Faculty & Staff
Michal Lipson and Venkat Venkatasubramanian Elected to the National Academy of Engineering
Lipson and Venkatasubramanian honored for transformative contributions in photonics, AI, and engineering systems.
Michal Lipson, Eugene Higgins Professor of Electrical Engineering and professor of applied physics, and Venkat Venkatasubramanian, Samuel Ruben-Peter G. Viele Professor of Engineering, have been elected to the U.S. National Academy of Engineering. Election to the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) is among the highest professional distinctions accorded to an engineer.
“We are thrilled to see the extraordinary achievements of Michal and Venkat recognized by the National Academy of Engineering,” said Columbia Engineering Dean Shih-Fu Chang. “Both are pioneers in their respective fields who have made advancements in some of the most important research areas of our time, from photonics to AI to engineering systems. This well-deserved honor reflects many years of dedication and contribution.”
Lipson and Venkatasubramanian join an NAE cohort of 128 new members and 22 international members, announced Feb. 11. There are currently 19 NAE members on Columbia Engineering’s faculty. Individuals in the newly elected class will be formally inducted during the NAE's Annual Meeting Oct. 5, 2025.
An alumnus of the Department of Mechanical Engineering was also elected to the NAE. Kyriacos A. Athanasiou MS'85, PhD'89, distinguished professor and Henry Samueli Chair, Biomedical Engineering, University of California, Irvine was recognized for contributions to the understanding and treatment of musculoskeletal afflictions and for leadership in bioengineering.
Michal Lipson
Michal Lipson pioneered critical building blocks in the field of silicon photonics. In 2004, she showed the ability to tailor the electro-optic properties of silicon (Almeida, et al., Nature 2004 and Xu et. al. Nature 2005 with more than 4,000 citations) which led to the explosion of silicon photonics research and development. The number of publications related to silicon photonic devices and systems is now more than 50,000 a year. A large fraction of these publications are based on Lipson’s original papers published since 2001. Today more than 1,000 papers published yearly involve devices and circuits based on Lipson’s original modulators, or based on other silicon photonics devices demonstrated by her group.
Lipson, who joined Columbia Engineering in 2015, is the inventor of over 45 issued patents. She was elected as a member of the National Academy of Science and has been awarded the NAS Comstock Prize in Physics, the MacArthur Fellowship, the Blavatnik Award, the Optical Society’s R. W. Wood Prize, the IEEE Photonics Award, Erna Hamburger Award, and the John Tyndall award, becoming the first woman recipient of this honor. Each year, since 2014, Lipson has been named by Thomson Reuters as a top 1% highly cited researcher in the field of physics.
Venkat Venkatasubramanian
Venkat Venkatasubramanian is an internationally recognized authority in developing artificial intelligence-based methods for process fault diagnosis, process safety, pharmaceutical engineering, and materials design. In each of these areas, his research has been pioneering, with impact on theoretical developments, industrial practice, and the profession. Venkatasubramanian’s contributions in AI for chemical engineering have been years ahead of their time, anticipating developments that are now widely recognized.
His three papers on process fault diagnosis and safety in 2003 are among the 10 most-cited papers in the international journal, Computers & Chemical Engineering. With 8,000+ citations, they are now considered a ‘gold standard’ in the field. His 2019 paper on AI in chemical engineering is the most-cited paper in the AIChE Journal in the last 20 years. His book, “How Much Inequality is Fair? Mathematical Principles of a Moral, Optimal, and Stable Capitalist Society”, was published in 2017 by Columbia University Press.
In 2009, the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) honored Venkatasubramanian with the Computing in Chemical Engineering Award for contributions to process systems engineering. It recognized him as a fellow of AIChE in 2011. In 2024, Venkatasubramanian, a faculty member in the Department of Chemical Engineering, received AIChE’s oldest and most prestigious award, the William H. Walker Award, for his pioneering contributions in AI for chemical engineering.