Educational Interests and Achievements
Now in less than fifty years from the previous technological revolution we stand on the brink of a new one that will be more powerful and more dangerous. In its scale, scope, and complexity, this transformation will be unlike anything we have experienced before. According to Klauss Schwab, Founder and Executive Chairman, World Economic Forum “We do not yet know just how it will unfold, but one thing is clear: the response to it must be integrated and comprehensive, involving all stakeholders of the global polity, from the public and private sectors to academia and civil society “ [4].
The Fourth Industrial Revolution is building on everything we have discovered so far and it will use the internet to connect humans and machines in one task. It will bring together technology and culture in a clash of unprecedented proportions with further concentration of populations to what we will call Mega-Cities. The farm land will be managed by robots, the factories will employ robots, and humans will use robots for low level jobs living us wonder of what role we will play in this society.
Considering that cities are a construct of many designed systems, engineering could play a key role in addressing many of the negatives this revolution could bring. In the dawn of the forth industrial revolution, it is imperative that we incorporate sustainability ethics, principles and constraints early in design process. The merging of sustainability and engineering design should be part of engineering education not as an add-on but as integral part of learning of how to design systems.
There is a wonderful opportunity to start teaching engineering while introducing sustainability constraints. The new systems that will emerge from this effort will undoubtedly lead us to a technology that will reduce the gap between those who have access and those who do not, while at the same time they will develop new financial markets and new job categories. One of the most critical criteria for teaching engineering students will not be that we optimize what they know at the time they graduate but that we optimize their ability to learn new concepts and stay innovative in whatever field they choose to follow.
