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Marie C. Paretti is an Associate Professor of Engineering Education at Virginia Tech, where she co-directs the Virginia Tech Engineering Communications Center (VTECC). Her research focuses on communication in engineering design, interdisciplinary communication and collaboration, design education, and gender in engineering. She was awarded a CAREER grant from NSF to study expert teaching practices in capstone design courses nationwide, and is Co-PI on several NSF grants to explore design education. Her work includes studies on the teaching and learning of communication in capstone courses, the effects of curriculum on design cognition, the effects of differing design pedagogies on retention and motivation, and the dynamics of cross-disciplinary collaboration in both academic and industry design environments.

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Susannah Howe, Ph.D. is the Design Clinic Director in the Picker Engineering Program at Smith College, where she coordinates and teaches the capstone engineering design course. Her current research focuses on innovations in engineering design education, particularly at the capstone level. She is invested in building the international capstone community and served as Co-chair of the 2010 and 2012 Capstone Design Conferences. She is also involved with efforts to foster design learning in middle school students and to support entrepreneurship at primarily undergraduate institutions. Her background is in civil engineering with a focus on structural materials. She holds a B.S.E. degree from Princeton, and M.Eng. and Ph.D. degrees from Cornell.

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Peter Rogers is Professor of Practice, Engineering Education Innovation Center, the Ohio State University, Columbus, OH 43210. Email: Rogers.693@osu.edu. Rogers joined the university in Oct. 2008, bringing with him 35 years of industrial experience. Beginning with a foundation in product development leadership in the robotics industry, Rogers continued with assignments in contract research working at Battelle, Edison Welding Institute, and founding his own consulting business. The last third of his industrial career included leadership roles in engineering, sales, and manufacturing in the electronics, sensors, and controls industry. Prior to joining the university, Rogers founded a second company and created an inspection product and service targeting the public transportation industry. Throughout his career, Rogers has developed products using an innovative process consisting of multidisciplinary teams focused on understanding customer needs and converting them to commercially viable products and services. He brings this experience to the university where he leads the effort in developing company-sponsored, product-oriented capstone design programs. As part of the mission of the Engineering Education Innovation Center (EEIC), Rogers has led the development of an ABET-approved curriculum for a year-long Capstone experience. With a focus on providing students with a broader experience base, the multidisciplinary program applies teams of engineers, business, design, and other students to work with Ohio companies to help them be more competitive. Teams apply a company’s core competencies to help develop new products and markets. This experiential learning emphasizes real-world problem solving, professional communication and ethics, teamwork, and implementation of a formalized design process. Additionally, Rogers has created the Social Innovation and Commercialization initiative by collaborating with business, engineering, and design colleges. This program applies multidisciplinary student teams to define, design, and commercialize products for people with disabilities. Partnering with local non-profit organizations, teams define unmet problems working with people with various disabilities, problems that can be solved with an innovative product. The student teams apply a co-design process working with end users to fully understand the problem and to assist in the overall design and validation process. The educational goal is to provide experiential learning with a social outreach. The social goal is to produce product income to help non-profit partners become self-sustaining while improving the independence of people with disabilities. Rogers earned his Ph.D. at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, focused on mechanical engineering and manufacturing. He has presented a number of industrial conference papers and holds several patents. He is currently the Co-chair of the organizing committee for the 2012 Capstone Design Conference and a member of the CDHub web development team. He holds the position of Professor of Practice at the Ohio State University.

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After seven years with the Information Science Research Institute, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, where he was an Associate Research Professor, Junichi Kanai joined Panasonic Information and Networking Technologies Lab in 1998. He was a Senior Scientist developing and transferring new technologies to product divisions. From 2002 to 2004, he was a manager at Matsushita Electric Corporation of America (Panasonic), providing system integration and software development for clients. Kanai joined Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) in 2004. He is currently Associate Director of the O.T. Swanson Multidisciplinary Design Laboratory and Professor of Practice of in the Electrical, Computer, and Systems Engineering Department. His responsibilities include managing the operation of the design lab and optimizing the experience for students working on engineering design projects.

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R. Keith Stanfill holds the academic rank of Engineer and serves as the Director of the Integrated Product and Process Design (IPPD) Program for the Industrial and Systems Engineering Department at the University of Florida (UF). He received his B.S., M.E., and Ph.D. degrees in mechanical engineering from UF in 1985, 1991, and 1995, respectively. He joined the UF faculty in 1999 as the IPPD Associate Director and was promoted to IPPD Director in 2001. IPPD is an experiential multidisciplinary design program where teams of students complete real projects for sponsoring companies and agencies. Stanfill has recruited more than 250 industry-sponsored projects and directed the efforts of more than 1,600 senior-level engineering and business students for the IPPD program. In 2003, he helped create the Integrated Technology Ventures (ITV) program and serves as Chair of the ITV Board of Directors. The ITV program exposes students to the realities of technology start-up companies while assisting UF researchers in commercializing their technological innovations. Virtual companies comprised of engineering, business, and law students identify market opportunities, develop business plans, and produce prototype systems. Each ITV team is led by an experienced entrepreneurial CEO and features hands-on guidance from engineering, business, and law faculty. Prior to joining UF, Stanfill spent 10 years with United Technologies where he designed gas turbine hardware for fighter aircraft, served as a key resource to the Carrier Corporation New Product Development Council Steering Committee, facilitated Design for X (DFx) workshops internationally, developed business process linkages between new product development and lean manufacturing, and developed and implemented manufacturing systems software. His interests include technology transfer, product development, design education, DFx, and entrepreneurship. He is a registered Professional Engineer in the state of Florida and is a member of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, the American Society of Engineering Education, the Institute for Industrial Engineers, the UF Faculty Senate, and the UF College of Engineering Faculty Council. He has served on the organizing committee for the 2007, 2010, and 2012 Capstone Design Conference. He volunteers his time as a judge in the Alachua Region Science and Engineering Fair and the Junior Science, Engineering, and Humanities Symposium, as well as serving as the booster club President and volunteer goalkeeper coach for the Buchholz High School Lady Bobcats soccer team.

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