Engineering as diplomacy
You cannot look into the eyes of a child who is dying from a disease caused by drinking dirty water — something that rarely, if ever, happens in the United States — and not feel changed. You cannot stand before her parents without thinking, “I’m an engineer. There must be something I can [...]

Engineering school’s growth targets societal needs
The primary role of engineering as a discipline is to use scientific knowledge to do useful things for society. So in academia, engineering serves as a bridge between the natural sciences on one hand and the humanities and the social sciences on the other. Engineers are, of course, involved very [...]

James J. Duderstadt, President Emeritus and University Professor of Science and Engineering, The University of Michigan provides an extensive report on the state of engineering in the USA. The report focusing on engineering education and the role of engineering in the economy and society. Engineering for a Changing World - A Roadmap to [...]

SciVee is a new site by the great people at PLoS, with support from NSF and San Diego Supercomputer Center. It is very early in the launch of this effort but it looks very promising.
SciVee allows scientists to communicate their work as a multimedia presentation incorporated with the content of their published article. Other [...]

Change Management: Combining Management with Ancient Philosophy:
The Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) is one of the rare Indian government undertakings that are completed on schedule and within budget.
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DMRC’s uniqueness lies in how it has managed “soft issues” related to the general public affected by it. To ease out traffic snarls and general chaos around construction [...]

MIT’s Amy Smith on appropriate engineering, Recorded February 2006 in Monterey, California. Food, water, medicine — in the developing world, these basic needs can be impossible to meet. Amy Smith and her students design smart, low cost tools to improve the life of the poorest in our world.
I remember traveling with my father as [...]

Engineers are responsible for solving a variety of increasingly-complex problems, but oftentimes nature has already figured out the best solutions. For example, velcro was invented in 1941 after a Swiss engineer looked under a microscope to see how the seeds of a burdock plant stuck to his socks. Before this time, there was no good [...]

(left to right) real cell, mold of real cell, artificial cell
Biomedical engineers at Brown University have created a plastic replication of cells using a two step molding process. The result: a copy so authentic that the trained eye could not distinguish a difference.
Relying on Schwann cells (those covering nerve fibers [...]

The writers for the show CSI can now start looking to real life to help think up plot lines.

Up until just recently, forensic scientists have only been able to study the two-dimensional photos of bullets and casings taken from crime scenes. This method left ample room for error, as examiners could sometimes end up [...]

Global warming, meet geoengineering, the deliberate modification of Earth’s environment on a large scale to suit human needs and promote habitability. While the field remains controversial due to its radical project proposals, such as a sunshade sattelite that cools the earth by limiting the earth’s sun exposure, failed efforts to reduce global warming and [...]