New Opportunities for AI EDAM: Ecological Systems and Biological Designs

Almost all EDAM over the last century has been based on the physical sciences. Although the physical sciences certainly will continue to be very important, I expect that biological sciences will soon begin to play a critical role in engineering, leading to new methods and practices of biologically inspired engineering design and manufacturing. Also, in the big picture, much of EDAM in the past has been driven by considerations of economy and culture. Although economy and culture of course will continue to be critical determinants, limitations of natural resources and ecological sustainability will become increasingly important in EDAM. I posit that because of these two developments, AI research on EDAM in the next decade will address problems quite different from those, say, in the 1990s; the new set of problems will engage biology, ecology, and the environment at a depth and scale never before seen in this journal.