Associate Professor
Associate Professor Jia “Peter” Liu, Ph.D., has been selected to participate in the National Academy of Engineering’s Grainger Foundation Frontiers of Engineering 2026 Symposium this fall.
“As an attendee, I am excited to engage with frontier advances at the intersection of AI, hypersonics and advanced manufacturing to help shape the next generation of engineering systems,” said Liu, the Trey Lauderdale Industrial and Systems Engineering Fellow in the University of Florida’s Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering.
Each year, the academy, known as NAE, invites engineers from all disciplines nationwide who are conducting innovative research. This year’s event will feature 74 highly accomplished engineers who will collaborate, share techniques and strengthen networks to help the next generation of engineers.
“Engineering has always been a force for progress, but its role is becoming even more vital as society faces increasingly complex and interconnected challenges,” said NAE President Tsu-Jae Liu. “The NAE aims to strengthen engineering leadership to benefit the nation and improve lives by advancing excellence, fostering collaboration across sectors and disciplines, and preparing engineers to lead with creativity, rigor, and purpose.”
The 2026 Frontiers of Engineering, or FOE, symposium’s four themes will be Innovation in Bioengineered Materials, Computing Challenges for Artificial Intelligence, Agriculture as a System-of-Systems: From Molecules to Markets and Hypersonics.
Liu’s selection to attend the symposium reflects his excellence in research and his work developing physics-informed, AI-driven frameworks for certifying additively manufactured, defense-critical components operating in extreme environments. Participants were selected from nominations submitted by fellow engineers; they represent leaders across academia, government and industry.
“I am especially motivated to exchange ideas with a diverse cohort of participants and NAE members,” said Liu, “I hope to draw inspiration to solve pressing regional and societal challenges, such as citrus greening disease in Florida, hazard monitoring and prediction. The cross-disciplinary perspectives at FOE offer a valuable opportunity to reframe these problems and identify novel, scalable solutions.”
Liu joins more than 6,000 early-career engineers who have been attending the NAE symposium since 1995. This year’s Grainger Foundation Frontiers of Engineering 2026 Symposium will take place in September at the University of Texas at Austin in conjunction with Advanced Micro Devices.