Category Archives: Engineering
Have your say: How do we inspire the next generation of engineers? – The Engineer
What big conversations need to happen to help us inspire the next generation of engineers? Asks Dr Hilary Leevers, CEO of Engineering UK
Weve launched a new campaign to encourage discussion about how to achieve the ambition of increasing the diversity and number of young people entering engineering. Maybe youve seen it?
The Big Engineering Conversation has been taking place across social media and on our website and Im delighted to see the engineering community responding, commenting and contributing their perspectives.
If you havent had a chance to get involved with the #BigEngConversation, then let me share some highlights. We kicked off with the question, What have we learnt from delivering engagement activities in a pandemic?.
First, one of my colleagues, Moira Shaftoe, our Business Partnership Manager for the North East, shared her thoughts about the creation of the Virtual Work Experience working group. This group of 12 EngineeringUK Corporate Members, was established to find innovative ways to ensure high quality work experience opportunities during the pandemic. Building on the key learning from that group, we have partnered with The Careers & Enterprise Company in the development of a step-by-step guide to support employers interested in providing a young person with an experience of their workplace. The site, Experiences of the workplace A guide for employers, houses high-quality resources to take you through the entire process of planning, preparation and delivery. We know how much young people value work experience in STEM, and research from Wellcome found that about twice as many seek it than find it, so we need to offer much more. If youre interested in doing so, I hope you find this guide useful.
We really need to work together to increase our collective impact, so young people understand the thousands of engineering roles available in the future
We also heard from Phillip McShane, Head of the Big Bang Programme, about the pivot to Big Bang Digital after the cancellation of the 2020 face-to-face Fair. The inaugural Digital event followed consultations with teachers and young people to understand how to make it most useful for them. The team produced a key learnings report in which they reflected on what went well and share some of the challenges and learnings. This years Big Bang Digital, a 3-day extravaganza due to be held on Wednesday 23 to Friday 25 June 2021, will give young people an opportunity to see how the STEM subjects they are studying right now can lead to a brighter and greener future. If youre in any way connected to a school, then please do ask them to register.
Common to both testimonies was the collaboration required to pull off these feats. We really need to work together to increase our collective impact, so young people understand the thousands of engineering roles available in the future. From public transport, to tackling climate change and helping the UK achieve its Net Zero aspirations, to working alongside scientists and health care specialists to combat global pandemics, engineering and technology spans a range of exciting careers. According to our research, nearly 50% of 11 to 19 year-olds said they knew little or almost nothing about what engineers do, so we need many organisations working effectively together to reach the scale of change needed.
We initiated the #BigEngConversation but we dont want to talk to ourselves! We want your input, expertise and engagement. We started by focusing on how the pandemic has affected engagement activities, why diversity is such a key issue for engineering and how collaboration can help us in achieving some common goals. But were really keen to hear from you about what other big conversations need to happen to help us inspire the next generation of engineers. Weve had some great suggested topics, from the training of teachers and careers advisors and understanding of different pathways into engineering, to how to engage neurodiverse young people.
The team have created a toolkit to help employers, individual engineers, Professional Engineering Institutions, delivery organisations and anyone else connected to the engineering sector to get involved. Over to you
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Have your say: How do we inspire the next generation of engineers? - The Engineer
Black & Veatch Named a Top Employer for Women Engineers, Reflecting Commitment to Diversity – Business Wire
OVERLAND PARK, Kan.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Recognizing Black & Veatchs commitment to providing a positive working environment for women engineers, the global engineering, procurement and construction leader has been named to Woman Engineer magazines list of Top 50 Employers.
The rankings are the result of an annual reader survey conducted by the magazine to determine the top companies in the country for which [the readers of Women Engineer magazine] would most like to work or whom they believe would provide a positive working environment for women engineers. The magazine, launched in 1979, targets women in the fields of engineering, computer science and information technology.
Black & Veatch understands the social and financial importance of enabling a diverse and inclusive workforce, said Patty Corcoran, Interim Chief Human Resources Officer with Black & Veatch. This top ranking helps validate our commitment to investing in our women engineers, helping to raise awareness about bias and pushing for a more gender-neutral world, which is a mission central to the diversity commitment of Black & Veatch.
