This award supplies funds for the Engineering Research Center in Innovation in Product Development at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to purchase equipment for an Undergraduate Product Development Laboratory (UPDL). This facility would create an environment for undergraduates to experience "hands-on" design and fabrication of products, giving them the opportunity to learn to work with the tools commonly used in industry today. The UPDL will provide students with the needed equipment, machinery, space, guidance, and curriculum to make product development integral to their educational experience. The students will use the laboratory through a number of undergraduate courses, including "The Product Engineering Process," where students develop a product idea through all stages to a working, high quality prototype, and the "LEGO Robot Design Competition," where interdisciplinary student design teams build robots for a competition. Training on the new equipment for both faculty and students will be provided, and the facility will have evening and weekend access. The laboratory will also be open to other MIT faculty and to non-MIT users such as industry representatives, who act as student project advisors and other local universities, who have an informal agreement with MIT to share uncommon or niche resources.
