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In NASA’s most recent mission, the rover Perseverance carried the robotic helicopter Ingenuity to Mars. The launch was on July 30, 2020 in
Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida and Delivery Date on Mars February 18, 2021 at the landing site Jezero Crater.

On April 19, 2021 Ingenuity successfully completed the first powered controlled flight by an aircraft on a planet besides Earth and is still performing after 14 flights.

On Friday November 12, 2021 from 9:30 am to 11:00am, Syracuse University’s School of Design is hosting SU IID Alumnus Stan Nowak and three of his engineering colleagues at AeroVironment. They will present about the design development of Ingenuity. A flight demonstration of the only Ingenuity prototype on this planet is part of the event in the dome, which will be open to the SU community.

It was a lot of fun volunteering to review Thesis Projects for the DAAPworks_ID awards for the second year in a row. I spent about 2 hours of time reviewing projects on Behance and selecting winners for the following categories:

1^st Place, 2^nd Place, 3^rd Place, Best sketching, Most innovative visualization, Most manufacturable, Best use of technology, Most sustainable, Best user experience, Most socially responsible, Best future vision

Thanks to IDSA OHS Chair Caterina Rizzoni for inviting me. The winners were announced at their Zoom Virtual Awards Ceremony. The students projects can be reviewed at here.

Here are the results:

1^st Place: Hunter Elmore, Eclipse Prosthetics

2^nd Place: Maggie Macleod, Four Postpartum Wellness

3^rd Place: Connor Adams, Nav Smart Helmet

Best Sketching: Hunter Elmore, Eclipse

Most Innovative Visualization: Cody Caldron, Project Agitate

Most Manufacturable: Ellora Jaggi, Shirudo

Best Use of Technology: Parth Kashikar, The-FPV-X-RC-Camera-Car-for-Filmmakers

Most Sustainable: Justin Hiles, Loop

Best User Experience: Mikayla Hounchell, hd&me mobile app

Most Socially Responsible: Justin Meyer, Canary

Best Future Vision:  Griffin Christensen, Come to Roost

Welding is not my profession, but it is a very helpful skill in making functional prototypes.

In March I attended IDSA’s virtual Getting It Made Deep Dive conference. Many inspiring speakers share their design work.

It is great to be part of a professional community that openly exchanges ideas, especially at isolating times during the Covid-Pandemic.

Well, This was fun! Huge shoutout to my colleague Prof. Dianna Miller for pulling of this Miro 007 move. Due to Covid-19, the in-person poster review had to happen online. On a Miro page, all posters were pinned up and provided a Zoom Link to meet up with the respective Design Student. It worked great!

The IDSA CNY fall lecture series hosted Gustavo Fontana, co-founder of Fresco Design.

The Augmented Reality presentation lecture was superb:

The COVID-19 pandemic forced the Academic Design Management Conference
into a Virtual Format. It took me about 5 days of work in the video editing program Camtasia to create the 15 minute presentation.

Check out the result here.

It was a lot of fun volunteering to review Thesis Projects for the UCID20 awards. The projects are on Behance, which allowed to provide feedback directly. I spent about 2 hours of time reviewing and selecting winners for the following categories:

1^st Place, 2^nd Place, 3^rd Place, Best sketching, Most innovative visualization, Most manufacturable, Best use of technology, Most sustainable, Best user experience, Most socially responsible, Best future vision

Thanks to IDSA OHS Chair Caterina Rizzoni for inviting me. The winners were announced at their Zoom Virtual Awards Ceremony. The students projects can be reviewed at https://ucid20.com/.

Testing design iterations in VR is a powerful experience. I have been investigating the pros and cons of the KeyVR virtual reality app from KeyShot to compare the dynamic VR design critique experience with static ray trace rendering.

Click on the image above to experience the before & after slider.