This award will create a set of dissemination tools for the Environmentally Benign Design and Manufacturing research and education community, within the US and accessible and linked to the global activities in Sustainable Product Development. The objective is to promote a sharing environment, maintained and actively linking industry, academia, and national lab participants in this growing area. Five tasks are planned to accomplished this, including setting up a web-based discussion service for all EBDM researchers and educators, moderating open forums on topics selected by an organizing committee of those who have recently held international conferences and workshops, and a library of best practices, focusing on solutions for industrial implementation or educational modules.
The broader impacts of these activities include the potential for blending global perspectives in conjunction with regional activities, balancing materials use research with industrial product life cycle management, and creating an avenue for emerging software tools and management principles to be readily tested against a broad set of applications. The PI has successfully demonstrated the ability of his group to facilitate, manage, and disseminate research in new fields through previous NSF funding. This activity will assist researchers in carrying out their advancements, providing them with a supportive environment within which to web-publish, discuss, and collaborate. The creation and management of such a network is beyond the scope of typical research grants.
