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Founders
Dr. Diana Bairaktarova
Diana Bairaktarova is an Associate Professor in the Department of Engineering Education, an Affiliate Faculty in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, and a Faculty in the Human-Centered Design Program, all at Virginia Tech, USA.
Diana has a PhD in Engineering Education from the School of Engineering Education at Purdue University, an MBA from Hamline Business School and an MS and BS in Mechanical Engineering from Technical University of Sofia, Bulgaria. She has over fifteen years of industry experience working as a Design and Manufacturing Engineer.
Dr. Inês Direito
Inês Direito is Assistant Researcher at the University of Aveiro (Portugal), Center for Mechanical Technology and Automation (TEMA), Department of Mechanical Engineering, and Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the University College London, Centre for Engineering Education (United Kingdom).
Inês has a PhD in Psychology from the University of Aveiro, an MSc in Cognitive Sciences and a Licenciatura in Psychology from the University of Minho.
She is currently working on a 6-year research project, funded by FCT/Individual Scientific Employment, that explores empathy as a tool to tackle societal challenges and promote accessibility in engineering education.
Speakers
February 2023 Webinar: Dr. Nicola Sochacka
Reflections on a decade of studying and teaching empathy
Dr. Nicola (Nicki) Sochacka co-directs the ProQual Institute for Interpretive Research Methods. Her mission is to expand the community of scholars who have the expertise to conduct high quality, qualitative and mixed methods STEM educational research. She does this through leveraging the strengths STEM scholars bring to educational research, such as their content-based knowledge, teaching expertise, prior technical research experiences, and passion for driving positive change in education. The ProQual Institute’s 9-week online course offers a novel, person-centered, and community-based approach to designing, conducting, and evaluating interpretive studies. Prior to establishing the ProQual Institute, Nicki was the Associate Director for Research Initiation in the Engineering Education Transformations Institute (EETI) at the University of Georgia, where she was supported by over 3.5M in funding from the NSF to pursue a multi-faceted research program focused on fostering empathy in engineering, characterizing how shame interacts with engineering identity development, integrating the arts into STEM, and exploring novel approaches to qualitative and mixed methods educational research. Nicki has served as a research consultant, advisory board member, mentor, and writing coach to colleagues around the world. She loves a methodological challenge and thrives on helping her clients to design, conduct, publish, and propagate novel, beautifully crafted, and well-aligned interpretive studies.
March 2023 Webinar: Dr. Justin L Hess
The role of empathy in promoting prosocial and ethical behavior
Dr. Justin L Hess is an assistant professor in the School of Engineering Education at Purdue University. Dr. Hess’s research interests include exploring empathy’s functional role in engineering and design; advancing the state of the art of engineering ethics instruction; and evaluating learning in the spaces of design, ethics, and sustainability. Justin received his PhD from Purdue University’s School of Engineering Education, as well as a Master of Science and Bachelor of Science from Purdue University’s School of Civil Engineering. Justin is the 2021 division chair-elect for the ASEE Liberal Education in Engineering & Society division.
April 2023 Webinar: Dr. Nihat Kotluk
Emotions matter but how
Dr. Kotluk, a learning scientist and teacher educator, is currently a researcher and lecturer at the EPFL. He currently focuses on emotions in learning, moral decision-making, moral reasoning, and ethics in Engineering Ethics Education. He also works on teacher education, learning sciences, and accessibility issues in education. He has an academic background in both STEM and Educational Sciences. He has 14 years of teaching experience in teacher education and has trained high school students in physics and teachers in pedagogy.
May 2023 Webinar: Dr. David Fernandez Rivas
Engineering Empathy, for All
Dr. David Fernandez Rivas (BS: 2004; MSc: 2006 Nuclear Engineering, Higher Institute of Science and Technology, InSTEC, Havana, Cuba) obtained his PhD at the University of Twente UT (2012). Assistant professor (2014-2019), associate professor (2020-2021) and Professor (2021) in the Mesoscale Chemical Systems Group, UT. He is research affiliate at the Mechanical Engineering Department, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA (2017) and Visiting Professor at the Dermatology Department, Erasmus MC Hospital, Rotterdam, The Netherlands.
His research interest and expertise are in the areas of microfluidics, transdermal drug delivery alternatives, solar-to-fuel cells, process intensification, acoustic cavitation and sonochemistry. In 2019, he obtained the European Research Council Starting Grant for his project BuBble Gun, aimed at penetrating microjets in soft substrates, towards controlled needle-free injections. David received the prestigious VIDI grant, from the Dutch Research Council in 2023.
