It's time engineers move the puck up the ice

(1 minuted read)

There is an election happening right now in Ontario. It is to select the next governing board for engineers. The organization is called Professional Engineers Ontario or PEO for short. Seeking the top spot is Marisa Sterling - distinguished chemical engineer, organizational leader, and diversity and inclusion enthusiast. And her opponent? His platform was recently described as focusing on where the puck is coming from, while Marisa's platform is focused on where it's going.

What is the puck in today's game of public safety? In the past it was exciting electrons to give us light or drilling through rock to give us the railroad. But today, Marisa describes it as disruptive technologies, the 4th industrial revolution: software and computer engineering, nanoengineering and mechatronic engineering, civil, chemical and environmental engineering to stave off climate change, and space engineering to find new solutions to problems on Earth. It is the mashup of automation with human functions.

What is the personal risk in smart cities that track your every move and score your good or bad behaviour? Or biological devices like computer chips embedded under our skin to turn our phones on and regulate our body functions?

Marisa started asking PEO these questions last year, when she was successfully elected the Vice President. Now she wants to reach out to industry and work alongside them and engineers to help develop the best standards going forward for your best interest.

Engineers do one thing very well. They put you first when they make any decisions involving technology, ensuring that science is applied with public safety in mind. So are you ready to jump into that self-driving car, or would you like to hear what the engineers think first?

Please share this message with Ontario's engineers and ask them to vote in the PEO election. They can be identified by a P.Eng. after their name.

Wouldn't you feel safer knowing that engineers aren't just looking in the rearview mirror but are one step ahead and keeping you safe?

Voting ends Friday, February 22, 2019 at 4pm. Instructions can be found here.