Announcing the 2025 ECE Alumni Hall of Fame
The NC State Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering is proud to announce the 2025 inductees to the ECE Alumni Hall of Fame, as well as the fourth recipient of the Outstanding Early Career Award.
November 11, 2025 
Colleen Brown
The NC State Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering is proud to announce the 2025 inductees to the ECE Alumni Hall of Fame, as well as the fourth recipient of the Outstanding Early Career Award.
This year’s Hall of Fame induction ceremony was held at Hunt Library on November 7, 2025, where faculty, staff and ECE Advisory Board members recognized and celebrated the accomplishments of this remarkable group. This class includes esteemed researchers, leaders and innovators that perfectly represent the far-reaching impacts of NC State ECE, the College of Engineering and our Wolfpack community. Since its inception in 2015, the department has inducted 110 graduates into the ECE Hall of Fame.
”Our alumni are at the core of the department,” said Department Head Veena Misra. “They represent the agents and ambassadors that have made groundbreaking contributions in the study and practice of electrical and computer engineering, and beyond.”
The Outstanding Early Career Award is presented to one alumnus each year who has attained significant achievement in their early career, and who show the promise of further contributions to their field.
The department offers a special thank you to the ECE Alumni Hall of Fame Committee for their diligent efforts in engaging with and showcasing our alumni. Our sincerest gratitude is bestowed to the following members for their time, dedication and invaluable service: Clay Gloster, Michelle Swart, John Amein, Spencer Johnson and Steve Lovell.
Want to nominate an outstanding alum in your life? Please visit the Alumni and Community Awards page. Nominations for next year’s induction will be accepted through May 2026.
Mohit Bhatnagar
At its core, Mohit Bhatnagar is an engineer who loves to define, build and sell innovative products and businesses. He has 30+ years of experience in building and leading the growth of multiple cloud, AI infrastructure & software companies ranging from sub-10-person start-ups to $1B+revenue products. Most recently, he was leading the product management team responsible for Apple's multi-billion cloud infrastructure for its AI initiatives and for the global deployment of core Siri, Search & AI services.
He has served in GM, product, and engineering leadership roles in marquee technology companies including Apple, Netapp, Symantec, and McKinsey. Mohit holds a doctorate in electrical engineering from NC State University and a bachelor’s from IIT Kanpur. He has been awarded over 25 patents for his work and has published more than 30 papers in peer-reviewed journals.
Keith Bowman
Keith A. Bowman is a Principal Engineer and Director of the System-on-Chip Research Lab at Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. in Raleigh, NC. He directs the research and development of innovative circuit and system technologies to improve the performance, energy efficiency, yield, reliability, and security of Qualcomm processors.
Dr. Bowman and his team pioneered four commercially successful circuit and system solutions, significantly benefiting CPUs, GPUs, neural processing units, and secure processing unit across internet-of-things, mobile, laptop, and automotive platforms. He received the B.S. degree from North Carolina State University in 1994 and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 1995 and 2001, respectively, all in electrical engineering. His career includes a 12-year tenure at Intel Corporation in Hillsboro, OR prior to joining Qualcomm in 2013.
Dr. Bowman has published over 90 technical papers, received more than 100 patents, and given over 50 tutorial, special-session, and keynote presentations. His contributions have been recognized with the 2016 Qualcomm Corporate Research and Development (CRD) Distinguished Contributor Award for Technical Contributions, representing CRD’s highest recognition, and the 2022 Qualcomm IP Achievement Award. He has held various leadership roles within the IEEE Solid-State Circuits Society such as serving as an IEEE SSCS Distinguished Lecturer, IEEE SSCS Mentor, and multiple technical committee positions for the IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference. He currently serves as the ISSCC 2026 Program Chair. He is a Fellow of the IEEE.
Kim Hazelwood
A globally recognized leader in AI infrastructure and AI systems research, Dr. Hazelwood's 25-year career has included stints as a tenured associate professor of computer science at the University of Virginia, as well as technical and executive leadership roles at Google, Yahoo, and Meta (Facebook). Over the course of her career, her technical focus has evolved from computer systems and architectures to artificial intelligence applications, infrastructure, and research. She has served as a contributor to a number of efforts with broad research community impact, including the Pin Dynamic Binary Instrumentation tool, the Google Tensor Processing Unit, and the Facebook AI Research Supercluster.
Dr. Hazelwood is the recipient of the 2025 Top 100 Women in AI Award, the MIT Technology Review Top 35 Innovators Under 35 Award, the ACM SIGPLAN 10-Year Test of Time Award, the Anita Borg Early Career Award, and an NSF Career Award. She has published more than 70 peer-reviewed research papers and books, and regularly delivers keynote addresses at major academic and industry AI conferences. She has served on advisory boards for the Computing Research Association, MIT SystemsThatLearn, EPFL EcoCloud, Empire AI, and Bruin AI.
Sanjeev Malaney
Sanjeev Malaney is a serial entrepreneur with over 35 years of experience founding and leading innovative technology companies in Silicon Valley. He currently serves as founder and CEO of Timebook Software, an AI-based Product Management Platform.
