(1) A detailed study of cost in the (building) construction industry. (a) What are the components of cost? What is their relative size? Labor, land, materials,

(1) A detailed study of cost in the (building) construction industry. (a) What are the components of cost? What is their relative size? Labor, land, materials, permitting, architecture/engineering, regulatory compliance, (b) The housing value chain. Parties involved, who's adding the most value/earning the highest markups. How the cost of commodities (wood, steel) compares to the final, built value of a structure. (c) Why it costs more to build in some places than others (materials availability? labor)? (d) The true cost and benefits of various types of regulations, e.g. SF's Affordable Housing Bonus Density Program, various types of zoning ordinances, height limits. Quantifying the cost of regulatory uncertainty in extending project lifetimes. The extent to which a regulatory/uncertainty premium influences investment behavior. (2) Effects of technology on mental health. I've been happier since giving up facebook and I wonder the extent to which this is a placebo, or something more widespread and generalizable. (3) Computer security. A study of what actually causes breaches, data theft/loss, and other high-impact disasters/outages and how we can fix it, with detailed cost metrics. Things like "employee malfeasance", "unpatched software", "configuration error", etc. As a sysadmin, I'd like to know "what are the 5 top causes of breaches" and "what is the highest ROI investment I can make in software/procedure/etc. to keep my large-scale computer system safe/confidential" (I wanted to do this one in grad school but never got around to it) (4) A true study of the early-stage ecosystem. Kind of meta, but I'm tired of people making vague hand-wavey generalizations like "99% of companies fail". How much return do venture funds actually earn? What are their biggest economic drivers? How do VC returns as a whole correlate with other benchmarks like the S&P 500? If anyone wants to discuss these further my email is in my sig. I used to be a researcher and think of questions like these all the time when walking the streets of SF ;)