By Eric Lindberg
As a young scholar in Taiwan, Shinyi Wu felt like she was being pulled in opposite directions.
Despite being drawn to the social sciences and efforts to improve societal well-being, she possessed a strong desire to pursue a career in the natural sciences and engineering. At that time, those interests led down separate and mutually exclusive paths in academia.
Wu eventually settled on industrial engineering, but she never lost her passion for devising ways to improve the health and well-being of vulnerable individuals from a wider perspective.
“All along, I kept an eye toward social sciences and how my engineering methodology could be applied to solve social problems,” she said.
Wu now has an opportunity to meld her two interests as the newest faculty member of the USC School of Social Work. The assistant professor, who transitioned from her previous post at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering earlier this year, said she is excited to tackle issues facing the U.S. health care system — chronic illness, population aging and the rising cost of care.
“Social work is the engineering equivalent of the social sciences,” Wu said. “I think we can use many of the things we learn in engineering to address social issues.”