You often have a choice: work on something pre-existing, well understood, and successful - or work on something new, nebulous and in its infancy. Both choices have merits. A new project can be hard and is often fruitless, but it is sometimes amazingly rewarding, both psychically and financially. In this (short) talk, I will draw on my experience at Google as part of the creation of Google search engine, Adwords, Adsense, Gmail, and some other products in Silicon Valley to discuss both the opportunities and dangers inherent in new and risky projects. I’ll address how to choose what projects to work on, who to work with, and what to expect - all things I wish I had learned in college, but was
fortunate enough to learn afterwards.

Today's quality of life depends on the continuous functioning of the nation's electric power infrastructure, which depends in turn on the health of an underlying computing and communication network infrastructure that is at serious risk both from malicious cyber attacks and accidental failures. This presentation presents the technical and social challenges in designing, building, and validating a cyber infrastructure for the next generation power grid that can survive malicious cyber attacks while providing continuous power delivery, and discusses approaches we are taking to do this in our NSF Trustworthy Cyber Infrastructure for Power Center. TCIP aims to create an infrastructure technology that will convey critical information to grid system operators despite partially successful cyber attacks and accidental failures. Since the constraints and vulnerabilities of the power system cyber infrastructure are similar to those faced by many other critical infrastructure systems, the solutions created are expected to be adaptable for use in those systems as well.

Regulation through "code," i.e., the hardware and software of communication technologies, is growing in importance. Software programmers and policymakers are addressing individual issues and societal concerns, such as privacy, security, freedom of speech, and intellectual property protection with code-based solutions. While scholars have noted the role of code in regulating choices/preferences, there is little analysis of the various features or characteristics of code that have significance in regulating behavior. This talk examines two or three universal governance characteristics that policymakers may use to design code that comports with societal concerns. These characteristics include defaults, standards, transparency, and the like. For each characteristic, I discuss the salient regulatory issues for manipulating code. I also present provide proposals for modifying some characteristics, such as how to set software defaults. This analysis should aid policymakers seeking to manipulate code to vindicate societal values and concerns.

Dr. Beasley is Executive Director of the Envirovet Program in Wildlife and Ecosystem Health, which highlights the trans- disciplinary cooperative nature of work required for effective wildlife and ecosystem research, management, and long-term problem solving through field work with the United States and South Africa.