NI CEO and President Elected to National Academy of Engineering in U.S.

“I am excited to congratulate my friend and colleague Jim Truchard for achieving this great honour,” said Dr. Ben Streetman, Dean of the College of Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin, Truchard’s alma mater. “His pioneering of virtual instrumentation has revolutionised the test and measurement industry. Furthermore, his contributions to engineering education worldwide have been substantial. In recent years, the work NI has done in classrooms with LEGO® robots has given young people a taste of engineering design and graphical programming.”

Since its founding in 1976, National Instruments has pioneered virtual instrumentation, a unique approach to embedded design, industrial control and test and measurement that combines commercial off-the-shelf technologies with innovative software and hardware. In 1986, National Instruments introduced the revolutionary software product LabVIEW, which challenged traditional approaches to programming with graphical development similar to flowcharting. LabVIEW helps engineers and scientists in diverse industries to quickly produce a wide range of applications.

Over the past 20 years, LabVIEW has evolved from a desktop instrument control and data acquisition tool into an integrated design, control and test platform for desktop, industrial, embedded and handheld applications. Because the software employs an intuitive graphical programming environment, it is used by professional engineers and students alike, at both school and university levels. In 2006, NI and LEGO collaborated to create the LabVIEW Toolkit for LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT, in which children as well as expert programmers can use a unique drag-and-drop programming environment to program their LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT robots.

This honour reinforces Truchard’s role as an industry leader. He was recently named a Distinguished Graduate of The University of Texas College of Engineering and in 2003 was elected to the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences. In 2002, a leading electronics publication, Electronic Design, inducted Truchard into its Engineering Hall of Fame and in 2001, a global market consulting firm, Frost & Sullivan, honoured him as the CEO of the Year for the test and measurement industry. In addition, Worth magazine named him one of the best CEOs for three consecutive years, emphasising his focus on long-term growth and innovation.

Founded in 1964, the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) is the portal for all engineering activities at the National Academies, which along with the NAE include the National Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Medicine and the National Research Council. Academy membership honours those who have made outstanding contributions to “engineering research, practice or education, including, where appropriate, significant contributions to the engineering literature,” and to the “pioneering of new and developing fields of technology, making major advancements in traditional fields of engineering, or developing/implementing innovative approaches to engineering education.”