Seminar Series | How Engineers Can Work on Problems that Matter: Insight into UC Berkeley’s Master of Development Engineering

Are you looking to develop technology that makes a difference in our society? Development Engineering is a field of research and practice that combines the principles of engineering with economics, entrepreneurship, design, business, natural resources, and social science to create interventions in accordance with and for individuals living in low-resource settings. While people often associate these settings with “developing” or “low-income” countries, Development Engineering equips practitioners to work on societal problems in emerging regions wherever they exist, whether in California or Cambodia.

Development Engineering students at UC Berkeley are gaining the skillsets they need to solve complex global challenges across the corporate, nonprofit, and government sectors. The three-semester master of Development Engineering is headquartered at the Blum Center for Developing Economies, home to the Development Engineering PhD program, the undergraduate Global Poverty & Practice program, and the Big Ideas Contest, the University of California’s social entrepreneurship catalyst.

Watch this video of a recorded live webinar to hear from Dr. Yael Perez, Director of the Development Engineering Programs at UC Berkeley. Learn about the vision for the program, curriculum and admissions process. And, as always, participants will have the opportunity to ask questions and interact with the presenter.

Panelist

Dr. Yael Perez is the Development Engineering (DevEng) Program Director at UC Berkeley’s Blum Center for Developing Economies, managing the DevEng Masters and the DevEng PhD Designated Emphasis. Yael holds a PhD in Architecture from UC Berkeley with a scholarship on co-design methodologies and technologies to support and empower communities and design practitioners in fostering sustainable development. For over a decade, she has been collaboratively leading CARES—Community Assessment of Renewable Energy and Sustainability—a team of UC Berkeley faculty and students working with Native American Citizens in their pursuit of sustainable development. Recently, this initiative grew into the Native FEWS Alliance, a cross-institutional collaboration working to significantly broaden the participation of Native American students in Food, Energy, and Water Systems (FEWS) education and careers to address critical challenges facing their communities. Before joining the Blum Center, Yael was a visiting scholar at IIT Mandi (India).

Moderator

Dr. Jesse Austin-Breneman is an Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Michigan. He earned his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering in 2014 from MIT. He also holds a S.M. in Mechanical Engineering from MIT and a B.S. in Ocean Engineering also from MIT. Previous to his academic career, he worked as a development engineer in Peru, working with rural communities on alternative business opportunities and with local doctors’ groups on medical device development. He also spent two years as a high school mathematics teacher in Boston, MA. He currently is the director of the Global Design Laboratory. The group focuses on developing design processes and support tools to help multi-disciplinary design teams think at a systems-level when performing complex system design tasks. This includes investigating the best way to incorporate system-level interactions between stakeholders in emerging markets into the design decision-making process.

Comments from the Community

2 Comments

  1. engineerattah says:

    Waiting for the time to link up. Thanks

  2. k_nationaltraders says:

    like to attend 18-02-2022 webinar

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