Infrastructure Zine on the impact of infrastructure designed for cars and the alternatives of walking and biking based city planning.

Infrastructure Zine about internet protocols and influential groups on the internet.

Report and Reflection following a poster presentation at the 2021 Conference of the Association for Contemplative Mind in Higher Education. It was the presentation of a project titled "Contemplative Environments within Engineering Education: A Weaving of Two Auto-Ethnographies" by Olin faculty member Yevgeniya V. Zastavker and student David Freeman.

Infrastructure Zine about the blackouts and wildfires surrounding California's private utility company PG&E.

Booklet about the types of plastic that medical bottles are made out of and what that means for their end of life options, created for the class Materials Creation, Consumption, and Impact taught by Jon Stolk

Infrastructure zine final project created for Infrastructure Studies course taught by Debbie Chachra about the importance of maintaining infrastructure in the United States, and more specifically with regards to the diesel booster at Olin.

Construction documents containing diagrams of the Olin College Library's circulation desk. The circulation desk, also referred to as the front desk, was designed by Work-Shop, a design studio in Providence, Rhode Island. You can find more information about the circulation desk on Work-Shop's website at:

https://web.archive.org/web/20210303112004/https://workshop.co/projects/olin-circ-desk/

A student project for AHSE1500: Foundations of Business and Entrepreneurship (taught in Spring 2006) featuring an Olin College themed tradable card game. It consists of cards of students, professors, locations, and events.

This record contains the Final Report for the project and scanned images of all the cards in the game.

I began this project in search of different ways I could capture the world around me as it stands the test of time. As I am nearing a very monumental transition in my life, I can't help but think, "Where has the time gone?"

Time is a fascinating concept, it is constantly change, yet always consistent. Our lives are made up of infinite little moments through which we experience the world. There are times when I wish it would slow down while in others, all I can think about is its passing. I made the decision a few years ago to focus on living in the moment, learning from the past, and aspiring for the future.

This state of mind seeps into my interest in photography as it is a medium that acts as a remote controller with just the pause functionality. We can't stop time, but photographs can preserve an instance albeit in a way that is different than the lived experience.

When I look through the view finder, I am reminded that I represent just one perspective out of a sea of millions. The motivation from this project comes from an interest in slowing down and using photography as a medium to communicate the lens through which I am experiencing my surroundings.

A personal, artistic exploration of the nuances of the pictographic characters in written Chinese.

Effective communication is crucial for effective leadership, which is particularly relevant today. Recent events illustrate countless examples of cases where the same data or set of events are covered by different media stations, and although the underlying facts are the same, different news outlets are able to portray a wide array of very contrasting interpretations of what actually happened. In some cases, this is done intentionally to encourage viewers to adopt a particular viewpoint, but in other cases this naturally occurs due to bias of the writers.

Most effective leaders are able to present facts in such a way to compel their audience to feel a certain way or believe a certain narrative, and a disconnect in understanding between the leader and their audience is often undesirable and avoided at all costs. Within engineering, it is often the case that this difference in understanding stems from a miscommunication of technical material to a nontechnical audience, which is something we need to be particularly cognizant of as engineering students hoping to make a positive impact in the world. As someone who is planning on pursuing a research- oriented career path, I believe that it’s far too common for researchers to be incredibly meticulous when it comes to carefully analyzing their data, but then not take the time to fully share the story of why their results matter in the greater context of the world, especially to those outside their field. As an example, there are lots of graphs that attempt to convince the general public that climate change is an issue, but many of them are displayed in a plain graph that doesn’t really communicate the severity of this issue, despite technically presenting the data. Although he presented the same data, cartoonist Randall Munroe is able to clearly communicate the fuller story through this comic (https://xkcd.com/1732/), which tells a story that many of the technical graphs widely circulated online miss.

Through this project, my primary goal is as follows: to learn and practice techniques to share compelling stories with data. To this end, I plan to start with textbook examples, then work my way into “real- world” examples using media I come across. I chose to go with a Miro board since it enables both asynchronous discussion through post- its and synchronous conversations over zoom. I anticipate that these discussions will be informative for everyone involved - after these discussions, I hope that my peers take away insights related to data communication that they incorporate into their future work, and I hope that these discussions help me to see which parts of my work were effective in communicating a story and which parts were confusing for my audience.

Creative writing booklet centered around the theme of breaking through the shields we put up and the bubbles enclosing us. The booklet contains three writing pieces, and each piece is matched with a writing prompt, included at the end of the story, and some related recipes. The recipes either involve a food item that is depicted within the story or are closely related in another aspect.

