STEWART BIBBY
Senior Lecturer
University of Lincoln

Stewart Bibby is a senior lecturer in product design at the University of Lincoln (UK) and a member of the mbrela collaborative project with the industrial design programs at San Jose State University and Philadelphia University. In 2011, the mbrela team presented collections at SaloneSatellite Milan, ICFF and NeoCon East Baltimore. He holds a master’s in education and has presented research on design education in the Far East and Europe. He is currently responsible for the cultures, drawing and design contexts elements of the undergraduate program at Lincoln.

Session Title:
Mbrela Project and the Future of Education

ANGELA YEH, IDSA
Define & Connect: Branding You and Connecting to Your Target Market
Yeh IDeology

Angela Yeh is the president and founder of Yeh IDeology LLC, a leading design, strategy and innovation recruitment firm in the United States. Yeh IDeology helps clients seamlessly incorporate design into their businesses and realize their full potential. In addition to Yeh IDeology, Yeh teaches career strategies at Parsons The New School for Design where she also mentors students and young professionals on personal development. She sat on IDSA’s Board of Directors as the Northeast District VP from 2006 to 2007 and chaired IDSA’s NYC chapter from 2003 to 2005. She holds a bachelor’s in psychology from the University of Bridgeport and honed her keen eye for design at Pratt Institutes master’s in industrial design.

Workshop Title:
Define & Connect: Branding You and Connecting to Your Target Market

CAMILLO SASSANO, Ph.D., IDSA
Industrial Design Lead
IBM

Camillo Sassano is an industrial design lead and design strategy consultant at IBM. His role with the hardware experience design team focuses on developing a unified hardware branding language for a worldwide product line. He also supports areas of business innovation between the industrial design team, corporate communication and IBM research. He has worked as a design lead and design strategy consultant in numerous internal and external consulting projects. His work ranges from exploration workshops and award-winning product design to the continuous development of an industrial design program for a Global 500 company. Sassano received a master’s in architecture and a doctorate in industrial design from the Politecnico University in Milan, Italy. Before joining the IBM design team, he worked as a design consultant in Italy and in the US, including several years with Richard Sapper Design Services and three years as coordinator of the IBM Design Workshops in Milan. His current focus is on the strategic application of design in the business–to–business environment.

Session Title:
Smarter planet and the Role of Design at IBM

CHRISTOPHER SHARROCK
Dean, College of Art, Media and Design
University of the Arts

After leaving art school, Christopher Sharrock began a career as a freelance illustrator but received a job offer as a representative at a large illustration agency in London. He soon left the agency to set up his own agency. Next, he worked on the groundbreaking British television show "Spitting Image" drawing caricatures of celebrities and then sculpting these in clay. The heads were molded to make the puppets that the show was known for. He later moved into higher education, becoming chair of a new master’s program in illustration at St. Martin’s School of Art in London. He worked at a number of British universities and was later dean of Camberwell College of Arts, part of the University of the Arts, London. He is now dean of the College of Art, Media and Design in the University of the Arts in Philadelphia (not affiliated with the school in London of the same name).

Session Title:
Where are They Going? Where Did They Come From?

NATALIE W. NIXON, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Philadelphia University

Natalie Nixon is a hybrid thinker, comfortably synthesizing creative and analytical thought processes from design and business to arrive at innovative opportunities. A practitioner and researcher of design thinking, she has 15 years of experience as an educator on the secondary and university levels and worked in the fashion industry as an entrepreneurial hat designer as well as in apparel sourcing for The Limited Brands in Sri Lanka and Portugal. Nixon’s research and consulting interests are in integrative strategic design, experiential service design and applying strategies from the fashion industry to a range of sectors, using style as a competitive advantage in order to build brand distinction. She is certified by the National Charrette Institute at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design to lead charrette trainings; she uses the charrette methodology to lead ideation, opportunity finding and consensus building for a range of organizations. She earned a bachelor’s (cum laude) in anthropology and Africana studies (double major) from Vassar College, a master’s in global textile marketing from Philadelphia University and a doctorate in design management from the University of Westminster, London.

