engineering research & development

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Learn the ins and outs of research and development engineers, including the important qualities that an R&D engineer should possess.

Engineers live in a constant state of innovation. Every day brings a new challenge, and engineers are constantly faced with a new set of hurdles that need to be overcome to provide quantifiable solutions. Every project starts out in the preliminary stages—or more commonly known amongst engineers as the research and development (R&D) phase. During the research and development phase, engineers execute research and perform tests on product ideas, develop new products, and perform redesigns. Research and development is most commonly done before the start date of a project; however, R&D can also be conducted during a project if a major change is needed. 

In this article, we’ll dive into the roles and responsibilities of R&D engineers while outlining the importance of investing in research and development. We’ll also cover the characteristics and skill sets that R&D engineers should possess while touching on what you can do as an R&D engineer if you’re eager to progress in your career. 

Engineering research and development

What is r&d engineering.

• Why should you invest in R&D?

What is the role of an R&D engineer?

R&d engineer responsibilities, what important qualities should an r&d engineer possess, how can r&d engineers advance in their careers  .

Engineering a new product is always an iterative process, and this process can’t begin until research and development have been conducted. Engineering research and development can be defined as the systemic approach that is taken by engineers to learn about building new technologies that are ultimately used to design or bring a product to fruition. This includes the entire development process through engineering program and project management, conceptual design, detailed design, prototyping, manufacturing, performance analysis, technical documentation , and configuration management.

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R&D covers three main types of activities, including: 

• Basic research 
• Applied research 
• Experimental development 

1 Basic research 

Basic research is a long-term commitment that requires consistency. This type of research is used in an attempt to provide an organization with a more in-depth understanding of the problem at hand. Engineers can then work backwards to identify solutions. 

2 Applied research 

Applied research is the second step in the research process. This type of research requires investigative work that the engineer can use to gain additional knowledge for the final step in the research process. During this phase, engineers work to identify solutions, resolve issues, and investigate industry trends. 

3 Experimental development 

Experimental development is when engineers finally have the opportunity to combine their existing knowledge and the knowledge they’ve gained during the research process in an attempt to develop a new product, service, or process. 

Why should you invest in R&D? 

• Increases business efficiency
• Reduces costs 
• Secures investments
• Fosters innovation 
• Puts you ahead of competition

1 Increases business efficiency

Beginning a project with a clear path forward is an excellent way to increase business efficiency. Taking the time to conduct a thorough research and development phase will ensure your engineers are firing all cylinders. Development can be a costly, long-term venture, meaning it’s extremely important to enter into any development only after ample research has been conducted. Doing so will result in streamlined processes and more efficient workflows. 

2 Reduces costs 

Keeping research and development together is one of the best things you can do to reduce costs. Entering a project with no foresight or clear plan will result in mistakes and long-term costly effects, whereas conducting your research upfront ensures time, energy, and any other overhead costs are invested wisely from the get-go. 

3 Secures investments

Securing investments can be difficult, so it’s important to cover all of your bases. Taking the time to do your due diligence and back up any future ventures with comprehensive research demonstrates your competence and confidence to potential investors. 

4 Fosters innovation 

It can be easy to become stagnant, especially if you never step out of your comfort zone and experiment. Living in a constant state of iteration breeds innovation. If your organization doesn’t invest the necessary time and energy into research and development, it may fall behind the competition. 

5 Puts you ahead of competition

Innovation is key when determining how to stay one step ahead of the competition. If you fail to innovate, you won’t be able to remain competitive. Frequently practicing R&D within your organization means you’re always looking for ways to improve, which is key if you want to stay ahead of the curve. 

R&D engineers are responsible for conducting research and implementing solutions on behalf of their organizations. Their role is ever-changing and largely involves developing prototypes based on their research, designing and testing products, and also redesigning or iterating upon existing products. 

The role of an R&D engineer varies and largely depends on the engineer’s industry, but many R&D engineers have similar responsibilities. Common responsibilities include, but aren’t limited to: 

• Developing ideas 
• Designing products
• Conducting research 
• Leading and managing engineering teams
• Creating detailed plans and seeing them through to fruition
• Performing market research when applicable to the project at hand 
• Working cohesively with other engineers and developers to create prototypes and products
• Ability to work in a team
• Problem-solving skills
• Great attention to detail
• Time management skills
• Organizational skills 
• Leadership skills
• Creativity skills

1 Ability to work in a team

R&D engineers are never solely responsible for the projects on which they work. Instead, they work as part of a development team and often work cross-functionally with other key stakeholders to develop solutions. Having the ability to collaborate and be a team player is imperative.

2 Problem-solving skills

Problem-solving is at the core of everything R&D engineers do. On any given day, these engineers are responsible for conducting research in an attempt to learn more about a specific subject matter that will, in turn, provide the insights they need to develop solutions. Without a never-ending desire to iterate and problem-solve, R&D engineers would not be successful within their roles. 

3 Great attention to detail

Working in a fast-paced, precision-based environment while handling competing priorities means attention to detail is a must. Paying close attention to detail makes it possible for R&D engineers to analyze complex problems and produce creative solutions. Failing to be detail-oriented may result in negative financial implications, negative user reviews or experiences, or even long-term negative effects on the product. 

4 Time management skills

Not only are engineers managing multiple projects at once, but they’re also working within a number of different parameters in an attempt to meet deadlines for competing tasks and projects. This said, time management is a very important skill for engineers. 

5 Organizational skills 

R&D engineers are constantly faced with conflicting priorities. On any given day, they’re balancing a number of tasks, making organization one of the most valuable skills in their tool belt. Having the ability to remain organized and on task within an ever-changing environment is very important. 

6 Leadership skills

Engineers need to possess the ability to lead engineers, developers, and other technical personnel. While R&D engineers may hold a great deal of responsibility, chances are there are other contributors creating, designing, developing, implementing, and evaluating products, systems, or services, so having the ability to inspire and create alignment amongst these individuals is key.  

7 Creativity skills

R&D engineers are constantly innovating and striving to identify creative solutions. A large part of what they do entails uncovering new ways to do something or innovating on an existing practice, process, or product to come up with a creative solution. As a result, creativity and thinking outside the box is a must. 

While post-secondary education is a must, real-world industry experience or on-the-job training is also extremely important for R&D engineers who are eager to progress in their careers. Career progression in research and development goes hand in hand with developing both technical and research skills. Perpetual growth, continuous learning, industry experience, and the desire to sharpen your soft skills are all key factors that will contribute to a lengthy career in R&D engineering. 

Parting advice

In conclusion, R&D engineering is a subset of engineering that focuses on research and development. An R&D engineer will be responsible, on behalf of their organization, for performing research that can then be used to develop creative long-term solutions. These engineers use research theories, principles, models, and prototypes to perform experiments and innovate on existing practices. R&D engineers work to create new products while also iterating on existing designs, processes, and company products.

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Tech & AI

Development Engineering: A Critical Overview

June 14, 2017

Development engineering is an emerging field that brings together communities, businesses, students, faculty, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and governments, as well as for- and non-profit organizations, with the intention of working collaboratively to solve global challenges. It is, by design, a multidisciplinary field that bridges engineering and social sciences such as economics, public health, and gender studies and places them alongside business and entrepreneurship for societal benefit. In this piece, we’ll dive into where the new field of development engineering came from, where it’s headed, and the challenges it’s facing along the way. Development engineering has the potential to address massively complex challenges our world grapples with today, and by understanding its history and trajectory, we examine how development engineering can contribute to social change.

The history that paved the way for the emergence of development engineering, as well as the drivers behind it and the core tensions it currently wrestles with, will all be explored here from our perspective: two current PhD students in the Development Engineering program at UC Berkeley. We have seen the academic side of development engineering within the university setting as well as the entrepreneurial side, a perspective both of us have gained through running technology-based ventures in healthcare.

What development engineering is and how it’s different

Also known as “humanitarian engineering”, “engineering for change”, or “engineering for impact”, development engineering is a field of research and practice that combines the principles of engineering with economics, entrepreneurship, design, business, and policy—among others—to create technological interventions in accordance with the needs and wants of individuals living in complex, low-resource settings. While most may associate these settings with “developing” or “third world” countries, development engineering equips practitioners to work on social problems wherever they exist, whether that is California or Bangladesh. A variety of technologies have been created for diverse contexts, such as modular greenhouses for use in Kenya, a device for cervical cancer screening education in Ghana, and a filter to remove arsenic from groundwater in the United States.

Development engineering isn’t entirely new. Engineers have long been engaged in public service. The first canon of the Code of Ethics for Engineers states that “engineers shall hold paramount the safety, health, and welfare of the public.” Development engineering aims to build on the profession’s service-oriented roots by integrating both social and technical considerations into design work to ensure that proposed solutions sustain intended benefits over time. In this spirit, development engineering interventions may take the form of solutions that address systemic problems. One systemic problem addressed by development engineers is the lack of contextual consideration. For example, medical devices donated to developing countries often fail because the equipment does not match community need, no system for maintenance exists , or the user manual becomes lost . One potential development engineering project would aim to create medical devices suitable for use in a developing country, taking into account relevant factors such as required durability, power supply, and availability of spare parts.

Historically, engineering training is often deeply technical ( e.g ., learning fluid mechanics, thermodynamics, and advanced calculus) and places less emphasis on communication and contextual understanding. This position is generally reinforced by engineering programs and faculty that call the ability to write or give a presentation a “soft” skill. However, engineers are well-equipped to examine problems holistically—traditionally, they learn to simultaneously understand the details of a situation as well as the broader problem context. But in practice, this often manifests as understanding, for example, how the flow rates in a wastewater treatment system relate to total sediment removal, and not how a telemedicine system can change national health policy. Engineering was created as an applied science; development engineering takes it one step further by broadening the potential applications of engineering to address real-world, poverty-driven challenges.

