrumental in securing a $219.5 million investment—among the largest gifts ever to a public university—from the A. James & Alice B. Clark Foundation. Building Together: An Investment for Maryland is funding need-based scholarships campus-wide, as well graduate fellowships, faculty positions, infrastructure, and other initiatives. Pines is also currently leading an initiative to pilot a first-of-its-kind, nationwide, pre-college course on engineering principles and design. The pilot program, Engineering For US All (E4USA), will test the effectiveness of a standardized educational curriculum across multiple states.

Stephen Trimberger, Institute for Systems Research

Stephen Trimberger

Stephen Trimberger continues his residency as a Glenn L. Martin visiting research engineer at the Clark School’s Institute for Systems Research. Trimberger was elected to NAE membership “for contributions to architectures and programming tools for field-programmable gate arrays.” He is also a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). Along with William Carter, he received the 2018 IEEE Donald O. Pederson Award in Solid-State Circuits “for contributions to field-programmable gate array integrated circuit technology.”

At the Clark School, Trimberger's research explores the emerging scientific and technological landscape relevant to the design, development, and deployment of new electronics systems for computation and sensing, with a specific focus of understanding their implications for artificial intelligence, machine learning, and data science.

Trimberger currently is a program manager in the Microsystems Technology Office at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), where he has been since August 2018. Trimberger’s distinguished career at Xilinx Research Labs, including Fellow, involved leading a research group investigating various aspects of semiconductor devices.

NAE Membership at UMD

Kim, Mote, Niemeier, Pierre, Pines, and Trimberger join 12 other NAE members on faculty at UMD.

Election to NAE membership is one of the highest professional honors accorded an engineer. Members—elected by their peers, current NAE members—have distinguished themselves in business and academic management, in technical positions, as university faculty, and as leaders in government and private engineering organizations.

Published September 4, 2019