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Dr. Michael Escuti in his lab at the Monteith Research Center on Centennial Campus. Photo by Marc Hall

Seventy-eight of the nation's brightest young engineers have been selected to take part in the National Academy of Engineering's (NAE) 18th annual U.S. Frontiers of Engineering symposium.  Engineers ages 30 to 45 who are performing exceptional engineering research and technical work in a variety of disciplines will come together for the 2 1/2 day event. The participants -- from industry, academia, and government -- were nominated by fellow engineers or organizations and chosen from approximately 300 applicants.

"Our nation's health, quality of life, and security will depend on the engineering achievements of the 21st century," said NAE President Charles M. Vest.  "The Frontiers of Engineering program gives young engineering pioneers the opportunity to collaborate and share approaches across fields. We believe those interactions will generate new ideas for improving the future."

The symposium will be held on Sept. 13-15, 2012, at the General Motors Technical Center in Warren, Mich., and will examine serious games, vehicle electrification, climate engineering, and engineering materials for the biological interface.  Alan I. Taub, retired vice president of General Motors global research and development, will be a featured speaker at the symposium.

The following engineers were selected as general participants:

Pieter Abbeel - University of California, Berkeley

Andrea Armani - University of Southern California

Muhannad Bakir - Georgia Institute of Technology

Billy Bardin - Dow Chemical Co.

Halil Berberoglu - University of Texas, Austin

Alexandra Boltasseva - Purdue University

David Brumley - Carnegie Mellon University

Xi Chen - Columbia University

Gian Colombo - Carpenter Technology

Xiquan Cui - Qualcomm Inc.

Frank DelRio - National Institute of Standards and Technology

Zhiqun (Daniel) Deng - Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

Jennifer Dionne - Stanford University

Nathan Domagalski - Bristol-Myers Squibb

Ayman EL-Refaie - GE Global Research

Michael Escuti - North Carolina State University

Joelle Frechette - Johns Hopkins University

Yan Fu - Ford Motor Co.

Weiying Gao - DuPont

David Garrett - Broadcom Corp.

Brian Gerkey - Willow Garage

Sayata Ghose - Boeing Co.

Anindya Ghoshal - U.S. Army Research Laboratory

Jordan Green - Johns Hopkins University

Piyush Gupta - Bell Labs, Alcatel-Lucent

Robert Hampshire - Carnegie Mellon University

Jessica Harrison - DNV KEMA Energy and Sustainability

Steve Hartmann - Medtronic

Reed Hendershot - Air Products and Chemicals Inc.

Elizabeth Hillman - Columbia University

Jeremy Hollman - Aurora Flight Sciences

Mona Jarrahi - University of Michigan

Michael Jewett - Northwestern University

Suzette Johnson - Northrop Grumman

Anupama Kaul - National Science Foundation

Scott Klemmer - Stanford University

LaShanda Teresa Korley - Case Western Reserve University

Christopher Kruegel - University of California, Santa Barbara

T.C. Michael Law - Mueser Rutledge Consulting Engineers

Chunhao Lee - General Motors

Steven Little - University of Pittsburgh

Xiang Liu - Bell Labs, Alcatel-Lucent

Jason Lyons - Arkema Inc.

Brian MacCleery - National Instruments

Youssef Marzouk - Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Kristyn Masters - University of Wisconsin, Madison

Meagan Mauter - Carnegie Mellon University

Jason May - HRL Laboratories

Timothy McKnight - Oak Ridge National Laboratory

Brett McMickell - Honeywell Aerospace

W. David Merryman - Vanderbilt University

Rahul Mital - General Motors

Mohammad Mofrad - University of California, Berkeley

Nathan Moody - Los Alamos National Laboratory

Elisabeth Nguyen - Aerospace Corp.

Nicholas Peters - Applied Communication Sciences

Desiree Plata - Duke University

Yadunandana Rao - Motorola Solutions

David Reeder - Cargill Inc.

Kate Riggins - Procter & Gamble Co.

Wallace Sawyer - University of Florida

Charles Schroeder - University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

Stephanie Severance - Cummins

Behrouz Shafei - University of Massachusetts, Amherst

Leena Singh - Charles Stark Draper Laboratory

Shukri Souri - Exponent Inc.

Joshuah Stolaroff - Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

Tong Sun - Xerox Webster Research Center

Kevin Turner - University of Pennsylvania

Kimberly Turner - University of California, Santa Barbara

Chris Urmson - Google

Peter van Beek - SHARP Laboratories of America Inc.

