global grand challenges
Transcript of 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
Global Grand ChallengesSummit
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
Exploring collaborative approaches to tackling global grand challenges 3
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.
4 Global Grand Challenges Summit
Global Grand ChallengesSummit
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
“”
Exploring collaborative approaches to tackling global grand challenges 5
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
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Global Grand ChallengesSummit
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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Global Grand ChallengesSummit
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
Exploring collaborative approaches to tackling global grand challenges 9
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
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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
Exploring collaborative approaches to tackling global grand challenges 11
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
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“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.
Exploring collaborative approaches to tackling global grand challenges 13
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
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Global Grand ChallengesSummit
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.
Exploring collaborative approaches to tackling global grand challenges 15
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.
16 Global Grand Challenges Summit
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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
Exploring collaborative approaches to tackling global grand challenges 17
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
18 Global Grand Challenges Summit
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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)
Exploring collaborative approaches to tackling global grand challenges 19
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
22 Global Grand Challenges Summit
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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
Exploring collaborative approaches to tackling global grand challenges 23
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
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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“ ”
Exploring collaborative approaches to tackling global grand challenges 25
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
26 Global Grand Challenges Summit
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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.
Exploring collaborative approaches to tackling global grand challenges 27
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.
28 Global Grand Challenges Summit
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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
Exploring collaborative approaches to tackling global grand challenges 29
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
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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
Exploring collaborative approaches to tackling global grand challenges 31
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
32 Global Grand Challenges Summit
Global Grand ChallengesSummit
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“ ”
Exploring collaborative approaches to tackling global grand challenges 33
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
34 Global Grand Challenges Summit
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My Summit
Elizabeth Choe
Exploring collaborative approaches to tackling global grand challenges 35
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.
36 Global Grand Challenges Summit
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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.”
Exploring collaborative approaches to tackling global grand challenges 37
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.
Exploring collaborative approaches to tackling global grand challenges 39
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
40 Global Grand Challenges Summit
Global Grand ChallengesSummit
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.
The Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) is working to engineer a better world. We inspire, inform and influence the global engineering community, supporting technology innovation to meet the needs of society. The Institution of Engineering and Technology is registered as a Charity in England and Wales (No. 211014) and Scotland (No. SCO38698).
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.
The Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) is working to engineer a better world. We inspire, inform and influence the global engineering community, supporting technology innovation to meet the needs of society. The Institution of Engineering and Technology is registered as a Charity in England and Wales (No. 211014) and Scotland (No. SCO38698).
www.theiet.org
Video footage from the summit is available at
www.theiet.org/grand-challenges