No abstract

No abstract

He has been teaching science and engineering courses there for 25 years, and is a registered Professional Engineer in the State of Oklahoma. He received BS and MS Degrees in Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering from Purdue University in 1985 and 1986, and a PhD in Mechanical Engineering from UCLA in 1992. His current research interests involve affordance-based design and systems engineering, reverse engineering of complex natural systems, and the preparation of scientists and engineers for missions work within technical communities.

The practice of reverse engineering is not only receiving increased attention in fields involving artificial systems such as computer software development, but also in fields involving natural systems such as molecular and cellular biology. As an example, a recent pronouncement of the National Academy of Engineering lists "reverse engineering the human brain" as one of the grand challenges for the next century. The applicability of engineering design principles to natural systems has been well recognized, but ambitious attempts to further reverse engineer such complex systems will require the latest advances in design thinking. The recent concept of design affordance readily lends itself to the analysis and understanding of complex natural systems that exhibit multiple interactions between subsystems.

No abstract