Engineering technology is an important engine driving the development of human society. At present, the global round of scientific and technological revolution and industrial transformation is greatly intensifying, and the development of engineering technology has entered an unprecedented period of active innovation. The deep integration of scientific and technological advancement with industrial innovation is accelerating. Breakthroughs are continuously being made in fields such as artificial intelligence, biomedicine, aerospace, new energy, and new materials, and epoch-making achievements are emerging in engineering innovation, causing profound changes worldwide.
As the flagship journal of the Chinese Academy of Engineering (CAE), Engineering has joined with the CAE's Global Engineering Frontier Research Consulting Project Team to organize the selection of the Global Top Ten Engineering Achievements every year since 2021, in order to promote the progress of engineering technology, lead technological innovation in engineering, and foster the spirit of engineering technology. Through expert recommendations, public voting, and comprehensive judgment, major innovative achievements in engineering technology that have been completed and verified to be effective in a global scope within the past five years are selected, with the aims of guiding the global community's attention to engineering technology and creating an atmosphere that respects and advocates for technological innovation in engineering.
This year's Global Top Ten Engineering Achievements include accomplishments at the cutting edge of engineering technology that can lead the direction of technological development, such as the Sora video model; the latest successes in the system integration of innovative engineering technology, such as the Chang'e 6 mission's sampling and return from the far side of the Moon and a high-temperature gas-cooled-reactor nuclear power station that achieves combined heat and power generation; and achievements setting the development direction for new, high-quality production forces that can give birth to new industries and new momentum, such as autonomous vehicles and flexible displays. These innovative achievements in engineering technology are rapidly transforming into actual productive forces, bringing far-reaching and extensive impacts to many aspects of the world's economic and social development.
A brief introduction to the Global Top Ten Engineering Achievements 2024 is provided below.
1. CAR-T cell therapy
Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)-T cell therapy, a form of immunotherapy for treating malignant tumors, uses genetic engineering technology to modify patients' T cells so that the cells can recognize and attack tumor cells. Since the first CAR-T cell therapy, KYMRIAH, was approved by the US Food and Drug Administration in 2017, several CAR-T cell therapies have been approved for marketing globally and have demonstrated significant advantages in treating hematological malignancies. CAR-T therapy is a cutting-edge approach for treating cancer and other serious diseases, marking the arrival of the era of cell therapy.
2. Chang'e 6
On June 25, 2024, China's Chang'e 6 lunar mission successfully returned to Earth using a semi-ballistic skip-entry method, marking the first time in human history that samples have been collected from the far side of the Moon. This mission, which lasted 53 days, went through 11 stages including Earth–Moon transfer, lunar braking, orbiting the Moon, landing, sampling on the Moon's surface, ascending from the Moon, rendezvous, sample transfer, waiting in lunar orbit, Moon–Earth transfer, and re-entry recovery. Chang'e 6 brought back 1935.3 g of samples from the far side of the Moon; these samples provide direct evidence for the study of the Moon's early evolution and offer a new perspective on understanding the geological differences between the far and near sides of the Moon.
3. LEO satellite constellation
On May 23, 2019, SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket carried 60 low-Earth-orbit (LEO) satellites into space in one launch, marking the beginning of the deployment of the Starlink LEO Internet constellation project. The goal of Starlink is to build a high-capacity, low-latency, space-based communication system to provide high-speed Internet services worldwide. As of August 6, 2024, Starlink has launched 6851 satellites in 184 batches, making it the largest satellite constellation in human history. With their unique orbital advantages and technical characteristics, LEO satellite constellations are gradually becoming an important part of the global communication network.
4. Flexible displays
Flexible displays are ultra-thin, ultra-light, and bendable display products made using flexible substrates. They are widely used in fields such as consumer electronics, automotives, and medicine. In 2023, the global market size for flexible display monitors reached 37.89 billion USD, with Samsung, LG Display, BOE, and TCL CSOT being among the world's foremost manufacturers of flexible displays. With their unique appeal, flexible displays are leading a new revolution in the design of consumer electronic products, disruptively expanding the usage scenarios and boundaries of electronic products and providing users with unprecedented portability and infinite possibilities for design creation.
