FREDERICK McDONALD MASSIAH

Massiah (1886-1975) was born in Barbados, West Indies, and emigrated to the United States in 1915. Working by day as a laborer and studying at night, he earned a degree in Civil Engineering at what is now Drexel University. By the early 1920s, he established his own business, and his pioneering construction techniques combining reinforced concrete with steel beams in 1927 established Massiah's reputation as a leader in this form of construction. Massiah was then awarded the Harmon Foundation Medal for Engineering in recognition of the outstanding beam and girder work. Receiving numerous government contracts, he was responsible for building numerous structures during a forty-five year span of activity stretching into the late 1960s, including the elliptical dome of the Ascension of Our Lord Church (the first structure of its kind in this country), and the William Donner X-Ray laboratory at the University of Pennsylvania.

CALDWELL McCOY, JR.

McCoy (1933-1990) was born in Hartford, Connecticut, and eventually earned a Doctor of Science degree in Telecommunications from George Washington University (1975). On receiving his discharge from the Air Force in 1959, he began his employment with the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C. for the next 17 years. As a Project Engineer in Anti-Submarine Warfare, his duties included designing, testing and evaluating systems for long-range detection and localization of submarines. In the 1970s, he worked for the U.S. Department of Energy, managing the largest computer facility in the country devoted to a single scientific problem, namely analyzing the prospect of achieving usable energy from magnetic energy. In 1983, Dr. McCoy left the Department of Energy (DOE) to accept a position with National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) as Director of the Information Systems Program. This program provided support to the space science research community in high performance computing.

PERCY ANTHONY PIERRE

Pierre (1939- ) was born in St. James Parish, Louisiana, and earned a Doctor of Science in Electrical Engineering in 1967 from The Johns Hopkins University. He served as a Systems Engineer for the RAND Corporation and then as a White House Fellow for the Executive Office of the President. From 1971 to 1977, Pierre was appointed Dean of the School of Engineering at Howard University, and for four years after that was Assistant Secretary for Research, Development, and Regulation for the U.S. Department of the Army. During much of the 1980s was President of Prairie View A&M University, and in the first half of the next decade he served as Vice President for Research and Graduate Studies at Michigan State University. Since 1995 he has been a full-time Professor of Electrical Engineering at MSU.