Benjamin Dubansky, Brooke Dubansky, Brandon Ballengée, and Christopher Just, in collaboration with Le Bleu Perdu Project, "Fresh Sea," from the series Né dans le peche (Born in Sin), 2024. Digitized image from a histology slide of American alligator osteoderm, stained with a modified version of Ramón y Cajal’s picroindigo-carmine and Kernechtrot Nuclear Fast Red. Courtesy of the artists, Le Bleu Perdu Project, Atelier de la Nature.

Engineering and Infrastructure

Infrastructure supports the modern world—literally. The nation's highways, broadband networks, flood controls, electrical grid, tunnels and bridges, building codes, internet architecture, and railways are just some of the infrastructure that must be continually built, maintained, and upgraded. Science and technology plays an outsized role in making this infrastructure work effectively and efficiently—a task made more challenging by climate change and natural disasters. Whether the country's infrastructure can adapt to a very different environment than the one it was built for is one of the most pressing questions of the twenty-first century.