Engineering

Mobile Gaming Jam Captures Network Data

by Maddy Myers on May 23, 2013

in Campus Culture, Classroom, Engineering, Events, Research, Student Life, Uncategorized

Ravi and Tiffany at the Stata Center.

Tiffany Chen and Ravi Netravali at the Stata Center.

What did MIT students do last weekend? Some of them hosted a game jam.

Research students in the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) Networks and Mobile Systems group extended an open invitation to local mobile game developers to come to the Stata Center and participate in a weekend-long challenge: create a game that encourages its players to go forth and explore new places.

The event resulted in a new mobile game made by a small group of developers; the team hopes to officially release it in the next two weeks. Game design teams who missed last weekend’s game jam can find the NetMap Game Client on Github.com should they wish to aid these researchers in their quest.

The hosts of the game jam have already been collecting data on their own about wireless and cellular networks via a tool called NetMap, as a class project for 6.829 Computer Networks. Three PhD students in the class–Tiffany Chen, Ravi Netravali, and Victor Costan ’07 MNG ’08—believed that their research project could extend beyond just a class assignment. They wanted to collect more data to analyze from mobile users all over the world.

How could the team get users everywhere to find out about NetMap, install it, and provide more data for the researchers to analyze? Make a game, of course.

The Teaching Assistant of the students’ Computer Networks class, PhD student Jonathan Perry SM ’12, took this idea one step further. He suggested the team host a game jam, a hackathon-like event for game developers to meet up and make a game in a single weekend.

“We needed an easy way to collect a large volume of measurements,” Perry explains. “If you’re going to go big-scale, why have one game when you can have many?”

Although the game jam event produced only one game so far, the team hopes for further development with NetMap in the future.

“Our wildest dream would be to have these collections everywhere where there are wireless device users,” says Netravali. “The problems of a poor connection can plague you anywhere.”

“You could find out if AT&T works better in this area or T-Mobile works better in this area,” Tiffany Chen explains. “You could know which service you should choose. Everybody can use that information.”

Perry hopes the data collected via NetMap and the team’s subsequent research and analysis will help network researchers. “When you make new network equipment or when you design new standards—later versions of 4G, for example or the next version of Wi-Fi—you can take into account data.”

The game jam focused on development for Android devices so that the games and the entire NetMap project can remain open source and freely available for future researchers and developers.

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IkeaBot Assembles Furniture Using “Common Sense”

by Nancy DuVergne Smith on May 21, 2013

in Engineering

Assembling popular Swedish furniture may help the masses, but it’s only a hint of what goes on in MIT’s Distributed Robotics Laboratory. How the bots do it is the breakthrough. According to a recent IEEE Spectrum article, the bots are fully autonomous and need no human help to whip together a Lack table in 10 minutes. The magic is in the software and the grippers—and that magic can be applied to industrial-scale problems in manufacturing.

Ross A. Knepper, a postdoctoral associate, is leading the effort to teach a team of commercially available KUKA youBots to assemble the furniture. In an earlier life, he created motion planners that drive Mars rovers, unmanned military vehicles, and a personal home-assistant robot called HERB.

With the Ikeabot, Knepper is tackling a key problem in robotics with savvy algorithms.

“A lot of problems in factory automation are similar to the problem in Ikea furniture assembly,” says Knepper. “There are many robots in factories but they perform very simple functions. In the future, we want robots that can move around in the factory and interact with people…so they can be treated as teammates, not just tools.”

Knepper is writing code that creates the kind of common sense that allows humans to work side by side intuitively. “If you imagine two people assembling furniture together, they can infer what the other is doing—they don’t have to explain it. [The IKeabots] are trying to infer how parts fit together and the logical order of assembly.”

Using a natural language feature, the robots can ask for help. If they can’t reach a part, for example, they find a human and ask that the part be handed to them, and then they continue to work.

Space requirements have guided much of robot research in the past few decades, Knepper says. In space, robots need a higher order of intelligence to solve problems and work independently. The payoff may be closer to home though—on the factory floor. Using intelligent robots could help rebuild manufacturing and create jobs in the US. “We will need highly skilled people to operate the robots and robots and humans can trade off jobs,” he says. “You can have a much more efficient process.”

