News
Welcome Dr. Slawomir “Slawek” Tadeja! Slawek finished his PhD in the University of Cambridge in engineering + XR. He is now joining our group as a postdoc to lead a variety of XR research projects and expanding our work on human-robotics interaction and digital manufacturing.
Welcome to our SP2025 UROPs: Dianne Cao, Sage Gilbert-Diamond, Megan Huang, Christy Ly, Daniel Nwazue, and Romina Cano Velasquez! They will be supporting projects ranging from workforce development, intelligent tutoring systems, and smart mill.
Welcome Dr. Cigdem Uz-Bilgin! Cigdem is currently an associate professor Computer And Instructional Technologies Education at Turkey’s Yildiz Technical University. She joins the group as visiting scholar. She will be collaborating with us to develop intelligent tutoring systems for VR environments for psychomotor training.
Welcome Dr. Yeo “Stella” Jung Yoon! Stella has an exciting background in robotics + AI + manufacturing. She finished her PhD at USC in MechE. She joins the group as a postdoc. She will be contributing to projects on manufacturing workforce, robotics, and human-machine interaction.
Welcome Dr. Licia Mastronardi! Licia has strong experience in engineering curriculum, education evaluation, and grant-writing (yay). Having finished her PhD and postdoc at UT Austin in engineering education, she finished a stint as a grantwriter at Middlesex CC. She now joins as our group’s first research scientist. She will be working on NAMTECH project (industry mapping, program design, instructional design, pathways) and supporting a number of our engineering ed projects.
MIT Open Learning highlights our quantitative work to understand peer interactions in CrowdLearn, a novel “peer review + discussion forum” environment.
MIT Open Learning and MIT J-WEL highlight our work to develop an XR intelligent tutoring system for advanced manufacturing skills training!
Congratulations for winning the Best Paper Award of IEEE DEMOCon 2024! Dr. Meghan Perdue, Dr. Jessica Sandland, Dr. Aditi Joshi, and Dr. John Liu: “Exploring the Integration of Social Practice Into MOOC Peer Assessment”.
Both papers submitted to 2024 IEEE DEMOCon have been selected as finalists for the 2024 Best Paper Award! Congratulations to Dr. Daniel Braconnier, Dr. Meghan Perdue, Dr. Jessica Sandland, Dr. Aditi Joshi, and Dr. John Liu.
“Comments & Replies: Discussion Forum Interaction Networks Stimulated by Peer-Review Assignments”
“Exploring the Integration of Social Practice Into MOOC Peer Assessment”
Welcome Dr. Rolando Bautista-Montesano! Rolando is joining as a postdoc wiht expertise in automation/embedded systems and considerable teaching experience. He will be contributing to the TechAmp workforce project and investigating new forms of human-machine collaboration in manufacturing.
Congratulations to Francisco Sepulveda and Dr. Dishita Turakhia (close collaborator, advised by Prof. Stefanie Mueller) on graduating!
Francisco’s Masters thesis: Developing a Constraint-based Intelligent Tutoring System (ITS) Architecture rooted in a Cognitive framework (ACT-R) for Psychomotor Skill Training in Virtual Reality
Dishita’s PhD thesis: Designing a learner-centric future for skill-learning
Congratulations for becoming a finalist at 2024 ACM CHI Interactivity! Kachina Studer, Hing Lie, Zhen Zhao, Ben Thomson, Dishita Turakhia, Dr. John Liu: “An Open-ended System in Virtual Reality for Training Machining Skills”.
Welcome Aarsh Patel to the group! Aarsh is visiting Masters student from RWTH Aachen University. He’ll be with us for 5 months to support various projects in VR for training and manufacturing workforce.
MIT News and MIT MechE News highlight our work to create the advanced manufacturing technologist program.
Welcome Dr. Yibo Fan to the group! Yibo is an instructional designer who will work on the Technologist Advanced Manufacturing Curriculum.
Welcome Dr. Ziling Chen to the group!
Welcome Christian Gabbianelli to the group!
Welcome Dr. Meredith Thompson to the group!
Welcome Dr. Daniel Braconnier to the group!
Welcome Francisco Sepulveda to the group!
MIT News and MIT Open Learning highlight J-WEL’s recent award to the LEAP group for VR cognitive architecture for learning hands-on skills.
