Research in Engineering Design
The engineering design faculty have collaborative research activities with other departments, and five of the six tenured faculty have graduate faculty status in other departments. Their research is sometimes compatible with the research interests in engineering design, and, conversely, research within the engineering design program is often congruent with research interests in other departments. Engineering education research has always been an accepted research focus and this effort continues within design, entrepreneurship, and leadership initiatives. The program also houses two peer-reviewed journals.
Our program is active in engineering design research, particularly integrated design – cross-cutting methods which apply to most fields of engineering. Research areas include:
- optimization under uncertainty
- risk mitigation in the early conceptual stages of design
- design cognition
- human design performance analysis
- multi-criteria decision-making
- optimal communication methods for conceptual design
- innovative design, project/systems integration
- performance of co-located and virtual distributed teams.
The Engineering Design Program faculty has received recent funding from many sources, including NCIIA, FIPSE, Engineering Information Foundation, NASA, National Science Foundation, NAE, USDA, Alcoa, AFOSR, Autodesk, Alibre, Daimler Chrysler, and the US Air Force. Many faculty members are currently producing 5–10 articles per year in archival journals and refereed proceedings.