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2025-12-17

Engineering Chance --- Planning for the Unplanned as a Modern Discovery Paradigm

Sailing He

Prof. Sailing He

Department of Electromagnetic Theory

Royal Institute of Technology

Sweden

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Progress In Electromagnetics Research, Vol. 184, 62-63, 2025

doi:10.2528/PIER25121604

Abstract

The history of science is filled with legendary ``happy accidents", from penicillin to the microwave oven. These breakthroughs are often attributed to luck. But Prof. Keisuke Goda (University of Tokyo) and his team argues in a recent paper in Progress In Electromagnetics Research (Vol. 184, 14--23, 2025: doi:10.2528/PIER25100702) [1], entitled ``Serendipity Engineering with Photonics: Harnessing the Unexpected in Biology and Medicine," that such accidental discoveries can be systematically cultivated. It introduces ``serendipity engineering" --- the intentional design of tools and research cultures to make unexpected, yet meaningful findings more likely.

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Sailing He, "Engineering Chance --- Planning for the Unplanned as a Modern Discovery Paradigm," Progress In Electromagnetics Research, Vol. 184, 62-63, 2025.
doi:10.2528/PIER25121604

References

1. Lee, Kelvin C. M., Walker Peterson, Fabio Lisi, Tianben Ding, Kotaro Nojima, Hiroshi Kanno, Yuqi Zhou, Hiroyuki Matsumura, Yasutaka Kitahama, Ming Li, Petra Paie, Cheng Lei, Tamiki Komatsuzaki, Masahiro Sonoshita, Dino Di Carlo, and Keisuke Goda, "Serendipity engineering with photonics: Harnessing the unexpected in biology and medicine (Invited Paper)," Progress In Electromagnetics Research, Vol. 184, 14-23, 2025.
doi:10.2528/PIER25100702

2. Cohen, N., "Fractal antenna applications in wireless telecommunications," Professional Program Proceedings. Electronic Industries Forum of New England, 43-49, Boston, MA, USA, 1997.
doi:10.1109/EIF.1997.605374