This is why I love being an engineer: the idea that what you do is timeless, and the overriding goal -- always -- is developing structures, tools, mechanisms for the benefit of society, and not for some superficial temporal pleasure or sheer financial gain (although economics will always be the reason anything happens in engineering, or anything else, for that matter).

A series of challenges has been announced for the fields of engineering...

- Making solar energy affordable: How do you convert and store the power of sunshine at a cost competitive with fossil fuels?
- Providing energy from fusion: How do you sustain a controlled fusion reaction for commercial power generation?
- Developing carbon sequestration methods: How do you capture the carbon dioxide produced from fossil-fuel burning, and confine that excess carbon underground?
- Managing the nitrogen cycle: How do you develop countermeasures for fertilizer use, internal combustion and other activities that contribute to pollution?
- Providing access to clean water: How do you address the short supply of water for personal use and irrigation in many areas of the world?
- Restoring and improving urban infrastructure: How do you renew aging infrastructure while bringing cities into better ecological balance?
- Advancing health informatics: How do you identify the specific factors behind wellness and illness, and follow through on the promise of personalized medicine?
- Engineering better medicines: How do you find new treatments for age-old scourges as well as newly emerging diseases?
- Reverse-engineering the brain: How do you unlock the secrets of brain function, to heal human diseases and advance the field of artificial intelligence?
- Preventing nuclear terror: How do you head off threats from agents who are bent upon bringing ruin to industrial society?
- Securing cyberspace: How do you protect the global information infrastructure from identity theft, viruses and other threats without bogging down the flow of data?
- Enhancing virtual reality: How do you use computer technology to create imaginative environments for education and entertainment?
- Advancing personalized learning: How do you move from a "one-size-fits-all" style of education to more engaging, computer-enhanced teaching techniques?
- Engineering the tools for scientific discovery: How do you improve our methods for exploring the frontiers of life, the atom and the cosmos?

I have not always ended my day thinking I had the most exciting of professions, but I have never started my day thinking that what I did was not going to make some measurable difference.

More specifically, I am currently working on the sixth challenge mentioned above, evaluating the existing levee system, hundreds of miles in length, in California, and eventually designing either improvements or new replacement levees. At the same time, in a few cases, removing levees and restoring the natural flow path and flood plain, would be the most beneficial, both ecologically and in alleviating the risks elsewhere. In making that difficult decision -- to take land away -- economics factors in, and existing land use, however unnatural it is, including but not limited to agriculture, tends to govern, even though the cost to replace or improve existing levees is potentially much greater than the purchase of the land itself.

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