Grand Challenges for Engineering
Posted on February 19, 2008 Comments (1)
Here are the Grand Challenges for engineering as determined by a committee of the National Academy of Engineering:
* Make solar energy economical
* Provide energy from fusion
* Develop carbon sequestration methods
* Manage the nitrogen cycle
* Provide access to clean water
* Restore and improve urban infrastructure
* Advance health informatics
* Engineer better medicines
* Reverse-engineer the brain
* Prevent nuclear terror
* Secure cyberspace
* Enhance virtual reality
* Advance personalized learning
* Engineer the tools of scientific discovery
Committee members included: J. Craig Venter, President, The J. Craig Venter Institute; Dean Kamen, Founder and President, DEKA Research and Development Corp; Raymond Kurzweil, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Kurzweil Technologies, Inc and Larry Page, Co-Founder and President of Products, Google, Inc.
The web site (which by the way fails to even display the text on many pages without javascript – phb design) goes into more details on each challenge and will chronicle the ideas the public shares based on the challenges.
Related: Grainger Challenge Prize for Sustainability – Civil Engineering Challenges – Water and Electricity for All – Extreme Engineering
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February 20th, 2008 @ 11:32 am
“Make solar energy economical” I completely agree. Solar energy is a great commodity, however it is pretty pricey. It is sort of like the bittersweet situation of healthy food, its good for you, but costs more. I guess we all must weight out the pros and cons of every decision we make before making a decision, or we should at least. Personally, I believe that my health and the environment is more important than money. I’ll be investigating solar panels when I get out of college :).