Steven W. McLaughlin's inauguration as the 14th president of The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art was held on Friday, March 27, 2026. Watch the event and see some moments from the ceremony here.

Leading up to the investiture ceremony, The Cooper Union hosted a series of Great Hall public programs and community events throughout the week. 

John Jay Iselin Memorial Lecture
Apple: The First 50 Years
March 24, 2026, 7 pm

Gardiner Foundation Great Hall Forum
Future Relic
March 25, 2026, 7 pm

Cooper Union Alumni Association Founder's Day Awards
March 26, 2026, 7 pm 

Inauguration Ceremony Participants

DELEGATES:

Frances Bronet is the president of Pratt Institute. Under her leadership, Pratt has developed a presence at the Brooklyn Navy Yard through an inaugural research facility and M.F.A. programming, become a founding partner of The New York Climate Exchange, and launched a public high school dedicated to design and social justice with Bank Street College of Education in collaboration with the New York City Department of Education. For nearly 40 years, Bronet who trained as an architect and engineer has been developing and publishing work on multidisciplinary design. Prior to Pratt, Bronet served as senior vice president and provost at Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT). She is past president of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA) as well as past chancellor for the ACSA College of Distinguished Professors. She also cofounded the ACSA Women’s Leadership Council.

Ángel Cabrera is the 12th and current president of the Georgia Institute of Technology. An academic leader and economist by training, Cabrera previously served as president of George Mason University, president of Thunderbird School of Global Management, and dean of IE Business School in Madrid, Spain. His work has focused on global business education, ethics, and leadership, as well as the role of universities in addressing societal challenges. In his role at Georgia Tech, he has prioritized interdisciplinary research, technological innovation, and expanding access to education. Cabrera has been recognized internationally for his contributions to higher education leadership, including awards and honors from the World Economic Forum, the Aspen Institute, and the Carnegie Corporation.

Magnus Egerstedt is a renowned robotics researcher and the executive vice chancellor and provost of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He previously served as dean of the Henry Samueli School of Engineering at the University of California, Irvine and as the Steve W. Chaddick School Chair and Professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. His work focuses on the control and coordination of large-scale robotic networks, with applications ranging from environmental monitoring to disaster response to sustainable infrastructure. Egerstedt is the creator of the Robotarium at Georgia Tech, a first-of-its-kind remotely accessible swarm robotics laboratory.  

Alec D. Gallimore is the provost and chief academic officer of Duke University as well as the Alfred J. Hooks E '68 Distinguished Professor in the Thomas Lord Department of Mechanical Engineering & Materials Science of the Pratt School of Engineering. Previously, he served as the Robert J. Vlasic Dean of Engineering at the University of Michigan. Gallimore is a leader in the field of advanced spacecraft propulsion and founded a laboratory at the University of Michigan that is developing the plasma drive system that may ultimately propel humans to Mars.

James H. Garrett Jr. is provost and chief academic officer of Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) where he is responsible for leading CMU’s schools, colleges, institutes, and campuses. A member of the faculty for more than 35 years, Garrett previously served as dean of CMU's College of Engineering. Throughout his research career, he has focused on how sensors and data analytics can make our cities more adaptive and efficient. He is an elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the National Academy of Construction and was awarded the title of Distinguished Member of the American Society of Civil Engineers.

Charles Lee Isbell Jr. is chancellor of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He previously served as the dean of the College of Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology and as provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. A computer scientist specializing in artificial intelligence and machine learning, Isbell founded the Constellations Center for Education in Computing at Georgia Tech and has been recognized internationally for his work advancing high-quality, accessible education at scale. He is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and has served on advisory boards for the National Science Foundation, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, and the National Academies.

