Design in Mechanical Engineering

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Mechanical Engineering is home to many of Northwestern's
pathsetting programs in design education and practice.

News -- March 20, 2007

Crate and Barrel Co-Founders Endow Design Institute

The Design Institute will be directed by Mechanical Engineering professor Ed Colgate, and Don Norman, Professor of Psychology.

Walter Herbst and Rich Lueptow co-direct the Masters of Product Development (MPD) program.

In MPD, mid-career professionals learn about managing creativity and design, form and function, project management, customer-focused innovation, research, and financial issues, all from the perspective of product development.

Ed Colgate co-directs the Institute for Design Engineering and Applications (IDEA), which is responsible for implementing design throughout the curriculum in the McCormick School.

IDEA offers an undergraduate Certificate in Engineering Design, as well as a Bachelor’s degree in Manufacturing and Design Engineering.

Colgate also led the development of the school-wide freshman sequence Engineering Design and Communication (EDC)

Colgate is the recipient of the ASME’s 2003 Leonardo DaVinci Award for contributing significantly to design engineering.

Ann McKenna is the Associate Director of IDEA and the co-Director of NCEER, the Northwestern Center for Engineering Education Research.

NCEER's mission is to conduct research on how to best educate engineering students as adaptive experts who can solve and anticipate global technological challenges.

Kevin Lynch and Michael Peshkin have created the Mechatronics sequence of courses which focus on the design of electromechanical systems.

333 Introduction to Mechatronics
433 Advanced Mechatronics

Peshkin also directs the engineering school’s annual undergraduate Design Competition, in which students design and build robots for head-to-head competition.
Henry Stoll is one of the world’s leading authorities on design for manufacture, and is the author of Product Design Methods and Practices.
Walter Herbst and Kornell Ehmann co-advise the Sunrayce team, which designs, builds and races solar-powered vehicles.

Wei Chen is the Director of the Integrated Design Automation Laboratory (IDEAL). She teaches numerous courses in design including the Mechanical Engineering capstone design course 398.

Chen is the recipient of numerous awards for her work in design, including the Intelligent Optimal Design Prize awarded at the 18th International Conference on Structural Mechanics in Reactor Technology in 2005, and the ASME Pi Tau Sigma Gold Medal achievement award in 1998.