Chapman University’s Vice President for Research, Thomas Piechota will host the next Ask the Experts Virtual Town Hall: Human Centered Engineering on Wednesday, April 14th from noon to 1:00 pm. The conversation will be moderated by Fowler School of Engineering Dean Andrew Lyon and will explore how the term “human centered”, despite its well-established reputation for resulting in superior products in terms of usability and adoption, also transcends borders in creating solutions for complex challenges and therefore takes on a much larger meaning.

The panel will emphasize how human-centered engineering only emerges from diverse groups of thinkers and innovators who are also considering the broadest possible collection of users and use-case scenarios.

The entire Chapman community (staff, faculty, and students) and the broader community are invited to join. Click here to join the Zoom webinar. Visit the website for more information on the Ask the Experts series.

 Moderator:
Andrew Lyon, Ph. D., Dean, Fowler School of Engineering

Dr. Andrew Lyon has over 20 years of experience as a chemist, bioengineer, educator, and entrepreneur and currently serves as the founding dean of the Dale E. and Sarah Ann Fowler School of Engineering at Chapman University. In addition to his role at Chapman, he is the co-founder and chief scientific officer of Sanguina, Inc., SēlSym, Inc., and Split Rock Therapeutics, LLC, three early-stage biotechnology companies. He is the recipient of multiple prestigious grants and awards including a NSF CAREER, Beckman Young Investigator, and Research Corporation Research Innovation award. Dean Lyon will moderate Ask the Experts: Human Centered Engineering.

Faculty Expert Biographies:
Erik Linstead, Ph. D., Associate Professor, Fowler School of Engineering

Erik Linstead is an associate professor and the associate dean of academic programs and faculty development in the Fowler School of Engineering. He is the principal investigator of the Machine Learning and Affiliated Technologies (MLAT) lab. Prior to his current role, he spent 12 years at Boeing as an embedded software engineer and currently serves as a consulting senior engineering specialist for the Aerospace Corporation in the areas of deep learning and computer vision. In both academia and industry his work has focused on developing engineering solutions to socially impactful problems, whether that be utilizing artificial intelligence to better understand developmental disorders or launching the next generation of communication satellites.

Elizabeth Stevens, Ph. D., Assistant Professor, Fowler School of Engineering

Dr. Stevens is an assistant professor and the program director for the Fowler School of Engineering. Her research sits at the intersection of machine learning and behavior analysis. In particular, she has explored unsupervised techniques for modeling subtypes of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and how they respond to treatment intensity and duration.

Dhanya Nair, Ph. D., Assistant Professor, Fowler School of Engineering

Dr. Dhanya Nair is an assistant professor and a founding faculty member in the Fowler School of Engineering. Her research centers around characterizing human touch and developing haptic assistive technologies. She has worked with blind individuals to design and develop tactile interfaces for mobile devices and braille readers. More recently, she engineered a wearable system for handwriting correction and visuo-motor skills training and is currently developing solutions to utilize this system for representing tactile music on the arm. As an electrical engineer, she is also passionate about making engineering education more accessible and inclusive. During the online learning, she designed a new lab course that offers students hands-on experience in building and testing real-life circuits in the remote environment using everyday stationary supplies, educational toys, and traditional circuit boards.

Franceli L. Cibrian, Ph. D., Assistant Professor, Fowler School of Engineering

Dr. Franceli L. Cibrian is an assistant professor at the Fowler School of Engineering. Her research interests focus on the design, development, and evaluation of ubiquitous interactive technology to support children’s educational and therapeutic interventions, particularly children with special needs. She has authored 10 peer review Journal articles and more than 10 top-tier conference papers. She is a co-author of the Research Advances in ADHD and Technology Book and two book chapters. She belongs to the National Science System from Mexico given by CONACYT. She has also done research stays at the Design Lab at UC San Diego and in the UCL Interaction Center at University College London (UCL).