Prof. John Hart and Dr. John Liu have been awarded a capital equipment grant from the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative’s Massachusetts Manufacturing Innovation Initiative (M2I2) and its Innovation Institute: “Digital Manufacturing of Advanced Aerospace, Defense, and Medical Components: Accelerating Technology and Workforce Education Research”
SAP Insights interviewed Dr. John Liu for two articles: “Advanced Manufacturing Skills Workers Will Need” and “Hunting for Advanced Manufacturing Talent: 4 Moves“
Dr. John Liu has been awarded a J-WEL Education Innovation Grant: “Developing an ACT-R and Error-based Cognitive Architecture for the Development of Virtual Reality Hands-on Training”.
Dr. Liu moderated the “Rebuilding the Manufacturing Workforce” panel at the Manufacturing@MIT 2023 Symposium.
Congratulations to Hie “Isa” Lie for earning her BS degree!
Dr. Liu spoke at 2023 J-WEL Thinking Series, on the “Workforce Education: New Solutions” panel.
Dr. Liu spoke at the MIT Concrete Sustainability Hub’s “Transforming the Concrete Delivery Professional” Workshop, on the panel “Emerging Technologies for Creating a More Productive Workforce.”
Welcome Kachina Studer to the group!
Welcome Dr. Zhen Zhao to the group!
Connected World interviewed Dr. Liu for its article on “Metaverse and the New Manufacturing Workforce.”
Dr. Liu spoke at Defense Manufacturing Conference 2022 (DMC22) on the plenary “Education and Workforce Development Panel.”
Dr. Liu spoke at MIT Open Learning Talks: “Using Augmented Reality and Online Collaboration to Enhance Teaching and Learning.”
Dr. Liu gave a talk at the DoD Manufacturing Technology, Education and Workforce Development Network Virtual Gathering: “Scaling Advanced Manufacturing Training Through Online Learning, AR/VR Simulations and Digital Games.”
Megan Ngo, Emily Welsh, Emma Higgason, and Nisal Ovitigala all gave talks at ASEE’22 in Minneapolis, MN!
Dr. John Liu and Dr. Svetlana Boriskina have been awarded an MITx Modules Grant: Fiber and Textile Engineering.
Dr. Liu spoke at Times Higher Education’s “Digital Universities Week US”, on the panel “Transforming the campus: How can institutions improve faculty adoption of digital teaching methods?”
Dr. Liu spoke at the Manufacturing@MIT Symposium, on the panel “Digitally-Enabled Approaches to Manufacturing Education at Scale.”
Times Higher Education covered Dr. John Liu and three other university leaders on driving teaching innovation in universities.
Welcome Satvik Sabarad and Ben Thomson to the group!
Welcome Josue Rodriguez, Fatima Abbasi, and Isa Lie to the group!
Our course, Advanced Fluid Mechanics 1 (2.25.1x), is one of the 100 most popular university courses launched in 2021! The ranking list sources from the 2600 online courses released on four different platforms (Coursera, edX, FutureLearn, and Swayam).
LEAP Group’s work in developing augmented reality to address STEM skills has recently been featured in four places! Open Learning’s Medium blog and News, MITili’s blog, and MIT Mechanical Engineering News.
Welcome Dr. Rachel Mok and Charlotte Folinus to the group!
Welcome Juanita Benjamin, Emily Li, and Gillian Roeder to the group!
Congratulations to Emily Welsh, Dan Li, Prof. John Hart, and Dr. John Liu for their ASEE21 paper winning a second, larger award: Best Paper of the ASEE 2021 Conference — Professional Interest Council II! PIC II is composed of ten divisions in ASEE.
Congratulations to Emily Welsh, Dan Li, Prof. John Hart, and Dr. John Liu on being awarded the best paper of the ASEE 2021 Conference — Manufacturing Division. The paper is called Scaling Hands-On Learning Principles in Manufacturing through Augmented Reality Disassembly and Inspection of a Consumer Product.
Welcome Gregory Osborne to the group!
Congratulations to Emily Welsh for receiving an Infinite Mile Award Team Award for supporting the MechE department in remote education kit logistics.
Congratulations to Sandra Li, Gabrielle Enns, Tema Nwana, Nisal Ovitigala for earning their BS degrees!
Welcome Shelly Ben-David, Rafael Fernandes, Nathaniel Lee to the group!
Congratulations to Nisal Ovitigala for finishing his BS thesis, Multimodal Learning Methods for the Fundamentals of Atomic Force Microscopy.
