UW News

September 30, 1996

UW professor elected to National Academy of Engineering

Akira Ishimaru, Boeing Martin Professor of Electrical Engineering at the University of Washington, has been elected to the National Academy of Engineering.
Election to the Academy is among the highest professional distinctions accorded an engineer. Membership honors those who have made important contributions to engineering theory and practice and those who have demonstrated unusual accomplishment in the pioneering of new and developing fields of technology.

Ishimaru, who has been a professor at the UW since 1958, specializes in the theory and application of wave propagation and scattering in random media. Some examples are optical, microwave and acoustic wave interactions with the atmosphere, ocean, composite materials and biological media with applications in imaging, remote sensing, object detection and communications.

“This is a great honor for me, and I am grateful to the Electrical Engineering Department, the College of Engineering, and the University of Washington for giving me the environment where I could contribute to the engineering profession,” Ishimaru said. “Working with a group of faculty members and graduate students has been most rewarding and stimulating, and I hope to continue to contribute to the engineering profession and the needs of society. The National Academy of Engineering has active study programs to assess the changing needs and resources of the nation, and exposure to these programs should be challenging for me.”

Ishimaru officially be inducted Oct. 2 at the annual National Academy of Engineering meeting. He will join seven other current and retired UW engineering professors in the academy.