Jason Schupbach is the seventh president of the Fashion Institute of Technology. He is a nationally recognized expert on support systems for creatives and on the nexus of creativity and comprehensive community development. Schupbach previously served as dean of the Antoinette Westphal College of Media Arts and Design at Drexel University where he launched a new apprenticeship model of education with URBN. He also led the ReDesign.School initiative as director of The Design School at Arizona State University, advising on projects that include the Studio for Creativity, Place and Equitable Communities; James Turrell’s large-scale land artwork, “Roden Crater”; and Arizona State University’s downtown Los Angeles campus.

Joel Towers is president and University Professor of Architecture and Sustainable Design of The New School. An architect by training who focuses on design-based solutions to climate change, he has been with The New School for more than 20 years in multiple roles including executive dean of Parsons School of Design. Prior to The New School, he worked with William McDonough Architects, where he directed projects that helped codify that firm’s environmental thinking. He also co-founded Sislian Rothstein and Towers Architects (SR+T), which completed several award-winning projects and served as a testing ground for the integration of research, scholarship, and creative practice.

Rebecca L. Walkowitz is a scholar of 20th- and 21st-century literature and serves as provost and Dean of the Faculty at Barnard College. Her research and teaching consider aspects of cosmopolitanism, multilateralism, and multilingualism and their relationships to questions of idiom, narrative structure, typography, and media in modernist and contemporary literature. She has authored several books including Born Translated: The Contemporary Novel in an Age of World Literature (2015) and written several widely cited and field-defining articles, one of which is one of the most-cited articles in the flagship journal PMLA.

Lynn Zelevansky is an art historian, writer, and curator who formerly served as the Henry J. Heinz II Director of the Carnegie Museum of Art. She previously held curatorial roles at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, where she curated such influential exhibitions as Love Forever: Yayoi Kusama (1998) and Beyond Geometry: Experiments in Form (2004), and at the Museum of Modern Art, where she curated Sense and Sensibility: Women Artists and Minimalism in the Nineties (1994), the institution’s first all-female exhibition. Zelevansky has also taught photography and criticism at Pratt Institute, The New School, and The Cooper Union.  

SPEAKERS:

Jane Forrest is a third-year student in the School of Art at The Cooper Union. Through materially intensive and repetitive processes, her artistic practice considers labor as a form of endurance and care. Working across mosaic, painting, and sculpture, she examines how memory becomes embedded in domestic architecture through the accumulation of fragments, touch, and pressure. Her work has been exhibited at the Orillia Museum of Art & History, the Art Gallery of Hamilton, and the Royal Ontario Museum. In summer 2026, she will be attending the Yale Norfolk School of Art.

Brad Holyman-Sigal is the 29th Manhattan Borough President and a lifelong public servant who has called New York City home for more than 35 years. He is focused on expanding affordable housing, supporting small businesses, and ensuring Manhattan remains a fair, inclusive, and vibrant place for all. Prior to taking office, he served over a decade in the New York State Senate, where he passed more than 400 bills and led on major progressive reforms, including tenant protections, LGBTQ+ rights, and government accountability. He also spent over ten years on his Community Board, including as Chair, working closely with residents and small businesses to strengthen neighborhood life. Brad lives in Greenwich Village with his husband and their two daughters.

Kaye Husbands Fealing is the assistant director of the Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences Directorate at the National Science Foundation and former co-chair of the Subcommittee on Social and Behavioral Sciences of the Committee on Science of the National Science & Technology Council. At the Georgia Institute of Technology, she is a professor in the Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School of Public Policy. Previously she served as dean of the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts and Chair of the School of Public Policy at Georgia Tech. Her work and research focus on science, technology and innovation policy. She is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and an elected fellow of both the National Academy of Public Administration and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Sinclair Kennedy-Nolle is a senior studying civil engineering in The Cooper Union’s Albert Nerken School of Engineering and minoring in economics and public policy through the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences. He studies the interaction between society and the built environment, focusing on the intersection of restoration engineering, social equity, and environmental conservation. Kennedy-Nolle serves as administrative chair of the Engineering Student Council. Previously, he was the vice president of Cooper’s American Society of Civil Engineers student chapter and has served as president of Cooper’s New York Water and Environmental Association. At home, he enjoys biking and working on home improvement projects, but you can typically find him at the Cooper Union library (or just outside of it, playing table tennis).

