PIT scholarship, research, and innovation can place institutions at the forefront of emerging technologies that serve the public good. PIT research covers broad and interdisciplinary perspectives, from making technologies accessible, to understanding and designing ethics and policy approaches to ensure the justice and equity of the technologies produced. Technologies exist everywhere - in our homes, our workplaces, our cities, and of course in the devices we use to shape how we interact with the world around us. Emerging technologies include artificial intelligence, gene editing, smart cities, and other areas where stakes are high, outcomes are uncertain, and in which novelty is contested. Such areas warrant discussions to contextualize them with the public interest and public good in mind. The development of these technologies should also address societal challenges, being cognizant of their specific ethics, impacts, implications, and long-term social and political consequences.

Given the disciplinary breadth of PIT and its lack of identification with any one particular academic perspective (e.g., in contrast to public interest law), we identify three types of scholarship, research and innovation as being driven primarily by concerns from the scientific, technological, engineering, or mathematics (STEM) disciplines, as being driven primarily by concerns from the social scientific or humanistic disciplines, or as being intentionally designed as interdisciplinary.