Carlye Lauff is a 5th year PhD candidate and a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow. She is co-advised by Dr. Mark Rentschler and Dr. Daria Kotys-Schwartz, who are the co-Directors of Design Center Colorado.
Carlye’s research is in the field of Design Theory and Methodology, and her research studies the role and impact of prototyping on design teams in companies who produce physical products.
She has worked across diverse industries, spanning the fields of biomedical devices, aerospace hardware, consumer electronics, and apparel/footwear. Currently, she is working to distill best practices around prototyping into lectures and workshops for engineering students.
Carlye was a visiting NSF Global Research Fellow in the Centre for Design Innovation at Swinburne University of Technology with Professor Blair Kuys during January - August 2017. She holds a Master’s degree in Mechanical Engineering with a focus in Design from the University of Colorado Boulder (May ’15), and a Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Pennsylvania State University (May ’13).
Outside of research, Carlye founded CU Boulder’s Design for America studio in 2015 because of her passion for engaging students in real-world interdisciplinary design challenges. Carlye also enjoys traveling to all corners of the world, and makes it a point to hike, bike, backpack, or ski everywhere she goes.