Creative Young Engineers Selected to Participate in NAE's 2007 U.S. Frontiers of Engineering Symposium

WASHINGTON — Eighty-three of the nation’s brightest young engineers have been selected to take part in the National Academy of Engineering’s (NAE) 13th annual U.S. Frontiers of Engineering symposium. The 2½-day event will bring together engineers ages 30 to 45 who are performing exceptional engineering research and technical work in a variety of disciplines. The participants — from industry, academia, and government — were nominated by fellow engineers or organizations and chosen from more than 260 applicants.

“It is exciting to witness the energy when outstanding engineers from many different fields come together in this unique venue,” said NAE President Wm. A. Wulf. “Frontiers of Engineering is a proven mechanism for traversing engineering disciplines. By exposing bright young minds to developments in areas other than their own — and giving them lots of time to interact — Frontiers enables advances in approaches and thinking that would not have occurred otherwise.”

The symposium will be held Sept. 24-26 at Microsoft Research in Redmond, Wash., and will examine trustworthy computer systems, safe water technologies, modeling and simulating human behavior, biotechnology for fuels and chemicals, and the control of protein conformations. Dr. Henrique Malvar, Microsoft Distinguished Engineer and managing director, Microsoft Research, will be a featured speaker. His research at Microsoft has focused on audio and video signal enhancement and compression, multirate signal processing, and signal decompositions. Prior to joining Microsoft Research, Malvar headed research and advanced technology at PictureTel and the Digital Signal Processing Research Group at Universidade de Brasília.

The following engineers were selected as general participants:

• Dongchan Ahn, Dow Corning Corp.
• Vitaly Aizenberg, Exxon Mobil Corp.
• Matthew Andrews, Alcatel-Lucent, Bell Labs
• David A. Bader, Georgia Institute of Technology
• Randy A. Bartels, Colorado State University
• Jennifer T. Bernhard, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
• Joshua Binder, Boeing Co.
• Markus J. Buehler, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• Wai Kin Chan, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
• Eric Pei-Yu Chiou, University of California, Los Angeles
• Alfred J. Crosby, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
• Rula A. Deeb, Malcolm Pirnie Inc.
• Shrikant Dhodapkar, Dow Chemical Co.
• Peter A. Dinda, Northwestern University
• Michael J. Fasolka, National Institute of Standards and Technology
• Andrew Fernandez, Agilent Technologies Inc.
• Timothy Fisher, Purdue University
• Raja N. Ghanem, Medtronic Inc.
• Reza Ghodssi, University of Maryland
• Rajat S. Ghosh, Alcoa Inc.
• Anouck Girard, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
• Samuel Graham, Georgia Institute of Technology
• Tyrone W. Grandison, IBM Almaden Research Center
• Johney Green, Oak Ridge National Laboratory
• Michelle L. Gregory, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
• John Hecht, Procter & Gamble Co.
• Hugh W. Hillhouse, Purdue University
• Jeffrey Kanel, Eastman Chemical Co.
• Jeffrey M. Karp, Harvard University
• Theodore J. Kim, Sandia National Laboratories
• Fred A. Kish, Infinera Corp.
• Efrosini Kokkoli, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis
• Ilya Kolmanovsky, Ford Research and Advanced Engineering
• Michael R. Krames, Philips Lumileds Lighting Co.
• Raj Krishnaswamy, Metabolix Inc.
• Rajesh Kumar, Intel Corp.
• Sanjay Lall, Stanford University
• Eugene J. LeBoeuf, Vanderbilt University
• K. Rustan Leino, Microsoft Research
• Philip Levis, Stanford University
• Mark E. Lewis, Cornell University
• Ju Li, Ohio State University
• Jennifer Lukes, University of Pennsylvania
• Yiorgos Makris, Yale University
• Ajay P. Malshe, University of Arkansas
• Michele Marcolongo, Drexel University
• Wade Martinson, Cargill Inc.
• Katherine McMahon, University of Wisconsin, Madison
• Swarup Medasani, HRL Laboratories LLC
• Edward S. Miller, DuPont Co.
• Wilbur L. Myrick, SAIC
• Priya Narasimhan, Carnegie Mellon University
• Ravi Narasimhan, University of California, Santa Cruz
• Roseanna M. Neupauer, University of Colorado, Boulder
• Sissy Nikolaou, Mueser Rutledge Consulting Engineers
• Burak Ozdoganlar, Carnegie Mellon University
• Jianbiao Pan, California Polytech State University
• Alexander Parkhomovsky, Seagate Technology LLC
• Arshan Poursohi, Sun Microsystems Inc.
• Lisa Purvis, Xerox Corp.
• Marcus Quigley, Geosyntec Consultants
• R. Michael Raab, Agrivida Inc.
• Lee Rosen, Praxair Inc.
• Rachel A. Segalman, University of California, Berkeley
• Deborah Shands, Aerospace Corp.
• Samuel Sia, Columbia University
• John E. Smee, QUALCOMM Inc.
• Lydia L. Sohn, University of California, Berkeley
• Randy Stiles, Lockheed Martin Space Systems Co.
• Michael S. Strano, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
• Joseph Szczerba, General Motors Corp.
• David N. Thompson, Idaho National Laboratory
• Jean W. Tom, Bristol-Myers Squibb Co.
• Sundeep N. Vani, Archer Daniels Midland Co.
• James Scott Vartuli, GE Global Research
• S. Travis Waller, University of Texas, Austin
• Helen J. Wang, Microsoft Research
• Annemarie Ott Weist, Air Products and Chemicals Inc.
• Mei Wen, Arkema Inc.
• Joan Wills, Cummins Inc.
• Lifang Yuan, EDO Corp.
• Randy Zachery, U.S. Army Research Office
• Xin Zhang, Boston University

