global grand challenges

global grand challenges

A report on the London 2013 Summit

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Exploring collaborative approaches to tackling global grand challenges 1

CONTENTS

Contents

Forewords

From the President of the Royal Academy

of Engineering, Sir John Parker GBE FREng 2

From the Chair of the Global Grand Challenges

Summit steering group, Professor Dame Ann Dowling DBE FREng FRS 3

Opening comments by Dr J Craig Venter 5

Sustainability 8

Health 11

Education 14

The Global Grand Challenges Student Day 17

International scholarships for Grand Challenges in Engineering 19

Short film competitions 22

Enriching life 23

My Summit – Yewande Akinola 26

Technology and growth 28

Resilience 31

My Summit – Elizabeth Choe 34

Closing comments by Bill Gates 36

Organisers 39

Global Grand ChallengesSummit

In memoriam:Charles M Vest, 1941-2013President, National Academy of Engineering, USA, 2007-2013

2 Global Grand Challenges Summit


Foreword Sir John Parker

President, Royal Academy of Engineering

As President of the Royal Academy of Engineering,

it was my great pleasure to welcome nearly 500

current and future leaders from the UK, the USA

and China to London for the first Global Grand

Challenges Summit, held on 12-13 March 2013 at

the IET on London’s Embankment.

Over the course of the summit, we were exposed

to an extraordinary combination of creativity,

innovation, passion and sheer intellectual

horsepower. The problems and opportunities,

and the risks and rewards, presented by today’s

complex and interconnected world were discussed

by the speakers and the diverse audience which

ranged from the most promising of undergraduates

to the most eminent of academicians – along

with artists, economists, designers, philosophers,

industry leaders, educators and policymakers.

We saw how engineers are at the centre of efforts

to develop new sources of energy, to change the

nature of medicine, to create art out of artificial

life and to make the infrastructure that we take for

granted both intelligent and resilient. We also heard

about the need to reach out to other disciplines,

publics and communities; for example, by building

alliances between academia, industry and civil

society to promote real measures to alleviate

climate change and create the conditions for a

sustainable future.

I would like to extend my sincere thanks to all those

who made the summit a success - in particular,

our sister academies in the US and China, and our

event partners: Lockheed Martin, the Engineering

and Physical Sciences Research Council and the

Institution of Engineering and Technology. I would

also like to thank the companies and engineering

schools who sponsored the attendance of their

most promising engineers. Finally, I would like to

thank and congratulate the international steering

group which oversaw the organisation of the

event: Professor Dame Ann Dowling DBE FREng,

Professor Thomas Katsouleas, Professor Yannis

Yortsos, Professor Rick Miller and Professor Tony

Hey CBE FREng.

The Global Grand Challenges Summit was rooted

in the belief that it is time for engineers to show

leadership. If we do, I strongly believe that we can

not only address these global challenges but make

things better than they ever were before.

Sir John Parker GBE FREng

FOREWORD


FOREWORD

Foreword Professor Dame Ann Dowling

Chair, Global Grand Challenges Summit steering group

The global nature of our economies, supply chains,

research endeavours and communities – as well as

the environmental impacts of our activities – mean

that our futures are inextricably linked. Political

dialogue often falters in the face of complex

problems with many interdependencies, and it is

time to explore what could be accomplished with a

globally integrated systems approach. Who better

than engineers to lead this charge?

In the year up to March 2013, I chaired an

international steering group in planning the

agenda for this inaugural Global Grand Challenges

Summit – an initiative of the national engineering

academies of the UK, USA, and China. We wanted

to provide a new global platform for the world’s

leading thinkers to share their ideas with the next

generation of engineers on how to develop the

international frameworks, tools and collaborations

needed to solve our common global challenges.

We oversaw the assembly of an impressive cast list

of international figures, including Bill Gates, Robert

Langer, J Craig Venter, will.i.am, Frances Arnold,

Lord Darzi, Jo da Silva, Jeffrey Sachs and Regina

Dugan, among many others. On 12-13 March, they

were joined at the IET in London by a host of young

engineers, scientists, innovators and entrepreneurs

from around the world, with hundreds more

participating in satellite events staged by the IET in

Birmingham and India, and a global audience of

thousands watching seminar sessions live online.

There was a carnival atmosphere to the two-

day conference. World-renowned economists

exchanged views on the impacts of climate change

with development specialists; pioneering surgeons

debated healthcare with software mavens;

engineers explored the social impact of 3D printing

with geneticists, designers and politicians. New

connections were made, existing conventions

challenged and radical ideas forged. And a

surprise address on education, from will.i.am, a

chart-topping musician with a passion for STEM

subjects (science, technology, engineering and

mathematics) as well as the arts left us talking

about a future where more people would be

collaborating on international research in TEAMS of

STEAM (STEM + Arts).

When I first became involved, I hoped the summit

would give the attendees the ideas, connections,

inspiration and enthusiasm to work together with

confidence as engineers in interdisciplinary teams

to address the world’s most pressing challenges.

There are already encouraging signs that it will

have a broader impact on the way international

research collaboration is carried out. The UK’s

Engineering and Physical Sciences Research

Council (EPSRC) and the US National Science

Foundation have already announced a joint funding

call on research into provision of clean water for all.

EPSRC has since established a Grand Challenges

Fellowship scheme focused on the messages

emanating from the event.



FOREWORD

Sadly, this year we said goodbye to Charles

M Vest, the former NAE President who drove

the Grand Challenges concept in the US and

internationally, and masterminded much of

the initial planning for this Summit. But his

spirit lives on in a new initiative, the Charles

M Vest NAE Grand Challenges for Engineering

International Scholarships, which offer research

based postgraduate scholarships to leading US

universities to international postgraduate students.

The Chinese Academy of Engineering has readily

taken up the mantle to host the next Summit in

two years’ time. Based on the interactions I had

with Summit participants, I have no doubt that this

event was just the beginning. We look forward to

continuing our work with the Chinese Academy

of Engineering and the US National Academy

of Engineering to harness the enthusiasm and

connections resulting from the 2013 summit and to

ensure that it bears fruit, in the form of meaningful

and transformative action, in the months and years

ahead.

Professor Dame Ann Dowling DBE FREng FRS

Head of Department of Engineering, University of

Cambridge

When I first became involved, I hoped the summit would give the attendees the ideas, connections, inspiration and enthusiasm to work together with confidence as engineers in interdisciplinary teams to address the world’s most pressing challenges

“”


Opening comments Dr J Craig Venter

Founder, J Craig Venter Institute

The world is in need of disruptive change and

synthetic biology can provide some of the change

that is needed, said Craig Venter, who led the

team that sequenced the human genome for

the first time and constructed the first synthetic

bacterial cell. Dr Venter, delivering the opening

keynote address to the Global Grand Challenges

Summit, said that the five years since the Global

Grand Challenges were set down had not brought

progress.

“The grand challenges have got grander,” he said.

Population growth and the continued depletion of

resources concerned him, and the big questions

of the availability of fuel, water and food were not

being answered. “We don’t know for sure what the

impact of things like climate change will be, and

it’s like playing Russian roulette and hoping for the

best,” he said.

