A large part of the population is not applying its creativity to society's greatest challenges, Professor Elanor Huntington says.
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Professor Huntington is referring to women.
"We're attracting about half as many engineers as we need and less than 20 per cent of the engineering workforce is female," Professor Huntington said.
The professor will give a public talk in Newcastle on Thursday, titled The X Factor: Why We Need More Women Engineers.
Engineering and computing professions should be "representative of the society we are making".
"I believe we should make a world that we all want to live in," she said.
Professor Huntington, who is the Dean of Engineering and Computer Science at the Australian National University, said more diversity in the sector would "broaden our approach to solving and finding problems".
"Evidence shows technical teams are more effective when more women are involved."
She said Australia needs engineers and computer scientists now more than ever.
"We want to increase involvement and find the right kind of problem-finders."
Moments in time that feature simultaneous economic, technological and societal disruption historically involve "an emergence of engineering disciplines at almost exactly the same time".
"Our world is becoming more and more technologically rich. People and algorithms will soon make decisions about the way we behave," she said.
Engineers and computer scientists will consider the safe design and operation of these new technologies.
This kind of future involves civil engineers safely transporting people across cities, electrical engineers optimising electricity and medicos providing home healthcare online.
"It is a bold new future in which engineering can set the agenda," she said.
She said the next great wave of engineers would "thrive in a highly distributed and interconnected world".
"We will find these people through the stories we tell. We do not have to choose between changing the world and being an engineer," she said.
She's concerned, though, that society is not prepared for the coming transformation. Given this, ANU's Reimagine project aims to get people thinking about the world in 2050, when "we're completely embedded in a digital and physical environment".
The project encourages new types of engineers, computer scientists and designers to "take charge and shape a new intellectual agenda".
The talk starts at the University of Newcastle's New Space building at 5.30pm.
