Engineering professional societies in the United States are engaged in a wide range of activities involving undergraduate education. However, these activities generally are not coordinated and have not been assessed in such a way that information about their procedures and outcomes can be shared. Nor have they been assessed to determine whether they are optimally configured to mesh with corresponding initiatives undertaken by industry and academia. Engineering societies work largely independently on undergraduate education, leaving open the question of how much more effective their efforts could be if they worked more collaboratively--with each other as well as with academia and industry. To explore the potential for enhancing societies' role at the undergraduate level, the National Academy of Engineering held a workshop on the engagement of engineering societies in undergraduate engineering education. This publication summarizes the presentations and discussions from the workshop--Publishers website.

This report describes the work of the Committee on Proposal Evaluation for Allocation of Supercomputing Time for the Study of Molecular Dynamics, Eighth Round. The committee evaluated submissions received in response to a Request for Proposals (RFP) for biomolecular simulation time on Anton 2, a supercomputer specially designed and built by D.E. Shaw Research (DESRES). Over the past five years, DESRES has made an Anton or Anton 2 system housed at the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center (PSC) available to the non-commercial research community, based on the advice of previous National Research Council committees. As in prior rounds, the goal of the eighth RFP for simulation time on Anton 2 is to continue to facilitate breakthrough research in the study of biomolecular systems by providing a massively parallel system specially designed for molecular dynamics simulations. The program seeks to continue to support research that addresses important and high impact questions demonstrating a clear need for Anton's special capabilities. Report of the Committee on Proposal Evaluation for Allocation of Supercomputing Time for the Study of Molecular Dynamics, Eighth Round is the report of the committee's evaluation of proposals based on scientific merit, justification for requested time allocation, and investigator qualifications and past accomplishments. This report identifies the proposals that best met the selection criteria.

Fusion offers the prospect of virtually unlimited energy. The United States and many nations around the world have made enormous progress toward achieving fusion energy. With ITER scheduled to go online within a decade and demonstrate controlled fusion ten years later, now is the right time for the United States to develop plans to benefit from its investment in burning plasma research and take steps to develop fusion electricity for the nation's future energy needs. At the request of the Department of Energy, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine organized a committee to develop a strategic plan for U.S. fusion research. The final report's two main recommendations are: (1) The United States should remain an ITER partner as the most cost-effective way to gain experience with a burning plasma at the scale of a power plant. (2) The United States should start a national program of accompanying research and technology leading to the construction of a compact pilot plant that produces electricity from fusion at the lowest possible capital cost.