As far back as she can remember, Cathy Wu ’12, MNG ’13 wanted to find ways to solve problems to improve people’s lives. Her parents were Taiwanese immigrants, and her father had a long commute to his job, which took him away from the family. On a tight budget, the rest of the family often stayed home on a street that was too busy for playing outdoors. Wu and her siblings ended up playing a lot of computer games. Wu says her desire to make the world a better place, her dad’s daily battle against traffic, and the games she played, like “SimCity,” were the seeds of her motivation to design safe, efficient transportation systems. Wu is an associate professor in the MIT Department of Civil and En...