For all the talk of disruptive change in recent years,

Dr Venter saw little evidence that it was happening.

“But we’re now 100% dependent on science and

engineering for our future for food, medicine, clean

water and air,” he said. So science and technology

needed to be the agents of disruptive change,

and synthetic biology, the latest manifestation of

humanity’s perennial quest “to get control over

nature”, could be a powerful tool for that.

Synthetic biology is the application of engineering

principles to biological systems and resulted

from the work led by Dr Venter. This proved that

“DNA is the software of life” and that sequences

of DNA code could be converted into the 1s and

0s of programming and used to create synthetic

DNA which then functions in the same way as the

natural DNA.

This discovery, he said, opened up a new area of

engineering design in which genes are the basic

building blocks for the creation of products and

materials.

“We have computer software for getting biology

to do what we want it to do,” he said. “So we can

design new cells that use carbon dioxide as their

carbon source and light as their energy source and

can take us in new directions for food, plastics and

medicines.”

More than this, the processes that can be

harnessed through biology are not just new,

but are also often more efficient than traditional

manufacturing or agricultural methods. They

make, for example, highly nutritious foods derived

from algae rather than from traditional plants a

practical proposition to tackle global hunger.

Dr Venter expects big benefits to come in sectors

such as medicine and healthcare, where the first

genome-based vaccine is set for approval in 2013.

That vaccine acts against type b meningitis, and

other viral-based vaccines are being developed for

flu. Because the production technology is digital,

the processes are very fast and not constrained by

geography. “We call this ‘biological transportation’:

it’s sending biology at the speed of light, and any

country can do their own production and have

access.”

OPENING COMMENTS



OPENING COMMENTS

But it is not just national governments that will be

able to take part in this. Dr Venter sees potential

also for using the same concepts to print skin, or

for individuals to download their own insulin for

diabetes treatment. On a different scale, future

Mars missions will be able to send back their

findings digitally “so we can reconstruct alien life

in secure laboratories on Earth”.

Engineering has progressed from the ability to

enhance physics, through chemistry and now

into biology, and it has been a rapid progression:

“Everything we know about modern biology has

happened in my lifetime,” Dr Venter said. And it is

only just the beginning.

We’re now 100% dependent on science and engineering for our future for food, medicine, clean water and air

“”

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Sustainability

A systems engineering approach to sustainability

is required as part of the knowledge revolution

that could achieve a truly sustainable planet, said

Professor Jeffrey Sachs, and this revolution “is as

big as anything mankind has achieved before”.

It is needed, he said, because current policies

are making no headway in terms of controlling

the “juggernaut of economic growth”, the rise in

world population and continued depletion of natural

resources.

Professor Sachs, Director of the Earth Institute at

Columbia University, painted a bleak picture of

political confusion, half-hearted adoption of agreed

policies and rising inequality.

“Since the Rio Summit in 1992, we have not

shifted the needle,” he said. And the difficulties

are becoming more urgent: to alleviate world

poverty and bring developing countries up to

living standards enjoyed in developed nations

would require a global economy at least four times

larger than today’s. “We meet crucial planetary

boundaries before then,” he said.

Within this context, sustainability, Professor

Sachs said, was achievable only through “a global

social movement with systems engineering”.

He foresaw the need for a social compact that

included sustainable development goals such as

a commitment to end extreme poverty by 2030,

socially inclusive education, low carbon agriculture

and urbanisation, and new types of public and

corporate governance.

But technologies that deal with the interlocking

“systems” and that enable appropriate global and

local actions to be taken are also required. Allard

Castelein, Vice-President, Environment for the Shell

Group, saw engineering as part of the solution to

the inexorable rise in global energy demand – but

only part.

A big difficulty, he said, was that new energy

technologies typically needed 30 years to reach

maturity. There was “no escape” from the

conclusion that hydrocarbons would still be the

dominant energy source in 2050, though shifts

from coal and oil to natural gas would mitigate

some of the climate change consequences of

continued fossil fuel use.

The ability of engineering technology to provide

answers to help break out of the cycle of ineffectual

politics was debated throughout the session.

Photo: Ben Britten flickr.com/tauntingpanda


SUSTAINABILITY

As an example, Professor Angela Belcher

of MIT said that work on the nanoscale into

understanding how nature makes new materials

and converts energy through biological and

genetic methods could lead to significant gains in

the current performance of some systems, as well

as new formulations.

But there is still a significant political dimension: a

fundamental requirement for a sustainable planet

is that engineers engage more closely with politics

to get messages and technologies accepted.

Professor John Loughhead of the UK Energy

Research Group said that for energy challenges

to be met it was essential for engineers to engage

not just with the technologies but “with how people

live their lives”.

And there are positive messages too about the

capacity for the planet and for mankind to achieve

sustainable goals. International development

specialist Professor Calestous Juma HonFREng of

Harvard University stressed that, surprisingly, the

poverty and lack of infrastructure in the world’s

poorest countries meant that it was often “easier to

do things there”.

In areas such as education and with technologies

such as genetically modified crops, it was possible

that the world’s poorest nations might “leapfrog”

those where entrenched attitudes produced

inertia.

To alleviate world poverty and bring developing countries up toliving standards enjoyed in developed nations would require a global economy at least four times larger than today’s



SUSTAINABILITY

Case study

Evolution of materials The abalone is just one of many creatures which have, over millions of years, evolved the ability to produce new inorganic material.

The abalone’s DNA contains the genetic sequence for making the intricate structure of its shell, which it is able to produce under

normal environmental conditions. Tapping into this kind of genetic information to create new and better-performing materials is

part of the work of Professor Angela Belcher, a materials scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Knowing that organisms can already combine various elements to build materials, Professor Belcher wondered if “we could

genetically code the synthesis of a battery or a solar cell”. DNA codes for proteins, which in turn have sequences that ‘grab’ atoms

from the environment in order to start building up a given inorganic material. Professor Belcher wanted to “give biology a new

toolkit to work with many different elements, not just the elements that organisms have evolved over this geological time period to

be able to use in making materials”.

Professor Belcher and her students have been focusing on simple organisms such as yeasts and bacterial viruses (which are non-

infectious to humans or any organisms except their bacterial host) and genetically engineering them to work with semiconductor or

magnetic materials. They speed up the evolutionary process by performing billions of experiments at a time, and then “taking the

one in a million that works, and amplifying it up”.

She said their research has “evolved a virus to make new cathode and anode materials for a battery – it can pick up single-walled

carbon nanotubes, and grow an iron phosphate material at room temperature conditions, which self-assembles into a battery

electrode”. After several rounds of genetic engineering and selection, Professor Belcher’s group produced a battery that was “as

good as the state-of-the-art battery at the time”. The group also evolved a virus to pick up carbon nanotubes which can then be

incorporated into dye-sensitised solar cells, and act as a direct connection to the current collector. “By putting 0.1% biology into

our solar cell, we increased efficiency by 33%,” said Professor Belcher.

So a little bit of biological selection can go a long way to enhance performance. “Understanding and utilising the ways in which

nature makes materials, and taking small collections of atoms and controlling their crystal structure, could have big impacts on

many challenges,” Professor Belcher said. Potential applications of her work abound – from increasing the performance of solar

cells and batteries to fuel production, water purification, therapeutics and imaging.

