About the Authors:Engineering Cultures
About the Engineering Cultures Authors
Dr. Gary Downey
Professor, Science and Technology in Society
Center for Science and Technology Studies
Virginia Tech
Dr. Juan Lucena
Associate Professor, Liberal Arts and International Studies (LAIS)
Principal Tutor and Director-mcBride Honors Program in Public Affairs for Engineers
Colorado School of Mines
Bios
Gary Downey is Professor of Science and Technology Studies at Virginia Tech. Trained initially as a mechanical engineer (1974) at Lehigh University, he completed his master’s and Ph.D. (1981) in cultural anthropology at the University of Chicago. He is winner of the 1997 Diggs Teaching Scholar Award at Virginia Tech, awarded each year to four of 1,400 faculty. Downey is author of The Machine in Me: An Anthropologist Sits among Computer Engineers published by Routledge in 1998. He is also co-editor of Cyborgs and Citadels: Anthropological Interventions in Emerging Sciences and Technologies, the product of an advanced seminar at the School of American Research, an anthropology think-tank. With Juan Lucena, Downey is currently writing an ethnography of engineering education titled Just Tell Me What the Problem Is: The Making of Engineers. As described in Results from Prior Support, this project provided the conceptual basis for the proposed project.
Juan Lucena is Associate Professor of Liberal Arts and International Studies (LAIS) and the Principal Tutor for the mcBride Honors Program in Public Affairs for Engineers at the Colorado School of Mines. He obtained a Ph.D. in Science and Technology Studies from Virginia Tech. His dissertation is a cultural history of education and “manpower” policy in science and engineering titled Making Policy for Making Scientists and Engineers for America: From Sputnik to Global Competition. Dr. Lucena holds bachelors’ degrees in Mechanical and Aeronautical Engineering from Rensselaer. For the past ten years, Dr. Juan Lucena’s research has been focused on theorizing about engineering practice, knowledge, and design from the perspective of science and technology studies. Currently, he is researching how images of globalization shape engineering education, hiring practices, and engineering practices and designs under a NSF-sponsored project titled Global Engineers: An Ethnography of Globalization in the Education, Hiring Practices and Designs of Engineers in Europe, Latin America, and the U.S. At the Washington Internship for Students of Engineering (WISE) program, Dr. Lucena taught fifteen of the best engineering students in the US to understand and analyze the processes, actors, and institutions that shape technology policy and politics, to discover alternative career paths in policymaking, and to write and publish high-quality policy papers that will help engineering societies to develop a strategy in a significant area of technology policy.