Dr. John Liu, Prof. Rohit Karnik, and other colleagues have been awarded an MITx Explorations Grant: Development of the CrowdLearn Tool v3.
Dr. John Liu, Prof. Pierre Lermusiaux, and Dr. Rachel Mok have been awarded an MITx Modules Grant: 2.005.1x Thermal-Fluids.
Megan Ngo, Tema Nwana, Emma Higgason, and Gabrielle Enns presented their research at the PTC Digital Transformation in Education Summit.
Congratulations to Dr. John Liu and Emily Welsh for both receiving MechE COVID-19 Hero Awards. They have been recognized for their respective departmental service in remote qualifying exams and remote education kit logistics.
Welcome Emma Higgason to the group!
Welcome Gabrielle Enns to the group!
Congratulations to Dr. John Liu for receiving a 2020 MIT IS&T Infinite Mile Excellence Award. He has been recognized for departmental service in supporting the MechE department’s 2020 transition to the Canvas platform.
Welcome Sandra Li, Nisal Ovitigala, Megan Ngo, and Justin Li to the group!
Congratulations to Dr. John Liu for receiving a MechE Covid19 Hero Award. He has been recognized for departmental service in supporting the department’s 2020 transition to remote teaching.
Congratulations to Sandra Li, Gabrielle Enns, Tema Nwana, Nisal Ovitigala for earning their BS degrees!
Dr. John Liu and Prof. Gareth McKinley have been awarded an MITx MITx Modules Grant: 2.25x Advanced Fluid Mechanics.
Dr. John Liu and Prof. Nick Fang have been awarded an Alumni Class Funds grant: Learning Nanotechnology through Multi-modal Experiences.
Welcome Dr. Slawomir "Slawek" Tadeja! Slawek finished his PhD in the University of Cambridge in engineering + XR. He is now joining our group as a postdoc to lead a variety of XR research projects and expanding our work on human-robotics interaction and digital manufacturing.
Welcome to our SP2025 UROPs: Dianne Cao, Sage Gilbert-Diamond, Megan Huang, Christy Ly, Daniel Nwazue, and Romina Cano Velasquez! They will be supporting projects ranging from workforce development, intelligent tutoring systems, and smart mill.
Welcome Dr. Cigdem Uz-Bilgin! Cigdem is currently an associate professor Computer And Instructional Technologies Education at Turkey's Yildiz Technical University. She joins the group as visiting scholar. She will be collaborating with us to develop intelligent tutoring systems for VR environments for psychomotor training.
Welcome Dr. Yeo "Stella" Jung Yoon! Stella has an exciting background in robotics + AI + manufacturing. She finished her PhD at USC in MechE. She joins the group as a postdoc. She will be contributing to projects on manufacturing workforce, robotics, and human-machine interaction.
Welcome Dr. Licia Mastronardi! Licia has strong experience in engineering curriculum, education evaluation, and grant-writing (yay). Having finished her PhD and postdoc at UT Austin in engineering education, she finished a stint as a grantwriter at Middlesex CC. She now joins as our group's first research scientist. She will be working on NAMTECH project (industry mapping, program design,...
MIT Open Learning highlights our quantitative work to understand peer interactions in CrowdLearn, a novel "peer review + discussion forum" environment.
MIT Open Learning and MIT J-WEL highlight our work to develop an XR intelligent tutoring system for advanced manufacturing skills training!
Congratulations for winning the Best Paper Award of IEEE DEMOCon 2024! Dr. Meghan Perdue, Dr. Jessica Sandland, Dr. Aditi Joshi, and Dr. John Liu: "Exploring the Integration of Social Practice Into MOOC Peer Assessment".
Both papers submitted to 2024 IEEE DEMOCon have been selected as finalists for the 2024 Best Paper Award! Congratulations to Dr. Daniel Braconnier, Dr. Meghan Perdue, Dr. Jessica Sandland, Dr. Aditi Joshi, and Dr. John Liu. "Comments & Replies: Discussion Forum Interaction Networks Stimulated by Peer-Review Assignments" "Exploring the Integration of Social Practice Into MOOC Peer...
Welcome Dr. Rolando Bautista-Montesano! Rolando is joining as a postdoc wiht expertise in automation/embedded systems and considerable teaching experience. He will be contributing to the TechAmp workforce project and investigating new forms of human-machine collaboration in manufacturing.