Edmund Lee - Introduction

Hi, my name is Edmund. I am a undergraduate sophomore in Mechanical Engineering, and I am doing a double major in Engineering and Public Policy (EPP). I have had interest in the policy area for a long time – I have always seen it as one of the few careers that one can go into knowing full well that, because the decisions made are impactful to the general public, the prior analysis of a policy before its rollout has to be thorough and comprehensive. At the same time, I have always loved engineering – mechanical systems appeal to me because of its physical nature. Therefore, it has been a dream come true to have the opportunity to learn how to apply engineering knowledge to policy work.

I am an international student from Singapore. While I certainly do not know as much about how the US system works, I will try my best to learn as much and as fast as I can. Given my background, I hope to be able to offer a diversity in views. I do admit that this does give me some biases – in particular, some left-leaning for-regulation tendencies, which mirror the way the government works in Singapore.

I have always been interested in innovation policy. In fact, I am doing one other class under EPP that deals with innovation as well (19-411/711: Global Competitiveness: Firms, Nations and Technological Change). Why innovation? I have always seen innovation as the key to productivity gains – and perhaps, helping our society strive towards “universal opulence” (as what Adam Smith said). But how do innovations come about? Why do firms innovate? How do innovations affect the economy – of country A? of country B? What can countries do about it? Perhaps then, innovation policy interests me because I am interested as to the tools that governments can have at their disposal to spur innovation. Many people see Innovation has always been largely seen to be a firm-centric thing, and the idea that there are national innovation systems that can promote innovation is intriguing. I look forward to learning more in this class.