A Task Force to Study Operations Research as a Catalyst for Engineering Grand Challenges

University Of Southern California, Los Angeles CA

Investigators

Abstract

Over the past several years, a group of leading thinkers from around the world have come together to identify some grand challenges for engineering (under the auspices of the NAE). These challenges, broadly classified under the themes of Sustainability, Security, Human Health, and the Joy of Living, identify a few key areas with the potential to reinvent our way of life. The role of the proposed Task Force is to identify new operations research (OR) directions that will enable the NAE Grand Challenge-domains to leverage new OR knowledge into their research. In this sense, the proposed effort will identify OR challenges with an eye towards serving as a catalyst for the NAE Grand Challenges. The Task Force will convene three meetings. The first one will be focused on distilling the NAE challenges into drivers for OR research. Given the multi-disciplinary nature of OR, it is expected that certain broad requirements for OR research will emerge during presentations, and deliberations of the task force. The second meeting will be focused on in-depth statements of OR challenges, which if met by the OR community, will allow the NAE challenges to make progress, and even engage the OR community in the quest for solutions to some of the more pressing problems facing the engineering world. Finally, at a third meeting feedback from a panel of referees will be incorporated into the preparation of a final report that is expected to be widely disseminated in the OR community and have broad impact in shaping future research directions.