Presenter Bios
Carlye Lauff is an Assistant Professor of Product Design at the University of Minnesota – Twin Cities. She earned her PhD from the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Colorado Boulder, where she was a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow studying the role of prototypes in companies. Carlye’s research is in the field of Design Theory and Methodology, and she studies how designers and engineers engage in the product design and development process and then improves tools and methods to support them. Carlye works at the intersection of multiple disciplines including engineering, product design, education, management science, and the social sciences. She often draws on qualitative and mixed methods research in her work and collaborates across diverse disciplines.
Natasha Wright is an Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Minnesota – Twin Cities. Her research and teaching interests include membrane-based separation processes, desalination, photovoltaic and solar thermal water treatment, design ethnography, and the role of engineering in global development. She completed her PhD in the Global Engineering and Research Lab at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2018 and developed the semester course Engineering in Global Development at Tufts University. She was awarded the Lemelson-MIT Award for graduate inventors (2017), was listed on Forbes 30 Under 30 in Energy (2016), and led the team that won the USAID Desal Prize (2015). Natasha received her B.S.M.E. from the University of St. Thomas, St. Paul, MN.