Planning for a Bright Future

By Dean Kenneth R. Lutchen

In what is now my 10^th year as dean, it’s natural to reflect on the College’s many accomplishments over the past decade. But, the dean’s job is to keep looking forward and to lead planning for the next 10 years. Several months ago, I asked the leaders of our departments and divisions to establish new goals that are both ambitious and achievable, and what emerged was a remarkable confluence of ideas and priorities that fit exceptionally well with our vision for creating Societal Engineers, and with our commitment to growth in research impact and excellence.

There was unanimous agreement that the College’s research portfolio should leverage and contribute to emerging technologies that will shape our lives in the coming years and decades. The identity of those areas evolved organically and they are closely aligned with our faculty’s expertise. All of them involve interdisciplinary challenges that bring the strengths of multiple departments to bear.

At present, a revolution is happening at the intersection of big data, the internet of things and cyber-physical systems. Computers can process vast amounts of information, which can be used to manipulate something else. Optical and photonic technologies are increasing the speed and volume of information transmission, and creative networking technologies will allow for critical ways to exchange information at low cost. All of this has enormous implications for improving the function of cities, health care and many other facets of daily life.

Synthetic biology, systems biology, and cell and tissue engineering will all transform our capacity to address medical challenges. Examples include understanding how mechanical forces influence the function of biological systems and how genomic systems can be controlled to address a huge range of diseases. These efforts will help us understand why cancer does or does not develop, or metastasize, and provide insights into diseases of the heart, lungs and joints.

Understanding how and why Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and cancer develop in the brain, and how neurostructures within the brain process information and perform functions are other emerging areas. Optical and nano technologies merged with big data and computational modeling are being used to develop imaging and diagnostic techniques that aim to address these critical societal problems and opportunities.

Robotics will change our lives in many ways in the coming years. In the near future, robots will assist us in our homes in ways only now imaginable. They will enhance our security. They will help people who have lost muscular function and drones will transform the way we interact as people and with our environment.

Developing sustainable sources of energy remains a topic that has attracted great interest in recent years and is accelerating. Multiple disciplines are involved with finding ways to produce, store and deliver low-cost, low-carbon energy, reducing our reliance on fossil fuels in a complex fossil fuel ecosystem, and lowering the cost of computation.

Virtually all of the applications above and more will engage researchers and technology innovators with communities, with public policy, with socioeconomic leaders and systems, with people and infrastructures throughout the world, and with concerns and needs for cybersecurity and privacy.

How can we amplify the number of multi-dimensional Societal Engineers we will need for these challenges?

One way we are answering this question is by doubling down on our Technology Innovation Scholars Program. Our efforts to inspire young people with the possibilities of an engineering career are bearing fruit. In five years, TISP has reached nearly 14,000 K-12 students across America and is growing rapidly. This scalable model for what engineering pipeline feeders might look like nationally has attracted major support from corporations, non-profits, government agencies and our alumni. We’re aiming to sustain momentum through our unique STEM Educator-Engineer Program, which allows students to earn a bachelor’s degree in engineering and a master’s degree in education, preparing them to bring their passion for engineering into K-12 classrooms and inspire generations of young people.

I hope that when we look back 10 years from now, Boston University will have played a leading role in developing technologies that improve our lives and in dramatically increasing the number and diversity of young people who choose engineering as a career that can impact society.

This essay originally appeared in the Spring 2016 issue of The ENGineer, the College’s alumni magazine.