Research, Engagement, & Creative Scholarship

As part of a top tier research university, the College of Design prides itself not only on teaching the next generation of designers, but on conducting groundbreaking research and sharing our expertise with a wide variety of communities. The College of Design’s research, engagement, and creative scholarship units include centers, laboratories, museums, consortia, and institutes of regional, national, and international importance. These units focus on providing innovative solutions to design problems, new information to their constituencies, and thought-provoking opportunities for student learning.
Explore our research collaborations.

Research Highlights

Wearable Technology Lab

Assistant Professor Brad Holschuh has devoted his career to inventing and developing garments to improve life both in space and here on Earth. Holschuch and his colleagues at the Wearable Technology Lab (WTL) were featured in a recent issue of Minnesota Alumni magazine. Learn more about how the WTL is taking their expertise in space suit design and applying it to soft robotics in order to create compression garments that initiate compression after they're on the body.

Center for Design in Health

Together with cardiac anesthesiologists, the Center for Design in Health is designing and testing information that will give cardiac surgery patients a better understanding of blood transfusions. The goal is to fully involve patients in decisions involving their need for blood. A blood transfusion can be thought of as a "transplant in a bag," so designing information that enables patients to better understand when a transfusion might or might not be necessary will help empower them when they make decisions about their care.

Center for Sustainable Building Research

Center for Sustainable Building Resarch MPCA Grant Prototype

CSBR and the Cold Climate Housing Center are testing wall insulation upgrades at the Cloquet Residential Research Facility. The work is funded by Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. The research involves identifying cost-effective energy saving insulation upgrades that do not increase the risk of moisture damage to the original structure. Data will be collected beginning fall 2019.

Goldstein Museum of Design

Goldstein Museum of Design (GMD) not only develops exhibitions through original curatorial research but also presents faculty research using a guest-curator model. Throughout FY20, exhibitions will include Beverley Oliver Hawkins and Nieeta Presley: Influential Saint Paul Developers (guest curator Marilyn Bruin, Housing Studies); Creativity In Everyday Life (guest co-curators Brad Hokanson; Merlie Buckman, Professor of Design; and Daniel Martin, graphic design graduate student); Renaissance Type and the Grammar of Ornament (guest curator Bill Moran, Graphic Design); and Elizabeth and Winston Close Retrospective (guest curator Jane Hession, architectural historian). View the digital catalog.

Minnesota Design Center

The Minnesota Design Center is part of a National Science Foundation grant looking at the implications of shared autonomous vehicles (SAV’s) on our streets, public realm, and parking lots and ramps. In partnership with the Head of the Department of Landscape Architecture, Joseph Favour, the MDC staff – Joseph Hang and Javkhlan Nyamjav – and director – Thomas Fisher – have looked at the impact of SAV’s on a series of intersections along Marshall and Lake Streets in St. Paul and Minneapolis. Professor Favour presented this work at the national Transportation Research Board conference in Washington D.C. in January 2019.
Learn more about the center.