The end goal is to produce 3 ceramic busts of figures that are significant in history and also meaningful to the artist (me, Emily Nasiff). Each bust will require researching each individual that will be modeled. Visual research and biography research will be done in order to capture their likeness and a sense of who they were/are beyond just the physical. The overarching goal and educational goal of the project is to build upon previous ceramics skills developed in a previous ISRG around ceramic hand building. This project will focus on strengthening modeling skills. Research will have to be done into best bust making practices.

Due to the current Pandemic and since the busts will be made in Arizona the audience for the physical busts will be rather small. The digital audience will be larger and consist of mainly peers and those at Olin College. The audience the busts will geared toward will be those in Generation Z since these individuals are the one I most hope to impact. The intended impact of this project is to highlight individuals who can bring hope and inspiration to people during this difficult time in history. The audience should walk away reminded that if we are determined and lead with love we can make a difference. Personally, this project will help me use my hands to express how I feel about the future and keep me hopeful.

I grew up with stories about the end of the world heavy on my mind, and that fear still has some hold on me. The 2000’s were the era of the post-apocalyptic dystopia for children’s literature, and I loved the genre. I like to make things, understand how they work, and thinking about the tools and other objects in these stories of survival in the wake of societal destruction have always fascinated me. As a child I learned to sew, knit, weave, and spin yarn among other artistic pursuits. I also started to worry about the world around me. About what would happen if we couldn’t go to the grocery store, if there were no more stores.

This collection of stories was created for my arts, humanities, and social science capstone at Olin College of Engineering. The goal of my project was to explore the relationship between fiction and my reality in pieces that intentionally blur the lines between the two. I hoped to use these pieces to share stark glimpses into both my life and my characters’ lives, and leave it to the reader’s interpretation to untangle and decipher these stories as they see fit. I was inspired by semi autobiographical storytelling, such as the Little House on the Prairie series, the book To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, Little Women by Louisa May Alcott, the webtoon The Kiss Bet by Ingrid Ochoa, and Taylor Swift’s recent album folklore. I was also inspired by how works set in realms that feel so distant from us, like The Hunger Games trilogy, can be so rooted and inspired by the actual current social situations and events.

The first three sources all played with retelling their experiences while blending in fictitious or exaggerated components and characters. Little House on the Prairie presents itself as the closest to the “truth”, but still reveals bits about the author’s life in addition to weaving a fictional narrative. While The Kiss Bet presents itself as fiction, the author has admitted that those close to her can immediately name the individuals and situations that inspired characters and plotlines. Taylor Swift’s folklore was a massive inspiration in regards to the structure and creating a myriad of pieces, as the album contains songs completely about Swift’s life, songs completely about fictional characters, and songs that combine the two seamlessly. I grew up believing that storytelling was the most compelling and versatile tool in the world. In these pieces, you will read about the plight of an aging nymph, someone who recognizes their role in their own stagnation, and the stories that can be mapped onto one’s hands. But you will also read the confessions of a twenty two year old who is still searching for connection and a sense of belonging.

Artist Origin I’m Rascal a rapper and producer from Nashville Tennessee living in Massachusetts. I’ve loved hip hop music since I was five years old listening to Black Eyed Peas’ album Elephunk. I was never was too plugged into mainstream hip hop growing up but listened to groups like Blue Scholars and Doomtree. Their work influences how I make and interact with music today. Blue Scholars’ music has a deep focus on staying informed and being policy engage. Doomtree As a group focuses on challenging ideas of society with socialism and anarchy.

Artist Statement I want to make music to express how I feel about life and how I feel about society. I want to celebrate the highs and lows of life and express vulnerability as a strength. I want to stand up to the structure in society that forces us to be something we are not.

Album Summary This is my first Album focusing on my upbringing and who I am now. It’s a retrospective of where life has taken me. This album’s main message is that Rascal lived life from moment to moment holding onto whatever he could. To the end of the album to ideal changes to see what he can get out of life.

Link to album: https://soundcloud.com/rascal-tunez/sets/lanes

During the remote spring 2021 semester, students in the User-Oriented Collaborative Design course used Miro boards to replicate the post-it filled classroom they normally inhabit for the class.

