3/12/2025 Laura Schmitt 6 min read
Written by Laura Schmitt
Three individuals with ties to the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering at Illinois—former professor Patrick Chapman and alumni Martin Eberhard and Michael Krames—are among the 128 engineers elected this year to the U.S. National Academy of Engineering. Election to NAE is one of the highest professional distinctions accorded to an engineer.
“The recognition of these three individuals, whose work has had such a large impact on society through both their leadership and technical contributions, reminds us that Illinois ECE continues to be the source of thought leaders and innovators that change the world. We are so proud of them and our ECE community looks forward to celebrating this recognition with them when they next return home to us.” Jennifer: Please insert a quote—perhaps something about their election, contributions to technology, or what this means to ECE.
Chapman, who had a successful 10-year faculty career before launching or leading multiple startup companies in the energy sector, was recognized for the development of reliable inverters enabling large-scale photovoltaic energy system deployment.
Inverters are a key component of solar energy systems. They convert direct current (DC) electricity generated by solar panels to alternating current (AC) electricity, which is used in homes or can flow out to the power grid.
In the early 2000s, the residential solar power industry faced challenges with its inverter technology. At the time, a single large inverter was connected to multiple rooftop solar panels. If that device was damaged or failed, the entire rooftop array stopped producing electricity.
Chapman and colleagues developed a robust and highly reliable microinverter device that was paired to individual solar panels, so damage to one device did not affect the rest of the system—it could keep producing power from the undamaged panel and microinverter pairs.
His approach shifted the entire industry away from big box inverters, and he, a former college roommate, and two Illinois ECE colleagues co-founded SolarBridge Technologies, which manufactured and sold microinverters directly to solar module companies, making solar energy affordable with a simple plug-and-power functionality. Within short order, SolarBridge microinverters captured a 10% market share.
Later, Chapman was a leader in technology development for two other solar energy companies. Today, he is co-founder of early-stage startup, Stormentum, which adapts microinverter architecture to work with solar batteries that store excess energy and can be used as a backup power source.Chapman has more than 75 issued U.S. patents.
He earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Missouri University of Science and Technology; and he earned his doctorate from Purdue
University in 2000.
Eberhard (BSCompE ’82, MSEE ’84), who has been called the battery guru of the electric vehicle (EV) industry, was elected for leadership in the development of EVs and entrepreneurship in transportation.
He has co-founded several EV-related companies during his career—most notably Tesla Motors in 2003, where he served as the firm’s first CEO. He was the driving force behind the innovative lithium-ion battery system that powered Tesla’s groundbreaking 2008 Roadster EV, which could travel 220 miles on a single charge.
He also co-founded InEVit Inc, whose battery pack technology was incorporated into Chinese automakers’ SERES vehicles, and more recently, he co-founded Tiveni, where he led a systems-level approach to EV battery technology, resulting in EV batteries that were safer and less expensive to manufacture.
Eberhard’s early entrepreneurial efforts—before he co-founded Tesla—played an influential role in the eBook industry. His startup NuvoMedia created the market for electronic books with the 1998 launch of the Rocket eBook, which provided the necessary infrastructure to sell and deliver electronic content securely on the Internet.
In 2007, Fortune Magazine ranked him among the “24 Top Innovators” and Business 2.0 Magazine named him among the “50 People Who Matter Now.” He was inducted into the Grainger College of Engineering Hall of Fame in 2015.
He retired in late 2021, although he continues to invest in innovative early-stage startups, serves on the boards of several startups and lectures around the world on reducing the use of carbon fuels, on the advantages of electric drive over other automotive technologies, on entrepreneurship, and on the need for young people to pursue degrees in science and engineering.
Krames (MS ’92, PhD ’95), a leading authority on wide bandgap semiconductors used in lighting, displays and other applications, was elected for contributions to high-brightness, visible-spectrum light-emitting diodes (LEDs).
During his 30-year career, he has led technology teams at Hewlett-Packard (HP), Lumileds Lighting, Philips Lumileds and Soraa—making groundbreaking innovations to advance LED lighting technology. In 2015, he founded Arkesso, a consulting firm that specializes in wide bandgap semiconductor technology.
His work enabled several product firsts, including LED automotive headlights, LEDs that replaced directional halogen lamps, and LEDs for high-color-gamut flat panel displays.
While at HP, Krames reengineered the light-emitting semiconductor chip used in the company’s high-brightness LEDs from a cubic to an inverted pyramid design. As a result of his innovation, HP LEDs held the industry performance record of more than 100 lumens per watt for several years.
At Philips Lumileds, he led the team that identified Auger-Meitner recombination as the main cause of droop in gallium nitride (GaN)-based LEDs—a longstanding problem that had limited GaN LEDs’ practical efficiency.
Krames was also chief technology officer at Soraa Inc., an LED lighting technology company founded by Nobel physics laureate Shuji Nakamura. There he pioneered a new LED platform, GaN-on-GaN technology, which resulted in the world’s most efficient high-power, visible-spectrum LED.
Among his other accomplishments, Krames is a fellow of both the Institute of Electrical & Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and Illuminating Engineering Society (IES); he holds more than 170 U.S. patents; and has served on several companies’ boards of directors.
Krames earned his doctorate at Illinois under the supervision of Illinois ECE Professor Nick Holonayk Jr., who invented the world’s first practical red LED and semiconductor laser in 1962.
Current Illinois Civil and Environmental Engineering Professor Marcelo Garcia, the M.T. Geoffrey Yeh Endowed Chair in Civil Engineering, was also elected to NAE. Garcia was recognized for research on sediment transport and river and marine morphodynamics, and for advancing hydraulics and sedimentation engineering.
All members of NAE’s class of 2025 will be formally inducted during the Academy’s annual meeting on Oct. 5, 2025.
Read the NAE announcement welcoming the 2025 new members.
About the NAE
Founded in 1964, the NAE provides independent, objective analysis and advice to the nation, offering leadership and insights for a complex world. Elected by their peers, NAE members are among the world’s most accomplished engineers from business, academia, and government.