CEESI wins IBM Smarter Planet Industry Skills Innovation Award

BU’s Clean Energy and Environmental Sustainability Initiative (CEESI) has won a $10,000 award from IBM to create a course titled, “Technology and the Global Urban Challenges: Security, Energy, Water, and the Environment”.

The premise of this Course is that technology and information can make urban environments more sustainable. Achieving a sustainable future, however, requires a holistic approach that is consistent with environmental needs, is cognizant of economic and policy incentives and realities, embraces new business models and leverages the synergies of technologies and information processing. This confluence cannot be designed ex post that is, engineers cannot generate technical innovations and then expect managers and policy makers to make them ‘environmentally friendly.  Similarly, managers cannot design green solutions without first understanding the engineering and environmental aspects of the problem. We therefore propose an interdisciplinary approach that brings expertise from various Boston University colleges and schools in technology, environmental science, economics, business, cognitive science, environmental policy and engineering. Students trained deeply in a specific area, such as economics and engineering, will gain a broad and interdisciplinary perspective on smart cities.

This  proposal  is  supported  by  several  key  research  and  education  groups  at  Boston  University:  Smart  Neighborhood  Center  for  Energy  &  Environmental  Studies  (CEES)  Center  for  Information  and  Systems  Engineering  (CISE)  Clean  Energy  and  Environmental  Sustainability  Initiative  (CEESI).