Best and Brightest Young Engineers Descend on Forty Acres

More than 70 top early-career engineers across academia, government and industry are coming to the Forty Acres to showcase their innovative research and technical achievements.

They’re gathering for the 31st edition of The Grainger Foundation Frontiers of Engineering symposium, a signature activity of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE). This year’s event is hosted at UT Austin by the Cockrell School of Engineering and Oden Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences in partnership with semiconductor company Advanced Micro Devices (AMD).

In addition to hosting the annual event, taking place Sept. 21-24, UT will have three engineers taking part in the programming: David Fridovich-Keil, Department of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics; Krishna Kumar, Fariborz Maseeh Department of Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering; and Joaquin Resasco, McKetta Department of Chemical Engineering.

“I’m proud to welcome some of the nation’s top minds in engineering to Austin for Frontiers of Engineering,” said Karen Willcox, aerospace engineering professor, director of the Oden Institute and event co-chair. “Engineers have such an important role to play in addressing unprecedented social challenges. This event is pivotal in bringing together top early-career engineers across different sectors and disciplines.”

This year’s symposium will explore four themes:

• Innovation in bioengineered materials
• Compute challenges for artificial intelligence
• Agriculture as a system-of-systems: from molecules to markets
• Hypersonics

“Engineering has always been a force for progress, but its role is becoming even more vital as society faces increasingly complex and interconnected challenges,” said NAE President Tsu-Jae Liu. “The NAE aims to strengthen engineering leadership to benefit the nation and improve lives by advancing excellence, fostering collaboration across sectors and disciplines, and preparing engineers to lead with creativity, rigor, and purpose.”

Membership in the National Academy of Engineering is one of the highest honors in the engineering field. In total, 24 Cockrell faculty members are active members of NAE, along with many more alumni. Among that select group are the event’s two co-chairs, Willcox and Mark Papermaster, AMD’s chief technology officer and Cockrell School alumnus.

Participants selected to participate in The Grainger Foundation Frontiers of Engineering Symposium were nominated by leaders in the engineering profession or prominent engineering organizations. Since 1995, close to 6,000 early-career engineers have participated in previous symposia, many of whom have gone on to become national leaders in the engineering community.