The Training Needs of the Profession for the Next Decade
The main theme of this Address is the training of professional engineers, although it is apparent that training cannot be completely divorced from education. Primary education is dealt with briefly, but sufficiently to indicate its importance. A proposal is made for a system of mentor and tutorial guidance extending from the sixth form through the industrial student stage, and through University to Corporate Membership of C.E.I. and into management.At each stage of development the responsibilities of the various participants are clearly outlined, and proposals are made for training and educational programmes. These are broad enough to be applicable to almost any discipline, and should be tailored to suit the individual requirements of any organization. The Address is concerned with the methods which should be adopted for manager development, not only for the graduate but right through, as a continuing process, for all grades of management.
Management and the Engineer
Engineers were the first managers. Their pre-eminence has been overtaken by accountants and men of broader training, and acceleration of business studies will increase this displacement. Mention is made of the advantages and special problems of engineers in business studies. The graduate engineer has many opportunities but the situation is less satisfactory for non-graduates. The desirability of finding solutions is stressed, particularly because of the central importance of engineering industries in Britain.
Creating the Virtual Universe
Simulation software is important to our understanding of the universe. The intrinsic multiphysics aspects are spiced with a range of temporal scales and spatial scales, both of which cover more digits than are available in the standard hardware. This, together with the intrinsic chaotic nature of many physical processes, poses quite a challenge. To meet this challenge, researchers developed the Astronomical Multipurpose Environment (AMUSE). Instead of writing a suite of multiphysics solvers from scratch, AMUSE's developers coupled existing solvers for each physical ingredient. The result is a highly inhomogeneous collection of dedicated solvers with a homogeneous protocol that scales to supercomputers.