On November 13, 2025, the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering inducted eight esteemed alumni into its Hall of Fame, and recognized two outstanding young alumni. Built upon their common foundation at NC State University, these graduates inspire our current students and continue to serve as extraordinary representatives of the department in their chosen industries.
With over 12,000 MAE alumni, nomination is based on professional and service achievements, entrepreneurship and contributions to professional societies, making this a truly noteworthy distinction.
“This event is one of my favorites every year,” said Department Head Srinath Ekkad. “This is where we learn the impact of an NC State education from people who graduated in the 70s, 80s, 90s, 2000s and beyond. So this is a proud moment for me, for the department and for NC State.”
MAE’s mission is to benefit all people of North Carolina and the global society by: making a profound impact on science and technologies, fostering synergistic multidisciplinary research and education, providing the environment for innovative professional development, and graduating highly skilled, ethical engineers who will be future leaders. The Alumni Hall of Fame reflects this mission, and the department is honored to welcome this year’s inductees.
View the full induction ceremony photo gallery here.
Click here to watch the induction ceremony recording.
Hall of Fame Inductees
Adam Amar
Adam Amar grew up in Charlotte, NC and studied Aerospace Engineering at NC State University, where he graduated with his B.S. in 2004 and M.S. in 2006.
Studying under Dr. Jack Edwards, Amar’s graduate school research focused on computational fluid dynamics and modeling ablative thermal protection systems. While in grad school, Amar worked as an intern at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, NM, where he applied his research through the development of software tools for analysis of ablative thermal protection systems.
Amar has spent his entire post-graduate career with NASA’s Johnson Space Center, primarily as an aerothermodynamicist, supporting the Orion and Artemis Programs. He is currently the Orion Aerothermodynamics System Manager and the Johnson Space Center Technical Discipline Lead for Aerothermodynamics. In these roles, Amar leads an agency-wide team in the development of aerothermodynamic environments for Orion design and mission execution. He also serves as a subject matter expert on review boards for other planetary and scientific missions involving aerothermodynamics.
Recently, Amar played a leading role in the investigation into the Artemis I heat shield anomaly. Through this, he supported determination of root cause, developed corrective action for future Artemis missions, and provided rationale to certify and safely fly Artemis II with crew on board.
Antônio Silva Neto
Antônio José da Silva Neto holds a Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical and Nuclear Engineering from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (‘83), a Master’s degree in Nuclear Engineering from the same university (‘89) and a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from NC State University (‘93). At NC State MAE, he studied under Dr. M. Necati Ozisik, and minored in Computational Mathematics under Dr. Robert E. White.
Dr. Silva Neto worked for the Brazilian National Nuclear Energy Commission from 1984 to 1986, and for Promon Engenharia from 1986 to 1997. In 1997, he joined the Polytechnic Institute of Rio de Janeiro State University, where he has been a full professor since 2013.
Dr. Silva Neto is a former president of the Brazilian Society of Computational and Applied Mathematics (SBMAC, 2014-2017), and a former president of the Brazilian Society of Mechanical Sciences and Engineering (ABCM, 2009-2013). He has been a full member of the Brazilian National Academy of Engineering (ANE) since 2017.
Dr. Silva Neto has authored 16 books and over 750 articles. Over the course of his career, Silva Neto has supervised dozens of students, including 54 M.S., 33 Ph.D. and 14 postdocs. He is an Associate Editor (AE) of five journals: Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer (ASME), Computational and Applied Mathematics (Springer), Journal of Computational Mathematics and Data Science (Elsevier), International Journal of Data Science and Analytics (Springer) and Trends in Computational and Applied Mathematics (SBMAC). Dr. Silva Neto is a member of the Editorial Board of the Brazilian Journal of Environmental Sciences (Brazilian Association of Sanitary and Environmental Engineering). He was an AE of the journal Inverse Problems in Science and Engineering (Taylor & Francis) from 2004 to 2021.
From 2012 to 2018, Dr. Silva Neto was the coordinator of Mechanical and Nuclear Engineering for the Carlos Chagas Filho Foundation for Research Support of the State of Rio de Janeiro (FAPERJ), and has served as an advisor to FAPERJ’s president since 2021.
