POV: ‘Development engineers’ take aim at global poverty
A new generation of development engineers, "dedicated to using engineering and technology to improve the lot of the world's poorest people," is emerging around the world, write Shankar Sastry and Lina Nilsson of UC Berkeley's Blum Center for Developing Economies, in a Washington Post opinion piece.
October 6, 2014
Lucrative jobs are plentiful for young people leaving college with engineering degrees. But are too many bright minds preoccupied with “myopic invention” like how to get consumers to click on ads?
Lina Nilsson and Shankar Sastry
Two UC Berkeley scholars — Lina Nilsson, innovation director of the Blum Center for Developing Economies, and Shankar Sastry, dean of engineering and Blum Center director — take up this question in an Oct. 5 Washington Post opinion piece.
“In labs around the world, a new generation of engineers is emerging,” they write. “They are men and women concerned by the gulf between rich and poor and by environmental changes and resource depletion. They are what we call ‘development engineers’ — engineers (and often economics, business and social science majors, as well) who are dedicated to using engineering and technology to improve the lot of the world’s poorest people.”
Read their opinion piece here.