We recognize the value and contributions of our women professionals across the full spectrum of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM), where women remain dramatically underrepresented, Corcoran said.
According to the Society of Women Engineers, women comprise just 13 percent of the engineering workforce. Over the past decade, womens interest in majoring in engineering and computer science has increased slightly, up from 4.4 percent in 2009 to 7.1 percent in 2019, but they still lag behind men across all the STEM disciplines.
In 2019, Ingrams selected Black & Veatch as one of its Best Companies to Work For, recognizing its commitment to supporting professionals through leadership, performance and career development. That same year, Black & Veatch CEO Steve Edwards signed the CEO Action for Diversity & Inclusion pledge, joining the largest CEO-driven business commitment to advancing diversity and inclusion in the workplace. The pledge further cements the companys commitment to nurturing a trusting workplace that values inclusiveness, enables difficult conversations about diversity and inclusion, expands education about unconscious bias and examines both best and unsuccessful practices aimed at creating an inclusive work environment.
The company also runs a designated Womens Network under its Employee Resource Group program that provides women professionals and allies a place to network, host events and collaborate. Earlier this year, Forbes honored Black & Veatchs commitment to workplace diversity by placing it on its annual list of Best Employers for Diversity.
Editors Notes:
About Black & Veatch
Black & Veatch is an employee-owned global engineering, procurement, consulting and construction company with a more than 100-year track record of innovation in sustainable infrastructure. Since 1915, we have helped our clients improve the lives of people around the world by addressing the resilience and reliability of our most important infrastructure assets. Our revenues in 2020 exceeded US$3.0 billion. Follow us on http://www.bv.com and on social media.
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Polymer Science and Engineering’s Thomas Russell Contributes to Landmark Study on Compostable Plastic – UMass News and Media Relations
What to do with plastic? Despite decades of attempts at effective recycling programs, over 90% of the plastic we use ends up in the landfill or as litter. While biodegradable plastic has made headway, it can contaminate otherwise recyclable plastics, takes months to break down with specialized industrial infrastructure, and decomposes into tiny microplastics, which have themselves become a worldwide health concern.
Now however, a team of researchers, led by Ting Xu at UC Berkeley, a Ph.D. graduate of UMass polymer science and engineering, and which includes UMass Amhersts Thomas P. Russell, Silvio O. Conte Distinguished Professor in Polymer Science and Engineering, has discovered a way to engineer plastics that can completely biodegrade into organic materials right in your own compost bin.
The research, recently published in Nature, details the teams efforts to nanoconfine enzymes into plastics. Because enzymes are natures way of breaking down just about everything, the team engineered a way to incorporate two different commercial enzymes, Burkholderia cepacian lipase (BC-lipase) and proteinase K, into the two predominant types of biodegradable plastics that we have today, polylactic acid (PLA), a vegetable- based plastic material blended with cornstarch, and polycaprolactone (PCL), a biodegradable polyester.
What resulted was a durable plastic that nonetheless broke down completely in a matter of weeks given nothing more than water and the standard kind of compost many of us have in our backyards. This new approach is also cost-effective and would add only a few cents to the production cost of making a kilogram of new plastic resin.
This new research is a major step toward overcoming the plastics waste problem and realizing a sustainable world, says Russell, and the teams research could soon find its way into our daily lives. A patent has been filed, a startup company created, and further research into composting additional types of plastic is in the planning.
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Gremlin Announces Automatic Service Discovery for More Targeted and Effective Chaos Engineering – Business Wire
SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Gremlin, the leading Chaos Engineering platform helping companies improve resilience and reduce downtime, today announces Automatic Service Discovery at FailoverConf. The new feature from Gremlin automatically identifies the various services running across distributed systems, which enables engineers to directly target them for more effective Chaos Engineering experiments.
When we started Gremlin our primary focus was on the underlying infrastructure, helping customers answer questions like, 'Can we handle server crashes?' or 'Can this cluster deal with a 10X traffic spike?' said Matthew Fornaciari, CTO and Co-Founder of Gremlin. But the rise in popularity of microservices necessitate services functioning as first-class citizens. The infrastructure layer is becoming more abstract and engineers are increasingly thinking about their systems as a collection of services. We want to replicate that mental model in Gremlin and reduce the cognitive load necessary to create controlled chaos.
