Kevin Kornegay, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at Cornell University, has been named Black Engineer of the Year in the category of Promotion of Higher Education. The award is sponsored by Career Communications Group, publisher of U.S. Black Engineer and Information Technology ; the Council of Engineering Deans of Historically Black Colleges and Universities; Lockheed Martin; and DaimlerChrysler.

Kornegay will receive the award at the 16th annual Black Engineer of the Year Conference, in Baltimore, Feb. 14-16. The award is presented in more than a dozen categories, including professional achievement, technical contribution and overall leadership.

Announcing the award to Kornegay, Tyrone D. Taborn, publisher and chief executive of Career Communications Group, spoke of the difficulty of selecting this year's winners. "Over 40 percent of this year's winners are directors, managers or vice presidents of major organizations. Never before in the history of these awards was the competition so fierce," he said.

Kornegay, who joined the Cornell faculty in 1998, was recognized for his research in developing the first CMOS (for complementary metal-oxide semiconductor) circuits in silicon carbide. This semiconductor remains functional at extreme temperatures. One of Kornegay's research interests is developing integrated electronics for harsh environments.

He also was cited for his work in creating a Cornell center for mixed analog/digital electronics based on high-speed silicon-germanium alloys (SiGe), important semiconductor materials for many applications, including high-frequency devices. Kornegay is director of the Advanced Integrated Microsystems Research Group at Cornell, which performs basic research and develops innovative applications in integrated microsystems that have sensing, computing and communications capabilities. He also is director of the Cornell Broadband Communications Research Laboratory, which trains the next generation of radio-frequency (RF) engineers and conducts research in the design of future broadband communication systems. The lab also designs and tests RF integrated circuits, such as the transceivers in cellular phones and other wireless devices.

Kornegay is known among engineering students at Cornell for his championing of the Cornell Big Red Artificial Intelligence Navigator (BRAIN), which develops small, robotic submarines. The student-run BRAIN team won second place at the third annual International Autonomous Underwater Vehicle Competition in 2000.

Kornegay earned his doctorate from the University of California-Berkeley in 1992. From 1992 to 1994, he was employed as a research staff member at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, N.Y. He was an assistant professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Purdue University from 1994 until 1997, when he became the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Visiting Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Kornegay is the recipient of numerous awards, including a National Science Foundation Career Award, an IBM Faculty Partnership Award, the National Semiconductor Faculty Development Award and the General Motors Faculty Fellowship Award. He was selected as a participant in the National Academy of Engineering's 1999 Frontiers of Engineering Symposium. He is a senior member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and a distinguished lecturer of the IEEE Electron Devices Society. He is a member of the Eta Kappa Nu and Tau Beta Pi engineering honor societies.