Chair
Akshay Sharma
Chair, Industrial Design
Mailing Address
Industrial Design Department
158 College of Design
Ames, IA, 50011
Contact Information
Phone: (515) 294-2264
Email: akshays@iastate.edu
Office: 146A Design
Education
2001 Master of Science in Design (Industrial Design), Arizona State University
1996 Bachelor of Architecture, School of Planning and Architecture, New Delhi, India
On the Web
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnd2-hdwe38
https://www.linkedin.com/in/akshay-sharma-9a87b95/
Supporting Files
Research Interests
Associate Professor and chair of industrial design, Akshay is passionate about using design as a catalyst for positive change. He has led multidisciplinary student teams looking at issues related to social impact. He has worked on projects related to financial literacy for micro financing that is being implemented in rural India and will reach 500,000 women in next four years. Another project uses cell phones for creating an information management system for vaccination records to be used in developing countries; a version of this system is being used by Jaipur foot for managing their patient information. He believes good design ought to translate into joy and happiness for the end user.
- Design thinking for Social Impact through strategies aimed at regeneration of resources. Looking beyond sustainability to reverse the course and regenerate depleted natural resources.
- Alternative energy strategies for low income family residences in SW virginia and rural India.
- Design visualization for exploring new ideas and use of sketching as a tool for innovation in design process.
Current Projects
- Collaborating with Xue Yu, Stephen DiVerdi, Yotam Gingold on developing a VR based sketching application for Industrial Designers. https://cragl.cs.gmu.edu/
More details: https://cragl.cs.gmu.edu/scaffoldsketch/ - Ongoing collaboration with Dr. Johari at George Mason University. We have worked together on a number of funded initiatives, few notable examples are:
https://news.vt.edu/articles/2012/07/072412-caus-immune.html
https://www.amazon.com/Designing-Development-International-Education-Engineering/dp/1627050035
This partnership also resulted in support for eight industrial design students over the Summer of 2023, to work on a research project with a team of researchers at George Mason and Iowa State University.