Gremlin's Automatic Service Discovery works by identifying the services running where the Gremlin agent is installed, and then surfacing the operational data that makes those services function, such as process names, container images, and where the service is deployed. This makes it easier than ever before for engineers to run targeted chaos experiments, regardless of how they are hosted, be it distributed across hosts, containers, or even multiple cloud providers.
End customers wont care about the ephemeral workloads and API calls happening behind the UI, they just want applications that function and perform as expected, said Jason English, Principal Analyst at Intellyx. Before DevOps teams can shift-left and engineer resiliency into a system with early performance testing, chaos experiments and telemetry; they need to shift-right and discover exactly what services are contributing to that customer experience in production.
Gremlin has also built a new way to track reliability progress, enabling SREs and DevOps teams to click into a particular service and view the full history of experiments run over time. The owner of the service can also include links to runbooks for remediation and any associated dashboards for deeper observability. Having a single view for all of this information will provide engineers with a greater understanding of the reliability of their services.
More resources
Read the State of Chaos Engineering 2020 report: gremlin.com/state-of-ce/2021 Get started with Gremlin: gremlin.com/get-started RSVP for FailoverConf: failoverconf.io
About Gremlin
Gremlin is the worlds first hosted Chaos Engineering service with a mission to help build a more reliable internet. It turns failure into resilience by offering engineers tooling to safely experiment on complex systems, in order to identify weaknesses before they impact customers and cause revenue loss. Investors include Amplify Partners, Index Ventures, and Redpoint VC. Key customers include GrubHub, HEB, JPMorgan, Mailchimp, Target, Twilio, Under Armour, and Walmart.
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Steiner convinced new engineering team will pay off in 2022 – RACER
Guenther Steiner believes Haas has a secure future and is convinced a new engineering team will result in a much more competitive 2022.
Haas has put all of its resources into the development of its new car for next years regulations, effectively writing off any improvements this season as it gives experience to its rookie drivers: Mick Schumacher and Nikita Mazepin. Despite appearing to have the slowest car on the grid this year, the Haas team principal told the Australian Grand Prixs In The Fast Lane podcast that hes sure the work done behind the scenes will lead to a clear improvement next season.
I think I can say the team is secure, said Steiner. We are fine, we have got a long-term commitment from Mr. Haas to Formula 1. Our finances are good, we found ways to cross that bridge, so Im really happy with that one.
2022, weve been developing since the beginning of February. The guys work all the time to get a good car, but even if we have a good car and the others do a better job I dont know where we will end up. But Im convinced that we will be in a good position again.
I can see the work that is going on its a little bit early because we started in February, now were in April, but were making good steps forward in the wind tunnel. Why I believe in it is because last year when we were in a crisis a lot of people were furloughed, and we built up the complete engineering team again.
Weve got people joining us from Ferrari on secondment long-term secondment obviously and that gives me the confidence, because otherwise how can you be confident if you are like last year? No, we did a lot of changes and we already rebuilt the whole team they are working already. We started to rebuild the team in December and got going again in January, so thats where my confidence comes from.
With an uncompetitive car and two rookies this year, Steiner says he has already seen improvements and wants the team to be motivated by progress and the promise of a brighter future rather than point-scoring results in 2021.
On our side we have two young drivers and success will maybe not be measured in points but in how much progress these guys are making, he said. Weve got two young guys who want to make it who we know will get ready for next year, so I think were making progress. Weve now done two races and we made big progress. People can see that the guys are getting better and better, so I hope that continues, that we can really see steps forward until race 10 and then we are nearly through half of the season.
Then to keep morale going we need to show the guys in the team the light at the end of the tunnel with the new car for 2022. The guys know that we did it before, the people that did the car for 2018 didnt get stupid in a year. We know we are capable of doing it and we just need to believe in ourselves.
