Dereje Agonafer is an Ethiopian-American engineer and educator who is a mechanical engineering professor at the University of Texas at Arlington and a member of the National Academy of Engineering. He has also been a member of the National Academy of Inventors since 2018. Prof. Agonafer earned his B.S. in Aerospace Engineering in 1972 from the University of Colorado Boulder. He joined IBM after receiving his PhD from Howard University in 1984. He worked with IBM for 15 years before becoming a tenured Professor at the University of Texas in Arlington. Professor Agonafer’s research interests include electronic packaging, heat transmission, and thermal engineering. Agonafer was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2019 for “contributions to computer-aided electro/thermo/mechanical design and modelling of electronic equipment.” Dereje Agonafer is the Site Director of the National Science Foundation Industry-University Cooperative Research Centre in Energy Efficient Systems and the Director of Electronic Packaging. He is a Presidential Distinguished Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the University of Texas at Arlington. He spent 15 years with IBM after earning his PhD at Howard University. The IBM Outstanding Technical Achievement Award in Appreciation for Computer Aided Thermal Modelling was given to him in 1991 in recognition of his contributions. In addition to guiding 15 PhD students and eight MS students at the moment, Professor Agonafer has graduated 250 graduate students since joining UTA in 1999, including 28 PhDs. Governmental organisations as well as a number of businesses, such as Facebook, Intel.