From 2014 to 2016, Dr. Silva Neto was a member of the Deliberative Council of the Brazilian Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq), and now serves in the Advisory Committee in Mechanical, Naval and Oceanic, and Aerospace Engineering, an appointment that will last until 2028. Dr. Silva Neto was a member of the Interdisciplinary Area Coordination of the Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES) from 2006 to 2016, and now serves as an ad hoc consultant in the CAPES Environmental Sciences Coordination Area.
In 2020, Dr. Silva Neto participated in the creation of the first Professional Doctorate approved by the CAPES Environmental Sciences Coordination Area (titled Modeling and Technology for the Environment Applied to Water Resources) at the Federal Fluminense Institute (IFF). In 2009, he created the Municipal Secretariat of Science, Technology and Innovation in Nova Friburgo, Rio de Janeiro/Brazil, serving as its first Secretary from 2010 to 2011. In 1999, Silva Neto participated in the creation of the Mechanical Engineering degree at the Polytechnic Institute of the Rio de Janeiro State University.
In 1998, Silva Neto founded the annual National Meeting on Computational Modelling (ENMC). Since 1991, he has been a member of the Honor Societies Phi Kappa Phi and Pi Mu Epsilon. Silva Neto has served as Scientific Coordinator for the Brazilian National Center for Applied Research in Artificial Intelligence for Industry since 2021, with headquarters at the SENAI CIMATEC University.
Silva Neto and his wife Gilsineida Neto have been married for over 38 years; they have one son, Lucas Neto, and one daughter, Luísa Neto.
Charles Lewis
Lewis has had a diverse career that started as a flight test engineer at the Naval Air Test Center in Patuxent River, MD, where he worked on projects involving the Navy’s F-14 aircraft. He then returned to NC State to pursue an M.S. in Mechanical Engineering, where his research was recognized by NASA in the administration’s Tech Briefs.
After earning his master’s degree, Lewis worked as an engineer at Duke Power in Charlotte, NC, where he served as a liaison between the company and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, coordinating licensing compliance efforts in collaboration with engineering and operations. He then accepted a position in Duke Power’s environmental group, where he performed environmental compliance audits, environmental site assessments and soil and groundwater contamination investigations.
Lewis then decided to make a career change and entered law school at UNC-Chapel Hill, where he was a member of the North Carolina Law Review and had his law review note on a U.S. Supreme Court patent law case published. Since earning his J.D. with high honors in 1999, Lewis has worked in law firms, including a patent law boutique, and served as general counsel for two commercial general contractors (R. J. Griffin & Co. and BE&K Building Group).
Since 2018, Lewis has served as Vice President, General Counsel and Corporate Secretary for Huber Engineered Woods LLC, a manufacturer of engineered wood products. In his general counsel roles, Lewis has been involved in a significant amount of construction litigation. His engineering background has helped tremendously because it has allowed him to quickly understand the design, construction and building science issues that are at the heart of almost every case.
In his current role, Lewis was responsible for three intellectual property cases, two of which were patent infringement cases, while the third involved trade secrets related to manufacturing equipment and processes. All three were multi-million-dollar cases. Lewis has published in both his technical and legal roles and was a finalist for the Charlotte Business Journal’s Outstanding General Counsel award in 2025.
Dr. Cheng-Hung Huang
Dr. Cheng-Hung Huang is a Chair Professor in the Department of Systems and Naval Mechatronic Engineering at National Cheng Kung University (NCKU), Taiwan, and former Chairman of CSBC Corporation, Taiwan’s largest shipbuilding company. He earned his M.S. (‘88) and Ph.D. (‘91) in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering from NC State University. Dr. Huang was mentored by Dr. Richard Johnson during his master’s studies and by the renowned heat transfer scholar Dr. M. Necati Ozisik during his doctoral work. Their guidance instilled in him the lasting values of discipline, intellectual curiosity and creative problem-solving.
Upon returning to NCKU in 1991, Dr. Huang served in multiple leadership roles, including Department Chairperson, Associate Vice President and Vice President for International Affairs, Vice President for Finance, and Executive Vice President. His research focuses on inverse problems, inverse design problems and system optimization problems, with applications in fuel cells, heat exchangers, heat sinks, solar stills and fan/blade design.
