With my last company, there were times where government helped and times where government hindered our ability to innovate. It wasn’t surprising to me when earlier this month The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine released a report saying that overly risk averse FAA regulations are stifling innovation in the drone industry.

Katherine is an MIT-educated aerospace engineer. She served for four years as an officer in the U.S. Air Force, primarily as an engineer working on operational readiness of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. As a PhD student in electrical engineering, Pratt is currently studying the security, ethics, and policy of brain computer interfaces. 

Katherine is an MIT-educated aerospace engineer. She served for four years as an officer in the U.S. Air Force, primarily as an engineer working on operational readiness of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. As a PhD student in electrical engineering, Pratt is currently studying the security, ethics, and policy of brain computer interfaces. 

As a scientist with a background in biotechnology, it’s been pretty easy to ignore the role government played in my career. I spent a lot of time as a student, where my energy was best spent studying.

Law or tech - I agonized over this question for my entire college career. I decided tech, and am glad I did.

As someone with a computer science background based in Washington, D.C., I had the fortune of being in the right place at the right time. My core role within civil society has been to lower barriers for non-technical constituencies to engage in policy discussions that have technical implications.  

As technologists, we rarely know the broader societal effects of the technology we build. As we build, we are taught to measure the impact of every change.  But rarely do we spend significant time thinking broadly and critically about the effect of any product on society at large.