Abstract Though the word “cognitive” has a wide range of meanings we define cognitive engineering as learning from brain to bolster engineering solutions. However, giving an achievable framework to the process towards this has been a difficult task. In this work we take the classic data-information-knowledge-wisdom (DIKW) framework to set some achievable goals and sub-goals towards cognitive engineering. A layered framework like DIKW aligns nicely with the layered structure of pre-frontal cortex. And breaking the task into sub-tasks based on the layers also makes it easier to start developmental endeavours towards achieving the final goal of a brain-inspired system.