Photo: Donna Coveney


HealthMedicine, healthcare and our own human biology

are all on the threshold of changes that will involve

engineers as much as the conventional medical

and surgical professions.

Surgeon Lord Darzi HonFREng said that it was

not just in products and techniques that his

profession could learn from engineering: “There’s

a lot of process stuff that we could and should be

borrowing from engineers,” he said. “I’d love it if

every surgeon could do six weeks of engineering to

learn how they think.”

Professor Robert Langer FREng, of MIT’s David

H Koch Institute, picked out three engineering

technologies which he believes will impact on

surgery and medicine in the near future: the

use of concepts developed in nanotechnology to

target drug delivery inside the body; personalised

medicine, in which a “pharmacy” can be

implanted on a chip through photolithography

and then activated remotely; and the combination

of mammalian cells with polymers to make new

tissue.

This third innovation is starting to make possible

the creation of scaffolds in any shape, and it is

an example, Professor Langer said, of “the way

we are starting to use engineering materials and

methods”. He foresees that by around the middle

of the century it will be commonplace to be able

to take cells from an individual and make tissue to

meet specific needs.

“We’re not quite at the point where we could

grow a new ear for a person, but we will be able

to do that and perhaps even more exciting is

the possibility of being able to repair spinal cord

injuries this way,” he said.

But if the professions traditionally based on biology

are now using engineering more and more, then

there are also developments in the opposite

direction: “We as engineers have a lot to learn

from biology,” said Professor Frances Arnold from

the California Institute of Technology. Biomimetic

technologies that aim to imitate efficient products

and processes from nature have been a fruitful

source of innovation in recent years, but Professor

Arnold believes the biological world may have

answers to some fundamental questions – and to

some questions of global importance.

HEALTH

Photo: taken by Dr Samantha Stehbens, University of California San Francisco, using an Andor Clara CCD camera



“For example, living systems obtain their energy

from the environment and convert it into becoming

self-building machines,” she said. “There are a

spectacular array of solutions to the basic problem

of being alive. We will be using some of nature’s

solutions to solve our problems.”

This kind of thinking, she said, was very much in

its infancy: in 60 years since the discovery of DNA,

we had synthesised the genome, but had not yet

synthesised life itself. “Essentially what we’re doing

now is to grab bits and cobble them together. We

don’t yet know, for example, how to take sunlight

and make gasoline from it.”

Understanding the codes inside DNA would be

the key to new types of chemistry and to new ways

to make materials. But engineering’s increasing

overlap with biology and medicine is not just

at the futuristic end of spare parts surgery and

breakthrough process technologies.

Health and healthcare are key issues that unite

developed and developing countries, said Dr

Qimin Zhan of the Chinese Academy of Medical

Sciences. New technologies could enhance the

core work done by hospitals and clinics, and that

applied not just to breakthrough technologies that

might lead to earlier diagnoses but to the practical

implementation of systems. The quality of clinical

information was an issue both nationally and

internationally, he said.

Some of the technologies that would have the

greatest impact on diseases and life expectancy in

the developing world are, in fact, neither difficult

nor expensive, and their impact can be significant.

Rebecca Richards-Kortum from Rice University in

Texas works on developing optical imaging systems

for diagnosis in low-income countries. Diseases

such as cervical cancer, she said, “should not be

about palliation and treatment anywhere when we

can prevent them through screening”.

Devices such as cellphone-based microscopes

could bring relief, and would also repay their cost

in preventing the overtreatment that resulted when

diseases were not caught early.


Case study

The biological factoryEngineers have a lot to learn from biology and from natural organisms’ remarkably efficient and elegant solutions to their

challenges, said Frances Arnold, Professor of Chemical Engineering, Bioengineering and Biochemistry at the California Institute

of Technology.

“Living systems obtain energy and resources from the environment and convert them into self-replicating and self-reproducing

machines,” Arnold highlighted. “We don’t know how to take sunlight and carbon dioxide and make sugars, or gasoline.”

Some 60 years after the discovery of DNA’s structure, Professor Arnold continued, “We know how to synthesise it but not how

to compose it. But we can evolve it, breed it like we breed lab rats or race horses.” However, the engineering design that can

be achieved with current knowledge, in terms of composing new DNA, is haphazard and incomplete: “We don’t know the rules.

This is a challenge the engineer faces. A good breeder can anticipate what the progeny might look like. We don’t have this

experience in the lab, but that’s the fun part, the research.”

Understanding more of the rules that govern how specific functions are encoded into DNA could enable powerful advances,

Arnold said. “No other engineering discipline can take a bad design and use an algorithm like this one to turn it into a good

one,” she continued. “That’s the power of evolution and artificial selection, and we should be able to use this to optimise

and engineer new biological systems.” The aim is not just to use biology, but to improve on it. In Arnold’s view, there are

several routes to achieve this kind of positive outcome. Engineers have recognised that the code for synthesising important

pharmaceuticals and biologically active molecules, such as taxol, an anti-cancer therapeutic, is encoded in the DNA of the

organism that makes it. Often we don’t have sufficient supplies of these compounds and they are too complicated to synthesise

in a laboratory. However, by transferring the relevant DNA code to a microorganism, we can produce the compounds on a larger

scale. Professor Arnold believes the ‘biological factories’ that do the work of converting cheap products like sugar into useful

compounds such as anticancer treatments or gasoline substitutes are “truly amazing engineering marvels”.

It is not necessary to understand how an enzyme does what it does – inserting oxygen into a carbon-hydrogen compound, for

example – to use it. But according to Professor Arnold, the next phase, modifying and improving enzymes through reliable

engineering and evolutionary processes, could be “even more exciting – we can go beyond what nature has achieved, for example

by creating versions of enzymes that can do whole new chemistries – and use this to expand biology to solve whole new problems”.

HEALTH



EducationIn the high-growth economies of China, India

and Brazil, engineering is the career to pursue to

achieve personal and professional success. In the

older industrial economies of the West, such as the

UK and the US, engineers are in what seems to be

permanent short supply and engineering courses

and careers often struggle to fill their quotas.

The Global Grand Challenge for education, said

Professor John Hennessy of Stanford University,

was to attract the best people and to prepare them

for careers solving the real problems of the world.

One answer, perhaps, is for the profession to

become much more forceful about itself. The

singer and entertainer will.i.am, who has become

something of an engineering and technology

evangelist, was an unexpected contributor to the

session and challenged the conference audience

of engineers to compete for young people’s

attention.

Entertainment and sports produced positive

images to fire imaginations, he said: “You

engineering guys should compete in the world of

popularity too. We need to make it sexy.”

Professor Hennessy phrased it differently, but his

message was similar. “Many young people simply

don’t know what engineers do,” he said. “They

don’t know how engineers work.” And current

courses emphasised maths and physics which

were often taught with little context and which

could deter potential students.

“Modern engineering education needs to be about

problem-solving, being collegiate and global and

it needs to be inspiring,” he said. Issues such as

sustainability and the contribution of engineering

to health and healthcare would give a more

realistic and topical view of the work that engineers

actually do.

