​
What is it?
With input from people around the world, an international group of leading technological thinkers were asked to identify the Grand Challenges for Engineering in the 21st century. Their 14 game-changing goals for improving life on the planet, announced in 2008, are outlined here. The committee suggested these Grand Challenges fall into four cross-cutting themes: SUSTAINABILITY, HEALTH, SECURITY, and JOY OF LIVING.
​
What are the Challenges?
"In recent years, a growing appreciation of individual preferences and aptitudes has led toward more “personalized learning,” in which instruction is tailored to a student’s individual needs. Personal learning approaches range from modules that students can master at their own pace to computer programs designed to match the way it presents content with a learner’s personality."
"For a long-term, sustainable energy source, solar power offers an attractive alternative. Its availability far exceeds any conceivable future energy demands. It is environmentally clean, and its energy is transmitted from the sun to the Earth free of charge. But exploiting the sun’s power is not without challenges. Overcoming the barriers to widespread solar power generation will require engineering innovations in several arenas — for capturing the sun’s energy, converting it to useful forms, and storing it for use when the sun itself is obscured."
"But within many specialized fields, from psychiatry to education, virtual reality is becoming a powerful new tool for training practitioners and treating patients, in addition to its growing use in various forms of entertainment. Virtual reality is already being used in industrial design, for example. Engineers are creating entire cars and airplanes "virtually" in order to test design principles, ergonomics, safety schemes, access for maintenance, and more."
"Figuring out how the brain works will offer rewards beyond building smarter computers. Advances gained from studying the brain may in return pay dividends for the brain itself. Understanding its methods will enable engineers to simulate its activities, leading to deeper insights about how and why the brain works and fails. Such simulations will offer more precise methods for testing potential biotechnology solutions to brain disorders, such as drugs or neural implants."
Engineering can be used to better the systems and processes through which we analyze and create medicine. By refining our methods of manufacture, research, and analysis, we can ultimately create medicine that is tailored towards the individual, and is more effective for each person.
Engineering can be used to better the systems and processes through which we analyze and create medicine. By refining our methods of manufacture, research, and analysis, we can ultimately create medicine that is tailored towards the individual, and is more effective for each person.
"Infrastructure is the combination of fundamental systems that support a community, region, or country. It includes everything from water and sewer systems to road and rail networks to the national power and natural gas grids. Perhaps there will be a hydrogen grid in the future as well."
"It is clear that engineering needs to develop innovations for addressing a long list of cybersecurity priorities. For one, better approaches are needed to authenticate hardware, software, and data in computer systems and to verify user identities. Biometric technologies, such as fingerprint readers, may be one step in that direction."
With the worlds usage of water increasing at a rapid rate alongside large population increase, we must continue to be mindful about the ways in which we utilize water. While clean water is in abundance in totality, it is often not located where people need it most. That being said, it is imperative that we find efficient ways to provide large groups of people with clean water
"Fusion is the energy source for the sun. To be sure, producing power from fusion here on Earth is much more challenging than in the sun. There, enormous heat and gravitational pressure compress the nuclei of certain atoms into heavier nuclei, releasing energy. The single proton nuclei of two hydrogen isotopes, for example, are fused together to create the heavier nucleus of helium and a neutron. In that conversion, a tiny amount of mass is lost, transformed into energy as quantified by Einstein’s famous equation, E=mc2."
"From the beginnings of the nuclear age, the materials suitable for making a weapon have been accumulating around the world. Even some actual bombs may not be adequately secure against theft or sale in certain countries. Nuclear reactors for research or power are scattered about the globe, capable of producing the raw material for nuclear devices. And the instructions for building explosive devices from such materials have been widely published, suggesting that access to the ingredients would make a bomb a realistic possibility."
"The nitrogen cycle reflects a more intimate side of energy needs, via its central role in the production of food. It is one of the places where the chemistry of the Earth and life come together, as plants extract nitrogen from their environment, including the air, to make food. Controlling the impact of agriculture on the global cycle of nitrogen is a growing challenge for sustainable development."
"Carbon sequestration is capturing the carbon dioxide produced by burning fossil fuels and storing it safely away from the atmosphere."
Looking forward, engineers and scientists will need to continue to innovate and create together as a collective unit to better understand the world we live. No person in any particular field can achieve scientific discovery alone, and the engineers involvement is very important in this challenge!
