Washington, DC, June 17, 2020 – 85 of the nation’s brightest early-career engineers have been selected to take part in the National Academy of Engineering’s (NAE) 26th annual US Frontiers of Engineering (USFOE) symposium. Engineers who are performing exceptional 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.
The 2020 USFOE was originally scheduled to be hosted by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colorado in September; however, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the meeting has been rescheduled for February 25-27, 2021, and will be held at the National Academies’ Beckman Center in Irvine, California. The symposium will cover cutting-edge developments in four areas: Food for Thought: The AgRevolution Shaping What We (Will) Eat; Next-generation Energy Systems Integration; Engineering Innovation in Women’s Health; Plastics: Pollutions Challenges and Innovations.
“The Frontiers of Engineering program brings together a talented group of young engineers from different technical areas to spark innovation and facilitate long-term collaborations,” said NAE President John L. Anderson. “These relationships are critical in developing creative engineering solutions to the world’s problems.”
The following engineers were selected as general participants:
| Damena Agonafer | Washington University in St. Louis |
| Sarah Ahlberg | Medtronic |
| Mohamed Amer | Robust AI |
| Arezoo Ardekani | Purdue University |
| Rohini Bala Chandran | University of Michigan |
| Michelle Calabrese | University of Minnesota |
| Guadalupe Canahuate | University of Iowa |
| Jesse Chan | Rice University |
| Haoshuo Chen | Nokia Bell Labs |
| Elizabeth Connelly | National Renewable Energy Laboratory |
| Cory Cornelius | Intel |
| Jason Crater | Genomatica, Inc. |
| Rachel Cummings | Georgia Institute of Technology |
| Brian Cummins | Abbott |
| Sujit Datta | Princeton University |
| Timothy Davenport | United Technologies Research Center |
| Sean Donegan | Air Force Research Laboratory |
| Xinyu Du | General Motors |
| Jessilyn Dunn | Duke University |
| Sudipta Dutta | General Electric |
| Eno Ebong | Northeastern University |
| Joseph Ensberg | Collins Aerospace |
| Pete Erslev | Ball Aerospace |
| N. Dianne Ezell | Oak Ridge National Laboratory |
| Neta Ezer | Northrop Grumman Corporation |
| Zachlyn Farwig | Boeing |
| Alexander Fiannaca | Microsoft Research |
| Greeshma Gadikota | Cornell University |
| Maria Gorlatova | Duke University |
| Reza Haghpanah | Dow Inc. |
| Kerry Hamilton | Arizona State University |
| Jennifer Hoffmann | WL Gore & Associates |
| Aruna Jammalamadaka | HRL Laboratories, LLC |
| Katherine Jungjohann | Sandia National Laboratories |
| Kakani Katija | Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute |
| Mikhail Kats | University of Wisconsin-Madison |
| Suman Khatiwada | Syzygy Plasmonics, Inc. |
| Sarah Kim | Arkema Inc. |
| Alper Kiziltas | Ford Motor Company |
| Lyle Kocher | Cummins Inc. |
| Cortney Kreller | Los Alamos National Laboratory |
| Kelly Leung | Allergan, Inc. |
| Adrienne Little | Google [x] |
| Mitul Luhar | University of Southern California |
| Karthish Manthiram | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| Christine McCool | 3M Company |
| Matthew McDowell | Georgia Institute of Technology |
| Alejandra Menchaca | Thornton Tomasetti |
| Rebecca Mieloszyk | Microsoft Healthcare |
| Michael Millhaem | GE Aviation |
| Timothy Morse | Exponent, Inc. |
| Monica Moya | Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory |
| Venkat Narayanaswamy | North Carolina State University |
| Destenie Nock | Carnegie Mellon University |
| Jeffrey Nye | Bristol-Myers Squibb |
| Ronke Olabisi | University of California, Irvine |
| Holly OLDROYD | University of California, Davis |
| Emily Pentzer | Texas A&M University |
| Greg Rieker | University of Colorado Boulder |
| Simon Rogers | University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign |
| Seth Rothschild | Dell Technologies |
| Liliana Ruiz Diaz | |
| Meha Rungta | ExxonMobil Chemical Technology |
| Chelsea Sabo | Lockheed Martin |
| Bodhisatwa Sadhu | IBM |
| Samantha Santacruz | University of Texas at Austin |
| Soumalya Sarkar | Raytheon Technologies Research Center |
| Rebecca Schulman | Johns Hopkins University |
| Richa Sharma | Schlumberger-Doll Research |
| Anita Shukla | Brown University |
| Melissa Smith | MIT Lincoln Laboratory |
| Michael Thomas | Dominion Energy |
| Varun Varun | Itasca International Inc. |
| Vikrant Vaze | Dartmouth College |
| Ashok Veeraraghavan | Rice University |
| Archana Venkataraman | Johns Hopkins University |
| Peter Verderame | Air Products |
| Naveen Vetcha | ERC/Jacobs Space Exploration Group/NASA MSFC |
| Vidya Vidyapati | Procter & Gamble Company |
| Katherine Vozar | Ford Motor Company |
| Dana Weinstein | Purdue University |
| Benjamin Westin | Boeing |
| Alexander Wiltschko | |
| Hao Zhu | The University of Texas at Austin |
| Qi Zhu | Northwestern University |
Organizing Committee:
| Jennifer West (Chair) | Duke University |
| Lily Cheung | Georgia Institute of Technology |
| Anela Choy | Scripps Institution of Oceanography |
| Andrew Coughlin | Syngenta |
| Jenna Jambeck | University of Georgia |
| Jennifer Kurtz | National Renewable Energy Lab |
| Javad Lavaei | University of California, Berkeley |
| Kristin Myers | Columbia University |
| Melissa Skala | Morgridge Institute for Research |
Speakers:
| Mercy Asiedu | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| Noel Bakhtian | Idaho National Laboratory |
| Svanika Balasubramian | rePurpose |
| Jeremy Conkle | Texas A&M University, Corpus Christi |
| Patrick Cournoyer | US FDA |
| Aaron Hummel | Pairwise Plants |
| Johanna Mathieu | University of Michigan |
| Kristin Miller | Tulane University |
| Desiree Plata | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| Kyle Schneider | Vestaron Corp. |
| Ariella Shikanov | University of Michigan |
| Suzanne Singer | Native Renewables |
| Ridhi Tariyal | NextGen Jane |
| Sierra Young | North Carolina State University |
Sponsors for the 2020 US Frontiers of Engineering are The Grainger Foundation, National Science Foundation, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, Air Force Office of Scientific Research, Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, Microsoft Research, and Cummins.
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.
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