Other speakers in the session stressed aspects of

engineering that were felt often to be underplayed

in the education system – the education that

informs choices about whether to pursue

engineering, and the education that is then

delivered to those who choose engineering.

Professor Chris Wise RDI FREng from University

College London said that the relationship between

engineering and science was not as close as

conventional education sometimes made it.


EDUCATION

“There’s a very fundamental difference, which is

that science is about things that happen outside

and you take them into your head, whereas

engineering is about things that start in your

head,” he said.

In some of the work that he had been doing, he

had found it useful to characterise other skills

apart from scientific and mathematical knowledge

that formed important parts of engineering: “You

need the strategy of an artist to come up with the

concept, the skills of an artisan to do work such as

product creation, the analysis and the testing, and

you need to be a philosopher to make judgements

and to optimise things. As an engineer you need

these skills and science too, but you don’t have to

be equally good at all of them.”

Professor Dame Ann Dowling DBE FREng FRS,

Head of the Department of Engineering at

the University of Cambridge, identified other

qualities that trained engineers would ideally

have: “creativity, invention and communication

skills,” she said. And it was important also that

engineering education should be about the needs

of society at large, to emphasise that engineering is

in everything and to enable everyone to discuss it.

If some of the topics raised in this session are

very much long-term projects, then there are also

reasons to believe that change may arrive relatively

swiftly. Engineering, said Professor Hennessy, is an

expensive subject to teach by conventional means,

and cost was now an important element in the

whole of education.

At the same time, new technology methods for

delivering educational courses and learning

content – called MOOCs, or massive online

open courses – were opening up engineering

opportunities across the world. “It’s going to

change the world, and it’s going to be free,” he

said. With students “teaching themselves” at their

own pace, the engineering profession needed

to embrace the idea to ensure that quality was

maintained. “MOOCs will set you free,” he said.



Case study

The changing schoolThe Global Grand Challenges for the 21st century identified by the US National Academy of Engineering form

the basis of the curriculum for an unusual high school that is attached to the North Carolina State University

in Raleigh.

The Wake NC State STEM Early College High School opened in 2011 with a first cohort of 55 ninth-

grade students and, says Principal Robert Matheson, aims to teach science, technology, engineering and

mathematics subjects through Grand Challenge projects.

“If you are going to create a school for the 21st century, there’s no better way than through a curriculum

that’s focused on the Grand Challenges,” Matheson said. “In the Challenges there is something for everyone:

there’s life sciences, earth science, physical science, chemical science.” So in teaching earth sciences, for

example, the curriculum at the high school tackles the challenge of providing access to clean water for all.

But Matheson believes that the Grand Challenge curriculum also avoids the ‘silo’ approach to teaching in

which subjects are frequently taught in isolation from each other. “The Grand Challenge 21st-century issues

are about economics, ethics, legislation, politics and sustainability as well,” he said.

The school has moved away from a traditional teacher-pupil style of learning: “We don’t lecture. Pupils

have already watched or read up the basic information.” Instead, teaching is done through projects and

discussions, and there are spin-off courses that can be attached to the main curriculum, so the water

resources challenge can be supplemented with an engineering design course.

A further difference from conventional education is that there is an explicit desire to link the education

through to careers, to show how the subjects and the ways of working are relevant to the STEM professions

and real jobs. After 18 months, the school in Raleigh now has two year-groups in it: it’s early days, but

Matheson believes that it is already producing results.

EDUCATION


Student Day

I served on the joint organising committee for the

Summit as a representative of the Royal Academy

of Engineering. My best contribution was helping to

organise the Student Day, which took place on the

Monday before the Summit.

One of the main aims of the Global Grand

Challenges Summit was to inspire the next

generation of engineers and engineering leaders

from around the world to think creatively and

work collaboratively. The Global Grand Challenges

Summit Student Day was held by the Royal

Academy of Engineering to help achieve this goal.

Enabled by sponsorship from Microsoft Research

Connections, the day brought together sixty of

the brightest undergraduates and postgraduates

studying in the US and UK, to collectively tackle

one of the following six grand challenges:

n Provide access to clean water

n Restore and improve urban infrastructure

n Advance health informatics

n Secure cyberspace

n Enhance virtual reality

n Advance personalised learning

The event bore a resemblance to the popular

US and UK television shows, The Apprentice

or Dragon’s Den/Shark Tank. Participants were

divided up into teams based on the challenges

they wished to tackle, ultimately combining two

challenges: securing cyberspace and enhancing

virtual reality, to result in five teams.

In their teams, participants went away and engaged

in a variety of exercises to demonstrate the creativity

and collaborative nature of their ideas. After

debating ideas with their peers, the teams worked

the best of these into business proposals, which

were then presented by representatives from each

team at the end of the day to a panel of angel

investors made up of myself, Dr Margaret Anne

Craig (Chief Executive Officer at Clyde Biosciences),

The Global Grand Challenges Student Day took place at the Royal Academy of

Engineering on 11 March 2013. Royal Academy of Engineering Fellow Professor

Tony Hey CBE FREng reflects on his experience at the event.

STUDENT DAY



STUDENT DAY

Professor Chris Wise RDI FREng (Co-Founder of

Expedition Engineering) and Ian Shott CBE FREng

(Managing Director at Shott Consulting) – and we

then selected the winning idea.

The team working on health informatics won,

earning them the opportunity to present their

innovation as a part of the main Summit

programme.

I was extremely pleased to introduce the winning

team at the main Summit, as they addressed

more than 400 distinguished invitees about health

informatics.

Grappling with global grand challenges and

encouraging the development of the next

generation of problem solvers – it doesn’t get

much better than that!

Professor Tony Hey CBE FREng

Vice President, Microsoft Research Connections

Photo, top: The winning Student Day team were (left to right): Nikhila Ravi (University of Cambridge), Elizabeth Choe (MIT), Andrew Whyte (University of Bath), Julie Shi (University of Washington), Michael

Morley (IIT), Alison Gerren (University of Toledo) and Carolyn Damo (University of Toledo)


International engineering scholarships

Opportunities in the US The Global Grand Challenges Summit saw

the announcement of a new initiative by

representatives from eight top US universities;

The Charles M Vest NAE Grand Challenges for

Engineering™ International Scholarship Program.

This scholarship programme is named after the

late Charles Vest, former President of the NAE,

who originated the Grand Challenges concept. It

provides the opportunity for international graduate

students to pursue research at one of eight US

universities into one or more of the 14 areas

highlighted by the NAE Grand Challenges for

Engineering – with all expenses paid for a year.

The goals of the Vest Scholarships are to provide a

platform to exchange ideas, share problem-solving

skills and strengthen international relationships

in order to advance progress in some of the most

critical global challenges in the twenty-first century.

There was one Vest Scholarship offered at each

of the eight partner institutions for the year

2014-15, and applications were open to those

enrolled and in good standing in a graduate-level

(master’s or doctoral) engineering or engineering-

related programme outside of the United States.