Speakers at this year’s event are:

• Carina Maria Alles, DuPont Co.
• Jess Brown, Carollo Engineers, P.C.
• Amy Childress, University of Nevado, Reno
• Bruce Dien, National Center for Agricultural Utilization Research
• Edward W. Felton, Princeton University
• Kevin Gluck, Air Force Research Laboratory
• Laurent Itti, University of Southern California
• Matthew J. Lang, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• Karl G. Linden, Duke University
• Sanjay Malhotra, National Cancer Institute
• Greg Morrisett, Harvard University
• Rama Ranganathan, University of Texas Southwestern Medical School
• Diana K. Smetters, PARC
• Vanessa L. Speight, Malcolm Pirnie Inc.
• Michael van Lent, University of Southern California
• Rebeccca N. Wright, Stevens Institute of Technology

The organizers of the 2007 symposium are:

• Julia M. Phillips (chair), Sandia National Laboratories
• Ana I. Antón, North Carolina State University
• John Dunagan, Microsoft Research
• Richard T. Elander, National Renewable Energy Laboratory
• Christian Lebiere, Carnegie Mellon University
• Donald J. Leo, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
• Carol R. Rego, CDM
• Vijay Singh, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
• Paul K. Westerhoff, Arizona State University
• Robert Wray, Soar Technology Inc.

Sponsors for the 2007 U.S. Frontiers of Engineering are the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, the U.S. Department of Defense (DDR&E-Research), DARPA, the National Science Foundation, Microsoft Corp., Cummins Inc., and numerous individual donors.

The National Academy of Engineering is an independent, nonprofit institution that serves as an adviser to government and the public on issues in engineering and technology. Its members consist of the nation’s premier engineers, who are elected by their peers for their distinguished achievements. Established in 1964, NAE operates under the congressional charter granted to the National Academy of Sciences in 1863.

A meeting program and more information about Frontiers of Engineering is available at http://www.nae.edu/frontiers.

National Academy of Engineering
Date: June 18, 2006
Contacts: Janet Hunziker, NAE Senior Program Officer
202-334-1571; e-mail jhunziker@nae.edu
Randy Atkins, NAE Senior Media Relations Officer
202-334-1508; e-mail atkins@nae.edu