26th March, 2021
Two Nigerian-Americans, Oyekunle Olukotun and Oluwole Soboyejo, who have been elected to the prestigious National Academy of Engineering (NAE) in the United States, have received plaudits from House of Representatives member, Tolulope Akande-Sadipe.
Akande-Sadipe expressed delight on their elections.
She said the election was another good sign that Nigerians in Diaspora are recognised in their various fields.
The chair of the House Committee on Diaspora praised the Nigerian-Americans for their forthrightness in their chosen career, Engineering.
According to her, the Committee on Diaspora is proud of their feats.
Olukotun and Soboyejo were among the 104 members and 24 international members elected to the academy in February, according to a statement by NAE.
The new members bring the academy’s total US membership to 2,353 and the number of international members to 299.
The academy membership honours those who have made outstanding contributions to “engineering research, practice, or education, including, where appropriate, significant contributions to the engineering literature”.
It also honours pioneers of new and developing fields of technology, making major advancements in traditional fields of engineering, or developing/implementing innovative approaches to engineering education.
Individuals in the newly elected class will be formally inducted during the NAE’s annual meeting on October 3, 2021.
Olukotun is the Cadence Design Systems Professor in the School of Engineering and Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Stanford University.
He has been on the faculty since 1991.
Olukotun is well known as a pioneer in multicore processor design and the leader of the Stanford Hydra chip multiprocessor research project.
He currently directs the Stanford Pervasive Parallelism Laboratory, which seeks to proliferate the use of heterogeneous parallelism in all application areas using Domain-Specific Languages.
He received his Ph.D. in Computer Engineering from The University of Michigan.
Soboyejo is Senior Vice-President and Provost, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Northborough.
Prior to joining WPI, Soboyejo was a Professor in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Princeton University for approximately 17 years.
He is a materials scientist whose research focuses on biomaterials and the use of nanoparticles for the detection and treatment of disease, the mechanical properties of materials, and the use of materials science to promote global development.
He has also served as President and Provost of the African University of Science and Technology in Abuja, Nigeria, a Pan-African university founded by the Nelson Mandela Institutions, among others.
He received his Ph.D. in Materials Science and Metallurgy from Churchill College, Cambridge University.