Dean Yannis Yortsos

THE CHALLENGES OF OUR TIMES

At a rather unsuspecting time, a mere one year ago, the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) articulated 14 engineering grand challenges. While financial clouds were still very far in the horizon, these challenges were centered on one key element, societal needs. When the clouds brought the devastating global financial storm in the Fall of 2008, societal needs moved from a somewhat abstract subtext to a brutal reality.

Engineering schools, such as Viterbi, have embraced the NAE challenges warmly. The Viterbi School is co-hosting the first national NAE Grand Challenges Summit, along with Duke University and Olin College, to begin a dialogue on ways to address these most pressing issues.

With an ever accelerating faith in the power of technology and science, our community has eagerly looked to providing solutions to these complex problems. The bio-nano-info revolution of the last two decades has ushered in unprecedented new tools we can use. And the advances in information technology and computer science have empowered the ability of engineering to confront issues at levels unthinkable even a decade ago: To engineer incredible new devices, materials and processes – and in the process, dramatically change the scope of the discipline.

The new canvas on which engineers now paint is one that I can characterize as

Engineering + {subject}

This evolution is manifested steadily and, most spectacularly, in medicine, through advances in health care and delivery, a key subset of the NAE challenges. Our own Viterbi School is deeply immersed in this increasingly close relationship with medicine. Energy is another such vital group of challenges.

Engineering + is now the norm. But can this transformative feature help us get out of the current deep financial crisis?

I will not be saying anything novel by stating the relevance of the deductive sequence

Ideas -->  Innovation -->  Economic Health

More than even before, however, ideas and innovation must revolve around concepts that solve real problems and add real value. The NAE grand challenges provide a focus to germinate such ideas. Indeed, one can almost map one-to-one the proposed initiatives of the new federal administration in urban infrastructure, health care reform, green technologies and K-12 education to the NAE challenges.

Armed with new engineering weapons we can focus precisely and relentlessly on the new challenges. Solving problems under constraint, even under the severe conditions we currently experience, is the hallmark of engineering. The Viterbi School is committed to take part and be counted as a leader in this effort.

And after we are able to recover, we must address a much tougher challenge, not articulated by the NAE, which resides at the intersection of engineering + social sciences. This intersection, dealing with the variables of human nature, produces constantly changing complex systems and makes life interesting. The current global crisis underscores its vast importance. It is time to face it in earnest.