Musk was elected as an academician of the National Academy of Engineering, and Zhang Hongjiang and Fang Daining were selected as foreign academicians

On February 9, 2022, US time, John L. Anderson, president of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE), announced the newly elected 111 US academicians and 22 international academicians. This brings the total number of U.S. academicians of the National Academy of Engineering to 2,388 and the number of international academicians to 310.

Among the newly elected 111 U.S. academicians, the names of Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, are also listed.

Founded in December 1964, the National Academy of Engineering is the highest-level academic institution in the U.S. engineering and technology community, and has a high influence and reputation in the world. Being elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering is one of the highest professional honors an engineer can earn.

Every election of members of the National Academy of Engineering is a long-term process of one year. Voting for each year takes place in December, while the final vote for fellowship takes place in January of the following year. The most important criterion for selecting academicians is that they have made outstanding contributions to engineering research, practice or education.

In addition, other criteria include the development of new or developing technical areas, significant progress in traditional engineering, and the development or practice of more innovative approaches to engineering education.

As for Musk's reasons for being elected to the fellowship, the National Academy of Engineering wrote: "Elon Musk is the founder, CEO and chief engineer of SpaceX Company in Hawthorne, California. Particularly in the field of reusable launch vehicles, as well as in the field of sustainable transport and energy systems, he has made breakthroughs and contributed in the areas of design, engineering, manufacturing and operations. ”

At present, Musk holds many titles, he is not only the founder, CEO and chief engineer of space exploration technology company SpaceX, but also the CEO and chief designer of the electric car company Tesla, the founder of the underground tunnel network company Boring Company, the brain-computer interface company Neuralink, and the co-founder of the artificial intelligence company OpenAI. He now has about $241 billion in assets, mostly from his own Tesla stock, the richest man in the world.

Shortly after the news release, Musk, who loves to use social media, also quickly retweeted the tweet and wrote "Thank you very much."

Figure | Elon Musk thanked him on social media for the news of his election to the National Academy of Engineering (Source: Twitter)

Newly elected Members of the Academy of Engineering will be officially accredited at the NAE Annual Meeting on October 2, 2022.

In addition to Musk, there are many other people we are familiar with in the newly elected academician list or from companies and institutions that we are familiar with.

Dr. Hongjiang Zhang, investment partner of Beijing-based Source Code Capital, senior advisor to Carlyle Group and Distinguished Visiting Professor of the Intelligent Industry Research Institute (AIR) of Tsinghua University, was also elected as a Foreign Fellow of the Chinese Academy of Engineering in 2022 for his outstanding technical contributions in the field of multimedia computing.

Dr. Zhang Hongjiang is known as the "founding father" of computer video retrieval research. A paper he published in the inaugural issue of the Journal of Multimedia Systems in 1993 established the basic framework for modern video retrieval and content query, and the paper is regarded as a classic in modern multimedia research. Many researchers in this field have borrowed or cited this paper.

In addition, Professor Fang Daining, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and from the Institute of Advanced Structural Technology of Beijing Institute of Technology, was also named a foreign academician of the American Academy of Engineering in 2022 for his research contributions to the mechanics of ferroelectric/ferromagnetic materials and lightweight multifunctional structures under extreme conditions.

Academician Fang Daining has conducted many years of research on the mechanical theory, calculation and experimental methods of advanced materials and structures under the multi-field coupling of force electromagnetic heat. In addition, he has also developed the multi-field multi-field computational mechanics method and design preparation method of lightweight multi-functional composite material force electromagnetic heat, and applied the prepared lightweight multi-functional materials and structures to the construction of national defense equipment.

Professor Cai Kequan, tenured distinguished professor of the Department of Civil Engineering of National Taiwan University, was also awarded as a foreign academician for his outstanding contributions to seismic engineering research and steel structure design.

Noubar Afeyan, co-founder and chairman of Moderna, Cambridge, Massachusetts, which produces the COVID-19 vaccine, was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering for his leadership in biotechnology, particularly in mRNA therapy and chromatography.

John Maxwell Cohn, a researcher at IBM and an MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab, was elected a Member of the National Academy of Engineering for improving the design efficiency of high-performance analog and mixed-signal circuits and for his contributions to the promotion of STEM education.

John Davies, a former vice president at Intel Corporation, who was elected to the National Academy of Engineering for his contributions to improving education and health care and stimulating the economy in less developed countries, has retired.

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