Development engineering hinges on the understanding that creating sustainable systems around a technological intervention requires more than just engineering prowess—it requires knowledge of aspects like local economics and business to understand financial viability as well as ethnography ( i.e ., systematic study of people and their behaviors and culture) and interviewing practices to understand the community. While the traditional focus on “hard” skills is changing as engineering programs evolve, emphasizing the need for students to develop communication and entrepreneurial competencies is core to development engineering.

To be clear, this is not a belief that engineers should be expected to be experts in ethnography, geography, economics, and engineering. Instead, the hope is that engineers will become able to translate concepts across disciplines and understand there are many “unknown” unknowns, or factors not yet considered that must be uncovered if a technological intervention is to be successfully implemented over time.

Why development engineering is necessary

Today’s complex, globalized world is filled with problems that are messy with no clear solutions. Problems such as securing access to food in an era of climate change, providing universal housing amidst rapid urbanization, and determining ways to provide consumers with low-carbon energy sources all require innovative thinking and action if progress is to be made. As Paul Polak— a leader in the social entrepreneurship movement—states, over 90 percent of the world’s design efforts are aimed at 10 percent of the population. The people who need game-changing solutions are not engaged in the innovation process while, at the same time, significant resources are being spent on solving the wrong problems , or more precisely, developing products and processes that make money but only improve the world for a small number of people.

Unlike an engineering homework set where all the necessary information can be found in a textbook, “ wicked ” problems are those that are ill-defined and complex. “Wicked” problems are indeterminate and there aren’t rules for how to generate and implement solutions to them. Solving “wicked” problems requires intimate knowledge of the problem context, a point that is too often overlooked and causes initiatives that aim to implement technology within development projects to fail . If we, as a global society, are going to gain traction on solving compelling and immediate problems with complex societal and ecological dimensions, we need programs like development engineering to train the next generation of engineers to become critical thinkers and doers. Without sufficient training, students and practitioners with good intentions run the risk of failing to achieve their goals or, worse, doing more harm than good.

Consider, for example, a well-funded and publicly optimistic venture to install “PlayPumps” in Southern Africa to attempt to solve the regional water crisis. The PlayPump connects a merry-go-round contraption to a water pump that allows playing children to power a device to extract and store groundwater. However, after all the hype and tens of millions of dollars fundraised, the PlayPump installations in Mozambique and South Africa were soon inoperable. Yet in order to meet donor demands and live up to the marketing hype , PlayPumps were installed in thousands of locations, replacing the traditional water pumps already there, effectively transforming PlayPumps into a not only a failed venture, but also one that became useless and exploitative by forcing children to keep turning the merry-go-round nonstop in order to pump out enough water to meet village demand.

Instead of solving a dire water crisis, PlayPumps actually contributed to water inequities in Southern Africa by replacing the workable traditional water pumps with an exciting, but ultimately deeply flawed, water pump design. PlayPumps succinctly illustrate that global issues don’t come with quick fixes and that engineers can’t just casually step in to help with a community’s needs. Instead, global development requires a rigorous approach for which technically trained engineers need to have a better understanding of problem contexts, either through collaboration or a more rounded education.

In this vein, development engineering can add significant value to global development by providing a space for diverse parties with the same goal to connect, find collaboration opportunities, and share best practices as well as mistakes and failures. Although many practitioners may be working on the same types of projects in different settings—or working on different projects in the same setting—they aren’t always talking to one another. This communication breakdown results in mistakes frequently being repeated and redundancy of efforts. Development engineering, however, builds a more cohesive community by bringing faculty from different disciplines ( e.g. , business and engineering) together to co-teach core development courses and by requiring engineers to learn about public health and economics. Connection among peers happens through dedicated conferences , an open-access journal , and academic centers such as the Blum Center , which serve as hubs for meet-ups, classes, and conversations.

Where development engineering started

The roots of development engineering can be traced back to the time of colonialism and imperialism. The era preceding World War II saw Western powers in the world occupying and exploiting non-Western countries with less economic power. In the 1940s the United States instituted the Marshall Plan to provide material aid for Western European nations affected by the destruction wrought in the war, which represented the first instance of the US giving aid internationally. President Harry Truman’s inaugural address in 1949 outlined a plan to “embark on a bold new program for making the benefits of our scientific advances and industrial progress available for the improvement and growth of underdeveloped areas,” which development critic Gustavo Esteva regards as the invention of development .

With the belief that underdeveloped nations needed to be “modernized” , the 1960s saw a period of Western nations giving technologies to formerly colonized non-Western nations , assuming such technology transfer would yield fast success. After failing to see progress in the way of economic or technological “development” in the modernization era, the 1970s saw an alternative approach to aid. The rise of “appropriate” technology coincided with the growing recognition that for technology to be accepted, it needed to be designed for the intended use context. Simply transferring a technology designed for Western nations to a developing country would not yield desired progress. This new approach, which emphasized the importance of integrating contextual considerations in development, was formalized at the first Design for Development congress in 1979. The congress itself, hosted by the International Council of Societies of Industrial Design (ICSID) and the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), represented a crucial moment in recognizing design—a close cousin to engineering—as a tool for global development, useful in creating products and services to meet social needs. The congress also signed the Ahmedabad Declaration, formalizing a new “design for development” field .

In the 1980s and 1990s, as design and engineering became increasingly employed in socially conscious settings, the tech boom connected the world on an unprecedented scale. However, these connections created a “spiky” (unequal) world in which the urban and wealthy regions rapidly outpaced the rural and poorer areas in economic development, innovation, and general well-being. During the same time, both those working in development and intended beneficiaries became disillusioned by the power of multilateral institutions (large organizations funded by multiple nations) like the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) to promote international development and, consequently, that allowed engineers and designers to imbue small-scale and localized projects with their technical expertise.

Attempting to gain back the generally lost trust of large multinational organizations, in September 2000, the United Nations suggested eight goals “to reverse the grinding poverty, hunger, and disease affecting billions of people”: the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). These served as a catalyst to further encourage the involvement of engineers and designers in addressing global challenges by engaging in smaller, more localized projects. More and more funding opportunities began to arise for development-oriented projects in the wake of the growing international commitment to the MDGs, and what emerged was an ecosystem that provided support to ventures, projects, and programs at the intersection of engineering and impact.

The coalescing of a movement

At universities, students and faculty began to recognize a multi-faceted opportunity. Each semester a new crop of students enrolls with time and energy to work on aspects of important and impactful problems as opposed to, for example, spending time redesigning part of a car engine. Project-based classes that started as “crazy ideas” by motivated faculty members at various universities were acknowledged as being able to provide specific opportunities for students to apply the knowledge they were learning in technical classes toward the causes that the MDGs focused on.

It doesn’t take long for the students to be hooked. For many engineers in training, the impact of participating in a project-based class focused on problems faced by real people redefined the possibility of what engineering could encompass . For universities, project-based engineering and design classes provide the training students need to become next generation of engineers who would work to address these important social issues. Support for classes and projects from funding institutions such as VentureWell , the National Science Foundation, and the United States Environmental Protection Agency helped to expand enrollment, transform classes in programs and centers, and further catalyze impact.

A major draw of these programs among students is the ability to engage with like-minded peers they otherwise wouldn’t have worked with and to connect with people whose experience of the world is vastly different from their own. Perhaps, however, the biggest appeal to students of these programs, particularly Millennials and Gen-Xers , is the belief that one’s efforts are creating real, needed impact. As one student from Penn State’s Humanitarian Engineering and Social Entrepreneurship program noted, “Many times I have wanted to make a difference, but I have never known how. Now I have the ability to change lives in a real part of the world.” While this is motivating for many students, it has had a profound influence on female students in particular , who are overrepresented in development engineering programs. The hope for programs like ours is that they will help to transform individuals’ desire to help out into an actual ability to make a sustainable difference in the lives of the intended beneficiaries.

Of course, universities are not doing this alone. An entire subset of the broader development ecosystem shares the credit for the creation and growth of the development engineering field. There are multiple types of organizations that are fusing technology with other disciplines to create products , provide financial services , and accelerate health innovation , including for-profit ventures, non-profit organizations, foundations, government agencies, and multilateral organizations. Funding agencies are also playing a key role in providing support for impact-oriented entrepreneurs and ventures at both early and middle stages . A key funder of the development engineering field was the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), whose Higher Education Solutions Network provided significant resources to grow labs at seven university campuses working to evaluate and strengthen real-world innovations for development.

The future of development engineering

Throughout its proliferation, the development engineering field has seen successes including a growing number of academic programs, increased buy-in from funding sources, and a growing base of practitioners. However, there is still much to be done as the field matures and shapes the broader development agenda. Growing pains are common in any new field or movement, but rather than ignoring them, it’s important that they’re called out in order to spur thoughtful conversations and spark action to move the field forward. Some of the central challenges facing development engineering currently include balancing academic incentives with real-world impact, fitting community-driven work into institution-driven programs, and blending techno-centric and human-centric approaches.

First, a lack of alignment often exists between academic incentives and the factors that drive real-world impact. At the faculty level, this is seen in the publication system and tenure committees. As Virginia Tech professor Marc Edwards recently wrote in Environmental Engineering Science , “The goal of measuring scientific productivity has given rise to quantitative performance metrics, including publication count, citations, combined citation-publication counts. Quantitative metrics are scholar-centric and reward output, which is not necessarily the same as achieving a goal of socially relevant and impactful research outcomes.” Few incentives exist for faculty to spend the extra effort to engage with communities and maintain diverse partnerships and relationships.

Furthermore, faculty are compared against peers who may have been publishing more while an impact-oriented faculty member was doing the extra work necessary to create change, including engaging with policy makers and other stakeholders. Such a system does not promote the pursuit of socially relevant research.

For students, the disconnect between academia and real-world impacts manifest when examining what qualifies as “worthy” research. Often, development work is perceived as less rigorous compared to other forms of technical work. This can translate to students treating development engineering as an extra thing they’re doing rather than the main objective of their studies. Further, the traditional goal of graduate research is to become an expert in a narrow field, while development practice, on the other hand, requires a working knowledge of a broad range of fields including politics, economics, and psychology in addition to deeply technical engineering topics.

