MIT Institute for Data, Systems, and Society Inaugural Workshop: Sociotechnical Systems, Cambridge, MA September 22-23, 2016

Massachusetts Institute Of Technology, Cambridge MA

Investigators

Abstract

This award supports a workshop marking the inaugural year of MIT's Institute for Data, Systems, and Society (IDSS) that aims to advance education and research at the intersection of engineering systems with statistics, information and decision systems with social and behavioral sciences. Our lives are shaped by complex, interconnected systems that generate increasingly vast amounts of data -a proliferation that is redefining various domains of engineering. IDSS is at the forefront of this development and this workshop will showcase the recent advances in studying such systems and pave the way for the future. This award will support and fund the sessions focused on smart services, smart cities, smart grid, and graduate education. Bringing together researchers from all five MIT schools as well as distinguished speakers from across the nation, including engineers in various disciplines, together with statisticians and social and behavioral scientists, the workshop will show how rigorous analytical methods can be used to better model, understand, and improve society's most complex systems. The research presented in the workshop takes a holistic, data-driven approach to solving critical societal problems across a range of application domains. Within the broad scope of this research, this NSF-funded workshop will help showcase research across several key areas: smart services and operations in energy systems (the smart grid), urbanization and smart cities, and generally smart services. The research highlighted in the workshop paves the way for new interdisciplinary research in all of these areas. The workshop will showcase the state of the art of research in these domains through a series of panel discussions led by top thinkers in their fields. These discussions will foster dialogue about new directions for research and create opportunities for collaboration, while strengthening IDSS?s multidisciplinary research community. The 2-day workshop will be open to the public with free registration and will involve researchers from government, industry, and academia, as well as graduate students in the relevant areas. The Launch Event will also feature a student session that explores IDSS's new programs in Social and Engineering Systems and also in Statistics, and what impact these new programs might have on the future of interdisciplinary, data-driven research for solving society's biggest challenges. There will also be a student Q&A session in which the students get to ask questions and exchange ideas with the distinguished panelists. As part of its research efforts, IDSS is not only advancing new technologies and new smart services in energy, health, transportation and urban science,, but it is also looking at the powerful implications of these innovations for individuals, larger systems, and society as a whole. There will be a report issued that will present the major findings of the event.