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Biochemical engineer Kai Zhuang walks us through the evolving relationships between technology and humanity, especially as it relates to engineering education, in this episode of The Engineering Commons podcast.

• Jeff and Adam discuss the high salaries being offered to software engineers in Silicon Valley.
• Adam notes that the U.S. Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) placed a value of $2.6 million on the economic loss suffered by society due to a traffic fatality in 1994. The current estimates (2013) are considerably higher, in the range of $9.1 million.
• Our guest for this episode is Kai Zhuang, a biochemical and operations engineer who has an interest in engineering education.
• Kai’s application to the University of Toronto’s National Scholarship Program was a little more avant garde than most, consisting of creative art pieces.
• Biomedical engineering is a fairly new engineering discipline that is only now beginning to work out its own sub-fields and areas of emphasis.
• Kai was frustrated with the rigid curriculum structure he encountered as an undergraduate engineering student.
• In response to his frustrations, Kai produced a video about transforming engineering education.
• Prior guest Dave Goldberg has described engineering education as being a math-science death march.
• Kai mentions a presentation by Harvard physics professor Eric Mazur, titled Assessment: The Silent Killer of Learning.
• The Force Concept Inventory (FCI) has been used by Eric Mazur to evaluate the effectiveness of physics instruction.
• Our guest describes a Big Bang Theory episode in which physicists joke about a spherical chicken in a vacuum.
• Our modern word engineer derives from the Latin ingenium, meaning a clever invention.
• Jeff relates Montessori education methods to Kai’s suggestions for a more exploratory engineering curriculum.
• The post-WWII Grinter report (1955) caused engineering to be treated more as a “science” in the United States.
• Jeff compares producing interchangeable engineers to using the Play-Doh extruder toy.
• Kai describes the difficulty of solving problems that involve complex systems.
• A MOOC is a “massive open online course.”
• The ongoing shift of engineering instructors from expert to coach has been examined by Dave Goldberg, founder of Big Beacon.
• When looking for innovative approaches to engineering education, Kai was advised by filmmaker Ryan Varga to investigate York University in Toronto, and Olin College in Boston, Massachusetts.
• This podcast is now a media affiliate with Big Beacon.
• Kudos to PhD Comics creator Jorge Cham for the notion of brain on a stick.
• A recent quote from software developer Dave Winer concerns the inevitability of serious problems resulting from our increasing dependence on a “fragile and insecure” internet system.
• Kai is disappointed that systems thinking is almost completely missing from the engineering curriculum.
• Our guest notes that most fears are “past pain extrapolated incorrectly into the future.”
• Brené Brown has spoken eloquently about wholeheartedness and the power of vulnerability.
• You can reach Kai via email at kai [dot] hua {dot} zhuang ++AT++ gmail [dot] com.

Thanks to Andrew Mason for his photograph titled “Inside.” Podcast theme music by Paul Stevenson.