Similar to the “publish or perish” crisis, a second challenge is that many academics are encouraged to engage with others internally, with little incentive to form meaningful partnerships with organizations unaffiliated with a university. The path of least resistance in academia is often to turn inward, to engage with others of a similarly academic mind, and to avoid bringing the highly abstract and theoretical conversations down to a level of actionable progress.

The other side of this challenge is the amount of time it takes to develop meaningful partnerships, understand the full extent of a situation, test ideas, revise, and implement solutions. The long gestation period of community-driven development projects can be at odds with the intensely concentrated university setting in which these programs exist. Students traditionally spend only four years in their undergraduate education and less than six years in their graduate education and, with the ever-present demands of rigorous higher education, students are not encouraged to prioritize the needs of the communities they work with above their own needs to build a resume, graduate, and find a job.

Finally, development engineering aims to leverage technical resources and rigor to solve global problems, yet lacks a formal process for understanding the scope of important global problems. Students and faculty benefit from education and resources, but may lack direct experience with the problems they are solving. In order for the privileged and often insulated development engineering practitioners to work on addressing problems affecting the world’s impoverished and disenfranchised people, they have to look beyond their own lived experience.

Anthropology, ethnography, and, most recently, human-centered design provide rigorous frameworks to understand and empathize with people who have completely different experiences and perspectives. In order for development engineers to effectively solve social problems, they first must understand the complicated facets and human faces that characterize them. The focus cannot solely be on creating resource-efficient, cost-effective technologies; it must be, first and foremost, on understanding the people, systems of power, and political environments surrounding global issues . Without considering the political and historical contexts in which they are working, development engineers run the risk of repeating the damage done to impoverished communities by colonial, imperial, and neoliberal policies and approaches.

Development engineering is far from the only way to approach addressing the many challenges of our world, but it can certainly support communities striving for social change now and in the future. There’s still much to explore and uncover, and many professionals and academics are questioning what the next stages of development engineering look like. For example, further work is needed to better define what the goal of development engineering is, how impact can be better sustained, and whether or not remote design is appropriate. Development engineers must also figure out how to embrace complexity and resist the urge to over-simplify, test whether or not solutions are actually appropriate and contextualized before they are implemented, and prioritize the end-users’ empowerment or worldview instead of the development engineer’s freedom of creativity.

In addition to these important questions, we have come to question and consider things in our own work, such as the role that engineers should play in development, how the social sciences can be better integrated with the physical and biological sciences in universities to best educate development engineers, and how the people most affected by poverty and underdevelopment can best be engaged to work together to create lasting change.

Benevolence isn’t enough. Our world faces massive and complicated challenges that cannot simply be solved by deploying well-meaning engineers abroad. Historical development approaches have yielded the need for multidisciplinary approaches and supportive partnerships across geography and economic status. The ultimate goal of development engineering is to provide a rigorous framework to mobilize technical thinkers toward social change while recognizing the limitations of technology and the need for multifaceted solutions.

A version of this article was previously published on Impact Design Hub . The original article can be found here .

About the authors:

Rachel Dzombak received her PhD in Civil and Environmental Engineering from UC Berkeley. She now works as a post-doctoral scholar with the Haas School of Business and Blum Center for Developing Economies to reimagine the future of engineering education.

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Primary Menu Software Services Digital Engineering Lean+Agile About AI TLP What is Research, Development and Engineering (RD&E) Management?

What is research, development and engineering (rd&e) management.

• Business strategy
• Marketing and product management
• Advanced R&D and technology development
• Portfolio Management
• Program Management
• Engineering: Design, task execution, requirements management
• Staffing and skill-set management
• Manufacturing: Manufacturability
• Quality: Risk assessment and testing

Connected process can reduce the need for redundant inputs across processes and reduce process escapes. Connected processes make it much easier to make optimal management decisions:

• Business strategy needs to change. How can we change our project portfolio?
• A new market opportunity appeared. How can we best address it?
• Customer needs changed. How expensive will it be to change our projects?
• A break through technology has been developed. How should we engage customers?
• We face unforeseen technological challenge on a critical product. How can we use find staffing without disrupting the entire portfolio?
• Marketing needs to change requirements. What risks will the change introduce? What testing will we need to redo?
• Many more…

An integrated tool like InspiRD can facilitate this connection, enabling organizations to deliver more innovation while reducing administrative overhead.

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Forces Shaping the U.S. Academic Engineering Research Enterprise (1995)

Chapter: what is engineering research and how do engineering and science interact.

ages (Lane, this volume). According to a recent study (Dickens, this volume), there are 281 university research centers sponsored by six federal agencies (including NSF) and over 1,000 university-based engineering research units in the United States. Most of these research units were established as university initiatives in the past 10 years, and their success in establishing industry linkages varies widely. Much broader adoption of such linkages by industry—without government sponsorship and participation—is needed.

Consistent with the important role of academic engineering research in the advancement and diffusion of the engineering knowledge base and the training of engineers, substantial increases are needed in the level of support for academic engineering research and associated aspects of engineering education. Such increases will enhance U.S. leadership in commercially important technologies, improve industrial competitiveness, and increase economic growth. Reports issued over the past decade by the National Academy of Engineering, the National Research Council Engineering Research Board, and the National Science Board Committee on Industrial Support for R&D all have echoed the need to boost funding in this area (Committee to Evaluate the Programs of the National Science Foundation Directorate for Engineering. 1985; National Research Council, 1987; National Science Board, 1992).

Because policymakers tend to be unaware of the variety of purposes and products of government-sponsored research, the engineering community must coordinate and focus more effectively the many voices speaking for engineering. Both policymakers and the public need to better appreciate the important differences between scientific and engineering research, especially with regard to how quickly the two disciplines can address pressing national concerns.

In general, the concept of engineering research is not readily understood. In academic settings, its distinction from research in the basic sciences is even less well understood. Therefore, the next section of this report is devoted to an exposition of the nature and value of academic engineering research.

WHAT IS ENGINEERING RESEARCH AND HOW DO ENGINEERING AND SCIENCE INTERACT?

In many ways, the methods of academic engineering research and the resulting insights into the nature of the physical world are indistinguishable from those of basic scientific research. However, there are crucial differences between the two endeavors. Basic scientific research is concerned with the discovery of new phenomena and their integration into coherent

conceptual models of major physical or biological systems. By definition, the focus of greatest interest tends to be at the outer edges of present knowledge. Most scientific knowledge will, in a highly variable and unpredictable fashion, find technical applications of economic and social value, but in most cases the nature of such applications will not be apparent to the those who perform the original scientific research.

Basic research in engineering is by definition concerned with the discovery and systematic conceptual structuring of knowledge. Engineers develop, design, produce or construct, and operate devices, structures, machines, and systems of economic and societal value. Virtually all engineering research is driven by the anticipated value of an application. However, not all potential applications can be anticipated, and occasionally the hoped-for application may not be nearly as important as one that turns up by serendipity. The time from research to production may be a few years, as in the development and application of the laser or in the progression from the integrated circuit to microprocessor, or it may be decades, as in the development of television.

Engineering, unlike science, is concerned not only with knowledge of natural phenomena, but also with how knowledge can serve humankind's needs and wants. Such variables as cost, user compatibility, producibility, safety, and adaptability to various external operating conditions and environments must be taken into account in the design, development, operational support, and maintenance of the products and services that engineers create. Thus, engineering involves the integration of knowledge, techniques, methods, and experiences from many fields.

Also, almost all university research in both science and engineering is performed as a component of the advanced education of students. For most engineering students, the goal of a career in industry motivates their pursuit of advanced study, and this will increasingly be the case in the future. Because of this, engineering students' outlook on research tends to be predisposed toward application in engineering practice.

Basic science and mathematics have advanced rapidly in the past several decades with the development of computers that can deal with increasingly complex problems. At the same time, engineering science, research, and practice have employed increasingly advanced analytical and experimental methods across the spectrum of engineering fields and industrial sectors. In What Engineers Know and How They Know It (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990), Walter Vincenti has identified some theoretical and experimental features common to both scientific and engineering research. In fact, in some engineering fields such as electronic materials, the analytical and experimental methods and instruments used may be indistinguishable from those in the basic-science fields of solid-state physics and chemistry.

The way in which academic engineering research is financed and public expectations for the outcomes from such research are changing at an unprecedented rate. The decrease in support of defense-related research, coupled with the realization that many U.S. technological products are no longer competitive in the global market, has sent a shock wave through research universities that train engineers. This book argues for several concrete actions on the part of universities, government, and industry to ensure the flow and relevance of technical talent to meet national social and economic goals, to maintain a position of leadership in the global economy, and to preserve and enhance the nation's engineering knowledge base.

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Introduction to Development Engineering

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• Anustubh Agnihotri 7 ,
• Temina Madon   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-2427-3655 8 &
• Ashok J. Gadgil   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-0357-9455 9  

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Technological change has always played a role in shaping human progress. From the power loom to the mobile phone, new technologies have continuously influenced how social and economic activities are organized—sometimes for better and sometimes for worse. Agricultural technologies, for example, have increased the efficiency of agricultural production and catalyzed the restructuring of economies (Bustos et al., 2016). At the same time, these innovations have degraded the environment and, in some cases, fueled inequality (Foster and Rosenzweig, 2008; Pingali, 2012). Information technology has played a catalytic role in social development, enabling collective action and inclusive political movements (Enikolopov et al., 2020; Manacorda & Tesei, 2020); yet it has also fueled political violence and perhaps even genocide (Pierskalla & Hollenbach, 2013; Fink, 2018).

