- That was great, and
Don certainly reiterated
and hit on some of the points I made.
I would say, also challenge
you not to just look,
look beyond your table
and within this room,
but to go outside this room,
and to think about creating your center
as one more research question.
That is, not just focus on the science,
but focus on the problem
of creating a center
that is one that has
some theory of change,
and that has designed it's processes,
it's programs, et cetera,
around making that happen.
So, with that, I'm really pleased
to introduce our next speaker,
Yannis Yortsos, many of you
already know him, I think.
He's Dean of the School of Engineering
at the University of Southern California.
He's extremely well known
for his work on fluid flows,
transport and reaction processes
in porous and fractured media.
He's a member of the National Academy.
He's also well known for innovative work,
he's the PI on one of
the I-Corps Innovation.
He is PI of the I-Corps
Innovation Node in Los Angeles,
which was established in 2014.
He's done a number of things that
sort of made him perfect
for this opening talk.
He served on the Nuclear
Regulatory Commission Committees
for the 2017 report on a new vision
for center based engineering research,
and he also contributed to the 2017 report
on the value of social, behavioral,
and economic sciences
to national priorities.
And he articulated the
idea of engineering plus,
which has had a big impact
on his campus and beyond.
So with that, let's welcome him,
we look forward to hearing
what he has to say.
(applause)
- Well thank you very much.
I appreciate the wonderful introduction,
and then, my next challenge
will be to create my slide.
So, it's a great pleasure to be here.
I've been in Washington since Thursday,
so I'm looking forward to
go home, after so many days.
I was asked to come and talk
a little bit about this theme,
'The Promise and Challenges
of Convergent Research'.
And so, I want to tell
you that I will bring in
whatever experience and knowledge
I have acquired in these capacities.
I've been the Dean of Engineering
at USC for 13 years now,
and I contributed to the report
on the Convergent
Engineering Research Centers
that came up, I think last
year or the year before.
I also participated in creating
the Grand Challenges Scholars Program,
which was started in 2009
along with two colleagues
at Duke University and Olin College,
which is an undergraduate program.
Essentially changes mindsets
about what we do in engineering.
And I think, what Don mentioned here,
I think the whole concept behind
what we do here as a culture,
and also how we change mindsets.
I think mindsets is the most
important thing that we do.
I'm not a psychologist,
so I am treading in very
dangerous fields here,
by talking about things that
I don't know much about,
but I believe that mindsets
is a very important thing
for the success of brick and mortar
universities in the future.
'Cause if you think about it,
knowledge and skills can be
downloaded from the internet,
however, mindsets cannot.
And I think universities will have to play
that particular role in trying to develop
in these ecosystems that allow people
to grow in a different capacity.
I was fortunate enough to lead
a diverse initiative of
the ASEE in southern 15,
that is now more than 210
engineering deans of schools
have committed to increase
diversity across the board,
and we are working on making this happen.
And as was mentioned,
I am technically the PI
of this I-Corps Node.
Although I am an unpaid PI,
and the reason I am unpaid is
because my salary is so great,
that even if I put a finite,
a small amount of time,
if you multiply time times salary,
the impact will be so
important on the budget,
so I'm not paid for it,
I'm just kidding you.
(laughter)
I will have a couple of
questions, like why convergence?
The fundamental theme that
I will want to describe here
is that the reason we are talking about
all of these things today,
is because of the exponential
changes in technology.
The rate by which things are changing,
and this creates all these opportunities
that we did not have before.
We're not talking about
convergence 30 years ago,
because the rate of technology
change was not as fast.
And the reason we talk
about all of this today
is because we have the
ability to do things
that we've never been able to do before.
So keep in mind that we are going
to keep this ability as long as
this technology change is happening,
and, as Friedman says in his book,
'Thank You for Being Late',
we also live in the era
of constant accelerations.
By constant accelerations doesn't mean
the acceleration is constant,
but there are accelerations
that happen all the time.
Because one of my colleagues says,
'Constant acceleration and
exponential all go together.',
and I say, 'I understand
that, because you think
the derivative is also
increasing with time.'
But none the less, it's just,
those of you who are engineers
I'm sure connect with
me perfectly well here.
Here's a slide that I
like very much to show,
which is basically is
the technology growing
exponentially fast, the
units are arbitrary,
don't try to, they're
not technology units.
There's no time units,
this is completely a qualitative slide.
And I also have the tangent to this log,
to the particular curve
at any given point.
This stands in, essentially,
is the way we look,
as humans are not capable of
looking around the corner,
except, perhaps, for Wayne Gretzky.
