ISD Funds 5 Seed Grant Proposals
ISD seeded transformative research by five groups with faculty from across U-M departments and colleges. Proposals addressed societal gaps through an integration of fields and communities into the process of designing and manufacturing. This approach served to holistically inspire engineers, while also including historically excluded communities. Proposals combined qualitative and quantitative research methods to demonstrate the beneficial role of integrative approaches in successful realization, use, and retirement of engineering systems. The expectation is these projects will go on to impact broader national efforts.
Project Details
In total, five proposals and multi-disciplinary teams across campus were funded. The projects cover the ISD focus areas of model-based thinking, integrative thinking, and socio-technology.
Projects addressed questions such as how to deal with uncertainty in mass production of additively manufactured large components, how the U.S. and the electric power system can achieve absolute decarbonization in line with the 1.5 and 2°C target goals, and how to mitigate the risk in integrated micro-mobility vehicles (electric bicycles, scooters, unicycles) into urban transportation systems, but also how to better embed the designer’s own positionality in early stage design act.
Details on the proposals:
Project Title: Technology and Workforce Pathways for Electric Power System Decarbonization under a Sustainable Manufacturing Future
Team: Daniel Cooper (ME), Michael Craig (SEAS), Sarah Crane (Economic Growing Institute), Xun Huan (ME)
Expected Outcome: This project aimed to create a consumption-based industry-EPS emissions model for the conterminous US (2023-2050). This model will be used to screen for industry-EPS pathways that satisfy manufacturing expansion (emissions and scale-up) constraints across a wide range of plausible futures.
Project Title: Model-Based System Approach to Rapid Certification of Additively Manufactured Metal Components
Team: Pingsha Dong (NAME, ISD), Judy Jin (IOE, ISD), Theodor Freiheit (ME)
Expected Outcome: This team proposed creating a methodology that concurrently integrates mold design details with the AM build process, build quality, in-situ monitoring, and application-specific certification requirements by taking advantage of some of the unique mechanics-based modeling methods available at U-M.
Project Title: Strategic Investment in CO2 Pipeline Networks for Climate Change Mitigation
Team: Christian Lastoskie (CEE) Jeff Scruggs (CEE) Peter Adriaens (CEE) Michael Craig (SEAS)
Expected Outcome: This proposal developed a stagewise plan for construction of CO2-dedicated pipelines to facilitate expansion of markets for CO2-sourced commercial goods. A crucial systems interdependency of the CO2 pipeline network is that the shared cost per unit flow in the pipeline increases as the flow volume decreases.
Project Title: Positionality in the Early Stages of ‘Design for Social Good’ Projects: Characterizing and Enhancing Product Designers’ Conceptions
Team: Shanna Daly (ME), Kathleen Sienko (ME, ISD), Deepa Butoliya (Penny W. Stamps School of Art & Design), Ted London (Ross), Jacquie Handley (Consultant)
Expected Outcome: Characterize product designers’ conceptions of positionality in early-stage design for social good work, and develop and evaluate a preliminary positionality exploration tool meant to improve designers’ awareness and consideration of the role of positionality in their work.
Project Title: Risk-Centric Integration of Automated Vehicles and Micro-mobility Vehicles
Team: Bob Bordley(ISD), Jim Bagian(IOE, Michigan Medicine), Seth Guikema (IOE, CEE), Gabor Orosz(ME)
Expected Outcome: Generate motion predictions for MMVs and share these using peer-to-peer wireless communication. Show how such motion predictions will improve road safety while mitigating the risks related to communication malfunction.
