Congratulations to Armando Neto for being selected as a recipient of the 2024 Carl G. Sontheimer Prize from the Mechanical Engineering Department! He was selected for this award by faculty and departmental leadership, and was among a small group of undergraduate and graduate MechE students at MIT to be honored for their outstanding achievements.
Carl G. Sontheimer was an accomplished engineer, entrepreneur, and cook, most famous for giving America the Cuisinart®. He earned an engineering degree at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). After graduating, he invented a number of technical devices, most notably a microwave direction finder that NASA used in a mission to the moon. After selling the Cuisinart® company in 1987 for $42 million, Sontheimer finally focused on cooking, co-producing two cookbooks and a magazine. But it is as an inventor that he is best known. In his honor, MIT’s Mechanical Engineering Department created the Carl G. Sontheimer Prize for Excellence in Innovation and Creativity in Design.