Grand Challenges For Engineering

Engineering Grand Challenge-s of the 21st century. As defined by the NAE (National Academy Of Engineering Trade Guild).

  • here's their list of the biggest engineering achievements of the 20th century. NuclearTechnologies?

Reminds me a little of the Copenhagen Consensus.

http://www.engineeringchallenges.org/

List (2011, still there 2018) - in which can software Eat People? use Open Innovation?

Advance Personalized Learning: 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. Given the diversity of individual preferences, and the complexity of each human brain, developing teaching methods that optimize learning will require engineering solutions of the future.

Make Solar Energy Economical: Currently, solar energy provides less than 1 percent of the world's total energy, but it has the potential to provide much, much more.

Enhance Virtual Reality: 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.

Reverse-Engineer the Brain: A lot of research has been focused on creating thinking machines—computers capable of emulating human intelligence— however, reverse-engineering the brain could have multiple impacts that go far beyond artificial intelligence and will promise great advances in health care, manufacturing, and communication.

Engineer Better Medicines: Engineering can enable the development of new systems to use genetic information, sense small changes in the body, assess new drugs, and deliver vaccines to provide health care directly tailored to each person.

Advance Health Informatics: As computers have become available for all aspects of human endeavors, there is now a consensus that a systematic approach to health informatics - the acquisition, management, and use of information in health - can greatly enhance the quality and efficiency of medical care and the response to widespread public health emergencies. (EHealth)

Restore and Improve Urban Infrastructure: Infrastructure is the combination of fundamental systems that support a community, region, or country. Society faces the formidable challenge of modernizing the fundamental structures that will support our civilization in centuries ahead

Secure Cyberspace: Computer systems are involved in the management of almost all areas of our lives; from electronic communications, and data systems, to controlling traffic lights to routing airplanes. It is clear that engineering needs to develop innovations for addressing a long list of cybersecurity priorities

Provide Access to Clean Water: The world's water supplies are facing new threats; affordable, advanced technologies could make a difference for millions of people around the world.

Provide Energy from Fusion: Human-engineered nuclear fusion has been demonstrated on a small scale. The challenge is to scale up the process to commercial proportions, in an efficient, economical, and environmentally benign way.

Prevent Nuclear Terror: The need for technologies to prevent and respond to a nuclear weapon attack is growing.

Manage the Nitrogen Cycle: Engineers can help restore balance to the nitrogen cycle with better fertilization technologies and by capturing and recycling waste.

Develop Carbon Sequestration Methods: Engineers are working on ways to capture and store excess carbon dioxide to prevent global warming

Engineer the Tools of Scientific Discovery: In the century ahead, engineers will continue to be partners with scientists in the great quest for understanding many unanswered questions of nature.


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