When design meets engineering, students solve the right problems
In Sarah Rottenberg’s studio course, engineering and design students are taught to rethink the earliest stage of design: understanding the problem itself.
2 min. read
For Sarah Rottenberg, executive director of the Integrated Product Design Program at Penn Engineering and adjunct assistant professor at the Weitzman School of Design, innovation does not begin with solutions—it begins with asking better questions.
For Sarah Rottenberg is the executive director of the Integrated Product Design Program at Penn Engineering and adjunct assistant professor at the Weitzman School of Design.
In IPD 5520: Problem Framing, which Rottenberg (who also holds a secondary appointment in Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics in Penn Engineering) co-teaches with Mikael Avery, senior lecturer at Weitzman, students are taught to rethink the earliest stage of design: understanding the problem itself. The result is a studio course where ambiguity isn’t avoided—it is essential.
For more than a decade, IPD 5520 has paired student teams with industry clients to tackle complex, human-centered challenges. The goal isn’t to rush toward solutions, but to slow down and ask deeper questions.
“Identifying research insights to ground ideas is genuinely hard,” says Rottenberg. “Coming into a new domain and generating ideas that are both novel and implementable takes real skill and time. We are giving our students a head start so they know how to approach these problems when they graduate and forge their own career paths.”
Students learn to conduct user interviews, analyze systems and test assumptions in real-world settings, mirroring the early phases of professional product design. Just as importantly, they learn to navigate uncertainty.
When the Schuylkill swallowed the city: Lessons from Hurricane Ida’s historic flood
New Penn research shows that Hurricane Ida wasn’t a once-in-a-century anomaly but a preview of how climate change, urbanization, and aging infrastructure are rewriting flood risk.
The Fed explained: What it does and why it matters
Former Philadelphia Fed President Patrick Harker and financial historian Peter Conti-Brown, both Wharton professors, unpack the central bank’s origins, its unusual structure, and the quiet ways it shapes the economy
How population changes are impacting primary education worldwide
Research from Penn sociologist Emily Hannum and colleagues reveals regional trends in whether school-age populations are increasing, plateauing, or decreasing—and shows how different countries are responding.
A bioengineered bean gum from the lab of Penn Dental’s Henry Daniell is found to reduce the levels of three microbes associated with head and neck squamous cell cancer to almost zero, without affecting the beneficial bacteria normally found in the mouth.
Fighting oral cancer with bioengineered chewing gum
Research led by Penn Dental’s Henry Daniell shows that antiviral and antibacterial chewing gums reduce the levels of three microbes linked to worse outcomes in oral cancers, paving the way for more effective and affordable therapies.
