Briefs

WASHINGTON � The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) has elected 76 new members and nine foreign associates, NAE President Wm. A. Wulf announced today. This brings the total U.S. membership to 2,216 and the number of foreign associates to 186.

Election to the National Academy of Engineering is among the highest professional distinctions accorded to an engineer. Academy membership honors those who have made outstanding contributions to "engineering research, practice, or education, including, where appropriate, significant contributions to the engineering literature," and to the "pioneering of new and developing fields of technology, making major advancements in traditional fields of engineering, or developing/implementing innovative approaches to engineering education."

Among the new academicians are two who are well known to the data mining community:

• Rakesh Agrawal, IBM Fellow and senior manager, IBM Almaden Research Center, San Jose, Calif. For the development of techniques for extracting information from very large databases.

• Vladimir N. Vapnik, fellow, NEC Laboratories America Inc., Princeton, N.J. For insights into the fundamental complexities of learning and for inventing practical and widely applied machine-learning algorithms.