Jennifer Lukes Selected to Participate in the National Academy of Engineering's Frontiers of Engineering Symposium

Jennifer Lukes, the William K. Gemmill Term Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics has been selected as one of 83 of the nation's brightest young engineers to participate in National Academy of Engineering's (NAE) 13th annual U.S. Frontiers of Engineering Symposium.  The 2½-day event will bring together engineers ages 30 to 45 who are performing exceptional engineering research and technical work in a variety of disciplines.  The participants ­ from industry, academia, and government ­ were nominated by fellow engineers or organizations and chosen from more than 260 applicants.

"It is exciting to witness the energy when outstanding engineers from many different fields come together in this unique venue," said NAE President Wm. A. Wulf.  "Frontiers of Engineering is a proven mechanism for traversing engineering disciplines.  By exposing bright young minds to developments in areas other than their own ­ and giving them lots of time to interact ­ Frontiers enables advances in approaches and thinking that would not have occurred otherwise."

The symposium will be held Sept. 24-26 at Microsoft Research in Redmond, Wash., and will examine trustworthy computer systems, safe water technologies, modeling and simulating human behavior, biotechnology for fuels and chemicals, and the control of protein conformations.  Dr. Henrique Malvar, Microsoft Distinguished Engineer and managing director, Microsoft Research, will be a featured speaker.  His research at Microsoft has focused on audio and video signal enhancement and compression, multirate signal processing, and signal decompositions.  Prior to joining Microsoft Research, Malvar headed research and advanced technology at PictureTel and the Digital Signal Processing Research Group at Universidade de Brasília.