Integrating Knowledge for Innovation

A piece in today’s Penn Current highlights how the School of Design is pioneering efforts to integrate knowledge as a means of achieving innovation and discovery. It features a course “FNAR 268/568: Integrative Design Studio—Cultures of Making,” taught by PennDesign’s Orkan Telhan and the Graduate School of Education’s Yasmin Kafai, which ran concurrently to “BIOL 376: Microbial Diversity and Pathogenesis Lab” led by biology professor Mecky Pohlschröder and Karen Hogan.

Students came together to explore how design and biology could complement one another to create products, such as designing microbial fuel cells that use energy produced by bacteria to produce electricity.

“It’s not enough for the scientists to put an idea together and then bring designers in to get involved at the last stage,” Telhan says. “They have to be part of the whole process.” Read more: www.upenn.edu/pennnews/current/2014-11-20/features/overcoming-challenges-integrating-knowledge