Prof Michael Pecht was awarded the highest reliability honor, the IEEE Reliability Society's Lifetime Achievement Award at the RAMS Conference in Las Vegas, 2008. The award was given to Prof Pecht for his major contributions to the Reliability Society, Reliability Research, and Reliability Education, all benefiting the Reliability Community.

Prof Pecht has an MS in Electrical Engineering and an MS and PhD in Engineering Mechanics from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. He is a Professional Engineer, an IEEE Fellow and an ASME Fellow. He served as chief editor of the IEEE Transactions on Reliability for eight years and on the advisory board of IEEE Spectrum. He is chief editor for Microelectronics Reliability and an associate editor for the IEEE Transactions on Components and Packaging Technology. He is the founder of CALCE (Center for Advanced Life Cycle Engineering) at the University of Maryland, College Park, where he is also a Chair Professor in Mechanical Engineering. He has written more than twenty books on electronic products development, use and supply chain management and over 400 technical articles. He has been leading a research team in the area of prognostics for the past ten years, and has now formed a new Prognostics and Health Management Consortium at the University of Maryland. He has consulted for over 50 major international electronics companies, providing expertise in strategic planning, design, test, prognostics, IP and risk assessment of electronic products and systems. He has previously received the European Micro and Nano-Reliability Award for outstanding contributions to reliability research, 3M Research Award for electronics packaging, the IEEE Undergraduate Teaching Award, and the IMAPS William D. Ashman Memorial Achievement Award for his contributions in electronics reliability analysis