Britelab | Penn State

Projects

the things that inspire us to do more

what types of problems does britelab tackle?

The britelab's research lies at the intersection of innovation, technology, and engineering and can be largely broken into two overarching themes: (1) improving design as a process and (2) improving design as an end-product. Britelab research on design for a process has focused on identifying the cognitive mechanisms that lead to bottlenecks in the creative process and developing technological solutions to improve innovation capabilities. On the other side, their research on design as a product has focused on medical simulation design.

Current Projects

Past Projects

Current Projects

Dynamic Haptic Robotic Training | National Institutes of Health

Successful training of medical residents to perform Central Venous Catheter (CVC) placement is of critical importance to ensure patient safety. Mechanical complications including arterial puncture, pneumothorax, hemothorax, and failed puncture commonly occur in CVC procedures. These complications can be reduced by improving medical resident’s mechanical skills before they operate on human patients. The goal of this project is to develop, explore the effectiveness, and implement the novel training method of dynamic haptic robotic training (DHRT) for central venous catheter (CVC) placement.
Pub Med
| Funding to develop DHRT+ | Medulate Start-up Wins Top Prize | Student Spotlight
MPI Scarlett Miller | MPI Jason Moore | Haroula Tzamaras | Jessica M. González-Vargas | Dailen Brown | Rachel Bartuska

Psychological Safety in Engineering Student Teams | National Science Foundation

Engineering organizations around the world are becoming increasingly team-based in order to deal with these challenges. In order to be effective, engineering teams need to have strong technical skills and strong interpersonal skills. Effective team communication and a team working environment that supports active engagement of all members are essential components of successful teamwork. These technical and interpersonal skills take time to learn, so it is important to understand how they develop as engineers engage in the design process and when suitable interventions might be needed to help engineers learn them more effectively. To this end, this research will explore the role of team communication patterns on engineering student team performance throughout the design process. The study will investigate the role that the composition of the team plays in these dynamic relationships. This research will provide evidence regarding when team training interventions should be applied, as well as which types of interventions will be most effective at specific points of the design process.

Malevalent Creativity | NCITE

This project is a collaboration of researchers at King’s College of London and Penn State University that aims to see if counterterrorism workers could disrupt malevolent creativity involved in planning and carrying out terrorist attacks. The goal of this work is to study violent extremist (jihadist and right-wing) behavior online and apply engineering theory to develop precise interventions that interrupt and stop would-be attacks.

| Can you change a terrorists mind? | Disrupting malevolent creativity
Stay Tuned

PI Sam Hunter, Psychology | Co-PI Scarlett Miller | Aoran Peng

Virtual Reality in Additive Manufacturing Education | National Science Foundation

| Putting reality in virtual additive manufacturing education
NSF Public Access Repository
PI Nick Meisel | Co-PI Scarlett Miller | Co-PI Tim Simpson

Past Projects

Risk Taking in Engineering Design | National Science Foundation CAREER award

The research objective of this Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award was to develop a theoretical understanding of the factors that influence the filtering and promotion of creative ideas through the concept selection process. Three research tasks contribute to achieving this objective. First, an understanding of the fundamental relationship between risk aversion and innovation was developed through experimental investigations with engineering design students and industry professionals. Second, novel methods for assessing concept creativity were developed and tested for their impact on the promotion of filtering of creative ideas during the concept selection process. Third, substantive and empirical studies were conducted to validate the utility of concept selection methods for maximizing the potential for innovation through engineering design courses.

| Abandoning Creativity; Why we don't select our best ideas
Publications Produced as a Result of this Research
Preferences for Creativity Scale | Tool for Assessing Semantic Creativity
PI Scarlett Miller

Improving the Validity and Reliability of Creativity Ratings in Engineering Design | National Science Foundation

Without creativity, there is no potential for innovation. Consequently, creativity is seen as an essential component of engineering design. Numerous creativity metrics have been developed to assess the creativity of designs people produce. Such metrics are important for assessing business and engineering practices, a key part of improving US innovation and economic competitiveness. However, existing metrics are often scattered across different, specialized domains and it is difficult to validate their ability to accurately measure the creativity of the wide variety of engineered solutions that are produced. In addition, past research provides limited guidance on how to use and validate creativity metrics for a given design problem. This has led to universally applying metrics without systematic assessment of where and when a given metric is appropriate for a given task. This award supports fundamental research into how to evaluate the effectiveness of different creativity metrics for different types of products or services.

| NSF grant supports research to define creativity in engineering design
Publications Produced as a Result of this Research
Creativity Metric Repository
PI Scarlett Miller | Co-PI Sam Hunter, Psychology | UMD PI Mark Fuge

Understanding The Impact of Product Dissection on Design Innovation and Learning | National Science Foundation

Product dissection, or the systematic disassembly of products, is used as a means to help designers discover the inner workings of products and inspire new design ideas. While product dissection has been widely adopted in both engineering education and industry, there are many widely varying approaches of dissecting products for encouraging creativity and design learning. However, almost all dissection activities currently require products to be dissected physically which limits the utility of these activities due to the cost of the materials, space requirements, and the effort required to dissect the product. This award supported fundamental research to provide needed knowledge for the development of cognitive models of product dissection innovation and learning practices.
| NSF supports research on product design, innovation and learning
Publications Produced as a Result of this Research
Design Tools Learning with Dissection Website

Making in the Maker Movement: An Investigation into the Impact of Additive Manufacturing on Student Creativity | National Science Foundation

Additive Manufacturing is a process in which successive layers of material are deposited under computer control to create a three-dimensional artifact. The field is estimated to grow to a worldwide revenue of more than $21 billion by the year 2020. While additive manufacturing (AM) is projected to form an important part of the United States' future global manufacturing competitiveness, current industry demands for a skilled AM workforce are not being met. This has lead to universities ramping up their AM course offerings and engineering educators using AM technologies to augment prototyping and manufacturing learning during the design process. Unfortunately, there is no rigorous scientific understanding of the best approach to formally educate students with AM in the classroom or evaluate effective instructional practices. As a result, instructor efforts may not be properly preparing students to utilize AM to improve their designs, a growing area of research termed Design for Additive Manufacturing (DfAM). To address this educational gap, the objective in this project was to understand how formal undergraduate AM educational approaches impact design learning and creativity in engineering students. This was determined through evaluation of student design novelty and feasibility as they participate in a variety of DfAM educational units and design activities.

Publications Produced as a Result of this Research
Creativity Metric Repository-->
PI Nick Meisel | Co-PI Scarlett Miller | Co-PI Tim Simpson

US-Tunisia-Morocco Partnership (USTM) for the Promotion of Technology Innovation and Commercialization Strategies in Engineering Research and Education | U.S. Department of State

US-Tunisia-Morocco Partnership (USTM) for the Promotion of Technology Innovation and Commercialization Strategies in Engineering Research and Education is a project funded by the Bureau of Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs' (OES), U.S. Department of State. The Pennsylvania State University leads the USTM effort in partnership with the non-profit organization Tunisian-American Young Professionals (TAYP) and premiere science and engineering universities in Tunisia (led by the Ecole Polytechnique de Tunisie) and Morocco (led by Cadi Ayyad University of Marrakech).

USTM Website and Repository
PI Zoubeida Ounaies | Co-PI Scarlett Miller | Co-PI Richard Schuhmann