Co-PI on a NASA-funded project, Total Solar Eclipse 2024: Engaging Undergraduate Students at DePaul University through High-Altitude Ballooning and Makerspaces ($20,000). The work connected near-space payload design with makerspace pedagogy to give students a rigorous, build-driven pathway into aerospace instrumentation, flight readiness, and field operations…
As Johnson Professor and director of the Connolly Center, I’m building an experiential, design-forward entrepreneurship pathway: the Entrepreneurship (now Entrepreneurship & Design) minor, the student-run Connolly Entrepreneurship Society, the Entrepreneur-in-Residence program, recurring pitch/video competitions, and an annual Entrepreneurship Summit that connects students with alumni and…
A privacy-respecting reader that centers curation and calm workflows over engagement hacks. ourss emphasizes: pick your sources; read in batches; optionally share a digest with your team/class/community. It’s tooling for inquiry and reflection, not infinite scroll.
Lead on the THOTCON 0xD electronic badge: custom game hardware with a capacitive touch wheel, LCD, and real-time networking—designed, built, and shipped.
An Open Education Conversion project. PI on a VIVA Open Adopt Grant ($2,000) to adopt and assemble OER for Makers’ Workshop at Washington & Lee, cutting student cost to $0 while preserving high-fidelity, hands-on learning in both digital and physical prototyping. Deliverables include openly licensed…
Program Development The 1K Makerspace project was borne out of my work at Illinois PPE that explored a distributed fabrication model. In a continued exploration of what localized manufacturing could look like after the worst of the pandemic, I crowdfunded — and subsequently received corporate…
Study Abroad Trip My former colleague Heather Snyder-Quinn and I conceived this trip in 2020. Rewilding in Patagonia brought DePaul students to remote areas in southern Chile undergoing natural restoration through the removal of dams, fences, and reintroduction of plants and wildlife. Witnessing the effects…
Object Development At the behest of a team of oncologists at University of Chicago, I directed my student industrial design consulting team in the fabrication and re-design (in progress) of a sub-$200 microscope. In addition to conducting the design research and development phases of the…
Game Development This badge was done in collaboration with a student consulting group that I direct, as well as my friends Rudy Ristich and Rob Rehrer. As with previous iterations, we began by consulting the individuals who direct the event, then quickly moving from their…
Program Development I wrote the BFA Industrial Design program with my colleagues Nathan Matteson, Eric Landahl, and Theresa Steinbach. The program launched in 2021, and currently has approximately 30 enrolled students. In addition to traditional industrial design practices, students are exposed to embedded systems design,…