The German-American Frontiers of Engineering Symposium, hosted by the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory, emphasized the importance of building relationships across national boundaries to tackle the world's toughest engineering problems.
Sixty early-career researchers from the United States and Germany were invited to attend the prestigious four-day event, "A Digitally Connected World," at ORNL in March.
Organized by the U.S. National Academy of Engineering, or NAE, the Grainger Foundation and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, the symposium alternates each meeting between a German and a U.S. location to build collaborative research networks among early-career engineers from industry, universities and other research institutions.
At a fireside chat during the event, leaders from ORNL, NAE and the Humboldt Foundation celebrated the potential benefits of such research communities. "I mourned the death of library card catalogs because there was that chance, as you were thumbing through the cards, that you'd find something really cool that you'd never thought of before," said ORNL Director Stephen Streiffer. "I think one of the real benefits of bringing people together is you have these side conversations that provide similar opportunities for unexpected discovery."
Streiffer and Al Romig, NAE member and executive officer, shared their personal experiences of being student-scientists conducting research internationally. Romig recalled being at Y-12 National Security Complex, a sister facility to ORNL, when the Berlin Wall came down. He said the United States, Germany and other nations need to work together to solve today's technological challenges.
"When you're talking about engineering or applied science, those things, for the most part, are team sports," Romig said. "There are issues around food, water, energy, climate, the proliferation of nuclear technology and the list goes on. What's important is that people, countries and institutions work together globally to solve these problems."
As host, ORNL treated symposium participants to facility tours of the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility, the Spallation Neutron Source, the National Transportation Research Center and the Manufacturing Demonstration Facility, as well as panel talks and technical discussions on topics ranging from additive manufacturing to artificial intelligence and digital learning.
"ORNL is committed to developing exceptional tools in science and engineering to change our lives," said ORNL's Kathy McCarthy at the opening of the symposium. An NAE member, McCarthy is the director of the US ITER project, which delivers U.S. contributions to the international ITER fusion project under assembly in France.
"Engaging in international collaboration is one of the major factors that attracted me to the fusion field," she said, encouraging early-career engineers to "say yes to adventure."
Proceeding to technical topics, Amy Elliott, group leader for System Automation and Monitoring Research, led a discussion of the advantages offered by additive manufacturing for complex, custom parts. Eliminating the need for expensive assembly lines saves energy, lead time and reliability while streamlining supply chains and improving performance design.
Michael Kirka, who leads ORNL's Deposition Science and Technology group, shared advances in the additive manufacturing of refractory metals that can withstand extremely high temperatures - a vital capability for next-generation energy applications such as gas turbine engines or fission and fusion reactors. Manufacturing tungsten tiles to line the reactor walls of fusion reactors like ITER is particularly challenging due to tungsten's high melting point and extreme hardness - qualities that also make it ideal for such environments. To address this, ORNL researchers are using powder bed printing, a process that employs an electron beam or laser to melt metal powder into a desired form. By precisely heating and cooling each layer, they can control the crystal structure of the material, enabling the use of heat-resistant alloys that are typically prone to cracking or weakness.
Despite these advances, sourcing suitable metal powders remains a challenge. One engineer raised the question of whether innovation is needed in feedstock production. "At ORNL, we are currently standing up the capability to turn critical elements into metal powder for additive manufacturing, creating feedstock to make prototype parts," Kirka said. ORNL will soon become the first American research facility capable of producing new alloy powders from metals such as tungsten and niobium at pilot-scale quantities - helping to derisk the transition of these refractory alloys for broader industrial use.
At a later panel, Curtis Taylor of ORNL's Cyber Sensing and Analytics group discussed the limitations of using large language models such as ChatGPT in manufacturing and industrial control systems. He noted that while asking these models for solutions could reduce operation costs and risks, they remain unreliable for a variety of reasons, including their difficulties in understanding images and diagrams. His own tests have shown important details are often "thrown out" by the models.
When it comes to cybersecurity, the information provided is not well-tailored to different users, and the questions themselves can reveal information that could be used to target cyberattacks. "Open-source AI solutions are great, but they lack the finesse that is needed," he said. "There's an opportunity now to build the right tools, but we're not there yet with cyber."
Other ORNL speakers included David Sholl, executive director of the University of Tennessee-Oak Ridge Innovation Institute and NAE member, who delivered a dinner presentation on March 26 called, "How to Have Outrageously Good Ideas." ORNL's Ross Wang, NAE early-career co-chair, also led a session and a tour of NTRC's Connected and Automated Vehicle Environment Laboratory.
UT-Battelle manages ORNL for the Department of Energy's Office of Science, the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States. The Office of Science is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit energy.gov/science . - S. Heather Duncan and Leslie Mullen
