GRAND CHALLENGES FOR ENGINEERING AND DEVELOPMENT OF CDIO SKILLS

The National Academy for Engineering announced 14 Grand Challenges for the 21 st Century engineers to address in order to ensure a sustainable future for the generations to come. These Grand Challenges are in four broad areas, namely, energy and environment, health, security and learning and computation. This paper reports on a Grand Challenges Scholars Programme that is developed to prepare the engineering students to be able to address the Grand Challenges using the CDIO framework and focusing on five components, research experience, interdisciplinary curriculum, entrepreneurship, global dimension and service learning. The programme is voluntary and the candidates are expected to commit additional learning time. The programme was launched with 16 participants who are expected to graduate in 2016.