BLACKSBURG, Va., June 22, 2004 – Amy Bell, of Blacksburg, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering in the College of Engineering at Virginia Tech, has been invited to participate in the National Academy of Engineering's (NAE) 10th Annual Symposium on Frontiers of Engineering, Sept. 9-11 in Irvine, Calif.
The academy has invited 100 engineers from throughout the U.S. — representing academia, industry, and government laboratories — to the symposium. Bell is among a select group of engineers from 30 to 45 years of age nominated and chosen to participate in recognition of their contributions to the advancement of engineering and their potential as future leaders in their fields.
Since joining the Virginia Tech faculty in 1997, Bell has developed a strong research program in the field of signal processing and is director of the university's Digital Signal Processing and Communications Laboratory. Her work has attracted more than $1 million in research funding, including grants from three of the National Science Foundation's most competitive programs — Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER), Professional Opportunities for Women in Research and Education (POWRE), and Information Technology Research (ITR).
Bell and fellow symposium participants will hear presentations from the world's leading engineers and scientists on the topics of engineering for extreme environments, designer materials, multi-scale modeling, and engineering and entertainment.
"Advances in engineering are moving with incredible speed across many facets of the profession," said NAE President William Wulf. "The goal of the Frontiers in Engineering symposium is to bring together outstanding leaders of the engineering developments."
This year's symposium is sponsored by the NAE, ATOFINA, Cummins Inc., Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the U.S. Department of Defense, Eastman Kodak Co., and Microsoft Corp.
Bell received her master's and bachelor's degrees from the University of Pittsburgh and her Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. Her research has been published in a number of prestigious journals, including the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers' Transactions on Image Processing and Transactions on Signal Processing, for which she serves as an associate editor.