Heinz College Professor Selected for Engineering Symposium

Release Date: Jun 25, 2009

Michael D. Smith, associate professor of information technology and marketing at H. John Heinz III College, has been selected to participate in the National Academy of Engineering's (NAE) 15th 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 event. The 88 participants — from industry, academia, and government — were nominated by fellow engineers or organizations and chosen from approximately 240 applicants.

"In today’s challenging economic times, we look more than ever toward our engineering innovators," said NAE President Charles M. Vest. "The U.S. Frontiers of Engineering program brings together a diverse group of this country's most promising young engineers, and gives them a forum to discuss multi-disciplinary ways of addressing the issues that will carry us into tomorrow's economy."

The symposium will be held Sept. 10-12 at the National Academies' Beckman Center at the University of California, Irvine, and will examine engineering tools for scientific discovery; engineering the health care delivery system; nano/micro photonics and new applications; and resilient and sustainable infrastructures. A featured speaker will be Bradford W. Parkinson, Edward C. Wells Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics Emeritus at Stanford University. Parkinson is credited with being the father of the Global Positioning System and is a recipient of the prestigious Draper Prize and a member of the NAE.

Smith received his Bachelors of Science in Electrical Engineering (summa cum laude) and his Masters of Science in Telecommunications Science from the University of Maryland, and received his Ph.D. in Management Science and Information Technology from the Sloan School of Management at MIT. He is on the editorial board of three leading journals and has served as the co-chair of the Workshop on Information Systems and Economics.

Prior to receiving his Ph.D., Dr. Smith worked extensively in the telecommunications and information systems industries, first with GTE in their laboratories, telecommunications, and satellite business units and subsequently with Booz Allen and Hamilton as a member of their telecommunications client service team. While with GTE, Dr. Smith was awarded a patent for research applying fuzzy logic and artificial intelligence techniques to the design and operation of telecommunications networks.

Smith has received the prestigious National Science Foundation CAREER award for his research into designing efficient information exchanges. He has also received research awards from the Networks, Electronic Commerce, and Telecommunications Institute, the Marketing Science Institute, the Carnegie Bosch Institute, and Amazon.com.

Smith is also a researcher for i-LAB, Heinz College's inter-disciplinary research center.

Read more about:

• Michael D. Smith.
• Heinz College's School of Information Systems and Management.
• NAE's 15th Annual U.S. Frontiers of Engineering symposium.

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