EPP :: Issue No. 22 Page 1

Issue No. 22 Spring 2005

_____________________________________________________________________ A newsletter reporting the activities of the faculty, students and graduates of the Department of Engineering and Public Policy in the College of Engineering at Carnegie Mellon. _____________________________________________________________________

Cranor and Farber Add to EPP Strength in IT Policy.

The recent appointment of Lorrie Cranor as Associate Research Professor (ISRI/EPP) and David Farber as Distinguished Career Professor (SCS/EPP/Heinz) have brought additional strength to EPP’s efforts in computer and telecommunications policy.

Dr. Cranor, who has a background in computer science, did her Ph.D. in the now defunct Ph.D. program in Engineering and Policy at Washington University in St. Louis.
She spent seven years as a researcher at AT&T Labs where she worked on online privacy, privacy enhancing technology, usability of privacy and
security software, technology policy, and the social impact of computers.

Dr. Cranor is interested in applications of the Platform for Privacy Preferences (P3P), and in user interfaces and usability issues related to privacy enhancing software and secure systems. Her system Privacy Bird (http://privacybird. com/) reads the privacy policies of web sites that are written in P3P format and translates them into simple intelligable messages for users.

Cranor/Farber - continued on pg. 3

EPP Home for New
Climate Decision Making Center

      A new interdisciplinary multi-institutional research center anchored in EPP will focus on “Climate and Related Decision Making in the Face of Irreducible Uncertainties.” The Center is being supported by a five-year, $6.9 million award recently announced by the National Science Foundation. Work in the new Center will be motivated by the belief that while additional research may result in improved understanding, a considerable amount of uncertainty about the climate and energy systems will remain, and will not be resolved until after climate has actually changed and impacts and policies have played out.

      In addition to PI Granger Morgan (EPP/ECE/Heinz), investigators at Carnegie Mellon will include Jay Apt (Tepper/ EPP), Paul Fischbeck (SDS/EPP), Edward Rubin (EPP/MechE) and David Hounshell (History/EPP). Investigators at other institutions include Steven Schneider at Stanford, Alex Farrell at U.C. Berkeley, Tim McDaniels and Hadi Dowlatabadi at the University of British Columbia, David Keith at the University of Calgary, Stefan Rahmstorf and Kirsten Zickfeld at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) as well as several collaborators at other institutions.

      The work on climate uncertainty will include a variety of studies in expert elicitation that focus on characterizing what we are not likely to learn before significant climate change has occurred. In addition to a focus on uncertainty about the

NSF - continued on pg. 3

Veloso Studies the Brazilian
Software Industry

      The Brazilian software industry is roughly the same size as India’s. Most people don’t know that. The reason, says Prof. Francisco Veloso (EPP), is that in contrast to the “three I’s”, India, Ireland and Israel, which serve export markets, 98% of sales by the Brazilian industry have been to its own domestic market. Exports represent only $100-million of Brazilian software sales.
      Veloso, who is leading a major study of the Brazilian software industry, has teamed with Antonio Botelho of the Instituto Gênesis, Rio de Janeiro and Giancarlo Stefanuto of Softex – Sociedade Brasileira para a Promocao do Software. Contributions are also coming from Alice Amsden of MIT and Ted Tschang from Singapore Management University.
      Veloso reports that Brazil has the potential to become a leading player in the international software industry over the coming decade, having experienced double digit growth rates since the beginning of the 1990s. Annual sales were at $7.7-billion in 2001. Veloso and his colleagues have characterized the industry and explored in detail the relative merits and drawbacks of its inward development path. They investigated key areas where Brazilian software firms have been able to leverage the domestic market to build competitive positions, domestically and increasingly in the international arena. They have also examined the ways in which a strong reliance on the domestic market can have a stifling effect on the development of the industry.
      The investigators have explored a range of future scenarios and challenges for the development of the industry, contrasting the

Veloso - continued on pg. 3

_____________________________________________________________________