School of Engineering
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Forest Olaf Peterson, Ph.D.
Research Affiliate, Civil and Environmental Engineering
Staff, Civil and Environmental EngineeringBioAs a postdoctoral research affiliate, I bring both blue-collar and white-collar perspectives to my role as a scholar of infrastructure.
For seven years, I was a concrete laborer on large infrastructure projects with the Laborers’ International Union of North America. Those years taught me social and environmental dimensions from the ground up.
My fellow laborers wanted to work safely. However, though skilled, we often did not have the information to succeed without unnecessary hardship, for example, on a large highway project we could have worked on another task while a broken piece of equipment was repaired, however, neither the crew nor our supervisors had access to a task schedule to see that (there was a schedule, it was just permission that was missing -- though even with permission the schedule was your typical P6 Gantt which even at best wouldn't have been informative). As a result, our supervisors forced us to continue work loading miles of heavy concrete barriers with a damaged loader. Our choices were to work, quit, or be fired; we were not the operator of the loader, we were the ground crew [2023 Edit: we should have called our Union]. Eventually, a two-ton barrier dropped and hit something that flipped it over where it came to rest just inches above my chest. My fellow workers celebrated my life. One cried in memory of a recent work fatality. We were told to get back to work.
The futility of the situation has left a lasting impression.
www.researchgate.net/profile/Forest-Peterson
www.linkedin.com/in/forest-peterson -
Thomas Puschmann
Affiliate, Center for Sustainable Development and Global Competitiveness
Visiting Scholar, Center for Sustainable Development and Global CompetitivenessBioThomas Puschmann is Founder and Executive Director of the Global Center for Sustainable Digital Finance at Stanford University and the University of Zurich. In addition, he is Founder and Director of one of the first FinTech research labs worldwide, the Swiss FinTech Innovation Lab at the University of Zurich, Professor at the University of the Fraser Valley in Canada, Co-Founder of the Association Swiss FinTech Innovations, Co-Founder of the Swiss Green FinTech Network, Co-Founder of Extreme Tech Challenge Switzerland and Member of the Swiss Innovation Council Innosuisse.
Thomas serves as an advisor for many strategic national and international initiatives and is an advisory board member of various institutions to foster innovation and develop an innovation and start-up ecosystem. Before his current position he was heading one of the first digital financial services research projects at the Universities of St. Gallen and Leipzig and was a visiting scholar at MIT Sloan School of Management and Stanford University. Prior to this, Thomas spent five years in consulting and software development, where he was a member of the executive board at ESPRiT Consulting (now Q_Perior) and The Information Management Group.
Thomas holds a master's degree in information systems engineering and a PhD in business informatics engineering from the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland.
