Engineering Frontiers: Living Systems for a Living Planet

Overview

Engineering is the frontier where humanity’s aspirations for quality of life and science come together to realize the future.  In this cluster, our focus is on planet Earth as the Life Support System which enables and sustains human agency.  The birth and collapse of civilizations is associated with the delicate balance between enabling lifeline infrastructure (drinking water, irrigation systems, food production, transportation, communication, energy sources and distribution).  Civilizations also impact technologies to fight and conquer disease and the environment.  In recent decades, unintended consequences from infrastructure projects, exploration of natural resources, pollution and climate change, and rampant urbanization have brought protection and stewardship of our natural environment to the forefront of society and policy.  Catastrophic disasters such as Hurricane Katrina, the flood of 1993, the 1989 San Francisco Earthquake, and the Exxon Valdez spill exposed the lack of flexibility in the relationships between urban environments, landscapes and the public good.

The objective of this cluster is to provide students with an opportunity to place engineering in a broader context that includes science and technology transfer, and macro scale planning and development.  Students will explore topics such as environmental impact assessment and sustainability, life enabling and life support technologies, risk control, anticipation, preparation for and control of natural disasters, infrastructure breakdown, and climate, environmental and societal change.

This cluster is designed to attract students with wide-ranging interests.   Trinity students who hope to understand the science and technology basis of their future work, and Engineering students who want to put engineering in a context of complex social questions, will be able to pursue their interests and enhance their knowledge.

Courses

Seminar: Engineering 31FCS Engineering the Planet

Ana Barros, Professor, Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering, Pratt School of Engineering

In this course, students will examine the engineering of natural landscapes and exploitation of natural resources over the past 200 years.  These changes range from dam construction and channeling of natural rivers, to large-scale farming and irrigation, clear-cutting of montane forests, energy production, and extensive urbanization of land-margin ecosystems.  All these changes triggered significant hydrological, ecological and geomorphological changes.  Students will examine the social and environmental make-up of global changes such as ecological breakdown in the Black Sea, biodiversity in Africa’s Lake Victoria and development of California and the American Southwest.  Students will also explore linkages between bioenergy, life supporting ecological services and long-term environmental sustainability.  In addition, they will study the science and technology of environmental restoration and transformation in conditions as diverse as the Florida Everglades and the Pacific Northwest.

The course will be comprised of lectures, discussions, and small group research projects.  Students will examine complex problems and develop quantitative and analytical problem-solving skills to uncover key controls and achieve synthesis.  The students will gain a foundation on which they can examine complex environmental systems and sustainability from a broad interdisciplinary perspective.
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Seminar: Engineering 32FCS Mapping Engineering Into Biology

David Needham, Professor, Departments of Biomedical Engineering, and Mechanical Engineering & Material Sciences, Pratt School of Engineering

The NAE Committee on Engineering's Grand Challenges has identified 14 areas awaiting engineering solutions in the 21st century http://www.engineeringchallenges.org/.  In response to this, Duke University, Olin College, and USC have joined forces to offer a NAE Grand Challenge Scholars Program. One of the 14 NAE’s Engineering Grand Challenges is “Reverse Engineer the Brain”.  EGR32FCS has been chosen as one of the classes that we will initiate this ground breaking initiative.  Last year, (Fall 2008) we reverse engineered the FIVE senses.  This year we are going to Reverse Engineer the Brain! –the recipient of the signals that each of these senses generates, and explore how and to what extent the various “organs” of the brain process this information and present it to the individual (body).  To start to meet this challenge, EGR32FCS 2009 will focus on How did Nature Solve the “Process Sensory Inputs” Problem?  The course employs a hierarchical scale of organ, cellular, and molecular systems (macro, micro, nano) to define Nature’s solution, and uses a Design Methodology Scheme familiar to traditional engineering to reverse engineer each scale.  The Goal is to bring a greater understanding of nature’s “designs” of healthy normal systems, and then to reverse engineer the changes in disease.  Bioinspired new designs are also explored.  It employs a new pedagogy of student learning called EDU-K.  While the course is founded in Engineering Design Methodology and students will learn what this is and how to use it, the Grand Challenges are not just for engineers, they will require a multidisciplinary collaboration in order to come up with and implement the solutions.  It should therefore be noted that EGR32FCS is not exclusively just for Pratt students.  The experience has been designed so that it delivers a mind-expanding perspective on the engineering approach to problem solving to Trinity students as well.  All should benefit.
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Seminar: Engineering 49FCS Introduction to Green Engineering & Sustainable Design

Dan Vallero, Adjunct Professor; and, Chris Brasier, Architect and Lecturer, Pratt School of Engineering

This course investigates the engineering of structures, products, and systems with the goal of incorporating “green engineering” into the design of materials, processes, systems, and devices.  Students will be introduced to efforts to minimize the overall environmental impact of systems by employing a complete life-cycle approach to a product or process.  Students will also evaluate cases of success and failure in sustainability, clarifying the role of the engineer in sustainable design, and use hands-on and laboratory projects in sustainable technologies, energy management, and conservation techniques.  The course includes a class project to learn ways to adapt ongoing design and construction projects so that they are more sustainable and environmentally acceptable.
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Seminar: Environment 99FCS Sustainable Site Design

Sally Schauman, Adjunct Professor, Nicholas School of the Environment & Earth Sciences

Sustainable site design is the creative protection and enhancement of the landscape’s ability to provide services such as climate regulation, clean air and water, and improved quality of life.  Such design requires ecoknowledge of a site—its hydrology, soil and plant conditions.  Like building designs; site designs can be evaluated as to their sustainability. Sustainable Sites™ is a cooperative effort now in progress to provide a stand–alone tool for rating site sustainability.  The U.S. Green Building Council plans to adopt the Sustainable Sites metrics, into its LEED® rating system. Sustainability can best begin in home places, familiar landscapes—where we live, or go to school. This seminar will collect ecoknowledge about sites familiar to students with a special focus on Nicholas Hall, the new home for Duke’s School of the Environment. Students will also investigate research on landscape services and sustainability and use the draft Sustainable Sites metrics to evaluate existing site designs of new construction and restored landscapes. Individually and in teams, students will be asked to develop an ecodesign concept for a selected site.
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Focus 99FCS.02 Special Topics in Focus: Engineering Frontiers

Ana Barros, Professor, Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering; and,
Dan Vallero, Adjunct Professor, Pratt School of Engineering

Students and faculty will meet weekly in this half-credit course to discuss issues of common interest that bridge the topics of individual seminar courses.  Students will have the opportunity to synthesize the information they are learning, and test the insights and methodologies learned from one discipline on the issues raised within another.  A special focus will be placed on ethical, philosophical and policy questions that arise from the exploitation of natural resources, anthropogenic manipulation of ecosystems services, and new technologies.
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