University Times

Pitt trustee and engineering school alumnus John A. Swanson will be the featured speaker for Pitt’s 2010 commencement exercises, to be held in the Petersen Events Center at 2 p.m. May 2.

Swanson helped revolutionize computer-aided engineering after receiving his PhD degree in applied mechanics here in 1966.

He is recognized internationally as an authority and innovator in the application of finite-element methods to engineering. In 1970, Swanson founded ANSYS, which markets the ANSYS software code that Swanson created for use by the aerospace, automotive, biomedical, manufacturing and electronics industries to simulate how product design will behave in real-work environments.

With more than 40 sales locations worldwide, ANSYS and its subsidiaries employ approximately 1,400 people and distribute products through a network of channel partners in more than 40 countries.

At Pitt, Swanson helped to establish the John A. Swanson Institute for Technical Excellence, which houses the John A. Swanson Center for Micro and Nano Systems; the John A. Swanson Center for Product Innovation; the RFID (radio frequency identification) Center of Excellence, and the John A. Swanson Embedded Computing Laboratory in Computer Engineering.

Now retired, Swanson lends his expertise to Pitt engineering students as an adviser on senior design projects.

In 2007, Pitt renamed its engineering school the John A. Swanson School of Engineering in recognition of Swanson’s $41.3 million donation, the largest individual donation in Pitt’s history.

Swanson has two of the highest honors a professional engineer can receive. Last year he was named to the National Academy of Engineering for contributions to and innovations in engineering. In 2004, he received the American Association of Engineering Societies’ John Fritz Medal, widely considered the highest award in the engineering profession.