Dr. Derrick Tate }Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at Sattler College. He aims to integrate an understanding of human flourishing into the design of new products and services and to impact society through bringing design thinking to areas of strategic importance, such as developing sustainable approaches for building systems, transportation, and manufacturing; facilitating mass innovation; and assessing the innovative potential of design ideas. He has collaboratively developed five transdisciplinary programs at the undergraduate, Master’s, and PhD levels in the US and China. He has developed nineteen new undergraduate courses across engineering design, industrial design, and computer science and four new graduate courses for Master’s and PhD students in mechanical engineering, industrial design, and working engineers. His funded research has come from a diversity of national, state, entrepreneurial, and non-profit sources, and he has published more than thirty journal papers and fifty conference papers.
He has supervised eight PhD students, thirteen Master’s students, seventeen undergraduate students, and many undergraduate capstone projects. In 2014, he was named a Fellow of the Academy of Transdisciplinary Learning and Advanced Studies. He received a BS in Mechanical Engineering degree from Rice University, and his SM and PhD degrees in Mechanical Engineering are from MIT in the areas of manufacturing and design, respectively. Prior to joining Sattler, he was Senior Associate Professor at Xian Jiaotong-Liverpool University and founding Head of the Department of Industrial Design. He has also held positions as Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Texas Tech University and Associate Professor at Beijing Jiaotong University. His industrial experience includes working as a Manager of Applications Engineering at Axiomatic Design Software, Inc.