DESIGN THEORY AND METHODOLOGY

Astrid Layton

Dr. Astrid Layton is an assistant professor and Donna Walker Faculty Fellow at Texas A&M University in the J. Mike Walker ’66 Department of Mechanical Engineering. She received her Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, Georgia. She was elected to serve as member and chair of ASME’s Design Theory and Methodology technical committee. She is also a guest editor for IEEE’s Open Journal of Systems Engineering. She is the recipient of several awards, including a 2021 ASME International Design Engineering Technical Conferences and Computers & Information in Engineering (IDETC-CIE) best paper award. Dr. Layton research focuses on bio-inspired systems design, using biological ecosystems as inspiration for achieving sustainability and resilience in the design of complex human networks/systems/systems of systems.

Jessica Menold

Jessica Menold is an Assistant Professor in the School of Engineering Design and Innovation and the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Penn State. She is the director of the Technology and Human Research in Engineering Design lab and conducts research at the intersection of engineering design, manufacturing, and new product development. Her current work focuses on improving the efficiency and effectiveness of new product development processes, integrating design thinking into engineering education, identifying the factors that contribute to or detract from the success of high-tech startups, and Design for Inspection in advanced manufacturing environments. Her work is dedicated to improving the design of engineered products and systems through evidence-based design methods, rapid prototyping, and performance analysis. Her work is supported by the United States National Science Foundation and the United States Air Force Office of Scientific Research. Dr. Menold is also the Associate Director for Outreach and Inclusion at the Bernard M. Gordon Learning Factory, Penn State’s Makerspace.

Christine Toh

Christine Toh is an Assistant Professor in IT Innovation in the School of Interdisciplinary Informatics at the University of Nebraska Omaha. She obtained her PhD in Industrial Engineering at the Pennsylvania State University. Her research focuses on studying human decision-making and the antecedents of creativity in design, and developing an understanding of the larger context of creativity and innovation in engineering and design. Christine teaches classes in IT Innovation, Design, and Human-Centered Computing. Her research to date has spanned topics such as individual attributes and biases in team decision-making, perceptions and preferences for creativity during concept selection, and the visual representation of design artifacts in virtual engineering learning paradigms. Her current research interests include new technology-enabled information platforms for design, design creativity in technology startup environments, and the nature of relationships between humans and machines.

Kate Fu

Dr. Kate Fu is an Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering at University of Wisconsin-Madison. From 2014 to 2021, she was an Assistant and Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology. Prior to these appointments, she was a Postdoctoral Fellow at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD). In May 2012, she completed her Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. She received her M.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Carnegie Mellon in 2009, and her B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Brown University in 2007. Dr. Fu is an NSF CAREER awardee and a recipient of the ASME Design Engineering Division (DED) Design Theory and Methodology (DTM) Young Investigator Award.

Mark Fuge

Mark Fuge is an Associated Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Maryland, College Park, where he is also an affiliate faculty in the Institute for Systems Research and a member of the Maryland Robotics Center and Human-Computer Interaction Lab. His staff and students study fundamental scientific and mathematical questions behind how humans and computers can work together to design better complex engineered systems, from the molecular scale all the way to systems as large as aircraft and ships, by using tools from Applied Mathematics and Computer Science. He received his Ph.D. from UC Berkeley and his B.S./M.S. from Carnegie Mellon University. He has received an NSF CAREER award, a DARPA Young Faculty Award, a National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate (NDSEG) Fellowship, and has prior/current support from NSF, NIH, DARPA, ARPA-E, ONR, and Lockheed Martin.

Christopher McComb

Christopher McComb is an Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. He received dual B.S. degrees in Civil and Mechanical Engineering from California State University-Fresno in 2012. Later he attended Carnegie Mellon University as a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow and obtained his M.S. and Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering in 2014 and 2016, respectively. His research expertise is in design computation, with specific focuses on machine learning for engineering design, agent-based modeling of human systems, and human-AI collaboration. Application areas include design for additive manufacturing, marine energy devices, and drone delivery systems.

Conrad Tucker

Dr. Conrad Tucker is an Arthur Hamerschlag Career Development Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Machine Learning (Courtesy), and Robotics (Courtesy) at Carnegie Mellon University. His research focuses on the design and optimization of systems through the acquisition, integration and mining of large scale, disparate data. Dr. Tucker has served as PI/Co-PI on federally/non-federally funded grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR), the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the Army Research Laboratory (ARL), the Office of Naval Research (ONR) via the NSF Center for eDesign, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF). In February 2016, he was invited by National Academy of Engineering (NAE) President Dr. Dan Mote, to serve as a member of the Advisory Committee for the NAE Frontiers of Engineering Education (FOEE) Symposium. He received his Ph.D., M.S. (Industrial Engineering), and MBA degrees from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology.

Eun Suk Suh

Dr. Eun Suk Suh is an Associate Professor in the Graduate School of Engineering Practice at Seoul National University, Korea. He completed his Ph.D. in Engineering Systems from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2005, an M.Eng. in Mechanical Engineering from Cornell University in 1995, and B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Clarkson University in 1994. His research interests include system architecture design, design for system properties, product design, and technology infusion analysis. Dr. Suh’s previous professional experiences includes chassis design engineering at Hyundai Motor Company and system architecture research and development at Xerox Corporation. He has several international patents and peer reviewed journal publications in the area of printing system design, technology infusion and product platform development.

Tahira Reid Smith

Tahira Reid Smith is an Associate Professor in the School of Mechanical Engineering at Purdue University and is the director of the Research in Engineering and Interdisciplinary Design (REID) Laboratory. Her research interests include quantifying and integrating human-centered considerations in the design process and human-machine systems. Her research program has received funding from the National Science Foundation, Air Force Office of Scientific Research, Procter & Gamble, General Motors, Ford Motor Company, and other sources. Prior to arriving to Purdue in 2012, she completed a postdoctoral position in the Mechanical Engineering Department at Iowa State University. In 2010, she received her PhD from the University of Michigan in Design Science, with Mechanical Engineering and Psychology as her focus areas. Dr. Reid Smith received both her BS and MS degrees in Mechanical Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) in 2000 and 2004, respectively.

Julie Linsey

Julie Linsey is an Associate Professor at Georgia Tech and the director of the Innovation, Design Reasoning, Engineering Education and Methods Lab.

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Areas: DESIGN THEORY AND METHODOLOGY