iMechanica - A EUROPEAN web portal to discuss NAE's “Grand Challenges” impact in EUROPE - Comments

Fusion research as an example

Yixiang Gan — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 10:11:44 -0400

Now, ITER is one of the most important and inevitable projects in fusion research toward commercial usage of fusion energy. Since it has been decided to be built in France and EU will support near 50% of the budget of 11 billion Euro, it is definitely an European, and of course international, challenge. This has been also listed in the NAE Grand challenges.

In terms of orgnization, European Fusion Development Agreement (Garching, Germany) and recently Fusion for Engergy (Barcelona, Spain) are two examples. They reassemble scientists and engineers from differenet disciplines, and in different places together for the same challenge. I think their experiences could be usefull for those challenges, i.e. to break "walls".

NAE Grand challenges for engineering

Zhigang Suo — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 11:13:39 -0400

Here is a previous iMechanica thread on the NAE Grand challenges. Also, on the NAE website, each challenge has become a long thread of discussion. These threads can be useful resources.

A EUROPEAN web portal to discuss NAE's “Grand Challenges” impact in EUROPE

Mike Ciavarella — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 10:30:13 -0400

We are planning to set a WEB portal to discuss

1) the example and the role of an Academy of Engineering to find the correct blend of credentials and consensus to set research needs

2) The final 14 NAE resulting "challenges", being set at international level, should be accepted worldwide. Is this really the case, are the European Agencies considering them, or do they think we need to duplicate the search for the "challenges" separately?

3) Can we coordinate efforts in Europe for the next steps announced by NAE (Challenges of Landing on Mars, Educating Engineers for 2020 and Beyond, Engineering for the Developing World, Capturing and Simulating Physically Accurate Illumination in Computer Graphics)

4) Is this an occasion to pose the question: would Henry Kissinger find today a single phone number for European Research?

5) How to address the "challenging" questions in Europe: the European Research Area? Are we trying to have less bureaucracy, more merit, less "closed circles", "disciplinary sectors", and fewer of many other European "walls" --- perhaps in the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the crash of Berlin's one?

6) We hope to receive feedback from iMechanica! Attached the preliminary road map document, and the way to partecipate.