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Fear and Loathing of Technological Progress? Leveraging Science and Innovation for the Implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development

Technology and Innovation for Social Change: An Introduction

Rethinking Economic Development in Muslim Societies in the Context of the Fourth Industrial Revolution

• Development Engineering
• Appropriate Technology
• History of Technology
• Humanitarian Engineering

1.1 What is Development Engineering?

Technological change has always played a role in shaping human progress. From the power loom to the mobile phone, new technologies have continuously influenced how social and economic activities are organized—sometimes for better and sometimes for worse. Agricultural technologies, for example, have increased the efficiency of agricultural production and catalyzed the restructuring of economies (Bustos et al., 2016 ). At the same time, these innovations have degraded the environment and, in some cases, fueled inequality (Foster and Rosenzweig, 2008 ; Pingali, 2012 ). Information technology has played a catalytic role in social development, enabling collective action and inclusive political movements (Enikolopov et al., 2020 ; Manacorda & Tesei, 2020 ); yet it has also fueled political violence and perhaps even genocide (Pierskalla & Hollenbach, 2013 ; Fink, 2018 ).

Nevertheless, the United Nations (UN) has recognized technology as key to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), a set of global policy targets adopted by 193 national governments for implementation by 2030. Footnote 1 An outstanding question is how to systematically harness technology for sustainable development? Fortunately, the research community has begun to offer paths forward. In this textbook, we introduce the nascent field of development engineering , an area of research focused on discovering generalizable technological solutions that can improve development outcomes in poverty-constrained settings. It integrates the theory and methods of development economics (and other social sciences) with the practice of engineering , promoting the co-design of engineering advances alongside the social and economic innovations required for impact in the “real world.” The resulting solutions—whether they focus on intensifying agricultural production, enhancing early child development, or expanding access to sanitation—are well positioned to succeed at scale, and within planetary boundaries.

As a field, development engineering is closely aligned with the recent movement to scientifically validate different approaches to poverty reduction, exemplified in the 2019 Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences (awarded to development economists Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo, and Michael Kremer) Footnote 2 . These researchers and their co-authors have helped pioneer the use of randomized controlled trials in public policy, bringing a precise and incremental approach to solving the problems of poverty. Development engineering follows in this tradition, yet is distinct in its focus on technological innovation as a tool for achieving sustainable development.

For all the promise of technology to accelerate sustainable development, we must also recognize the potential for new tools to harm people and the environment. Indeed the motivation in launching this new field has been, in part, the long string of failures in the area of “technology for good.” There is a rich history of engineering projects that have been technically sophisticated but have failed to achieve social impact in the real world—or worse, have rolled back the frontiers of human development. Examples include costly but ineffective attempts to improve educational outcomes through low-cost laptops (Cristia et al., 2017 ; Kraemer et al., 2009 ); water rollers Footnote 3 that were intended to facilitate water transport but failed to gain adoption within targeted communities (Borland, 2014 ; Crabbe, 2012 ; Stellar, 2010 ); and large-scale irrigation systems that failed to deliver promised benefits (Higginbottom et al., 2021 ).

These failures have a number of elements in common. First, it is not obvious, ex ante , that such projects should fail, and the causes of failure are not always clear. They are often well intentioned efforts, employing human-centered design to better meet the needs of individual users. Yet they often overlook the top-down view of development: the politics, institutions, and social norms that surround any user. These conditions can doom the most well-intentioned efforts to fail.

Second, engineers operating in the context of poverty often lack information about users’ habits. Take this as a thought experiment: as a consumer in a well-functioning market, you benefit from a vast infrastructure for data collection that reveals the economic behavior of you and people like you. The firms that service your needs have access to your web traffic logs, digital payments, utility meters, and mobile location data—not to mention household economic surveys, government economic indicators, and industry analyst reports. But what about the homeless consumer who lives in urban poverty, subsisting on free meals and donations? Or the rural subsistence farmer who uses cash to operate in informal markets?

The most disadvantaged households are rarely reached by business analysts and government enumerators. Just 10 percent of households in rural India have access to formal sources of credit; the vast majority leave no trace in the credit market (Demirguc-Kunt et al., 2018 ). Fewer than half of all nations in sub-Saharan Africa have conducted a nationally representative household economic survey in the last decade (Yeh et al., 2020 ). People living in poverty, by definition, are excluded fromparticipating actively in formal markets. As a result, their preferences are rarely captured in market price signals or routine consumer data. They may providefeedback to researchers in the form of self-reported preferences (e.g., through focus groups or interviews), but these inputs may be biased and unreliable. Without reliable insights to guide technology design, it is unsurprising that so many engineers have failed to achieve impact.

In recent years, we have developed better techniques to observe the preferences and behaviors of underserved communities. These include low-cost sensors for monitoring product use, automated digitization of administrative records, and even behavioral experiments conducted outside the lab, in “the field.” Some of these tools will be discussed in future chapters; they are increasingly being used by engineers to design for people excluded from conventional markets.

A third challenge is the paucity of research identifying the long-term economic and social impacts of new technologies (largely for a lack of investment in rigorous evaluation). Rarely have the developers of “pro-poor” technologies had the resources to evaluate the downstream social and economic impacts of their inventions. We are all familiar with the use of randomized, controlled trials (RCTs) in medicine; these methods are used to rigorously measure the effects of a novel medical treatment or prophylactic, across large populations of patients. More recently, software developers have adopted this approach to test the effects of different product features, using rapid experimentation to generate user feedback in a process known as A/B testing. Yet the tools of rigorous evaluation have only slowly diffused into the broader engineering community. This is despite the fact that engineers are interventionists at heart, seeking to make changes to markets, the environment, and people’s lives.

Through collaboration with economists, political scientists, and public health researchers, engineers are now investigating the impacts of their inventions. Adapting the experimental methods used in medical trials (and more recently in public policy), we can now ask: How does the use of tablets in classrooms affect learning outcomes, both for the highest-performing students and those in the bottom quantile (Chap. 11 )? How does the introduction of improved cookstove technology affect household consumption and nutrition (Chap. 15 )? What is the impact of mobile telephony on local economies (Chap. 11 ), and what is the development impact of access to gridelectricity (Chap. 5 )?

Rigorous evaluation can help explain the causal relationships between a technology and its downstream impacts, including impacts on the climate and the environment (Alpízar & Ferraro, 2020 ). It allows us to learn how technologies effect change, and it teaches us about the economic and social constraints that any successful solution must address. Experiments in real-world settings have also led to a better understanding of how technologies get adopted in disadvantaged communities. These insights can be used to weave novel behavioral, economic, and social interventions into the design of technological solutions.

What does a “development engineering” innovation look like? One of the earliest examples is a community-scale water chlorination technology for rural households, designed by a team of engineers and economists. For user convenienceand perceptual salience, it is a brightly colored device placed at high-traffic points of water collection, like springs. It dispenses just the right amount of chlorine to fill the typical household’s container, and it is provided free of charge. Its design is based on rigorous studies of users’ willingness to pay, their consumption habits, and an understanding of howsocial pressure influences hygiene practices (Kremer et al., 2011 ; Null et al., 2012 ). The system is now being scaled to millions of households across sub-SaharanAfrica, with appropriate adaptations; and it is widely viewed as one of the most sustainable modern solutions for providing clean water to rural communities (Ahuja et al., 2015 ).

Technologies like these leverage important recent insights from economics—for example, the finding that poverty-constrained households do not use preventive health technologies (like insecticide treated bednets) when pricing is non-zero Footnote 4 (Dupas, 2014 ). They are built for specific social, behavioral, environmental, and economic contexts. This means that when markets cannot deliver the desired development impact, the public sector (or civil society) is leveraged as the channel for delivery.

In some sense, development engineering is similar to other problem-focused fields, like environmental engineering and bioengineering, in that it combines two or more disparate disciplines to holistically address a defined set of problems. By definition it is highly interdisciplinary, combining insights from development economics and political science as well as computer science, environmental science, and of course engineering. Similarly, it is applied: there is a limited focus on basic research and an emphasis on identifying innovations that solve problems reliably (and at scale) within complex “real-world” environments. It is unique in its emphasis on the challenges faced by individuals and communities subjected to poverty and marginalization.

Defining Terms: Technology, Invention, Intervention

In this textbook, we refer to a “technological solution” as a technology integrated with the social and economic interventions required to achieve impact at scale. When brought together, these two elements solve a development problem that neither could have achieved independently. In some cases, we will use the word “innovation” in place of the word “solution.” To help navigate the jargon-rich world of development engineering, here we define a set of common terms that you will find throughout the textbook.

Technology is the body of scientific and engineering knowledge and its application to improve the production of goods, the delivery of services, and the accomplishment of societal objectives. Technology can take the form of novel systems, practices, or processes.

An invention is a unique device, method, process, or composition that is technically novel, nonobvious, and often patentable. An invention is the result of a creative process that involves the discovery of something new. It may not require new technology. For example, invention of the lightbulb brought together multiple existing technologies in a new arrangement, yielding a useful and novel product.

An intervention is an action taken to effect or modify the outcomes of individuals, populations, and systems. In the context of development engineering, an intervention may be a social or economic strategy designed to change the behaviors of markets, institutions, and households. Interventions can be innovative, and they may involve technologies or inventions, but these are not required.

Development engineering is a practice, but it is also a field of research, with a research agenda that explores how technological solutions (and their design) can be optimized and applied for sustainable development. While the design of technology has been well studied in developed markets, it is less clear how innovations should be designed to solve development challenges. The field aims to generate technological solutions that can be rigorously evaluated, can perform reliably at scale, and can improve millions of lives.

The authors of the various case studies in this textbook speak from experience. They have engaged in research and collaboration across disciplines and over many years. Electrical engineers studying power grids have learned in the field alongside development economists exploring the demand for electricity in rural communities. Political scientists interested in post-conflict state capacity have collaborated with computer scientists on the design of digital governance technologies. They have also advanced the measurement of social and economic outcomes, leveraging tools like remote sensing, mobile data, and networked sensors to observe and understand the process of sustainable development. By learning each other’s languages—and defining this new discipline—we are able to form a more coherent, systematic approach to global development challenges.

