SFI External Professor Jessika Trancik, who is also a professor at MIT and a former SFI Omidyar Fellow, has been appointed as the director of MIT’s Sociotechnical Systems Research Center (SSRC). The appointment took place this summer.
The SSRC brings together knowledge from engineering, physical sciences, and social sciences to tackle complex societal issues related to technological change. In her research, Trancik studies what drives technology evolution and its effects on society. Her laboratory at MIT works to understand why some technologies advance more quickly than others and examines their broader impacts.
Trancik's work focuses on building general models and theories about technological progress. She applies these models to areas that are important for clean energy and efforts to address climate change. According to the announcement, "Her work seeks to uncover fundamental insight about technology and has helped to shape climate policy, infrastructure planning, and private sector research and development portfolios."
