This award supports the NSF goal to 'achieve excellence in U.S. Science, mathematics, engineering, and technology education at all levels', and will 'provide opportunities for young people that will attract them to and prepare them for careers in science, mathematics, and engineering'. Through a student essay competition, undergraduate and graduate students will be selected to attend a premier conference in engineering and systems design. The essay assignment challenges students to consider the effect of global competitiveness on engineering design practices, particularly in light of complex systems, and articulate their vision for the future of engineering and systems design. This exercise promotes the type of thinking skills necessary for innovators and researchers in engineering. The conference experience promotes growth in individual students and can also serve to strengthen the overall research quality of the research at the student's home institution when this knowledge is shared among their peers.
The objective of this award is to promote undergraduate and graduate student professional development in engineering and systems design through an essay competition and support for travel to a research conference. A secondary objective is to encourage students to think deeply about what engineering design of complex systems will be like 20-30 years in the future. The competition will be publicized broadly, with students from a variety of engineering disciplines encouraged to compete. They will communicate their thoughts on the competition topic in an essay which will be judged by a distinguished group of engineering design researchers and educators. Travel funds will be provided for students who are selected through the design essay competition. A poster session will be organized at the conference to give the students an opportunity to interact with researchers and discuss their ideas on the future of engineering design of complex systems. Winning essays will be featured on a website so that they are accessible to a broad audience.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
