Three Harvard Professors Elected to the National Academy of Engineering

Three Harvard professors were among 106 new members elected this year to the National Academy of Engineering, the academy announced Tuesday.

Those selected included Dean of the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences Francis J. Doyle III, bioengineering professor Donald E. Ingber, and Harvard Kennedy School professor William W. Hogan.

Founded in 1964, the NAE uses the expertise of its members to advise the federal government on matters related to engineering and technology. Election to the NAE is “among the highest professional distinctions accorded to an engineer,” per its website.

Doyle, Ingber, and Hogan will join the Academy’s 2,352 other American members and 298 international members.

Doyle, who said he was “still soaring high” after receiving the news, was elected for “insights into natural biological control systems and innovative engineering of diabetes control devices.”

A graduate of Princeton University and the California Institute of Technology, Doyle has been a faculty member at Harvard since 2015. Prior to working at Harvard, he was chair of the Department of Chemical Engineering and associate dean of research at the University of California Santa Barbara, where he also headed the UCSB/MIT/Caltech Institute for Collaborative Biotechnologies.

Doyle has been a member of the National Academy of Medicine – a counterpart of the NAE – since 2016, and a fellow at multiple world-renowned organizations, including the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, for which he served as president for the Control Systems Society in 2015.

Ingber, who teaches at both SEAS and Harvard Medical School, was awarded for “interdisciplinary contributions to mechanobiology and microsystems engineering, and leadership in biologically inspired engineering.”

He described the NAE’s work in an email as “critical for our collective future success,” and noted he was “proud and honored” to have the chance to collaborate with fellow NAE engineers.

Ingber’s work with SEAS, HMS, and Boston Children’s Hospital has combined techniques across fields to explore the effect of cell structure on tissue development and biochemistry.

He has authored more than 430 publications and 150 patents and has founded five companies. Like Doyle, Ingber was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2012, and he was elected to the National Academy of Inventors in 2015.

The NAE recognized Hogan for “contributions to electricity industry restructuring, electricity market design, and energy policy modeling and analysis.”

Specializing in global energy policy, Hogan is the current research director of the Harvard Electricity Policy Group. He previously worked at Stanford University, where he founded the Energy Modeling Forum, and he is the former president of the International Association for Energy Economics.

“The main focus has been to take theory into practice in improving the operation of actual markets,” Hogan wrote in an email. “The foundations are even more important for the future as we move to increasing reliance on renewable energy.”

Doyle, who noted his membership letter was signed by a former professor of his, wrote that he hopes he can inspire a future generation of engineers as his own professors did him.

“One thought that struck me as I poured over the lovely emails I’ve received is how much I owe to those who trained me and helped build the foundation that I can rise from,” Doyle wrote. “It’s humbling to think about the foundations that all of us in the academy are helping to build for the next generation.”

The newly elected members will be officially inducted at the Academy's annual meeting on Oct. 3, 2021.

—Staff writer Natalie L. Kahn can be reached at natalie.kahn@thecrimson.com. Follow her on Twitter @natalielkahn.