“Engineering allows us to directly address the most pressing global problems,” Mason said. “We have a lot of issues that we need to solve. Especially problems that could be solved by science and technology, we have a mandate to try to solve.”
On Wednesday, Feb. 7, members of the PME community gathered – nearly 200 in person and online combined – to hear Mason discuss the school’s growth, challenges and triumphs. The event also offered the audience the opportunity to ask questions directly of the Dean, ranging on topics from diversity and inclusion efforts to the date of the next Friday Social.
“This event is an opportunity to get our community together, to have transparency and to get people thinking along the same lines,” Mason told the assembled crowd.
From the Molecular Level Up
PME is the first school in the nation dedicated to molecular engineering, the process of building everything from new plastics to quantum devices from molecules up.
Similarly, PME itself grew from a small starting particle to a group now creating world-changing innovations.
“We've grown from one director to a population of more than 600 people in just 12 years,” Mason said.
During this time, PME has leapt to the forefront of research. Mason’s talk highlighted recent PME accomplishments from all four of PME’s themes. PME’s innovative theme approach tears down the silos that traditional departments create, better allowing scientists to collaborate on solutions for pressing global issues.
“Rather than divide by disciplines that were created 100 years ago, it was decided to focus on what was important for policy results, focus on who you needed to gather together to address important issues and important topics,” Mason said. “I believe that every school of engineering should do this and, if they could start over again, that many would do this.”
This interdisciplinary approach is only possible through vigorous partnerships. The Dean’s talk highlighted several such collaborations, including Prof. Junhong Chen’s leadership role in a local partnership that received a $160 million federal award in January to clean Great Lakes water, a global partnership inked last month at the World Economic Forum in Davos to promote quantum science and ongoing local programs that bring science to South Side schoolchildren.
The Priority and the Challenge
Growth took the center stage for much of the talk.
“PME is very powerful, but it’s also relatively small,” Mason told the crowd.
Mason’s ambitious goals for the next 10 years include doubling the number of faculty, doubling the number of undergraduate majors and quadrupling the number of master’s students.
PME is on its way to these goals, this year welcoming its largest-ever class of incoming graduate students – 68 first-year PhD students and 22 Master’s of Engineering (MEng) students.
“I know many of you came here excited about growth,” Mason told the audience. “You came here because you could help build your fields.”
But growth brings challenges. The top of Mason’s challenges to address is space. The ERC is at capacity and PME is currently spread across 15 sites on campus. Two vital construction projects – the Hyde Park Lab and a new facility on the site of the aging Accelerator Building will provide top-tier lab and classroom space for the expanding school.
Mason said her family helps keep her grounded on the real-world stakes of the issues PME research tackles.
“If you ask my daughters the issues that are most important to them, they’ll say things like climate change or how we use technology,” Mason said. “These are problems engineering can address.”