It will be a task to do, it will be OK. There will be some down moments I mean, me personally on a Sunday night if youve finished 15th and 16th youre not having the greatest Sunday evening, but you just need to keep focused, believe in the team and yourself, and its only 10 more months to go anyway!
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Steiner convinced new engineering team will pay off in 2022 - RACER
Why Data Engineering Is The Fastest Growing Tech Job In 2021? – Analytics India Magazine
At the SkillUp 2021, Sourav Saha, academic dean at Praxis Business School, and Prasad Srinivasa, assistant vice president at Genpact, spoke about the exciting career opportunities in data engineering.
Saha is an educator and an advanced analytics domain expert with around two decades of experience in business consulting, research and development. On the other hand, Srinivasa has over 20 years of experience in developing AI/ML solution frameworks and data analytics products for banking and financial institutions.
In the age of content overload, organisations have to create personalised solutions to stay relevant and competitive. Companies are collecting a large amount of data structured, semi-structured and unstructured from multiple channels in different formats.
Srinivasa believes data engineering, which involves collecting, provisioning and maintaining excellent quality data for insights, is essential in driving business outcomes. For this, a data engineer needs to design and develop a scalable data architecture, set up processes that pool data from multiple sources, check the data quality, and eliminate corrupt data, etc.
Pandemic notwithstanding, Genpact, with more than 1,800+ data engineers, has helped Fortune 500 companies across different industry verticals to navigate the new normal, Srinivasa said.
In January 2021, Genpact acquired data engineering and analytics firm Enquero for an undisclosed amount to bolster enterprise digital transformation services through advanced analytics. In May last year, Accenture acquired Ahmedabad-based Big Data firm Byte Prophecy to enhance AI, analytics capabilities in emerging markets.
There is a huge demand for competent data engineers. This is the right time to immerse in it and grab the opportunity, said Srinivasa.
While data engineers build the underlying infrastructure and architecture for data generation, data scientists use data to derive actionable insights, said Saha.
There is a serious demand for data engineering professionals, he added.
Srinivasa talked about different data engineering roles, such as:
Srinivasa said a data engineer calls for three skills data literacy, technical prowess and hands-on experience in developing various use cases.
Amit Raja Naik is a senior writer at Analytics India Magazine, where he dives deep into the latest technology innovations. He is also a professional bass player.
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Why Data Engineering Is The Fastest Growing Tech Job In 2021? - Analytics India Magazine
Lead Engineer on NASA’s Perseverance Mission Started at HCC – Business West
Prepared for Launch
By Laurie Loisel
David Gruel stands next to the launchpad at the Kennedy Space Center on July 29, 2020, the day before NASA s Perseverance rover mission launch.
Not many people can say theyve worked on every U.S.-led rover mission to Mars. One who can is David Gruel, a Holyoke Community College graduate from the class of 1991.
Five years out of HCC, Gruel was part of the Pathfinder mission that landed the Sojourner rover on Mars, the second Mars mission since the Viking became the first-ever U.S. mission to Mars in 1975. Sojourner had limited movement when compared to other rovers (most recently Perseverance) that travel across the planet, but it was a milestone nonetheless.
Pathfinder was the return to the red planet some 20 years after Viking, he said of the rover that launched in December 1996, landing on Mars in July 1997.
After that, through his job as an engineer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., Gruel was among the crews working on the Spirit, Opportunity, Curiosity, and Perseverance NASA rover missions.
Considering that Gruel falls into a category of people for whom the maxim its not rocket science most definitely does not apply, the 50-year-old is modest and candid about his high-school years as an avid underachiever. He is equally clear about the role HCC played in putting him on a path to a career in rocket science. In fact, he flat-out declares that, if not for HCC, he wouldnt be where he is today.
I still have an incredible memory of the math and physics professors at HCC, and it was mutual. They went out of their way to know their students and to figure out where they could help.
As a student at Westfield High School, Gruel spent more energy stocking grocery-store shelves, tending to the car those earnings bought him, and socializing with his friends than on academics. I was looking for the easy road out at all times, he admits.
After graduation, when many of his friends headed off to four-year colleges, Gruel continued working in the grocery store. And then I realized I needed a different challenge in life, he said.
