Celebrate National Engineers’ Week 2011 – February 20-26, 2011

The celebration of National Engineers’ Week started in 1951 by the National Society of Professional Engineers [3].  The week occurs in February, in conjunction with President George Washington [4]'s Birthday; our first President is considered by many engineers to be the nation's first engineer because of his survey work.

Engineering has made countless contributions to enhancing modern life by making it more comfortable, safe and prosperous.  Engineers use imagination and analytical skills to invent, design, improve and build things. They turn ideas into reality, apply basic research and dream up creative and practical solutions.   Engineers change the world.

The engineering field is as varied as engineers themselves. Engineers design and build superstructures and delicate medical instruments.  They explore for energy and better and more efficient ways to deliver it, design environmental controls for buildings and are driving innovation in wind energy, fuel cell technology, solar energy, geothermal energy, petroleum, gas, nuclear engineering, alternative energy and energy efficiency to fusion, hydrogen and superconductor technologies.

Who knows where the next great challenges and breakthroughs will be?

At DOE and the National Laboratories engineers support the discovery and design of new materials with novel structures, functions and properties that may lead to new materials for the generation, storage and use of energy or address and solve environmental impacts of energy use. Other engineers use modern tools and capabilities in the engineering sciences to ensure the safety, security, reliability and performance of the current and future U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile without having to conduct underground testing.   Still other engineers are working to facilitate collaborative computational research for energy applications.

Do you want to know more about engineering at DOE and our national laboratories?  Do you want to find your own research?  Learn more about the Nobel Prize-winning work?  Science Accelerator [5], developed by the Office of Scientific and Technical Information [6](OSTI) to advance discovery and to deliver science information, is a gateway to chemistry and all science at DOE, including R&D results, project descriptions, accomplishments, full text documents, conference papers, Scientific e-prints….and more.  All this through a single query and with a real-time relevance ranking system that the user can design.

Celebrate National Engineers’ Week by learning more about science and engineering.  Science Accelerator [5]  makes it easy.  And remember to thank an engineer.

Walt Warnick, Director of the Office of Scientific and Technical Information

Dr. Warnick was elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in 2005 “for leadership in the federal scientific information community and for contributions to the conceptualization, development and implementation of innovative programs that significantly advance access to government information."  He earned his Ph.D. and M.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Maryland and his Bachelor of Engineering Science from The Johns Hopkins University.