Megan Hofmann
Assistant Professor, Khoury College of Computer Sciences
Assistant Professor, Mechanical and Industrial Engineering
Related Links
Research Focus
Accessibility and fabrication, digital fabrication in healthcare, automatic machine knitting
Education
- PhD, Human-Computer Interaction, Carnegie Mellon University, 2022
Research Overview
Accessibility and fabrication, digital fabrication in healthcare, automatic machine knitting
Accessible Creative Technologies (ACT) Lab
The Northeastern ACT (Accessible Creative Technologies) Lab is focused on creating digital fabrication technologies, such as design tools, 3D modeling tools, and generative design systems, that can be used to produce assistive technologies and medical devices. These tools are designed to be accessible to a wide variety of people with disabilities.
Some examples of tools developed by the ACT Lab include Maptimizer, a tool for generating customized tactile maps, OPTIMISM, a toolkit for building generative design tools using domain expertise, and KnitGIST, a generative design tool for automatic machine knitting.
In addition to our work on digital fabrication technologies, the ACT Lab also studies the use of fabrication technology in healthcare settings, also known as medical making. This research has led to a number of publications and efforts to manufacture personal protective equipment (PPE) during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Department Research Areas
Selected Publications
- Living Disability Theory: Reflections on Access, Research, and Design. Megan Hofmann, Devva Kasnitz, Jennifer Mankoff, and Cynthia L. Bennett.2020. In the 22nd International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS ’20), ACM. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3373625.3416996
- “Occupational Therapy is Making”: Clinical Rapid Prototyping and Digital Fabrication. Megan Hofmann, Kristin Williams, Toni Kaplan, Stephanie Valencia, Gabriella Hann, Scott E. Hudson, Jennifer Mankoff, and Patrick Carrington. 2019. In Proceedings of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’19). ACM. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3290605.3300544
- Sharing is Caring: Assistive Technology Designs on Thingiverse, Erin Buehler, Stacy Branham, Abdullah Ali, Jeremy J. Chang, Megan Hofmann, Amy Hurst, and Shaun K. Kane. 2015. In Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’15). ACM. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/2702123.2702525
- The Right to Help and the Right Help: Fostering and Regulating Collective Action in a Medical Making Reaction to COVID-19, Megan Hofmann, Udaya Lakshmi, Kelly Mack, Scott E. Hudson, Rosa I Arriaga, and Jennifer Mankoff. 2021. In Proceedings of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’21). ACM.
- Medical Maker Response to COVID-19: Distributed Manufacturing Infrastructure for Stop Gap Protective Equipment, Udaya Lakshmi, Megan Hofmann, Kelly Mack, Scott E. Hudson, Jennifer Mankoff, and Rosa I Arriaga. 2021. In Proceedings of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’21). ACM.
Aug 18, 2023
New Faculty Spotlight: Megan Hofmann
Megan Hofmann joins the Mechanical and Industrial Engineering department in August 2023 as an Assistant Professor with a joint appointment in Khoury.