The Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at NC State University is proud to announce the 2023 inductees to the ECE Alumni Hall of Fame. Additionally, the recipients of two awards launched last year—the Outstanding Early Career Award, and the Distinguished Service Award—were recognized.
At an induction ceremony on October 13, 2023, at the Talley Student Union, 5 members of this seventh class of inductees were welcomed by members of the ECE Advisory Board and ushered into the ranks of the Alumni Hall of Fame.
This class of recipients included national business leaders, professors, and innovators from all walks of engineering life.
We have inducted 91 exemplary alumni into our Alumni Hall of Fame since its inception in 2015, celebrating the accomplishments of our outstanding graduates who use their education to excel in a profession, career, or service.
The Outstanding Early Career Award is presented to one alum each year who has attained significant achievement early in their career and who shows promise of further contributions to the field.
Finally, the William Easter Distinguished Service Award recognizes and honors the lasting service and impact that NC State ECE community members have had on the department, its students, and its mission. In recognition of its inaugural recipient, it was also announced that this award will be named the William Easter Distinguished Service Award.
Our alumni and community are at the core of the Department, representing the agents and ambassadors who have made groundbreaking contributions in the study of electrical and computer engineering and beyond.
We offer a special thank you to the ECE Alumni Hall of Fame Committee. Their diligent efforts in the review and selection process are indeed appreciated. The Department is the fortunate recipient of their commitment to alumni engagement. Our sincerest gratitude is bestowed to the following members for their time, dedication and invaluable service: Clay Gloster, Spencer Johnson, Sonali Luniya, Steve Lovell, Jim O’Dell, and Nita Sharma.
To learn more about how you can nominate outstanding alumni for induction, please visit the Alumni and Community Awards. Nominations for next year’s induction will be accepted through July 15, 2024.
Hall of Fame Inductees
Drew Banks
Drew Banks is a seasoned tech entrepreneur, business author, and novelist. From 1989 to 1999, Banks held a variety of leadership positions at computer visualization giant Silicon Graphics (SGI). After a brief stint as VP Community for ThirdAge Media, Drew co-founded Pie Digital. Drew spent the final decade of his career in visual communications, working to globally expand two European start-ups – Prezi and Drops – and helping broker the sale of Drops to Kahoot! Banks holds two patents in home automation, has written two novels – Able was I and Ere I Saw Elba – and is currently working on his 3rd novel and a screenplay.
Joseph Forbes, Jr.
Joseph Forbes, Jr has built a career in creating and building technology companies in multiple disciplines. Mr. Forbes has been the founder of six successful firms in energy, clean tech, consulting, hardware/software development and wireless communications over the previous 28 years with high returns to investors through public/private exits, leveraged buyouts and successful capital formation with Fortune 100 Companies. Mr. Forbes is a prolific inventor. He is the named inventor of over 150 patents focused on the evolution of the electric grid from a centralized, one-way architecture to one that is two-way, steeped with advanced Internet Protocol-based communication and advanced energy financial settlements
Hugh Milton Holt
Hugh Milton Holt had a spectacularly successful 53-year career as an electrical engineer for NASA. He served as Deputy Director of Airborne Systems where he directed research on sensors, electromagnetics, simulators, and aircraft and supervised 300-500 engineers, technical, and administrative personnel. Holt received numerous NASA awards, including the Leadership Medal for sustained leadership in flight electronics. He has served as the President of the Technology Commercialization Center, a NASA spin-off company since 2007.
Jeyhan Karaoguz
Jeyhan Karaoğuz earned his M.S. (1989) and Ph.D. (1992) degrees in Electrical Engineering from the North Carolina State University. In the first decade of his career, he held technical and research management positions at IBM Research Triangle Park, IBM Zurich Research Labs, and Motorola Labs, where he made key technical contributions to the development of early industry standards for fast ethernet and cable modems. He also served as the editor for the physical layer of multiple IEEE industry standards. In 2000, he joined Broadcom Corporation as a principal engineer and has held various engineering positions in research and development for more than 20 years, most recently as Vice President and General Manager of Intellectual Property. Dr. Karaoğuz conducted pioneering research and development in broadband network access, wireless connectivity, and mobile devices in their early days. He is a prolific inventor with 764 US patents awarded to his name. His innovations span a wide range of digital living technologies, powering everyday essentials like mobile devices and wireless networks.
Kenneth Wright
Kenneth Wright is a memory specialist and technical executive with 30 years of experience in highly complex and reliable systems. As Senior Director of System Engineering Datacenter GPU at AMD, Wright manages a global team of more than 120 engineers. His team is responsible for deploying and maintaining the GPU subsystem for the first exa-scale computer, Frontier, at Oak Ridge National Labs. He previously served as Senior Director of Engineering Architecture at Rambus and worked for IBM for 18 years where he received the Outstanding Technical Achievement Award for his leadership and work on teams that developed POWER PC, Mainframe, and AS/400 systems. He has more than 120 patents and has published more than 15 articles in journals
Outstanding Early Career Award
Shubhi Asthana
Shubhi Asthana works as a Senior Research Software Engineer at IBM Research. As an exemplary researcher, she has demonstrated outstanding, impactful, and sustained contributions towards research and leadership in the field of Data Engineering and Services Computing. Shubhi has successfully led projects in financial services computing and analytics with business impact. Currently, she is leading the efforts in Identifying Objectionable Personally Identifying Information (OPII) for the IBM’s premier machine learning platform watsonx.ai.Shubhi’s innovative work yielded to IEEE Senior member elevation, with 40+ publications in top-tier research conferences and meetups. Some of her work was published in patent format and filed by USPTO, with upto 20+ patents. Her patents range in topics like services research, optimization methods for handling financial and sales services data, building innovative algorithms, and performance related algorithms.She has tirelessly worked to support Women in Services. For example, she co-organized the IEEE Women in Services Computing symposia, collocated with the IEEE Services from 2021 to 2023. Through her efforts, 30+ students passionate towards higher studies in STEM received scholarships through IEEE Services. She serves as the industry liaison officer for Women in OR/MS since 2022. She has organized technical talks at INFORMS Business Analytics conference. For her work, Shubhi has been recognized with research and industry awards.
Distinguished Service Award
Larry Monteith
A native of Bryson City, North Carolina, Larry Monteith spent four years as an aviation electronics technician in the US Navy, and then enrolled in North Carolina State College of Agriculture and Engineering in 1956 and graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering in 1960. He eventually joined the faculty at NC State in 1968 as an associate professor in the Solid State Micro-electronics division of the Department of Electrical Engineering.Monteith was active in developing research, graduate programs, teaching and extension programs when appointed in 1974 as head of the department and then in 1978 as the dean of engineering. After a decade as a dean, Monteith accepted the position of interim and then chancellor in 1988 and 1989 before retiring in 1998 after thirty years of service when the efforts of faculty throughout the entire university improved undergraduate, graduate, research and programs that resulted in substantial growth and prominence for the institution.
He was also an early champion of Centennial Campus, including putting forward the initial concept as Dean—and ensuring the funding—of the Engineering Graduate Research Center which opened in 1997. This would later be renamed as a fitting tribune to his impact on engineering education as the Monteith Research Center and is at the forefront of electrical and computer engineering research.
Chancellor Monteith’s leadership in the department, college, and university were instrumental in making NC State an international leader and a powerhouse in the state.