Carnegie Mellon University’s standing as a powerhouse in engineering research is underscored by the election of Jonathan Cagan(opens in new window), CMU President Farnam Jahanian(opens in new window), and alumnus Ira J. Pitel to the prestigious National Academy of Engineering(opens in new window)‘s 2026 class.
Election to the NAE is among the highest professional distinctions accorded to an engineer.
Cagan, the David and Susan Coulter Head of Mechanical Engineering, is known for his advancements in design automation and medical technologies. Jahanian is a celebrated scholar with over 100 published research papers on distributed computing, network security and network protocols. Pitel is an IEEE(opens in new window) Fellow, holds 28 patents and received the 2008 Gerald Kilman Innovator Award and the 1995 IEEE Industry Applications Society Prize Paper Award.
Cagan co-founded the Integrated Innovation Institute(opens in new window) for interdisciplinary design education at CMU, bringing engineering, design and business together to create new products and services. His research focuses on design automation and methods, problem-solving and medical technologies.
He is a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He has been awarded the ASME Computers and Information in Engineering Division Lifetime Achievement, Design Theory and Methodology, Design Automation, and Ruth and Joel Spira Outstanding Design Educator awards. Cagan serves as co-editor-in-chief of Design Science Journal.
A registered professional engineer, Cagan received his Ph.D. from UC Berkeley, and has been on the faculty at CMU since 1990.
Jahanian is the 10th president of Carnegie Mellon where he holds the Henry L. Hillman President’s Chair. He is currently serving his second five-year term as president and holds three faculty appointments in CMU’s School of Computer Science,(opens in new window) College of Engineering(opens in new window) and the Heinz College of Information Systems and Public Policy(opens in new window).
Jahanian is a celebrated scholar on a range of topics, including distributed computing, network security and network protocols and architectures. His research has been supported by numerous major sponsors, including the NSF, DHS, DARPA, NSA, ONR as well as companies that include Cisco, Intel, Google, Boeing, VeriSign, Hitachi, Hewlett-Packard and IBM.
He holds a master’s degree and a Ph.D. in computer science from The University of Texas at Austin. He is a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery, the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Pitel earned a doctoral degree in electrical and computing engineering from CMU in 1978, and is the founder of Magna-Power Electronics(opens in new window) in Flemington, New Jersey. His election recognizes Pitel’s contributions to advancements in power electronics, integrating theoretical innovation with practical applications in commercial products.
Cagan, Jahanian and Pitel join 72 members of the CMU research community previously elected to the NAE.
The NAE elected 130 members and 28 international members to its Class of 2026. Individuals in the new class will be formally inducted during the NAE’s Annual Meeting in October.
“Carnegie Mellon University is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The institution was originally established in 1900 by Andrew Carnegie as the Carnegie Technical School. In 1912, it became the Carnegie Institute of Technology and began granting four-year degrees.”
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