Assistant Professor Cristina Riso has been selected for the National Academy of Engineering's Grainger Foundation Frontiers of Engineering 2026 Symposium, recognizing outstanding early-career engineers and fostering interdisciplinary collaboration.
Cristina Riso, assistant professor in the Daniel Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering, has been selected for the National Academy of Engineering's (NAE) Grainger Foundation Frontiers of Engineering (FOE) Symposium, which brings together the nation's most accomplished early-career engineers.
Participants were selected through a competitive process recognizing engineers who have demonstrated exceptional technical achievement and leadership early in their careers.
Riso is one of four Georgia Tech faculty members selected for this year’s symposium, joining Divya Mahajan, Anirban Mazumdar, and Andrew J. Medford.
The 2026 symposium will be hosted by Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) and the University of Texas at Austin in September.
Approximately 100 outstanding engineers from academia, industry, and government laboratories will convene to explore emerging technologies, exchange ideas across disciplines, and build collaborations that advance the nation's innovation ecosystem.
The symposium will feature discussions on four cutting-edge topics: innovation in bioengineered materials, compute challenges for artificial intelligence, agriculture as a system-of-systems, and hypersonics.
Since joining Georgia Tech in 2022, Riso has established the Structural Dynamics Aeroelasticity Research Laboratory focused on investigating the interactions between aerodynamic, inertial, and elastic loads in next-generation aerospace vehicles.
Her research advances the understanding and prediction of aeroelastic phenomena in fixed-wing and vertical-lift aircraft, with an emphasis on flutter instabilities. Her work aims to support the design of safer, faster, and more efficient air vehicle configurations.
"I am honored to represent Georgia Tech at the Frontiers of Engineering Symposium," said Riso. "This event is a unique opportunity to connect with early-career engineers from other disciplines, which I hope will lead to new collaborations. I am particularly interested in discussions around the cutting-edge topics of AI compute challenges and hypersonics, which are highly relevant to our work on aeroelastic modeling, analysis, and simulation.”
Prior to her selection for the 2026 U.S. FOE Symposium, Riso’s research contributions in aeroelasticity have been recognized with multiple honors and awards, including a Ralph E. Powe Junior Faculty Enhancement Award from Oak Ridge Associated Universities, an invited keynote lecture at the International Forum on Aeroelasticity and Structural Dynamics, and a Boeing Visiting Professorship.
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