Entrepreneurial Mindset in HFE Education: Overlaps and Opportunities

Megan Conrad is an Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Detroit Mercy where she leads the Eick Center for Assistive Technology and teaches courses related to Biomedical Engineering and Product Design.

She has earned a Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering from Marquette University and studied hand function and rehabilitation as a Northwestern University postdoc working in the Sensorimotor Performance Program at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago.

Dr. Conrad’s teaching portfolio bridges the disciplines of engineering, biology, and medicine to implement systems capable of enhancing human function and meeting patient needs. In 2018 Dr. Conrad established the multidisciplinary Biomedical Design minor and since 2017 has co-taught the mechanical engineering assistive technology capstone projects. Through the capstone projects, engineers collaborate with nursing and biology students to build devices capable of enhancing independence for people with disabilities.

  Dr. Conrad's research interests are centered around the assessment of human performance in healthy and disabled populations as it pertains to therapy, work and product design. Specifically, she studies upper extremity function and manual dexterity with the goal of identifying techniques that will allow elderly and disabled individuals to remain independent at home and work. She is currently funded by the FDA, actively collaborating with the Office of Generic Drugs to develop human factors methods ensuring generic drug-device combination products (such as inhalers and injectors) are safe, effective and interchangeable with their original drug counterparts. In addition to FDA funding, she has received extramural funding as PI or co-I on projects supported by the AHA, NIH, and NSF.

Dr. Amir Momenipour, who earned his Ph.D. in Industrial and Systems Engineering from the University of Iowa in 2019, currently is an assistant professor in the Department of Engineering Management at the Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology (RHIT) in Terre Haute, Indiana. With three years of professional experience in the manufacturing industry, he has contributed to and led several projects in industrial and systems engineering. As an educator at RHIT, Dr. Momenipour teaches in diverse areas including human factors, user experience research, work analysis and design, management information systems, manufacturing, and facilities planning to both graduate and undergraduate students. His studies focused on human factors, user experience research, and designing for accessibility and learnability in consumer products, web technologies, and educational tools. Additionally, he conducts research in the usability engineering of future work systems technologies.

Dr. Momenipour's studies in engineering education emphasized the integration of the Entrepreneurial Mindset (EM) in the development of industrial and systems engineering as well as human factors and ergonomics pedagogies. His recent research is on fostering a human-centered design mindset among engineering students through the adoption of EM principles. He is a member of several professional societies including the IISE, HFES, ASEE, and Engineering Unleashed, and has actively contributed to their various initiatives. Currently, he serves on the board of directors for SEMS in IISE. Moreover, he has held positions in two technical groups of the HFES, including the program chair-elect of the Usability and System Evaluation technical group and the secretary of the Engineering Education technical group. Dr. Momenipour also serves as an Engineering Unleashed Ambassador for IISE and HFES, dedicating his efforts to faculty development activities focused on implementing entrepreneurial-minded learning in industrial and systems engineering as well as in human factors and ergonomics education.