Critical Technology Initiative
Our faculty, research scientists, and partners work to quantify knowledge, supply chain criticality, and more to help prioritize financial investments and resource allocation and drive policy decisions that impact U.S. and world citizens in a meaningful way.
Mission
The Critical Technology Initiative (CTI) at Carnegie Mellon University brings together interdisciplinary expertise across five schools to pioneer how advanced analytics can ensure we smartly invest in and enact policies to achieve competitiveness in technologies critical to national security, economic competitiveness, and the well-being of all citizens.
The challenge
With the globalization of knowledge and production and increasing sources of geopolitical conflict, disasters, and technology shocks, nations face new challenges to national security, economic prosperity, and the well-being of all citizens. Despite dedicating massive resources to address these issues, policy-makers lack the frameworks, data, and analytic tools needed to direct resources to achieve their desired national objectives and mitigate and more effectively respond to future crises.
The solution
Combining methods across engineering (techno-economics, deep technical and sectoral data and expertise), economics (industrial organization, labor, trade, innovation and supply chain economics), computer science (machine learning and natural language processing), and political science (security studies and international relations), we are transforming the possibility frontier in:
- Providing timely awareness
- Quantifying technology and product criticality to national and economic security and the well-being of citizens
- Prioritizing action (including investments and policy)
- understanding and exploiting technical, mission, and global interdependencies; and
- Assessing the efficacy of policy interventions
