The U.S. National Academy of Engineering (NAE) provides the international engineering sector with the top 14 engineering challenges for the 21st century as proposed by a committee of experts from all over the world, some of the most accomplished engineers and scientists of their generation (2008). A huge effort was put to come up with this conclusion which has its weight to be considered by the leading research institutions from all over the world.
I have passed on many recent works (research papers) that consider these challenges and cite the reports of the NAE in there publications. I mean works from professors in the MIT, Stanford University (USA), USA Coast Guard Academy, the University of Cambridge (UK), the University of Catania (Italy), and others.
The list of the challenges is:
1. Make solar energy economical
2. Provide energy from fusion
3. Develop carbon sequestration methods
4. Manage the nitrogen cycle
5. Provide access to clean water
6. Restore and improve urban infrastructure
7. Advance health informatics
8. Engineer better medicine
9. Reverse-engineer the brain
10. Prevent nuclear terror
11. Secure cyberspace
12. Enhance virtual reality
13. Advanced personalized learning
14. Engineer the tools of scientific discovery
For more details: The Grand Challenged PDF
Does the Faculty of Engineering and Technology at the University of Jordan have plans for research? A list of the "research challenges" ordered based on the national needs. This list should be constructed in the light of the global engineering priorities listed above.
The research should serve the community not only the researcher. This means that the purpose of the research is not only for the personal academic ranks, but it should be guided by national plans that carries the research in some happy endings.
If the excuse was (money). I would say that we see many research papers published by professors from the JU, but, most of the times, they are in a random way. What if this small amount of money and large amount of efforts with the great brains that we have were guided toward one "narrow" field of research? This will - with no doubts - carry the University of Jordan (say the CPE department) into a regional or even global leadership in this narrow field if chosen carefully.
The University of Jordan - a Leader in Bioinformatics!!
Medicine in Jordan is recognized in the middle east as a great leader. Why don't the smart engineers (doctors and students) from the Computer Engineering Department and the Computer Science Department get themselves involved in building smart technology to analyze and study the biological information that can be provided by the medicine labs?
According to my research in the fields of interest of most of the leading universities from all over the world, bioinformatics is a leading topic which tackles two of the 14 engineering challenges. The "special topics" module of the CPE department should be used to scratch the surface of bioinformatics and to open the scope of research-based graduation projects based on this topic.
Finally, I trust our professors' abilities in the CPE department as well as the CS department. I have no doubts in having some of the most intelligent students brains (as I can confirm while being in the UK now!!). The only problem is: we have a lot of messy issues that need to be organized. Whenever these brains find the path guided by plans, we will welcome the golden age of our scientists very soon.
For interested readers:
Basel Abu Jamous,
PhD Research Student in Bioinformatics and Computational Biology
Department of Electrical Engineering and Electronics
University of Liverpool, Liverpool, UK
Member of: IEEE Computational Intelligence society, IEEE and Jordan Engineers Association
+44 (0) 7551889509
