(84d) Bridging Between Engineering Communities: A Hitchhiker's Guide

Research and application opportunities are continually lost by ineffective communication among engineering communities. Many of the great innovations are cross-over technologies where great ideas from one discipline finds new application with another. Communications between academia and industry are often hindered by a different sense of mission and very different reward systems. Yet, the ability to bring new technology into practice is greatly slowed by this well-documented industry-academia divide. Lack of interactions also limit the effectiveness of engineering societies which far too often function as weakly-joined collection of smaller societies.

Learning to span these divides is an important career skill every student should strive to develop. Professor Cox will share his first-hand experience working with different bodies of engineers and offer his perspective about the challenges, opportunities, trends, and strategies for bridging between the various communities.