Cell-mediated compaction of the extracellular matrix (ECM) plays a critical role in tissue engineering, woundhealing, embryonic development, and many disease states. The ECM is compacted as a result of cellular traction forces. Wehypothesize that a cell mechanically remodels the nearby ECM until some target conditions are obtained, and then the cell stopscompacting. A key feature of this hypothesis is that ECM compaction primarily occurs in the pericellular region and the propertiesof the ECM in the pericellular region govern cellular force generation. We developed a mathematical model to describe theamount of macroscopic compaction of cell-populated collagen gels in terms of the initial cell and collagen densities, as wellas the final conditions of the pericellular environment (defined as the pericellular volume where the collagen is compacted(V) and the mass of collagen within this volume (m)). This model qualitatively predicts the effects of varying initial cell andcollagen concentrations on the extent of gel compaction, and by fitting V and m, provides reasonable quantitative agreementwith the extent of gel compaction observed in experiments with endothelial cells and fibroblasts. Microscopic analysis ofcompacted gels supports the assumption that collagen compaction occurs primarily in the pericellular environment.

Independent study in photography building a 4x5 film camera.

Halide perovskites are promising materials for tandem solar cell applications due to their easily tunable bandgap through cation and halide variations. However, photo-induced halide segregation in iodide-bromide perovskite chemistries often results in iodine-rich and bromine rich domains that limits the efficiency of tandem solar cells. One approach to mitigate such segregations reported in the literature is the addition of chlorine to the usual iodide-bromide perovskite compositions. With Gaussian process regression and other computational tools, we efficiently explore the cesium-formamidinium triple halide perovskite composition space and optimize for perovskite optical property and stability at the same time.

Research Advisor: Rebecca Belisle, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Physics, Wellesley College Research Co-Advisor: Zachary del Rosario, Ph.D., Visiting Professor of Engineering, Olin College of Engineering Academic Advisor: Mark Somerville, Ph.D, Provost, Dean of Faculty, Professor of Electrical Engineering and Physics, Olin College of Engineering

We see a misalignment between the engineering field’s constitutive-interests rooted in the reductionist sciences and the needs of the 21st century in the socio-political, environmental, and spiritual realms. Following Habermas’s critical theory, the knowledge-constitutive interest of the natural and reductionist sciences lie primarily in the manipulation of the physical world for the purpose of predictable and quantifiable outcomes by reducing the studied system to its smallest components. Such interests are unfit to understand and intervene in our world; a living world of dynamic complexity. We argue that a renewed science of holism will create the conditions for a critical engineering education that can mimic the properties of living systems to recreate a thriving existence for all living beings on this planet. In this thesis, we identify six loose web-nodes to draw a picture of a science for the whole:

(1) Natural phenomena such as emergence, self-organization, or autopoiesis acquaint us with the nature of nature. (2) The study of our world brings us closer to our cosmos’s mysteries, which naturally introduces spirituality to the holistic web. (3) Dynamically complex systems theory attempts to understand the relationships between parts of the system to make assumptions about future behavior or opportunities for intervention. Practices that are commensurate with the nature of reality are crucial for an effective engagement with living systems. Such practices include (4) methods for a co-creation of the future and (5) research and learning methodologies that embrace unpredictable emergence of insights and emancipate us from hidden oppressive power structures. (6) Lastly, a holistic science includes the reductionist sciences to analyze, predict, and control non-living, simple systems. Our hope is that a holistic science will re-shape engineers’ understanding to learn and interact with our world to recreate the nature of nature in our systems: a thriving existence for all.

Readers are invited to comment on the online version of the thesis: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1C3SCRvH27EgcddZZr0pTxEqCUb41ksqJ/view

| Advisors: Linda Vanasupa, Benjamin Linder, Jonathan Stolk

The most significant part of my experience at Olin has been the people I have met and the friendships I have made. I wanted to do an AHS Capstone project that really represented the importance that these people have had in the past four years of my life. Doing this project with embroidery offers a unique way to accomplish this. The process of creating each portrait gave me time to focus on each subject; while creating the portraits, I can think about each subject as a person and about my relationship to each of them. I created a series of 10 embroidered portraits and an artist’s statement about the project. At the end of the semester, all of the portraits were displayed together in Milas Hall and at Expo before being sent off to each subject.

For my AHS Capstone Project I was working in the scholarly field of painting. I enjoy painting as an art and I want to get better at it. I found after taking a painting course that I especially enjoyed painting landscapes. I also have found that when I’m at college there are places, especially from home, that I miss and have a deep emotional connection with. These are usually the most fun and enjoyable paintings to work on. With this project I am hoping to further develop my skills as an artist while having a fun and relaxing activity during this semester. Going into the project my plan was to go through the photographs that I had from home and my recent road trip across the country and select a handful of photos that I would be interested in painting. Then I went on to explore composition with sketches and draft paints. When I settled on two drafts I was happy with I started my final. My final paintings were inspired by places in Hawaii and Yellowstone National Park.

A graphic novel on engineering epistemology.