Abstract: Many people believe that we’ve run out of ideas and that the future will be one of bleak shortages of food, energy, and water. This couldn’t be further from the reality. Technology is now advancing so rapidly that it has become possible to solve the problems that have long plagued humanity. Entrepreneurs can now do what only governments and big research labs could do before in solving these—and they can wipe out entire industries and create new trillion dollar opportunities.

Vivek Wadhwa will explain why the future doesn’t hold shortages and stagnation; it is more likely to be one in which we debate how we can distribute the abundance and prosperity that we’ve created. He will highlight some the innovations coming from as far away as India and show how we could be headed into the utopian future we saw on Star Trek. He will explain why he believes it is a beautiful time to be educated—and graduating from NCSU.

Short Bio: Vivek Wadhwa is a Fellow at Arthur & Toni Rembe Rock Center for Corporate Governance, Stanford University; Director of Research at the Center for Entrepreneurship and Research Commercialization at the Pratt School of Engineering, Duke University; and Distinguished Fellow at Singularity University. He is author of “The Immigrant Exodus: Why America Is Losing the Global Race to Capture Entrepreneurial Talent”—which was named by The Economist as a Book of the Year of 2012, and ”Innovating Women: The Changing Face of Technology”—which documents the struggles and triumphs of women. In 2012, the U.S. Government awarded Wadhwa distinguished recognition as an “Outstanding American by Choice”— for his “commitment to this country and to the common civic values that unite us as Americans”. He was also named by Foreign Policy Magazine as Top 100 Global Thinker in 2012. In 2013, TIME Magazine listed him as one of The 40 Most Influential Minds in Tech.

Wadhwa oversees research at Singularity University, which educates a select group of leaders about the exponentially advancing technologies that are soon going to change our world. These advances—in fields such as robotics, A.I., computing, synthetic biology, 3D printing, medicine, and nanomaterials—are making it possible for small teams to do what was once possible only for governments and large corporations to do: solve the grand challenges in education, water, food, shelter, health, and security.

In his roles at Stanford and Duke, Wadhwa lectures in class on subjects such as entrepreneurship and public policy, helps prepare students for the real world, and leads groundbreaking research projects. He is an advisor to several governments; mentors entrepreneurs; and is a regular columnist for The Washington Post, Wall Street Journal Accelerators, LinkedIn Influencers blog, Forbes, and the American Society of Engineering Education’s Prism magazine. Prior to joining academia in 2005, Wadhwa founded two software companies.