While we attempt to define development engineering in the opening chapters of this book, the research community has offered several diverse definitions of the field (Nilsson et al., 2014 ; Agogino & Levine, 2016 ). Taken together, these perspectives are beginning to shape an important dialogue about technology and its role in sustainable development. We value these contributions, and we aim for this textbook to offer a comprehensible (if not comprehensive) synthesis of research to date.

1.2 Intellectual History of the Field

The concepts of “engineering for development” and “technology for development” have taken many forms over the last few decades. This section sketches an intellectual history of the field, tracing the different paradigms that have dominated our thinking about technology in resource-constrained settings. We start with research on the broad relationship between technological change and human development and then review the various movements employing technology as a solution for societal challenges. We conclude by explaining how this new field differs from earlier paradigms.

It is well established that technological innovation is central to economic growth. Technological advances, with an enduring consistency, have led to increases in the productive capacity of societies, allowing them to move from scarcity to surplus (Landes, 2003 ; Nelson & Nelson, 2005 ). Economic historians have studied this process in great detail, starting with the industrial revolution (Mokyr, 2018 ; Landes, 2003 ; Polanyi & Maclver, 1944 ; Piketty, 2014 ). Propelled by technological innovation, the industrial revolution had a profound impact on the thinking of philosophers and economists. It introduced the idea that technological transformations can make persistent improvements in economic conditions; it also established the centrality of markets in shaping the economic life of individuals and societies. It introduced the notion that human intervention can actually shift the course of our development (Smith, 2010 ). Footnote 5

However, the idea that human development could be achieved through policy intervention did not take root until the end of the second World War and the so-called Marshall Plan. Postwar policy initiatives focused on economic growth across war-torn Europe, with the underlying assumption that technological progress would increase productivity and create economic surplus (Landes, 2003 , Keynes, 2018 ). Such progress was “engineered” through large-scale industrialization that was managed by corporations and guided by governments through economic policy. The success in spurring postwar economic growth led to a Western concept of development that had well-defined stages of growth, with all societies passing through distinct phases and eventually converging through the diffusion of technology (Rostow, 1960 ).

In the postwar era, Europe’s success in using large-scale industrial technology to solve the challenges of production led to the transfer of these technologies to less developed countries, with the aim of rapidly transforming their economies. However, this effort to transplant technology was riddled with failures. Not only did many of these technologies (like synthetic fertilizers and large-scale dams) create unforeseen environmental harm; they also failed to be widely adopted or fell into disuse (e.g., handpumps to access groundwater).

1.2.1 Appropriate Technology Movement

The movement for appropriate technology emerged, in part, as a reaction to the frustrations stemming from attempts to rapidly replicate “Western” models of technology-driven growth in lower-income settings. The Western model often excluded community input, treating people as recipients of intervention rather than participants in development.

Peaking in the 1970s and 1980s, the appropriate technology movement argued for small-scale technological solutions that were based on local needs and “appropriate” for the nature of local endowments, rather than implemented by central authorities (Schumacher, 2011 , Dunn, 1979 ). The movement borrowed heavily from the Gandhian ideal of self-reliant village communities. It also viewed the adoption of technology, and its consequences, through the lens of equality, by focusing on who adopts a technology, and how the gains from a technology are distributed. As a consequence, the approach has focused on local and indigenous production of (appropriate) technology, so that communities benefit from wider-scale adoption in multiple ways.

Impact on the environment is also a central tenet of the movement, with a strong emphasis on sustainability and the use of renewable sources. An example of a widely adopted appropriate technology is the treadle-pump for irrigation, which is easily constructed at the village level and sustainably enables the farmer to provide water to his or her fields (Adeoti et al., 2007 ). In reality, this innovation has been delivered through a centralized nongovernmental organization (NGO) to enable product quality certification (“KrishiBandhu”), signaling some of the shortcomings of this approach.

The appropriate technology movement has had a deep impact on how the development community thinks about the role of technology in shaping lives of people in poor communities. It has highlighted the need to pay closer attention to the negative environmental externalities of industrial technology. However, appropriate technologies have not seen widespread and sustained adoption over the medium to the long run. Critiques have suggested that the lack of attention to the role of markets and scalability has limited the success of “appropriate” technologies (Rybczynski, 1980 ; Willoughby, 1990 ).

1.2.2 Market-Oriented Approaches

In parallel to the appropriate technology movement is a long history of leveraging market-based incentives to stimulate innovation for resource-poor settings. The idea of profit at the “bottom of the pyramid,” popularized by CK Prahalad, asserts that there are large, untapped market opportunities in low-resource communities that can be exposed by making technologies more affordable for the poor (Prahalad, 2009 ). Rather than viewing people who live under $2 a day as passive recipients of development aid, this approach views them as consumers of profitable goods and services. Given the very large number of people living in resource-poor environments, even a small profit margin can yield substantial profits at scale. While the poorest households cannot afford a bottle of shampoo or a box of tea, they do desire, and can afford, a small sachet that is cheaply priced. This approach has encouraged corporations to pursue profit while ensuring that people with limited resources can access the products they need. This approach too has its limitations, since it focuses exclusively on needs that can be addressed through market expansion. Large “public goods” requirements—like education and health—are not always effectively met by this approach.

A different market-oriented approach has focused on the productive and creative capacity of people living in resource-poor settings. Challenging the often held assumptions that associate technological innovation with high levels of formal education, this approach emphasizes the entrepreneurial and generative capabilities of the poor as “frugal innovators.” The idea is that within resource-constrained settings, local innovators can develop technologies with unique forms and functionalities, tailored to local problems and environments. Anil Gupta’s Honey Bee network leverages the traditional knowledge created by grassroot innovators to identify and screen new technologies for scale up (Gupta, 2006 ). An example of this is the biosand filter, an adaptation of centuries-old indigenous technology that was refined for scale-up in 1990. It is now estimated to serve more than 4 million people in 55 countries.

Like Prahalad’s market-oriented approach, the view of people in resource-poor environments as technology creators leads to technologies that are adapted to local contexts and preferences. This can have spillover benefits for wealthier consumers, when products optimized for low-income communities move into developed markets. Indeed the unique nature of innovations from resource-constrained settings has led to a so-called “boomerang” effect, with products designed for scarcity benefiting users in more prosperous economies (Immelt et al., 2009 ; Winter & Govindarajan, 2015 ). For example, the leveraged freedom chair which provided users navigating uneven terrain in rural India with added control and flexibility was also successfully marketed in the United States as GRIT Freedom Chair, at a higher cost (Judge et al., 2015 ). Thus, market-oriented approaches have focused on people in under-resourced conditions as both consumers and producers of technological innovation for solving development problems.

1.2.3 Humanitarian Engineering

Humanitarian engineering is a paradigm that explores how engineering solutions can be used to provide access to basic human needs—like water, sanitation, energy, and shelter—in response to disasters, emergencies, and other resource-challenged environments. Unlike market-oriented approaches, humanitarian engineering takes a rights-based view, placing the needs of communities as the central motivation behind intervening. It often relies on researchers and innovators contributing their time to develop a technological solution that solves a well-identified problem within a community.

While the field of humanitarian engineering has begun to embrace market-based solutions, for example, through the distribution of cash transfers to households recovering from economic shocks, it is unclear whether private sector approaches actually work, particularly when it comes to provision of goods like water and sanitation (Martin-Simpson et al., 2018 ). Alongside recent exploration of market-based programming, there has been an emphasis on the design of “dual-use” solutions that operate in an emergency and also enhance community resilience by building preparedness for future emergencies. For example, a project to provide clean drinking water within a refugee tent camp might be taken up by a voluntary organization like engineers without borders but designed to support sustained use as the camp evolves into a longer-term settlement.

Humanitarian engineering has been especially effective when applied to disaster mitigation, a process that prepares disaster-prone communities to rebuild using resilient technologies. For example, the Berkeley-Darfur Stove, developed initially for Darfur refugees, now serves more than 60,000 families in different settings across Africa (see PotentialEnergy.org ). UVWaterworks, a water purification technology initially developed in response to a cholera epidemic in India, now serves 26 million customers across 5 different countries (see WaterHealth.com ).

The proliferation of information and communication technology (ICT) across the world has fundamentally altered how individuals access and receive information, search for jobs, obtain government services, engage with financial institutions, and communicate with others. With more than 3 billion Internet users worldwide, ICT plays a central role in how under-resourced communities experience social and economic development (WDR, 2016 ). Gains from access to ICT can be significant for people who previously lacked access to the technology: for example, fish markets in Kerala saw dramatic reduction in spatial price variation after the introduction of cell phones, which allowed fishermen and wholesalers to more easily exchange information (Jensen, 2007 ). Similarly, M-pesa, a mobile-based money transfer application introduced in Kenya, has allowed millions of people to easily access remittance flows (Mbiti & Weil, 2015 ). However, the adoption and benefits of ICTs depend heavily on social and economic factors. For example, more educated people living in urban areas are more likely to have access to smartphones (World Development Report, 2016 , Pg 167).

The field of ICT for Development (ICTD or ICT4D) has focused on understanding how this digital divide can be bridged, by making access to ICTs more equitable. One thrust of the field is how to reduce information asymmetries, so that remote and disconnected populations can connect to markets. For example, modifications to communication services like interactive voice response (IVR) enable those with low literacy to access relevant digital information (Chu et al., 2009 ; Mudliar et al., 2012 ).

ICTD researchers have also partnered with governments to change how states deliver services to their citizens. The most common innovation is the deployment of “helplines” that enable citizens to register their grievances through web-based or IVR platforms. Thoughtful design of these systems can empower marginalized citizens, providing new channels for reporting their grievances (Chakraborty et al., 2017 ). This approach has also been adopted by civil society, enabling individuals and communities to act collectively and voice their grievances (World Development Report, 2016 , Chap. 3 ). For example, IVR platforms are being used to help smallholder farmers to raise concerns and grievances with local authorities (Patel et al., 2010 ).