He has received several recognitions, such as the Young Sonochemist Award, given by the Japan Society of Sonochemistry (JSS) in 2011, the Pieter Langerhuizen Lambertuszoon Fonds prize (2016) awarded by the Royal Holland Society of Sciences and Humanities (KHMW), and elected as Engineer of the Year 2021, and the Prince Friso Award by the Royal Dutch Institute of Engineers (KIVI). His work in Public Outreach earned him the Stairways to Impact Award, granted by the Dutch Scientific Council, and the UT in the Media Award, both in 2021. He was elected to the Global Young Academy (2020) and the Young Academy Europe (2020), elected Secretary in 2023.
David has co-authored over 60 reviewed journal papers and wrote the book Empathic Entrepreneurial Engineering. He is inventor of a patent commercialized by the spin-off BuBclean (2013) of which he is cofounder. He also founded FlowBeams, a spin-off from the University of Twente (2021) to valorize his research and second patent on needle-free injections.
He was co-chair of the COST Action Greenering: Green Chemical Engineering Network towards upscaling sustainable processes, from the European Cooperation in Science & Technology (2019-2022). He also serves in the editorial board of several journals, such as Ultrasonics Sonochemistry, and Biomicrofluidics.
June 2023 Webinar: Dr. Adetoun Yeaman
Not just one winner
Dr. Adetoun Yeaman is an Assistant Teaching Professor in the First-Year Engineering Program at Northeastern University where she facilitates students’ development of foundational engineering skills and competencies including design thinking, programming, CAD, and ethical reasoning, in a project- based learning environment. Prior to this role, she was a postdoctoral fellow at Wake Forest University where she supported the dynamic and emerging engineering program in incorporating character and ethics focused learning activities in the undergraduate engineering curriculum. She received her doctorate from Virginia Tech and her research focused on understanding empathy in the experiences of undergraduate engineering students in service-learning programs. She has an M.S. degree in Mechanical and Nuclear Engineering and a B.S. degree in Biomedical Engineering, both from Virginia Commonwealth University. She has a strong interest in the ways that people interact and the role that engineering and technology play in society. To this end, she continues to promote social competencies, such as empathy, within engineering education and practice. Her research spans a variety of areas including empathy in engineering, character education, community engagement and design education. She is also passionate about helping young people find their place as valuable contributors in society and is enthusiastic about further fostering this passion in her current role, research, and outreach experiences.
July 2023 Webinar: Rubaina Khan
Building with Heart
Rubaina Khan is an Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto, teaching engineering design and teamwork processes. She is also a doctoral candidate within the Department of Curriculum, Teaching, and Learning at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) at the University of Toronto. She has an M.A. in Curriculum and Pedagogy from the University of Toronto and an M. Sc. in Computer Control and Automation from the Nanyang Technology University in Singapore. She has worked at MIT developing navigation technologies for underwater robotics that were used to model and predict environmental issues in the coastal regions of Singapore. Her interest in engineering education led her to take up a position as a lecturer at Singapore Polytechnic. She spent five years developing interdisciplinary engineering design courses and designing state-of-the-art classrooms. Her current research interest lies at the intersection of engineering design education, socio-technical thinking, learning communities, and identity formation.
September 2023 Webinar: Dr. Johannes Strobel
Beyond Empathy – On the Search for What Drives People’s Actions and Beliefs
Dr. Johannes Strobel, Professor and Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Studies at University of Texas at El Paso, is serving the community of El Paso and the only research- intensive (R1) open access university in the USA. He has researched beliefs and empathy in engineering, expanding his work to the study of perceived troublemakers and intellectual humility. Dr. Strobel has published over 180 publications, many co-authored with students. He received over $35 Million in research funds and is the founding editor of the Journal of Pre- College Engineering Education Research.
October 2023 Webinar: Pr. Sharon Tettegah
Empathic Design: Engineering Curriculum
Professor Sharon Tettegah is a faculty in the Department of Black Studies, and Director for the Center for Black Studies Research at University of California, Santa Barbara (USA). Sharon Tettegah’s research framework is at the intersection of STEM, Psychology and Education with an emphasis on Black and Ethnic Studies. Her current research focuses on the use of high performance computing to examine broadening participation in STEM and beyond. The focus of her most recent past research examines affective, behavioral and cognitive facets of empathy and empathic dispositions using multiple technologies (e.g., functional magnetic resonance imaging, simulations, games). Her interest and research in empathy, emotions and technology is the result of passion and commitment to the improvement of accessibility in leadership, teaching and learning. In addition to her research on empathy, she is also involved in the examination of innovation and creativity in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics fields. Her goals as a researcher and practitioner are to broaden participation for students of color in STEM disciplines.
