Engineering News, January 16, 2006

January 16, 2006 Vol. 77, no. 1S

IT'S GOOD POLICY: You probably walk by the Goldman School of Public Policy every day along Hearst Avenue. Here's your chance to take a course taught by one of its professors, Stephen Maurer, for engineering credit. (Photo provided by Professor Maurer)

Think big picture (and help your career) in new course called "Public Policy for Engineers"

You've just created the most beautiful piece of technology in the world: Do you patent or open source it? What are your obligations to customers versus your obligations to society? How do economics drive and affect innovation? How does public perception affect it? Explore these questions and discover ways to be a better engineer in a new upper-division course, "Public Policy for Engineers," jointly offered this spring by the College and the Goldman School of Public Policy.

"Engineers seem to end up in marketing or management where they have to interact with the social system," says course instructor Stephen Maurer, a public policy professor. "To succeed at whatever they're doing, they need to be shrewd about how economic, political, government and legal mechanisms work."

The course will cover intellectual property and the New Economy, innovation incentives such as open source, public support for science, antitrust, public perception and regulation of risk, homeland security, and pharmaceutical research and development.

As part of these topics, the class will analyze the Microsoft antitrust case and why cures for neglected diseases are socially difficult to implement. Students must complete a midterm, final, and a policy analysis white paper, which asks them to make recommendations about real-world problems.

Maurer is acting director of the Project on Information Technology and Homeland Security, which uses social science to analyze problems facing information technology and homeland security. The project is currently working with ChemE/BioE Professor Jay Keasling to develop safety standards and property rights norms for synthetic biology. Before joining the Berkeley faculty, Maurer worked in intellectual property law for 20 years.

"This is the ultimate 'think-outside- the-box' course," he says. "You will be thinking beyond traditional engineering solutions and outside the traditional engineering canon. In many cases, social solutions might be the fastest, and sometimes the only, way to get things done."

The three-unit course, which lists under E 198-003 (CCN 27945)/E 298A-017 (CCN 27942), will be held in Hearst Memorial Mining Building, Room 290. Introductory microeconomics is helpful but not necessary; there are no prerequisites. EECS and BioE students will find the course particularly applicable, though a variety of engineering problems will be explored and all departments are welcome.

You can still sign up! For additional information about the course, go to http://gspp.berkeley.edu/iths/iths.htm or contact Maurer at smaurer@berkeley.edu or 848-3593.

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