Sergei Vassilvitskii - Yahoo!

Kuansan Wang - Microsoft

Kevin Wasson - Corning Inc.

Ulrike Wegst - Dartmouth College

Jianzhong Wu - University of California, Riverside

Miao Yu - University of Maryland

Speakers at this year's event are:

Matthew Gevaert - KIYATEC Inc.

Christopher Jones - Georgia Institute of Technology

Eli Kintisch - Science Insider

Ben Kravitz - Stanford University

Helen Lu - Columbia University

Arindam Maitra - Electric Power Research Institute

Rahul Mangharam - University of Pennsylvania

Richard Marks - Sony

Cory Ondrejka - Facebook

Zoran Popovic - University of Washington

Lynn Russell - Scripps Institution of Oceanography

Jeff Sakamoto - Michigan State University

David Schaffer - University of California, Berkeley

Constance Steinkuehler - Office of Science and Technology Policy

Matthew Willard - Naval Research Laboratory

The organizers of the 2012 symposium are:

Kristi Anseth (chair) - University of Colorado, Boulder

Karen Burg - Clemson University

Li-Te Cheng - IBM

Michael Degner - Ford Motor Co.

Ali Khademhosseini - Harvard University

Sanjeev Naik - General Motors

Ben Sawyer - Digitalmill

David Sholl - Georgia Institute of Technology

Armin Sorooshian - University of Arizona

Sponsors for the 2012 U.S. Frontiers of Engineering are General Motors, the Grainger Foundation, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, National Science Foundation, Microsoft Research, and Cummins Inc.

The mission of 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 (along with the National Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Medicine, and the National Research Council), an independent, nonprofit organization chartered by Congress to provide objective analysis and advice to the nation on matters of science and technology.

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North Carolina State University will lead a national nanotechnology research effort to create self-powered devices to help people monitor their health and understand how the surrounding environment affects it, the National Science Foundation announced today.

The NSF Nanosystems Engineering Research Center for Advanced Self-Powered Systems of Integrated Sensors and Technologies (ASSIST), to be headquartered on NC State's Centennial Campus, is a joint effort between NC State and partner institutions Florida International University, Pennsylvania State University and the University of Virginia. The center, funded by an initial five-year $18.5 million grant from NSF, also includes five affiliated universities and about 30 industry partners in its global research consortium.

"Tackling the world's grand challenges is one of NC State's strategic imperatives," said NC State Chancellor Randy Woodson. "The ASSIST center holds the potential to transform health care, leading to advanced environmental health research and enhanced environmental policy."

With the addition of ASSIST, NC State is the only university in the country currently leading two active NSF Engineering Research Centers (ERCs), among the largest and most prestigious grants made by the engineering directorate of the federal agency. The FREEDM Systems Center, a smart grid ERC formed in 2008, is also headquartered at NC State.

ASSIST researchers will use the tiniest of materials to develop self-powered health monitoring sensors and devices. These devices could be worn on the chest like a patch, on the wrist like a watch, as a cap that fits over a tooth, or in other ways, depending on the biological system that's being monitored.

Wireless health monitoring is already a fast-growing industry, but the self-powered technology being developed by ASSIST means that changing and recharging batteries on current devices could soon be a thing of the past. By using nanomaterials and nanostructures - a nanowire is thousands of times thinner than a human hair - and thermoelectric and piezoelectric materials that use body heat and motion, respectively, as power sources, ASSIST researchers want to make devices that operate on the smallest amounts of energy.

 
Dr. Veena Misra and Dr. John Muth provide leadership for ASSIST.

"Currently there are many devices out there that monitor health in different ways," said Dr. Veena Misra, the center's director and professor of electrical and computer engineering at NC State. "What's unique about our technologies is the fact that they are powered by the human body, so they don't require battery charging."

These devices could transform health care by improving the way doctors, patients and researchers gather and interpret important health data. Armed with uninterrupted streams of heart rate readings, respiration rates and other health indicators, as well as personalized exposure data for environmental pollutants such as ozone and carbon monoxide, sick people could better manage chronic diseases, and healthy people could make even better decisions to keep themselves fit.

On a larger scale, data gleaned from research studies employing these devices could prove invaluable to lawmakers crafting environmental policy. And if people using the devices make better decisions about where and how healthfully they live, national health care costs, which topped $2.5 trillion in 2010, could come down.