A corrective critical perspective for the field of ICTD explores the inability of technology, by itself, to improve welfare and the need for institutional arrangements that support technological solutions and their effective adoption (Toyama, 2015 ; Johri and Pal, 2012 ). Indeed in the private sector, deployment of ICTs often focuses on the end-user and the product, without close attention to institutional arrangements, power dynamics, and the cultural environment of targeted users. For example, the one-laptop per child (OLPC) program aimed to transform learning by providing every child with an affordable laptop. However, it failed to achieve the impact at scale by failing to account for local cultures and preferences within the educational system (Kraemer et al., 2009 ).

1.2.5 Human-Centered and Participatory Design

A persistent challenge in “technology for development” is that products are designed by people who are far removed from the end-user’s context. Human-centered design (HCD) advocates for a product design strategy that explicitly centers around the daily experiences of people in their native environments. The hypothesis of HCD is that failing to understand and empathize with the user’s needs and requirements can lead to failure in adoption when the technology finally arrives at the user’s doorstep. As discussed earlier, the water-roller was designed to help women in rural low-income settings access large quantities of water. Yet it fell into disuse as a result of severe design flaws, including failures on uneven terrain and the size of the product, which failed to meet women’s needs (Crabbe, 2012 ). HCD emphasizes the perspective of the user and her environment, focusing on the complete product cycle from interface to manufacturing, distribution, and repair (Donaldson, 2009 ). A successful example of HCD is the wheelchair by the Gear Lab at MIT, which serves people with disabilities. The specific needs of disabled people living in low-income settings were incorporated into a redesign of the traditional wheelchair model, allowing users to traverse more rugged terrain with greater maneuverability (Winter and Govindarajan, 2015 ).

A related effort has been that of participatory design (or co-design), which actively involves end-users and other stakeholders in the design process (Spinuzzi, 2005 ; Steen, 2013 ). Thus, the consumers of the new technology provide their inputs from initial ideation to finalization and production. The active involvement of the end user ensures that the design of a new product does not leave out needs of the consumers. However, the deep involvement of a small number of end-users can limit the effort taken to get feedback from a larger, more representative sample of customers. It remains unclear whether human-centered design and co-design result in innovations that achieve superior development outcomes at scale. However, they are a promising complement to approaches that focus on market constraints, institutional failures, and social and behavioral norms.

1.2.6 Development Engineering

Development engineering borrows from many of the intellectual paradigms mentioned above but also differentiates itself in key ways. Like appropriate technology and frugal innovation, it pursues the well-being of people living in resource-constrained environments (as opposed to targeting rapid industrialization, or macroeconomic growth). Yet unlike these movements, development engineering brings attention to the importance of markets and political institutions in shaping human development. As with humanitarian engineering, we focus on sustainability and resilience, yet we also seek to discover the causal mechanisms through which technology shapes sustainable development over the long term. By studying the mechanisms of development, development engineering aims for generalizable lessons that extend beyond any one context, population, or environment.

In many ways, this new field follows in the tradition of ICTD, particularly its emphasis on interdisciplinary collaboration. It seeks to bring insights from the rapid adoption and positive impact of ICTs to other important areas of engineering, including some with great economic promise (like off-grid energy and precision agriculture) and some with importance for health (such as wastewater treatment and sanitation). As such, development engineering extends beyond ICTD’s focus on information and computing to include civil and environmental engineering, mechanical engineering, electrical and power systems engineering, materials science, chemical engineering, and related disciplines. And unlike market-oriented approaches, development engineering does not rely on one particular strategy for the implementation of a technological innovation: if markets are the appropriate channel, they are leveraged—while not ruling out the option of delivering a technology through government agencies, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), or communities.

Indeed development engineering has emerged in the absence of a profit motive, driven by university researchers focused on efficiently meeting the unmet demands of disadvantaged people. These university actors have worked alongside international development agencies, governments, social enterprises, and for-profit ventures to create “testbeds” for innovations that can advance progress toward the SDGs. This team-based architecture has allowed for the accumulation of knowledge and the discovery of generalizable solutions, while also facilitating the transition to scale of effective solutions.

On that note, we should point out that development engineering focuses explicitly on the scalability of technological solutions. It does not emphasize “boutique” or bespoke solutions to niche problems nor does it rely exclusively on the participatory approaches that some technical groups (e.g., MIT D-Lab) have developed. The scalability and generalizability of research findings are viewed as critically essential and important features of development engineering, while recognizing that scale-up of any innovation will require localization, customization, and adaptation to local conditions.

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Agnihotri, A., Madon, T., Gadgil, A.J. (2023). Introduction to Development Engineering. In: Madon, T., Gadgil, A.J., Anderson, R., Casaburi, L., Lee, K., Rezaee, A. (eds) Introduction to Development Engineering. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-86065-3_1

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What Is Research and Development?

• Understanding R&D
• Types of R&D
• Pros and Cons
• Considerations
• R&D vs. Applied Research
• R&D Tax Credits

The Bottom Line

• Business Essentials

What Is Research and Development (R&D)?

Investopedia / Ellen Lindner

Research and development (R&D) is the series of activities that companies undertake to innovate. R&D is often the first stage in the development process that results in market research product development, and product testing.

Key Takeaways

• Research and development represents the activities companies undertake to innovate and introduce new products and services or to improve their existing offerings.
• R&D allows a company to stay ahead of its competition by catering to new wants or needs in the market.
• Companies in different sectors and industries conduct R&D—pharmaceuticals, semiconductors, and technology companies generally spend the most.
• R&D is often a broad approach to exploratory advancement, while applied research is more geared towards researching a more narrow scope.
• The accounting for treatment for R&D costs can materially impact a company's income statement and balance sheet.

Understanding Research and Development (R&D)

The concept of research and development is widely linked to innovation both in the corporate and government sectors. R&D allows a company to stay ahead of its competition. Without an R&D program, a company may not survive on its own and may have to rely on other ways to innovate such as engaging in mergers and acquisitions (M&A) or partnerships. Through R&D, companies can design new products and improve their existing offerings.

R&D is distinct from most operational activities performed by a corporation. The research and/or development is typically not performed with the expectation of immediate profit. Instead, it is expected to contribute to the long-term profitability of a company. R&D may often allow companies to secure intellectual property, including patents , copyrights, and trademarks as discoveries are made and products created.

Companies that set up and employ departments dedicated entirely to R&D commit substantial capital to the effort. They must estimate the risk-adjusted return on their R&D expenditures, which inevitably involves risk of capital. That's because there is no immediate payoff, and the return on investment (ROI) is uncertain. As more money is invested in R&D, the level of capital risk increases. Other companies may choose to outsource their R&D for a variety of reasons including size and cost.

Companies across all sectors and industries undergo R&D activities. Corporations experience growth through these improvements and the development of new goods and services. Pharmaceuticals, semiconductors , and software/technology companies tend to spend the most on R&D. In Europe, R&D is known as research and technical or technological development.

Many small and mid-sized businesses may choose to outsource their R&D efforts because they don't have the right staff in-house to meet their needs.

Types of Research and Development (R&D)

There are several different types of R&D that exist in the corporate world and within government. The type used depends entirely on the entity undertaking it and the results can differ.

Basic Research

There are business incubators and accelerators, where corporations invest in startups and provide funding assistance and guidance to entrepreneurs in the hope that innovations will result that they can use to their benefit.

M&As and partnerships are also forms of R&D as companies join forces to take advantage of other companies' institutional knowledge and talent.

Applied Research

One R&D model is a department staffed primarily by engineers who develop new products —a task that typically involves extensive research. There is no specific goal or application in mind with this model. Instead, the research is done for the sake of research.

Development Research

This model involves a department composed of industrial scientists or researchers, all of who are tasked with applied research in technical, scientific, or industrial fields. This model facilitates the development of future products or the improvement of current products and/or operating procedures.

The largest companies may also be the ones that drive the most R&D spend. For example, Amazon has reported $1.147 billion of research and development value on its 2023 annual report.

Advantages and Disadvantages of R&D

There are several key benefits to research and development. It facilitates innovation, allowing companies to improve existing products and services or by letting them develop new ones to bring to the market.

Because R&D also is a key component of innovation, it requires a greater degree of skill from employees who take part. This allows companies to expand their talent pool, which often comes with special skill sets.

The advantages go beyond corporations. Consumers stand to benefit from R&D because it gives them better, high-quality products and services as well as a wider range of options. Corporations can, therefore, rely on consumers to remain loyal to their brands. It also helps drive productivity and economic growth.

Disadvantages

One of the major drawbacks to R&D is the cost. First, there is the financial expense as it requires a significant investment of cash upfront. This can include setting up a separate R&D department, hiring talent, and product and service testing, among others.

Innovation doesn't happen overnight so there is also a time factor to consider. This means that it takes a lot of time to bring products and services to market from conception to production to delivery.

Because it does take time to go from concept to product, companies stand the risk of being at the mercy of changing market trends . So what they thought may be a great seller at one time may reach the market too late and not fly off the shelves once it's ready.

Facilitates innovation

Improved or new products and services

Expands knowledge and talent pool

Increased consumer choice and brand loyalty

Economic driver

Financial investment

Shifting market trends

R&D Accounting

R&D may be beneficial to a company's bottom line, but it is considered an expense . After all, companies spend substantial amounts on research and trying to develop new products and services. As such, these expenses are often reported for accounting purposes on the income statement and do not carry long-term value.

There are certain situations where R&D costs are capitalized and reported on the balance sheet. Some examples include but are not limited to:

• Materials, fixed assets, or other assets have alternative future uses with an estimable value and useful life.
• Software that can be converted or applied elsewhere in the company to have a useful life beyond a specific single R&D project.
• Indirect costs or overhead expenses allocated between projects.
• R&D purchased from a third party that is accompanied by intangible value. That intangible asset may be recorded as a separate balance sheet asset.

