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School NewsLau celebrates25 years at Penn StateAndrew Lau, associate professor of engineering design,associate director of the Center for Sustainability, and directorof engineering first-year seminars, reached 25 years of service inhis career at Penn State. On April 9, 2009, Lau was presentedwith a rocking chair and a plaque to recognize his tenure at theUniversity.Lau received his bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineeringfrom Penn State in 1977. After working as a design engineerfor five years in residential solar research and application,he went on to pursue a master’s degree, also in mechanicalengineering, from the Solar Energy Lab at the University ofWisconsin, Madison, in 1983.In January 1984, Lau returned to Penn State and beganworking as an associate professor in the Energy TechnologyProgram at Penn State Harrisburg. At Harrisburg, he served asprogram coordinator of Mechanical Engineering Technologyand helped form and direct the Honors Program. In 1999,Lau joined the School of Engineering Design, Technology,and Professional Programs at University Park as an associateprofessor of engineering design and as the director of theEngineering First-Year Seminars program for the College ofEngineering.During his time as a Penn State faculty member, Lau hastaught various engineering and engineering technologycourses, including those in engineering design, mechanicalengineering technology, and engineering first-year seminars.He has contributed to the College’s efforts to incorporate ethicsinto the curriculum, and in 2003 he received the GE TeachingExcellence Award for those efforts.g r a N T sParkinson receives NsF CarEEr awardMatthew ParkinsonMatthew Parkinson, assistantprofessor of engineering design andmechanical engineering, has beennamed a recipient of the NationalScience Foundation (NSF)'s FacultyEarly Career Development (CAREER)Award. The prestigious NSF CAREERAwards provide five years of fundingfor researchers. They are designed tosupport junior faculty who have shownexceptional promise in teaching andresearch.Parkinson received a $400,000 award for his project titled“Foundation of Designing for Human Variability.”Parkinson serves as the director of the Center for Research inDesign and Innovation and the OPEN Design Lab. Parkinson’swork combines rigorous design tools such as optimization, robustdesign, and statistical modeling with human-centered fields suchas ergonomics, human factors, and biomechanics. His currentefforts focus on the allocation of adjustability, vehicle safety, andthe development of adaptive medical devices.NsF award #0846373CarEEr: Foundations of designing forHuman VariabilityThe research objective of this Faculty Early Career Development(CAREER) award is to provide a theoretical foundation for definingdesign targets and conducting design assessments to improvethe design of products, tasks, and environments, enablingaccommodation of populations that are increasingly diverse.Bryant arnold receives NsF funding throughamerican recovery and reinvestment actNsF award #0928644Enhancing Creativity with a Conceptgenerator - Evaluation and Team TrainingThe research objective of this award is to provide substantive andempirical evidence of the ability to enhance engineering designcreativity through the use of a computational concept generatorpaired with team training support. The research activities willidentify the strengths and weaknesses of concept generators forengineering design and advance a repository of existing designknowledge to help produce innovative new solutions. In addition,a novel gaming-style iPhone application will be researched to helppopulate the design repository with diverse design solutions viauser-entered, user-policed, and user-rated data that will supportthe concept generator. Finally, the research team will produceand validate team training protocols designed to stimulateindividual creativity within a team-based design environment thatwill accompany the concept generator in order to synergisticallycultivate innovative solutions.Kremer receives NsF grant to improve ideacreationprocessGül KremerGül Kremer, associate professor ofengineering design and industrialengineering, has received fundingfor research to examine the TRIZmethod, a systematic approach forthe generation of innovative designsto seemingly intractable problems;freehand sketching; and technologyenableddesign journaling in order toimprove the idea-formation process forundergraduate engineering students.Kremer received $346,944 for her project titled “SystematicIdeation Curriculum Effectiveness Investigation & Deployment toEnhance Design Learning.”Above: Andrew Lau accepts a plaque and rocking chair for his 25 years ofservice and dedication to Penn State. He is pictured with Dhushy Sathianathan,former head of the School of Engineering Design, Technology, and ProfessionalPrograms; Andrew Lau in 1974 as a Penn State sophomore (taken in front of theWest Halls) and at present day.Since 2004, Lau has been the associate director of the Centerfor Sustainability at Penn State. In 2007, a team of students ledby Lau and other faculty successfully designed a 100-percentsolar-powered house that placed fourth out of 20 schools in theU.S. Department of Energy’s Solar Decathlon.The School of Engineering Design, Technology, andProfessional Programs would like to congratulate and thankAndrew Lau for 25 years of service and dedication to PennState.Cari Bryant ArnoldTeam Training.”Cari Bryant Arnold, assistant professorof engineering design and mechanicalengineering, has been awarded a grantfunded under the American Recoveryand Reinvestment Act of 2009.Principal Investigator Bryant Arnoldand Co-Principal Investigators TimothySimpson and Samuel Hunter wereawarded $350,000 for their projecttitled “Enhancing Creativity with aConcept Generator - Evaluation andIn 2007, Bryant Arnold was the recipient of a $38,000 NSF grant(award # 0742693) for her collaborative research, "VOICED - AVirtual Organization for Innovative Conceptual EngineeringDesign."NsF award #0920446CCLI Phase II: COLLaBOraTIVE rEsEarCH:systematic Ideation Curriculum EffectivenessInvestigation & deployment to Enhancedesign LearningIn this project, three methods are being examined to determinetheir impact on improving the ideation performance ofundergraduate engineering students. The first method is TRIZ,which is a systematic approach for the generation of innovativedesigns to seemingly intractable problems. TRIZ was firstdeveloped in Russia and is based on the analysis of thousands ofpatents that illustrate numerous solution patterns from diversedisciplines. The second method of ideation being explored in thisproject is freehand sketching and the third method is technologyenableddesign journaling.52 | SEDTAPP NEwS | SPriNg 2010 SPriNg 2010 | SEDTAPP NEwS | 53