Research Focus

Engineering Education, Management, and Policy

New technologies are created by and for people. The Engineering Education, Management, and Policy Cluster focuses on how policies at the organizational, sectoral, national, and cross-national levels influence the life and work of the many and varied people who make up the engineering and technology workforce.

As researchers, we have two primary areas of concern:

• Education:  We seek innovative approaches to educating and training the engineering and technology workforce and improved quantitative assessment of these essential missions. 
• Global management:  We pursue a deeper understanding of the challenges of the global forms of organization, including distributed workgroups, in which the engineering and technology workforce will increasingly find itself.

As educators, we deploy our personal curiosity more broadly to catalyze campus-wide interest in the many socio-technical challenges and opportunities that new and emerging technologies are creating for society.

Energy-Environmental Systems Research

The complex interaction among society, energy and the environment has dramatically changed over the past few decades. Recognizing this, the Energy and Environment group has come together as a community of people, seeking to collectively lay intellectual foundations for future change. We include practitioners and scholars who were actively engaged during past transitions together with a new generation of scholars.

Among our aims, we look to elucidate issues at the intersection of technology and society with a focus on solutions grounded in policy and practice. Our research seeks to advance problem-solving in ways which surmount the limitations of traditional disciplines. In our teaching and scholarship, we value learning that is informed by both theory and application.

Drawing from a diversity of experience working with industry, government, laboratories, and community-based initiatives, we look to equip the next generation of decision-makers and analysts with foundational knowledge and relevant experience to shape current and emergent energy-environmental pathways.