What’s next for the Ikeabot? The team is working on an Allen Wrench glove that the robot can put on and off as needed, and the future is about groups of robots working collaboratively with one another—and with people. And all that fits neatly into the Distributed Robotics Laboratory, which is headed by Daniela Rus, director of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL). DRL is known for research in programmable matter and distributed robotics. In fact, the lab’s robots have many talents: they can end a garden, bake cookies from scratch, fly in swarms to perform surveillance functions, and dance with humans.

Want the details? Download “The IkeaBot: An Autonomous Multi-Robot Coordinated Furniture Assembly System,” which was nominated for Best Automation Paper at the International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA)in Karlsruhe, Germany, May 2013.

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Robot Bartender: Should You Still Leave a Tip?

by Jay London on May 17, 2013

in Engineering, In the News, Modern Geekhood, Research

Makr-ShakrThe most prolific bartenders have knowledge of thousands of different drink recipes, but a how about a googol? A new robotic bartender developed by MIT’s SENSEable City Lab makes that claim and more.

The Makr Shakr is a three-armed robotic barman created through a partnership with Coca-Cola and Bacardi USA. The robot’s programmable  mixing system claims an infinite number of drinks and users can submit their own through a mobile app.

From dezeen magazine:

“Users will download an app on their handheld devices and mix ingredients as virtual barmen. They can gain inspiration by viewing other users’ recipes and comments before sending in their drink of choice. The cocktail is then crafted by three robotic arms, whose movements reproduce every action of a barman—from the shaking of a Martini to the muddling of a Mojito, and even the thin slicing of a lemon garnish.”

The Makr Shakr was previewed during Milan Design Week in April and made its official debut at the Google I/O annual developer conference in San Francisco on May 15. The machine was created at Google’s request. A year earlier, they asked the inventors to create a device that best exemplifies participatory design.

The robotic arms mimic the movements of a bartender—a very graceful bartender. The designers programmed the robot’s gestures by recording the movements of Italian ballet dancer Roberto Bolle.

Five SENSEable researchers helped develop the Makr Shakr, including project leader and graduate student Yaniv Turgeman. SENSEable’s 35-person team includes associate director Assaf Biderman ’05, Otto Ng ’12, Dietman Offenhuber ’08, Anthony Vanky SM ’11. Bacardi also has MIT ties; Joaquin E. Bacardi III MBA ‘98 is the company’s president and CEO.

Inspired by Coca-Cola’s Freestyle touchscreen beverage dispenser, the Makr Shakr can create alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks. The app’s customization system can monitor alcohol consumption and blood alcohol levels and help users self-monitor their intake. Users can also share their recipes and drink photos.

SENSEable City director Carlo Ratti told Boston Magazine that the Makr Shakr will not replace human bartenders and is “more a research platform aimed at the third industrial revolution, where anyone can design and produce.”

Fear not, barkeeps. There are no plans to make the Makr Shakr commercially available.

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“I’m A Nuke”: MIT’s Rising Generation of Nuclear Engineers

by Nancy DuVergne Smith on May 14, 2013

in Energy, Engineering

Guest blogger: Peter Dunn

The phrase “young nuclear engineer” has been something of an oxymoron in recent decades, with the nuclear energy industry offering few openings for newcomers. Yet a new crop of nuclear engineers are coming out of MIT and videos themed, “I’m A Nuke,” tell some of their stories.

MIT students host the American Nuclear Society 2013 Student Conference.

MIT students host the American Nuclear Society 2013 Student Conference in April.

Newly educated engineers are vital because the engineers who entered the field in the 1960s and 1970s are retiring, and climate change concerns are sparking renewed interest in the ability to generate continuous carbon-free energy. MIT’s Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering (NSE) has seen a surge in applications from a diverse, dynamic group of students, many of them with strong environmental orientations.

Last month, MIT hosted the recent American Nuclear Society 2013 Student Conference, with the theme, Public Image of the Nuclear Engineer. About 630 US and international students attended the event, which was co-chaired by NSE students Nathan Gibson, Ekaterina Paranomova ‘13, and Samuel Brinton. Publicity coordinator Jake Jurewicz ’14 said the timing, about two years after the Fukushima disaster, was opportune.

