Dr. Anastasia Schauer is an Assistant Professor in the Walker Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin. She previously received her Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology as a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow, and she also holds an M.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Georgia Tech and a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Cincinnati. Dr. Schauer’s research program specializes in the development and validation of tools to aid designers in producing innovative, high-quality, and equitable design outcomes. A current focus of the Design Understanding, Cognition, and Knowledge (DUCK) Lab is the study of how designers interface with technology such as virtual reality and generative artificial intelligence to result in better designs for humanitarian engineering projects and beyond.