Research

Engineering Education

The goal of our research is to implement sociotechnical material in engineering courses in order to engage a broader variety of students. We first built a project in collaboration with the blind and visually impaired community in Massachusetts. We then used the project as a case study of human-centered machine learning for an ML class at our home institution. While studying the effectiveness of the implementation, we also created curricular materials and resources for external engineering courses.

Publications

2026 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition | Educating Responsible Technologists: Integrating AI and Social Sciences via Immersive Learning Modules, Presented at NSF Grantees Poster Session I

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Co-Creating Tools for Workers Who Are Blind Using Sociotechnical and Ethnographic Approaches.” Paper presented at workshop on “AT@Work [Assistive Technology]: Intelligent Assistive Technologies for Enabling Workplace Inclusion” at the 27th International ACM SIGACCESS conference, Denver, Colorado, 26 October 2025. Authors: Paul Ruvolo, Caitrin Lynch, Sam Michalka, Leah Horgan, Chelsea Andrews, Isabela Sanchez Taipe, Ethan Alford, Charles Mawn, Ryan Thrasher, Daniel Theunissen, Zara Coakley.

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Posters