The University of Massachusetts-Amherst is renewing its participation in the e-Design center, an I/UCRC center that was created in 2003. The lead institution is Virginia Tech, and the center at present includes three universities and approximately seventeen industry members. The mission and Vision of the NSF Center for e-Design is to serve as a national center of excellence in IT-enabled design and realization of manufactured products. E-Design involves conceptualizing, designing and realizing a product (or system) using methods and software tools that allow for interoperability of remote and heterogeneous systems and support collaboration among distributed, multidisciplinary stakeholders.
The University of Massachusetts (UMass) will bring expertise in three of the four Center thrust areas, including: New Design Paradigms and Processes, Design Optimization, and Enabling Information Infrastructure. Researchers at UMass will be focused on the development and application of engineering ontologies related to product design to enable seamless collaboration and interoperability of engineering tools and people in a distributed web-environment. The joint research efforts of researchers at the other Center institutions (Virginia Tech and University of Central Florida) both complement and strengthen the work at UMass.
The proposed Center renewal will enable UMass to continue its key research and leadership role in the Center, as well as contribute significantly to the successful development and preparation of graduate and undergraduate students. Benefits to students will include integration of resulting work into coursework and engineering curricula, as well as internship opportunities. The center will provide a unique experience to students who can interact and collaborate with industrial researchers and engineers. Research and educational findings will continue to be disseminated nationally and will have a significant impact on US industry as a whole.
The University of Massachusetts-Amherst is a founding member of the Center for e-Design, an I/UCRC center that was created in 2003. The lead institution is Iowa State University, and the center at present includes seven additional universities and approximately twenty-five industry members. The mission and Vision of the NSF Center for e-Design is to serve as a national center of excellence in IT-enabled design and realization of manufactured products. Center for e-Design involves conceptualizing, designing and realizing a product (or system) using methods and software tools that allow for interoperability of remote and heterogeneous systems and support collaboration among distributed, multidisciplinary stakeholders. Intellectual Merit: Center for e-Design at UMass Amherst brings expertise in three of the five Center thrust areas, including: New Design Paradigms and Processes, Design Optimization, and Enabling Information Infrastructure. Researchers at UMass are focused on the development and application of engineering methods and tools related to product design to enable seamless collaboration and interoperability of engineering systems and people in a distributed web-environment. Our intellectual work at UMass Amherst has led to a number of accomplishments, including over forty refereed publications with thirty graduate, undergraduate, and post-doctoral researchers, multiple collaborative projects with academia, industry, and government agencies, several new tools and technologies, and a library of downloadable engineering ontologies. Broader Impacts: During its tenure, the center site at UMass Amherst has played a leadership role in the advancement of new methods and tools in conceptual design and product innovation, advanced engineering modeling and simulation, design for sustainability, and digital manufacturing. Our discoveries have paved the way for industrial collaboration and technology transfer, and they have had a significant impact on U.S. industry as a whole. Our industry partners have benefitted from first access to our research, royalty-free use of the tools we have developed, and the opportunity to license and commercialize technologies. We have also disseminated our research and educational findings through publications and presentations at national and international conferences. In recent years, our center has grown in prominence on our campus, as well as nationally and internationally. The center directors have recently been recognized as leaders in the field of knowledge-based engineering and they have been promoted to fellows in their professional organizations. In recognition of our growth and productivity, our center site will be leading the Advanced Digital Design and Fabrication (ADDFab) initiative for the Massachusetts Applied Life Sciences Center at UMass Amherst and the Surgical Technology Innovation and Commercialization at UMass (STIC-UM) team at the UMass Medical School.
