A sublime marriage of British and French architecture and engineering, the Grand Viaduc du Millau outdoes even the stirring 10-year-old Pont du Normandie that spans the mouth of the Seine between Honfleur and Le Havre.
"This collaboration between Microsoft Research and Duke is kind of a blank slate, and it's on us now to think creatively about how we can best use it," said Lawrence Carin, Duke's vice provost for research and professor of electrical and computer engineering, during the grand opening event.
The French hotel giant Accor, meanwhile, said recently that it was "re-engineering" the upmarket Grand Mercure brand it already operates in China.
As a CES Innovations Design and Engineering Award honoree, the product will also be on display at the Innovations Design and Engineering Showcase in the Grand Lobby of the Las Vegas Convention Center and will also be featured at CES Unveiled: The Official Press Event of the International CES on Tuesday, January 5.
Some geologists think that Mars could be transformed, or "terraformed," into a livable planet over time in what would be the grandest and most expensive engineering project ever, one that would take thousands of years and entail the Mother of All Environmental Impact Statements and, yes, "trillions of dollars".
But on first look, I'm not sure how many of the grand engineering challenges really are questions of design or invention.
SOME of the grandest ideas about how to preserve the environment involve molecular-scale engineering known as nanotechnology.
The project is part of the Engineering Grand Challenges research that aims to take on some of the biggest challenges currently facing the science and engineering worlds.
He cites Cascade Engineering as an example: Years ago, the Grand Rapids, Mich., company decided it wanted to hire people right off public welfare, so that welfare recipients could make at least double the money if they were successful.
His project addresses the "engineering better medicines" Grand Challenge.
My Grand Challenge Scholar research centers on the challenge of engineering the tools of scientific discovery.
