Research Areas

Some of the fundamental scientific questions we study include: What are efficient and useful ways to computationally and mathematically represent designs? How do we combine physics-driven and data-driven models to design better products? What makes design collaboration between large groups of people work well or poorly? How can we use tools from applied mathematics (such as graph theory, category theory, and statistics) and computer science (such as complexity theory, submodular optimization, and artificial intelligence) to better understand how humans design?

Some past practical applications of our research include: a fully automated system for inferring what makes designs creative given human feedback; the world’s first polynomial time algorithm for diverse bi-partite b-matching; algorithms for exploring and optimizing high-dimensional design spaces (e.g., aircraft) that accelerate optimization by an order of magnitude or more; software for helping novices 3D print working mechanical devices; and network analyses of online collaborative design networks such as OpenIDEO.