is a PhD student in STEM Education at Tufts University. Karen served as the Director of Research and Innovation at the science center CuriOdyssey and the Education Director of the Palo Alto Junior Museum and Zoo after teaching elementary and middle school. Her research focuses on elementary students' reasoning and decision-making in collaborative engineering design.

as well as a Research Assistant Professor at the Center. Merredith received all four of her degrees from Tufts (B.A. English, B.S. Mechanical Engineering, M.A. Education, PhD in Engineering Education) and has been a member of the Center for Engineering Education and Outreach for 18 years, previously serving as the Director of Outreach and a program manager. Her research interests focus on how children engage in designing and constructing solutions to engineering design problems and evaluating students' design artifacts. Her outreach work focuses on creating resources for K-12 educators to support engineering education in the classroom. She is also the founder of STOMP (stompnetwork.org), LEGOengineering.com (legoengineering.com), and the new Teacher Engineering Education Program (teep.tufts.edu).

in 2006. She managed a consulting business for 10 years working on evaluations that focused primarily in the areas of education and STEM for middle and high school students, especially women and minority students. Her research interests include student engagement and interest in STEM and STEM careers as well as the development of instruments and evaluation tools to assess these constructs.

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