Eric Reynolds Brubaker

I am a complex systems engineer and design researcher at NASA.  

After a decade doing hardware development, teaching design, and co-developing social ventures and other initiatives in the U.S., India, and Zambia, I returned to school and completed a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering (design) at Stanford University. There I was part of the Center for Design Research, Center for Work, Technology & Organization, and Center for African Studies and funded as a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow. 

My research examines how people co-design across group boundaries. I leverage theories from engineering design, systems science, the learning sciences, sociology, psychology, critical studies and other transdisciplinary scholarship. My research involves ethnography and mixed methods in partnership with communities and organizations. 

My family and I are based in Chapel Hill, NC.