Most of us extrapolate literally,
and I think what you see is the ability.
So there's this gap that is developing,
and that essentially calls that we have to
reinvent ourselves pretty much every year.
As a Dean, when I start the academic year,
I say, 'How do I reinvent myself
to make sure they look and think so?'
Well, first I, in essence, to try
to move up from here, to here,
and then take another tangent again.
And I think that is a challenge
that also the universities
are going to have,
how you reinvent yourself as
you go through the process,
where new things are happening,
and perhaps your idea is no
longer applicable anymore,
and therefore, you have to pivot,
as they say, and make a change.
I will return to this slide,
because I think it's fundamental to me,
and helps me actually
address a number of issues.
This explanation of technology brings
immense opportunities,
can solve big problems,
and at the same time, brings assumption.
And the assumption is the
fact that this gap here
is essentially the
disruption that you see,
and one way to avoid this
gap is to go back in time,
which obviously you cannot do.
Because you cannot go back in time.
Now, I am a chemical engineer,
so I will show you three slides
why I believe that more joy in everything
is basically not applicable
to more, to circles only,
but it's because technology,
I believe in innova...
Sorry, the innovation grows
as a chemical reaction.
So, I know many of you
will say this is nonsense,
and I have no experimental
data to prove it,
however, I'm just going
to put it bravely here.
If you take linear kinetics,
let's assume technology grows
as proportion of the time,
sorry, the rate of change of technology
is proportional to the
technology level itself,
then the clearly the exponential,
this gives an exponential.
And so you can say well, that's more slow.
Okay, now, if you say, what about
if the kinetics are second order,
and you take this, it
takes the rate of change
of technology, let's hear it, okay,
it's proportional to a square.
In other words, it's a combination of,
it's much more powerful.
If you integrate this equation,
then you get a singularity.
I don't if anyone of you
have heard of Kurzweil,
who predicts that there
is a singularity in time.
I don't know if Kurzweil
knows his theory here,
but if you make this assumption,
you can actually show
that perhaps there is
a technology revolution, and
that's not only exponential,
but actually much faster than that.
Is it possible to happen?
Kurzweil keeps pushing the
time where this happened
to like the, I think it was 2030,
and now it's going to 2035
or something like that.
May happen, I'm not sure.
But the reason I think
we have convergence,
is that often, a technology bee comes
because of the product of the technology.
Let's say digital, take biotechnology
that's empowered by digital technologies,
let's say by information technology.
If you make this type
of assumption, again,
and you assume, for example,
that 'A' is digital technology,
and 'B', let's say is biotechnology,
you can get then an evolution
that has a different exponent.
And it's not necessarily
the Moore's Law exponent,
but maybe something different.
And so here is something that you have
an exponential increase, but
with a different exponent,
this is, for instance,
more so for the cost
per raw megabase of DNA sequence.
So you can see, more so large over here,
and then goes down there.
Maybe this is because of this result.
Again, this is a particular
talk for this audience here,
so don't ask me questions that
are challenging my theory,
but think of it as an attempt to appeal
to your mathematics in order to believe
that convergence is an important thing
and is going to grow
in an exponential way.
So much about my theory here.
Why engineering?
Because engineering is enabling
discipline of our times,
and because it's exponentially growing.
And, I should say, that human nature
does not change exponentially fast.
So, actually, I'm not even sure
that human nature changes.
If you were to make a
difference in the world,
let's say, try to take
advantage of engineering
which grows exponentially,
and hopefully human nature
will have come along
in order to help us solve big problems.
We get problems, perhaps,
where humans come in
and make them more difficult in some way.
Don asked the question,
define for me engineering?
I was going to raise my hand,
and here is my definition.
Technology or engineering is leveraging
phenomena for useful purposes.
I do not use a question,
I don't use devices,
I don't use algorithms.
Simply leveraging phenomena
for useful purposes.
This is actually an idea
that was paraphrased
from a book by Brian
Arthur, 2008 I believe,
'The Nature of Technology',
it's a really wonderful book to read
and if you think about it,
and you look at the engineering technology
as leveraging phenomena
for useful purposes,
it encompasses so many things,
and makes engineering
technology so interesting
and appealing to many, many people.
And what are these
technology, these phenomena?
If you think in terms of
increasing complexity,
we started in engineering and technology
from physical phenomena.
Let's say go back to the ancient times,
where engineering was
basically throwing rocks
or building castles and
things of that type.
Mostly physical and mechanical.
Then you have chemical phenomena,
geological, groundwater for instance,
biological, much more complex,
and social-behavioral, which actually
the ultimate complexity in my mind,
in terms of trying to solve problems.
