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Global Grand Challenges Summit
Exploring collaborative approaches to tackling global grand challenges
Venue: IET London: Savoy Place,
London WC2R 0BL
Date: March 12-13 2013
On the 12-13 March 2013 over 450 leading engineers,
artists, economists, designers, philosophers, scientists, politicians,
industry leaders, educators and policy makers from across the globe
gathered in London to attend the inaugural Global Grand Challenges Summit.
With the prosperity of future generations relying on
unprecedented levels of inter-disciplinary and international cooperation in
pursuit of solutions to the world’s most pressing challenges, the
Summit, organised by the Royal Academy of Engineering in partnership with
the national engineering academies of the US and China, sought to provide a
new global platform for the world’s leading thinkers to share their
ideas with the next generation of engineers on how to develop the international
frameworks, tools and collaborations needed to solve our common global challenges.
The audience of the two day event heard from panels of leading experts in six different sessions covering the themes of sustainability, health, education, enriching life, technology and growth and resilience. The Summit also included plenary addresses from Dr Craig Venter, Founder of J. Craig Venter institute and Bill Gates, Co-founder and trustee of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and an additional surprise address from will.i.am on the need for new approaches to STEM education.
Speakers at the Summit included:
Professor Frances Arnold, Dick and Barbara
Dickinson Professor of Chemical Engineering,
Bioengineering and Biochemistry at California
Institute of Technology
Professor Dame Anne Dowling, Head of the
Department of Engineering at the University of
Cambridge
Professor Lord Darzi, Professor of Surgery at
Imperial College London
Dr Regina Dugan, Senior Vice president of
Motorola Mobility
Professor John Hennessy, President of
Stanford University
Professor Calestous Juma, Professor of the Practice
of International Development, Harvard Kennedy School
Dr Robert Langer, David H. Koch Institute Professor at MIT
Dean Kamen, Founder of FIRST
Professor Jeffrey Sachs, Director of Earth Institute
at Columbia University
Professor Helen Storey, Co-founder of Catalytic Clothing,
and Professor of Fashion and Science at University of Arts London
(LCF at Centre for Sustainable Fashion)
Dr Mike Lynch, Founder of Invoke Capital
Dr Li Yingtao, President of the 2012 Laboratories, Huawei
Technologies Co. Ltd
Two major new international collaborative research opportunities, dedicated to the pursuit of tackling global grand challenges, were also announced at the Summit. Representatives from eight top US universities, including Duke University, USC and MIT, announced the establishment of the new Vest scholarship program. The program, named after outgoing National Academy of Engineering (NAE) President Charles M. Vest, will give select international graduate students the opportunity to pursue potentially world-changing ideas at top US universities.
Sir John Parker, President of the Royal Academy of Engineering, also announced in his closing remarks a new £1-2 million joint international call from the EPSRC and the NSF, for proposals from UK and US research teams to work on tackling the grand challenge of providing clean water for all.
View the Programme (5420KB)
Watch the introduction to the Global Grand Challenges Summit 2013 
Video of will.i.am at the Global Grand Challenges Summit
Watch footage from the Summit
View Press Releases
View the Global Grand Challenges Summit Blog
View cartoons images from the Summit (4167KB)
(All cartoons are credited to http://www.CaricaturesbyLukeWarm.co.uk and are not to be used for any other purpose without permission of the artist)
For more information on Global Grand Challenges related research opportunities please see the links below:
View Global Grand Challenges research opportunities available in the UK (227KB)
View Vest Scholarship program information (3.95MB)
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