Five members from Drexel University’s faculty and senior administration will attend a major international summit organized by the National Academies of Engineering of the US, UK and China to explore new approaches for solving some of the world’s most pressing challenges. The inaugural Global Grand Challenges Summit, to be held in London on March 12-13, 2013, will bring together many of today’s leading thinkers and innovators with the next generation of engineering talent from around the world.
Participation in the summit is through invitation only and the team representing Drexel at the summit includes Dr. Deborah Crawford, Senior Vice Provost for Research; Dr. Eli Fromm, National Academy of Engineering (NAE) member, Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Associate Dean and Director of the Freshman Experience; Dr. Joseph Hughes, Dean of the College of Engineering; Dr. Youngmoo Kim, Director of the Expressive and Creative Interaction Technologies Center, Assistant Dean of Media Technologies and Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering; and Dr. William Regli, Professor of Computer and Information Science and Associate Dean for Research in the College of Information Science and Technology.
The inaugural Global Grand Challenges Summit is a new collaboration of the US NAE and the National Academies of Engineering in the United Kingdom and China. This two-day event will spark discussion and debate, with a goal of identifying opportunities for global cooperation on engineering innovation and education to address common technological goals. More than 400 people—from industry, research, education and policy—will participate at the event, which will also be webcast to a worldwide audience.
The academies are organizing this event with the support of Lockheed Martin and the UK’s Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. The summit was inspired by the US NAE’s 2008 report “Grand Challenges for Engineering,” findings of an international panel of leading scientists and engineers which are already having wide-ranging impacts, particularly in US education through initiatives like the Grand Challenges Scholars Program and the Drexel-NSF Graduate STEM Fellows in K -12 Education (GK-12) program.