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Wicked problems: how to engineer a better world

Hosted by the Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science

In-person and online public event (Sheikh Zayed Theatre, Cheng Kin Ku Building)

Speaker

Dr Guru Madhavan

Dr Guru Madhavan

Chair

Dr Michael Muthukrishna

Dr Michael Muthukrishna

Our world is filled with pernicious problems. How, for example, did novice pilots learn to fly without taking to the air and risking their lives? How should cities process mountains of waste without polluting the environment? Challenges that tangle personal, public, and planetary aspects―often occurring in health care, infrastructure, business, and policy―are known as wicked problems, and they are not going away anytime soon.

Systems engineer and author Guru Madhavan illuminates how wicked problems have emerged throughout history and how best to address them in the future using a model mindset informed by flight trainers that revolutionized aviation, while demonstrating how engineering is a cultural choice―one that requires us to restlessly find ways to transform society, but perhaps more critically, to care for the creations that already exist.

Meet our speaker and chair

Guru Madhavan (@bioengineerGM) is the Norman R. Augustine Senior Scholar and senior director of programs at the U.S. National Academy of Engineering. A biomedical systems engineer, he is author of Applied Minds: How Engineers Think and Wicked Problems: How to Engineer a Better World. Some institutions that he is a fellow of are; the Institution of Engineering and Technology (UK), the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering.

Michael Muthukrishna (@mmuthukrishna) is Associate Professor of Economic Psychology at LSE. He is also Affiliate of the Developmental Economics Group at STICERD, Affiliate of the LSE Data Science Institute, CIFAR Azrieli Global Scholar in the Boundaries, Membership and Belonging programme at the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, and Technical Director of The Database of Religious History. He is also a board member of the One Pencil Project. 

More about this event

This event will be available to watch on LSE Live. LSE Live is the new home for our live streams, allowing you to tune in and join the global debate at LSE, wherever you are in the world. If you can't attend live, a video will be made available shortly afterwards on LSE's YouTube channel.

The Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science (@LSE_PBS) is a growing community of researchers, intellectuals, and students who investigate the human mind and behaviour in a societal context. Our department conducts cutting-edge psychological and behavioural research that is both based in and applied to the real world.

This event is part of the ESRC Festival of Social Science 2024, taking place from 19 October to 9 November with events across the UK.

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A video of this event is available to watch at Wicked problems: how to engineer a better world.

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