German-American Frontiers of Engineering Symposium: Sustainable Futures by Design
10 -13 March 2027 in Karlsruhe, Germany
Building a sustainable future is the defining challenge of our times. This symposium will explore how engineering innovations can drive both environmental sustainability and technological advancements. The symposium will explore the evolving landscape around latest advances in materials discovery, synthetic biology, climate adaptation, and advances in AI that will underpin the pathway towards a more sustainable, equitable, and technologically advanced future.
In particular, the symposium will focus on the following topics:
- Materials discovery and manufacturing for advanced tech and the green economy
- Engineered living systems and synthetic biology
- Climate adaptation engineering and development of resilient infrastructure
- Ensuring safe and equitable implementation of AI in engineering education and practice.
The primary theme to be addressed is: How do Germany, the United States and other international collaborators anticipate, reflect and imagine sustainable futures by engineering design? Moreover, the presentations and discussions will address not only technology but also insights from biology and engineering education.
Questions and issues that will be addressed and discussed include:
- How can we accelerate the discovery, scalability, and adoption of sustainable materials that meet performance demands of advanced technologies, while reducing environmental impact?
- What are the most promising applications of engineered living systems for addressing global challenges in health, agriculture, and sustainability?
- How can engineers design infrastructure systems that can withstand increasingly extreme and dynamic climate conditions?
- What guardrails, standards, and pedagogical approaches are necessary to integrate in to engineering curricula and practice to ensure safety and avoid bias due the rapid integration of AI across systems?
The scientific program of the symposium is designed by an organizing committee comprised of five US and five German researchers. Conference Co-chairs for the GAFOE Symposium 2027 are Professor Matthias Brockmann, FH Münster and Professor Asmeret Asefaw Berhe University of California, Merced.
The German-American Frontiers of Engineering Symposia (GAFOE) are a series of interdisciplinary, binational conferences which are co-organized bi-annually by the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (AvH). Funding on the German side is provided by the Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space.
Each symposium brings together 60 outstanding, early-career and mid-career engineers and scientists from industry, universities, and other research institutions to introduce their areas of research and technical work, thereby facilitating a cross-disciplinary transfer of knowledge and methodology. Participants question and expand the boundaries of their respective disciplines – for example through discussions of current advancements, innovative research and emerging opportunities.
The symposium aims to incentivise and establish international engagement and collaboration between researchers working in Germany and the United States in a broad range of disciplines, thereby encouraging the exchange of ideas across disciplinary and national boundaries. After the symposium, all participants can apply for funding through the follow-up program CONNECT to carry out future joint research activities with participants from the partner country.
This symposium is part of the Frontiers of Research Programme of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. The Foundation regularly convenes bi- and tri-national Frontiers of Research Symposia in cooperation with its partner organisations in Brazil, China, Japan, India, Israel, the United Kingdom and the United States of America.