Samueli School Distinguished Lecture: NAE's Grand Challenges Scholars Program

Abstract:  In 2008, a diverse committee of experts from around the world, convened at the request of the U.S. National Science Foundation, revealed 14 challenges that, if met, would improve how we live. The NAE's Grand Challenges for Engineering in the 21st Century outlines the clearest and most compelling description of engineering's future direction for students and the public alike. Each of the challenges is a global-scale engineering system problem, such as reverse-engineer the brain, provide access to clean water, manage the nitrogen cycle and secure cyberspace. Solutions to each require global engagement. The world’s cadre of engineers will need to seek ways to put knowledge into practice to meet these grand challenges. Applying the rules of reason, the findings of science, the aesthetics of art, and the spark of creative imagination, engineers will continue the tradition of forging a better future. This presentation describes an engineering educational platform to prepare students for taking on global problems like these grand challenges. 

Bio: C.D. Mote Jr. is president of the National Academy of Engineering and Regents Professor, on leave, from the University of Maryland, College Park. Mote is a native Californian who earned his B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees at UC Berkeley in mechanical engineering between 1959 and 1963. After a postdoctoral year in England and three years as an assistant professor at the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh, he returned to Berkeley to join the faculty in mechanical engineering where he stayed for the next 31 years. He and his students investigated the dynamics, stability and control of high-speed rotating and translating continua (e.g., disks, webs, tapes and cables) as well as biomechanical problems emanating from snow skiing. He coined the area called “dynamics of axially moving materials” encompassing these systems. Fifty-eight doctoral students earned their degrees under his mentorship.

Hosted by Gregory Washington, Stacey Nicholas Dean of Engineering

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