MIT Institute for Data, Systems, and Society Launch Event
Abstract
Many of the most challenging problems that face the nationÕs military involve complex, interconnected systems and infrastructures formed by the interactions between social phenomena and large-scale engineering systems. Examples include autonomous systems, online social networks and their impact on resulting sociopolitical phenomena, electronic voting systems, self driving cars and smart urban systems and services, as well as other complex social and engineered networks. Increasingly, one cannot understand the full picture of such complex, networked systems without understanding all of these components. What has made the above understanding possible is the availability of massive amounts of data on all relevant aspects. There is an increasing push to to combine analytical tools that have been primarily, but not exclusively, in the purview of engineering with the study of human and social behavior. These aspects have been addressed traditionally in different disciplines. As an example, consider the role of autonomy in urban systems. In addition to developing rigorous theory, modeling, and synthesis tools for smart buildings and autonomous, self-driving cars that are going to revolutionize urban systems and transportation, it is of paramount importance for researchers and policy makers and practitioners to understand how the behavior of human users individually and in groups, will impact such a sociotechnical system. How should rules, and policies be designed to ensure efficient, robust, and safe operation of such systems? What are the social and economic implication of replacing humans with autonomous systems? Even before answering such important questions, it is important to ask whether our current graduate educational systems designed within well-established departmental structures is adequate to train a new breed of scholars that can systematically address these questions. To address these issues, The PI and colleagues have found the new MIT Institute for Data, Systems, and Society (IDSS), an interdisciplinary entity that is centered at the School of Engineering but spans all five Schools (Schools of Engineering, Sciences, Humanities and Social Sciences, Management, and Architecture). The Institute, which operates like a graduate department with existing faculty and 16-16 new faculty lines, will address problems at the interface of complex engineering systems and social systems in a holistic manner, by integrating the engineering perspective, modern analytical tools (including advanced statistical methods and information and decision sciences), and the relevant social sciences, including economics, political science, sociology, and anthropology. The scope of the InstituteÔs research will be broad, encompassing diverse problems of significant societal importance such as systemic risk in financial and power networks, digitally driven socio-political change, social phenomena of cascades and contagion, and future social cyber-physical systems, just to name a few. The Institute will also have a new PhD program in Social and Engineering Systems, that will bridge the gap discussed above, produce innovative research of a different kind, train a next generation of leaders, and provide a paradigm that will hopefully be emulated by other institutions. To formally launch IDSS, we proposed a 2-day workshop scheduled for September 22 and 23, 2016 on MIT campus. An early draft of the workshop agenda is available at http://idss2016.mit.edu. The workshop consisted of luminaries from academia, industry and government, and will be open to the public with free registration. The workshop was a 2-day event held at MIT Media Lab Conference Room on September 22 and 23, 2016. The workshop was webcast live and videos of all sessions are stored online and available for public viewing at https://idss2016.mit.edu/videos/.
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- Dec 04, 2018
- Source ID
- W911NF1610578
Entities
People
- Ali Jadbabaie
Organizations
- Army Contracting Command
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- United States Army