Thats how he ended up at Holyoke Community College. Despite a less-than-stellar high-school transcript, he knew HCC would actually give me a chance, he said. HCC was there to give people a second chance.
Once enrolled, encouraged by his professors, he buckled down. He believes he had a better academic experience at HCC than he would have had he attended a four-year program right out of high school.
The classes were small, and the teachers actually cared about you, he said. I still have an incredible memory of the math and physics professors at HCC, and it was mutual. They went out of their way to know their students and to figure out where they could help.
It was not easy. He worked two jobs while a full-time HCC student, sometimes studying while logging third shift at a gas station.
I was willing to work at it, he said, but there were people who were willing to support me, and thats what I needed.
Gruel graduated with honors and an associate degree in engineering, an accomplishment he remains proud of to this day. This was something I had done for myself, and I had earned it.
It also earned him acceptance at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y., where he found he had a real affinity for engineering. And here is where his humility rears its head again.
A lot of things went my way, he said. In addition to working hard, theres a lot of luck involved in where we end up in our lives.
In his senior year at RPI, he learned that two friends who also had gone to HCC were doing co-op semesters in the field, working at engineering jobs. He decided to pursue one, landing a co-op placement at the prestigious Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California, a federally funded research and design center managed by Caltech, with the vast majority of its funding and contract work coming from NASA.
Dave Gruels favorite photo of Perseverance was captured moments before the Mars landing by one of the EDL (entry, descent, landing) cameras he installed on the rover.
Gruel thought the experience would spice up his rsum by adding that he worked on a team designing interplanetary spacecraft. Little did he know it would lead to his lifes work.
After eight months, he went back to RPI to finish school and graduate. Once on the job market, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory was among the job offers he received, and though he always imagined settling down in New England, he found himself changing those plans when such an enticing job.
The challenge of JPL massively dwarfed the benefits of being in New England, he said.
Gruels role in the last two Mars missions was to lead the team known as ATLO (Im the boss man, he said cheerfully.) ATLO stands for Assembly, Test, and Launch Operations. Essentially, the team takes all the parts for the rover and its spacecraft tens of thousands of them and assembles them.
We get delivered to us a bunch of intricate Legos, is how Gruel put it.
Next the team conducts endless tests to simulate launch, touchdown, and the harsh conditions on the ground. So when its cruising from Earth to Mars, it works as designed, he noted.
To simulate launch, the machine goes into a large vibe table; to mimic the Mars environment, it goes into a vacuum chamber that gets as cold as the red planet itself.
From mission start to landing, it takes about six to eight years, he explained. And timing is everything: because the planets align every 26 months in a way that creates optimal conditions for Earth-to-Mars travel, all assembly and testing must be fully complete when that time comes.
The schedule pressure is intense, he said. We need to get our testing done and our design done in order for it to be ready to launch.
In addition to finding a career at JPL, Gruel met his wife, Danelle, there when she was working in the Finance division, though now she stays home with their two boys, Dylan, 14, and Ethan, 11 (who also love Legos, as well as watching mission launches with their father).
Typically, once a mission has landed, Gruels role slows down quite a bit, but the Perseverance landing in February 2021 was different because he had installed a camera system to take video and still images of the descent, and he was responsible for it.
Even after we launched, I was still intimately involved in making sure that system was going to function, he said. We continued to do testing on it to make sure it would reach its full potential, and it sure did. The images were amazing.
Those images captured the spacecrafts descent and landing, including video of the rover setting down on Mars and kicking up dust. We joked it was kind of like our selfie cam, he said.
In 1998, Gruel returned to HCC as the recipient of a Distinguished Service Award at commencement and delivered the keynote address, an invitation he seems to still find hard to believe to this day: I spoke at commencement! Me, a flunkie out of high school!
Its a fact he mentions not to boast, but rather to inspire. If theres anything he hopes people take away from his story, its that they should never underestimate their potential, even if theyve had trouble living up to it.
When you as a person make a decision to do something, the sky opens up, he said. The sky is no longer the limit.
And thats coming from someone who knows how to get to Mars.
Laurie Loisel is a freelance writer based in Northampton.
