RESEARCH AREAS & PROJECTS
Reuniting Academic Research and Innovation for National Security Requirements
Government, academia, and the private sector have become disaggregated and disconnected over the past several decades. Through convenings, research and sustained engagement, this track reunites academic innovation and private sector entrepreneurship with critical national security requirements. Leveraging Berkeley’s proximity to Silicon Valley, the affiliated network of national security labs and Berkeley’s indigenous research strengths and history with scientific innovation, this track delivers engineering backed solutions to meet national security requirements for government and institutions.
Cybersecurity and Emergent Technologies
This track studies and develops tools in cybersecurity, particularly as it affects critical infrastructure, as well as the security and political implications of emerging technologies such as AI, biometric-based technologies, cloud computing, and quantum computing. This track enables collaboration among leading technologists, social scientists, legal scholars, engineers, ethicists, and policy experts, for advanced research into the risks, disruptions and opportunities that emerging technologies pose to democracy and its institutions, all while conducted in a controlled environment designed to accelerate innovation and deliver applicable research-driven solutions.
Institutional Resilience
This track focuses on strengthening our democratic institutions, which rely on facts, truth, and a unifying social contract. It examines the increasing distrust in our democratic institutions amidst social polarization and how this trend threatens our future prosperity and global security. BISG develops practical and accessible approaches to bridging the emerging divide between the American people and the institutions that were established to serve and support them.
Where a commonly held perspective on truth and fact is no longer a societal standard, democratic institutions begin to fail, leaving large segments of the population behind. When Americans of differing views no longer share a common value system, or an ability to communicate with one another, they become divorced from a social compact. This track identifies root causes of these challenges, countermeasures to remedy them, and strategies for action by policy makers, the media, and the general public.