My name is Jesse Austin-Breneman and I am a Post-doctoral Associate for Professor Amos Winter in the GEAR Lab and Professor Maria Yang in the Ideation Lab.  My research focuses on system-level approaches to difficult engineering design problems, such as large-scale complex system designs and product design for emerging markets.

My work uses empirical studies, practitioner interviews  and simulations to gain insight into issues facing multi-disciplinary design teams working in these fields. I am particularly interested in how teams manage competing objectives throughout the design process and formal strategies for helping them do so. 

Ongoing projects include investigating how biased information passing affects system
level optimality in complex system design and Design for Micro-enterprise, a methodology for designing 
commercial products for small businesses in emerging markets.

Written Work:

  • Austin-Breneman, J., Yu, B. Y., and Yang, M. C., “Biased Information Passing Between Sub-systems Over Time in Complex System Design,” 2014 ASME Design Engineering Technical Conferences. [pdf]
  • Austin-Breneman, J. and Yang, M. C., "Design for Micro-Enterprise: An Approach to Product Design for Emerging Markets," ASME International Design Engineering Technical Conferences, Portland, OR 2013. [ pdf ]
  • J. Austin-Breneman, T. Honda, M. C. Yang (2012) "A Study of Student Design Team Behaviors in Complex System Design." ASME Journal of Mechanical Design. 134, 124504. [ prepub pdf | journal ]
  • Berns, M.S., Tsai, E., Austin-Breneman, J., Schulmeister, J.C., Sung, E., Ozaki, C.K., and C.J. Walsh. (2011) "Single Entry Tunneler (SET) for Hemodialysis Graft Procedures. Transactions of the ASME-W-Journal of Medical Devices, 5(2), 027524. [ pdf ] 

 

Conferences I have attended:

Fellowships:

  • 2010 National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship
  • 2010 Ford Foundation Predoctoral Fellowship
  • 2009 MIT Presidential Fellowship

Blogs I read: