To address the pressing global grand challenges society faces in the 21st century, there is a critical need to inspire and educate the next generation of engineers. The synergy between the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) Grand Challenges for Engineering, the UN Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDG’s), Peace Engineering and other Grand Challenge-like themes offers a great opportunity to address these challenges by inspiring innovations and to contribute to capacity building around the world.
The presentation describes the NAE Grand Challenges for Engineering and the NAE Grand Challenges Scholars Program (GCSP) and suggests avenues for meaningful collaborations between initiatives that are all focused on making the world better through engineering.
NAE Grand Challenges for Engineering—announced in 2008—is a cross-disciplinary initiative whose vision is the “Continuation of life on the planet, making our world more sustainable, healthy, secure and joyful.” They have captured the imagination of the global engineering community and inspired widespread support for engineering to better our world.
This effort has two components – “Innovation” and “Talent Building”. The Talent-Building piece, GCSP, provides a model to prepare the workforce to be effective in providing global engineering solutions. The GCSP focuses on experiential learning to inculcate in students’ five critical competencies, namely, research/creative project experience, multidisciplinary training, business/entrepreneurial mindset, global/multicultural understanding and social consciousness so that they are ready to be the engineering leaders of the 21st century. The GCSP is designed to ensure that there is coherence and connectivity across the five competencies under a chosen Grand Challenge theme and that the program elements are driven by the power of the idea of the 21st-century engineer with flexibility afforded to institutions for execution.
Now is the time is to forge partnerships that focus on vitally important global responsibilities of engineers and to mobilize the community to create collaborations to become more effective in building the talent that will deliver real products and services of benefit to society.
Speaker // Bindiganavale Ramakrishna
US National Academy of Engineering
Dr. Ramakrishna received his Ph.D. in solid-state science from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, in 1982 and joined the faculty at Arizona State University in 1985. From 2011–16 he was the Diane and Gary Tooker Professor of Materials Science and Engineering and a member of the humanitarian engineering faculty until his transition to emeritus professor in 2016. He is dedicated to preparing engineers that have not only the necessary technical skills but also the cross-disciplinary knowledge, entrepreneurial spirit, global perspective, and sense of mission needed to meet the challenges facing humankind in the 21st century.
In 2013-14, he was awarded the Jefferson Science Fellowship to serve as a senior science and technology advisor to the Office of the Secretary of State. As part of his responsibilities, he helped guide US international relations through the lens of “engineering for sustainable development” and provided intellectual, technical, and strategic leadership on policies and priorities.
Since January 2017, he has been at the National Academy of Engineering in Washington D.C. as the Director of the Grand Challenges Scholars Program Network. His main responsibilities are to broaden and deepen the impact of the program across the US and around the world by forging vibrant partnerships between universities, professional societies, industry, civil society and governments.