Dr. Huang has published over 180 SCI-indexed journal papers and received the Outstanding Research Award from Taiwan’s National Science and Technology Council three times, the maximum possible number, recognizing his sustained contributions to engineering research. Dedicated to advancing the academic community, Dr. Huang also serves as Associate Editor or Editorial Board Member for several international journals, and was recognized among the world’s top 2% of scientists by Stanford and Elsevier.
In 2025, Dr. Huang was inducted into the MAE Alumni Hall of Fame at NC State, a distinction he regards as both a personal honor and a tribute to the mentors, colleagues and community that shaped his career. His journey reflects a commitment to integrating rigorous research, inspired teaching and industrial leadership – carrying forward the values of critical thinking, resilience and innovation instilled during his formative years at NC State.
Dr. Neal T. Frink
Dr. Neal T. Frink is an internationally recognized expert in applied aerodynamics, with over four decades of service at NASA’s Langley Research Center. Known for his pioneering work in computational fluid dynamics (CFD), he led a small collaborative team to develop the NASA Tetrahedral Unstructured Software System (TetrUSS), a widely adopted suite of tools for aerodynamic analysis and design; TetrUSS won the NASA Software of the Year Award in both 1996 and 2004, and remains one of NASA’s most downloaded software tools after three decades. His leadership and vision helped establish unstructured grid methods as the standard in CFD, influencing research and practice across government, industry and academia.
Dr. Frink’s career blends deep expertise in fluid mechanics, aerodynamics, CFD and wind tunnel testing. He conceived a novel design process that was verified by flight tests, contributed to major aerospace programs within government, industry and NATO, and played key roles in accident investigations and redesign efforts. His work also reached the public through a 20-foot TetrUSS generated image of a Boeing 747-400, now displayed in the “How Things Fly” exhibit at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.
Dr. Frink’s many contributions to the field of applied aerodynamics have been recognized at the national and international levels, including: the 2013 AIAA Aerodynamics Award, the NASA Distinguished Service Medal and the NATO Science and Technology Organization AVT Panel Excellence Award. Yet, what’s most fulfilling about his career has been the opportunity to collaborate with and be inspired by the many talented colleagues who have advanced the field of aerodynamics alongside him.
Phillip LeDuc
Philip LeDuc (Ph.D., Johns Hopkins University; post-doctoral fellow, Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School) is the William J. Brown Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University, with appointments in Biological Sciences, Biomedical Engineering, Electrical and Computer Engineering and Computational Biology.
Dr. LeDuc has received a National Science Foundation CAREER Award, the Beckman Foundation Young Investigators Award and was also selected as a faculty member for the Sloan Foundation minority Ph.D. Program. He has been funded by various organizations, including the Gates Foundation, the National Institute of Health, the Department of Defense, the Department of Energy and the Keck Foundation.
Over the course of his career, Dr. LeDuc has published many articles in a variety of journals, including: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Nature Nanotechnology, Nature Communications, JACS, Applied Physics Letters, Methods in Cell Biology, Advanced Materials, Nature Protocols and Nature. He has given seminars across the world, from South Africa to India and Brazil.
Dr. LeDuc has been on and helped to organize many scientific meetings, including for the National Academy of Engineering, the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Medicine and the U.S. Congress. He was elected to the Science Advisory Council of the Beckman Foundation and to the Board of Directors for both the Biomedical Engineering Society and the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering. Dr. LeDuc is also a Fellow of the Biomedical Engineering Society, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, the International Academy of Medical and Biological Engineering and the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering. He has filed numerous patents, created companies and consulted for numerous other companies.
Philip and his wife, Rachel, have a daughter and two sons. He has been involved with many philanthropic organizations, including raising money for non-profit organizations and mission trips to Africa and Armenia.
Neal Elliot
Dr. Elliott directed the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy’s (ACEEE) research and led its industrial work for almost three decades prior to transitioning to emeritus status in the fall of 2020. He joined ACEEE in 1993 as the founding director of its industrial program. In his emeritus capacity, Dr. Elliott continues to contribute to ACEEE’s research and policy efforts as an internationally recognized expert and author on energy efficiency programs and policies, industrial energy efficiency and decarbonization, smart manufacturing, rural and agricultural energy policies, electric motor systems and clean distributed energy.
