Agenda

Associate Professor

School of Education, University of California, Davis

Lee Martin is an associate professor in the School of Education at the University of California, Davis. His research looks across in-school and out-of-school settings to investigate the varied ways that people assemble social, material, and intellectual resources to help them to meet their goals. He studies participation in making and the maker movement as activities that may help youth become more flexible and adaptive in their thinking and problem solving. In addition, he examines processes of identity development and sense of connection to STEM fields. His research group, Beta Lab, has recently built a mobile maker studio to facilitate their work in schools and community centers. They also work to create new thinking tools to foster noticing, reflection, ideation, and collaboration.

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Instructional Design and Development Coordinator

Innovation Center, Folsom Lake College

A lifelong tinkerer and maker, Zack joined the Folsom Lake College faculty in 2001 as the college's Instructional Design and Development Coordinator. In that role, he runs the college's Innovation Center, providing training, resources and energy to support the development of innovative approaches to teaching and learning, and helping to cultivate a culture of making at the college. Through the Innovation Center's Making Across the Curriculum efforts, faculty from a variety of disciplines have integrated the ethos, tools, and techniques of making into their practice, leading to the development of unique curriculum, class activities, and interdisciplinary projects.

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Assistant Professor

Graduate School of Education, Stanford University

Paulo Blikstein is an assistant professor at the Stanford University Graduate School of Education where he directs the Transformative Learning Technologies Lab and the global FabLearn Program. Blikstein's research focuses on how new technologies can deeply transform the learning of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. He creates and researches cutting-edge educational technologies, such as computer modeling, robotics, digital fabrication, and rapid prototyping, creating hands-on learning environments in which children learn STEM disciplines by building sophisticated projects and devices. He also focuses on the application of data-mining and machine learning for the assessment of hands-on, project-based learning. In 2010, Blikstein was a pioneer in bringing the maker movement to schools, and started the first educational program around digital fabrication in schools, FabLearn Labs (formerly FabLab@School). His group has built some of the first educational digital fabrication labs in the world and has conducted research in middle and high-schools in the US, Russia, Mexico, Spain, Australia, Finland, Brazil, Denmark, and Thailand. Blikstein was awarded the National Science Foundation Early Career award in 2011 and the AERA Jan Hawkins Early Career Award in 2016.

Associate Director

Product Realization Lab, Stanford University

Marlo Kohn (BS '05 Product Design; MS '07 Mechanical Engineering) is the Associate Director of the Stanford Product Realization Lab and a Lecturer in Mechanical Engineering. Kohn is the creator and founding manager of the PRL's satellite prototyping lab known as Room 36. Kohn has developed and taught new PRL courses including Making Is Thinking Introductory Seminar, Flexible Part Design, and Making Multiples: Injection Molding. Before joining the PRL, Kohn was a Production Manager and R&D Engineer at Vibrynt and served internships at Barosense, Apple, and Atlas Snowshoe. Kohn was an invited speaker at the First International Symposium on Academic Makerspaces held at MIT in November 2016, and is the co-author of the academic paper "Coaches and Their Impact: One Model for Empowering Teaching Assistants in an Academic Makerspace," which was also presented at the ISAM conference.

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Lecturer

College of Environmental Design, UC Berkeley

Ghigo DiTommaso was trained as an architect in Florence, where he picked up the tools of the trade while engaging directly with the city's heritage and feeding a strong interest in urban history and theory. Professional degree and licensure in hand, he moved to Barcelona to become part of its thriving design community. There he joined the debate on the on-going transformation of the city and committed himself to the creation of beautiful public architecture. For several years he conducted urban design research at the Escuela Tècnica Superior de Arquitectura de Barcelona (EtsaB), while also working with prominent Catalan architects on numerous award-winning projects from conception to construction completion. In 2009 he entered the EtsaB doctoral program in architectural design, in 2010-2011 he was visiting scholar at the UC Berkeley College of Environmental Design, and in 2011-2012 adjunct faculty at the Universitat Ramon LLull. In late 2012, he relocated to the Bay Area to become a member of Rebar Art & design Studio. Since 2014, he is devoting his passion for design and his skills to Gehl Studio, while collaborating with the UC Berkeley College of Environmental Design, where he teaches, conducts research, and leads the Design & Innovation for Sustainable Cities summer institute.

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