The 2050 Challenge


Mark J. Kushner is the dean of Iowa State University’s College of Engineering.

Our children’s futures are in our hands. The decisions we make today about the directions and priorities of engineering research and education will determine our quality of life decades in the future.

Place yourself in the year 2050 and ask yourself what society-changing challenges must be met so that we will still have prosperous societies in 2050. This is what the College of Engineering at Iowa State University calls the 2050 Challenge. How do we provide clean water, universal access to information, health care, and robust economies for 9-1/2 billion people? How do we restore our crumbling infrastructure and build that infrastructure for the first time in the developing world? How do we sustain our agriculture and manufacturing? How do we address climate change while developing nonpolluting, renewable energy sources?

If we don’t meet these challenges, it is not clear that a single country in 2050 will have the quality of life we enjoy today. It’s not even clear we will have functioning societies. Meeting these challenges is not an option. It is a mandate.

Who is going to solve these problems?

It probably won’t be governments working alone. Meeting the 2050 Challenge will require the collaboration of every country on earth, and governments haven’t been very successful at that. And it probably won’t be just businesses. Industry has the intellectual capability but not always the required social mandate and long-term perspective.

The organizations that have the will, the intellectual capacity, the vision, and the social mandate to meet the 2050 Challenge are universities—and colleges of engineering in those universities in particular. Indeed, it is not an exaggeration to say that it is within the collective abilities of universities and their colleges of engineering to meet the challenges that threaten our planet.

It is not only technology that will address the 2050 Challenge. It is also leadership.  Although the majority of these challenges do have technical solutions, implementing those solutions worldwide in a socially acceptable manner will require insightful, altruistic leadership, capable of the long-term perspective

The College of Engineering at Iowa State University has focused its strategic plan on addressing the 2050 Challenge. In this effort, we are building upon our strengths and hiring new faculty into cluster areas: biosciences and engineering, engineering sciences and technology, engineering for extreme events, information and decision sciences, and engineering for sustainability. We have established the Engineering Policy and Leadership Institute with the charge to increase the role of engineers in the development of public policy involving technology and to birth the next generation of technically educated leadership. We are broadening our curricula with a systems perspective to address the extreme complexities of these challenges.

We are committed to meeting the 2050 Challenge. Join us in this effort.


Meeting the Challenge