For the second year in a row, a faculty member from Boise State has been selected as a Fellow of the Executive Leadership in Academic Technology, Engineering and Science, or ELATES, one of the most competitive leadership development programs in American STEM higher education.
Associate Professor Krishna Pakala from the Department of Mechanical and Biomedical Engineering was selected as a 2026-2027 fellow. Pakala follows Professor Hui (Claire) Xiong from the Micron School of Materials Science and Engineering who completed the 2025-2026 ELATES cohort.
“For our college to receive back-to-back faculty members named ELATES Fellows is a tremendous accomplishment and a reflection of the exceptional leadership and talent within Boise State,” College of Engineering Dean Amy Fleischer said. “Claire and Krishna are not only outstanding educators and researchers, but also leaders who are helping shape the future of our state’s workforce. Their recognition through ELATES is a well-deserved acknowledgement of the impact they are making at Boise State and beyond.”
Back-to-back ELATES fellows are rare for any single university, let alone the same college. The distinction signals something the College of Engineering has been building deliberately for years – a deeply talented pipeline of faculty ready to step into senior academic leadership.
Meet this year’s fellow
Krishna Pakala has spent more than a decade building a reputation at Boise State as both an engineering educator and institutional builder. He earned his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Wyoming and joined Boise State’s Department of Mechanical and Biomedical Engineering in 2012, where he served as associate chair while continuing to teach core courses in thermodynamics, heat transfer, and fluid mechanics.
Pakala has never treated the classroom as a fixed model. Early in his career he pioneered mobile learning and virtual office hours strategies, work that earned him the inaugural role of Faculty Associate for Mobile Learning at Boise State. His roles during the pandemic he was recognized for adapting his teaching to keep students engaged through crisis. His educational innovation has been recognized with three Golden Apple Awards, the David S. Taylor Service to Students Award, and the ASEE Outstanding Teaching Award.
In recent years, Pakala’s scholarly focus has remained student centered, exploring how personal narrative and storytelling shape student identity, persistence and belonging in STEM. Backed by National Science Foundation funding, his research has produced a growing body of published work on narrative-based interventions that help engineering and other STEM majors see themselves in their field, particularly students from groups historically underrepresented in the industry.
“Being selected as an ELATES Fellow is an incredible honor, but what excites me most is what I can bring back to Boise State,” Pakala said. “Leadership is ultimately about creating environments where people can thrive. I want to use what I learn through ELATES to strengthen the systems, opportunities, and sense of belonging that support our students, faculty and staff, and help create an environment where everyone can see what is possible and have the support to get there.”
Pakala’s teaching innovation, funded research, and track record of student success all contributed to his ELATES profile selection.
Meet last year’s fellow
Pakala’s selection follows directly on the heels of Xiong’s 2025-2026 ELATES fellowship, making her both a recent program alumn and an informal example for what the fellowship can mean for a Boise State career.
Hui (Claire) Xiong joined the Micron School of Materials Science and Engineering in 2012 and has built a productive and successful research laboratory, the Electrochemical Energy Materials Laboratory. Her labs’ work focuses on next-generation battery materials, particularly sodium-ion battery cathodes and the fundamental materials chemistry of energy storage.
Her research has been funded by the Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation, including an NSF CAREER Award. The research produced has been published in journals such as Nature Materials, PNAS and the Journal of the American Chemical Society.
Her national scholarly standing culminated with her elevation to Fellow of the American Ceramic Society in 2023 and Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry in 2023. Xiong, alongside Boise State alumnus Peter Barnes ‘21, received the 2024 Charles Hatchett Award from the Institute of Materials, Minerals, and Mining for their work on niobium oxide electrode materials.
“ELATES is a very unique experience that helped me know myself better, know how to work better with others around me, know how universities operate, and gain perspectives from university administrators,” Xiong said. “The program is carefully designed to hone our leadership skills in STEM fields with a very supportive network. I’ve really benefited tremendously from such experiences.”
Xiong currently serves on the editorial team of Journal of Power Sources and advisory boards for materials chemistry journals.