The center's headquarters will be housed in the Larry K. Monteith Engineering Research Center on NC State's Centennial Campus. There, ASSIST researchers will develop thermoelectric materials that harvest body heat and new nanosensors that gather health information from the body such as heart rates, oxygen levels and respiration data. In addition, the researchers will find ways to package the technology developed by the center into wearable devices.

The center's partner institutions will also play important research roles. At Penn State, researchers will create new piezoelectric materials and energy-efficient transistors. The team from the University of Virginia will develop ways to make the systems work on very small amounts of power, while the group from Florida International University will create sensors that gather biochemical signals from the body, such as stress levels.

The results of that work, coupled with low-power radios developed by the University of Michigan, will be used to process and transmit health data gathered by the sensors to computers and consumer devices, such as cell phones, so patients, doctors and researchers can easily digest it. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill will provide ASSIST with medical guidance and arrange testing of the center's technology.

 
ASSIST aims to produce self-powered health-monitoring devices, some of which could be worn on the wrist.

"We have assembled a comprehensive team that works together closely under a systems-driven approach to tackle this challenging set of global health problems," Misra said.

ASSIST also has foreign partnerships with the University of Adelaide, the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, and the Tokyo Institute of Technology.

"The research conducted at ASSIST will help patients, doctors and scientists make direct correlations between a person's health and the surrounding environment, leading to better prediction and treatment of chronic diseases," said Dr. Louis A. Martin-Vega, dean of the College of Engineering at NC State. "The fact that NC State now leads two NSF Engineering Research Centers is a testament to our world-class engineering faculty, students and facilities."

ASSIST will also draw on the expertise of industry partners to help guide the center's work to the marketplace. These partners include companies and agencies involved in nanomaterials and nanodevices, integrated chip manufacturing, software development, bioengineering and health care.

The center will feature a nanotechnology education program, including an undergraduate concentration and a graduate master's certificate, as well as a personalized professional-development program for graduate students.

The center will also partner with 11 middle and high schools in North Carolina, Virginia, Florida and Pennsylvania to develop outreach activities that bring nanosystems engineering into K-12 classrooms. Students in partner high schools will have the chance to be involved in ASSIST research.

The five-year NSF grant for ASSIST is renewable for an additional five years and follows a two-year selection process by the federal agency. The grant is among a new group of Engineering Research Center awards that invest in nanosystems.

Dr. John Muth, professor of electrical and computer engineering at NC State, will serve as the center's deputy director. The ASSIST leadership team also includes Dr. Thomas Jackson, Kirby Professor of Electrical Engineering at Penn State, research director and partner campus director; Dr. David Peden, senior associate dean for translational research at the UNC School of Medicine, medical director; Dr. Benton Calhoun, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Virginia, partner campus director; Dr. Shekhar Bhansali, Alcatel-Lucent Professor and head of electrical and computer engineering at Florida International University, partner campus director; Dr. Mehmet Ozturk, professor of electrical and computer engineering and director of the NC State Nanofabrication Facility, education and diversity director; Dr. Gail Jones, professor of science, technology, engineering and mathematics education in NC State's College of Education, pre-college education director; and Dr. Ted Baker, associate professor of management, innovation and entrepreneurship in NC State's Poole College of Management, industry collaboration and innovation director.

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Engineering Online at North Carolina State University has been ranked among the nation's top 10 online graduate engineering programs by U.S. News & World Report.

The magazine's 2013 rankings put Engineering Online's graduate engineering programs at No. 7 nationally and its computer science and computer networking programs at No. 9 (those programs are listed under "Computer Information Technology Programs"). Prospective students often use the U.S. News rankings to help them decide which school to attend.

The College of Engineering at NC State established what is now known as Engineering Online in 1978. The program, designed for working professionals, allows students to earn master's degrees in engineering without coming to campus. Courses offered by Engineering Online are identical to on-campus courses in terms of content, requirements and academic rigor. GetEducated.com ranked Engineering Online's master's programs sixth nationally in its most recent "Best Buy" rankings.

Engineering Online offers master's degree programs in aerospace engineering, civil engineering, chemical engineering, computer engineering, computer networking, computer science, electrical engineering, environmental engineering, industrial engineering, integrated manufacturing systems engineering, materials science and engineering, mechanical engineering and nuclear engineering. The program also offers a master of engineering degree.

