Tell us about where you are from and what your childhood was like.
I grew up in Broomfield, Colorado with my two (twin, younger) sisters, my parents, and my grandmother.
My two main interests as a kid were reading, music (mostly singing), and making things.
When I was 6, I really wanted to be an astronaut, and as I got older I realized that my best chance of going into space would be to study aerospace engineering.
Neither of my parents had much academic background, but they were really supportive of my academic dreams and taught me to love learning. My mom (a newspaper journalist, editor, and glass artist, among other things) helped me build my first computer when I was 8, and taught me about writing, layout (both on a computer and on an old-school light table with rubber cement!) and that you can make almost anything out of stuff you have around the house. (Her house has a lot of cool materials, which helps). My dad (a photographer and science fiction fan) taught me how to look at the world both through a lens to capture what’s really there, and to imagine what could be there but isn’t yet.
When did you first learn about engineering? What about it interested you the most?
I came to engineering really without any background in it – I didn’t do robotics clubs or build electronics when I was a kid. I became an engineer because I wanted to make spaceships and satellites and explore the world, and once I got into my studies I realized that it overlaps with all the other kinds of things I like to make. I feel like engineering is the most fundamental part of being human – imagining a thing that doesn’t exist, and then figuring out how to make it exist. And I want everyone to know that they can do engineering, even if they aren’t and don’t want to be professional engineers.
Why did you choose to study engineering education?
I’m actually not technically studying engineering education at all – I am part of the Mechanical Engineering and Human-Robot Interaction joint PhD program. I started out in the MechE/HRI MS program, hoping that a master’s degree would make me more competitive for engineering jobs after being out of the field for a few years. A year into my MS, I was doing independent study research in the AABL lab (under Dr. Elaine Short) on human-robot collaboration. That summer, I was invited to join the PhD program working for both Dr. Short and Dr. Chris Rogers working on a grant to develop assistive robots for creative tasks, running hackathons and workshops to test out our work. My interest in collaborative robotics plus my background teaching STEM to both my own kids and others as a volunteer for Girl Scouts and Scouting America programs matched nicely with the grant’s focus on helping people design, build, test, and redesign robots that would help them create new things in the world.
Developing those hackathons and workshops helped me understand why engineering education is really important both for children and adults. You can’t make everyone in the world believe they can do engineering unless you teach them what engineering is. Working with kids is actually easier there: kids are more likely to believe that they can be something new, because they haven’t spent decades being told or telling themselves that they can’t and aren’t. Adults are trickier, and sometimes you have to sneak in the idea that they can learn something new by having, for example, a parent help their child with a project (and then they both learn something new). Making is another great way to get adults interested and change their self-perception about engineering, because it feels reachable – it doesn’t take much work to download an STL file off the internet and print a little tool or toy, but once someone knows they can do that, they might realize that it wouldn’t be *that* much more work to customize it a little in a CAD program to be bigger or smaller, or to have their name engraved on it… and they start to get comfortable with the idea that they can make something that never existed before, try it, and then make it better (which is engineering!)
Tell us about your research. Why did you choose to study this?
My research has two main threads: one is about making makerspaces accessible to everyone, and the other is designing control systems for assistive robots that can support people in makerspaces. Makerspace accessibility broadly is part of my belief that everyone should be able to do engineering, making, crafting, creating new things. If you can’t access the tools, information, and materials, you can’t make the things you imagine – so we need to make it not only possible but easier for people to access makerspaces and other engineering curriculum. I started out by interviewing both disabled makers and people who run makerspaces, to find out from them what barriers they see and what benefits they get from making, and that was my first paper. A lot of disabled people are makers in various ways (even if they might not label themselves that way), because they often need custom tools to accommodate their disabilities. Do-it-yourself Assistive Technology (DIY-AT) is part of almost every disabled person’s world, because the things they need to access the world (whether that’s tools for activities of daily living like custom-shaped spoon holders, or tools for art or science or crafts, like a custom paintbrush holder or bespoke test tube rack) are not commercially available. One of the best parts about working on making tools for making is that I’m building tools not just to make the world a better place, but to help *everyone* make the world a better place. Engineering for everyone is a force multiplier for positive change.
In my research now, I’m looking at some of the details of what makes particular tasks inaccessible (mostly focusing on physical or sensory environments), which leads into my work in robotics. Robots are valuable teammates in a lot of ways, but (depending on the robot) are much less good at many tasks than humans. Humans have incredible “sensor suites” (vision, touch, smell, hearing), incredible processing capabilities, and really phenomenal fine manipulation skills. Robots, on the other hand, are excellent at remembering things, doing repetitive tasks, keeping track of time, and never getting bored, which makes them great assistants. They can also be designed in different shapes and sizes to do specific jobs that are ergonomically difficult for humans or outside their capabilities (regardless of whether the specific human’s capabilities are considered non-disabled or disabled). The strengths of the human and the robot match up really nicely, so that an interdependent human-robot system is more capable than either the human or robot could be alone.
Right now, though, robots are not so great at collaboration, because we’ve designed them to prioritize safety with relatively simplistic “never touch the human” models. Factory robots started out in cages, robots navigating in human spaces typically are programmed to treat humans as obstacles and avoid them by a wide margin, and even factory co-bots and assistive robots attached to wheelchairs have emergency stop features that put them into a fault state if they detect that they might have collided with a person or object. This makes it really hard to navigate the world as a robot, and therefore really hard to help people – a robot can’t get on a crowded subway car, or work elbow-to-elbow with a person putting together a model airplane or soldering a circuit board, or allow the wheelchair user to lean on their robot arm while they tighten a screw or paint a model.
I’m excited about improving the way robots move, way down at the mechanical/control system level, to make them more intuitive and helpful. I’m also interested in how they perceive motion, so that we can keep everyone safe without needing to keep humans and robots in their own personal space bubbles. If we can do this, it’s one step closer to a robot who can really support someone in a personal assistant kind of role, which is one of the places that I think people really want robots.
What do you like about Tufts?
I love the fact that everyone here is so *nice*. It starts with the people who hold the door for you when you’re behind them coming into a building, but really shows up all over the place. The faculty and staff really care about you as a person and as a student, and are motivated to see you succeed. Even when I disagree with someone’s approach or opinion, we can usually have a good conversation about it and it feels like the students’ opinions are respected even if they don’t change policy.
What do you want to do after graduation?
Growing up, or even five years ago, I never dreamed I would be in a doctorate program, but it turns out that I absolutely love research and teaching. I’m hoping to apply to faculty positions or possibly a post-doctoral position, or possibly research positions in industry. I want to keep making robots better, safer, and more helpful, while making what I do as an engineer more accessible to more people.
What do you enjoy doing in your free time?
I love to read (especially science fiction and fantasy, but also nonfiction), I love music and sing with a church choir, and I like making things. I knit and crochet, occasionally sew, and am learning Native American loomed beadwork and to speak Bodéawadmi from elders in my tribe (when I have time to practice). I’m a volunteer for three scouting organizations, and I have three school-aged kids, so “free time” is not always in abundance but we have fun.