“People have had time to digest Fukushima and the lessons learned; we all sat in on talks about what went wrong and what can be done to improve plants and remedy what happened,” said Jurewicz.

More broadly, he added, the conference focused on innovation, new ideas, and cultivation of the new workforce. In addition to talks and technical sessions, activities included a large poster session showcasing attendee research, career and political workshops, a job fair, tours of MIT’s fission and fusion reactors, and a three-minute pitch contest.

Brinton, who is studying nuclear waste policy, captured some of the complexity faced by his generation, saying, “my mother was raised near Three Mile Island, and my dad was an anti-nuclear weapons activist, so I wanted to address the big problems that nuclear was facing….I want to apply a scientific solution to a political problem.”

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Big Brain, Big Screen: Alum Stars on New Discovery Channel Show

by Joe McGonegal on May 13, 2013

in Alumni Life, Design, Engineering, In the News, Learning, Modern Geekhood

Alison Wong ’03 spent several weeks last year working on a missile defense system for thwarting rocket attacks.

Wong also designed methods to disengage car engines as they approached military checkpoints, one-person shelters capable of withstanding fire and extreme winds, and contraptions to prevent explosions in colliding vehicles.

Alison Wong '03. Photo: Discovery Channel.

Alison Wong ’03. Photo: Discovery Channel.

Wong did all this on the set of the Discovery Channel’s Big Brain Theory, a reality TV show that premiered in April and that will continue its run this spring on Wednesday nights.

Wong is one of ten contestants on the reality show and one of its two female stars.

After answering a casting call a year ago for the new show, which is hosted by Kal Penn of Harold and Kumar fame, Wong flew to Los Angeles for the full-immersion reality TV program. There, she lived with other contestants in a community house while solving those puzzling challenges and the occasional interpersonal dramas native to the medium of reality TV. The show’s top prize is $50,000 and a one-year contract at a top design firm.

Wong jumped at the opportunity to combine her passions in design and engineering. “Engineering is a team sport and this show is about teamwork,” she says.

At MIT, Wong majored in mechanical engineering with an architecture minor in the early years of course 2-A. She penned two regular comic strips for The Tech and did UROPs with David R. Wallace and the Media Lab.

A designer at heart, Wong pursued a master’s in design at Stanford and spent five years at IDEO as a principal designer. In 2010 she launched her own firm, Integral Design. She is currently working on bringing Keyprop, a key-ring tripod for smartphones, to market.

On Big Brain Theory’s first episode, contestants focused on the colliding-vehicle conundrum, with Wong leading efforts in the design and blueprint phase to keep an explosive box on the back of a pickup truck from reaching 25 g.

“The Discovery Channel makes quality shows, and I’m proud of them for taking a risk on promoting a show like this,” Wong says. “There’s nothing like it on TV. I’m honored to be among them.”

Wong got the full Hollywood treatment last month. Discovery hosted a red-carpet premiere for the show’s cast at design firm WET’s headquarters in LA.

Though Wong doesn’t rule out future roles on screen, her focus remains on her design career and using this experience to inspire others.

“I’m open to a lot of things, but I’m mostly trying to leverage this to inspire girls,” she says. “I just talked at a local school and showed students some of my 3D prints and products. I want to lead by example and show them that math and science can be really creative industries.”

To judge the contestants’ efforts in the first episode of Big Brain Theory, Discovery brought in another alum—astronaut Michael Massimino ME ’88—who critiqued Wong’s design and participated in the elimination vote at the end of the show.

Rest assured, he did not vote Wong off.

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Running Again: Alum Helps Victims Dream of Next Year’s Marathon

by Joe McGonegal on May 9, 2013

in Alumni Life, Design, Engineering, In the News, Learning, Modern Geekhood, Research

My doctor told me recently to stop running. He said my knees, like most human knees, have had enough of high-impact exercise after twenty years of road races.

