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Topic: Design

John Wanberg

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John Wanberg, M.A., is a professor in the Industrial Design Department at Metropolitan State University of Denver. He has been teaching university-level coursework in industrial design for over 18 years. Wanberg has a knack for training prospective industrial designers and believes constant professional skill development is critical to prepare students for their design careers.

Among the many ventures he has been involved in as a professional designer, Wanberg has designed many products for the medical field and transportation. He has a strong interest in ergonomic and human factors research and has assisted in the development of several products that other aesthetics-based designers have avoided. Wanberg has collaborated in the design of robotic prosthetics (for stroke victims and amputees) as well as dynamic, alternative vehicle architectures that have been serviceable and comfortable over a wide range of user sizes. Additionally, while working as a contract research assistant, he developed a prototype footbed for a training device that is adjustability to fit the length and width of multiple users’ feet. His expertise includes technology-based conceptualization, “mechano-aesthetic” design, prototype fabrication as well as composites manufacturing and applications.

Wanberg received a master’s in industrial design from Arizona State University in 2005 and a bachelor’s in industrial design with a minor in Japanese from Brigham Young University in 2000.

Jinseup (Ted) Shin

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Jinseup “Ted” Shin, MFA, is a professor the Department of Industrial Design at Metropolitan State University of Denver. His areas of expertise include technology, product design, and future trends. Shin teaches Introduction to Industrial Design, Technical Drawing, and Digital Visual Techniques in ID and oversees student internships.

Before teaching at MSU Denver, he taught as an associate professor in the Department of Industrial Design at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, for five years. Shin also worked for Samsung Electronics in South Korea for seven years, where he designed various products including Samsung’s first clamshell-type cellphone. He was one of 12 from over 700 Samsung designers to be placed in a special design program at the company, which allowed him to travel to many countries and study how different cultures impact design solutions.

Shin is a member of the Industrial Designers Society of America and co-authored an IDSA publication titled “Design Like a Chef,” in which he compares the complex roles of chefs and designers. Additionally, he is actively working with companies as a professional design consultant.

Shin received his master’s in Industrial and Product Design from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2001 and a bachelor’s in Industrial and Product Design from the Yeungnam University in South Korea in 1993.

Scott Mourer

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Scott Mourer, M.F.A., is an adjunct professor in the Department of Industrial Design at Metropolitan State University of Denver.

David Klein

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David Klein, M.F.A., is a professor in the Department of Industrial Design at Metropolitan State University of Denver.

His professional experience includes designing children’s riding toys and adult fitness equipment at Roadmaster Corporation, decorative designs at David Marshall Inc., and consumer electronics for Samsung Corporation in Seoul, Korea. Klein also completed a Fulbright-Hayes Seminar in the Czech and Slovak Republics, was a visiting scholar at the Beijing Academy of Science and Technology and has presented at IDSA and NCIIA national conferences. He is also a member of Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA) and is in involved in the One World One Water Center at MSU Denver.

Klein received his master of fine arts in industrial design from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a bachelor of arts in product design from Southern Illinois University at Carbondale.

Amy Kern

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Amy Kern, MID, is an associate professor in the Department of Industrial Design at Metropolitan State University of Denver. Her areas of expertise include industrial design, human-centered design, design thinking and design research. Kern currently teaches Introduction to Industrial Design.

Prior to joining MSU Denver in 2014, her work included being a senior product designer, furniture and lighting designer and director of product design. In 2012, Kern launched her design consultancy, AK Magma Design, where she still works as the founder and director of design. Her extensive experience, specializing in furniture and spatial and lighting design, includes work with factories around the world and major corporate retailers and custom designs for restaurants, lounges, hotels and casinos.

Kern’s research areas include globalization, ethnography, humanitarian design and universal design. Her current projects are being completed at her consultancy, focusing on balancing humanitarian and universal design projects with projects using expertise in the business of product design and manufacturing. She is a member of the Industrial Designers Society of America.

Kern received her Master of Industrial Design degree from Pratt Institute in New York in 2002 and her bachelor’s degree in Religious Studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara, in 1994. She also holds a special certification in Design Thinking.

Devi Kalla

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Devi K. Kalla, Ph.D., is currently employed at Metropolitan State University of Denver on a full time basis as a Tenure Track Faculty member with a position title of Professor of Mechanical Engineering Technology in the Department of Engineering Technology. Kalla has made substantial contributions to the hybrid and modern field of sustainable manufacturing science and engineering technology. His work has focused specifically in the areas of developing multiple regression analysis (MR) and committee neural network approximation (CN) models for predicting straight and oblique geometric cutting forces in milling operations using carbon fiber-reinforced polymer (CFRP) composites in the production process, establishing life-cycle databases to advance sustainable manufacturing practices in wind energy systems, and developing a framework to construct energy profiles and characterize the energy consumption involved in modern machining processes to support low carbon manufacturing.

Moreover, Kalla has a documented record of authorship in the field of endeavor. As evidence of his research success, Kalla’s work has resulted in at least 2 first-authored book chapters, 13 presentations, and 28 peer-reviewed scholarly publications, 16 of which are first-authored articles, appearing in leading international journals and international conference proceedings – an extremely productive and exemplary record compared to that of his peers in the mutual field of research.

Lisa Abendroth

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Lisa M. Abendroth is a professor in the Communication Design program at Metropolitan State University of Denver. She led the program as coordinator from 2000 to 2018. Her research focuses on public interest design and the social, economic, and environmental impacts created with, and within, the contexts of underserved people, places, and problems. Her pedagogy is committed to community-centered design practices that embolden access and equity.

Abendroth is a SEED Network cofounder, a SEED Evaluator coauthor, and a recipient of the SEED Award for Leadership in Public Interest Design. She is also a contributor to the Public Interest Design Institute. Abendroth is a coeditor of two books in Routledge’s Public Interest Design Guidebook series: Public Interest Design Practice Guidebook: SEED Methodology, Case Studies, and Critical Issues, published in 2015; and, Public Interest Design Education Guidebook: Curricula, Strategies, and SEED Academic Case Studies, published in 2018.

She has earned degrees from Virginia Commonwealth University and the Rhode Island School of Design. Abendroth lectures, curates, exhibits and publishes her work nationally and internationally. She was named a 2019 AIGA Fellow.

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