The fields of environmental engineering and science, as well as public health, have made remarkable progress in treating drinking water supplies, providing for safe conveyance of wastewater, and improving air quality over the past 50 years. But what future grand challenges await us over the next few decades? And which areas of environmental research are most critical to address these challenges? In 2050, with almost 9 billion people and a Gross World Product 2-4 times larger than today, environmental scientists and engineers are sure to play an important role in society. Whether we can improve the future outcome will depend to a large extent on our students, the next generation of environmental professionals.
The 2009 AEESP Conference is to provide a forum for AEESP, as a community, to discuss challenges and to better prepare environmental engineering faculty and students to tackle these challenges. Both the National Academy of Sciences (2001) and the National Academy of Engineers (2002) have identified the following environmental Grand Challenges which offer the potential for major technological, scientific, and societal breakthroughs:
1. Understanding human impacts on major biogeochemical cycles 2. Forecasting incidence of water-borne hazards and disease 3. Assessing effects of climate change 4. Improving our ability to predict changes in water resources and quality 5. Designing ecologically sustainable cities 6. Understanding and forecasting hydrologic cycle processes 7. Quantifying relationship of land-use/cover to aquatic ecosystem quality 8. Reinventing the use of materials (that become pollutants)
The conference is organized around the Grand Challenges, with each challenge having one session with a keynote speaker, a student award speaker, and six to eight additional speakers. Each session will be a mix of both research and education talks, which is an innovative, exciting aspect of this proposal. By combining the talks within each session, we hope to highlight successful examples of integrating research and education. In addition, we will offer several workshops focused on looking forward to new ways to address these Grand Challenges through improved research and education. Specific workshops will discuss strategies to enhance our graduate education programs, as well as our and our student's productivity.
The principal objective of the career workshop for young assistant professors in environmental engineering and science, a part of the 2009 AEESP conference, is to inform participants about the NSF CAREER Award proposal process and to stimulate discussion concerning personal and professional growth as a tenure-track faculty member in environmental engineering and science.
