Houston, we have a solution

The United States National Academy of Engineering (NAE) has put out the top 14 engineering challenges for the 21st century.

http://www.engineeringchallenges.org/

Close to two weeks back, Dr. Charles Vest, President Emeritus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology was speaking at the Faculty Hall of the main building at IISc, Bangalore. He is currently the President of the NAE. The topic of the lecture was ‘Engineering Education in the 21st century'. What caught all of us by surprise at the very outset of his talk was the statement that he made, which said “the world is actually getting better.” This was a refreshing change from the common handout that the world has taken a nightmare pill. The world is actually getting better.

Part of this talk covered the 14 greatest challenges you saw above, and how solving them could render a great impact to tens of millions of lives around the world. However, a cursory glance at the list will tell you that there are many other challenges that are equally important if not more, but haven’t made it to the list. For example, the issues of recycling the world’s waste or space exploration don’t feature on that list. But the 14 we have here are big enough to keep our heads and hands occupied for the next 100 years.

I’ve been spending time over the last few weeks meeting with people in academia, government and industries trying to gleam an understanding of where technology, especially enabling ones like nanotech (which I hold rather dear to me) are moving us towards. Invariably in each of these discussions, the topic gets derailed from the technology per se, to the fact that the world is beating inroads to the Indo-China region; and how everybody wants to be a part of the growth story. In my discussion earlier today with Ms. Indira Samarasekara, President of the University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada, it became abundantly clear that policy makers and influencers of tomorrow will need to root themselves in one particular 'center of gravity' of a technology/science/engineering issue, and bring forth an economical or societal or legal understanding of the same problem.

This points out to two steps the Indian government ought to consider. Firstly, the issue of Brain Drain that so famously filled debate topics during the 90’s is now not on the radar. And as Dr. Vest pointed out in his talk too, we’re now on our way to Brain Circulation from Brain Drain. This is but a passing phase where we should in all eventuality end up talking about Brain Integration. I can’t get a grip on the third phrase yet. However, brain circulation seems like a logical extension of a globalized world. I can now grow, harvest and sell my ideas to the world while living in my own country, thanks to so many other enabling technologies that could require an entirely new post to talk about.

Secondly, we’re looking at integrating the micro-technologies of info, bio and nano and bridge the gap on to the macro systems like energy, healthcare, defense and so on. India has a huge slice of this pie, and we’re only getting started. That will call on technocrats to draw on multi-disciplinary skills. We need more programmes at the masters level at Indian science and engineering institutes to implement this.

There’s never really been a better time to live and grow in this country. Houston, we have a solution!