He’s the third doctor to tell me so. Maybe this time it will sink in. In a small, perhaps completely incomparable way, I’ve felt the same zeal to overcome the body’s limitations that those who have endured paralysis, severe arthritis, or amputations experience. We all have that need to mend, overcome the pain, and return to the challenge.

Hugh Herr SM '93. Photo: Webb Chappell.

Hugh Herr SM ’93. Photo: Webb Chappell.

So when I heard interviews with victims of the Boston Marathon bombing in the past few weeks, who, despite severe injury and amputation, vowed to run the race again, I nodded my head. I understood.

MIT Media Lab Associate Professor Hugh Herr SM ’93 heard the same declarations coming from bombing victims this month. He, too, understood.

But Herr, himself a double amputee, is in a unique place to help. Partnering with No Barriers USA, Herr and his Biomechatronics Research Group intend to support any marathoner who, despite severe injury or limb loss as a result of the bombings, aims to run again next year.

No Barriers, a nationwide nonprofit with a goal of improving lives through assistive technology, launched the No Barriers for Boston fund on April 26. It hopes to raise $500,000 to support investments in sport-specific prosthetic limbs to help survivors run, bike, swim, or otherwise compete athletically again.

“Assistive technology makes a profound impact on the lives of people struggling with physical disability,” Herr wrote in a May 3 post on a Wall Street Journal blog. “It created a passion in me for science and engineering that has since defined my career.”

Herr’s award-winning team focuses on creating “intimate extensions of the human body” that react with ease to the nervous system’s electromechanical commands as fluidly as natural limbs. With fourteen patents relating to the field of bionics, Herr hopes to make an array of such advanced prosthetics commercially available and affordable.

What about knees like mine? In a New York Times interview last week, Herr speculated that someday, “smart” pants that act like a second skin on one’s legs might make running a painless, lifelong pursuit.  My joints like the sound of that.

An avid athlete himself, Herr says he intends to run alongside his fellow amputees in next year’s Boston Marathon.

“We will participate as a beautifully defiant statement to the world that we the people will not be intimidated, brought down, diminished, conquered or stopped by acts of violence,” he writes.

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How Do We Love Thee, River Charles? Let Us Count the Ways…

by Joe McGonegal on April 22, 2013

in Alumni Life, Athletics, Campus Culture, Classroom, Engineering, Events, IAP, Science, Student Life

Happy Earth Day! As you read this, teams are vying to be named champions in the annual MIT Earth Day Challenge this week. Many community members will contribute to the (rescheduled) 14th annual Charles River Cleanup this weekend.
earth day_transparent1

Being a school on a shoreline, MIT’s celebration of Earth any day is also, quite often, a celebration of the water, and in particular, the Charles River.

Like so many civilizations before us, MIT’s has been built upon a river.

How does this river sustain our work? Ocean engineering majors can tell you; they surveyed the muddy Charles’s depths in 2007. Civil engineers plumb its depths annually: check out this 2012 project to destratify it with turbulent jets.  Art, Culture,and Technology Associate Professor Gediminas Urbonas designed last winter’s IAP “Learning from the River” around it. CSAIL’s lecture series bears its name.

There was Proteus the penguin boat and the pre-Columbian raft. We’ve done sonar tests, problem sets with fictional “Charles River” companies, studied ice patterns, and silt formation.

And the Charles is our playground, too, as any runner, rower or sailor will attest. Maybe you played the MUVE game “Charles River City” a few years back, or watched the 4th of July fireworks from any available rooftop.

Always moving and yet always still, the Charles is a muse for photographers, romantics, barflys, philanthropists, and soul-searchers. Remember how Ernie Knight ’28, for his 70th reunion, took a single scull out for one more row?

2011_sunset_charles_small

Photo: Lydia Krasilnikova.

Seems logical to trek out there once a year—at least, to work on keeping the Charles clean.

In a unique sense of the word, the Charles River is also an MIT invention. Karl Haglund’s 2002 book, Inventing the Charles River, is a great exploration into how engineers (MIT alums included) shaped Boston and Cambridge’s shorelines over the years into a “Back Bay” with stabilized riverfronts. How would one’s MIT experience be different, do you think, if we looked out at mud flats and salt marshes every day?

