Carnegie Mellon University’s standing as a powerhouse in engineering research is underscored by the election of Jonathan Cagan, CMU President Farnam Jahanian, and alumnus Ira J. Pitel to the prestigious National Academy of Engineering’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 more than 100 published research papers on distributed computing, network security, and network protocols. Pitel is an IEEE 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 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.
