Engineer the tools of scientific discovery

Engineers have continually been at work on better, and cheaper, ways to search space for answers to these questions. New and improved telescopes, both on the ground and in space, make up part of the investigatory arsenal.

Other devices measure waves of gravity rippling through space, or detect the flux of the elusive lightweight particle known as the neutrino. It may be that further investigation of earthly materials will be needed as well, along with the continued assault on the problems of physics with the power of thought, an approach used so successfully by Einstein. Maybe answers will come only if scientists can succeed in discovering the ultimate laws of physics.

In that regard, the underlying question is whether there exists, as Einstein believed, one single, ultimate underlying law that encompasses all physics in a unified mathematical framework. Finding out may require new tools to unlock the secrets of matter and energy. Perhaps engineers will be able to devise smaller, cheaper, but more powerful atom smashers, enabling physicists to explore realms beyond the reach of current technology. Engineers and physicists are already collaborating to develop computers based on quantum principles.

Such computers, in addition to their possible practical value, may reveal new insights into the quantum world itself. All things considered, the frontiers of nature represent the grandest of challenges, for engineers, scientists, and society itself.

Join our mailing list Twitter Facebook. Society faces the formidable challenge of modernizing the fundamental structures that will support our civilization in centuries ahead.

Secure cyberspace. Computer systems are involved in the management of almost all areas of our lives; from electronic communications, and data systems, to controlling traffic lights to routing airplanes.

It is clear that engineering needs to develop innovations for addressing a long list of cybersecurity priorities. Provide access to clean water. About 1 out of every 6 people living today do not have adequate access to water, and more than double that number lack basic sanitation, for which water is needed. It's not that the world does not possess enough water - it is just not always located where it is needed.

Provide energy from fusion. Fusion is the energy source for the sun. The challenges facing the engineering community are to find ways to scale up the fusion process to commercial proportions, in an efficient, economical, and environmentally benign way.

Prevent nuclear terror. Engineering shares the formidable challenges of finding the dangerous nuclear material in the world, keeping track of it, securing it, and detecting its diversion or transport for terrorist use.

Manage the nitrogen cycle. Develop carbon sequestration methods. The growth in emissions of carbon dioxide, implicated as a prime contributor to global warming, is a problem that can no longer be swept under the rug. But perhaps it can be buried deep underground or beneath the ocean. Engineer the tools for scientific discovery.

Grand experiments and missions of exploration always need engineering expertise to design the tools, instruments, and systems that make it possible to acquire new knowledge about the physical and biological worlds. Register for a free account to start saving and receiving special member only perks.

But there are signs of a change as new and powerful instrumentalities come into use. Digital computers and networks are revolutionizing the way we conduct research, just as they are recasting the way we do business and spend our leisure time. It grows easier every day to collect, manipulate, and disseminate information. Researchers everywhere are developing new ways to use these digital systems in every phase of their work. These new tools— both hardware and software—make possible more creative and productive research, including new forms of collaboration on a global scale.

Advanced information technologies have become more than simply faster, more precise, and more automated research tools. They have opened up new ways of learning and communicating for anyone in the business of creating knowledge.

No discipline in science or engineering is exempt. These new ways of conducting research are also challenging many traditions of academic research. All research institutions, including universities, libraries, corporate and government laboratories, publishers, professional associations, and research funding agencies, will need to adapt.

At the same time, utmost care must be taken to preserve the core values of research. Applications of technology must be monitored to ensure that they do not threaten researchers' expression of these values. An equally profound challenge, however, is improving the rising flood of information in digital form and the capacity of the researchers to receive, assess, and act on this information. As the tools get better, the task of research may get harder, since the data is growing more complex and diffuse.

In some fields, more information is helpful. In others—especially those involving complex questions at the frontiers of knowledge—it may be overwhelming and distracting. For many fields, what will be needed is better information, and better ways to handle it. Computers connected by high-speed networks to other devices throughout the world are powerful information systems.

Public and private networks permit transmission of nearly instant voice, images, and other information to wide audiences around the world—and all at low cost. And digital technology continues to advance at a nearly inconceivable rate. For the past four decades, the speed and storage capacity of computers has doubled every 18 to 24 months.

Cost, size, and power consumption have shrunk at about the same rate. The data capacity of networks has increased one thousand-fold in just the past decade. Traffic on the Internet is doubling every three months.

The uses that will be made of advanced digital tools are difficult to anticipate. Some of the new applications are already having a fundamental impact on academic life. It is impossible to predict long-term effects, both positive and negative.

In education, teachers use computers to enhance conventional classes, for example, by creating Web sites for course materials, showing demonstrations, and using programmed instructional packages. The new technology has also created a new form of education. In some instances, course materials have been put online, and the number of face-to-face classes has sometimes declined.

Most radically, technology permits so-. These situations raise one of the greatest drawbacks of the digital age—increasing depersonalization.

Some can compensate for this, but others can become increasingly isolated. Institutions of learning must take great care in moving into this arena. Libraries are also changing, as almost all new information is created in digital format and much of it is available online. The need for a student or a researcher physically to be near a library is diminishing. Specialized information previously unavailable to the general public is now available.

For example, the Library of Congress is mounting its collections on the World Wide Web; the National Institutes of Health offers medical information to everybody, not only doctors; and the Cornell University Legal Information Institute Web site emphasizes service to professionals who are not lawyers. The Association for Computing Machinery has placed all of its publications in a digital library.

Publishing is also changing. Posting research results on the Internet offers researchers a fast and low-cost method of disseminating their results around the world. For example, physicists post preprints of papers in the online archives at Los Alamos National Laboratory. The Association for Computing Machinery and the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers, among others, offer similar services. Publishers are converting their journals to electronic format and are eliminating paper versions of some journals.

Since electronic journals are not constrained by the cost of printing, researchers can augment research papers with raw data and examples. Almost every field of research is making use of computing, and in some disciplines the methods of research are changing fundamentally:. The Internet permits social scientists to conduct surveys more quickly, more cheaply, and in greater detail.