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Eric Brubaker

Adjunct Associate Professor in the Engineering Graduate and Professional Programs
Engineering Graduate and Professional Programs

Selected Publications


Extreme Design: An Editorial on a New Research Framework Within Engineering Design

Journal Article Journal of Mechanical Design · December 1, 2025 Extreme design (XD) is a proposed research framework addressing engineering design’s outer edges of complexity and uncertainty. As the scale and urgency of global challenges grow, such as climate change, autonomous systems, and aging populations, so does t ... Full text Cite

Building Resilience in Aviation: Economic Impacts of Disasters and Future Adaptations

Conference AIAA Aviation Forum and Ascend 2025 · January 1, 2025 This paper examines typical disruptions to aviation caused by natural disasters. While there are many disruptions that impact aviation, this paper will primarily cover flooding, severe weather storms, extreme temperatures, and clear air turbulence across t ... Full text Cite

Applications of UAS Technologies to Create Resilient Rural Communities

Conference AIAA Aviation Forum and Ascend 2025 · January 1, 2025 The NASA Convergent Aeronautics Solutions (CAS) project convened a team of researchers to investigate the needs of rural communities with an eye towards the application of Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) technologies. The Connecting Rural Communities and C ... Full text Cite

Human-AI Collaboration Among Engineering and Design Professionals: Three Strategies of Generative AI Use

Conference No. DETC2024-143560 · August 25, 2024 Featured Publication Designers are increasingly using Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) in design processes; however, knowing how designers use GenAI--especially in professional design practice--is under-explored. This paper presents an ethnographic study of a design ... Link to item Cite

Operationalizing “Wickedness” as Analytical and Creative Tools to Transform Aviation

Conference AIAA Aviation Forum and Ascend 2024 · January 1, 2024 As the world grows increasingly networked and complex, so do challenges faced by aviation and technology professionals (e.g., fighting wildfires and increasing access to healthcare). There is a need to develop new methods to tackle complex socio-technical ... Full text Cite

A Spectrum of Stakeholder Perspective Taking in Early-Stage Design

Conference Proceedings of the Design Society · July 1, 2023 Featured Publication Stakeholder perspective taking is a critical skill in early-stage problem exploration and framing. We examined stakeholder perspective taking within an early-stage design team of engineers at NASA to begin to understand in what ways and under what conditio ... Full text Open Access Link to item Cite

Objects of Collaboration: Roles and Sequences of Objects in Spanning Knowledge Group Boundaries in Design

Journal Article Journal of Mechanical Design · March 1, 2023 Featured Publication Spanning knowledge group boundaries is both a source of and barrier to design performance and innovation. Objects - from prototypes to kanban boards - are frequently used in cross-functional design practice, but their associated outcomes appear varied and ... Full text Cite

Approaching Complex Societal Problems Tied to Aviation

Conference AIAA Aviation and Aeronautics Forum and Exposition AIAA Aviation Forum 2023 · January 1, 2023 Featured Publication From climate change to health inequity, humankind faces complex societal challenges that aviation can both exacerbate and help to alleviate. In this paper we describe our approach to identifying and approaching complex societal challenges with existing or ... Full text Cite

Partnerships Compass: Guiding Questions for Equitable and Impactful Engineering Community- Engaged Learning

Journal Article Advances in Engineering Education · January 1, 2022 Featured Publication Campus-community partnerships are integral to community-engaged learning, service-learning and similar pedagogies that extend project-based learning beyond the classroom into “real world” communities. Community-engaged courses have increased in prevalence ... Open Access Cite

OBJECTS OF COLLABORATION: ROLES OF OBJECTS IN SPANNING KNOWLEDGE BOUNDARIES IN A DESIGN COMPANY

Conference Proceedings of the ASME Design Engineering Technical Conference · January 1, 2022 Engineering designers often span knowledge boundaries when developing complex systems but doing so poses challenges because members of different knowledge groups must bridge their language, cognitions, and “thought worlds” to effectively broker, resituate, ... Full text Cite

Connecting people and ideas: Making sense of a research lab through creating a shared frame

Journal Article International Journal of Engineering Education · January 1, 2020 This paper looks at the culture of an academic research lab. Our aim is to internally reflect on how the connections between ideas and individuals can be noticed and labeled in order to create a shared cultural frame. We use a case-study approach with a se ... Cite

Integrating mind, hand, and heart: How students are transformed by hands-on designing and making

Conference ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition Conference Proceedings · June 15, 2019 Hands-on education - the integration of mind and hands - is often believed to transform the way that students think and learn. How and how much are students changed by hands-on education, and by what mechanisms do such transformations occur? This explorato ... Cite

Impact-driven engineering students: Contributing behavioral correlates

Conference ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition Conference Proceedings · June 24, 2017 Engineering has a long history of developing solutions to meet societal needs, and humanity currently faces many and varied societal challenges. Who are the engineering students motivated to address such challenges? This study explores a sample of 5,819 un ... Cite

The roots of entrepreneurial career goals among today's engineering undergraduate students

Conference ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition Conference Proceedings · June 24, 2017 Cite

Co-design in Zambia - An examination of design outcomes

Conference Proceedings of the International Conference on Engineering Design Iced · January 1, 2017 After decades of limited success "designing for the developing world", it is clear that Base of the Pyramid (BoP) markets are complex and face unique challenges, such as large geographical distances between designers and users as well as poor understanding ... Cite