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Twentieth-century engineering enabled life as we know it. The National Academy of Engineering looks at what is needed in the future.
It may be impossible for people living in industrial nations to reflect on the 20th century without considering the staggering innovations brought about by engineers and scientists. Even a top-of-the-head selection might include revolutionary achievements such as automobiles, aircraft, antibiotics, radios, rockets, jet engines, genetic engineering, computers, television, and the Internet. Technological capacity and acumen have bred more technology, with advances in some areas progressing almost exponentially.
But the achievements of technology and the engineered world have had a darker side; they've created a new landscape with serious, new challenges, and a need for even more engineering solutions. Consider the problems posed by the depletion of energy resources, the developing effects of global environmental shifts, looming security and terrorist treats, or the emergence of drugresistant pathogens - to name a few.
With so many urgent problems to solve, the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) convened a panel of accomplished and innovative experts in a variety of disciplines to reflect on the great challenges for the 21st century, and how they might be solved by engineering, science and medicine.
The result is a list of 14 Grand Challenges for Engineering "do-able" engineering undertakings that have the most potential for profound and positive impacts on civilization. The Grand Challenges were unveiled at a Feb. 15, 2008, press conference, held in connection with the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Boston, MA.
At the press conference, William Perry, chair of the Grand Challenges committee and a former U.S. Secretary of Defense, said that the panel looked at more than just the "legacy problems" created by the progress of the 19th and 20th centuries. "We focused on not only what could be invented, but what needed to be invented," he said.
NAE President Charles M. Vest conveyed the same urgency. "Some of the challenges," he said, "are imperative to our survival on the planet; some will make us more secure against both human and natural threats; and all would improve the quality of life in our nation and world."
To engage engineers and the publicat-large in the Grand Challenges discussion,...