Tackling the Grand Challenges of Engineering
Focus on engineering a society that will last for many generations to come
Use engineering to solve some of the world’s most pressing health-related causes
Secure our livelihoods on the ground or virtually in cyberspace
Use technology to make everyday life better
NAE Grand Challenges of Engineering
Engineers make good things happen. You want to solve the pressing challenges facing society, today and in the future. Problems in health and medicine, security, environment, and many others are multidisciplinary areas where you could help.
With input from people around the world, an international group of leading technological thinkers identified the Grand Challenges for Engineering in the 21st century. These 14 game-changing goals fall into four cross-cutting themes, all directed at improving life on our planet: Sustainability, Health, Security, and Joy of Living.
”The Grand Challenges set a grander scope for our discipline by changing the conversation about engineering, by providing key aspirational goals and by inspiring the new generations about the importance of engineering as the enabling discipline of our times.
Dean Yannis YortsosUSC Viterbi School of Engineering
Sustainability
- Make Solar Energy Economical
- Provide Energy from Fusion
- Develop Carbon Sequestration Methods
- Manage the Nitrogen Cycle
- Provide Access to Clean Water
- Restore and Improve Urban Infrastructure
Health
- Engineer Better Medicines
- Advance Health Informatics
- Reverse-engineer the brain
Security
- Secure Cyberspace
- Prevent Nuclear Terror

The Information Sciences Institute
With roots in early Internet infrastructure research and development, ISI's Networking and Cybersecurity Division carries out a broad program of research spanning the areas of networking scientific investigations, Internet operations and governance, cybersecurity research topics, and a variety of infrastructure projects for experimentation and collaboration.
Joy of Living
- Enhancing virtual reality
- Advancing personalized learning
- Engineering the tools of scientific discovery

Center for Intelligent Environments
This center supports ground-breaking research and brings together the world’s foremost leaders, scholars, innovators, and intellectuals to engage in dialogue and debate, as well as form partnerships that promote human-centered design and integration of intelligent technologies into built environments.

Signal Analysis and Interpretation Lab
SAIL focuses on human-centered signal & information processing that address key societal needs. Bridging science and engineering, SAILers pioneer behavioral signal processing and behavioral machine intelligence, affective computing, multimodal signal processing, computational media intelligence and computational speech science.
Listen while you scroll!
The Literal Viterbi Voices
Listen to our podcast episode interviewing the Yannis Yortsos, Dean of the Viterbi School of Engineering and champion of the Grand Challenges! Dean Yortsos discusses his engineering background and how he got to where he is, the programs and initiatives he has spearheaded during his time as Dean, and his vision for the future of the Viterbi School and for the discipline of engineering as a whole.
Viterbi Voices: The Podcast is your chance to hear stories about research, classes, student life, and more directly from our faculty, students, and other members of our engineering community. Click the link below to see the rest of our episodes!