REU Site: Hybrid Design and Fabrication

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Over three years, this maker-centered Research Experiences for Undergraduates site will recruit 30 students from diverse and interdisciplinary backgrounds to participate in developing smart material toolkits, AI-assisted and sensor-driven tools, and smart creative environments. This project will create an authentic undergraduate research experience that incorporates elements of maker culture to develop positive coping mechanisms needed to overcome the ambiguity of open-ended research questions, foster personal identity formation within the research community, and bolster scientific and creative curiosity. Its research builds on craft-based methods to design digital fabrication practices that allow users to maintain agency in the making process which has been shown to democratize access to advanced materials and fabrication techniques, enable grassroots innovation from hobbyist and professional communities, and broaden participation in STEM fields. Each research activity is situated within a community of practice and designed to engage REU students with stakeholders and peer researchers, including external mentors from internationally recognized human-computer interaction programs. Students will benefit from professional development in design thinking, additive and subtractive fabrication, and human subjects research. The interdisciplinary research experience and training will contribute to a high-demand research skill set for REU participants portable to a variety of science and technology disciplines. Projects will focus on a diverse range of underdeveloped materials within digital fabrication including clay, silicone, glass, biomaterials, and textiles which will provide both an experiential and collaborative learning substrate and attract underrepresented and underserved students in communities peripheral to science and engineering education. While a core advantage of digital fabrication is automation and abstraction, it has also contributed to removing users from directly interacting with a material. These material-based interactions are central to how experiential knowledge develops and are core contributors of creative cognition. Collectively, undergraduate researchers will help develop and disseminate digital fabrication toolkits and user interface systems to further promote material and technological literacy in both academic and independent "do it yourself" communities. Exemplar artifacts developed under the mentorship of professional art and design faculty will be disseminated through social and popular media and generate inspiration, excitement, and critical reflection around interdisciplinary collaborations between art and technology. Evaluation of the site using a Maker Competencies framework will provide valuable knowledge to the REU community on the effects of maker-centered training on the undergraduate research experience.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.