Engineering icon Charles Thornton died December 12 following a brief illness. He was 83.

Thornton’s career in structural engineering spanned more than 60 years, and its highlights included serving as chair and CEO of Thornton Tomasetti and founding the ACE Mentor Program of America. He retired from Thornton Tomasetti in 2004, but held an advisory role for several years afterward. He also served as chairman of the Charles H. Thornton Company, LLC, a management and strategic consulting firm, following his retirement from Thornton Tomasetti.

“Charlie Thornton was driven to succeed,” said AISC President Charles J. Carter, SE, PE, PhD. “He did so in many ways, but the most poignant one for me comes from the story he told me about how he used to dislike public speaking. He didn’t just overcome that—he became a generational voice in our profession.”

AISC has awarded the 2024 Milek Fellowship to a researcher working toward bringing automation to the steel design process.

Mohannad Z. (M.Z.) Naser of Clemson University has earned the fellowship, which is given out annually by the AISC Committee on Research, for his research proposal “SteelGPT: Automating Structural Design of Steel Structures.” Naser aims to use artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to create a virtual assistant named SteelGPT that will help enhance the steel design process.