During the 2024–25 academic year, the National Academy of Inventors (NAI) elected three Notre Dame Engineering faculty to its ranks—recognizing their outstanding contributions to research and innovation—with two named Senior Members (2025) and one named a Fellow (2024).
Ashley Thrall (pictured left), Myron and Rosemary Noble Collegiate Professor of Structural Engineering in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Earth Sciences and director of the Kinetic Structures Laboratory, was elected to NAI’s 2024 class of Fellows.
Thrall designs modular structures—such as bridges, shelters, and buildings—that can be rapidly erected, relocated, and deployed.
Thrall’s patented innovations include deployable, origami-inspired shelters for soldiers as well as modular steel bridge technologies that can be rapidly assembled for disaster relief or to meet immediate infrastructure needs.
The NAI also named Tengfei Luo (pictured center) and Matthew J. Webber (pictured right) 2025 Senior Members.
Luo, the Dorini Family Professor for Energy Studies in the Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering and director of Notre Dame’s MÖNSTER Lab (MOlecular/Nano-Scale Transport & Energy Research Laboratory), has established himself as a leader in the field of thermal sciences and materials engineering.
His research has led to inventions, ranging from energy-saving coatings for windows, to technologies that detect cancer and nanoplastics, to a new desalination method that uses ionic liquids and low-temperature heat.
Webber, the Keating-Crawford Collegiate Professor of Engineering in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering as well as the acting director of the Berthiaume Institute for Precision Health, has pioneered advancements in the application of supramolecular chemistry for use in biomaterials and drug delivery technologies.
His patented inventions, many of which were developed in the Webber Lab, offer better ways to deliver therapeutics, including new targeting strategies for cancer and related diseases as well as new glucose-responsive delivery mechanisms for treating diabetes.
The induction of the 2025 class of NAI Senior Members and 2024 class of Fellows will be celebrated during a ceremony at NAI’s 14th Annual Conference, taking place June 23-26 in Atlanta, Georgia.
—Karla Cruise, Notre Dame Engineering