What can you as an engineer do to help solve humanity’s biggest problems? Dig out your favorite science fiction and envision the future.

Chandrasekhar “Spike” Narayan, an engineer and former IBM Research executive who just joined The Engineering Research Visioning Alliance (ERVA) as interim executive director, tells Design News that the alliance needs engineers to think futuristically when working to tackle today’s challenges. 

“I urge the engineering community to think about the future. Go to science fiction books, envision what the future could be like, and then go back to today and figure out how to make it happen,” he explains. “Spending a fraction of your day thinking futuristically could help you contribute to long-term solutions."

Launched in April 2021, ERVA brings engineers and other experts together at “visioning events” to collaborate on engineering solutions to challenges such as climate change, sustainability, healthcare, and artificial intelligence. Each event brings a group of about 50 experts together to focus on a specific challenge. The output is a visioning report, which is public, that outlines directions for researchers and organizations to consider for adoption. 

“ERVA’s mission is to find a diverse group of voices such as engineers, academics, and non-engineer experts and be as inclusive as possible to work out a problem,” Narayan says. “To understand issues, we need a broad group of people with varying talents and expertise.”

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It's particularly important for engineers, however, to get involved. “The distinction between a scientist and an engineer is that once a scientist has found an idea, it often takes an engineer to help make it into a product or solution we can all benefit from,” says Narayan.

For the visioning events, ERVA seeks to “identify and develop ideas that are big, transformative, nascent, and underfunded or under researched,” he says. “We then catalyze the engineering community to think futuristically.”

Past visioning reports include those on AI, distributed manufacturing, and more. And in the next few months, ERVA will be releasing its 2024 reports on:

• Engineering Opportunities to Combat Antimicrobial Resistance

• Quantum-Enabled Technologies

• Transforming Women’s Health Outcomes Through Engineering

• Strategic Engineering for Next-Generation Wireless Competitiveness

Visioning event topics planned for 2025 include:

• Engineering Design to Equip a Neurodiverse Workforce

• Engineering Research to Catalyze Resilient Rural Communities

• Energy 2050: Engineering the Future of Radiant Energy

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“These topics are very broad in reach,” says Narayan. “It will be a promising year.”

ERVA also accepts suggestions for future events. “Look for open calls—they are open to anyone, and you can go on our website at any time to submit an idea,” he says. 

In the meantime, Narayan is excited about his role with ERVA. With a PhD in materials engineering, he spent 41 years at IBM in R&D “focused on taking ideas from the lab to the workplace,” he says. “ERVA fits me like a glove.”