During this inaugural year of the Vest Scholarship

programme, applications were only accepted from

students enrolled at institutions that participated

in the 2013 Global Grand Challenges Summit

held in London. The programme will be expanded

to additional institutions in future years. More

information is available at www.vestscholars.org

Opportunities in the UKMany UK universities offer scholarships for

international students to undertake research into

the Grand Challenges for Engineering. Opportunities

include the Marshall Scholarship at University

College London, the Gates Cambridge Scholarships

at University of Cambridge, PhD scholarships in

chemical and earth sciences engineering at Imperial

College London, Masters and Undergraduate

Distinction scholarships at the University of Exeter,

and the Braithwaite Family Foundation Studentship

at the University of Surrey – to name but a few.

Following the summit, the Engineering and

Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC)

opened up Fellowships in two new areas -

Engineering for Sustainability and Engineering

for Resilience – across all three career stages

(postdoctoral, early career and established career).

More information is available at

www.raeng.org.uk/grandchallenges or via the

EPSRC or individual university websites.

ENGINEERING SCHOLARSHIPS



Short film competitions The intersection between the artistic and

engineering disciplines has the capacity to provide

some of the most interesting and thought-provoking

ideas and concepts, as well as to inspire some of

the greatest innovations.

To highlight how fertile this intersection can be, and

to promote the importance of tackling global grand

challenges, the Royal Academy of Engineering

and the US National Academy of Engineering

launched parallel short film competitions, which

called on creative entrants, between the ages

of 18 and 27, to produce a two-minute film,

of any genre, that was thought-provoking and

highlighted the importance of engineering and the

role of engineers in tackling any one of the grand

challenges highlighted at the Summit.

The top three films from each country were

showcased at the Summit, with the competition

winners Paul Clarkson (UK) and Katie Speights

(US) presented with trophies for their films The

Promise of Engineering and The water energy

nexus, by pop superstar will.i.am and the director

of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Professor

Charles Elachi.

“I decided to do my film on sustainability – in my

opinion, the most important challenge on the list.

I wanted it to be thought-provoking and inspiring

for both engineers and non-engineers. I decided to

make it less about the ‘parts and components’ and

more about the people aspect. Engineering is not

something that we pick up off the street; it is a very

human creation. I felt that images, music and a

personal dialogue would best address this subject.”

UK Winner, Paul Clarkson

“When I became involved in the NAE Grand

Challenges Scholars Program at The University of

Texas at Austin, I was really drawn to the access to

clean water challenge. I was particularly interested

in the relationship between water and energy.

The water energy nexus represents two growing

problems that are fundamentally connected

and pervasive in almost every area of modern

life. I grew to recognize just how complex and

interdisciplinary this problem truly is, and this

realisation shaped my video into something that I

believe truly embodies the NAE Grand Challenges

Scholars Program.” US Winner, Katie Speights

Watch the winning competition entries at

www.raeng.org.uk/ggcs-videos

SHORT FILM COMPETITIONS

Scan here to watchthe films


Enriching lifeWe live surrounded by things that have been

designed and made by human beings, but the

process by which human-made devices come to

exist has not really changed much in thousands

of years. However, the series of speakers in this

session found many reasons why fundamental

change is happening or about to happen in the way

products are developed.

Professor Neil Gershenfeld, Director of the

Center for Bits and Atoms at MIT, said that

digitisation, having revolutionised computing and

communications, is now poised to have the same

effect in the fabrication of products. But the much-

vaunted 3D printing technology, in which devices

are built up layer by layer, is in his view at best only

a stage in this process, and computer-controlled

machine tools that remove material to create

artefacts are similar: “The future is turning data

into things, but it’s not additive or subtractive,”

he said.

The kind of digital fabrication that Professor

Gershenfeld is expecting, he said, puts digitisation

not just in the manufacture of the products but

right inside the materials so that the function is

inherent – but can also be reprogrammed. He

likens the concept to that of Lego bricks, where

the bricks themselves do not constrain what is

built from them and can be disassembled to be

“reprogrammed” into something new.

“Today’s state-of-the-art fabrication has

no information in the material,” he said.

“The revolution in digitising will be to bring

programmability into the physical world.” And the

‘killer app’ that he foresees making this mainstream

is personalisation: the ability to create the product

you want, when you want it, with a production run

of just one.

That can apply anywhere in the world. Digitising

the product and material information “breaks the

boundaries of aid,” Professor Gershenfeld said,

so anything can be made anywhere. The Center

for Bits and Atoms has already spawned a global

network of ‘Fab Labs’ – fabrication laboratories –

many of them in places not generally considered as

manufacturing hotspots and most of them currently

focused on technologies such as 3D printing.

This will change as digitisation takes hold, he

said, and connections between fabrication and

education will expand their potential: “You could

download the whole campus.”

But the products that we design and make may

themselves also be fundamentally different, putting

new capabilities into existing formats or creating

new combinations of features.

Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg of Edinburgh University

has been working on the concept of bringing

ENRICHING LIFE



biology and genetics into products to develop new

functions: using nature to solve problems through

design, such as colour-coded genetic markers for

disease diagnosis.

And artist and designer Professor Helen Storey has

already put this kind of thinking into action with a

range of ‘catalytic clothing’ that has impregnated

titanium dioxide in the cloth and removes

pollutants and viruses from the atmosphere as you

wear it.

The reinvention and reshaping of ‘products’ is not

just happening at the small-scale and individual

level, however.

Eric Brown, Director of the Watson project at IBM’s

research laboratories, is leading the team that is

developing new cognitive computing systems that

will learn from experience and be able to turn the

vast amounts of data that is accumulating year on

year into usable knowledge that can then do new

things.

The revolution in digitising will be to bring programmability into the physical world“ ”


ENRICHING LIFE

Case study

Clothing that cleansCatalytic clothing is the brainchild of two UK university professors from diverse backgrounds: Helen

Storey is Professor of Fashion & Science at the University of the Arts London and Tony Ryan is a

chemist and Pro-Vice Chancellor for the Faculty of Science at Sheffield University.

Launched two years ago, their idea is to coat fabrics used in clothing with nanoparticles of a mass-

produced catalyst, titanium dioxide, which would then react with light, oxygen and chemical pollutants

in the atmosphere, such as nitrogen oxides and sulphur dioxide, to purify the air as the wearer moves

through it. Some viruses can also be targeted.

The catalyst is introduced into the fabric during the laundry process and the professors have been

talking to laundry companies and detergent manufacturers to take the idea on. Professor Ryan’s

research with different kinds of fabric has indicated that blue denim is particularly suitable as a carrier

for the catalyst, which is already used in white paint and toothpaste.

It’s not just the technology, a marriage of fashion and science, that is different; the marketing of the

concept is also being tackled in an innovative way through elements of crowdsourcing. In addition,

said Professor Storey, “We haven’t patented anything. We want the idea to be stolen.”

The reason for this is simple: the idea works, but it’s practical only if it’s adopted widely. Four

people wearing impregnated jeans would clean the NOx emissions from a single car. To make a real

difference it needs almost universal adoption, but that, Professor Ryan believes, is not a far-fetched

idea: because it takes no conscious effort and can be incorporated into the existing clothes-washing

process, it’s potentially an easy win.

