http://viterbi.usc.edu/students/undergrad/gcsp/
Tackling Engineering's 'Grand Challenges' Viterbi researchers take up call from the National Academy of Engineering
The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) announced 14 Grand Challenges to be addressed in the early years of the 21st century if we are to safeguard our natural resources, promote quality of life worldwide and build a more secure and sustainable future for an ever-growing global population.
The Viterbi School has welcomed NAE’s call to action; our faculty have been involved with many ongoing research initiatives (listed below) that are directly aligned and reflect NAE’s challenges. These research initiatives span the following areas:
Health
Advance Health Informatics: Stronger health information systems not only improve everyday medical visits, but they are essential to counter pandemics and biological or chemical attacks.
Engineer Better Medicines: Our faculty are developing new systems that use genetic information, sense small changes in the body, assess new drugs, and deliver vaccines. Faculty includes Yong Chen, Noah Malmstadt, Ellis Meng, Michelle Povinelli, Richard Roberts, Pin Wang, and others.
Reverse-Engineer the Brain: The intersection of engineering and neuroscience promises great advances in health care, manufacturing, and communication.
Another strong area of research focuses on wearable sensors and mobile computing for health; faculty include Murali Anavaram, Urbashi Mitra, Gaurav Sukhatme, Maja Matari, Shri Narayanan.
Viterbi School faculty are also involved in developing methods and technologies for new diagnostics and therapies for a wide variety of conditions and disorders of vision, sleep, motor/movement control, social behavior, and cognitive function. Faculty include Ted Berger, Martin Gundersen, Michael Khoo, Gerald Loeb, Maja Matari, Shri Narayanan, Terrence Sanger, Costas Sioutas, Francisco Valero-Cuevas.
A significant number of our faculty are involved in imaging research, including Richard Leahy, Krishna Nayak and Kirk Shung. The Viterbi School of Engineering is teamed up with the Keck School of Medicine.
Energy and the Environment
Make Solar Energy Economical: Solar energy provides less than 1% of the world's total energy, but it has the potential to provide much, much more. DoE Engineering Frontiers Research Center (EFRC) on Emerging Materials for Solar Energy Conversion and Solid State Lighting (Daniel Dapkus and Mark Thompson)
Develop Carbon Sequestration Methods: Engineers are working on ways to capture and store excess carbon dioxide to prevent global warming.
The Viterbi School efforts in the area of BigData for this NAE challenge area are summarized on the Big Data Science and Technology web portal.
The Viterbi School has an extensive Energy Initiative with a wide variety of research projects.
Security
Prevent Nuclear Terror: The need for technologies to prevent and respond to a nuclear attack is growing.
Secure Cyberspace: It’s more than preventing identity theft. Critical systems in banking, national security, and physical infrastructure may be at risk.
Megacities Restore and Improve Urban Infrastructure Good design and advanced materials can improve transportation and energy, water, and waste systems, and also create more sustainable urban environments.
Personalized Learning
Advance Personalized Learning: Instruction can be individualized based on learning styles, speeds, and interests to make learning more reliable.
Enhance Virtual Reality: True virtual reality creates the illusion of actually being in a difference space. It can be used for training, treatment, and communication.
In the century ahead, engineers will continue to be partners with scientists in the great quest for understanding many unanswered questions of nature. The Viterbi School efforts in the area of BigData for this NAE challenge area are summarized on the Big Data Science and Technology web portal.
