Sept. 16, 2009
Director Named for VCU da Vinci Center
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Kenneth B. Kahn, Ph.D., a nationally recognized scholar and consultant in the field of product development, has been named director of Virginia Commonwealth University’s da Vinci Center for Innovation in Product Design and Development.
The VCU da Vinci Center is a collaboration of VCU’s schools of the Arts, Business and Engineering and serves as a hub for interdisciplinary innovation to prepare students for a career in product creation. The da Vinci Center also serves as a resource for company-sponsored projects and helps aspiring student teams bring their ideas to market.
As director, Kahn will coordinate the current da Vinci project course and develop and implement new curricula to expand the center’s programs, which will include undergraduate and graduate offerings as well as company training and community workshops.
“The da Vinci Center represents a unique experience because of the collaboration across the schools of the Arts, Business and Engineering,” he said. “Those students participating in da Vinci coursework gain a robust understanding of what goes on in industry and are prepared to direct the innovation process.
“Our corporate partners have commented about how they are impressed with our da Vinci students and what they accomplish in a single semester project,” Kahn said. “As our programs expand, I am confident that the da Vinci Center will become a national model for how to advance innovation through interdisciplinary collaboration.”
Kahn previously was at Purdue University, where he was a professor and director of Purdue’s Burton D. Morgan Center for Entrepreneurship. Kahn, whose background includes engineering and marketing, will hold a faculty appointment in the VCU School of Business.
A da Vinci Center group recently completed phase two of a $500 operating table for the developing world — a 24-inch, easy-to-ship cube that assembles into a full-size, hospital-grade table that moves in three dimensions.
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