SWE - Winter 2009 - (Page 22) SWE Members Engineer the Grand Challenges How are SWE members involved in these grand challenges? What are their thoughts about their work in the context of the grand challenges? What advances do they see in the foreseeable future for their fields? BY CHARLOTTE THOMAS, SWE CONTRIBUTOR This is the second article of a two-part series covering the National Academy of Engineering’s Grand Challenges for Engineering. The first article appeared in the 2008 Conference Issue of SWE Magazine. A panel of 18 experts from widely differing fields chose 14 challenges for engineering covering four main areas of concern for our world: sustainability, vulnerability, health, and joy of living. The National Academy of Engineering’s list of 14 grand challenges for engineers in the 21st century is unquestionably grand. Effectively managing the nitrogen cycle or securing cyberspace are monumental problems. Some of the challenges seem unsolvable. Reflect on the challenge to restore our urban infrastructure when you read about bridges collapsing or Third World children stricken with diseases because of unclean water. Engineers and politicians have been trying to resolve these two problems for years. However, the panel that chose these grand challenges was realistic. Rather than selecting “gee whiz” challenges, the 18 experts focused on practical goals that concern human existence: sustainability, health, vulnerability, and joy of living. The solutions might take decades, but the NAE panel fully expects that engineers can fix them. It is a challenge to all engineers to “put knowledge into practice to meet these grand challenges,” notes the NAE Web site. Visitors journey deep inside a virtual plant cell in the C6, a six-sided, 100 million pixel immersive virtual reality environment, located at Iowa State University's Virtual Reality Applications Center. (Development of the Virtual Cell Meta!Blast application is partially funded by the National Science Foundation and ISU's College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.) 22 SWE WINTER 2009
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