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Looking Ahead

Moderator: Thomas L. Magnanti
Barry Horowitz F. Stan Settles Daniel Hastings SM '78, PhD '80 William B. Rouse SM '70, PhD '72: March 30, 2004; Running Time: 1:35:50

About the Lecture

About the Lecture

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).

Lecture Details

Location: Wong Auditorium

About the Speakers

Moderator: Thomas L. Magnanti

Dean, MIT School of Engineering
Institute Professor Professor of Management Science and Electrical Engineering

Thomas L. Magnanti has been an MIT faculty member since 1971. He 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).

Barry Horowitz

Professor of Systems and Information Engineering, University of Virginia

F. Stan Settles

Professor and Director, Engineering Management Program
University of Southern California

Daniel Hastings SM '78, PhD '80

Director, MIT Engineering Systems Division Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics and Engineering Systems, MIT

William B. Rouse SM '70, PhD '72

Executive Director, Tennenbaum Institute, Georgia Institute of Technology
Professor, College of Computing and School of Industrial and Systems Engineering

William Rouse has written hundreds of articles and book chapters, and has authored many books, including most recently People and Organizations: Explorations of Human-Centered Design (Wiley, 2007),Essential Challenges of Strategic Management (Wiley, 2001) and the award-winning Don’t Jump to Solutions (Jossey-Bass, 1998). He is editor of Enterprise Transformation: Understanding and Enabling Fundamental Change (Wiley, 2006), co-editor of Organizational Simulation: From Modeling & Simulation to Games & Entertainment (Wiley, 2005), co-editor of the best-selling Handbook of Systems Engineering and Management (Wiley, 1999, 2008), and editor of the eight-volume series Human/Technology Interaction in Complex Systems (Elsevier).

Rouse is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, as well as a fellow of four professional societies - Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the International Council on Systems Engineering (INCOSE), the Institute for Operations Research and Management Science, and the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society. He has received the Joseph Wohl Outstanding Career Award and the Norbert Wiener Award from the IEEE Systems, Man, and Cybernetics Society; a Centennial Medal and a Third Millennium Medal from IEEE; the Best Article Award from INCOSE, and the O. Hugo Schuck Award from the American Automation Control Council.