We live today in a world where the eternal verities of engineering education are being challenged daily. Long before COVID-19, the world was in flux. The dramatic fall in global poverty over the last 30 years is driving the educational aspirations of millions of talented and ambitious young people all over the world, and unsurprisingly, many of these aspirations center on engineering and technology. And yet, many US universities must confront a continuing disinvestment in higher education and inflating tuition costs. The depredations of climate change and the need to develop sustainable engineering solutions have become painfully obvious. Our experiences during COVID-19 promise to upend traditional modes of education and to revolutionize the very nature of work. New technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning, ubiquitous interconnectivity, increasing automation and transformative medical advances such as CRISPR are disrupting entire industries. Furthermore, the last few years have demonstrated dramatically how the benefits of engineering education are not uniformly available to all members of our society.

Recognizing that we are at a pivotal moment in history, the theme of the 2022 Engineering Deans Institute is “Re-imagining Engineering: Building a Diverse, Sustainable and Healthy Future”. In this meeting, we seek to address these important issues through a variety of exciting keynote, panels, workshops, and discussions. EDI 2022 will address engineering education in the post-COVID era, remote and hybrid work and teaching, and emerging research areas, among others. As always, equity, diversity and inclusion remain an abiding concern, and workshops and panel sessions address this important topic as well. Most important of all, we hope that EDI 2022 will give us all a chance to connect with each other in person and to learn from our varied experiences and backgrounds.