Engineering has played a pivotal role in advancing society. Yet, we are in a century that will have some of our biggest challenges. The goal of creating a sustainable civilization and improving the quality of life for everyone is immense and urgent. Despite all of our progress, we are still vulnerable to pandemic diseases, terrorism and natural disasters.
The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) has identified four broad realms that engineering must focus on to ensure the progress of humanity: sustainability, health, vulnerability and the joy of living. They believe that engineering can tackle these grand challenges and pave the way to a better future.
With these challenges in mind, the NAE created the Grand Challenges Scholars Program (GCSP). The goal of the program is to give students the tools they need to tackle these challenges. More than 40 engineering schools in the United States, and many more across the globe, have implemented the program.
The GCSP combines curricular, co-curricular and extra-curricular activities to train students. The focus is for students to develop competencies in five key areas: talent (via mentorships), multidisciplinary, entrepreneurship, multiculturalism and social consciousness. The program is outcomes-based, which gives participating engineering schools flexibility in how they offer relevant experiences to students.
Sustainability
The NAE has further broken these grand challenges into 14 goals. Some of the most pressing challenges are around sustainability, which needs to be solved to ensure the future itself. The Earth has finite resources, yet our population continues to grow, and we continue to consume resources at an unsustainable rate.
There are five goals to reaching sustainability. One goal is to make solar energy more economical to help us transition to environmentally friendly energy. Only 1 percent of our current energy is from solar power. We need to see that number grow. To meet our energy demands, we also need to look at different energy sources. A long-term energy goal is to make nuclear fusion technologically and environmentally feasible.
As we work toward better energy sources, we also must deal with the consequences of current and past dependence on fossil fuels. Fossil fuels are expected to be used for the foreseeable future. This means that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases will continue to be an enormous threat to the planet. Thus, an important engineering goal is to discover new ways to capture and sequester carbon.
Although the effects of carbon are well-publicized, the nitrogen cycle has also become disrupted due to human activity. Fertilizers and high-temperature industrial combustion have doubled the rate of nitrogen removal from the air when compared to pre-industrial times. Disrupting the nitrogen cycle has contributed to smog, acid rain and polluted water and has furthered global warming. Engineers need to set their sights on fixing the nitrogen cycle while supporting agricultural producers to ensure food security.
The final sustainability goal is to ensure access to clean water. This goal spans sustainability and improved health outcomes. Access to clean water is a basic need for all humans. Advances in technology need to ensure that we meet this basic goal.
Thanks to the GCSP, students such as Sara Anis, are already developing technology to ensure cheap access to clean drinking water. She is a student at the University of Rochester and is enrolled in biomedical engineering at the Hajim School of Engineering & Applied Sciences. Through the GCSP program, she had the opportunity to work on a team that developed a filter using hollow fiber membrane technology that will give millions of people in Pakistan access to clean water.
Health
Within the health domain, there are three important goals. The first is to create better medicines. Our access to genetic information has opened the door to personalized healthcare that is tailored to the needs of an individual, but the technology to make this a health practice is still developing.
Our improvements in the health sector have also given us more access to data than ever before. An important engineering health goal is to advance health informatics. This goal requires developing a systematic approach to the acquisition, management and use of health information. Improved access to health information can impact local, national, international and global public health emergencies.
The final health goal is to reverse engineer the brain. This goal goes beyond applying the findings to artificial intelligence. NAE expects a better understanding of the brain to open up currently unimaginable advances in health care, manufacturing and communication.
For example, Hector Garcia, a student at Texas A&M University is reverse engineering the brain to advance the rehabilitation of stroke patients. He is working with the Laboratory for Control, Robotics and Automation to develop a limb exoskeleton. The goal is to create a device that can be trained to assist stroke patients who have lost mobility in an arm.
Security
Security is a growing global concern. NAE has identified several important security goals. The goal of preventing nuclear terror has been an important global goal since the development of the technology, and it is one of NAE's security goals. It includes preventing and responding to nuclear threats.
An emerging national threat is cyberattacks. As we become more dependent on the advances technology affords, the security of these systems has grown in importance. The next generation of engineers will need to develop new innovations to address our already long list of cybersecurity priorities.
A perhaps less recognized security goal is the restoration and improvement of urban infrastructure. Urban infrastructure is a fundamental support of our modern world. There are formidable challenges to modernizing these systems to support communities for the centuries ahead.
Many of the projects can make improvements toward multiple goals. The project Hilary Chaimov is working on at Oregon State University exemplifies this. The grand challenge she is tackling is urban infrastructure, but it will also advance sustainability goals. She is evaluating the amounts of CO2 that different concrete mixtures emit.
“The only way to restore and renew our urban infrastructure in a sustainable way is to ensure that the materials we are using are the best and most sustainable they can be,” she explained in a GCSP in spotlight series. “This research allows me to look at the sustainability of concrete and to keep pushing for a more sustainable mix.”
Joy of Living
We have many great technological challenges, but we must not lose sight of perhaps the most important goal of humanity, which is to enjoy our lives. Regarding this goal, NAE has identified three areas that should be concentrated on. The first is enhancing virtual reality (VR). VR is a tool that has the potential to improve many domains, but its development and growing use is currently strongly linked to entertainment.
Entertainment should not be seen as frivolous. It has the potential to teach students many lessons. Miles Mabey, who was part of GCSP at Arizona State University, built a 5-foot Nerf tank for a campus event. This fun project increased his skills in robotics and helped him discover his passion for entrepreneurship. He has already worked toward one startup in robotics, and we should expect to see more from him in the future.
A long-lauded goal of humanity has been to live a life of scholarly pursuit. The goal of advancing personalized learning can open more educational avenues for a diversity of people. Every student learns differently and has different instructional needs. Personalized education promises to account for the complexity of each human brain. We need engineers to develop new technologies that can optimize diverse learning environments.
The final goal is core to many engineering projects and passions. It is the goal of scientific discovery. There are and will continue to be many unanswered questions that inspire our curiosity. Engineers will always have a place furthering the frontiers of our knowledge and reality.
The progress we have made in the field of engineering has already made the world better understood, more connected and more inclusive, but the work is not done. The current challenges may be some of the toughest we have faced. We now have global threats that risk our very existence as a species. We must eliminate the gaps between the wealthiest and poorest and find our way to a sustainable future. These are not small challenges, so we need to prepare students now for the grand challenges that will surely come.