NAE President to Grainger Engineering students: The future is yours to shape

How should engineering students be educated in this time of constant, rapid change? Tsu-Jae Liu, President of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE), spoke at The Grainger College of Engineering’s Dean's Distinguished Lecture on November 4 about how engineering colleges can prepare students for socially responsible, sustainable, long-term and impactful innovation.

Liu’s participation in the lecture, titled “Engineering Leadership in a World of Accelerating Change” and hosted at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign’s National Center for Supercomputing Applications, acknowledged the college's leading role in educating the engineers of the future. Her familiarity with the challenges facing engineering educators and researchers comes from experience as an academic and dean of the University of California, Berkeley, College of Engineering from July 2018 through June 2025, and from the forefront of innovation in microelectronics. She has authored over 550 papers and holds 97 U.S. patents.

“One of the things we are looking to do with the National Academy is to help the United States regain leadership in engineering because I think it's important for the future of the nation and our allies.” - Tsu-Jae Liu

Liu’s introductory presentation highlighted the history of engineering, the American economy’s need for engineers, the public image challenges the profession faces, and how NAE is aiding engineering education in a rapidly changing world. “We have entered the age of intelligence characterized by the joining of physical, digital and biological worlds,” she said. “We’re in the exascale era.”

Liu spoke with Grainger Engineering dean Rashid Bashir in a fireside chat before an audience of faculty, students, and community members.

Their conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Watch the full discussion

You talked about AI. Let's start there. You started by showing responsibility. When people built bridges, they made sure that it was built right. How much of the research that's ongoing that you see from your vantage point is around responsible AI, and how can we accelerate it?

In my view, the solution is to learn from failures. That's what we teach our students. You don't quit just because you failed. You learn. It's not unusual for engineering innovations to fail. It's part of the process. We go back there, learn from it, and improve. That's how every technology has been developed.

That iterative learning cycle takes time. In fact, it will slow things down. You can't just run and break things. You have to learn, go back, and learn again. You should say, “We're going to investigate and make sure that what we develop is going to be safe for people and be useful.” That's the mindset that we should have.

Let me take that a little bit further. Do you have advice on how, in some areas of AI, industries move faster than universities?  What should our role be when technologies are moving faster in industry?

I know you have amazing computational capabilities here at this university, but that's not the case at many universities. This is unique with the AI revolution: for the first time, industry has more resources than universities to innovate or to explore the frontiers.

In this country, the government is investing in building regional computational resources. They expect industry to co-invest, so taxpayers get more return on their investment. Rather than every university having its own AI data center, we pool resources and work with the national labs to make them more accessible so that more researchers in a region can access them.

That's not a bad solution.

You articulated the workforce gaps very well. It's a big challenge. So what can we do?

Over 100,000 new jobs aren't being filled by new graduates each year. That's a lot of jobs across all industries. I've never heard anybody say we need more universities

“I think what you're doing here is great. You have CS + X and all these things. We need to attract more students, a greater diversity of students from other majors, and give them some technical training.” - Tsu-Jae Liu

We need to work together to increase the average citizen's technological literacy in this country. When we teach students in our classrooms, we should realize that not everybody's going to be an engineer. That doesn’t mean we shouldn't help them learn the basics and go on to successful careers.

In this age of autonomy and AI, how do you think engineering curricula should adapt?

You're already doing a good job here. If faculty don't have the time or funding to support a graduate student in updating the curriculum, how do you expect them to do that? When you promote people to tenured or full professor, do you only look at how much research funding they're bringing in? How many of their former PhD students are faculty at other universities? Do you care about the majority of students who go on to get jobs in industry, government or business? It’s all of the above. I think leaders must empower faculty and students to adapt to the rapidly changing world.

There's probably a handful of technologies now that, as they progress in the next 10 years, could literally change how we live, work and play. Whether it's quantum, nuclear, and, of course, AI. How can we prepare our students for this rapidly changing world, and for these key areas that could really change everything?

Multidisciplinary collaboration is important, so students have the opportunity to work with people from different backgrounds. This is all about inclusion. Being able to communicate and work effectively with people outside of your area of specialty. That includes people in the humanities and social sciences.

So what gives you the most optimism about engineering and the profession broadly for the future?

"Some people are worried about the future, but engineers, if you think about it, shape the future. So how can you not be optimistic if you know that you have the opportunity to shape it to be better than it is today?" - Tsu-Jae Li

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Grainger Engineering Affiliations

Rashid Bashir is Dean of The Grainger College of Engineering, Vice Chancellor Chicago Strategic Partnerships and professor of bioengineering. Bashir holds the Grainger Distinguished Chair in Engineering and is affiliated with Beckman, Carle Illinois College of Medicine, College of Liberal Arts & Sciences, Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, Department of Materials Science & Engineering, Department of Mechanical Science & Engineering, IGB, Materials Research Laboratory, and NCSA.