And so if you think about
what we do as engineers,
I think we are moving
in this direction, here,
of increasing complexity.
And actually, the
problems now that we solve
don't include only physical
and chemical phenomena,
but convergence means
that we, essentially,
are dealing with all
these phenomena together.
In many different ways,
particularly when you
deal with complex problems
like Grand Challenges,
and I will come to this in a moment.
So phenomena can be
systems, devices and tools.
They don't have to be
simply physical phenomena
or chemical phenomena, like you know,
or any of those equations,
or the photoelectric effect.
But could be devices
and systems and tools.
And combinations, and useful purposes
includes discovery of new phenomena.
So that captures also other
things that we do, right?
So for instance, in publishable science,
engineers can help scientists
discover new phenomena,
so I think that's another
useful purpose of engineering.
But, an important word
here is also useful.
If you look at useful,
that implies ethics,
morality, unintended consequences,
I'll come back to that, technology,
ethics of technology
is simply encapsulated
in this simple word, useful purposes.
So think about this as
a technology engineer.
So what is convergence?
Convergence, I think that
Don mentioned it as well,
is what I call engineering plus X.
X can be a vector, an E can be a vector.
Engineering can be multidisciplinary,
an X can be a vector,
it can be social science
and communications in
cinema, and law and business,
whatever, you can put them together.
X is anything, can be media, medicine,
entertainment, biology, education.
And I find three ways by which
this convergence happens,
so the two here is a attempt to humor,
and it means towards.
E towards X, two X, and
so instead of using t-o,
I used two, just wanted to
make sure you understand
that this two meant, so I apologize
if this actually didn't
come as well as I expect.
But anyways, that's what it is.
So there are three pathways,
engineering empowers X.
That's typically what
happens in digitization.
Usually, this is digital technologies.
Another one is when X empowers E.
Typically this happens in what
you, or loosely, biomimetics.
Typically when we learn from nature
or from, let's say organized societies,
to borrow concepts and empower
engineering in some way.
But the most important thing for you,
and for all of us, is where E union X,
and engineering and X comingle.
And all of them go
together in order to create
a real, true convergence.
And I think that is the challenge
that you will have as ERC's,
because creating something that
it is simply a digitization,
a digital technology to empower something,
I think it is very useful,
but probably this is something
that companies do very, very well.
And probably this is
not what you will need
in a ERC type of application.
I'll go very quickly through this path,
Engineering empowers X
means E, engineering,
makes X smarter, more efficient,
opens new dimensions, many disruptive,
and it is also the ubiquitous
digitization of everything.
That's Digital Technologies.
If you read the book from the
MIT Sloan Management School,
I forget the title, it talks about
three types of technologies,
digital, computorial, and exponential.
Our work here is on the exponential,
is E Union X, I think this
is what I am trying to say.
The other path, X empowers E,
let's call it X-mimetic, or biomimetic,
it's nature's optimization
through evolution
or perhaps societies ability to discover
phenomena that can be
in power engineering.
Perhaps other, I am not, I'm sure there
are other examples of that.
And finally, when
engineering and X comingle,
the X provides new
context that create new E,
it's a double helix, if you
like, of engineering and X
so that both of them work together,
engineering and medicine is the most
classical example of that.
How do you work together in
order to create something new,
something interesting, something exciting?
And this leads to, what you
call, exponential technology.
So for me, I think is the
fundamental context of the uses.
Why Grand Challenges?
As I talk about, there's
an increasing complexity
where these Grand Challenges have,
that are addressed by the exponentially
advancing technology.
This allows to tackling Grand
Challenge-like problems.
The reason many people
talk about Grand Challenge
is not because all of the
sudden we discovered them,
it's all of the sudden we can solve them.
And the reason we can solve them, again,
is this exponential technology.
That is actually the
fundamental reason behind it.
I should also mention
that powerful technology,
even in Grand Challenges, brings powerful
unintended consequences,
and that's the ethics
and societal aspects.
So you have a number of (muffled)
that particularly Grand Challenges,
for instance, you have
here the Grande Challenges
for Engineering on the left,
the Sustainable Development Goals
of the United Nations on the right.
If I were to mention the
NAE Grand Challenges,
you can put them in four buckets,
I know many people say Grand Challenges
for Engineering, well I do
things that are not really
one of these four things Grand Challenges,
I should say, do not
despair, whatever you do,
put them in a southern bucket.
The buckets are sustainability, security,
health and enriching life.
Everything that you do, most likely,
falls in one of these four categories.
