Megan McGovern

(B.S. GE ’08, M.S. SEE ‘11, Ph.D. SEE ’16)

Megan McGovern is a staff researcher at General Motors Research and Development. She joined GM in 2016 and leads research projects to develop manufacturing inspection systems, primarily focusing on quality verification for battery manufacturing. McGovern received her bachelor’s degree in general engineering with a concentration in acoustics at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in 2008 and master’s and doctorate degrees in systems and entrepreneurial engineering at Illinois in 2011 and 2016. While at Illinois, she was a research assistant at the ISE Non-Destructive Testing and Evaluation Laboratory and head teaching assistant at the Mechanical Testing Instructional Laboratory.

McGovern holds six patents and has published 28 peer-reviewed journal articles. She is actively involved in various professional societies and is a licensed professional engineer. In 2023, she was honored with the Boss Kettering Award, GM’s highest award recognizing technical inventions and innovations. In 2022, she received the ASNT Research Innovation and the SME Outstanding Young Manufacturing Engineer Awards. In 2017, ISE honored her with the William A. Chittenden Award for Distinguished Alumnus. As a student at ISE, McGovern received the Student Research Award at the special joint conference between the North Central Hot Mix Asphalt Conference and the Annual Illinois Bituminous Paving Conference and was a two-time MAVIS Future Faculty Fellow.