USC Viterbi School of Engineering Hosts Highly Successful “Grand Challenges Summit”

LOS ANGELES--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- The electricity of intellectual innovation filled the University of Southern California’s Bovard Auditorium October 6-8, 2010, as leaders from a variety of disciplines met to explore the National Academy of Engineering’s 14 Grand Challenges.

More than 1,000 innovators, engineers, policy makers, educators, executives and students were on hand as moderator and broadcast veteran Miles O’Brien, CNN’s former Chief Science and Technology Correspondent, fielded questions from audiences harnessing a number of social media including Facebook, a live blog, a live webcast, and Twitter, helping bring the Grand Challenges to life.

The Grand Challenges are 14 issues identified by the NAE as areas where engineers, in concert with key stakeholders, can make the greatest impact to society worldwide. A powerful line-up of panelists provided solutions from six different perspectives - Technology, Innovation, Policy, Communications, Education and Business - all looking beyond engineering to a broader societal landscape.

USC President C.L. Max Nikias provided the context for the discussion. “The solutions of these Grand Challenges will not be solely technological. They cannot be solved only by engineers and scientists. No single discipline can solve them alone - it will require a unified front,” Nikias said. USC Viterbi School of Engineering Dean Yannis C. Yortsos added that “the second annual Summit is not only a forum on technology, but also one that will shine light on the multitude of forces that need to be marshaled to solve crucial societal issues.”

NAE President and keynote speaker Charles Vest focused on the underlying master challenge. “As a nation we are moving in the wrong direction,” Vest said. “Where we used to be number one, we are falling down the scale.” Vest hoped for more engineering students in the new generation, noting that 21 percent of students in Asia receive degrees in engineering; 14 percent in Europe, and only 4.5 percent in the United States.

Technology Panel keynote speaker Jean-Lou Chameau, President of the California Institute of Technology, framed the discussion by describing a fundamental difference between the 20^th and 21^st Century. “The 20^th Century,” Chameau explained, “focused on progress; the 21^st Century must focus on sustainable progress, and this new approach should define the way we approach technological innovation. The United States needs to spark an innovation arms race,” he said.

During the Innovation Panel, X Prize Foundation Founder and Chairman Peter Diamandis stated, “We are living in an extraordinarily magical time right now. To create an innovation environment, you have to be tolerant of risk. Fail often, fail early.” Paul Debevec, recipient of an Academy Award for his work on Avatar and Associate Director of the Institute for Creative Technologies at USC added, “As a culture, we need to value innovation. We need to reward systems that reflect the value of innovation.”

An immediate step in catalyzing innovation was with the announcement of the Maseeh Entrepreneurship Prize Competition (MEPC), which will award $50,000 each year to enterprising USC Viterbi Engineering students. It is funded by a $1 Million dollar endowment from the Massiah Foundation.

The Policy Panel discussion focused on how engaging and effectively communicating with policy makers may be one of the greatest challenges facing engineers and educators. Daniel Schnur, Director of the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics at USC, explained that policy success requires communicating and recommending action from policy maker’s perspective. “You need to show the policy makers why your idea solves their problem.” UCLA healthcare economist Dana Goldman gave an example from his specialty, saying that policy makers must understand that healthcare innovation in the form of advanced medical technology or electronic medical records will ultimately lead to savings costs and improved healthcare delivery.

At the Communication Panel, Moderator Miles O’Brien called upon the engineering community to “toot your own horns. Good ideas are not enough - you have to sell them and sell yourselves.” O’Brien added that communicating science and engineering to a broader audience is itself a challenge and an opportunity. CNN Chief Business correspondent Ali Velshi added that “we have to explain complicated things in a way that the audience can understand. What I want to do specifically is connect them to ideas, innovation and inventions that will change the world.”

The Education Panel focused on the challenge of educating our future leaders in Science-Technology Education-Math (STEM) and emphasized that innovation and education go hand in hand. One example is the expansion and regional development of the NAE Grand Challenges Scholars Program. Susan Hackwood, Executive Director of the California Council on Science and Technology, stressed that educators must also think about ways to use digital education to reach students with STEM education and that the digital classroom of the future could augment traditional schools.

The Business Panel focused on how bringing the Grand Challenges to life requires corporate investment. Peter Williams, CTO for the IBM-Big Green Initiative, emphasized that “we need to think of each of these Grand Challenges as a business rather than a grand idea.” One example came from Alexis Livanos, Corporate Vice President and CTO of Northrop Grumman, who stated that his team is emphasizing one Grand Challenge: securing cyberspace. Livanos described a process to develop flexible systems and flexible architectures that can respond to an evolving threat in cyberspace. His team is working on “Observe, Orient, Decide and Attack” (OODA), processes loop to address security issues.

The NAE Grand Challenges Summit proved to motivate and capture brilliant minds alike in whose hands the future is now placed. National Summit organizers included this year’s Summit Host, the USC Viterbi School of Engineering, Duke University-Pratt School of Engineering, Olin College of Engineering, and the California Institute of Technology. Lockheed Martin was presenting sponsor, along with 25 other major corporations.

For an archived webcast of the NAE Grand Challenges Summit please visit www.gcs2010.org/webcast. For more information please visit viterbi.usc.edu

About the Viterbi School of Engineering

Engineering studies began at the University of Southern California in 1905. The Viterbi School of Engineering received its name not quite a century later from a 2004 gift from alumnus Andrew J. Viterbi, inventor of the Viterbi algorithm now key to cell phone technology and other data applications. Consistently ranked among the top 10 graduate programs in the United States, the school enrolls approximately 1,800 undergraduate students and 4,000 graduate students, taught by 168 tenured and tenure-track faculty, with 52 endowed chairs and professorships. The School consistently receives top rankings for research funding per faculty member, and the home of renowned research centers including the Information Sciences Institute, which played a key role in the creation of the Internet, the Signal and Image Processing Institute, birthplace of jpeg images; the NSF-funded Biomimetic MicroElectronics Systems (BMES) center, the Center for Risk Analysis of Terrorism Events (CREATE); the USC Center for Systems and Software Engineering (CSSE), the USC Center for Robotics and Embedded Systems (CRES) and many more.

Source: USC Viterbi School of Engineering

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