Two named to the National Academy of Engineering

College of Engineering Dean Paul S. Peercy and Materials Science and Engineering professor Max G. Lagally are among 74 engineers and eight foreign associates elected to the National Academy of Engineering.

Among the world’s most accomplished engineers, Peercy and Lagally join more than 2,000 members and foreign associates.

Seventeen faculty members in the College of Engineering now share this honor.

Peercy, a leader in the nation’s semiconductor industry, received his master’s degree in 1963 and Ph.D. in 1966 from the UW–Madison Department of Physics.

Before becoming engineering dean in 1999, Peercy was president of SEMI/SEMATECH, a nonprofit consortium that steers technical issues for more than 130 of the nation’s top suppliers to the semiconductor industry. Prior to that position, he was director of microelectronics and photonics at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, N.M.

Peercy is a fellow of the Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Physical Society. His research spans several areas of solid-state and materials physics and engineering.

Former Wisconsin Gov. Tommy Thompson recently appointed Peercy to the Wisconsin Technology and Entrepreneurship Council, a high-technology business development corporation funded through the Department of Commerce to provide direction to the state’s efforts to attract and develop companies of the new economy.

Lagally is the Irwin W. Mueller Professor and Bascom Professor of Surface Science. He has conducted groundbreaking research in both new and established areas of surface science. His work includes studying the nanoscale properties of structures of primarily semiconductors; the relationship of material structure to various localized electrical and magnetic properties, and DNA computing. Lagally also has developed advanced instrumentation for surface and interface studies.

Lagally received his master’s degree in physics and Ph.D. in solid-state physics from UW–Madison in 1963 and 1965, respectively. In 1970, he joined the UW–Madison Physics Department and became an assistant professor of materials science in 1971.

Lagally recently was elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and a member of the German National Academy of Science. In addition, he is a fellow of the American Physical Society, the Australian Institute of Physics, and the American Vacuum Society. Among his honors, Lagally received the Byron Bird Award for Excellence in research from the UW–Madison College of Engineering in 1989.

Founded in 1964, the NAE is a branch of the National Academies, which also include the National Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Medicine, and the National Research Council. In addition to its role as advisor to the federal government, the NAE also conducts independent studies to examine important topics in engineering and technology.