Creative Young Xerox Engineer Selected To Participate In NAE's 2010 U.S. Frontiers of Engineering Symposium

Eighty-seven of the nation's brightest young engineers have been selected to take part in the National Academy of Engineering's (NAE) 16th 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 2 1/2 day event. The participants — from industry, academia, and government — were nominated by fellow engineers or organizations and chosen from approximately 265 applicants.

Xerox is very proud to have Venkatesh Rao, a member of the Xerox Research Center Webster join an impressive list of participants. His innovative and creative spirit and his long list of accomplishments make him an excellent candidate for this event. Venkat has both a deep engineering technical background, in the area of control systems, and experience in business and software development, which he is combining to create web 2.0 and beyond opportunities for Xerox. His projects involve understanding and advancing the state of the art in the semantic web, and social and collaborative web (web 2.0), as well as rich internet applications. His work entails assessing emerging technology spaces, creating valuable technology options for Xerox, defining new business models, and moving the options towards productization.

Venkat has 20 peer-reviewed publications in journals and conferences, and 5 patent applications in progress. He writes a popular blog at ribbonfarm.com, which has been featured on Slashdot.org, Kottke.org and the New York Times blog. He has also contributed guest pieces to leading industry blogs such as Mashable, VentureBeat and GTDTimes.. Venkat is working hard on Xerox’s open innovation initiatives with the external technical community. He was the recent recipient Rochester Engineering Society’s Kate Gleason Young Engineer of the Year award.

About the U.S. Frontiers of Engineering Program

"As we face the challenges the next century brings, we will rely more than ever on innovative engineers," said NAE president Charles M. Vest. "The US. Frontiers of Engineering Program is an opportunity for a diverse group of this country's most promising young engineers to gather together and discuss multidisciplinary ways of leading us into the economy of tomorrow."

The symposium will be held Sept. 23-25 at the IBM Learning Center in Armonk, N.Y., and will examine cloud computing, autonomous aerospace systems, engineering and music, and engineering inspired by biology. A featured speaker will be Dr. Bernard S. Meyerson, IBM Fellow and Vice President of Innovation.

The National Academy of Engineering is an independent, nonprofit institution that serves as an adviser to government and the public on issues in engineering and technology. Its members consist of the nation's premier engineers, who are elected by their peers for their distinguished achievements. Established in 1964, NAE operates under the congressional charter granted to the National Academy of Sciences in 1863.

A meeting program and more information about Frontiers of Engineering are available at http://www.nae.edu/frontiers