New world, new goals

Updated on: Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Though many engineering schools are organised along traditional disciplinary lines (mechanical, electrical, civil) the problems engineers have to solve today rarely fall within a single engineering discipline. Hence, Dartmouth's Thayer School of Engineering has chosen to concentrate on three areas that include engineering in medicine, energy and complex systems. These areas represent complex, interdisciplinary and technology-based challenges facing today's world.

According to Joseph Helble, dean, Dartmouth's Thayer School of Engineering, "The area of engineering in medicine is a partnership with Dartmouth Medical School to help develop the technology and systems needed for advancing healthcare. In the area of energy, our focus is on taking a 'systems' approach towards developing higher efficiency devices and more sustainable energy supplies for the 21century. Our effort in complex systems focusses on networked communications, control and coordination of teams of robots pursuing complex tasks, artificial intelligence, inference of intent and related areas."

In each of these areas, the Thayer School of Engineering has developed new interdisciplinary engineering courses and pursued new research opportunities. "A recent example is the awarding of nearly $13 million from the US National Institutes of Health ( NIH) in September 2010 to our group to develop magnetic nanoparticles that can destroy malignant, cancerous tumours. This programme represents a collaboration among materials scientists, biochemical engineers, biomedical engineers and physician scientists from the Thayer School of Engineering, Dartmouth Medical School and the Norris Cotton Cancer Centre at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Hospital," informs Helble.
The Thayer School of Engineering also offers a modified major with public policy for those interested in careers in public service.

"The goal is not to produce policy experts, but rather engineers who are prepared to pursue a career in government or public policy and contribute to the development of legislation and policy in these areas," informs Helble.

Incidentally, the US lags behind many developing countries as well as countries high on the 2009 Global Innovation Index in terms of the per-capita production of engineers. And to an extent this can be attributed to the fact that the interdisciplinary connect (of engineering education) to societal issues started dwindling particularly in the last two decades.

"The most significant increase in US engineering enrolments occurred in the late 1970s, coinciding with a global spike in energy prices, a search for renewable sources of energy and the early days of biotechnology and its promise for revolutionising human health. Enrolments plummeted in the mid and late '80s and remained low for the following two decades, which I believe is largely because the broad societal issues (such as energy) that make engineering directly relevant to everyday lives, were absent from political conversations and were not discussed in the media," shares Helble.

Times of India

New world, new goals

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