Meeting 21st century education challenges

摘要

Over the summer, the academy sent an 80-strong delegation to Washington, DC for the Global Grand Challenges Summit, a major gathering of distinguished and early-career engineers from the UK, US and China, focused on accelerating action by engineers on global challenges. While the UK delegation included such luminaries as nanotechnology pioneer Lord Alec Broers, UK chief medical officer Dame Sally Davies and tech entrepreneur Baroness Martha Lane-Fox, the group was" primarily made up of UK engineering undergraduates who had been selected for their innovative ideas to tackle global development challenges. The summit's student activities were led by Dr Jason Blackstock, co-founder of the UCL engineering department's How to Change the World programme, which aims to equip students with the skills to develop creative and technically robust solutions to 21 st century challenges. In addition to providing an engaging student experience, the programme helps to instill in talented young engineers a global outlook and awareness of the role that engineers can play in delivering social and environmental change.