Photo: DED Design



My Summit Yewande Akinola

My word, was the first ever Global Grand

Challenges Summit an extremely enlightening two

days? I did a countdown to the event, extremely

excited about the fact that it would bring students,

forward thinkers, innovators, engineers, scientists,

entrepreneurs (and more) from across the globe

under one roof.

The line-up of speakers was brilliant, and as the

summit progressed, the list of things that stood

out to me grew and grew. I couldn’t help but have

conversations in my mind as I tried to make sense

of current problems and the world of opportunity

in research findings and innovative engineering

solutions. I took away many thoughts and ideas

from the Summit, a small selection of these being:

n The UK consumes almost 258 million litres of

oil every day! Surely that fact is enough to get

all hands (government, private investment,

society) on deck - supporting and working hard

to reduce that number?

n If the predictions are true that in 2050, 80% of

the working population will be in Asia and

Africa, African leaders need to work overtime

to make sure that the continent’s ‘of working

age’ population have work, and play a positive

contribution towards world progress. They need

to realise that an actively working population

is the only way to achieve innovative and

prosperous economies. It’s a ripple effect - lower

crime rate, industry growth and lots more. There

should come a time when an African country’s

wealth is less reliant on natural resources

and more reliant on its ability to produce - for

example on agriculture, on power (making use

of its numerous rivers) and more. My personal

opinion – this is where engineers work with

economists and entrepreneurs and literally

bombard politicians with proposals and more

proposals until something happens.

n If Professor Jeffrey Sachs’ estimation that biofuel

production needs to multiply by a thousandfold

in 30 years to provide the amount of fuel fossil

fuels currently produce is near accurate … we

need to get on ‘on our bikes’ designing the most

fuel-efficient upgrades of EVERYTHING that

uses fuel – as well as designing and marketing

the use of alternatives.

n Resilience, resilience, resilience. Our world is

‘shrinking’ so quickly that we cannot really

afford to settle for inconsistent resilience

strategies. We all use the internet; we all drink

water; we work on projects that may take

us out of our comfortable ‘safe’ geographic

locations, we use infrastructure, we consume

agricultural produce from many many many

miles and climates away, we depend on a

production economy of a country where 110

Yewande Akinola works as an engineer with engineering consultancy ARUP.

She was the 2013 IET Young Woman Engineer of the Year and was a panellist

at the Summit’s “Next Steps” discussion.


MY SUMMIT

of 600 cities experience severe water scarcity.

We need to adapt. We need to design resilient

infrastructure, we need to build flood defence

systems. These NEEDS spread across the most

prosperous countries, the ‘poorest’ countries,

the most corrupt countries and the progressing

countries. National budgets need to feature

the importance of resilience. Again, how do

the engineers initiate this? Proposals? Media?

Positioning ourselves where we can influence

decisions?

I am still reeling from all these thoughts, and I am

full of inspiration and excitement for the future.



Technology and growthThis wide-ranging session dealt with the sometimes

uneasy relationship between targets for economic

growth and the degree to which innovation can

be stimulated to help achieve those targets. And

the speakers addressed the topic from a variety of

angles.

Dr Mike Lynch OBE FREng, founder of Invoke

Capital and of the Autonomy software company,

saw innovation as a “pipeline” in which there were

numerous opportunities for blockages caused

by any number of different agencies: finance,

government, culture, and the balance between

individual effort and teamwork. “I believe in the

efficiency of the market,” he said, “but if it was

easy, then everyone would be doing it”. Research

culture and creativity were, he felt, at the root of

most problems in innovation.

Andrew Simms from the New Economics

Foundation took issue with a unified concept of

growth, contrasting the engineer’s desirable version

of growth based on realities of improvement and

progress with the economist’s version of growth

of GDP which failed to recognise the limitations

of the real world. “Growth is actually a phase

that most economies are now past,” he said.

“Innovation is about how to prosper within the

limits of the biosphere, and it cannot be business

as usual, because further conventional economic

growth is not compatible with all the environmental

indicators.”

“The challenge is how to do more things with fewer

resources,” agreed Dr Yingtao Li, president of the

2012 Laboratories at Huawei. “Innovation can

be demand-based or vision-based,” he said. “No

matter which, the end user will select the most

meaningful innovation for their particular practical

application.”

Several panel members were unhappy with narrow

definitions of innovation: “There is social and

economic innovation as well,” Simms said, citing

as examples the potential for a green investment

bank to invest in low-carbon technologies, and the

introduction in one US state of a four-day week.

Some of that kind of innovation, said Andy

Hopper CBE FREng FRS, Professor of Computer

Technology at the University of Cambridge, would

be achieved through the spread of digital systems:

“Computing is often underplayed in terms of its role

in sustainability,” he said. “It could allow us to have

our cake and eat it. Innovation in computing will

change how we lead our lives and people will be


happy about it.” Li concurred that ICT had already

helped other industries to improve productivity

and efficiency, and said “It is an enabler; it is a

catalyst.”

More widely there are “technology readiness

level” measurement systems that plot the

process from scientific research to mature

and marketable product. Commercialisation of

innovation is, however, a perennial sticking point:

universities, said Dr Margaret Anne Craig, Chief

Executive of healthcare spinout company Clyde

Biosciences, “are full of technologies, but it’s the

commercialisation which is the difficult bit”.

“Innovation is a discipline. Many believe this is

a contradiction. Viewed as unpredictable and

ethereal, innovation is commonly approached as

a necessary but elusive investment in the future,”

said Dr Regina E Dugan, former Director of the

United States Defense Advanced Research Projects

Agency (DARPA). The question asked at DARPA,

the agency responsible for over a half century of

breakthrough innovations from GPS to materials

science, stealth to the Internet, is “how does a

200-person organisation produce so many and

such diverse innovations over many decades?”,

Dr Dugan said. DARPA’s model of innovation does

not conform to the conventional linear model:

from basic science, to applied science, to product

commercialisation. Rather, DARPA’s projects are

a powerful blending of deep, big science and an

urgent driving application.

TECHNOLOGY AND GROWTH



TECHNOLOGY AND GROWTH

Case study

The DARPA differenceSince its inception is 1958, the United States Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has

produced a steady stream of breakthrough innovations. Many organisations have managed periods of

innovation, but no other organisation in history has innovations that have changed the world. Many don’t

know DARPA, but their lives know DARPA.

Dr Regina E Dugan believes that breakthrough innovation occurs at the intersection of a big scientific or

technical advance and a real problem. Somewhat counterintuitively, despite the increased risk, work driven

by both big science and a driving application actually increases the likelihood of breakthroughs. Deep

analytics are required to characterise both the technical opportunities and the application. And it requires

that organisations be optimised for outcome-focused projects, for agility, speed, and scale.

“Such work is exhilarating,” she said. “It attracts talent and motivates teams. It ensures that people and

projects continuously compete, constructively; that there are no entitled ideas, people or projects. It creates

an evolutionary pressure and a thoughtful ruthlessness that improves the quality of all the work conducted.”

The essential attributes of success at DARPA, she says, can be translated to other businesses and other

sectors. Doing so begins to move innovation from an ethereal activity to a discipline.