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Lead Engineer on NASA's Perseverance Mission Started at HCC - Business West
Minister Sisulu urged to reconsider decision on Cuban engineers or head to court – SABC News
Human Settlements, Water and Sanitation Minister, Lindiwe Sisulu has been given less than 24-hours to suspend her departments Cuban engineer programme, or she may have to defend its rollout in court.
The programme has courted controversy with trade union Solidarity threatening to go to court on Friday to obtain an interdict, forcing its suspension.
Solidarity calls for suspension of the Cuban engineering programme
Sisulu has brought in 24 Cuban engineers to help repair the countrys ailing water infrastructure at a cost of R65-million.
Theres also a backlash from South Africas Engineering Sector.
The Vaal sewage spillage crisis exposed years of poor maintenance of water infrastructure in the country. In an attempt to address the ailing infrastructure, Sisulu is hiring 24 Cuban engineers to assist with repair work.
She insists the engineers are not in South Africa for employment, but to transfer skills and mentor local officials.
Sthembile Tshikosi, an engineering professional with over two decades of experience, feels aggrieved that the government is importing skills, that are already available in the country.
There is no shortage of engineers in this country, therefore theres no need to go look outside until you have exhausted every Engineering graduate out there then you can say you can bring people from outside because we struggling. So I would say reach out to the Engineering Council of South Africa, find out from the universities who are the graduates. Are they working? Do something on the ground before you get on the plane and go look for people from outside?
South African Institution of Civil Engineering CEO Vishaal Lutchman says theres a lot of anger in the sector over this matter.
From an institutions point of view, we do respect bilateral trade agreements etc. And we believe that Geo-political relationships matter a lot especially in the time when we have economic woes like what we are having, says Lutchman.
However the rationale and the explanation of why this is happening, perhaps it is more important. It comes across as if government lacks care for its professionals that are in the country. Its regard for professionals has not been good enough. There was the comment about the local engineers not being skilled and in need of training and the like, adds Lutchman.
The Human Settlements, Water and Sanitation ministry denies the decisions are aimed at undermining the local engineering sector. It says local engineers were invited to assist, but only a handful responded.
The ministry says the programmes R64-million budget is justified as it covers the engineers travel, accommodation and communication expenses, as well as a stipend.
The departments spokesperson, McIntosh Polela, says minister Sisulu previously invited engineers to assist.
The minister some months ago invited South African engineers to say we need help. So it is not to say by bringing the Cuban Engineers we saying South African engineers are not welcomed. If anyone feels that they have people who are skilled they need that help. My goodness, we need the skills. We have a lot of places like municipalities that need skilled engineers. But us bringing Cuban engineers does not mean we are undermining any skill that is here in South Africa, says Polela.
Department of Water & Sanitation defends its decision to procure the services of 24 Cuban engineers
However trade union Solidarity insist that the minister must suspend the programme or risk being forced to do so through a court interdict.
The decision to import Cuban engineer is not only foolish and immoral, but it seems it also illegal. It appears at face value that these engineers do not meet the requirements for registration and licensing of the South African Engineering council. In its legal letter to the minister Solidarity asks that this whole Cuban programme must be suspended till we get legal certainty, says Dirk Herman. from Solidarity.
The industry regulatory body, the Engineering Council South Africa (ECSA), says Cuba is not a member of the International Engineering Alliance a global organisation that governs the recognition of engineering qualifications and professional competency.
ECSA says the Engineering Profession Act does not make registration mandatory in South Africa.
They will have to register with us as competent people so that they can be held accountable. Alternatively, they must work under the supervision of someone who is registered with ECSA who will take that accountability. Those are the two channels they can follow, says ECSA CEO Sipho Madonsela.
We do not have yet a compulsory registration regime in South Africa. The issue of making compulsory is something we are working on and i hope by the end of this year that process will be done and dusted. Then we can exclude certain people from performing certain engineering options if they are not registered, elaborates Madonsela.