In fact, I had proposal the NAE
that I should go, we should go one further
and talk about societal
organization and societal phenomena,
perhaps through cyber
physical, data science.
I was talking earlier
today about how cities,
smart cities and things like that,
this potentially could be
part of the societal part.
And if you think about it in a
Maslowe's Hierarchy of needs,
these Grand Challenges of Engineering
address the fundamental needs for Maslowe,
which is for an individual,
but this extrapolated to society.
Sustainability, security, health
and the joy of living,
or societal organization
but includes respect, self esteem,
belonging, self
actualization and the like.
I believe that the NAE Grand Challenges
actually are a lot more encompassing
than they think they appear to be.
I think there has been a communication,
a miscommunication, if you like,
from the National Academy in terms of
stipulating only 14 of them,
and I have been arguing that actually
it's probably better to expand
this, in terms of buckets,
because it's the right
way to think about it.
There are also Grand
Challenges for Social Work.
I participated in the development of them,
because at USC we have a very good
School of Social Work, and their Dean,
at one point in time we're discussing
the Grand Challenges of Engineering,
and he said to me, 'What
about Social Work?'
I said, 'Let's try to
figure out how you do this.'
And so the Social Work Society
has come up with Grand
Challenges for Social Work,
but they are all human driven, right?
Close the health gap,
stop family violence,
harness technology for social good,
end homelessness,
eradicate social isolation.
Things that are very
different than what we do,
however technology can
come in and help as well.
So this is kind of interesting to see,
many societies, all of the sudden,
many organizations come up with,
well, how do we address, through
the evolution of technology
and the power of technology,
that we have through
this exponential growth,
which I mentioned before we will continue,
is able to address these types of issues.
Why innovation, with respect to ERC?
At the National Academy meeting,
which I attended a few days ago,
Paul Yock, from Stanford
Biodesign Institute,
received the boardroom prize.
He gave a wonderful presentation,
actually, I was inspired to
modify my slide in this way.
Addressing Grand Challenge like problems
parallels innovation methodologies, why?
Because the Grand
Challenges identify needs.
And then, from these
needs you can then create
a distinct statement,
formulate a statement.
What are you going to do with
your, based on this need?
Based on needs, then you have to
create research and invention,
and then there have to be outcome.
Actually, there are four steps,
which are very well followed at
the Biodesign Institute at Stanford,
and it is need, identifying needs,
condense into a very
specific, SESYNC statement,
what you are going to do to
solve that particular need,
and that is very similar
to the Grand Challenges.
Then do research and invention for it,
and then create outcomes.
It seems to me that if you were to solve
a Grand Challenge problem,
it's, by definition, an innovation problem
because it follows exactly the same steps
that you'd have to follow otherwise.
In fact innovation is
intrinsically convergence
because it's the intersection
of three circles.
Technology, feasibility; business,
which is viability; and
design, which is desirability.
If you create something
that is not desirable,
it is not innovative.
Of course it has to be viable,
and you have to have the
technology to do that.
So there's another concept of convergence
that actually comes
into innovation process.
The innovation process
is absolutely convergent,
but in this time, with
different convergent items,
business and desirability,
or human element as well.
Let me give you an example
of the need and statement for
Don mentioned the BMES ERC,
which is Engineering plus Ophthalmology.
That started in 2003, before the concept
of convergence was too
popular in some sense.
The reason this was,
actually, quite successful
was that the PI of the ERC, Mark Humanyun,
was both an engineer and a medical doctor,
an ophthalmologist, he has both degrees,
and he understood both
cultures very, very well.
Here was his statement, I'm
sorry, here is the need.
Restoring eyesight to the blind.
Fantastic need, how do you,
a biblical need, if you like.
What was the statement?
Biomimetic microelectronic systems
will form direct high-density interfaces
with the human nervous system
to restore lost function.
That was the statement.
Based on that, Mark and his team,
including Ellis Mann, who is here,
actually in the back there,
developed a artificial retina,
which is something that allows
people with macular degeneration
to see for the first time.
And that's something that
is actually remarkable.
So, if you do something like this,
you will have Mark's fate, which is
he became famous and celebrity,
and became a member of two academy's,
The Academy of Medicine and
The Academy of Engineering,
so think that way, and then lots of good
things will happen to you.
A Convergence Engineering Center Report
there is a page that talks about
advanced personalized learning,
I put it together, and
this is why I have it here,
it's a lot of words,
actually I will skip it.
You can see it over there,
but the point to make here is
that you can create a need.
What is the Grand Challenge
of Personalized Learning?