Photo: DARPA


RESILIENCE

ResilienceThe engineering and technology of the past few

centuries – and in particular the past 100 years or

so – have enabled standards of living and comfort

to rise in many parts of the world. But at the same

time, there has been much less progress in terms

of humankind’s vulnerability to disasters.

Indeed, contributors to this session raised concerns

not just that the frequency of natural disasters

seemed to be increasing, but that their impacts

were growing too – and there were new kinds of

emergency and disaster inherent in the way we live

now.

Jo da Silva OBE FREng, Director of Arup with

responsibility for international development, said

that natural disasters had affected two billion

people in the past 10 years. Earthquakes are the

most lethal, but flooding has an impact on many

more people. The big variation, however, is in terms

of cost and the ability to foot the bill.

The Japanese earthquake and tsunami in 2011

had been estimated at a total cost of around $300

billion, but the quake in Haiti a year earlier was

arguably more devastating, since the $8 billion cost

was more than the national GDP.

Nor are the economic effects of disaster confined

to the locality. The Japanese disaster, again, had

disrupted automotive supply chains worldwide,

while floods in Bangkok had led to a 10% rise in

the price of hard disks, da Silva said.

Economics aside, however, there is evidence of an

increasing humanitarian toll caused primarily by

urbanisation. “The forecast is that 70% of world

population will live in cities by 2050, and cities

have historically been sited on coasts or deltas,”

she said. “It’s not just the accumulation of people:

it’s the rapidity of urbanisation. Often governance

is lacking, and there are infrastructure deficits. It

creates and magnifies the risks and it is the poorest

who are most affected.”

China’s rapid urbanisation and economic

development mean that it is a microcosm of the

kind of stresses that are now seen worldwide. Dr

Zhang Jianyun, president of the Nanjing Hydraulic

Research Institute, said that contrasting conditions

of flood and drought now account for 71% of the

cost of natural disasters in China. Of 600 large cities

in China, 110 were short of water: “Water resources

in the Beijing area are 40.8% less than they were

in the 1990s,” he said. Yet storms were increasing



in frequency: the same area had received a year’s

worth of rainfall on a single day in July 2012.

What da Silva advocates is a new approach to

infrastructure design and urban planning based on

resilience: “This is about the ability of systems to

perform so that disruption does not mean collapse,”

she said. It means accepting that failures will

happen, but having structures, codes and policies

that limit the effects, stop secondary problems –

such as the disease which so often follows a disaster

– and provide for a rapid rebound.

But it is not just natural disasters that threaten

stability. Bran Ferren, Co-Founder of the design and

technology company Applied Minds, warned that the

interconnectedness of everything was throwing up

new kinds of vulnerability. It showed itself in terms

of privacy and security, but Ferren’s view is that

those kinds of risk are just the start of it: “We have

a really fragile existence now based on networks

and computers,” he said. If cars were all networked,

for example, might a malicious hacker get them all

to turn left at once? The need, he said, was for a

new kind of systems engineering based on driving

complexity down.

Other systems, though, may develop resilience

through greater complexity. Dr Paul Golby CBE

FREng, former energy industry engineer and

executive, highlighted the vulnerability of virtually

everything we now do to power cuts: “We can’t

function without electricity,” he said. “Modern

society ceases to operate.”

The vulnerability in this instance is to do with

centralised, monolithic, single-technology systems,

and the remedy is both to redesign systems to be

more locally resilient and to develop technologies

such as energy storage to enable greater diversity of

energy sources.

This is about the ability of systems to perform so that disruption does not mean collapse“ ”


RESILIENCE

Case study

Smart infrastructureDramatic pictures of ruined buildings and collapsed bridges are unwelcome stories of engineering failure. Such failures are

sometimes a result of inadequate construction, which can be mitigated by better design codes, enforcement of regulations, and

better technologies such as sophisticated modelling.

However, often failures occur through degradation in performance that goes unnoticed: structures that have for years withstood

weather and traffic and endured consistent and unremitting loads sometimes fail with disastrous consequences. While

infrastructure operators have honed maintenance scheduling and preventative measures to a fine art, acquiring real data on

the condition of infrastructure assets has tended to be labour-intensive and haphazard. The result is that critical issues are

sometimes missed, which may be catastrophic, or conversely that actions bear little relation to true risks, such as expensive over-

maintenance or replacement of things that don’t need renewal.

Smart infrastructure technologies are intended to change all of this. A broad consortium of construction, electronics and

communications companies is behind the Innovation and Knowledge Centre, which is being led by Professor Robert Mair CBE

FREng FRS, Head of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Cambridge University. The Centre for Smart Infrastructure and

Construction (CSIC) is funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and Technology Strategy

Board (TSB) in collaboration with more than 30 industry partners.

The breadth of technologies being investigated by CSIC on construction projects and existing infrastructure includes small sensors

that continuously monitor performance (such as displacement, strain or crack width), and relay information wirelessly back to

central control. These micro and nanosensor devices need a power source, but their power needs are very small, and energy

harvesting techniques to scavenge power from vibration are already in development. Innovative fibre optic technologies are also

being demonstrated on construction projects: these technologies are used to monitor in real-time the performance details of

infrastructure such as tunnels, deep shafts and pile foundations.

The promise of smart infrastructure, says Professor Mair, is not just that it delivers a huge amount of invaluable data to builders

and operators of infrastructural assets, thereby improving their management, operation and maintenance throughout their design

life. Smart infrastructure also opens new opportunities to improve the construction and design processes themselves, using

sophisticated performance data to inform the creation and roll-out of more economical infrastructure.

Photo: Peter Bennett, University of Cambridge



My Summit

Elizabeth Choe


MY SUMMIT

Elizabeth Choe was in her final year of studying Biological Engineering at Massachusetts Institute of

Technology, USA, when she attended the Student Day and the main Summit. She was a member of the

winning Student Day team who then presented their proposal on health informatics at the Summit.



Closing comments Bill Gates

Co-Chair and Trustee, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

Engineers are the key people in delivering new

and better drugs to solve many of the disease

and healthcare problems of the developing

world, and also have a critical and urgent role to

play in devising solutions to climate change, Bill

Gates told the Global Grand Challenges Summit.

But the Microsoft Co-Founder, now leading the

Gates Foundation charity which seeks to bring

development through education and innovation

to the world’s poorest people, also warned

that there was “a flaw in the pure capitalistic

approach” in which priorities in innovation and

technology were driven by markets.

It had led, he said, to more money being spent

on research into male baldness than on the

development of a vaccine for malaria, which kills

millions.

This kind of distortion was why governments and

charities such as his own foundation needed

to intervene on these issues. “We should take

the basic needs and make sure the innovation

agenda focuses on these,” he said. “In general,

capitalism under-invests in research.”

Gates, giving a keynote plenary address by

video link from the USA at the Summit, said:

“The metric I track in this area is the mortality

of children under the age of five,” he said.

“In 1960, it was more than 20 million, and

this reduced by 1990 to 12 million while

the population almost doubled. The greatest

reduction since 1990 to today’s figure of less

than seven million is mostly ascribable to

vaccines invented for the rich world being taken

to the poorest, but we still need to invent TB and

AIDS vaccines. We’ve set the ambitious goal of

less than three million infant deaths by 2030. It

should be possible and I believe it is.”