Discussion on Minister Sisulus decision to hire Cuban engineers to deal with SAs water problems
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Minister Sisulu urged to reconsider decision on Cuban engineers or head to court - SABC News
Earth Day 2021: We need to talk about geo-engineering – The Engineer
We need to talk about the benefits and risks that surround purposely altering the planet, says James Fahn, author ofA Land on Fire
Twenty years ago, I worked briefly at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for a program that seemed hard to argue with we distributed funds to help countries adapt to climate change.
Yet we faced some resistance, from climate change deniers and some climate activists. They felt that if people and governments came to believe we could comfortably adjust to global warming, we would not work to prevent it.
In 2021, we face a similar situation regarding proposals around geo-engineering. There is reluctance toeven testthese ideas, lest they be taken up asan alternative to reducing carbon emissions.
But we do need aglobal debateon geo-engineering, both because it couldhelp amelioratesome of the effects of climate change, and because it is so risky.
The climate situation has become more dire. Even if countries meet their current commitments under the Paris Agreement, that would stilllikely lead to warming of well over two degrees Celsius, a level predicted to be catastrophic for human civilisation. That is why experts are calling on world leaders to set more ambitious targets for cutting carbon emissions, either at thevirtual summit being hosted this monthby President Biden or at the global climate summit scheduled for November.
Purposeful attempts at geo-engineering may therefore seem tempting to lessen some of the impacts of climate change we are already seeing in the decline of vital ecosystems, climate-induced conflict and migration, and more extreme weather events.
One approach is to try to draw more carbon out of the atmosphere. Buttechnological effortsto do this are so far too expensive. Planting a lot more trees could also help, but althoughglobal forest cover is increasing, it is not happening at a scale that is needed. And we are losingrainforestsand otherecosystemsthat are most effective at storing carbon.
The other main geo-engineering approach is to block a small percentage of the solar radiation hitting the Earth, most feasibly by pumping lots of aerosols or other small particles into the atmosphere. The idea is to essentially mimic the effects of volcanic eruptions like that of Mount Pinatubo in June of 1991, which effectivelyreduced the average global temperatureby about 0.6 degrees Celsius over the following 15 months or so.
While acompellingidea, it is an approach that treats one of the main symptoms of the climate crisis rather than the proverbial disease. The effects would be short-lived the atmospheric aerosols would have to be continually replenished and it would not do anything to reduce the build-up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, or to treat some major impacts such asocean acidification.
Are geoengineering opponents short sighted?
It is alsorisky. Dampening solar radiation would probably reduce agricultural output in some regions and could disrupt rainfall patterns. Most scary are the potential unknown impacts. The history of human intervention in the biospherehas not gone well.
Furthermore,how do we decidewho can or should take such actions? It is conceivable that governments acting alone, private companies, or even individuals may decide the impacts of climate change are so severe they have to take a geo-engineering approach to counteract them, or to carry it out as ade factoalternative to cutting fossil fuel consumption.
Given the risk of rogue, unilateral action, we need to have anopen, global discussionabout geo-engineering in the media andother public channels.
For the past decade, myorganisationhas helpedbring hundreds of journalistsfrom countries that are highly affected by climate change such as Bangladesh or Samoa but because of their size or economic power, are largely left out of high-level negotiations on climate.
Ultimately, to get to a global agreement on when and if geo-engineering tactics are warranted, we need to involve those most affected not only those with the power to take action.
If geo-engineering sounds like something out of science fiction, well, the one institution that seems to have no compunction publicly speculating about it is Hollywood. Geo-engineers seem to be the villain du jour, whether they try to achieve their goals byreducingthehumanpopulationorreducing global temperatures, with disastrous results.
However, some forms of carbon capture would seemingly have few opponents if they could become affordable and feasible. But most geo-engineering effortscome with considerable risk.
As we have found with efforts to inform people about adapting to climate change, there is another benefit to raising public awareness about geo-engineering: it can help make people realise that, whether talking about disease or climate change, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
James Fahn, author ofA Land on Fireand executive director ofInternews Earth Journalism Network
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Earth Day 2021: We need to talk about geo-engineering - The Engineer
Engineering-related Program Changes Approved by State Higher Education Coordinating Board – ASU News
04/23/2021
JONESBORO Action today by the Arkansas Higher Education Coordinating Board clears the way for Arkansas State University to offer the Bachelor of Science in Engineering Management Systems (BSEMS) degree, as well as an undergraduate certificate of proficiency in controls and automation.
