The Global Engineers

The Global Engineers: Building a Safe and Equitable World Together, is inspired by the opportunities for engineers to contribute to global prosperity. This book presents a vision for Global Engineering, and identifies that engineers should be concerned with the unequal and unjust distribution of access to basic services, such as water, sanitation, energy, food, transportation, and shelter. As engineers, we should place an emphasis on identifying the drivers, determinants, and solutions to increasing equitable access to reliable services. Global Engineering envisions a world where everyone has safe water, sanitation, energy, food, shelter, and infrastructure, and can live in health, dignity, and prosperity.

Engineers must become activists and advocates, rejecting ahistorical technocratic approaches that suggest poverty can be solved without justice or equity. Engineers must leverage our professional skills and capacity to generate evidence and positive impact toward rectifying inequalities and improving lives.

Evan Thomas is the Director of the Mortenson Center in Global Engineering and holds the Mortenson Endowed Chair in Global Engineering at the University of Colorado Boulder. The Mortenson Center supports hundreds of undergraduate and graduate students working in over 20 countries, with dozens of non-profit, social enterprise, government, and community partners.

Evan is a tenured Associate Professor jointly appointed to the Civil, Environmental, and Architectural Engineering and the Aerospace Engineering Sciences Departments. Evan is currently a member of the NASA and USAID SERVIR Applied Sciences Team, applying NASA satellite data with USAID supported expertise toward drought resilience in East Africa. Evan has worked professionally in over a dozen countries, and holds a PhD in Aerospace Engineering Sciences from the University of Colorado Boulder, is a registered Professional Engineer in the State of Texa.s, and has a Masters in Public Health from the Oregon Health and Science University.