Three College of Engineering faculty members are among 82 of the nation’s brightest young engineers who have been selected to take part in the National Academy of Engineering’s (NAE) 25th annual U.S. Frontiers of Engineering (USFOE) symposium. Early-career engineers who are performing exceptional engineering research and technical work in a variety of disciplines will come together for the two-and-a-half day event. The participants -- from industry, academia, and government -- were nominated by fellow engineers or organizations. Representing Georgia Tech are Karen Feigh, associate professor in the Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering; Marta Hatzell, assistant professor in the Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering; and Alejandro Toriello, associate professor in the Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering. 

The 2019 USFOE will be hosted by Boeing South Carolina in North Charleston, Sept. 25-27, and will cover cutting-edge developments in four areas: Advanced Manufacturing in the Age of Digital Transformation; Engineering the Genome; Self-Driving Cars: Technology and Ethics; and Blockchain Technology.

“The USFOE symposium is a one-of-a-kind event that brings together bright young engineers from different technical areas to spark innovative ideas and to facilitate, what often turn out to be, career-long collaborations,” said NAE President C. D. Mote, Jr. “When you foster a creative space for engineers to collaborate and work together, experience shows that the possibilities are endless.”

Sponsors for the 2019 U.S. Frontiers of Engineering are Boeing, The Grainger Foundation, National Science Foundation, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, Air Force Office of Scientific Research, DOD ASDR&E Laboratories Office, Microsoft Research, Cummins, and Amazon.

The mission of the NAE is to advance the well-being of the nation by promoting a vibrant engineering profession and by marshalling the expertise and insights of eminent engineers to provide independent advice to the federal government on matters involving engineering and technology. The NAE is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, an independent, nonprofit organization chartered by Congress to provide objective analysis and advice to the nation on matters of science, technology, and health.Since 1995, NAE has held an annual U.S. Frontiers of Engineering Symposium that brings together nearly 100 highly accomplished early-career engineers from U.S. universities, companies, and government to discuss leading-edge research and technical work across a range of engineering fields. Convening engineers from disparate fields and challenging them to think about developments and problems at the frontiers of areas different from their own can lead to a variety of desirable results. These include collaborative work, the transfer of new techniques and approaches across fields, and establishment of contacts among the next generation of leaders in engineering.