Behind the Research: Carolyn Fu | Newsroom
Before entering academia, Assistant Professor Carolyn Fu spent seven years as an engineer in Singapore, where questions about how complex systems work together led her to study innovation strategy. Today, she looks to the arts for insights into how organizations can bring together different ideas and expertise to innovate. We asked Fu about her research, background in the arts, and what she likes to do in her (nonexistent) free time. Featuring Carolyn J. Fu. By Shona Simkin on October 16, 2026 I study innovation strategy. I was an engineer for seven years in Singapore, and my last role was in national security and critical infrastructure—services like water, power, security, transport that keep society up and running. Our project was to coordinate them into a massive model to better understand how they interact—if there’s a disaster in one sector, how it affects others—like if a powerplant goes down and airports shut down as a result. It was a massive project. I discovered that everyon