Each time I talk with Princeton colleagues and students, I come away with renewed excitement about the power of our work to bring long- term benefits to humanity. 

That’s not just because of our technological advances, which are truly transformative. It’s because of the students, postdocs, and faculty at Princeton who thrive on interactions far outside their fields of studies and far beyond the confines of academia. As we develop innovations with the power to disrupt and remake so many elements of our lives and society as a whole, we need broad and interdisciplinary perspectives. In particular, collaborations across engineering, the social sciences, and the humanities, and with stakeholders of many backgrounds, are required to create the innovations that will improve lives, protect the environment, and avoid unintended pitfalls. 

That is why, as we grow in our role as a hub for technology innovation and entrepreneurship, we are infusing our approach with the powerful practices of design. In this magazine, you’ll read just a few examples of how design propels insights out of labs and into ventures that are making a positive difference. This is ongoing work. Our very popular course “Creativity, Innovation, and Design” has been a flagship of our entrepreneurship curriculum for more than five years and is now joined, through the generosity of Amy and Gordon Ritter ’86, with an exciting collaboration with anthropology and other initiatives. We are creating an Innovation Hub that brings together people across the University and introduces them to the practice of design and innovation. 

Please join us and share with us your own stories of innovation and design as tools for serving humanity.

Andrea Goldsmith
Dean
Arthur LeGrand Doty Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering