Download PDF Winter Bridge on The Grainger Foundation Frontiers of Engineering December 13, 2024 Volume 54 Issue 4 This issue features articles by The Grainger Foundation US Frontiers of Engineering 2024 symposium participants. The articles examine cutting-edge developments in microbiology and health, artificial intelligence, the gut-brain connection, and digital twins. Guest Editor's Note: The Grainger Foundation Frontiers of Engineering 2024 Symposium Friday, December 13, 2024 Author: Karen E. Willcox The NAE dedicates the winter issue of The Bridge to papers from The Grainger Foundation Frontiers of Engineering Symposium (also known as US Frontiers of Engineering [US FOE]), held in September each year. I am delighted to be the guest editor of this issue, which includes a selection of papers from the 2024 US FOE meeting that I chaired. The meeting was held at the National Academies’ Beckman Center in Irvine, California. I would like to remind our readers that the names of the Frontiers of Engineering program and the US-based event were changed in 2022 in recognition of the extraordinary endowment gift to NAE of $10M from The Grainger Foundation. We still use “US FOE” when referring to the annual meeting for US engineers if the shorter term works better in a particular context. The Grainger Foundation Frontiers of Engineering symposia bring together a diverse group of highly accomplished, early-career engineers who represent the best and brightest from academia, industry, government, and nonprofit sectors across all engineering disciplines. In addition to the US FOE, the series includes bilateral programs with Germany, Japan, China, and the European Union. The events provide an opportunity for competitively selected participants to learn about cutting-edge and impactful developments and to network and engage in intellectual discussions crossing traditional boundaries in engineering. The technical sessions at the 2024 US FOE provided exciting glimpses into the impact of engineering on cutting-edge topics in microbiology and health, artificial intelligence (AI), the gut-brain connection, and digital twins. The sessions covered the following topics: Water-Air-Surface Connections for Indoor Microbiology and Health, co-chaired by Kerry Hamilton (Arizona State University) and Erica Hartman (Northwestern University). Talks provided perspectives on environmental transmission of viruses and engineering interventions, including strategies to prevent indoor disease transmission; measurement and tracking of antibiotic resistance in the environment; and risk assessment of microbial exposure accounting for human behavior. Building the Future of Artificial Intelligence, co-chaired by Salvatore Candido (Evolutionary Scale, PBC) and Hanna Hajishirzi (University of Washington). Talks covered the challenges of factuality, reasoning, social awareness, and ethics in large language models; AI-enabled robot learning; and sustainability challenges associated with AI computational demands. Understanding and Engineering Connections between the Gut and the Brain, co-chaired by Nathan Crook (North Carolina State University) and Khalil Ramadi (New York University). Speakers provided perspectives on the role of the gut as a central regulator of health and disease; strategies to engineer the gut microbiome; and ingestible and implantable neural interfaces. The Impending Revolution of Digital Twin, organized by Kurtis Ford (Aperi CMC) and Omer San (University of Tennessee, Knoxville). Speakers covered the role of differentiable programming in achieving data-driven modeling, optimization, and control for digital twins; advances in digital twins in healthcare; and the value of digital twins in managing assets in the built environment. The meeting also included a “Meet and Connect” breakout session that facilitated small group discussion about attendees’ research and technical work as well as allowed time for networking. The dinner speaker was Dr. Melissa Orme (NAE; Boeing), who spoke about the evolution of additive manufacturing and its impacts on the engineering industry. The symposium program, abstracts of the presentations, and (where permission was granted) links to the slides of the presentations are all available at the US FOE website (naefrontiers.org). We thank the sponsors of the 2024 US FOE meeting: The Grainger Foundation, the National Science Foundation, Cummins Inc., and individual donors. The next US Frontiers of Engineering Symposium will be held from September 15-17, 2025, at the University of Pennsylvania. We encourage you to nominate outstanding early-career engineers in February each year to participate in this program. This will allow us to continue to facilitate cross-disciplinary exchange and promote the transfer of new techniques and approaches across fields to sustain and build US innovative capacity. About the Author:Karen E. Willcox (NAE) is the Peter O’Donnell, Jr. Centennial Chair in Computing Systems, director of the Oden Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences, associate vice president of research, and professor of aerospace engineering and engineering mechanics at the University of Texas at Austin.