February 27, 2006 Vol. 77, no. 7S

POSITIVE EXAMPLE: Kevin Kornegay (M.S.’90, Ph.D.’92 EECS) with a vehicle built by students on his Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Team, will move in January to Georgia Institute of Technology, where he will be the Motorola Professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering. (Denis Defibaugh photo)

Inspiring engineers, one student at a time

Growing up in Queens, New York, Kevin Kornegay was “a nerd and proud of it,” he says. “I was always building radios or oscilloscopes and tearing apart electric motors.” His natural tendency to tinker was fueled not only by the electronic gadgets his mother bought him, but also by techno-wizard Barney Collier, the character played by black actor Greg Morris on CBS television’s 1966–73 hit spy show, Mission Impossible.

“Collier was a technologist, and that had a significant impact on me,” Kornegay says. “When African Americans are portrayed positively in the media, kids looking for examples to emulate can find important role models.”

Kornegay (M.S.’90, Ph.D.’92 EECS) began his professional career as a researcher at IBM’s T.J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, New York. In 1998 he joined Cornell, where he is now associate professor of electrical and computer engineering, focusing on mixed-signal integrated circuit design for broadband communications. Best known for founding Cornell’s Broadband Communications Research Lab and his work on high-performance circuit design, he has recently mentored a number of award-winning student teams building autonomous, or unmanned, submarines.

“Autonomous systems require integration of sensors, computation, mechanical and electrical systems, and artificial intelligence,” Kornegay says. “This is systems engineering at its highest level.” Watching his students put it all together, he adds, is his favorite part of the job.

“These projects culminate in designs that bring theory and practice together,” he says. “It’s thrilling to watch the students solve challenging real-world problems in real time.”
Kornegay’s honors are too numerous to list in their entirety. They include the 2005 Janice Lumpkin Educator of the Year award from the National Society of Black Engineers and a National Science Foundation CAREER Award.

“When I graduated from Berkeley,” he says, “there were only two African American electrical engineering Ph.D. graduates in the country, and I was one of them. For the most part, those numbers haven’t changed.” Recent figures from the National Science Foundation confirm that blacks, Latinos, and Native Americans account for 23 percent of the U.S. population, but only 6 percent of its science and engineering labor force.

Today, Kornegay is doing his part to inspire more women and underrepresented minorities to excel in science and engineering. In his seven years at Cornell, he has mentored 14 Ph.D. graduates, three of them African Americans, one Latino, and one woman.

“Through my professional accomplishments, I try to be an example,” Kornegay says. “If I can do it, they can do it.”

— Written by Patti Meagher

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