Eric Iversen What do engineers actually do? Every year, the engineering community organizes itself to provide a wealth of answers and engaging resources in response to this question under the auspices of Engineers Week. Running February 18-24, the theme for this year is "Welcome to the Future!" In the spirit of Engineers Week, we are happy to feature selections below from one of our newest publications, the updated 4th edition of our Engineering Career Guide. It's bigger and better than ever – and it offers an exciting preview of the future that engineering is helping to make into reality. Th ..read more

Eric Iversen Uh oh On a Friday afternoon in 2019, a British energy company executive got a call from his CEO asking him to move money to an account in Hungary to pay a bill that was about to come due. As most people do in response to requests from their boss, he got right on the job, transferring over $240,000 to the specified account. Except the call did not come from his CEO. It came from a voice simulator program, driven by artificial intelligence, or AI, that can record, analyze, and reproduce vocal rhythms and intonations to generate an imitation of someone’s voice that is indistinguishab ..read more

Eric Iversen “Incredible” Star Wars engineering feats Yes, it’s May 4th, Star Wars Day, a fun occasion to honor the wonders and delights of the epic movie cycle. It can also be an occasion to spend some time considering aspects of the movies from alternate perspectives. Trying to find fresh angles on some of the most intensely scrutinized, rigorously studied works of film ever made is not for the faint of heart. But as Yoda says, “Do, or do not. There is no try.” So herewith, we do, with a consideration of engineering feats of the Star Wars saga, examining their “incredible” features, as in, w ..read more

Eric Iversen Toys are great … It’s easy to think well of toys. They’re fun, they bring kids together in play with friends and family members, they can help kids learn valuable lessons about sharing and kindness, they can inspire soaring flights of imaginative fancy, and they can send parents and grandparents on long trips down nostalgia lane in no time flat. … except when they’re not One really bad thing about toys, though: they’re terrible for the environment. The toy industry is a huge market, generating over $28 billion in the U.S. for 2021. And over 90 percent of this market takes the form ..read more

Eric Iversen First, can the internet be saved? These two things about the internet are unfortunately true at the same time: More people are falling victim to more online crime all the time. Not enough people are available to do the work we need to do to make our lives online safer. Indeed, examining the “seedy underbelly” of the internet brings to light startling, demoralizing facts, such as: $6 trillion in damage attributed to cybercrime this year alone, almost 60 percent of Americans harmed in some way, 33 billion accounts suffering data breaches. Meanwhile, in the United States we tru ..read more

Eric Iversen A rock-star engineer Mark Rober might be the most visible mechanical engineer in America. He’s got views on YouTube exceeding 2.5 billion, appearances on multiple TV news and entertainment shows, and a video launching it all showing him with a gaping hole in his torso. Or at least, a Halloween costume that makes it seem like he has a gaping hole in his torso. It’s the squirrels, people In our house, though, he is most famous for his squirrel maze videos. In the first video, a rogue’s gallery of squirrels puzzle their way through an eight-part obstacle course in Rober’s California ..read more

Eric Iversen One issue to rule them all All the action this year in STEM education policy turned on the question of what to do with the National Science Foundation (NSF). Specifically, the question was whether to make it bigger. Or make it a lot bigger. Debates played out against a backdrop of fears over competition with China on the one hand, and on the other hand, more general interests in deploying the country's R&D enterprise in the cause of addressing “grand challenges.” When the 117th Congress heads back into session next month, answering these questions will likely be among the earl ..read more

Eric Iversen The need abides Millions of unfilled jobs around the world. An urgent national security problem. Schools, companies, and families all under a steady threat of online attack or exploitation from unexpected directions. Cybersecurity sits at the center of all these issues, generating headlines and headaches every day. Rapid, challenging change afoot Cybersecurity is also an opportunity, though, as a career option for students from almost any background with almost any set of interests. And in fact, K-12 cybersecurity education is evolving quickly towards becoming a formal, classroom ..read more

Eric Iversen Never simple Our virtual lives get nothing if not more complicated and extensive. More and more of our work, learning, and leisure takes place online, a phenomenon accelerated by COVID but well established for all ages before the onset of pandemic times. Especially for kids, getting a grip on safely navigating this ever-expanding universe of online experiences is tricky. With Cybersecurity Awareness Month under way, we take great pride in announcing our latest publication, Outsmart Cyberthreats, in which we explore ramifying risks for underage internet users as well as offer guida ..read more

Eric Iversen Nice to (re-)meet you Nobody would call this new school year a return to normal. But it does mark a return to more widespread in-school learning than last year, at least insofar as local COVID infection rates will allow. As a result, students and teachers and administrators are all getting reacquainted with each other after an 18-month disruption to familiar school routines. To kick off our own return to regular publication of the blog, we thought we would align ourselves with this theme of getting reacquainted. So herewith is a review of the blog posts of the last 18 months that ..read more