The Grand Challenges [AP-S Turnstile]

Notwithstanding Niels Bohr\´s warning that "prediction is very difficult, especially if it\´s about the future," I am often drawn (a guilty pleasure?) to our professional colleagues\´ attempts to gaze into the crystal ball about the future of technologies. Because of my longstanding interest in biomedical applications, I was especially curious about what the distinguished Fellows of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) had to say about the future of those fields. The AIMBE (www.aimbe.org) celebrated its 20th anniversary in 2011 by undertaking to identify the major trends in the next twenty years. The results of the AIMBE Fellows\´ discussions were summarized in a recent report [1], which identified the following six overarching challenges: 1. Engineering safe and sustainable water and food supply, 2. Engineering personalized health care, 3. Engineering solutions to injury and chronic diseases, 4. Engineering global health through infectious disease prevention and therapy, 5. Engineering sustainable bioenergy production, 6. Engineering the 21st century US economy.