Engineering and Entrepreneurship: The Internet of Things

Date: 

Friday, September 30, 2016, 8:30am to 2:30pm

Friday, September 30, 2016 from 8:30 AM to 2:30 PM (EDT)

The “Internet of Things,” in which everyday objects possess network connectivity that allows them to send and receive data, is poised to radically transform the way we live and work. As part of their collaborative series on engineering and entrepreneurship, the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and the Harvard Business School will host a symposium on the Internet of Things, exploring the thrilling opportunities it provides for technological innovation and social organization. The event will feature lightning talks by four Harvard SEAS faculty members, as well as a keynote talk by Chicago Department of Innovation and Technology (DoIT) Commissioner and CIO Brenna Berman, called “Transforming the Future City.” Berman says, “Adopting IoT technologies in the urban environment offers cities a host of opportunities but also presents just as many challenges. Learn about one city's experience - its successes and lessons learned - as it uses connected technologies to course its future.”

Following the keynote, this symposium will feature a quintessential HBS experience – a case study discussion. The “case method” was introduced by HBS faculty in 1925, and has since become a powerful tool for interactive business education. It gives participants the unique opportunity to reason through a real-world management challenge. HBS remains the world’s leading case-writing institution, and symposium attendees will have the opportunity to experience a case study firsthand.

The symposium will culminate in transportation to the Hynes Convention Center for Demo Day, where local start-up companies, innovation labs, and change-making organizations will share the exciting new work that makes Boston a hub of visionary research.

Speaker:

Brenna Berman, Chicago Department of Innovation and Technology (DoIT) Commissioner and CIO

Chicago Department of Innovation and Technology (DoIT) Commissioner and CIO, Brenna Berman joined the Emanuel administration in 2011. In that time, she has focused on transforming the team at DoIT to provide the skills and expertise to implement the Mayor’s commitment to leveraging data and technology to create a more efficient, effective and innovative City government. This has meant adding new skills to the team to increase the focus on software engineering and analytics, improving the department’s commercial partnerships to drive savings for the City and identifying ground-breaking civic partnerships.
Over the past several years, Commissioner Berman and the team at DoIT has delivered on the Mayor’s commitment to a robust open data program, integrated advanced analytics and real-time data-driven decision making across the city, driven IoT innovation for the City through unique partnerships at UILabs and, in partnership with the University of Chicago, realized the vision of urba scale sensing with the Array of Things.

Prior to joining the Emanuel Administration, Comm. Berman built a career promoting government innovation over 10 years at IBM, where she worked closely with government agencies in cities and countries across the world to leverage technology and analytics to improve the services they provide to their residents. She advised governments on a variety of issues, from targeting personalized services through analytics to normalizing program offerings to simplify the delivery process and make them understandable to residents. Throughout her time at IBM, Ms. Berman tailored cutting-edge business and data models, from processes to analytic algorithms for large government organizations in order to accelerate their own modernization efforts, providing an incredibly valuable skill set for the work she continues at DoIT.

Brenna earned her bachelor’s degree and Masters in Public Policy from the University of Chicago.

Who It's For: students, faculty, community members, policy makers, current and future leaders