Project Team

Kevin Crowley received his Ph.D. in psychology from Carnegie Mellon University in 1994. He is Associate Professor of Education and Cognitive Psychology at the University of Pittsburgh's Learning Research & Development Center where he also directs the University of Pittsburgh Center for Learning in Out-of-School Environments (UPCLOSE). Dr. Crowley's research interests focus on the development of children's scientific thinking in informal, formal, and everyday settings. His work focuses on understanding how children develop knowledge and skill in the context of family scientific thinking in context such as museums or on the web. email

Marti Louw Louw is a co-PI on InformalScience.org [NSF/DRL#0610348] an online community and capacity building web infrastructure project; The City as Learning Lab: Understanding Technology Empowerment [NSF/DRL0#741685] and Neighborhood Networks [Intel] a related project which seeks to engage community residents around local issues using emerging network and robotic technologies. In 2003, Louw completed a Master's in Interaction Design from Carnegie Mellon University where she explored rhetoric, design and human-computer interaction approaches to the conceptualization, development and use of information technologies in informal learning experiences. email

Catherine Eberbach's research interests include facilitating educational programming in informal settings and evaluating science learning outcomes. Eberbach has directed exhibition design and installation, family programming, early childhood research, and project evaluation. email

Debra Bernstein is a researcher at the University of Pittsburgh Center for Learning in Out-of-School Environments (UPCLOSE) and a doctoral student in the Cognitive Psychology program at the University of Pittsburgh. She holds an M.A. in Educational Psychology from Columbia University. Debra's research examines the impact of technology on children's cognitive development. Her current work focuses on the development of technological fluency. Through her participation in after-school technology workshops (run in conjunction with the CREATE lab at the Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon University), she is examining how middle school students learn about the creative design process via robotics, and the ways in which changes in knowledge, skills, and identity can lead to technological fluency. Prior to joining UPCLOSE Debra worked in the educational media field, most notably as a research analyst for Blues Clues, an educational television program for preschool children. email

Mary Ann Steiner received her masters of education from the University of Minnesota and spent 18 years developing and implementing youth and community programs at the Science Museum of Minnesota. Her research interest is in how universities and communities can support rich learning environments that offer sustainable and meaningful science/technology learning on the community side and responsive strategies for resource sharing on the university side of the collaboration. email

Laurie Giarratani is involved in a variety of studies around Robot 250 workshops, exhibits and events that will describe how this massive community arts and technology program influences Pittsburghers' ideas about robots and their role in society. Laurie's research interests relate to the public understanding of science, particularly how to help young people who might not necessarily gravitate towards science find places where it can connect with their lives and interests. Prior to joining UPCLOSE, Laurie worked in biomedical research and has an M.S. from Rockefeller University. email

Illah Nourbakhsh is an Associate Professor of Robotics in The Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University and the Co-PI for the Robot Diaries, Neighborhood Networks and Robot 250 projects. He is co-founder of the Toy Robots Initiative and director of the newly established Center for Innovative Robotics funded by Microsoft Corporation. His current research projects include educational and social robotics, human-robot collaboration, electric wheelchair sensing devices, believable robot personality, visual navigation and robot locomotion. His CREATE (Community Robotics, Education And Technology Empowerment) lab seeks to bring cutting-edge robotic technologies to the general public for the purposes of building community and technology empowerment. email

Dennis Bateman is a former educator, program designer, and exhibits director for 16 years at the Carnegie Science Center, and provides expertise in informal learning project design, implementation, and production management. email

Emily Hamner received her BS degree in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University in 2002. She is currently a Senior Research Associate at the Carnegie Mellon Robotics Institute where she manages the CREATE Lab and serves as project coordinator for the TeRK project. Her research focus is on educational robotics and human-robot interaction. email

Tom Lauwers is a Ph.D. student at the Robotics Institute. He has a long-standing interest in educational robotics, as both a participant in programs like FIRST and later as a designer of robotics courses and education technology. He is currently studying curriculum development and evaluation and hopes that his study of the educational sciences will help him design better and more useful educational technologies. Tom received a BS in Electrical Engineering and Public Policy from CMU in 2003, and a Masters in Robotics from CMU in 2006. email

Dr. Carl DiSalvo is an Assistant Professor of Digital Media at Georgia Institute of Technology, and lead investigator for the Intel-funded Neighborhood Nets project. He recently completed a post-doctoral fellowship with joint appointments in the Center for the Arts in Society and the Studio for Creative Inquiry at Carnegie Mellon University where he worked closely with Nourbakhsh and Crowley on robotics projects, contributing a participatory design and arts-based perspective to issues technology literacy. DiSalvo currently runs the Public Design Workshop at Georgia Tech, which investigates the existing and possible roles of technology and design in shaping and enabling critical public discourse and political action. He will be directing the Atlanta extension of The City as Learning Lab project. email