MIT-Looking Ahead

At the start of this panel, Thomas Magnanti wonders whether engineering feats of the 21st century will rival 20th century systems built to provide electricity, water, and communications throughout the nation. Subsequent speakers focus mainly on the practice and teaching of engineering for increasingly complex projects. Barry Horowitz points out that undertaking vast, new engineering systems necessarily entails greater uncertainties. He worries that without more sophisticated models for measuring outcomes, society at large might confuse uncertainties with incompetent engineering. F. Stan Settles recounts early experiences as a young engineer—“designing a shim so it would help the assembly guy avoid hurting his hands.” He was severely criticized for flouting authority—but “ended up a vp.” Can we think outside the box and learn to predict things like the Challenger accident or the electric grid failure? William Rouse describes his efforts to energize faculty at Georgia Tech by creating a “portfolio of intellectual initiatives” to solve interesting problems. He recommends bringing together various disciplines, including artists and architects, to grapple with the implications of new technologies. Daniel Hastings calls for the deliberate cultivation by academia of engineering systems leaders, who will take into account the “broader scope of issues…and consider context as a variable rather than a constraint.” Issues like disarmament and genetic testing call for a holistic approach in the profession.

ABOUT THE MODERATOR:
Thomas L. Magnanti has been an MIT faculty member since 1971. Magnanti was a founding co-director of MIT’s industry-university collaborative research and educational program, Leaders for Manufacturing Program, and its on-campus off-campus graduate program, System Design and Management. He has previously served as head of the Management Science Area of the Sloan School of Management and as co-director of MIT’s interdepartmental Operations Research Center.

Magnanti is editor of the journal, Operations Research, and currently serves on the Boards of the Ford Design Institute and Emptoris, Inc. He was a visiting scholar at the Harvard Business School and held visiting scientist appointments at Bell Laboratories and at GTE Laboratories.

Magnanti is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He received master’s degrees in both Statistics (1969) and Mathematics (1971) from Stanford University, where he also received the doctorate in Operations Research (1972).

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