Alan Mantooth Announced as Fellow in National Academy of Inventors

Alan Mantooth, a Distinguished Professor of engineering at the University of Arkansas, has been named to the National Academy of Inventors' 2025 class of fellows. He joins fellows from around the world who will be formally inducted into the academy, known as the NAI, at the 14th annual meeting to be held in June of 2026.

"I am truly humbled to be selected for this honor by the academy," Mantooth said. "This is a distinction that I share with my former students, collaborators and colleagues. Because of our teamwork, we have been able to invent and innovate."

Mantooth is an extraordinarily productive researcher whose portfolio focuses on power electronics, cybersecurity and sustainable energy. Over the course of his career, Mantooth has submitted 45 invention disclosures, with 12 patents issued and four pending, and has helped start four companies. Electronics designed by Mantooth and his team have even flown on the International Space Station, built to survive extreme temperatures and radiation.

"Alan Mantooth's groundbreaking research in power electronics is truly changing the world," said Kim Needy, dean of the College of Engineering. "As a world-renowned leader in the field, Alan continues to push the boundaries of innovation and inspires all of us who work alongside him. This honor couldn't go to a more deserving person."

During his 27-year tenure at the U of A, Mantooth has worked with over 150 graduate students and personally mentored more than 250 students as part of a program that has received nearly $200 million in research funding, tapping both public and private sources. This has included funding from NASA, the Army Research Lab, ARPAe, DARPA, the Office of Naval Research, several divisions of the Department of Energy, the National Science Foundation and more than 50 companies. Mantooth has also led five federally-funded centers of excellence resulting in multi-institutional and industrial collaborations worldwide.

"Alan's ability to innovate in the field of power electronics owes much to his ability to conduct research on a vast scale," said Margaret McCabe, vice chancellor for research and innovation at the U of A. "He has a gift for generating research funding, nurturing collaboration across the university and the country, and mentoring the next generation of brilliant electrical engineers. His elevation to Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors is a natural consequence of his extraordinary ability to advance research."

Ten of Mantooth's issued patents and the four pending patent applications are related to his work in the field of power electronics at the U of A, and two of the issued patents were from his work with Synopsys Inc. In 2020, Mantooth co-founded a company called Bastazo Inc., which is licensing intellectual property from the U of A. Mantooth has been instrumental in the commercialization of Bastazo's AI-driven platform that identifies and prioritizes network cybersecurity vulnerabilities to allow critical infrastructure teams to proactively mitigate risks.

Mantooth also played an essential role in the formation of Arkansas Power Electronics International Inc. in 2002, which was acquired by Cree Inc. (now Wolfspeed Inc.) in 2015. In 2003, he co-founded Lynguent with colleagues from Synopsys to market modeling tools that were the basis of the two inventions started there. These tools were marketed and sold until 2011. In 2012, he co-founded Ozark Integrated Circuits to commercialize the extreme-environment electronics research he was pursuing with NASA and other institutions. This company remains in existence.

In recognition of Mantooth's outstanding contributions to science, he has received many honors and awards, including four R&D 100 Awards, which recognizes the world's top 100 innovations. His most recent awards include being named Business Advocate of the Year by the Fayetteville Chamber of Commerce, receiving the Distinguished Alumnus award from Tau Beta Pi and two awards from the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers Power Electronics Society: the Harry A. Owen Jr. Award for Distinguished Service in 2023 and the R. David Middlebrook Award for contributions to power semiconductor device modeling and packaging in 2025. Mantooth was inducted into the U of A chapter of the National Academy of Inventors in 2024.

Mantooth joins Min Zou, a Distinguished Professor of mechanical engineering; Ranu Jung, the founding executive director of the Institute for Integrative & Innovative Research (or I³R); Ingrid Fritsch, professor of chemistry; Hameed Naseem, University Professor of electrical engineering; and Joshua Sakon, professor of biochemistry, as current U of A faculty who are Fellows in the National Academy of Inventors.