This award partially supports a series of three national and international Frontiers of Engineering (FOE) Symposia organized by the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) for early career researchers: the German-American Frontiers of Engineering (March 29-31, 2012, in Potsdam, Germany), the U.S. Frontiers of Engineering (September 13-15, 2012, in Warren, Michigan), and the Japan-America Frontiers of Engineering (October 29-31, 2012, in Irvine, California). Each symposium focuses on four topical areas. The topics for the 2012 symposia are the following: engineering materials for the biological interface, serious games, climate engineering, vehicle electrification, robotics, smart grid, bio-inspired materials, massive data management, engineering for natural disasters, engineering for energy sustainability, engineering for agriculture, and image management/video analytics. About 100 outstanding young engineers for the U.S. symposium and 30 from each country for the bilateral symposia will participate. Each two and one-half day symposium includes four formal sessions, technical tours, break-out sessions, and opportunities for developing collaborative research partnerships. Sessions consist of presentations on cutting-edge research, innovations, and emerging research opportunities in engineering fields relevant to the symposium.
The FOE symposia provide early career scientists and engineers the opportunity for sharing research insights and techniques to foster new collaborations and, in the case of the bilateral meetings, deepen technical and cultural understanding between the countries' participants. The symposia foster interdisciplinary and international collaborations and serve as a reference point for many of the emerging frontiers in research and innovation in the United States. American innovative capacity is strengthened through these exchanges. Papers from the U.S. FOE symposium will be published in a volume available on the National Academies Press website at http://www.nap.edu.
The Frontiers of Engineering (FOE) program brings together a select group of engineers (ages 30-45) from industry, academia, and government labs for 2.5 day meetings to discuss pioneering technical work and leading-edge research in various engineering fields and industry sectors. The goal is to facilitate an interdisciplinary transfer of knowledge and methodology that could lead to collaborative networks of engineers. NSF provided partial funding for three FOE symposia in 2012: US Frontiers of Engineering held September 13-15, German-American Frontiers of Engineering (GAFOE) held March 29-31, and Japan-America Frontiers of Engineering (JAFOE) held October 29-31. Over 220 engineers attended the symposia where selected engineering topics such as serious games, engineering materials for the biological interface, robotics, energy storage, implantable electronics, video content analysis, and engineering for natural disaster resiliency, among others, were covered. Symposium materials can be found at www.naefrontiers.org. Outcomes described in evaluation forms: US FOE Rated good or excellent: Meeting format 96% Choice of topics 93% Quality of presentations 97% Level of engineering covered 95% Your opportunity to participate 92% Have you identified potential collaborative opportunities as a result of this symposium? 97% answered yes or possibly Have you identified potential applications of interdiscipoinary approaches, tools, and or analytical methods to your research activities? 89% answered yes or possibly Comments: " Learning about serious games and climate engineering allowed me to consider key issues facing the world and challenges that are facing engineering today. Even though these topics are outside of my main area of research, they allowed me to gain perspective and presented me with ideas that I can import back into my own research program. Finally, the ability to make connections and meet up-and-coming researchers in engineering was a great aspect of the Frontiers meeting." "I appreciated the high quality of attendees. It was a rare opportunity to have that much 'firepower' in the same place and in a format for making effective connections." "The presentations by colleagues of other disciplines were truly inspirational. The informal discussions ensured that they not only broadened my horizons but also triggered new ideas, with instant feedback from the experts and even possible future collaborations." GAFOE Rated good or excellent: Meeting format 100% Length of time given to presentations 96% Length of time given to specific discussions 94% Level of engineering covered 90% Quality of presentations 100% Your opportunity to participate 98% Have you identified potential collaborative opportunities as a result of this symposium? 92% answered yes or possibly Have you identified potential applications of interdiscipoinary approaches, tools, and or analytical methods to your research activities? 77% answered yes or possibly Comments: "I enjoyed the breadth and quality of all the talks. I like how much time was given to meet other people and discuss research. This was one of the highest quality meetings that I have ever participated in." "I appreciated the opportunity to meet people from a variety of fields with synergies across disciplines. I learned about many new technologies relevant to and that could impact my own discipline. There were intellectually stimulating discussions of my own and others' work bringing different points of view.." JAFOE Rated good or excellent: Meeting format 92% Choice of topics 96% Quality of presentations 88% Level of engineering covered 98% Your opportunity to participate 94% Have you identified potential collaborative opportunities as a result of this symposium? 87% answered yes or possibly Have you identified potential applications of interdiscipoinary approaches, tools, and or analytical methods to your research activities? 94% answered yes or possibly Comments: "I now see significant connections between video analysis techniques and the interpretation of data from sensors designed in my lab, as well as the opportunity to employ some of our sensing technologies to controlled agricultural environments." "I really enjoyed interacting with a diverse group of engineers who were all passionate about their work. It was exciting to be in this environment. I also really enjoyed that there was so much time dedicated to Q&A after each talk, and there was a lot of time for informal conversations." "Normally I attend very specialized conferences in computer vision and machine learning. JAFOE was a great opportunity to get exposure in other specialities of engineering that I would not normally be exposed to in my yearly routine. It allowed me to see the connections across al of the areas and to see how each of these areas is experiencing a "data explosion" and the need for good machine learning solutions. For example, I loved seeing how the agriculture business is connecting sensors in fields to control the rates of irrigation and fertilizer. In many ways this is exactly what we do in computer vision as we have been using images from cameras and other data (e.g., accelerometers in phones, depth sensors, etc.) to augment algorithms to make decisions." Grainger Grants Awarded Two grants of $30,000 from The Grainger Foundation were awarded for collaborative research involving 2012 US FOE meeting attendees.
