Chalmers Design Seminar
Series
Wednesday,
January 23, 2008, 4:10 pm
MB123
Prof. Paul Gauvreau, NSERC
Chair in Design Engineering
Learning from Laval: Bridge Design and Public Safety
The collapse of the Viaduc de la Concorde in Laval, Quebec in September
2006 poses a fundamental dilemma to an engineering profession that
seeks to ensure that this type of disaster does not happen again. The
profession must deal with the seeming contradiction of a bridge design
that was in full accordance with applicable design codes, yet was still
deeply flawed. This has largely been viewed as a problem with the code
itself. This lecture argues that the collapse was due not so much to a
deficient code, but rather the inability of design engineers to deal
effectively with situations that are not covered by code.
http://www.civ.utoronto.ca/pg/
Wednesday,
March 19, 2008 4:10pm, MB128
Prof. John S. Gero
Computational Models of Creative Design
For many, computers and creativity are incompatible. This talk presents
the results of research on computational models of creative designing
processes. It commences with a model of elementary computational
creativity. It then describes and presents results from:
- design creativity by combination using genetically-based
interpolation,
- design creativity by genetic engineering, and
- design creativity by combination using genetic engineering.
The talk then introduces the notion of “situatedness” as an approach to
drive first-person based computational creativity. It then describes
and presents results from:
situated design by analogy, design using social creativity. The talk
concludes with a model of creativity.
John Gero is a Research Professor at the Krasnow Institute of Advanced
Study and at the Volgenau School of Information Technology and
Engineering, George Mason University and a Visiting Professor at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Formerly he was Professor of
Design Science and Co-Director of the Key Centre of Design Computing
and Cognition, University of Sydney. He is the author or editor of 43
books and over 550 papers in the fields of design science, design
computing, artificial intelligence, computer-aided design, design
cognition, design creativity and cognitive science. He has been a
Visiting Professor of Architecture, Civil Engineering, Mechanical
Engineering, Computer Science or Cognitive Science at MIT, UC-Berkeley,
UCLA, Columbia and CMU in the USA, at Strathclyde and Loughborough in
the UK, at INSA-Lyon and Provence in France and at EPFL-Lausanne in
Switzerland.
http://mason.gmu.edu/~jgero/
Past seminars:
Fall 2007
If you have questions or would
like to meet with a speaker, please contact
Prof. L.H. Shu
2008 ASME Design Theory and Methodology Conference Chair
Associate Professor, Wallace G. Chalmers Chair of Engineering Design
Mechanical & Industrial Engineering, University of Toronto
5 King's College Road, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5S 3G8
T 416 946 3028 F 416 978
7753
shu (at) mie (dot) utoronto (dot) ca