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Kathan Bender tinkers with a bamboo water fountain created by his team for Freshman Engineering Design Day.

The bubble-blowing machine created by Morgan Danyi and her team worked just fine except for one minor problem: It didn't blow any bubbles.

Some parts spun too fast. The unstable platform wobbled. The bubble solution carried by spinning wands spilled before reaching the bubble-blowing fan. No solution, no bubbles.

Something had to be done. In two weeks, Danyi and her team planned to enter the machine into NC State's 13th Annual Freshman Engineering Design Day.

"Being an engineer is all about trial and error," Danyi, a freshman in chemical engineering, said after some last-minute tweaks made the machine competition-ready. "You identify the problem, brainstorm a way to resolve it and then create the finished product."

Freshman Engineering Design Day brings together more than 1,300 students on more than 400 teams who have completed design projects assigned in the College's introductory engineering course. Students huddle in groups for several weeks before the event, assembling hovercrafts, stitching together fabric buckets, molding concrete canoes, engineering nuclear reactor probes and tinkering with chain-reaction-driven Rube Goldberg machines.

All that work culminates in a day-long competition held in two packed rooms of students, faculty, judges and parents at NC State's McKimmon Center on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. Medals are awarded to the winners.

 
Morgan Danyi (in yellow) and her Design Day team overcame technical hurdles to create a working bubble-blowing machine.

"Design Day is the defining first-semester experience for engineering students," said Brian Koehler, the director of international engagement for the College who helps run the event. "It's a great opportunity for our first-year engineers to tackle difficult engineering problems they'll be facing during the next four years and ultimately in their professional careers."

Each project comes with its own set of constraints. Students must not exceed a $40 spending limit, which encourages creativity and innovation by forcing them to reuse, borrow and find creative resources in places other than store shelves.

That spirit of frugality and reusability was on display at this year's event, where students used toy cars, old plastic containers, aluminum foil, scrap wood, oil funnels, rubber bands, Pez dispensers, Tupperware containers and duct tape to build their entries.

Personalization is encouraged. A plastic watering can and holiday lights topped a flower-rimmed fountain. Arcade pinballs pummeled miniature Duke and UNC mascots. 18-inch concrete canoes - they can hold 10 pounds of marbles if built properly - were proudly painted NC State red.

For Danyi, the event turned out to be more than just a first-semester highlight. It gave her the chance to be a team leader and employ problem-solving skills when things didn't go as planned.

After the bubble-blowing failure, the team regrouped and devised a new design. A battery-powered motor in an overturned toy truck spun a wheel that had been cut from the bottom of a five-gallon plastic bucket. Because the wheel was larger and heavier than the CD covers they had originally used, the spinning wands that cradled the bubble solution became much more rigid, allowing the machine to spit out bubbles by the dozens.

The relieved team had its entry.

"The experiences at Design Day are a very accurate taste of what engineers will have to deal with in the real world," Danyi said.

Kathan Bender, a freshman majoring in civil engineering and environmental engineering, said the event improved his team's time management skills and taught team members the value of advance planning.

The group entered the water fountain competition, in which students must create a device that propels water upward against gravity. Bender and his team decided to meet early in the semester to begin work.

 
Students ready their projectile launcher for the competition.

The group built its waterfall from bamboo stalks. The stalks were tied together with twine and then set into a bamboo box filled with water and small stones. The water, propelled by an electric pump, was able to flow through a plastic tube encased in the central bamboo stalk, emerging out of the top and flowing back down into the box.

"After choosing the water fountain as our project, we had to decide on a theme and what parts of the project we wanted to assign to each person," Bender said. "Then we started planning the layout, gathering materials and putting it all together. It helped me learn the necessity of getting everything drawn out in advance before you start working."

Although Bender's team didn't receive a medal, he believes the group's bamboo water fountain was a crowd-pleaser that "gained the popular vote" of visitors to their table. Danyi's team didn't medal either, but that didn't take away from the event's positive experiences.

"Figuring out how to put our strengths together and working through problems are going to be very valuable experiences for the future," Danyi said. "Teamwork and effective communication are highly important for any group of people working together on a project."

The skills learned through Design Day help prepare Danyi, Bender and hundreds of other students for the more challenging projects to come in their academic and professional careers.

"Design Day helps our first-year engineers continue developing their interdisciplinary teamwork, problem-solving and communication skills while creating something that works," Koehler said. "With these skills, students can become leaders who solve challenging problems."

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