Carnegie Mellon's Cliff Davidson to Discuss Importance of Designing Sustainable Products at Workshop in India

August 14, 2009

Contact: Chriss Swaney
Carnegie Mellon University
412.268.5776

           
Davidson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering and public policy at Carnegie Mellon, will discuss the importance of educating engineering designers and managers for the 21^st century.

           
"Animals, plants and entire habitats, as well as our current lifestyles, are at risk from continued unsustainable development, and it is up to us to help educate future engineers about preserving limited resources through sustainable methods," said Davidson, the winner of Carnegie Mellon's prestigious 2009 William H. and Frances S. Ryan Award for Meritorious Teaching.

           
A leader in developing sustainable engineering programs across the U.S., Davidson recently spearheaded two workshops in Austin, Texas, in 2007 and another two in Pittsburgh July 13-17. In each pair of workshops, the first was intended for faculty members without prior experience in the concepts and applications of sustainability as they apply to engineering. The second workshop was designed to help engineering faculty, with prior experience in sustainability, incorporate sustainability concepts into their courses.

           
As founding director of the university's innovative Center for Sustainable Engineering, Davidson has galvanized programs into action. The center, supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, is designed to help future engineers better manage increased stress on the world's limited resources. The center is a collaborative effort between Carnegie Mellon, the University of Texas at Austin and Arizona State University.

           
The Indo-U.S. Workshop, co-sponsored by the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the Indian Institute of Science, aims to bring together experts from India and the U.S. to discuss the social, economic, environmental and technological challenges of designing sustainable systems, according to Davidson, whose creative teaching methods span everything from dissecting toasters to monitoring dangerous airborne particles in old industrial rustbelt towns throughout western Pennsylvania.