R&D Considerations

Before taking on the task of research and development, it's important for companies and governments to consider some of the key factors associated with it. Some of the most notable considerations are:

• Objectives and Outcome: One of the most important factors to consider is the intended goals of the R&D project. Is it to innovate and fill a need for certain products that aren't being sold? Or is it to make improvements on existing ones? Whatever the reason, it's always important to note that there should be some flexibility as things can change over time.
• Timing: R&D requires a lot of time. This involves reviewing the market to see where there may be a lack of certain products and services or finding ways to improve on those that are already on the shelves.
• Cost: R&D costs a great deal of money, especially when it comes to the upfront costs. And there may be higher costs associated with the conception and production of new products rather than updating existing ones.
• Risks: As with any venture, R&D does come with risks. R&D doesn't come with any guarantees, no matter the time and money that goes into it. This means that companies and governments may sacrifice their ROI if the end product isn't successful.

Research and Development vs. Applied Research

Basic research is aimed at a fuller, more complete understanding of the fundamental aspects of a concept or phenomenon. This understanding is generally the first step in R&D. These activities provide a basis of information without directed applications toward products, policies, or operational processes .

Applied research entails the activities used to gain knowledge with a specific goal in mind. The activities may be to determine and develop new products, policies, or operational processes. While basic research is time-consuming, applied research is painstaking and more costly because of its detailed and complex nature.

R&D Tax Credits

The IRS offers a R&D tax credit to encourage innovation and significantly reduction their tax liability. The credit calls for specific types of spend such as product development, process improvement, and software creation.

Enacted under Section 41 of the Internal Revenue Code, this credit encourages innovation by providing a dollar-for-dollar reduction in tax obligations. The eligibility criteria, expanded by the Protecting Americans from Tax Hikes (PATH) Act of 2015, now encompass a broader spectrum of businesses. The credit tens to benefit small-to-midsize enterprises.

To claim R&D tax credits, businesses must document their qualifying expenses and complete IRS Form 6765 (Credit for Increasing Research Activities). The credit, typically ranging from 6% to 8% of annual qualifying expenses, offers businesses a direct offset against federal income tax liabilities. Additionally, businesses can claim up to $250,000 per year against their payroll taxes.

Example of Research and Development (R&D)

One of the more innovative companies of this millennium is Apple Inc. As part of its annual reporting, it has the following to say about its research and development spend:

In 2023, Apple reported having spent $29.915 billion. This is 8% of their annual total net sales. Note that Apple's R&D spend was reported to be higher than the company's selling, general and administrative costs (of $24.932 billion).

Note that the company doesn't go into length about what exactly the R&D spend is for. According to the notes, the company's year-over-year growth was "driven primarily by increases in headcount-related expenses". However, this does not explain the underlying basis carried from prior years (i.e. materials, patents, etc.).

Research and development refers to the systematic process of investigating, experimenting, and innovating to create new products, processes, or technologies. It encompasses activities such as scientific research, technological development, and experimentation conducted to achieve specific objectives to bring new items to market.

What Types of Activities Can Be Found in Research and Development?

Research and development activities focus on the innovation of new products or services in a company. Among the primary purposes of R&D activities is for a company to remain competitive as it produces products that advance and elevate its current product line. Since R&D typically operates on a longer-term horizon, its activities are not anticipated to generate immediate returns. However, in time, R&D projects may lead to patents, trademarks, or breakthrough discoveries with lasting benefits to the company. 

Why Is Research and Development Important?

Given the rapid rate of technological advancement, R&D is important for companies to stay competitive. Specifically, R&D allows companies to create products that are difficult for their competitors to replicate. Meanwhile, R&D efforts can lead to improved productivity that helps increase margins, further creating an edge in outpacing competitors. From a broader perspective, R&D can allow a company to stay ahead of the curve, anticipating customer demands or trends.

There are many things companies can do in order to advance in their industries and the overall market. Research and development is just one way they can set themselves apart from their competition. It opens up the potential for innovation and increasing sales. However, it does come with some drawbacks—the most obvious being the financial cost and the time it takes to innovate.

Amazon. " 2023 Annual Report ."

Internal Revenue Service. " Research Credit ."

Internal Revenue Service. " About Form 6765, Credit for Increasing Research Activities ."

Apple. " 2023 Annual Report ."

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research and development , in industry , two intimately related processes by which new products and new forms of old products are brought into being through technological innovation .

Research and development, a phrase unheard of in the early part of the 20th century, has since become a universal watchword in industrialized nations. The concept of research is as old as science; the concept of the intimate relationship between research and subsequent development, however, was not generally recognized until the 1950s. Research and development is the beginning of most systems of industrial production. The innovations that result in new products and new processes usually have their roots in research and have followed a path from laboratory idea, through pilot or prototype production and manufacturing start-up, to full-scale production and market introduction. The foundation of any innovation is an invention . Indeed, an innovation might be defined as the application of an invention to a significant market need. Inventions come from research—careful, focused, sustained inquiry, frequently trial and error. Research can be either basic or applied, a distinction that was established in the first half of the 20th century.

Basic research is defined as the work of scientists and others who pursue their investigations without conscious goals, other than the desire to unravel the secrets of nature. In modern programs of industrial research and development, basic research (sometimes called pure research) is usually not entirely “pure”; it is commonly directed toward a generalized goal, such as the investigation of a frontier of technology that promises to address the problems of a given industry. An example of this is the research being done on gene splicing or cloning in pharmaceutical company laboratories.

Applied research carries the findings of basic research to a point where they can be exploited to meet a specific need, while the development stage of research and development includes the steps necessary to bring a new or modified product or process into production. In Europe , the United States , and Japan the unified concept of research and development has been an integral part of economic planning , both by government and by private industry.

The first organized attempt to harness scientific skill to communal needs took place in the 1790s, when the young revolutionary government in France was defending itself against most of the rest of Europe. The results were remarkable. Explosive shells, the semaphore telegraph, the captive observation balloon, and the first method of making gunpowder with consistent properties all were developed during this period.

The lesson was not learned permanently, however, and another half century was to pass before industry started to call on the services of scientists to any serious extent. At first the scientists consisted of only a few gifted individuals. Robert W. Bunsen, in Germany, advised on the design of blast furnaces. William H. Perkin, in England, showed how dyes could be synthesized in the laboratory and then in the factory. William Thomson (Lord Kelvin), in Scotland, supervised the manufacture of telecommunication cables. In the United States, Leo H. Baekeland, a Belgian, produced Bakelite, the first of the plastics. There were inventors, too, such as John B. Dunlop, Samuel Morse, and Alexander Graham Bell , who owed their success more to intuition , skill, and commercial acumen than to scientific understanding.

While industry in the United States and most of western Europe was still feeding on the ideas of isolated individuals, in Germany a carefully planned effort was being mounted to exploit the opportunities that scientific advances made possible. Siemens, Krupp, Zeiss, and others were establishing laboratories and, as early as 1900, employed several hundred people on scientific research. In 1870 the Physicalische Technische Reichsanstalt (Imperial Institute of Physics and Technology) was set up to establish common standards of measurement throughout German industry. It was followed by the Kaiser Wilhelm Gesellschaft (later renamed the Max Planck Society for the Advancement of Science), which provided facilities for scientific cooperation between companies.

In the United States, the Cambria Iron Company set up a small laboratory in 1867, as did the Pennsylvania Railroad in 1875. The first case of a laboratory that spent a significant part of its parent company’s revenues was that of the Edison Electric Light Company, which employed a staff of 20 in 1878. The U.S. National Bureau of Standards was established in 1901, 31 years after its German counterpart, and it was not until the years immediately preceding World War I that the major American companies started to take research seriously. It was in this period that General Electric , Du Pont, American Telephone & Telegraph, Westinghouse, Eastman Kodak, and Standard Oil set up laboratories for the first time.

Except for Germany, progress in Europe was even slower. When the National Physical Laboratory was founded in England in 1900, there was considerable public comment on the danger to Britain’s economic position of German dominance in industrial research, but there was little action. Even in France, which had an outstanding record in pure science , industrial penetration was negligible.

World War I produced a dramatic change. Attempts at rapid expansion of the arms industry in the belligerent as well as in most of the neutral countries exposed weaknesses in technology as well as in organization and brought an immediate appreciation of the need for more scientific support. The Department of Scientific and Industrial Research in the United Kingdom was founded in 1915, and the National Research Council in the United States in 1916. These bodies were given the task of stimulating and coordinating the scientific support to the war effort, and one of their most important long-term achievements was to convince industrialists, in their own countries and in others, that adequate and properly conducted research and development were essential to success.

At the end of the war the larger companies in all the industrialized countries embarked on ambitious plans to establish laboratories of their own; and, in spite of the inevitable confusion in the control of activities that were novel to most of the participants, there followed a decade of remarkable technical progress. The automobile, the airplane, the radio receiver, the long-distance telephone, and many other inventions developed from temperamental toys into reliable and efficient mechanisms in this period. The widespread improvement in industrial efficiency produced by this first major injection of scientific effort went far to offset the deteriorating financial and economic situation.

The economic pressures on industry created by the Great Depression reached crisis levels by the early 1930s, and the major companies started to seek savings in their research and development expenditure. It was not until World War II that the level of effort in the United States and Britain returned to that of 1930. Over much of the European continent the depression had the same effect, and in many countries the course of the war prevented recovery after 1939. In Germany Nazi ideology tended to be hostile to basic scientific research, and effort was concentrated on short-term work.

The picture at the end of World War II provided sharp contrasts. In large parts of Europe industry had been devastated, but the United States was immensely stronger than ever before. At the same time the brilliant achievements of the men who had produced radar, the atomic bomb , and the V-2 rocket had created a public awareness of the potential value of research that ensured it a major place in postwar plans. The only limit was set by the shortage of trained persons and the demands of academic and other forms of work.

Since 1945 the number of trained engineers and scientists in most industrial countries has increased each year. The U.S. effort has stressed aircraft, defense, space, electronics , and computers. Indirectly, U.S. industry in general has benefited from this work, a situation that compensates in part for the fact that in specifically nonmilitary areas the number of persons employed in the United States is lower in relation to population than in a number of other countries.

