Anjan Bose and James R. Asay have been named members of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE), the most prestigious honor in the engineering field. Bose is dean of the College of Engineering and Architecture at Washington State University and distinguished professor in power engineering. Asay is research professor and associate director of WSU’s  Institute for Shock Physics.

Election to the NAE comes from peers within the academy, based on nominees’ outstanding contributions to their field. Founded in 1964, the NAE serves with the National Academy of Sciences as an advisory board for the federal government through the National Research Council. Out of approximately 10 million academic and industrial engineers in the United States, only about 2,000 are members of the NAE.

Bose was named to the group for his “development of training simulators and computational tools for reliable power-system operation and for contributions to education and research on power systems.”

Bose’s research in the operation and control of the electric power grid has led to major breakthroughs in power system control technology that are in industrial practice today, including better computer controls of electric generation and transmission systems to avoid blackouts. He developed the real-time computer simulator that is used to train power grid operators all over the world. He is an expert in how to maintain the reliability of the power grid given the changes taking place in deregulating the power industry. He has served on a blue-ribbon power outage study team appointed by the U.S. Secretary of Energy to study several power outages that took place in the East and Midwest and has continued to be a technical leader in the industry and is a prominent consultant.

Asay was named for his “leadership in engineering research and management of shock waves and for the development of tools that have contributed to national security.”

Asay was a leading scientist at Sandia National Laboratories before joining the Institute for Shock Physics in 2002. At Sandia, he led several research programs on high-pressure material response as the deputy director of shock physics applications. He is internationally known for his work in shock wave research and high-pressure science and is noted for leading the development of new pulsed power techniques for magnetically compressing materials to very high pressures. He has served on several national committees, including a National Academy of Sciences panel that evaluated space debris hazards. He also served on a National Security Advisory Committee to assess nuclear defense technologies. He received his doctorate in physics from WSU in 1971.

Asay and Bose will be formally inducted into the NAE at the group’s annual meeting on October 12, 2003, at the National Academies Building in Washington, D.C.