Dr. Hughes holds B.E. and M.E. degrees in Mechanical Engineering from Pratt Institute and an M.S. in Mathematics and Ph.D. in Engineering Science from the University of California at Berkeley. He is an elected member of Phi Beta Kappa and Sigma Xi (Berkeley Chapters).
Dr. Hughes began his career as a mechanical design engineer at Grumman Aerospace, subsequently joining General Dynamics as a research and development engineer. After receiving his Ph.D., he joined the Berkeley faculty, eventually moving to California Institute of Technology and then Stanford University before joining the University of Texas at Austin. At Stanford, he served as Chairman of the Division of Applied Mechanics, Chairman of the Department of Mechanical Engineering, and Chairman of the Division of Mechanics and Computation, and occupied the Mary and Gordon Crary Chair of Engineering.