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Are You Ready for Wearable Computers?

by Joe McGonegal on April 17, 2013

in Alumni Life, Design, Engineering, In the News, Learning, Media, Modern Geekhood, Research

It’s an exciting time to be Thad Starner ’91, SM ’95, PhD ’99.

For over twenty years, Starner has been one of only a handful of pioneers to go where no humans have gone before, sporting a wearable computer in front of his eye.

Google Glass, due to be released in late 2013.

Google Glass, due to be released in late 2013. Photo: Google.

Later this year, Starner is about to have a lot of company. With the launch of Google Glass sometime in late 2013, Starner’s 20-year beta test will end.

In late February, a group of Google Explorers,  who essentially won the right to be early adopters, started seeing their world as Starner does, through a computer screen.

Starner designed and modified his own version over the years; Google’s first customers paid $1,500 for the off-the-shelf version that Starner helped design. Google Glass strives to contain everything in one device: microphone, camera, CPU and a mini-projector that will flash calendar reminders, text messages, directions and whatever else you wish it to onto a half-inch transparent area of one lens.

Serving as Technical Lead/Manager for Google alongside some former classmates, Starner has given talks on wearable computing for some time. He is quick to note, however, that we have all used wearable computers—in the form of heart-rate monitors, wristwatches and, of course, cell phones.

Long before there was industry research and symposia on the topic of wearable computers, Starner roamed the streets of Cambridge with his early model, exploring the intersections of virtual and real worlds—while crossing back and forth over a very real Mass Ave.

glass2

A typical view from a Google Glass headset. Photo: Google.

“We really believe that there’s much more convenient ways of having a computer augment your life than to take a phone out of your pocket,” Starner said in an interview this month. With a wearable computer, he says, “You get really good at using 30-second chunks of time.”

Aside from Google Glass, Starner’s lab at Georgia Tech, where he is director of the Contextual Computing Group, works on other types of wearable computing, like a glove with finger pulsations that can teach you to play Beethoven while you multitask. That glove also does wonders for stroke victims, Starner learned.

Clearly, wearable computing can make such profound impacts in people’s lives. Until then, Starner will have to be patient, fielding all the controversial questions about privacy and copyright and identity when the world puts on its glasses for the first time.

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Faculty on 60 Minutes: Robots and Job Growth?

by Nancy DuVergne Smith on January 22, 2013

in Engineering, In the News, Modern Geekhood

MIT Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee say technology both creates and destroys jobs.

MIT’s Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee say technology both creates and destroys jobs.

Is the twentieth century dream of robots helping humans do practically everything faster and cheaper turning into a nightmare with efficient machines replacing workers and driving up unemployment? 60 Minutes host Steve Kroft recently asked MIT Sloan’s Professor Erik Brynjolfsson PhD ’91 and Principal Research Scientist Andrew McAfee ’88, ’89, SM ’90 to discuss how robots are revolutionizing the workplace.

The segment, Are Robotics Hurting Job Growth, explores how robots are contributing to the jobless recovery. Technology and increased automation is a factor, the MIT scientists say. “Middle-skilled jobs that involve routine tasks,” like checking in luggage at the airport, are increasingly being filled by software robots or physical robots, says Brynjolfsson.

Any surprising uses? “There are very heavily automated warehouses where there are a surprisingly few or no people around. That absolutely took took me by surprise,” says McAfee.

Warehouse robots, pictured here in orange, can quickly move a stack of merchandise to a packing station and then scoot under stacked shelving to find the next load.

They point to a warehouse in Devens, MA, where robots move 10,000 pieces of merchandise a day more efficiently and cheaper than people could. Customer orders are transmitted via wifi antennas to the 69 robots in a warehouse that measures about the size of two football fields. The bots pick up a load, take it to packing station, then zip off to the next order.

In other examples, a California hospital has a fleet of robots that carry food to patients, blood samples to labs, and dirty linen to the laundry. Robots also are used to automate prostate surgery and fill prescriptions in pharmacies.

“Technology is always creating jobs and destroying jobs but right now the pace is accelerating,” says Brynjolfsson. “As a consequence, we are not creating jobs at the pace we need.”

