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NAE Awards The Grainger Foundation Frontiers of Engineering Grants for Advancement of Interdisciplinary Research

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Mon, March 17, 2025

Washington, D.C., March 17, 2025 —
Two Grainger Foundation Frontiers of Engineering Grants of $30,000 each have been awarded to attendees of the 2024 Grainger Foundation Frontiers of Engineering Symposium, a program of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE). The grants provide seed funding for participants at U.S.-based institutions to enable further pursuit of important new interdisciplinary research and projects stimulated by the U.S. FOE symposia.
 
“From utilizing artificial intelligence to improve fabrication of high-quality nanoscale structures to analyzing power grid efficiency, this year’s Grainger Grant recipients are making outstanding engineering contributions that demonstrate the essential role of engineers in advancing technological innovation for a brighter future,” said NAE President John Anderson.
 
Dan Congreve (Stanford University) and Grace Gu (University of California, Berkeley) have received a Grainger Grant for their project titled “Real-Time Monitoring and Optimization of Scalable Nanofabrication Processes.” Traditional approaches for scalable nanofabrication, such as two-photon polymerization (2PP), can achieve high resolution but face challenges from low throughput, high power requirements, and costly laser systems, making them impractical for large-scale or economically viable applications. Addressing this issue requires innovations that combine precision, scalability, and adaptability. This project leverages the transformative potential of triplet fusion upconversion (TF)-based volumetric printing, a novel technology that reduces power requirements while enabling high-speed, high-resolution nanoscale fabrication. The proposed work integrates this advanced printing process with artificial intelligence (AI)-driven in-situ monitoring and real-time defect correction, creating a platform capable of producing high-quality and reliable nanostructures with unprecedented precision and scalability. By dynamically adjusting printing parameters such as light intensity and voxel resolution during fabrication, this system overcomes key limitations of traditional approaches, ensuring consistent quality even in complex and variable manufacturing conditions. The importance of this activity lies in its ability to address fundamental bottlenecks in nanoscale manufacturing, paving the way for breakthroughs in energy-efficient technologies, biomedical devices, and sustainable materials.
 
The second Grainger Grant has been awarded to Xingpeng Li (University of Houston) and Satyajith Amaran (Dow) for their project titled “Electrical Grid Congestion: Analysis, Implications and Enhancement.” The power grid is a critical infrastructure for delivering continuous quality electricity to various consumers throughout the entire nation. Its limited power transfer capacity would lead to network congestion, inefficient system operations, clean energy curtailment, reduced reliability, and substantial price volatility, especially during high-demand hours. These are critical factors that significantly impact large industry entities like Dow, influencing their operational and strategic decisions, which shape their electricity consumption patterns and thus affect the grid operations and reliability in the form of demand response. This project aims to analyze electrical network congestion and its implications for industry entities and grid operators through three tasks: assessing network congestion and electricity price contours under different scenarios, developing a novel hierarchical machine learning (ML) model for predicting congestion and electricity prices, and simulating the impact of demand response from large consumers like Dow. The project’s outcomes are expected to benefit the public by enabling better-informed operational decisions for large industry entities and thus reducing peak demand on the grid, which will alleviate power grid congestion, improve system operational efficiency and reliability, and facilitate the growth of clean energy generation in the grid.
 
The Grainger Foundation Frontiers of Engineering is an NAE program that brings together highly accomplished early-career engineers from industry, academia, and government to discuss pioneering technical work and leading-edge research in various engineering fields and industry sectors. 
 
“The Grainger Foundation Frontiers of Engineering program facilitates interactions and exchange of techniques and approaches across fields and encourages networking among the next generation of engineering leaders,” Anderson noted. “Our nation’s emerging engineering leaders benefit greatly through participation in Frontiers of Engineering, and we are grateful to The Grainger Foundation for ensuring that future generations will have continued access to this outstanding program.”
 
The Grainger Foundation, an independent, private foundation based in Lake Forest, Illinois, was established in 1949 by William W. Grainger, founder of W.W. Grainger Inc.
 
Founded in 1964, the U.S. National Academy of Engineering is a private, independent, nonprofit institution that provides engineering leadership in service to the nation. Its mission is to advance the welfare and prosperity of the nation by providing independent advice on matters involving engineering and technology, and by promoting a vibrant engineering profession and public appreciation of engineering.
Sabrina Steinberg
Contact Sabrina Steinberg
Communications/Media Specialist
National Academy of Engineering
Phone202.334.2622
SSteinberg@nae.edu
Vernon K. Dunn, Jr.
Contact Vernon K. Dunn, Jr.
Director, The Grainger Foundation Frontiers of Engineering
National Academy of Engineering
Phone202.334.2344
vdunn@nae.edu