Improving industry-university interactions for meaningful R and D

The purpose of engineering, including engineering R&D, is to improve human life. The electric power industry is changing rapidly, with unprecedented complexity. Technical and business challenges abound. We may or may not agree with the changes that are occurring, with industry restructuring causing higher rather than promised lower power prices. In the words of Homer Jenkin's Wall Street Journal editorial (19 July 2000), deregulation “has become an elaborate social experiment concocted by hordes of government- paid economists and lawyers.”