Competition for Grand Challenges in Engineering

The 14 Grand Challenges

Engineering students will have a chance to compete alone or with colleagues by creating a video that focuses on achieving a "Grand Challenge." They'll not only have the satisfaction of receiving acknowledgement for their great ideas, but they can win a lot of money as well!

The National Academy of Engineering (NAE) is sponsoring a contest, Engineering for You 2 Video Contest, for which the grand prize is US$25,000.The competition opens in 2 days - 5 January 2015 - and the deadline is 2 March 2015 (noon U.S. Eastern Standard Time).

It is open to individuals or teams in the following four categories:

1. Middle School Students and Younger (grades K-8)
2. High School Students (grades 9-12)
3. Tertiary Education Students (2-year college through graduate school, part- or full-time
4. The General Public

The NAE has outlined 14 areas of what it calls "Grand Challenges for Engineering." Competitors must choose one or more of these challenges and then create and submit a 1- to 2-minute video "that shows how achieving one or more of the NAE Grand Challenges for Engineering will lead to a more sustainable, healthy, secure, and/or joyous world!"

The information on NAE's website: https://www.nae.edu/e4u2/

The 14 Grand Challenges (in no particular order) are:

• Make solar energy economical
• Provide energy from fusion
• Develop carbon sequestration methods
• Manage the nitrogen cycle
• Provide access to clean water
• Restore and improve urban infrastructure
• Advance health informatics
• Engineer better medicines
• Reverse-engineer the brain
• Prevent nuclear terror
• Secure cyberspace
• Enhance virtual reality
• Advance personalized learning
• Engineer the tools of scientific discovery 

Students would certainly be motivated to create something and enter the competition. Even if they don't win, they'll come up with useful ideas and they'll certainly have great practice in language skills, teamwork and creativity. And if they win - well, there's the glory and some money!

More specific information about the videos is on the competition website:
http://www.engineeringchallenges.org/  

The winners and prizes will be announced in September 2015, and I'll give an update in another post then.