- ECE inducted Kent Fuchs and the late Warren B. Nelms and Wayne Chen into its Hall of Fame on Monday.
- ECE also named Jose Príncipe, Bill Troner, Chuck Kung and Phil Marcoux as 2026 Distinguished Alumni.
- Honorees were praised for professional achievements, expanding research initiatives, philanthropy and inspiring future generations of engineers.
The Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) inducted three University of Florida icons into its Hall of Fame Monday and crowned four celebrated engineering graduates as Distinguished Alumni.
The ECE Hall of Fame now includes former UF President Kent Fuchs, Ph.D., and late ECE pioneers Warren B. Nelms, Ph.D., and Wayne Chen, Ph.D.
The ECE Distinguished Alumni class of 2026 includes José Príncipe, Ph.D. — already a distinguished professor in ECE and Biomedical Engineering — in the Academics category. He graduated at UF with his master’s and doctorate degrees and is retiring this year after nearly 40 years as a faculty member.
Retired patent attorney Bill Troner, tech advisor and investor Chuck Kung, and tech executive and strategist Phil Marcoux were named ECE Distinguished Alumni for Career Achievement.
“We gather together tonight to celebrate individuals whose careers reflect extraordinary achievement in engineering and adjacent fields. Just as importantly, they serve as role models for the next generation of Gators,” said ECE Chair Mark Tehranipoor said Monday in his opening remarks.
ECE Hall of Fame
Fuchs was a familiar, smiling face on campus during his tenure as UF’s president from 2015 to 2023, and then as interim president from August 2024 to September 2025. Many students remember him for stopping, chatting and posing for selfies.
With Fuchs at the helm, UF became one of the nation’s Top 10 public research universities; it was ranked among the nation’s Top 5 in the last two years of his presidency. Under his leadership, the university topped $1 billion in annual research, completed a $4.6 billion capital campaign and added 2.8 million square feet of new facilities.
With Fuchs, UF launched an artificial intelligence initiative and created new graduate, research and clinical programs in other parts of the state, including the UF Scripps Research Institute in South Florida.
But he remains an engineer at heart.
He earned a bachelor’s degree in engineering from Duke University and a doctorate in electrical and computer engineering from the University of Illinois (he also holds a master’s degree in divinity from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School). He taught electrical and computer engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, led the ECE department at Purdue University and served as dean of engineering at Cornell University.
Nelms and Chen were honored posthumously, with family members accepting the Hall of Fame awards with heartfelt and sometimes emotional tributes.
A transformative leader and visionary educator, Chen started with UF’s college of engineering in 1952 as an assistant professor. He became the chair of what was then the Department of Electrical Engineering and associate dean for Research and Innovation in 1965.
In 1973, he was appointed dean of the college, a position he held until 1988. Under his leadership, research expenditures increased from $4 million to $30 million.
He was a champion of early advancements in electronic distance learning, computer engineering and environmental engineering who also established the Engineering Advisory Council and the Office of Minority Affairs. His son and daughter, Tim Chen and Avis Chen Boulter, cited their father’s quest for diversity in the department.
Chen also championed interdisciplinary programs and research centers that paved the way for robotics, biomedical engineering, transportation systems and nuclear engineering at UF. ECE leaders contend his belief in the power of engineering to improve society remains a guiding principle.
David Nelms accepted the award for his father, the namesake of UF’s Warren B. Nelms Institute for the Connected World.
Warren B. Nelms was an innovative engineer, entrepreneur, inventor and philanthropist who left a lasting legacy in industry and education.
He earned his bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from UF in 1959 and later completed his MBA at the University of Pittsburgh. While at UF, he also served as the marching band’s drum major.
Nelms started his career at Westinghouse, where he became District Engineer of the Year and Florida West Coast Engineer of the Year. In 1981, he founded Computec, which develops tools that educate consumers about energy use and efficiency.
In his retirement, he and his, wife, Patsy, built an award‑winning energy‑efficient home known as Tree Cove in Florida. His family’s endowment established UF’s Warren B. Nelms Institute for the Connected World, a cutting-edge research institute advancing technologies in the Internet of Things, connectivity and intelligent systems.
ECE Distinguished Alumni
At UF, Charles “Chuck” Kung earned his bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering in 1986 and his master’s degree in computer science in 1988.
He moved to the San Francisco Bay Area in the pre-internet era, cutting his teeth as a software engineer at ROLM Systems, Acuson and Netlabs. He joined Yahoo! in its early days, where he managed Yahoo! Sports and helped bring fantasy sports to the platform.
After seven years at Yahoo!, he stepped away to focus on family became an investor for early stage startups — including WhatsApp.
That success allowed Kung and his wife, Lisa Guerra, to establish a foundation for their respective alma maters.
As a UF alumnus, José Príncipe, earned his master’s and doctorate degrees from UF and signed on as a faculty member in 1987. He has since graduated 112 Ph.D. students (with four more in the pipeline).
Retiring this year as a Distinguished Professor, Príncipe is known for his research in signal processing, machine learning and computational neuroengineering. He is considered one of the most influential scholars in his field.
Príncipe founded the Computational NeuroEngineering Laboratory at UF, creating a globally recognized hub for interdisciplinary research that blends machine learning with biological inspiration. His work has focused on developing mathematical frameworks that model cognitive processes and enable machines to learn from complex, real-world data.
He is a fellow with the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and the National Academy of Inventors.
Phil Marcoux is a technology executive and strategist with a distinguished career spanning electronic manufacturing, semiconductor packaging and artificial intelligence–assisted design and production. Widely recognized as a pioneer in electronics assembly, he now serves as an AI-assisted manufacturing and design facilitator and consultant at PPM Associates and the group leader for AI for Electronics Industry at the Printed Circuit Engineering Association.
He was CEO and co-founder of ChipScale. He served as interim general manager at Epoch International Enterprises, executive director of MEPTEC and vice president of sales and marketing at OSE-USA. He held leadership and engineering roles at AWI, Signetics and Analog Devices.
A former member of UF’s Dean’s Advisory Board for Engineering, Marcoux is a named inventor on six patents and a co-owner of more than 40 patents, covering high-performance and wafer-level semiconductor packaging, radar, image sensors and camera modules, with over 400 patent citations. He also served as vice president of the Fab Owners Association Packaging and Test Group.
A retired intellectual property attorney, Bill Troner most recently served as a patent licensing executive and managing member for André-Troner LC, whose clients included Fortune 500 companies.
His legal career started as a patent associate at Barnes & Thornburg in Washington, D.C., before joining the Harris company (now L3 Harris) in Melbourne, Florida, as senior intellectual property counsel.
Troner is a member and former board chair of the Health First Foundation, the philanthropic arm of the non-profit Health First System. He also is a member and former chair of UF’s Dean’s Advisory Board for Engineering, as well a member of the ECE’s Advisory Board.
A founding member of the Engineering Leadership Institute Board of Directors, Troner has been a guest lecturer over the years in the college of engineering’s Innovation course.
He earned both his bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering at UF in 1980 and his juris doctor in 1984.