NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang has been elected to the National Academy of Engineering (NAE), which is one of the highest academic distinctions awarded to engineers. The NAE credits NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang "for or high-powered graphics processing units, fueling the artificial intelligence revolution".
It wasn't too long ago that Jensen won the "Best CEO of 2023" by The Economist, but now his "outstanding contributions" to the world of engineering were for both the GPU and AI GPU industries. The NAE takes in a bunch of new members each year after they spend multiple months selecting them.
There are specific qualities, achievements and contributions that potential NAE members are judged by, with the academy only honoring people who have made outstanding contributions in the following fields:
- engineering research, practice, or education
- engineering literature
- pioneering of new and developing fields of technology
- making major advancements in traditional fields of engineering
- developing and / or implementing innovative approaches to engineering education
The NAE also publishes a brief description of each of the newly-elected members, with their names, current or most recent vocation, as well as a sentence outlining the achievements that got them elected. The NAE credits NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang "for or high-powered graphics processing units, fueling the artificial intelligence revolution".
It shouldn't come as a surprise that NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang received this honor, as we have NVIDIA GPUs -- in both GPU and AI GPU form -- powering datacenters, scientists, researchers, enterprises, supercomputers, and more with its silicon. For gamers, its range of GeForce RTX series GPUs are the most popular, most used, and most purchased graphics cards in the world.
The NAE had a year-long selection process that ended with a ballot in December, with Huang being just one of the 114 new members, with 21 international members announced earlier this week. The NAE members includes mostly engineers, but as Tom's Hardware points out, there was only one other member for their contributions to computer graphics, with SVP and director of research at IBM Research, Dario Gil.
Gil will also be a new NAE member, credited with his contributions in the "advancement and practical use of artificial intelligence and quantum computing in industry and society".
We have to wait until later this year -- September 29, until Huang and the other new members are officially inducted into the NAE. Once that happens, there will be 2310 members from the United States and 332 international members after the induction ceremony.