Awards Honor UM Pioneers in Electronics Engineering and Security Studies

Michael Pecht is the George Dieter Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the A. James Clark School of Engineering and director of the Center for Advanced Life Cycle Engineering (CALCE) at the University of Maryland. CALCE, founded by Dr. Pecht in 1985, is the world’s largest international academic/industrial partnership focusing on electronic product reliability, and is funded by more than a hundred companies. Pecht is also the driving force behind the development and implementation of physics-of-failure approaches to reliability and a world leader in research pertaining to accelerated testing, failure analysis, and prognostics for electronic systems.

Dr. Pecht is a Professional Engineer, an Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE) Fellow and an American Society Of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) Fellow. He also holds the titles of Visiting Professor in Electrical Engineering at City University of Hong Kong; Visiting Professor in Physics at Shanghai Jiao Tong University; Visiting Professor of Reliability at Beihang University, Beijing; and Fellow of the Academic Committee at Aero Combined Environment Laboratory, Beijing. He is a recognized world leader in electronics design, manufacture, test, and support for reliability. He served as chief editor of the IEEE Transactions on Reliability for eight years. He is now chief editor of Microelectronics Reliability.

Dr. Pecht has written eighteen books on electronic products development, use, and supply-chain management and a series of books on the Asian electronics industry, including books on Korea, Taiwan, Japan, and India. His latest book, China’s Electronics Industry, published by William Andrew Publishing, documents the technologies, manufacturing capabilities, and infrastructure that have made China a major player in the electronics industry.

Dr. Pecht has been recognized internationally by awards including the Kan Tong Po Electrical Engineering Award from the Royal Society-UK; the Grand Fellowship of the Mirce Akademy-UK; the 3M Research Award for electronics packaging; the IEEE Undergraduate Teaching Award; and the IMAPS William D. Ashman Memorial Achievement Award for contributions in electronics reliability analysis.

John D. Steinbruner is Professor of Public Policy at the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland, and Director of the Center for International and Security Studies at Maryland (CISSM). Steinbruner joined the Maryland faculty in 2000 after 22 years at the Brookings Institution, where he was Director of the Foreign Policy Studies Program from 1978 to 1996. He is Co-chair of the Committee on International Security Studies at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a fellow of the Academy, as well as Chairman of the Board of the Arms Control Association.

Dr. Steinbruner’s work has focused on substantive issues of international security policy and related global concerns. He has initiated a research program at CISSM exploring how advanced methods of cooperation might be applied to achieve higher standards of protection against the destructive use of those agents capable of inflicting massive damage on human societies, most notably nuclear explosives and virulent biological pathogens. Those efforts emerge from historical research on the development of nuclear weapons and from theoretical analysis of the decision process involved. They have also been influenced by his lengthy participation in international dialogues held separately with Russian, Chinese, and Indian counterparts on the problems posed by nuclear weapons and emerging biotechnology which were conducted through the Committee on International Security and Arms Control (CISAC), a standing committee of the National Academy of Sciences. Dr. Steinbruner was a founding member of CISAC in 1981 and served through 2004. He was Vice-Chair from 1996 to 2004, and remains a Senior Advisor.

In 1995, he was instrumental through CISAC in initiating a program of assistance, provided through the Nunn-Lugar legislation, for Russian research biologists who had been engaged in the Soviet era offensive weapons program. Its basic purpose is to encourage mutually reassuring transparency, a central theme of his research efforts at Maryland. From 1995 to 1998, Dr. Steinbruner served on the Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict, whose report focused on problems of civil violence. At Maryland he has been working on the application of “adaptive agent modeling techniques” to better understand the dynamics of civil conflict.