King receives highest campus honor for faculty mentoring

MechSE Professor Bill King was honored earlier this week as the 2024 recipient of the Campus Award for Excellence in Faculty Mentoring.

The top recognition of faculty mentoring on campus, the award is given to a faculty member who demonstrates commitment to fostering the intellectual, creative, scholarly, and professional growth of their mentees, such that their efforts result in career growth or personal development of their mentees.

King was recognized for his personalized and engaged academic guidance, helping to create opportunities for his mentees (both junior and mid-career), providing practical career recommendations, and for offering personal, empathic support to his mentees, to name just a few. He was nominated by MechSE Professor Sameh Tawfick, with support from nearly a dozen faculty colleagues, at Illinois as well as other institutions and in other disciplines, clearly demonstrating his extensive impact on the success of his colleagues.

He also won this honor at the college level – with the Grainger College of Engineering Award for Excellence in Faculty Mentoring.

King, who joined the MechSE Department in 2006 and has held the Ralph A. Andersen Endowed Chair since 2014, leads the Intelligent Manufacturing and Thermal Systems Laboratory at Illinois. His research spans the technical areas of nanotechnology, instrumentation, materials science, thermal transport, and micro- and nano-manufacturing. He has graduated over two dozen PhD students from his research group, published more than 250 journal articles, created three companies, and has developed and patented numerous innovations that have revolutionized the manufacturing process and manufacturing technologies around the world.

King also holds appointments in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, and the Carle Illinois College of Medicine.

He was formally recognized at the campus’s Celebration of Academic Service and Leadership Excellence on May 14.