Jamie Levitt is co-chair of the Commercial Litigation and Trial Group and former head of the New York Litigation Department at Morrison & Foerster. She currently serves as chair of the Board of Trustees of The Cooper Union and has been a trustee since 2020. A trial lawyer with extensive courtroom experience, Levitt’s practice involves all aspects of complex commercial litigation and arbitration, with an emphasis on securities litigation. She has served on numerous boards and committees of public interest groups, including the Board of the Federal Bar Council, the Board of Advocates for Children of New York, Inc., the Board of New York Lawyers for the Public Interest, and the Boards of the Center for Reproductive Rights and VisionSpring.

Isabella Ng is a writer and senior in the civil engineering program of the Albert Nerken School of Engineering at The Cooper Union. Her work combines geotechnical and geoenvironmental engineering with storytelling to examine environmental harm and responsibility in anthropogenic landscapes. She serves as Senior Civil Engineering Representative on the Engineering Student Council and works as a peer associate at the Center for Writing & Learning.

Ninad Pandit is an architect, urban planner, and a historian of modern South Asia. He serves as assistant professor of history in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at The Cooper Union and as an affiliated faculty in The Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture. Prior to his appointment at Cooper, he was the Singh Postdoctoral Fellow at Yale University and a Mellon Fellow in Cities and the Humanities at LSE Cities, London School of Economics and Political Science. His scholarship examines the relationships between urbanization, industrialization, and the emergence of radical politics in colonial India.

Douglass Sharrott EE’83 was named president of The Cooper Union Alumni Association (CUAA) in 2025. Recognized by Legal 500 as one of our country’s leading patent attorneys, Sharrott practiced law at the Fitzpatrick, Cella, Harper & Scinto and Venable law firms. He retired in 2024. During his career he tried numerous cases before the federal courts, International Trade Commission, and United States Patent and Trademark Office, and worked with inventors to obtain and license patents. Clients included IBM, Hewlett Packard, Calvin Klein, Tommy Hilfiger, Novartis, and Bristol Myers Squibb among others. Prior to his law degree he worked as an electrical engineer at Fairchild-Weston, Hazeltine, and Grumman corporations.

Zekaiya Whittington is a third-year student in The Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture at The Cooper Union. Currently in the Design III Studio course, Whittington is researching and designing affordable housing solutions in New York City.

Michael Young is the incoming dean of The Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture at The Cooper Union. He is also an associate professor and the coordinator of graduate studies in architecture at Cooper, where he has taught since 2005. He is the founding partner of Young & Ayata, an award-winning architectural firm, and is the author of The Estranged Object (Graham Foundation, 2015) and Reality Modeled After Images (Routledge, 2022). Young previously served as the Louis I. Kahn Visiting Professor at Yale University and as the Joseph Esherick Visiting Professor at the University of California, Berkeley. He was awarded the prestigious Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome for 2019–2020.

MUSIC:

Gotham Pipes & Drums is a New York City pipe band that plays for notable events across the city. The band is comprised of pipers and drummers who are always eager to play for The Cooper Union’s most special events.

Poco a Poco is a student-run chamber ensemble that brings together Cooper Union students from all years and disciplines. Founded in 2013, Poco has performed for the community at the ASCE Centennial Celebration, the Astor Alive! performing arts festival, the annual Cooper Union Talent Show, and other campus events.

Isaac W. K. Thweatt serves as vice president of Alumni Affairs and Development at The Cooper Union, where he leads efforts to engage alumni and advance philanthropic support for the college’s future. His work centers on building relationships and systems that connect people to Cooper’s mission and to one another. He has spent his career in advancement across higher education and cultural institutions, with a focus on community, access, and long-term impact. A classically trained musician, he is especially pleased to contribute to the inauguration through performance.