Featured Projects and Courses

Wes Watters

Students in Professor Watters' Astronomy 202 class developed their own projects to explore challenging environments, while learning skills such as computer programming, electronics, 3D printing, laser cutting, and others. Projects included Lil Pho (360° image and sound probe), HAB Solo (high altitude balloon probe), YELLO submarine (yoked electronic lake observer), 1 Luftballon (a project measuring the atmospheric opacity and environmental lapse rate), QuEEnBAE (quadcopter to measure and map Wellesley's lower atmosphere), and HAWK (an instrumented rocket experiment).

Students in Professor Amy Banzaert's First Year Seminar, ENGR 111, worked with para-rowers at Community Rowing, Inc. in Boston to design and prototype assistive devices for rowing and daily living.  Working closely with rowers, students brainstormed, developed and refined product ideas and created or reengineered products using a sewing machine and other tools in the FiberSpace in Knapp, in addition to the Wellesley Engineering Laboratory (We-Lab) and the Wellesley Costume Shop.

Students in Adam Van Arsdale's human evolution course were able to develop group research projects based on the newly discovered/published/named species of fossil hominin, Homo naledi, by printing out 3D models of some of the fossils themselves. The researchers responsible for the discovery and publication of these fossils, from the Rising Star Cave in South Africa, released 3D-models of the specimens concurrent with their initial publication on the open-access website, morphosource.org. This opportunity to work directly with fossil material, in the classroom, so soon after publication has historically been rare in paleoanthropology.

Adam Van Arsdale:

In 2014, I was invited by Dr. Dan Adler (University of Connecticut) to collaborate on an ongoing project investigating Late Pleistocene human evolution in Armenia, co-organized by the Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology (Yerevan, Armenia). One of the archaeological sites under investigation by Adler and his team, the rock shelter of Lusakert, has provided a large and compelling archaeological sample of stone tools and animal remains.

Bryan Burns and Jordan Tynes

https://ebapexcavations.org/digital/

Our program of three-dimensional modeling and fabrication is transforming the way we conduct archaeological fieldwork at ancient Eleon in central Greece. Working with a suite of portable equipment, funded through a Friends of the Library research grant, we are recording the excavation's results through hand-held 3D scanning and sophisticated drone photography. These technologies enable our research team to record information at varying scales, analyze architecture and finds from new perspectives, and engage scholarly and popular communities through interactive media. This invaluable set of imagery is also aiding our work restoring artifacts and was quickly incorporated into the decision-making process that guides the excavation progress.

Bryan Burns, Kimberly Cassibry, and Jordan Tynes

As part of an advanced seminar held in Spring 2016, students researched the history of exhibition for the Mediterranean antiquities held by the Davis Museum. 3D models – created through the combined efforts of LTS, Davis staff, and Knapp Technology Interns – enabled students to also consider new potentials for the display of artifacts in the galleries and through new media. The high quality of scanning technology gives all viewers new access to objects, considering three-dimensional works from new perspectives and simulating interaction with hand-held artifacts.

David Teng Olsen

Chasing Infinity, 2014 (excerpt) 1977 Chevy Van, stained glass, MDF, enamel and six-channel interactive video Dimensions variable ​ - text by Michael Maizels, “New View 2014 Faculty Exhibition,” the Davis, 2014. 72-78 ​ David Teng-Olsen’s art is curiously, restlessly and insistently autobiographical. He uses himself as what he calls a “test subject” and draws on his unusual, but nevertheless quintessentially American, life story to examine how and why we construct our own peculiar self-understandings. The undertones of experimentation and the pursuit of knowledge in his art betray his abiding interest in science and early academic training in bioengineering.

Text by Michael Maizels, “New View 2014 Faculty Exhibition,” the Davis, 2014. 72-78

Nicholas A. Knouf, Claudia Pederson

Art for Spooks is an augmented book that takes a poetic angle to electronic surveillance. It combines texts and images from “leaked” NSA documents that evidence mundane concerns of NSA employees with grooming etiquette, gossip and surveillance at the work place; the development of encryption and psychological profiling tools modeled on alleged historical links between magicians and the military; and a delirious imaginary steeped in the world of modern folklore, populated as is with UFOs, popular media archetypes of evil and good, as well as (apparently) a taste for buffalo meat, high art, and orientalist and gendered themes. These materials are juxtaposed with graphics read through a tablet interface.

Johanna Okerlund '14, Lauren Westendorf '15, Casey Grote '15, Ryuhi Segreto '15, Orit Shaer, Anja Scholze, Romie Litrell

Anna Loparev, Margaret Flemmings, Jennifer Cho, Vivien Chen, Orit Shaer, Tech Museum of Innovation