CES keynote speech
About 18 months ago, Gayle Ermer, my department chair, asked if I would contribute a keynote speech at the 2026 Christian Engineering Conference, the biennial meeting of the Christian Engineering Society. I said “yes;” how could I say “no?” The speech was today.
The instructions from the conference organizers were “say something of interest to the engineers and mathematical scientists (mathematicians, statisticians, data scientists, computer scientists) who will be in the audience.” That turned out to be a difficult task. Like any good economist who discounts the value of future payments, I vastly underestimated the time needed to prepare the speech a year and a half in advance.
The title of my talk was “Engineering: What are we doing?” I walked through how engineers are creative individuals who who solve problems for others using technical knowledge. But there are also problems! And, at our best we point in redemptive directions. I’m grateful it went well.
I’ll post later with the contents of the talk. For now, here are a few photos.
A gallery of photos from the twin conferences can be found at https://photos.pruim.co/Calvin/ACMSCES-2026.