Put a statement.
Here, I have a number
of possible statements,
an invention, what is the
invention going to be?
Outcomes, and what the team is.
And if you look at the team,
it will have computer scientists,
electrical engineers,
biomedical engineers,
education experts, neuroscientists,
psychologists, social type scientists,
ethicists, communication
and entertainment experts.
Imagine, personalized learning
is fundamental to the
democracy of any society.
Because how we learn
and how we participate
is very much an important part
of how a democratic society will function.
So there is another part of this,
that has to do with
learning and communication
and you can easily see how
you can create something
that is so pervasive and so important
in order to create a
center with fundamental
and torrential we're doing this year.
What are the convergence challenges?
I am going to use, I read a
wonderful book this summer,
by Antonio Damasio, who is
a neuroscientist at USC,
and it's called, 'The
Strange World of Things',
I recommend it very highly.
You know, talk about culture,
so I define culture here through it's,
well, I use his definition of
culture through it's attributes.
Remember, culture wants to
be enduring and prevailing.
That is why it is so
difficult to change culture,
because culture wants to be enduring,
it wants to continue.
And prevailing to different,
and this is what I think
is the most difficult
part about changing culture.
That's why, one week you're
not interpreting anything,
we always attribute it to culture,
because it's a cultural organization.
And it's a cultural this, safety
cultural, or this and that.
It is fundamental because it has to be,
it wants to be enduring and prevailing.
I'm going to use here a potential diagram,
in terms of potential
wealth, so for you physicists
and chemical engineers, switch over here.
So think of your potential
versus distance here,
what distance again,
don't worry about units.
If you look at this curve,
you have Culture A in one potential well,
and you have a Culture B
in another potential well.
And these are very stable things,
they like to be in a stable thing,
in fact, they want the well
to be deeper and deeper.
Because cultures want to simply,
and this is what you
call silos, if you like,
so here is a silo on Culture
A and a silo on Culture B.
What's a fundamental challenge?
How to make sure we
eliminate this mountain
and get these two cultures to become
closer and closer to each other.
That, I think, is the fundamental way,
the fundamental reason why
culture change is difficult.
Now one way to change culture is to lower
the activation energy body over there,
the other thing is to do tunneling.
Go through the mountain,
which actually is done
in quantum computing
from what I understand.
You can go from one place to another
through tunneling rather than
going through the mountain.
The people who actually invent
this will become fantastic,
and I think this is a fundamental thing
we have in academia,
we have it in society.
How do you change culture,
and how do we make sure
that this silos here
are, kind of, either disappear
or allow much, much better communication?
Convergence challenges
approach all parts of academy.
People, talent, programs,
where you have value,
papers, thought leadership and impact.
Impact on the society and the economy
could be through innovation
and entrepreneurship,
but also could be through societal impact,
which is something that
I think Don mentioned.
When I look at what I do,
as an Engineering Dean,
these are the four things I do every day.
I look at how to increase talent,
programs, thought leadership and impact.
These are the four things
that are important,
and then of course the
resources that are required
to put around them, in order to be able
to support these goals here.
But convergence, and there is this always,
how do you recruit people that are
interdisciplinary, faculty and student.
How do you create programs
that are interdisciplinary?
How do you create thought leadership,
which will be your particular structure,
and of course the impact in
terms of practices and patterns.
I believe that in order to change culture
you have to change the conversation.
So we have to start
changing the conversation
on what we do as engineers.
We have to get out of our silos
and be a lot more, sort of, a trying to go
to the other potential well if you like,
and be able to diffuse that.
Who we are, what we look like,
we're talking about
diversity and inclusion.
It's a big, important thing
in order to create the talent,
in order to be able to have the ability
to engage all of society
in this enterprise.
And also, how we reinvent ourselves.
Given the fact that we
have an exponential curve,
we have to keep reinventing ourselves
pretty much every year.
And I think that's a very interesting
thing to do, it's very exciting,
because, you know, you always
have something to look-
and you have to look at things
with a fresh, beginners eyes, every time.
I think because you can be
disrupted before you know it,
from somebody that
comes in with different,
fresh eyes, and all of the sudden,
what you thought you were
doing may become obsolete.
I think that's a very important part.
In addition to this,
therefore you have to have
what I call a mindset of growth,
Carol Dweck, at Stanford, a psychologist,
she has coined the term "Growth Mindset".
I actually, I'm turning it a little bit,
because I don't want to
be called into orthodoxy and say,
is this actually your growth mindset?
So I will call it mindset of growth,
so I will change it a little bit.