Prior to joining ACEEE, Dr. Elliott was an Adjunct Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Duke University and senior engineering project manager at the NC Alternative Energy Corp. (now Advanced Energy), where he was founding director of the Industrial Energy Laboratory and led agricultural energy efficiency efforts. Prior to AEC, Dr. Elliott worked as NC Wood Assistance team leader for the Industrial Extension Service and Department of Wood and Paper Science at NC State University.
In 2020, Dr. Elliott was recognized in the Congressional Record by Senator Shaheen for his contributions to industrial energy policy (CR Vol.166, No.140). He was appointed to the U.S. Department of Energy’s Industrial Technology Innovation Advisory Committee in 2024.
Dr. Elliott earned his B.S. and M.S. in Mechanical Engineering from NC State, and received his Ph.D. from Duke University, where he was a Dean’s Fellow.
Stacey Rock
Stacey Rock is the President of the Turbine Technologies Division at Kratos Defense, a role in which he leads the development and production of affordable, high-performance jet engines, turbomachinery and related propulsion solutions. His 35+ years of experience have been instrumental in transforming Kratos into a leading national defense and aerospace technology company.
Rock began his career as a computational fluid dynamicist and research engineer at the USAF Arnold Engineering Development Center, where he contributed to the development and testing of advanced transonic, supersonic and hypersonic weapon systems. He went on to hold key roles at CFD Research Corporation, L3 Harris and Kratos Defense, leading a variety of research and development programs for tactical missiles, hypersonic vehicles, airborne optical sensors and high-energy lasers.
In 2019, Rock founded the Kratos Turbine Technologies Division. Since then, he has grown the business into a multinational operation with over 400 employees, solidifying Kratos Defense’s reputation as a premier developer and manufacturer of both commercial and defense engines. Rock holds a B.S. in Aerospace Engineering from Auburn University and an M.S. in Aerospace Engineering from NC State University. He is a Senior Member of the AIAA.
Outstanding Young Alumni
Judith Brown
Dr. Judith Brown is a principal member of the technical staff in the Engineering Sciences Center at Sandia National Laboratories. She received her B.S. in Aerospace Engineering (‘09), her M.S. in Mechanical Engineering (‘12) and her Ph.D in ME (‘15), all from NC State. While working on her Ph.D., Dr. Brown developed a novel modeling approach to study laser interaction with energetic aggregates.
Dr. Brown has used her expertise in AE, computational solid mechanics and materials science to study complex material systems with the goal of developing predictive, multi-physics models. She has led several research projects to advance thermo-mechanical models for energetic materials in harsh environments. These efforts combine experiments, mesoscale models and computational techniques to study the effects of damage on energetic material behavior.
Dr. Brown serves as a mentor to Sandia’s graduate interns, postdocs and early-career staff. She is active in professional societies, conferences and publishing; her work has been featured on the cover of journals including: Modelling and Simulation in Materials Science and Engineering, Mechanics of Materials and Propellants, Explosives, Pyrotechnics.
Jess Errico
Jess Errico currently serves as a judicial law clerk on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. Before joining the judiciary, Errico practiced in the Intellectual Property Litigation group at Latham & Watkins LLP in Washington, D.C., where she worked on complex patent, trademark and trade secret disputes across a range of industries.
A 2019 graduate of NC State University with dual degrees in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Errico began her career as an engineering consultant before pursuing law at the University of North Carolina School of Law, where she earned her J.D. and graduated with honors and as part of the Order of the Coif. While at UNC Law, Errico chaired the Dean’s Advisory Board and was inducted into the Davis Society upon graduation.
At NC State, Errico was a Caldwell Fellow and was involved in campus leadership – serving as Student Body Chief Justice and later as Student Body President. She was also honored with the Matthews Medal, the university’s highest non-academic award honoring students who have made significant contributions to the advancement of the university. She has continued to give back through her service on the MAE Young Alumni Advisory Board.