German is one of only about 100 engineers nationally invited to the two-day symposium, which is sponsored by the National Academy of Engineering (NAE).

The annual event gives rising stars within various fields of engineering a rare opportunity to make cross-disciplinary and cross-professional connections and to promote the transfer of new techniques and approaches that promise to build US innovative capacity.

This year's FOE event was coordinated by NAE member and GT-AE professor Robert Braunand will feature four formal sessions: Cybersecurity and Privacy; Forecasting National Disasters; Optical and Mechanical Metamaterials; and Engineering the Search for Earth-like Exoplanets. The final of these presentations will be co-chaired by GT-AE assistant professor Mitchell Walker, himself, a 2014 FOE invitee.

"All of these areas are fascinating to me," said German, whose research focuses on multidisciplinary design, multi-objective optimization, and decision methods applied to air vehicle design and systems engineering.

"I'm particularly intrigued by the cyber-security component, because it intersects with my work, looking at electrically powered aircraft and automated systems. If you have a system whose architecture is electrically based, and there are computers running different systems, you have to protect against the possibility that it will be hacked."

An invitation to the USFOE symposium is considered a true honor by rising talents in the profession. The annual meeting recognizes exceptional engineering research and technical work among engineers ages 30 to 45. The participants -- from industry, academia, and government -- are nominated by fellow engineers or organizations. In addition to professors German, Walker and Braun, GT-ME professor Anna Erickson and GT College of Computing professor Richard Vuduc have also been invited to attend the fall meeting.