If people ask me that question,
I said actually, I really
mean it, I'm inspired by that,
but it means something
a little bit different.
In my mind, the growth mindset
is how do you make sure that
you follow this exponential?
Versus a fixed mindset, which
is being rather than becoming.
Classical example, girls are
not meant to be engineers.
That's the fixed mindset type of thing,
the growth mindset is you can actually
change the conversation about all that,
and go into the becoming part.
So I have articulated, sort of,
the five mindsets to
thrive in today's world.
The first is to be as technical
and scientific as possible.
Talent and excellence
you cannot engineer that,
you cannot change that, this
is fundamental to what we do.
I call it 'Hug the exponential'.
To be able to hug this
exponential curve and lead it.
The second is Engineering Plus,
where X is anything, particularly
if it's human-centric.
Think of autonomy, think of drones,
think of all the ethical issues
that will come up as a result of that.
Who we are, what we do, what we look like.
Innovation in the broadest sense,
we help create new markets, new jobs,
but also to design the new self.
I think that's an important part as well,
that's how you reinvent yourself.
Our students will have
to reinvent themselves
after they go into the market,
five years from now they may have to be
different than what they are now,
because the exponential
curve requires that,
you have to keep jumping
all the time across the gap.
The cultural mind, this is
the type that I mentioned.
Cultural awareness, with
culture broadly interpreted.
This cultural mind can be
within your own organization,
or it can be global, culture here
versus, let's say, Asia,
or some other place.
In the past, the cultural
mind was about globalization,
but I think it is bigger than that.
It's how different cultures interact,
what culture means, and
how we understand that.
And what I call 'Heroic Engineering',
which it's a term that I
coined from Megan Smith,
who is a 3rd Chief TO of
the Obama administration,
which is awareness of
the impact to society.
Particularly the importance
of technology ethics,
and also for what impact
we have in society.
So here is a triangle for you,
knowledge and applications or skills
is typically, in most of our curricula,
we are down there, in the bottom,
and we basically play between
knowledge and applications.
But I think, in a brick
and mortar university,
we have to also keep moving
up in this mindset business,
and actually move towards a place where
we also think along the
lines that I just mentioned.
And to change culture you
have to set new values,
goals, behavior, attitude,
rewards and incentives,
and it requires champions.
You have to have champions
in order to do that.
I understand from, and again,
I am not an expert in this,
but I understand that
you need about 10% of
change agents in your organization
in order to be able to change culture.
And that's something that it's
kind of a percolation threshold,
if you are to change from
one place to another.
How you cultivate this 10%,
I think is an important part,
it's something I try to
do, as much as I can,
in my own organization.
The Grand Challenges Scholars Program
that I mentioned, is something that
is consistent with these concepts here.
Talks about also skills and creativity,
leadership, great perseverance,
is consistent with the Engineer of 2020.
This is the Grand Challenges Summit,
which was held here in DC, last year.
I'd like to single out
Rick Miller, on the left,
who is the President of Olin College,
Tom Katsouleas in the middle,
he is the Provost at Virginia,
myself at the end, and Jenna Carpenter,
is the Dean of Campbell University,
that we have been trying to move forward
this Grand Challenges Scholars
Program for a while now.
More importantly, the Grand
Challenges Scholars Program,
the constitution, the percentage of women
is 50% or more, in this group here.
Women are very much attracted
to this program, this mindset.
The original rates show, well,
this is the Class of 2018 for you,
and see, we had about 45
students that graduated,
and you can see, it's a
fantastic group of kids.
Very diverse, very inclusive,
and I think it's something that if we can,
and the program now has been
adopted by at least 80
universities I think.
And it has become a signature part
of the National Academy of Engineering.
Finally, I'll talk about
Diversity and Inclusion.
For engineering to empower society,
has to be also empowered
by society itself.
So think of these two wheels here,
which feed on each other.
Society empowers engineering,
and therefore engineering
empowers society.
So to me, that's the most important part
of how we can utilize the
diversity of talent that exists,
in order to be able to
be inclusive and diverse.
We have a long way to go, do many strides.
Don mentioned the statistics,
the statistics are not uniform
across all universities,
in my own school, the freshman class
this year was 45% women.
It was 44% last year, so I
think we are going towards
sort of apparently 50/50
kind of thing between.
And I think that this is
true in some other places,
but not across the nation,
so we have created this
Diversity, Inclusion Initiative
that is now signed by more
that 200 schools nationally,
and we are pushing hard to be
able to make a real change.
K-12 is an important part
of how to make this change,
because you have to have this permeate
all the way to the younger
ages about engineering.
