Trio of Terps inducted into Innovation Hall of Fame
Life would be different without some of the future-facing innovations created by three University of Maryland leaders—two alums and one faculty—who joined the A. James Clark School of Engineering’s Innovation Hall of Fame (IHOF) in a ceremony on Thursday, February 20. From precise, infrastructure-free tracking systems that safeguard personnel; to high-accuracy facial recognition technology that mitigates bias; to the country’s leading plant-based meat company: innovative and game-changing work by Carole Teolis ’86, M.S. ’89, Ph.D. ’94, Rama Chellappa, and Ethan Brown M.P.M. ’97 is transforming the way we live. Meet the 2025 IHOF inductees: Carole Teolis ’86, M.S. ’89, Ph.D. ’94 Cofounder and CTO, TRX Systems For improving security, aiding military operations, and protecting lives through GPS-denied positioning technologies and infrastructure-free tracking solutions. Carole Teolis ’86, M.S. ’89, Ph.D. ’94 earned dual B.S. degrees in electrical engineering and mathematics, and master’s and doctorate degrees in electrical engineering from UMD. Her doctoral research in signal processing and control systems provided the framework needed to address the complex challenges presented in navigation and localization technologies where GPS is not available or compromised. She has dedicated her professional career to the pursuit of engineering research and development that is both impactful and marketable.
Teolis is the co-founder and chief technology officer of TRX Systems, which started as a Clark School Mtech Ventures incubator company and has grown into a successful commercial company. Under Teolis’ leadership, TRX has distinguished itself as an industry leader in developing infrastructure-free, GPS-denied navigation and mapping solutions. TRX’s core technology comprises innovative algorithms and hardware that integrate satellite-based Positioning, Navigation, and Timing (PNT) data with inputs from inertial sensors, maps, and other sources to reliably track user positions in environments where GPS signals are unavailable or compromised. TRX technology has provided reliable navigation for military personnel, first responders, and commercial operators in the most challenging conditions. Through Teolis’ efforts, TRX technology has been delivered to numerous national stakeholder organizations including the U.S. Army, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, U.S. Special Operations Command, U.S. Air Force, the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity, the National Science Foundation, and the Department of Homeland Security. In 2023, TRX was selected to provide the U.S. Army with its Dismount Assured PNT System, which was selected as the best device to provide soldiers with a navigation and positioning solution that is reliable even in contested environments. Rama Chellappa Bloomberg Distinguished Professor, Johns Hopkins University College Park Professor, University of Maryland For advancing global safety and security through transformative advancements in AI, including face recognition and gait analysis. Rama Chellappa is a UMD College Park Professor who served as chair of the Clark School’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering from 2011 to 2018. He is a Bloomberg Distinguished Professor in the Departments of Electrical and Computer Engineering (Whiting School of Engineering) and Biomedical Engineering (School of Medicine) with a secondary appointment in the Department of Computer Science at Johns Hopkins University.
Chellappa’s research interests and applications include artificial intelligence, computer vision, machine intelligence, and signal and image processing, with applications in biometrics, self-driving cars, forensics, and 2D and 3D modeling of faces, objects, and terrain. His research has greatly advanced the field of automatic face recognition by introducing the use of local and global facial features, and designing the first Bayesian methods for video face recognition. He has led large scale studies in conjunction with government agencies that have resulted in facial recognition systems that are now used by the Departments of Justice, Defense, and Homeland Security. Chellappa has also worked on gait analysis, which can apply to a range of uses from diagnosing Parkinson's disease to human identification at a distance. He also developed methods for whole-body and iris-based recognition of humans. He holds nine patents and is a recipient of numerous awards that recognize his contributions in research, teaching, innovation, and mentoring. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and a Foreign Fellow of the Indian National Academy of Engineering, as well as a Fellow of AAAI, AAAS, ACM, AIMBE, IAPR, IEEE, NAI, OSA, and the Washington Academy of Sciences. Ethan Brown M.P.M. ’97 Founder & CEO, Beyond Meat For redefining the future of food by integrating cutting-edge technology and sustainability to solve grand challenges. Ethan Brown is the founder and chief executive officer of Beyond Meat, a company dedicated to creating meat products from plants. The company’s flagship product, the Beyond Burger, revolutionized the meat aisle by being the first plant-based burger sold in the meat case alongside beef at major grocery chains from Walmart to Whole Foods Market. Beyond Meat has also partnered with leading restaurant chains including McDonald’s, which continues to sell the company’s products in various European countries.
One of Beyond Meat’s key innovations lies in its deeply scientific approach to building meat directly from plants. By deconstructing meat into its essential components—amino acids, lipids, carbohydrates, minerals, and water—and rebuilding them using plant-based ingredients, Beyond Meat delivers significant health benefits to the consumer while reducing greenhouse gases by 90 percent, and land and water use each by 97 percent, compared to compared to a conventional beef burger. Before founding Beyond Meat, Brown worked in the clean energy sector, including in the public sector on restructuring of the nation’s electric grid to support renewable power, before joining the world’s leading proton exchange membrane fuel cell developer, Ballard Power Systems, rising to report directly to the Company’s CEO. Though passionate about clean energy, Brown returned to a childhood spent visiting his family’s farm in Garrett County, Maryland, and began to see a larger opportunity to impact climate change by bringing innovation to agriculture. He began to focus on how a change in meat production—producing it directly from plants versus feeding plants to animals—could simultaneously address human health, climate, natural resource, and animal welfare challenges. Launched in 1985, IHOF recognizes metamorphic innovations achieved by UMD alums, faculty, and members of the UMD community. Past recipients have included Glenn L. Martin ’51 (posthumously inducted in 1987), George J. Laurer ’51, Robert Briskman M.S. ’61, Angel P. Bezos ’69, Emilio A. Fernandez ’69, Jeong H. Kim Ph.D. ’91, Naomi Ehrich Leonard Ph.D. ’94, and Robert E. Fischell ’54, Sc.D. (honorary) ’96.
February 26, 2025 Prev |
