Erica Fuchs

Erica R.H. Fuchs is a Professor in the Department of Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University, and by courtesy in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering and the Heinz College of Information Systems and Public Policy. She is also a Research Associate with the National Bureau of Economic Research. Dr. Fuchs’ research focuses on the development, commercialization and global manufacturing of emerging technologies, and national policy in that context.

Dr. Fuchs is passionate about building nationally the intellectual foundations, data, and analytic tools to inform National Technology Strategy across government missions. Toward realizing this vision, Dr. Fuchs catalyzed and is currently Director of the one-year $4M pilot National Network for Critical Technology Assessment funded by NSF’s Technology, Innovation and Partnerships Office, and involving academic thought-leaders from more than 13 Tier I research universities across the country; and founding Director of Carnegie Mellon’s Critical Technology Strategy Initiative – an initiative spanning Carnegie Mellon’s schools of engineering, computer science, and the Heinz College of Information Systems and Public Policy. Dr. Fuchs was previously founding Faculty Director of Carnegie Mellon University’s Manufacturing Futures Initiative – an initiative across six schools aimed to revolutionize the commercialization and local production of advanced manufactured products, which today is an endowed institute.

Over the past two decades, Dr. Fuchs has played a growing role in national and international meetings on critical technology policy, particularly as it relates to advanced manufactured products, including co-chairing the National Academies Committee on U.S. Science and Innovation Leadership in the 21st Century, serving on the expert group that supported the White House in the 2016 Innovation Dialogue between the U.S. and China, and being one of 23 participants in the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology workshop that led to the creation of the Advanced Manufacturing Partnership. Dr. Fuchs has most recently been appointed by President Biden to the White House Advisory Committee for Trade Policy and Negotiations. Dr. Fuchs serves and has served on a variety of visiting committees and advisory boards, including currently serves on M.I.T. Corporation’s Visiting Committee for M.I.T.’s Institute for Data, Systems, and Society, of which M.I.T.’s Technology Policy Program is a part; and on the Advisory Editorial Board for Research Policy. Dr. Fuchs completed her Ph.D. in Engineering Systems (2006), her Masters in Technology Policy (2003), and her Bachelors in Materials Science and Engineering (1999), all from M.I.T. She spent 1999-2000 as a fellow at the United Nations in Beijing, China. Dr. Fuchs grew up and attended K-12 in the Reading Public School District in Reading, PA. Her work has been published among other places in Science, the Nature journals, Research Policy, Industrial and Corporate Change, and Management Science. She has testified in Congressional hearings in both the House and Senate and had her work covered, among other places, by National Public Radio, Bloomberg, and the New York Times.