Expertise

Topics:  Innovation Policy, Technology Development, Public Policy, Global manufacturing, Commercialization

Industries: Research, Education/Learning, Public Policy, Writing and Editing

Erica R.H. Fuchs is a Professor in the Department of Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University, and by courtesy in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering and the Heinz College of Information Systems and Public Policy. She is also a Research Associate with the National Bureau of Economic Research. Dr. Fuchs’ research focuses on the development, commercialization and global manufacturing of emerging technologies, and national policy in that context.

Today, Dr. Fuchs is passionate about building nationally the intellectual foundations, data, and analytic tools to inform National Technology Strategy across government missions. Toward realizing this vision, Dr. Fuchs is currently Director of the one-year $4M pilot National Network for Critical Technology Assessment funded by NSF’s Technology, Innovation and Partnerships Office, and involving academic thought-leaders from more than 13 Tier I research universities across the country; and founding Director of Carnegie Mellon’s Critical Technology Strategy Initiative – an initiative spanning Carnegie Mellon’s schools of engineering, computer science, and the Heinz College of Information Systems and Public Policy. She first learnt that she loved bringing faculty together in ways that the total is greater than the sum of the parts as founding Faculty Director of Carnegie Mellon University’s Manufacturing Futures Initiative – an initiative across six schools aimed to revolutionize the commercialization and local production of advanced manufactured products, which today is an endowed institute.

Over the past two decades, Dr. Fuchs has played a growing role in national and international meetings on technology policy, including co-chairing the National Academies Committee on U.S. Science and Innovation Leadership in the 21st Century, serving on the expert group that supported the White House in the 2016 Innovation Dialogue between the U.S. and China, and being one of 23 participants in the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology workshop that led to the creation of the Advanced Manufacturing Partnership. Dr. Fuchs currently serves on the M.I.T. Corporation’s Visiting Committee for M.I.T.’s Institute for Data, Systems, and Society, of which M.I.T.’s Technology Policy Program is a part; and on the Advisory Editorial Board for Research Policy. Before coming to CMU, Dr. Fuchs completed her Ph.D. in Engineering Systems at M.I.T. in June 2006.

Media Experience

Policy memo: How the EU and US should overcome their trade and supply-chain disputes  — Atlantic Council
Beyond this, important questions remain as to whether sensitive emerging technologies—such as applied artificial intelligence, bio-machine interfaces, or quantum computing—should be included in the mapping and information-sharing process, and also whether the United States and the EU have the analytical capacities needed for proper technological foresight, as highlighted by the Brookings Institution’s Erica R.H. Fuchs.

Building the analytic capacity to support critical technology strategy  — The Brookings Institution
In a Hamilton Project proposal, author Erica R.H. Fuchs of Carnegie Mellon University and the National Bureau of Economic Research proposes the creation of a national capability for cross-mission critical technology analytics to build the intellectual foundations, data, and analytics needed to inform national technology strategy.

Team Builds Tools, Innovations to Support Federal Investment  — Carnegie Mellon University News
Carnegie Mellon University hosted Ambassador Katherine Tai, United States trade representative, in a roundtable discussion on the data and analytic tools necessary to support U.S. innovation and trade strategies in critical technologies, such as vaccines, batteries and semiconductors. During her visit, the ambassador observed research demonstrations by faculty and students working in several critical technology clusters on a tour guided by Bill Sanders, dean of CMU's College of Engineering, and Erica Fuchs, a professor in the Department of Engineering and Public Policy (EPP).

Please, no Moore: 'Law' that defined how chips have been made for decades has run itself into a cul-de-sac  — The Register
Since then, according to Professor Erica Fuchs of Carnegie Mellon University, "half of economic growth in the US and worldwide has also been attributed to this trend and the innovations it enabled throughout the economy.” Virtually all of industry, science, medicine, and every aspect of daily life now depends on computers that are ever faster, cheaper, and more widely spread.

Blue-collar jobs will survive the rise of artificial intelligence. But the work will change  — Los Angeles Times
Cutting-edge manufacturing not only involves the extreme precision of a Rolls Royce turbofan disc. It’s also moving toward mass customization and what Erica Fuchs calls “parts consolidation” — making more-complex blocks of components so a car, for example, has far fewer parts. This new frontier often involves experimentation, with engineers learning through frequent contact with production staff, requiring workers to make new kinds of contributions.