But pharmaceutical developments were not the

only way to bring better prospects to the poorest

people, he said. The distribution of drugs was

often the crucial problem in getting reliable

disease prevention and vaccination programmes

up and running. Engineers, he said, were good

at handling the complex issues that setting up

drug depots would entail.

Engineering product innovations were also

needed, such as vacuum flasks that would keep

drugs cool and slow-release mechanisms that

could ensure that full courses of drugs were

taken. And this was alongside a list of other,

more basic needs: “People living in Africa are

increasingly living in urban slums, and they need

the basics of shelter, lighting and heating.”

Gates singled out climate change as another

area where engineers could make a huge

contribution. “This is really a serious issue,”

he said. “We need engineering and innovation

to get low cost power that emits no carbon

dioxide. That’s the real global challenge that

this generation of engineers has to face.

Governments could be doing more, but we need

to solve it very quickly, and only engineers and

scientists can do that.”


CLOSING COMMENTS

In a lively question-and-answer session with an

audience of more than 400 engineers, Gates

confessed himself puzzled by the shortage of

engineers in Europe and the US. “It’s really

surprising to me that we have a deficit,” he said.

“If you want the most interesting jobs, the ones

that pay well and that have the most impact on

society, then go into science and engineering.”

Engineering, he said, “is the reason that any

progress has taken place at all.”

The personal computer, tablets, mobile phones

and his own area of software were powerful

manifestations of innovative engineering. “I have

a basic optimism about the problems we face,”

he said. “Science and engineering delivered into

the marketplace have got us this far. The positive

message of engineering is maybe that we don’t

talk about it enough. But I’m excited to be part

of it.”

If you want the most interesting jobs, the ones that pay well and that have the most impact on society, then go into science and engineering... Engineering is the reason that any progress has taken place at all

“”

EPSRC, proud supporters of the Global Grand

Challenges Summit

EPSRC is investing £47 million in leading

engineering research projects aligned to the themes

of the summit

• £25 million invested in 5 Frontier

Engineering projects

• £20 million invested in 4 large grants to

UK universities

• £1-2 million invested in an EPSRC and NSF

collaborative call for proposals from UK and US

teams to research provision of clean water for all

EPSRC, responding to the challenges debated at

the Global Grand Challenges Summit

EPSRC has opened up Fellowships in two new

areas within Engineering, across all three

career stages (postdoctoral, early career and

established career)

• Engineeringforsustainability

• Engineeringforresilience

As the single largest public sector funder of engineering research, EPSRC stimulates creativity and long-term thinking in areas with the potential for long-term impact. We take a holistic view of our portfolio, focusing on core engineering skills, knowledge and resources, and integrating research policies so that they successfully deliver against EPSRC’s priority challenge themes of Energy, Healthcare Technologies and Manufacturing the Future. These challenge themes depend on underpinning engineering research, as well as a flow of leading researchers between disciplines - and EPSRC is at the heart of this activity.

Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council Keeping the UK at the heart of global engineering research

www.epsrc.ac.uk

The issues explored at the Global Grand Challenges Summit highlighted how important it is for the UK to fund engineering research in these areas and

work with colleagues worldwide to develop both the people and projects to meet the demands of the twenty

first century.

Dr Kedar Pandya

EPSRC Engineering Theme Lead

The urgent challenge is for engineers to respond now to the ambitions laid down by the international community at the Summit. There is significant need for long-term and ambitious engineering research to deliver creative solutions in these areas. We are seeking creative ideas for game-changing engineering research.

Professor David Delpy,

EPSRC’s Chief Executive

The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) is the UK’s main agency for funding research in engineering and the physical sciences. EPSRC invests around £800 million a year in research and postgraduate training, to help the nation handle the next generation of technological change.


Organisers

As the UK’s national academy for engineering, we

bring together the most successful and talented

engineers for a shared purpose: to advance and

promote excellence in engineering.

We provide analysis and policy support to promote

the UK’s role as a great place to do business. We

take a lead on engineering education and we invest

in the UK’s world-class research base to underpin

innovation. We work to improve public awareness

and understanding of engineering.

We are a national academy with a global outlook.

We have four strategic challenges:

n Drive faster and more balanced economic

growth

n Foster better education and skills

n Lead the profession

n Promote engineering at the heart of society

ORGANISERS

Founded in 1964, the US National Academy of

Engineering (NAE) is a private, independent,

non-profit institution that provides engineering

leadership in service to the nation. The mission of

the National Academy of Engineering is to advance

the well-being of the nation by promoting a vibrant

engineering profession and by marshalling federal

government on matters involving engineering and

technology.

The NAE has more than 2,000 peer-elected

members and foreign associates, senior

professional in business, academia and

government who are among the world’s most

accomplished engineers. They provide the

leadership and expertise for numerous projects

focused on the relationships between engineering,

technology and the quality of life.

The NAE is part of the National Academies,

which also includes the National Academy of

Sciences (NAS), the Institute of Medicine (IOM)

and the National Research Council (NRC). The

NAE operates under the same congressional act

of incorporation that established the NAS, signed

in 1863 by President Lincoln. Under this charter

the NAE is directed “whenever called upon by

any department or agency of the government, to

investigate, examine, experiment and report upon

any subject of science of art.”

Royal Academy of Engineering

National Academy of Engineering



The Chinese Academy of Engineering (CAE) is a

national and independent organisation composed

of elected members of the highest calibre from

the national community of engineering and

technological sciences. Its missions are to initiate

and conduct strategic studies, provide consultancy

services for decision-making on key national issues

in engineering and technological sciences in China

and devote itself to the benefit and welfare of

society.

The main functions of the CAE are:

n To bring into full play the combined expertise

of its members in decision-making for

national and regional economic development

and social progress, as well as to undertake

studies, consultancy and strategy evaluation

for key projects and advise central and local

governments on top-priority issues and

orientation of key investments.

n To organise studies on issues of orientation

and frontiers of key engineering science and

technology, promoting innovation capacity

in industrial technology and improving

management quality of science and engineering

projects.

n To carry out extensive academic exchanges and

collaborations at home and abroad at all levels.

n To popularise scientific knowledge and to

contribute to the promotion of the standard of

engineering science and technology and the

quality of workforce in China.

n To safeguard science ethics, carry forward

the scientific spirit and vigorously promote the

construction of socialist civilisation.

ORGANISERS

Chinese Academy of Engineering

FiveIET SectorsEngineering for life.


www.theiet.org/sectors

global grand challenges

summit

Organised by:

This report summarises the Global Grand Challenges Summit held at The IET’s London headquarters, Savoy Place, London on 12-13 March 2013 organised by the Royal Academy of Engineering, the US National Academy of Engineering and the Chinese Academy of Engineering. This publication is a summary of discussions at the event and as such, unless stated otherwise, the views expressed in this publication do not necessarily reflect the views of, and should not be attributed to, any of the organisers or sponsors.

© The Royal Academy of Engineering (Registered Charity Number: 293074)

Published by The Institution of Engineering and Technology.


www.theiet.org

Video footage from the summit is available at

www.theiet.org/grand-challenges

global grand challenges

Documents

Transcript of global grand challenges