Speakers

Keynote Speakers

INDUSTRY KEYNOTE

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Invited Speakers

ACADEMIC KEYNOTE

Dr Laura Devendorf

Assistant Professor of Information Science, University of Colorado Boulder

Biosketch: Laura Devendorf is a design researcher working at the intersection of craft and engineering. Her personal practice explores how technology shapes reflection, particularly around experiences of motherhood. As director of the Unstable Design Lab, she works collectively with faculty, students, and visiting artists to build communities around “experimental weaving,” a term that captures a broad range of approaches to and applications of woven structures across art and science. Over the last several years, she has also led the design of AdaCAD, an open-source computer-aided design tool that applies the principles of computational design to the creation of woven structures. Her research has received several Best Paper Awards in the field of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and has been supported by a U.S. National Science Foundation CAREER Award.
Laura is an Associate Professor of Information Science in the ATLAS Institute at the University of Colorado Boulder. She received her PhD from the School of Information at the University of California, Berkeley, and holds bachelor’s

Keynote Title: Weaving Counterfactual Narratives of Technical Progress
Counterfactual thinking is a form of asking “what if” questions that consider how the present might have unfolded if historical events had different outcomes. In this talk, I draw from my research as an artist, computer scientist, and design researcher to present a counterfactual narrative of technical progress rooted in my deep fascination with and immersion in the world of complex weaving—the practice of creating complex 3D, electronic, and/or robotic structures. For example, how might our relationships with devices change if we handcrafted them from fiber, mended them with thin metals, and adapted them to our changing bodies with crochet hooks? I weave together historical narratives of textiles and technology with the work of students and artists-in-residence at the Unstable Design Lab to craft a vision of technology that emphasizes humility, care, and community.

RESEARCH & TECHNOLOGY:

Dr. Ken Loh

Professor of Structural Engineering, UC San Diego

Labs, Inc.

Biosketch: Dr. Ken Loh is the TaylorMade Golf Chancellor’s Endowed Professor in the Departments of Structural Engineering, Chemical & Nano Engineering, and Materials Science & Engineering at UC San Diego. He is the Director of the Active, Responsive, Multifunctional, and Ordered-materials Research (ARMOR) Lab and the Jacobs School of Engineering, Center for Extreme Events Research (CEER). He is also an affiliate faculty member of the Center for Wearable Sensors. Dr. Loh received his B.S. in Civil Engineering from Johns Hopkins University in 2004. His graduate studies were at the University of Michigan, where he completed two M.S. degrees in Structural Engineering (2005) and Materials Science & Engineering (2008), as well as a Ph.D. in Structural Engineering in 2008. He started his career in academia in December 2008 as an Assistant Professor and then Associate Professor at UC Davis, before joining UC San Diego in January 2016. His research interests are in nanocomposites, wearable sensors, and metamaterials for solving problems in human performance, structural sustainment, and human-structure interactions. Dr. Loh is also an Engineering Duty Officer in the U.S. Navy Reserve and a co-founder of a start-up, JAK Labs, Inc.

Tentative Title: Elastic Fabric Motion Tape Sensors for Human Performance Assessment

SUSTAINABILITY & CIRCULARITY:

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APPLICATIONS:

Dr Leonardo Cappello

Assistant Professor, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna

Biosketch: Leonardo Cappello is a Tenure-Track Assistant Professor at the BioRobotics Institute – Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna (Italy), where he leads the Textile Robotics Lab. He works on the design of textile-based robotic wearables for human sensorimotor restoration and augmentation. His research interests include haptics, assistive and rehabilitation robotics, prosthetics and orthotics, and motor neurosciences. He was recently awarded with the European Research Council Starting Grant (ERC StG) for the project MUsculoSkeletal Expansion (MUSE). Leonardo Cappello graduated in Mechanical Engineering (BS) in 2009 and in Biomedical Engineering (MS) in 2011 at the University of Florence, Italy. In 2016 he accomplished his PhD in “Robotics, Cognition and Interaction Technologies” at the Italian Institute of Technology. During his PhD, he was visiting student at the Nanyang Technological University, Robotics Research Centre, Singapore (2014 – 2015). He was Postdoctoral Researcher at Harvard University and the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, where he worked on soft wearable robots for upper limb sensorimotor restoration (2016 – 2017). He was then Postdoctoral Researcher at the BioRobotics Institute – Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna (Italy) – investigating advanced robotic prostheses and prosthetic techniques for the upper extremities (2017-2022).
Tentative title: Transcending the paradigm of wearing a robot – The MusculoSkeletal Expansion