And through all the
underrepresented minority groups,
women can play in this and
be attracted to engineering.
Finally, I will close
with useful purposes.
I mentioned that technology is leveraging
phenomena for useful purposes,
and this brings out issues of ethics,
because what's useful to someone
is not useful to another.
Unintended consequences, complexity,
policy, legislation or regulation,
and communications to a certain extent.
So I have put together two
schematics that are awful,
because I am not a good artist.
But you will see them over here.
So, when you make decisions,
you want your decision to
be smart, legal and ethical.
So you want to be at the intersection,
see, I tried to put some paint there
and did not know how to put
paint so I put it that way.
(laughter)
Somebody has to show me how to do that.
(laughter)
I did it like yesterday night.
So decision making that is
smart, ethical and legal.
That's the ideal world.
Now, if you make a decision
that's smart and illegal,
then obviously it is not a good decision.
Typically, when we start any
operation, any technology,
a startup always starts there, right?
If a startup is people
that invest in your company
and in your startup,
invest because they know
that it's smart, legal and ethical.
However, because of
unintended consequences,
and why are there unintended consequences?
I have a theory for that,
I'm sure you know why,
which is we live in a
complex, nonlinear world.
Complex, nonlinear world means
that you have chaotic behavior.
There will be consequences
that you cannot predict
from the beginning,
it's as simple as that.
The theory of nonlinear system tells you
you have more than three
independent variables
that are non linearly
interacting, you will get chaos.
And I think that is
basic, most of the time.
Or you can get three mis-cycles,
but basically, what it tells
you, is that at some point,
you're going to get
unintended consequences.
So here is my final slide here.
You start from something that
is smart, ethical and legal,
but as time goes up,
you have these branches
that come out of your technology.
So the core of technology
may still become,
stay legal, ethical and smart.
However, you have these
branches that come out,
read the newspapers, that's
the only thing I can say.
The question is, what do you do?
Do you need ethicists that can help you
in your technology, on how it evolves?
To sort of either predict,
or try to have a finger
on the pulse of your
technology or your solution,
and try to cut down the consequences.
What's the role of regulation here,
what's the role of society in these
unintended consequences,
how do we address them?
I think these are fundamental
to everything that we do.
It's fundamental to every technology,
because technologies are powerful,
and the unintended consequences
are equally powerful as a result of
the power that exists
in these technologies.
I think to me, it's an important question
and we need to, at least
educate our students
that there are unintended consequences,
and to be aware of that.
So some mnemonic rules,
hug the exponential.
Engineering plus, innovation
in the broadest sense,
the cultural mind and heroic engineering,
if you put all these as your new mindsets,
I think these are important things.
We will have engineers being the heroes
of the modern society,
and I think we can do that
in many different ways,
because, as I mentioned, human
nature changes very slowly,
technology changes exponentially fast.
These two are not going to, at any point
of the foreseeable future,
get along the same pace.
And I will close with a citation
from David Deutsch, 'The
Beginning of Infinity',
a wonderful book, a
Quantum Physicist at Oxford
who says problems are inevitable,
but all problems are solvable
through science and engineering.
So thank you very much.
(applause)
- [Woman] Can you take questions?
- Of course.
- [Audience Member] Do
you think that the NSF
has fully embraced everything that the
National Academy of
Recommendations in particular has?
And could you talk a
little, maybe, about...oh.
And could you talk a little bit about
how that vision of ERC's is similar
to or different from STC's?
And are they gonna keep
Science and Technology Centers,
or what's going on with that concept?
- I'm afraid this is outside
my domain of expertise.
I will give it to Don.
The report, we provide the report,
and that was presented at the NSF,
I think it was received well,
but I don't know if the recommendation,
other recommendations were taken,
and what's going on with
STC, I don't know, I'm sorry.
- [Woman] (muffled without mic)
...other questions or comments?
- [Audience Member 2] Please
talk a little bit about
- [Man] There you go.
- [Audience Member 2] What you think
are the most important differences
between interdisciplinary
science and convergence science?
Is it just the social impact,
or is there more to it than that?
- I think that convergent research
that we're talking about
here is probably driven by
sort of a Grand Challenge-type questions,
in other words, there are,
not saying these Grand Challenges,
one can formulate their own
Grand Challenge in some way, right?
Something that has, there is a need,
that needs to be resolved,
and if you solve this then
it has big societal impact.
I think it has to have some
sort of a great impact,
whether this is by spinoff
of newer enterprises,
or this solves a stubborn,
important problem
that will make society,
that has an impact.