Outside the air, space, and defense fields the amount of effort in different industries follows much the same pattern in different countries, a fact made necessary by the demands of international competition. (An exception was the former Soviet Union , which devoted less R and D resources to nonmilitary programs than most other industrialized nations.) An important point is that countries like Japan, which have no significant aircraft or military space industries, have substantially more manpower available for use in the other sectors. The preeminence of Japan in consumer electronics, cameras, and motorcycles and its strong position in the world automobile market attest to the success of its efforts in product innovation and development.

Journal of Engineering Research and Development

About the journal.

Journal of Engineering Research and Development is a peer-reviewed scholarly publication dedicated to fostering and disseminating high-quality research in various engineering disciplines. This journal provides a platform for researchers, engineers, and academics to contribute to the advancement of knowledge in fields such as civil engineering, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, and more. As an open-access journal, it emphasizes accessibility and inclusivity, providing a global audience with insights into the latest developments in engineering. Through the publication of original research articles, reviews, and case studies, the Journal of Engineering Research and Development seeks to facilitate knowledge exchange, foster collaboration among researchers, and contribute to the ongoing progress and innovation within the diverse realms of engineering.

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The effect of hydrogen flow into natural gas pipeline at bifurcation point, development of remote control light dimmer based on microcontroller, design and construction of computer based biometrics staff attendance register, information.

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Through Henderson Research, we empower our employees to commission fully-funded, proprietary research projects on behalf of our firm. Led by our own engineers, these research efforts seek to answer the “why” and challenge the “how” of engineering design in an effort to continuously improve solutions within the built environment. Henderson funds these research initiatives as one of the many ways we purposely strive to drive the industry forward. Henderson Research is just one way we are working to find sustainable solutions for our clients that set us apart from our competition, and also provide real—world results to truly impact the engineering world.

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LED ARENA LIGHTING

Lighting is paramount to staging a successful event – both for broadcast and live spectating. With so many manufacturers rushing to provide new technology, it’s important to separate the players from the pretenders. This study ran light fixtures from 12 different manufacturers through their paces to provide a snapshot of the current lighting landscape for sports structures.

HOISTWAY PRESSURIZATION

Recent code changes to the requirements of hoistway pressurization for elevators in high-rise buildings has provided an immense challenge to designers, contractors, and authorities having jurisdiction. Using a combination of empirical research and modeling using multiple software packages, this study help develop best practices for how to mitigate risks and provide a compliant design.

STAIR PRESSURIZATION

A counterpart to Hoistway Pressurization , this study seeks to identify best practices for pressurizing stairwells during a life-safety event.

LOCKER ROOM EXHAUST

Through a study of humidity levels and contaminants, we sought to identify best practices for removing space air to limit issues caused by saturated air and odors. This applies to lockers of all shapes and sizes, ranging from small shower and changing facilities for offices and schools to professional locker rooms.

BIG BOX INFILITRATION STUDIES

Large retailers often develop supercenters that combine dry goods with grocery. The unique nature of exhaust, ventilation air, and multiple entries creates challenges with the infiltration of raw outdoor air. This study sought to identify areas of mass infiltration to be able to develop alternative approaches to controlling this undesirable air at store entries.

GYMNASIUM HUMIDITY STUDY

Gymnasium flooring systems can be stressed by the combination of intermittent use, new-growth maple flooring, and large volumes of raw, often humid outdoor air. This study sampled a wide variety of gymnasiums and looked for patterns of humidity spikes that can adversely impact wood floors. The results of this study are expected to be completed in late 2017.

WATER RECLAMATION

A public-private partnership was struck between Henderson Engineers, the University of Kansas, and one of the nation’s largest supermarket chains to better understand opportunities around water. What this study found was not what we expected, so further research is now underway. We are now looking to beta test water reclamation skids and seeking code changes to further facilitate its adoption.

CRYOGENIC MEDICAL GAS

Hospitals and other healthcare facilities have two options for medical gas—liquid or compressed. Due to the expansion of liquid to gas and the required pressure relief in oxygen systems, low use can cause the system to be wasteful. This study researched at what point is it cost effective to make the switch.

ONGOING COMMISSIONING

This study is researching the right rules and algorithms needed to successfully monitor and control building systems to maintain their optimized state. The project is still ongoing and expected to be completed in 2019.

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Yuri M. Tairov’s research while affiliated with Petersburg State Electrotechnical University and other places

What is this page, publications (6).

3 Citations

Materials Science Forum

In the present theoretical study the attempt was undertaken to estimate chemical bonding and lattice distortions caused by the vanadium impurity in silicon carbide. The calculation is based on the cluster Xα-DV and tight-binding theory within Harrison bonding orbital methods. Results on vanadium are compared with Ti and Ni 3d-impurties. It is found that vanadium atoms can substitute both Si and C and have a local magnetic moment, while Ti and Ni atoms are in the nonmagnetic state.

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January 2001

4 Citations

The problems of obtaining of insulating properties in the bulk single-crystal silicon carbide by vanadium and aluminium doping under the LETI method growth process are considered. It was defined that the solubility limit of vanadium in SiC makes 1019 cm-3. The resistivity of obtained SiC:V, Al material exceeds 107 Ohm·cm at 20°C. It can be applied as a semi-insulating substrate material for extreme electronics based on silicon carbide or nitrides. The grown crystals exhibit visual spectrum photoconductivity with long-time relaxation.

SiC wafers are used as substrates for III-V nitrides growth. 6H- and 4H-SiC boules were grown by the Modified Lely method elaborated at the St.-Petersburg Electrotechnical University. Formation of stress and misoriented areas in SiC crystals has been investigated. The chloride-transport process was employed for the growth of AlN on SiC substrates using an open (p = 1 atm) horizontal silica multichannel reactor. High-perfect single crystalline AlN layers were deposited at the growth temperatures above 1150 C and growth rate about 0.1....0.5 μm/min. Single crystalline layers of AlN on large SiC substrates with misoriented areas have been successfully obtained.

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February 1998

2 Citations

Cathodoluminescence (surface mapping and spectroscopy), IR absorption/reflection spectroscopy, CV-characteristics, X-ray topography and optical microscopy have been employed for investigations of the 6H-SiC crystals grown by sublimation method and results of the investigations are compared. Measurement of the IR absorption could be employed as an express method of the evaluation of Nd-Na values in SiC samples with Nd-Na lower than 1018 cm-3.

14 Citations

Materials Science and Engineering B

The extended manufacturing of devices on the base of silicon carbide consumes big quantity of SiC substrates. Such tendency of development requires greater productivity of silicon carbide ingots growth. One solution to this problem can be an increase in the growth rate of SiC monocrystals. The maximum growth rate is 3.5 mm h−1. At the growth rate more than this value the crystals of silicon carbide were obtained with blocks and contained many inclusions. Ingots SiC of 4H and 6H polytypes with diameter up to 20 mm and length of 20 mm are obtained. It is necessary to note, that at growth on the plane (0001) C in 90% of cases polytype of the grown crystal was 4H, independently of substrate polytype. In the case of use for growth of the surface (0001) Si polytype of the ingot was 6H. Grown silicon carbide monocrystals had the following characteristics: the donor's concentration was 5 × 1017 cm−3; the micropipes density was from 100 to 1000 cm−2.

Citations (2)

... In the S 2 , the N atom radius is 0.075 nm, which is very close to the Si atom radius (0.091 nm), as the mass of atom is, and the binding energy of N on the site of C of SiC lattice is smaller (1.93 eV) [12]. It is possible that the N atom can substitute the C site on the SiC lattice in the diffusion process, and the resultant solid solution of N/SiC increase the carrier concentration of hole, which makes the band at 969 cm −1 weaker and shift to higher wavenumber (970 cm −1 ) .css-1xv2a6q{white-space:nowrap;background:var(--sn-colors-yellow-300);-webkit-padding-start:var(--sn-space-1);padding-inline-start:var(--sn-space-1);-webkit-padding-end:var(--sn-space-1);padding-inline-end:var(--sn-space-1);padding-top:var(--sn-space-1);padding-bottom:var(--sn-space-1);} [13] . The weakness and high shift of LO band indicates more carriers via LO-phonon-plasmon-coupled mode (LOPC mode) analysis [14−15]. ... .css-2o6hea{border-width:0;-webkit-align-self:stretch;-ms-flex-item-align:stretch;align-self:stretch;border-color:inherit;width:auto;height:auto;}.css-2o6hea{margin-top:0.5rem;margin-bottom:0.5rem;-webkit-margin-start:0px;margin-inline-start:0px;-webkit-margin-end:0px;margin-inline-end:0px;border-left-width:0;border-bottom-width:1px;} .css-g2amye{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;gap:var(--sn-space-2xs);} .css-1lqm3o8{font-size:12px;line-height:16px;} Reference: .css-luw466{transition-property:var(--sn-transition-property-common);transition-duration:var(--sn-transition-duration-fast);transition-timing-function:var(--sn-transition-easing-ease-out);cursor:pointer;outline:2px solid transparent;outline-offset:2px;color:inherit;font-size:12px;line-height:16px;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;overflow:hidden;text-overflow:ellipsis;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:var(--chakra-line-clamp);--chakra-line-clamp:1;word-break:break-word;}.css-luw466:hover,.css-luw466[data-hover]{-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;}.css-luw466:focus-visible,.css-luw466[data-focus-visible]{box-shadow:var(--sn-shadows-outline);} Dielectric properties of doped silicon carbide powder by thermal diffusion

• Citing Article

... The purity, grain size and solidification density of SiC source material exert significant effects to the quality of PVT-grown 4H-SiC single crystals [57][58][59] [60] [61][62]. It is well established that enlarging the grain size of SiC powder can positively increase the C/Si ratio during the PVT growth processes [59,63], and increasing the density of SiC powder promotes the stability of long-duration PVT growth periods [64,65]. ... Reference: In-situ and ex-situ characterizations of PVT-grown 4H-SiC single crystals