Prior to Timebook, Sanjeev founded and led Capsilon as Chairman and CEO for 18 years, building an AI-driven, cloud-based SaaS platform that revolutionized mortgage origination through advanced document recognition technology. The company was successfully acquired by Private Equity in November 2019.
Before Capsilon, he founded and served as Chairman and CEO of MediaTel Corporation, a pioneering cloud-based electronic document delivery service provider. Under his leadership, MediaTel was recognized as one of the top 100 fastest growing companies in 1998 and was acquired by a public company in April 1999.
Sanjeev began his career in Silicon Valley in 1984 as a Software Engineer at an AI Voice Recognition technology startup.
Throughout his career, he has demonstrated exceptional vision in identifying and developing enterprise cloud computing solutions, AI-driven technologies, and mission-critical systems. His multiple successful exits and pioneering work in artificial intelligence and cloud computing have established him as a leader in Silicon Valley's technology ecosystem.
Sanjeev graduated North Carolina State University with a BSEE in 1982.
Shridhar Shukla
Dr. Shridhar Shukla’s experience spans a broad spectrum – ranging from research and academia to technology development, corporate leadership, entrepreneurship, early stage start-up investment, and education-related philanthropy.
He is a co-founder and Chairman of KPOINT Technologies, a video intelligence company incubated at GS Lab in 2011. GS Lab, provider of software product engineering services globally, was also co-founded by him in 2003. It was acquired by private equity in 2021. He is the Founding Donor of IIT Bombay Trust Lab, established in 2022. He supports several initiatives in school teacher development.
Earlier in his career, Dr Shukla served as a Board member and Chief Operating Officer of Persistent Systems, today a global technology services company with $1.4 billion in revenue, for eight years. As his first job, he served as a faculty member at the Naval Postgraduate School in California for six years.
Dr Shukla is a Distinguished Alumnus and a Distinguished Service Awardee of IIT Bombay. He is a recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award from SEAP. He is a recipient of the NSF Research Initiation Award. He has served as the Chairman and Board Member of the IIT Bombay Alumni Association.
Dr Shukla is married to Gauri, a homemaker, and lives in Pune, India. Their son, Aditya, is a cognitive psychologist and an entrepreneur based in Seoul. Their daughter, Rohini, is a Program Director at BronxWorks, New York City, after a 2024 PhD in social history from Columbia University.
James Smith
Jim Smith serves as the president of PowerSecure, the nation’s leading distributed energy innovation company. He manages the company’s growing microgrid business and oversees a fleet of systems exceeding 3 gigawatts, boasting a reliability rating of over 98%. Smith previously served as the chief operating officer and as president of energy efficiency services at PowerSecure. In this capacity, he delivered top-tier solutions in areas such as lighting, controls, water conservation and renewable energy, aiming to reduce energy costs and enhance operational efficiency.
Prior to PowerSecure, Smith served as executive vice president and group president at Lime Energy, where he contributed to providing clean energy solutions nationwide. Smith served as the director of engineering and operations at Ameresco Inc., an independent energy services provider. His earlier professional experience includes roles at Duke Solutions, a subsidiary of Duke Energy, and Burlington Industries.
Smith began his career at Burlington Industries, where he worked in engineering, service and operations, managing large industrial and manufacturing facilities in the Southeast. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from North Carolina State University and has numerous licenses and certifications in construction, engineering, project management and safety.
Devesh Tiwari
Professor Devesh Tiwari is a tenured faculty member and Associate Vice Provost for Research Computing in the Office of the Provost at Northeastern University. Devesh’s research group, the Goodwill Computing Lab, is recognized for pioneering research and translational contributions in the areas of HPC, quantum computing, and environmentally sustainable computing — often featuring first-of-its-kind experimental demonstrations, production deployments, large-scale open-source community datasets, and over 50 publications in all venues listed on csrankings.org.
His research has been recognized with multiple awards including NSF CAREER Award on quantum computing, IEEE/IFIP Dependability Rising Star Award, IEEE TCSC MCR Excellence in Research Award, Facebook/Meta Faculty Research Award, Northeastern COE Faculty Fellow Award, US DOE ORNL’s NCCS Division Director Appreciation Award, etc.
For his teaching and mentoring efforts, Devesh was awarded the Northeastern COE Martin Essigmann Outstanding Teaching Award, and Professor of the Year by the Northeastern University IEEE student chapter and has consistently received near-perfect teaching evaluation scores. His recent PhD graduates are tenure-track faculty members at top CS departments in the country (e.g., Rice University, and the University of Utah).
For his community leadership and contributions, Devesh was recognized with the IEEE TCPP Outstanding Service and Contributions Award and the IEEE TPDS Editorial Excellence Award (twice) for his exceptional contributions to the TPDS journal as an editor. He serves as the steering committee co-chair of ACM HPDC, and on the SC (Supercomputing) steering committee (one of the largest annual CS conferences attended by over 10,000 researchers and practitioners) – the topmost conferences in the HPC research area.