Murty and Williams win Holladay Medal
Two College of Engineering faculty members are among the four North Carolina State University professors this year to receive the Alexander Quarles Holladay Medal for Excellence, the highest honor bestowed by NC State and the university’s Board of Trustees.
Korukonda Murty, Progress Energy Distinguished Professor in the Department of Nuclear Engineering, and Laurie Williams, Goodnight Distinguished University Professor in Security Sciences in the Department of Computer Science, will be honored at the Celebration of Faculty Excellence on April 30.
Murty received Bachelor of Science and Master of Science degrees in physics from Andhra University in India, and master’s and doctoral degrees in materials science from Cornell University. He joined NC State in August 1981 as an associate professor jointly in the Departments of Nuclear Engineering and Materials Science and Engineering, and is currently the Progress Energy Distinguished Professor in Nuclear Engineering. Murty’s work has focused on the deformation, creep, fatigue and fracture behaviors of nuclear core and pressure boundary materials, with particular emphasis on structure-property relationship and effects of radiation exposure. He is also interested in radiation-enhanced hydrogen transport into steels used for radioactive waste containers and the subsequent embrittlement with reference to their integrity. He and his colleagues are actively pursuing studies on the effects of fabrication processes on crystallographic texture and the resulting anisotropic mechanical properties of Zircaloy cladding, with application to the understanding of pellet-cladding mechanical interaction.
His success includes securing research grants and funds from federal and industry sources totaling more than $14 million as of 2023. These funds have supported numerous graduate students, postdoctoral fellows and undergraduates, resulting in the awarding of 54 graduate degrees and the publication of 383 journal articles to date. Murty has presented extensively at domestic and international conferences, contributing to a substantial body of technical reports. His exceptional research record includes consistent funding from the National Science Foundation, with a total of eight grants reflecting an outstanding commitment to scientific inquiry. He has strong research collaborations with colleagues in the Departments of Materials Science and Engineering and Civil, Construction, and Environmental Engineering, while also working with institutions in Germany, Australia, India, Korea and China, resulting in joint publications and mutual visits.
Over the course of his tenure, Murty has garnered numerous accolades, including the Alcoa Foundation Research Achievement Award, Fellow status in the American Society for Metals International and the American Nuclear Society, Life Fellow and Honorary Membership in the Indian Institute of Metals and American Institute of Mining, Metallurgical and Petroleum Engineers. His impact is further underscored by two symposia held in his honor: the International Plasticity Conference in 2016 and the Structural Materials Division Conference of The Materials Society in 2017.
Williams received her Bachelor of Science in industrial engineering from Lehigh University, her MBA from Duke University, and her Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Utah.
She joined NC State in 2000 and was recently named the inaugural Goodnight Distinguished University Professor in Security Sciences. She served as acting department head of the Department of Computer Science from 2014-2015; associate department head from 2015-2016; and interim department head 2017-2018. Her research is situated at the confluence of software engineering and cybersecurity, specifically in the field of software security. With a focus on proactively engineering secure systems, Williams’ work aims to prevent cyber threats rather than merely reacting after attacks have occurred.
In her role as a lead principal investigator, Williams has overseen research expenditures exceeding an impressive $33 million to date. She leads three distinct research organizations: she is a founding director of NC State’s Secure Computing Institute, the director of the National Science Foundation (NSF) Secure Software Supply Chain Center and the co-director of the North Carolina Partnership for Cybersecurity Excellence sponsored by the National Security Agency (NSA). Additionally, Williams was the co-director of the NSA-sponsored Science of Security (SoS) Lablet from 2011-2023, focused on solving five hard problems through the discovery of formal underpinnings of the design of trusted systems. She is the current associate editor-in-chief of IEEE Security and Privacy and of IEEE Software.
Throughout her distinguished career, Williams has earned numerous accolades, including the NSF CAREER Award and NC State’s Outstanding Teacher Award, and she has been named an NC State University Faculty Scholar. Her inductions into NC State’s Academy of Outstanding Teachers and the Research Leadership Academy showcase her exceptional impact on both education and research domains.
The other winners of the Holladay Medal are Thomas Barrie, Professor in the School of Architecture and Linda Hanley-Bowdoin, William Neal Reynolds Distinguished Professor in the Department of Plant and Microbial Biology.
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