Current events highlight the need for the nations of the world to develop sustainable energy resources, and to use all energy resources more efficiently. The required advances are of such a scale that they cannot be realized in a business-as-usual approach -- they will require major commitments at the global, national, and local levels alike. This is an imperative of our times. There is a need to quantify the issues and potential solutions, and to communicate the findings broadly. To address the issues, there is a need to deploy members of all technical communities that could potentially contribute. The adaptive structures and materials community is one of these. Over the last 30 years, members of this community have addressed challenges in transducers, multifunctional structures, shape control and morphing, vibration isolation and control, structural health monitoring, energy harvesting, and other areas. It is time for them to turn to the problems of energy.
The Pennsylvania State University coordinated U.S. participation in an international scientific workshop sponsored jointly by the European Science Foundation and the U.S. National Science Foundation. The primary objective of the workshop was to spur new advances in the science and technology of adaptive structures by exposing researchers to current challenges in the broad field of energy. The European delegation consisted of members of the ESF S3T (Smart Structural Systems Technology) Programme plus invited speakers for specific topics. The U.S. delegation was coordinated with the NSF program office for Structural Materials and Mechanics. Special consideration was given as needed to ensure that members of groups typically underrepresented in science and engineering were invited.
