Terpenny Begins Term as ASME’s 145th President, New Members and Nominees to the Board of Governors Announced

Janis Terpenny, Ph.D., has begun her term as the 145th president of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), as announced at the Society’s annual meeting on June 7, 2026. An ASME Fellow and active volunteer for more than 20 years, she also currently serves as a program director at the National Science Foundation (NSF), on temporary assignment from George Mason University, where she is a professor of systems engineering and operations research, as well as mechanical engineering.

Previously, Terpenny served as program director for the Division of Undergraduate Education at the NSF, dean of engineering at the University of Tennessee and department head of industrial and manufacturing engineering at Penn State University and at Iowa State University. She served as the first technical lead for the Advanced Manufacturing Enterprise (AME) area of the Digital Manufacturing and Design Innovation Institute (DMDII) during the development of the institute's roadmap and first strategic investment plan. She was co-founder and director of the Center for e-Design, an NSF IUCRC center comprised of seven universities and over 30 industry members. She has also been a professor at Virginia Tech in the departments of engineering education, mechanical engineering, and industrial and systems engineering, and in the department of mechanical and industrial engineering at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Terpenny has nine years of industry work experience with GE, including a two-year corporate management program. 
 
Terpenny also chaired ASME’s Intelligent Manufacturing Technology Group and served on the Fellows Review Committee. She founded, and for 10 years chaired or co-chaired, the Broadening Participation Committee (BPart) for the ASME Design Engineering Division. Terpenny served as the first associate editor of design education for the ASME Journal of Mechanical Design and has organized sessions and presented papers at the International Design Engineering Technical Conference and the Manufacturing Science and Engineering Conference for many years. 
 
Terpenny is also a Fellow and member of ASEE and IISE and a member of INFORMS, SME, Alpha Pi Mu, and Tau Beta Pi. She is an associate editor for multiple journals, has served as a senior vice president on the IISE Board of Trustees, and has received numerous awards for excellence in teaching, in research, and for service. 

For more updates on the ASME Board of Governors, please read the full ASME press release here.