I think that Don mentioned
changing the world type of thing.
Now, can we change the world
in everything that we do?
I mean, this is becoming, also,
a bit of a common phrase,
you know, all our students
want to change the world.
If you take it, not
literally, but in a sense,
understanding that you will have
a significant impact I
think that's probably
what I will call convergence research,
more than anything else.
Interdisciplinary has the, I
think that interdisciplinary
has the context that you are
in these two different wells,
and every now and then
you talk to each other,
and then you, maybe.
I think it's how it is
interpreted, in some ways.
I think, perhaps, you are asking
also, kind of an interesting
question of, maybe?
Which is like distance, co-location,
people working closely together,
let's say adverse to being
at a distance far away.
I think science is
something that has to be
addressing this issue significantly.
I can tell you that, in my own assertion,
that the School of
Medicine is not collocated
to the university campus.
The health science campus,
which is in East LA,
USC, University of our
campus, is in downtown.
So this is like 20 minutes away,
even though it's 20 minutes away,
there are still, that distance can be
an impediment, despite the fact that
you are the same institution.
I think is, you have to be, we
have to be much more creative
about how we address this.
You have the Google Bus
type idea, in San Francisco,
I don't know if that's
something that I have been
thinking about doing, it's
actually for our institution.
- [Audience Member 3] Thank you
for your excellent presentation.
You talked a lot about innovation
and driving innovation.
True innovation necessarily incurs risk.
Can you say a little bit, as a Dean
of the School of Engineering at USC,
what steps to take to manage that risk,
as a CERC is developed?
- A close understanding
of how things are going,
without micromanaging, is important.
You take the risk, I mean,
we have seated a number of centers at USC
that are interdisciplinary, if you like.
Some of them will work,
and some of them will not.
In other words, we put resources in them,
we try to help them, maybe the idea..
The whole concept of
pivoting and changing,
and trying to make sure that
your idea is still useful, but perhaps
with a redirection, can be more useful,
I think that's something you can do.
Or, perhaps, you cannot
discount the importance
of the people that lead the organization.
As I mentioned, Mark Humanyun,
the person who led the ERC, the BMES ERC,
was a true visionary and leader.
And for him, there was no silos,
there were no two potential wells,
because both of them were inside him.
Because he was an engineer
and a medical doctor.
So in a way, he understood
this concept very, very well.
So I think that was a
great addition to that.
But, you know, it is very important
you have to have confidence in people,
just like, I think VC is having,
very confident in the
people that run the company.
Regardless of whether the company
is going in the right
direction, not direction.
It's not necessarily only the idea,
it's actually the people that drive that.
I think, to me, that's
a very important part,
and we know that.
There is a distribution of quality,
and you want to make sure
you invest in the people
that will actually be able to lead this,
regardless of the obstacles.
And I think that in that case,
you are very comfortable in
taking the risk, in my opinion.
(muffled without mic)
- [Audience Member 4] As
you look to the future,
for USC for example, as a Dean,
what do you see is your key challenge
in being able to convince your faculty
to embrace this culture
change that you've described?
(chuckles)
- Interesting question.
(laughter)
Ellis Meng is here, she was the former
Chair of Biomedical Engineering,
so maybe I can ask her to excuse herself.
(laughter)
No, I'm just kidding. (laughter)
We have seated, so as a Dean,
I support within the school
a lot of internal centers.
That we tell people, people
come to me and they say,
'If we had money XYZ, we would develop
all these great ideas.'
And many of them are
interdisciplinary, so we support that.
This is basically like I
act like a VC, if you like,
and I put bets in various places,
and hopefully things will come out of this
that will be successful.
Silos do still exist, and
this is academic cultural,
and I think that, as I said,
culture wants to be
enduring and prevailing,
and it is really hard
sometimes to make changes.
One way that you make changes is by
bringing people from outside,
particularly more talented junior faculty,
who can, are a little
agnostic, with respect to this,
and they can be your agents of change.
And I have seen this in
many of our younger faculty,
which I am very proud to
see how well they evolve,
and how they become a lot
more interdisciplinary,
and how they avoid this,
as well as being champions
for diversity and inclusion.
I'm not saying that
everyone should simply stop
recruiting faculty that are more senior,
but I'm saying that I have seen
a significant impact by recruiting
talented, young, diverse, junior faculty
who come in and make a change.
I think that's something
that I believe very much,
and these are people
that will essentially,
not inherit, but shape the
university in the future,
and I think that that's what
we're placing our bets in.
- [Woman] Great, let's thank
Yannis, and then take a break.
(applause)
