COP30 Webinar - Transforming Engineering Education for a just, sustainable and resilient future

Engineering education sits at a critical juncture. Engineering schools need to rapidly update their curricula and develop new courses to teach the upcoming generation of engineers to think holistically in order to meet complex and interconnected crises such as climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution, while ensuring that future development is just, sustainable, resilient and leaves no one behind. The decisions we make now about how engineers are educated - what they learn, how they learn, the values and competencies they carry - will determine whether infrastructure is built resiliently, equitably, and in harmony with nature, or whether business-as-usual persists.

This COP30-timed session, hosted by ICSI in partnership with Duke University and UNEP,  is part of the Transforming Engineering Education ISLe Learning Hub, a virtual learning platform designed to catalyse the development of best practice guidelines and case studies for designing and enhancing the inclusion of climate resilience and sustainability topics in engineering higher education.

With COP30 as a backdrop, this webinar will:

1. Reflect on the key themes and learnings from the ISLe Learning Hub series to date — including curriculum reform, emerging competencies, systems thinking, inclusive pedagogy and the evolving role of engineers.

2. Connect those learnings to the broader global agenda: how engineering education intersects with climate mitigation and adaptation, nature-positive infrastructure, infrastructure investment, social justice and the SDGs.

3. Explore the role of engineering education professionals (faculty, programme directors, industry, policymakers) in enabling change, identifying their opportunities, challenges and levers for impact.

4. Share practical reflections and lessons from diverse geographies and contexts, enabling participants to gain comparative insight into how engineering education is evolving in different institutional, cultural and infrastructural settings.

5. Catalyse commitments, peer-learning and network building among the professional community to accelerate engineering education transformation, including next steps beyond this session (within and beyond the Learning Hub).

Speakers include:

• Dr Elizabeth Losos (Moderator) - Executive in Residence at Duke University's Nicholas Institute for Energy, Environment & Sustainability
  
• Rowan Palmer (Opening Remarks) - Programme Officer, UN Environment Programme
• Prof Bilal Ayyub - Professor Director, Center for Technology and Systems Management, University of Maryland
• James Viray - Global Head of Corporate Sustainability, GHD
• Priti Parikh - Director of the Bartlett School of Sustainable Construction, UCL
• Savina Carluccio - Executive Director, International Coalition for Sustainable Infrastructure (ICSI)

What is the Infrastructure Sustainability Learning (ISLe) Initiative?

As infrastructure spending ramps up across the globe, one of the greatest barriers to building in a sustainable and resilient way is a lack of capacity among local government officials, engineers, developers, and financiers. To address this challenge, the Infrastructure Sustainability Learning (ISLe) Initiative was established. The founding partners - the Nicholas Institute for Policy and Energy at Duke University, UNEP, and ICSI - are creating virtual communities of practice for sustainable infrastructure practitioners to learn from experts and from one another.

The ISLe Initiative delivers change through establishing and convening learning networks. Stakeholders from across multiple disciplines are engaged through Learning Hubs, which use the case-based and problem-solving learning approaches developed by Project ECHO - a virtual capacity-building model that connects specialists with practitioners for case-based learning and training in addressing complex challenges. Within an ISLe network, participants explore issues related to their own area of work in collaboration with other practitioners and sustainable infrastructure experts.