Seventy-eight of the nation's brightest young engineers have been selected to take part in the National Academy of Engineering's (NAE) 18th annual 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 were nominated by fellow engineers or organizations and chosen from approximately 300 applicants.

Matthias Yui-Hong Tan, Yaohua P. Tan, and Parijat Sengupta are Nanoelectronic Modeling (NEMO) students and are advised by Professor Gerhard Klimeck.

James Moore and Xufeng Wang are advised by Professor Mark Lundstrom, while Biswajit Ray and Sourabh Dongaonkar are advised by Professor Muhammad A. Alam.

The theme of TEDxPurdueU 2012 was "...innovation." The speakers selected were Purdue students, alumni, and faculty whose stories shed unique light on various aspects of the creative process from idea conception to reality.

Researchers have proposed a method to automatically detect a new class of software glitches in smartphones called "no-sleep energy bugs," which can entirely drain batteries while the phones are not in use.

U.S. researchers are perfecting simulations that show a nuclear weapon's performance in precise molecular detail, tools that are becoming critical for national defense because international treaties forbid the detonation of nuclear test weapons.

Researchers are edging toward the creation of new optical technologies using "nanostructured metamaterials" capable of ultra-efficient transmission of light, with potential applications including advanced solar cells and quantum computing.

Purdue researchers have taken a step toward overcoming a key obstacle in commercializing "hyperbolic metamaterials," structures that could bring optical advances including ultrapowerful microscopes, computers and solar cells.

The Materials Genome Initiative is an ambitious challenge to double the speed and cut the cost of discovering, developing, and deploying new high-tech materials in the United States.

ECE researchers have created an ultrasensitive biosensor that could open up new opportunities for early detection of cancer and "personalized medicine" tailored to the specific biochemistry of individual patients.