The boards action represents a huge step forward in the colleges effort to respond to the needs of students as well as employers, emphasized Dr. Abhijit Bhattacharyya, dean of the College of Engineering and Computer Science. The BSEMS, which will be offered both on-campus and online, will enable traditional as well as non-traditional students go on to positions of leadership in engineering companies.
Bhattacharyya expressed his gratitude to Dr. Alexandr Sokolov, assistant professor of engineering management, for his extensive work in developing the program, along with Dr. Brandon Kemp, professor of electrical engineering, who is serving as director of the engineering management unit.
Oftentimes engineers find themselves in management and leadership positions, when, in most cases, they have had little, or no, business or management training, noted Jim Chidester, senior mechanical engineer and project manager for Batson Inc., an engineering firm in Little Rock, as he emphasized the value of the degree program which will develop both engineering and business skills.
The need for training in controls and automation also is widely acknowledged by employers, such as Hytrol Conveyor Co., Inc.
"This type of advancement in learning is only available because of the partnerships between universities and the private sector. We are seeing time and time again that when this type of partnership happens, everyone wins," stated David Peacock, Hytrol president, adding Arkansas State offering students an undergraduate certificate in controls and automation will be a huge benefit to employers in our area.
This is a rapidly growing field and is becoming more and more desired every day, added David Williamson, president of Automation Outfitters Inc. It is a field that, due to the constant evolution of technology and application processes, can provide the challenges and continued growth that new electrical engineering and computer science students often desire once they enter the workforce. This will open many doors and broaden the opportunities for job placement for many new grads as well. As a business leader in the automation industry, I am excited for what this means. This gives us a much more opportunity to find and fill open positions without sacrificing our needs in those roles.
The undergraduate certificate most appropriate for those majoring in mechanical engineering and electrical engineering offers students a significant additional competitive edge when they enter the workforce, the dean added.
Controls and automation are ubiquitous these days some examples are conveyor systems, cruise control in cars, use of a thermostat to regulate heating and cooling in buildings or controlling the flight path of an aircraft. As for employers, it offers them access to local talent trained in theoretical and practical aspects of controls systems that they did not have before.
The certificate is the outcome of a collaboration between Dr. Shubhalaxmi Kher, electrical engineering program director, and Dr. Shivan Haran, mechanical engineering program director as well as the program faculty. The dean is grateful for their joint leadership in developing the certificate program.
The college is all about listening to its stakeholders students and employers and delivering on their needs, Bhattacharyya continued. Aside from the two very important developments today, ADHE approved the name change of the technology program to engineering technology a little more than a year ago. That important change aligned the name of the program to its content and instantly made it more recognizable to students and employers alike.
Engineering technology is a more applied discipline compared to engineering, and graduates are very involved in manufacturing operations while engineers are more involved in design and project execution.
Doug Imrie, president of Southern Cast Products, expressed his satisfaction with the name change of the program to engineering technology.
We have always actively recruited students in the engineering technology program at A-State. We find these students to be well-trained in several different technology aspects at our foundry, he said. Changing the name of this program from technology to engineering technology will not only make the program more attractive for prospective students, but it will also serve to better characterize the students in this respected field.
The name change also positions the program to complement the College of Engineering and Computer Science in such areas as quality, safety and project management, added Kevin Hart, project engineer for Anchor Packaging, Inc.
This change will shed new light on the program and the value these graduates bring to the services and manufacturing industries, he added.
Dr. Rajesh Sharma, director of the engineering technology program, emphasized the strong partnerships A-State enjoys with local industry, which supports students with internships, and graduates with full-time job opportunities.
The program name change was a response to students, alumni and employers who proposed the idea, Sharma added. This will better develop the identity of the program that is well understood by all stakeholders, including industrial and corporate entities, high schools, community colleges, and especially students and their parents.
More details about programs in the College of Engineering and Computer Science are available online.
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Engineering-related Program Changes Approved by State Higher Education Coordinating Board - ASU News