November 2023 Webinar: Dr. Mariam Makramalla
Peace building from within
Mariam is an educational consultant and scholar whose work is mostly concerned with socio-cultural and socio-political questions of educational transfer across contextual boundaries. As a Cambridge Partnership consultant, she has been engaged in the post-reform activity at the Ministry of Education in Qatar and is currently consulting the Ministry of Education in the UAE on matters of educational reform. As a consultant, she is interested that buy in from pre-reform stakeholders is achieved so that the transfer can happen from within. As a researcher, she has been heavily engaged with the post-curricular reform educational context of Egypt, trying to unpack ways in which practitioners relate to the mindset shift that is underpinning a given curricular reform setup. While most of her scholarly contributions have mainly targeted the K-12 sector, as a practitioner she has also recently been engaged with cross-cultural curricular transfer in the Higher Education sector.
January 2024 Webinar: Dr. Aristides P. Carrillo-Fernande
Empathy in Engineering Design Teams: Individuals, Context, and Collectiveness
Dr. Aristides P. Carrillo-Fernandez is a postdoctoral associate in the School of Engineering Education at Purdue University. Dr. Carrillo-Fernandez received a Ph.D. in Engineering Education from Purdue University (United States), a Master in Telecommunication Systems Engineering from ESIGELEC (France), and a Bachelor of Science in Telecommunication Systems Engineering from UPM (Spain). His research is centered on empathic formation in First-Year Engineering design teams and its role in engineering team dynamics during teamwork-based-designed projects.
February 2024 Webinar: Rebekah Dawn
Collaborative Theatre Making to Expand Connection in STEM Education
Rebekah Dawn has worked as an actor, dancer, singer, devisor, choreographer, director, and teaching artist in NYC, Australia, and across the Western States. She received an M.F.A. in Theatre Performance from Arizona State University and a B.A. in Theatre and Dance from California State University, Sacramento. Her specialty is creating ensemble generated dance/theatre through community engaged methods which utilize and promote kinesthetic empathy. She is currently on a Post-MFA Fellowship at Virginia Tech, teaching acting and collaborative theatre-making to STEM students to develop communication, connection, collaboration, critical thinking, and compassion.
March 2024 Webinar: Bala Vignesh Sundaram
My experiences in my PhD dissertation on Developing Teacher Empathy in the engineering classroom
Bala Vignesh Sundaram (Bala) started his career as an Assistant Teaching Professor at Arizona State University in Fall 2023. He completed his doctorate in Engineering Education Systems and Design at Arizona State University in Spring 2023. His research focused on teacher empathy in the engineering classroom. He is interested in research on classroom pedagogy, student motivation and teaching strategies. He is currently experimenting various pedagogical interventions in his first and second year undergraduate engineering courses. He strongly believes that empathy in a classroom is critical to help the students become the best versions of themselves (and also a lot of fun for the teacher in the classroom).
May 2024 Webinar: Dr. Linjue (Jade) Wang and Dr. David A. Delaine
Engaging students with empathy in engineering: three opportunities for educators
Dr. Linjue (Jade) Wang received a Ph.D. in Engineering Education and an M.S. in Industrial Systems Engineering from The Ohio State University. She is interested in exploring how engineering students develop empathy during their academic journey, especially what effective strategies engineering educators can use to integrate empathy into their teaching practices. Before studying in the U.S., Jade earned her B.E. in Building Environment and Energy Engineering from the School of Architecture at Tsinghua University in China.
As an instructional consultant, she is dedicated to supporting new faculty and lecturers in connecting with U-M resources and ensuring graduate students are adequately prepared for teaching in higher education when they become faculty.
Dr. David A. Delaine is an Associate Professor in the School of Universal Computing, Construction & Engineering Education (SUCCEED) and the STEM Transformation Institute at Florida International University (FIU). Dr. Delaine seeks to extend FIU’s expertise through his Community-based Learning Lab that advances knowledge on the ways in which community-based learning (service-learning, outreach, volunteerism) in engineering can impact local communities, students, and other participating stakeholders through reciprocal partnership. As an NSF CAREER award recipient, Dr. Delaine’s research develops evidence-based approaches within CBL contexts that can support the formation of reflexive engineering professionals while promoting positive societal change that has broad impacts on who participates in engineering and how. Dr. Delaine has obtained a bachelor’s in electrical engineering from Northeastern University, a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Drexel University, and served as a Postdoctoral Fulbright Scholar at the Escola Politécnica da Universidade de São Paulo.
