Columbia’s Venkat Venkatasubramanian joins the elite U.S. Engineering Academy.

NEW YORK (Diya TV) — Venkat Venkatasubramanian, the Samuel Ruben–Peter G. Viele Professor of Engineering at Columbia University, has been elected to the U.S. National Academy of Engineering (NAE), one of the highest professional distinctions in the discipline. The NAE honored him for his pioneering work on artificial intelligence-based approaches in process fault diagnosis, safety, pharmaceutical engineering, and materials design. He will be officially inducted at the NAE’s annual meeting on October 5.

Columbia Engineering Dean Shih-Fu Chang hailed Venkatasubramanian as a trailblazer in his discipline, pointing to his groundbreaking work in AI and engineering systems.

A global expert in chemical and pharmaceutical engineering, Venkatasubramanian has been a leader in the creation of AI-based process fault diagnosis, safety, and materials design methodologies. His pioneering work prefigured major advances now standard across the industry. His 2003 papers on process fault diagnosis remain among the most cited in Computers & Chemical Engineering, with over 8,000 citations. His 2019 work on AI applications in chemical engineering is the most-referenced paper in the AIChE Journal in the last two decades.

Beyond engineering, Venkatasubramanian has explored economic and social systems, authoring How Much Inequality is Fair? Mathematical Principles of a Moral, Optimal, and Stable Capitalist Society (2017).

A renowned scholar, he was awarded the Computing in Chemical Engineering Award by the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) in 2009 and elected an AIChE Fellow in 2011. In 2024, he was conferred AIChE’s esteemed William H. Walker Award for his trailblazing AI work.

Venkatasubramanian received his bachelor’s in chemical engineering from the University of Madras, a master’s in physics from Vanderbilt University, and a PhD in chemical engineering from Cornell University. Before coming to Columbia in 2012, he was an instructor at Purdue University, where he received the Norris Shreve Prize for excellent teaching three times.