UNC Charlotte’s Dr. Stuart Smith Named National Academy of Inventors Fellow

UNC Charlotte is proud to announce that Dr. Stuart Smith has been elected as a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors (NAI), the highest professional distinction awarded solely to inventors. This honor places Dr. Smith among an elite group of innovators whose work has made a lasting impact on society. He is the third UNC Charlotte professor to receive this recognition, joining Dr. Robert Keynton and Dr. Ishwar Aggarwal.

The 2025 class of NAI Fellows includes 169 distinguished U.S. inventors and 16 international honorees. Dr. Smith will be formally inducted and presented with his medal at the NAI 15th Annual Conference in June 2026 in Los Angeles, California. This recognition reflects a career built on innovation and leadership. Professor Smith’s journey in engineering began in 1977 with a factory maintenance apprenticeship in the United Kingdom, sparking a lifelong passion for precision engineering. After earning his Ph.D. in ultra-precision measurement instrumentation, he went on to patent an innovative slideway design and later joined UNC Charlotte in 1994 to help establish a research group in precision engineering and launch the department’s Ph.D. program.

Over the course of his career, Dr. Smith has published more than 20 patents, authored four books, and helped form three North Carolina-based companies driven by his research. His work has advanced ultra-precision manufacturing technologies across industries and inspired generations of entrepreneurial engineers. In addition to this latest honor, Dr. Smith recently completed his tenure as President of the American Society for Precision Engineering (ASPE), underscoring his leadership in shaping the future of the field.

Reflecting on the achievement, Dr. Smith shared:
“My successful nomination as a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors is a great honor, and I hope to use this as an opportunity to encourage young, curious minds to create what has never been—and to persist through failure to find those ideas that will help build a better future.”