Stan pitches VR for education in drug design

On Sept 17, 2018, Stan pitched a project to the 5th Health Care Engineering Systems Symposium on using VR to teach medical students about drug design, as well as how specific drugs work. The proposal builds on two years of work Stan did with a mathematical chemist (David Minh) up at IIT. Basically, the person wearing the VR headset can see the protein they hope to interfere with, and try various attachment sites for the ligand. Here is the short video (1 min 30 sec) of the presentation.

Juan de la Rosa attended the Design for Policy Making Conference in Brussels

The EU has been working in the last couple of years on a project of policy-making, not as a reactive activity, but rather as a planned process that facilitates the construction of a ‘preferred’ future for their communities (build through a collaborative process). As part of this project, the EU government has opened several Design Labs throughout the European countries, where designers, foresight professionals, and policy-makers meet up to produce new knowledge about the future. The FTA2018, Future-Oriented Technology Analysis Conference presents the advances on the last projects for systemic change in the EU. A great experience that shows that designers can be involved in a large scale systemic change!

Stan invited to give keynote on design research at SIGGRAPH 2018 Business Symposium

Stan was invited to speak on “The Design of Preferred Futures” in Vancouver on Aug 12, 2018, as part of the first Business Symposium at the annual SIGGRAPH conference. SIGGRAPH is the largest conference held by the Association for Computing Machines (ACM), with over 17,000 participants. Its focus is on film, gaming, and emerging technologies.

From the abstract:
We have all heard from researchers and entrepreneurs that the future already exists but is just not evenly distributed yet. But entrepreneurs need to simplify things, because they have something to sell. In fact, there is never just one future, and the ones we have on the radar now will be vastly different once they are evenly distributed. What design offers is not one preferred future, but instead a choice among possible futures. Designers at their best will imagine these futures, visit them, and bring things back for the rest of us to compare. In this talk, we will examine three cases: the design of a multinational information ecosystem, design for post-conflict zones, and the design of an autonomous train.

Stan invited to give Research Through Design video keynote in Brazil

On June 7-8, 2018 at Unisinos university in Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul held a symposium on research through design. Stan gave an address about the use of academic prototypes. The lecture consisted of a video talk, some questions delivered by video, and video answers. The video starts with comments in Spanish from some of the participants of the symposium. The lecture begins at 2:40 and the questions start at 21:07:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1vi0dQkMjLewwSwZ5vweAO_3Dn87UGMyl

Yaguang presents in China on Intelligent transportation products

On May 27, 2018, Yaguang gave a paper at the PhD forum of the 2018 China Green Building and Ecological City conference.

From the abstract:
This paper summarizes the characteristics of several intelligent transportation products, studies the operational principles of intelligent technology in various transportation applications, objectively summarizes the development constraints in its technical application, and proposes a system for analyzing and evaluating the advantages and disadvantages.

Priscilla discusses Smart Citizenship at DRS 2018

Priscilla presented the paper “Smart Citizenship: Designing the interaction between citizens and smart cities” at the Design Research Society conference in Limerick, Ireland on June 25-28, 2018. Stan is her co-author.

From the abstract:
This paper develops a critical reflection about the reasons why not every citizen in a smart city can be considered a smart citizen. We point out some of the primary causes and the role of design to help to develop possible solutions. The paper uses the concept of the network society and actor network theory in order to understand the infrastructure of smart cities and develop an analysis of the changing role of citizens in smart citizens. We propose that there is a need for new methods to generate sustainable and inclusive social engagement to solve collective urban problems. Moreover, it is speculated that smart citizenship will be an important part of the future of smart cities. In this context, design plays an important part, framing the way actors understand and interact with each other in the city ecosystem, and enabling citizens to shape the future of their cities.

Stan presents on Emulation at CSDH/SCHN 2018

From May 26-28, 2018, Stan presented on hardware and software emulation at the annual conference of the Canadian Society of Digital Humanities/le champs numerique (CSDH/SCHN) in Regina, Saskatchewan. The talks were part of a panel of four papers organized and run by Marley Liepert, entitled “Emulation is the Sincerest Form of Flattery.” Zhabiz and Gerry were co-authors.

From the panel abstract:
Considered both as an aspect of cultural heritage and as locations of untold voluntary labour, the  video games and virtual worlds of the past have a value that should be preserved, and, if possible, maintained for continued use in some form. In this panel, we propose a number of approaches to strategizing the preservation and even continued use of video games and virtual worlds.