5. High-temperature gas-cooled reactor nuclear power station
On December 6, 2023, the demonstration project of the world's first modular high-temperature gas-cooled reactor nuclear power station, located in Shidao Bay, Shandong, China, completed a 168 h continuous operation assessment, marking the commencement of its official commercial operation. The high-temperature gas-cooled reactor adopts a modular design, with inherent safety, high power-generation efficiency, strong environmental adaptability, and a wide range of uses. It can achieve the co-generation of heat and electricity, providing high-parameter industrial steam at 300–500 °C, and is internationally recognized as an advanced type of fourth-generation nuclear reactor technology, with broad application prospects.
6. Smart factories
As an advanced form of modern manufacturing, smart factories integrate manufacturing and information technologies to achieve digital, networked, and intelligent production and management throughout the entire product life cycle. This significantly improves production efficiency and product quality, reduces energy consumption, enhances supply chain collaboration and user interaction, and drives manufacturing toward flexibility, autonomy, and personalization. Companies such as Siemens, General Motors, and BMW have smart factories that represent the highest level of intelligent manufacturing in the world, leading the arrival of a revolution global manufacturing.
7. Autonomous vehicles
Autonomous driving refers to the ability of a vehicle to perceive and interact with its surroundings, make decisions autonomously, and operate at the level of a human driver. Supported by artificial intelligence and other technologies, autonomous driving is making a leap forward from rule-oriented to end-to-end intelligence, approaching the level of fully autonomous driving. With companies such as Tesla, Waymo, Baidu Apollo, and SenseTime leading in commercialization and technological innovation, autonomous driving is widely used in logistics transportation, public transportation, shared mobility, and other areas. As a foreseeable disruptive technology, autonomous driving will profoundly change the way we travel.
8. Surgical robots
Surgical robots typically consist of multiple interactive components such as a control console, robotic arms, and a high-definition visual system. They offer higher control precision, stability, and operational flexibility, enabling surgeons to perform more complex and less invasive surgeries and thereby reducing surgical trauma, shortening recovery time, and improving both the overall quality of surgery and patient treatment outcomes. Since the beginning of 21st century, significant progress has been made in global surgical robot technology, with the emergence of systems such as da Vinci, Versius, Hugo RAS, and Surgix. As an innovative technology in the field of medicine, surgical robots are expected to usher in a new era of healthcare.
9. The Sora video-generation artificial intelligence model
On February 16, 2024, OpenAI released the Sora video-generation artificial intelligence model. By learning the association between content-aligned text sentences and image/video data, Sora can simulate and reconstruct complex phenomena depicted in videos of the physical world. It elevates artificial intelligence content generation from text to multimodal content and has been hailed as a "video world simulator." The innovation represented by Sora raises the generalization capability of artificial intelligence to a new level.
10. Ultra-large wind power generation equipment
Against the backdrop of the global energy transition, innovation in wind power technology is accelerating, and ultra-large wind power generation equipment is continuously being updated toward larger capacity, higher hub height, and longer blades. Onshore wind power equipment with a single capacity of over 10 MW and offshore wind power equipment with a single capacity of over 15 WM are rapidly emerging. Companies such as Goldwind, Vestas, and General Electric hold a leading position in the global research and development, and production of ultra-large wind power generation equipment. The rapid development of this technology provides important support for global wind energy development and advances the world's energy transition.
On the occasion of the official release of the Global Top Ten Engineering Achievements 2024, we offer our warm congratulations to the scientists and engineers who have made significant contributions to the research and development, construction, and operation of the selected achievements! Your outstanding work has given rise to great projects and has promoted economic and social development and human progress. We greatly appreciate the support given to Engineering during the selection process from domestic and foreign experts, scholars, and engineers, and the colleagues from the selecting teams for each topic area; we also express our gratitude to the Selection Committee for the Global Top Ten Engineering Achievements of Engineering.
The paper "Global Top Ten Engineering Achievements 2024," authored by Junzhi Cui, Jian-Feng Chen. Full text of the open access paper: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eng.2024.11.007
