Kanafani, Papadimitriou elected to national engineering academy

Adib Kanafani, left, and Christos Papadimitriou Peg Skorpinski photos

27 February 2002 | Two campus professors — one a leader in transportation systems, the other in algorithm complexity — were elected Feb. 15 to the National Academy of Engineering. This is one of the highest professional honors for an American engineer.

Adib Kanafani, professor and chair of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and computer science professor Christos Papadimitriou are among the 74 new members and seven foreign associates elected to the academy. Both teach in the College of Engineering.

Their election brings to 86 the total number of Berkeley faculty members in this prestigious society — making the campus one of the most represented in the academy.

Kanafani holds the Edward G. and John R. Cahill Chair for Civil Engineering and co-directs the National Center of Excellence for Aviation Operations Research, a university-industry consortium funded by the Federal Aviation Administration.

His research centers on transportation planning and systems analysis. He was recognized by the academy for “contributions to national and international air transportation, the development of U.S. research on intelligent transportation, and the education of transportation professionals.”

Papadimitriou’s research focuses on theories of algorithms and complexity and their applications to databases, artificial intelligence and game theory. The associate chair for UC the computer science division, he also holds the C. Lester Hogan Chair in Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences.

The academy praised his contributions to “complexity theory, database theory, and combinatorial optimization.”

New academy members will be inducted in October at a ceremony in Washington, D.C.