Two MIT faculty members are helping to organize this year's "U.S. Frontiers of Engineering" symposium.
This is the 11th year for the event, which is run by the National Academy of Engineering (NAE), an independent nonprofit institution that serves as an adviser to the government and the public on engineering and technology issues. Members are elected by their peers for their achievements.
Amy Smith, an instructor at the Edgerton Center, and Stephen Intille, a research scientist in the Department of Architecture, are both working on this year's NAE event, to be held Sept. 22-24 at the GE Global Research Center in Niskayuna, N.Y.
Two speakers at the event also have MIT connections: MIT alumna and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute President Shirley Ann Jackson (S.B. 1968, Ph.D. 1973), who is a lifetime member of the MIT Corporation, and Kurt Kornbluth, a technical instructor at the Edgerton Center.
The symposium was initiated to give top engineers an opportunity to learn about cutting-edge developments in fields other than their own--facilitating collaborative work and the transfer of new approaches and techniques across fields.
The conference brings together outstanding engineers ages 30 to 45 from industry, academia and government. This year's symposium will explore aspects of identification and verification technologies, the engineering of complex systems, engineering for developing communities and energy.
Participants are chosen through a competitive process. This year, 88 engineers were selected to participate, out of 220 applicants.