The episode also introduces former MIT professor Rodney Brooks, in his new startup, Rethink Robotics, who contributing to the revival of manufacturing—with robots.

The 13-minute segment is followed by another featuring the faculty: Helping humans stay ahead of the curve.

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Innovation Center Lets Teens & Tweens Get Their Hands Dirty

by Amy Marcott on January 10, 2013

in Alumni Life, Arts, Design, Engineering, Learning, Media, Modern Geekhood

For the Fall 2012 theme of flight, students in one studio built heavier-than-air radio controlled airplanes. They learned about different methods of lift, propulsion, construction, and design. One team built a glider with long, thin wings. Another team built a futuristic-looking airplane with tapered wings and a round body. A third team made a plane that could change the angle of its propellers, allowing it to both hover like a helicopter, and glide like an aircraft. Read more about the airplane-design studio.

For the Fall 2012 theme of flight, students built heavier-than-air radio-controlled airplanes, learning about different methods of lift, propulsion, construction, and design. Read more about the airplane-design studio.

Some of the most memorable experiences at MIT happen when students seek to solve real-world problems and navigate the successes and failures inherent in the invention process. Now, alumni are bringing that same sort of experience to middle and high school students with NuVu, an innovation learning center located near campus in Central Square.

Launched in 2010 by Saeed Arida SM ’04, PhD ’11 (chief excitement officer); Saba Ghole SM ’07 (chief creative officer); MIT PhD student David Wang ’05, SM ’10 (in-house rocket scientist); and Sean Stevens (prototyping guru), NuVu uses the architectural studio model and encourages youth aged 11–17 to tackle complex, comprehensive problems with a hands-on approach. Small teams collaborate on multidisciplinary projects centered around a theme (for the winter term, currently underway, the theme is smarter planet). It’s an anything-goes, get-your-hands-dirty, dream big kind of place that offers instruction in robotics, engineering and applied sciences, information technology, design and interaction design, computer programming, alternative energy, social sciences, and digital arts and media.

The summer 2012 theme was superheroes, and in one studio led by Media Lab grad student Jennifer Jacobs, students learned the fundamentals of costume design; examined high-tech, self-healing fabrics and specialty metals imbued with shape memory; then manufactured their own creations. The Superhero Collection walked the runway at the the Emerging Trends Show during Boston Fashion Week. Read more about the fashion show. Above: the Lionfish dress, which takes its inspiration from a venomous fish found in the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea, was designed by Sam Ingersoll.

The summer 2012 theme was superheroes, and in one studio, students learned the fundamentals of costume design, examined high-tech fabrics and metals, then manufactured their own creations. The Superhero Collection walked the runway at the the Emerging Trends Show during Boston Fashion Week. Read more about the fashion show. Above: the Lionfish dress, which takes its inspiration from a venomous fish found in the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea, was designed by Sam Ingersoll.

Guiding students every step of the way are experts, many of whom are MIT alumni and PhD students. These coaches (as they are called) work with groups to address complex scientific, technical, and design questions and help with prototype inventions, which are then evaluated by external reviewers (professors, practitioners, entrepreneurs and designers). Students learn creative problem solving, collaboration, communication and presentation skills, systems thinking, adaptability, risk-taking, and more.

NuVu is a full-time program, 9:00 a.m.–3:00 p.m. weekdays, and the learning is intense. Students enroll in a sequence of four studios, each lasting two weeks. During the academic year, local schools send a select group of learners to NuVu for three to six months of  instruction. Special summer programs have been taught elsewhere in the US and there’s now a satellite program in India, the NuVu-Bangalore Studio.

The summer 2013 theme is interactive music and art. Studios include futuristic musical instruments, interactive storybook, brainwave art & music, drawing robots, interactive fashion, and more.

Registration for any or all of three summer sessions (July 8–Aug. 16) is open now through May 8. Enrollments are processed on a first-come, first-served basis.

There’s also a summer professional development session for educators and curriculum developers to learn about studio-based pedagogy. Participants will devise a project they can implement in their own schools and communities. Registration is open through April 19.

check out NuVu’s blog for more project updates.

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