Session Title:
Designing Graduate Business Education

JOEP MEIJER, LCA
Technical Expert
Sustainable Minds

Joep Meijer is an expert in quantifying environmental performance using lifecycle thinking and lifecycle assessment (LCA) methodologies. He has performed LCAs for over 300 products, has worked for all major materials manufacturers, many consumer products and design firms to integrate the science and vision of a measured approach to sustainability. Measured means, if you do not know where you are (your footprint), how do you know where you are going and when you get there? He is helping companies in developing sustainability strategies and making informed decisions during R&D, innovation and design. He has a seat on the US Green Building Council’s Material and Resources Technical Advisory Group, which is part of the ASTM committee on sustainable construction and is the LCA technical expert at Sustainable Minds. He works with design teams and conducts workshops, webinars and training to over 1,000 people making decisions about products and design. Meijer is a graduate of the University of Nijmegen in environmental chemistry.

Session Title:
The Biggest Innovation Driver in 2012: Environmental Performance

Workshop Title:
Pragmatic Sustainable Design for Product Designers

JAMER HUNT
Director, Transdisciplinary Design Graduate Program
Parsons the New School for Design

Jamer Hunt collaboratively designs open and flexible programs that respond to emergent cultural conditions. He is the director of the experimental Transdisciplinary Design Graduate Program at Parsons the New School for Design. He is an expert design blogger for Fast Company and he is co-founder of DesignPhiladelphia, now the largest city-based design festival in the US. Along with the Museum of Modern Art and SEED Magazine, he co-hosted and collaborated on the symposium Headspace: On Scent as Design in 2010 and MIND08: The Design and Elastic Mind Symposium. His written work engages with the poetics and politics of the built environment, and he has been published in various books, journals and magazines, including I.D. magazine, which published his “Manifesto for Postindustrial Design” in 2005.

Session Title:
Scala Framing for Complexity

JAMIE SALM
Creative Director
Mio

Born in Medellin, Colombia in 1978, Jaime Salm was always interested in the arts and sculpture. He studied at several art academies with independent artists and local architects. He received a bachelor’s in industrial design in 2001 from The University of the Arts in Philadelphia. Following his graduation, he co-founded MIO. He exhibited his first collection of furnishings at the 2003 International Contemporary Furniture Fair. Since then, products from the MIO Collection have been showcased by Material ConneXion, The Ontario Science Center, The National Building Museum in Washington and The Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh, among others. His work has been widely published in periodicals including Metropolis, Interior Design, The New York Times, Newsweek, Contract Magazine and Azure. In 2005, his designs were recognized with the Best Collection Award at the New York International Gift Fair. His work is part of the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum’s permanent collection. He has been a guest speaker at the Pratt Institute and Parsons in New York City, The University of Pennsylvania, The University of the Arts in Philadelphia and the TCDC in Bangkok.

Session Title:
Green Design for Everyone

GÖTZ UNGER
Associate Professor and Founding Director, Industrial Design Department
Philadelphia University

Götz Unger, associate professor and founding director of the Industrial Design Department at Philadelphia University, holds a master’s in design from the Royal College of Art, London and a Gesamthochschulabschluss in design from the University of Kassel, Germany. In his role as manager of design development groups, he has led interdisciplinary teams in numerous development and research projects. He has practiced as a freelance designer in the US and in Europe, with products on the market and in exhibits in both continents. His work has been featured in publications here and abroad. Professor Unger maintains a design studio and design consultancy in PA.

Session Title:
Mbrela Project and the Future of Education

ERIC FREITAG
Director, Engineering Services
Smart Design

Freitag is committed to understanding the daily needs of patients and his passion is in tackling the complex problems in today’s health-care system. An avid fly fisherman and devoted family man, he brings over 13 years of experience to his work as a design engineer. He is responsible for overseeing projects that extend from initial ideation and research through detailed design, engineering, testing and manufacturing. Freitag has experience launching numerous medical devices, including diagnostic monitors, instrumentation and delivery devices. His skills and depth of knowledge span a wide range of industries such as health, consumer electronics, and home products. He also leads the design engineering practice and specializes in more complex programs that involve multiple disciplines, including hardware and software integration. He has established himself as a trusted advisor for companies like Johnson & Johnson, Cardinal Health, Church & Dwight, Covidien, and UCB. Freitag earned his bachelor's in mechanical engineering, a bachelor’s in economics and a master’s in design engineering from U.C. Berkeley, where he received a patent on a thermostat that used real time weather data to predict the next day’s temperature to pre-cool or pre-heat buildings. He then went on to earn a post-baccalaureate degree in hybrid electric vehicle design.

Session Title:
Old Dogs, New Tricks: Designing for Behavioral Change