Mauro Atalla '96 will receive the Graduate Alumni Achievement Award during the Graduate Commencement Ceremony at 2:30 p.m. on May 10 at Cassell Coliseum on the Blacksburg campus.

Atalla is the vice president of engineering and technology for Sensors and Integrated Systems, a business of United Technologies Corp. He leads the Sensors and Integrated Systems Division in Burnsville, Minnesota, a unit that includes more than 60 product lines, with more than 1,300 engineers working from a wide range of national and global locations. He is responsible for all design engineering activities, from technology development to product design to support to field service.

Atalla joined United Technologies in 2000 and has worked with most of the firm’s business units. Prior to his work there, he was a research scientist with the Active Materials and Structures Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an associate professor at a university in Brazil. He is the author or co-author of six patents, and his publications include numerous journal articles and a book chapter. He also has delivered 29 conference papers and was co-chair of Ninth International Conference on Adaptive Structures and Technologies. He is a member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.

Atalla earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the State University of Campinas in Brazil. He earned his Ph.D. in engineering mechanics at Virginia Tech and also earned an MBA from Duke University. He serves on the industrial advisory boards of Virginia Tech’s Biomedical Engineering and Mechanics Department and the University of Michigan’s Aerospace Department.   

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