The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and the National Economic Council have released a request for information on Grand Challenges for the 21st Century.
Grand Challenges Scholars Program
The Grand Challenges Scholars Program is a combined curricular and extra-curricular program designed to prepare students to solve the Grand Challenges facing society. Learn how the program prepares the next generation of engineers and apply for this program at the Grand Challenges Scholars Program website.
The Summit Series on the Grand Challenges
This series represents a commitment to sustain critical dialogue and engagement with grand challenge problems and to change the way we educate our students in order to better prepare them for the challenges ahead. With events across the country scheduled for 2010, the goal of this program is to:
1. Enhance student interest in engineering and science.
2. Increase the visibility and importance of engineering and science to society.
3. Underscore the importance of recognizing that engineering education must be coupled to policy/business/law and must be student-focused.
4, Enhance student interest in engineering, science, and technology entrepreneurship.
5. Foment future collaborations of interested scientists, engineers, policy makers and researchers in business, law, social sciences and humanities needed to successfully address these complex societal issues.
Grand Challenge of Providing Access to Clean Water Chosen as the Theme for JETS High School Competition.
Get a PDF of the Grand Challenges booklet here.
With input from people around the world -- much of it on this website -- an international group of leading technological thinkers were asked to identify the Grand Challenges for Engineering in the 21st Century. Now their conclusions are revealed on this website.
From urban centers to remote corners of Earth, the depths of the oceans to space, humanity has always sought to transcend barriers, overcome challenges, and create opportunities that improve life in our part of the universe.
In the last century alone, many great engineering achievements became so commonplace that we now take them mostly for granted. Technology allows an abundant supply of food and safe drinking water for much of the world. We rely on electricity for many of our daily activities. We can travel the globe with relative ease, and bring goods and services wherever they are needed. Growing computer and communications technologies are opening up vast stores of knowledge and entertainment.
As remarkable as these engineering achievements are, certainly just as many more great challenges and opportunities remain to be realized. While some seem clear, many others are indistinct and many more surely lie beyond most of our imaginations. Today, we begin engineering a path to the future.