[bioundgrd] New Spring Semester Course! ESD.00 - Intro to Engineering Systems: Complex Sociotechnical Problems

Thu Feb 9 11:10:25 EST 2012

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for Undergrads • 9 units • Monday 3-5

Instructors: J. Sussman, S. Finkelstein, A. Siddiqi

Check out our video<http://techtv.mit.edu/videos/15324-esd00> and stellar site<https://stellar.mit.edu/S/course/ESD/sp12/ESD.00/>

We've got a project for you! Join a small team consisting of you, 2 or 3 other students, and an engineering systems researcher. Together you'll tackle one of the biggest, messiest, most complex problems out there. You bring your desire to make people's lives better. We’ll bring tools and concepts for evaluating and addressing these, and other, complex sociotechnical problems:

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Project Leader: Josephine Wolf

A slew of high-profile cyber attacks in recent years have successfully targeted high profile companies and prominent defense contractors. In the face of this, cyberinsurance is looked-to as a means of promoting better cybersecurity: it can limit a company's losses and encourage adoption of security best-practices throughout the market by basing cyberinsurance premiums on how much companies invest in self-protection of their networks. However, the cyberinsurance market has failed to meet this demand because cyber insurers encounter tremendous difficulty in characterizing the risks posed by such attacks...

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Project Leaders: Fernando de Sisternes and Dr. Dan Livengood

Electricity is essential to modern society. It powers lighting, industry, transportation, appliances, and information technologies... it is hard to imagine how life would be without it. Production of electricity with renewables will reduce greenhouse gas emissions but will increase the cost of electricity, require adaptations to the electric power system to absorb the intermittency of wind and solar generation, and guarantee the security of supply. How do we simultaneously achieve the goals of low emissions, low cost, and security of supply?

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Project Leader: Judy Maro

Every year, a new influenza vaccine is available for the general public during the influenza season (October-March) and there is a brief period to monitor the outcomes of this vaccine–both its safety (adverse events) and its effectiveness (avoidance of influenza-related illnesses). Of course, the effectiveness of the vaccination policy depends on the public's perception of the benefits and risks of influenza v. getting vaccinated against influenza...

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Project Leader: Jonathan Krones

Did you know that in the US, food waste makes up more than 14% of the tonnage of all waste generated but only 1% of all waste recycled? While we rely on energy-intensive, only-partially-effective technologies to recycle materials like plastic and metal, the tools for recovering nutrients and energy from food waste have been subject to a 3 billion year R&D process, and, for all intents and purposes, are mature. Why then, is food waste such an underutilized resource?

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Project Leader: Dr. Lara Pierpoint

24 years after Congress designated Yucca Mountain as the final resting place for commercial spent nuclear fuel, the Department of Energy has closed the site, leaving the country without a plan for managing nuclear waste. A confluence of factors, including local and political opposition, scientific uncertainty, and scandals, all contributed to the plan’s demise. A commission is set to report on the issue in early 2012. Draft recommendations say that selection of a new site should proceed in an adaptive and phased manner under a clear set of criteria. What should these criteria be?

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Project Leader: Dr. Wiljeana Glover

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other psychological health issues have emerged as a signature pathology of combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. However, the full continuum of care in the U.S. military for PTSD and related disorders is reported to be insufficient to meet the current and future needs of service members. The influence of external factors such as pre-traumatic risk factors and the availability of unit-level and enterprise-level resilience resources on eventual mental health outcomes have been previously considered individually, but not together in an enterprise-wide context.

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Christina Karapataki BA MEng (Cantab)
SM Candidate, Technology & Policy Program
Research Assistant, MIT Energy Initiative
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
+1 857-445-8553

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