Teaching Staff

You are encouraged to contact over Feishu to connect with our staff.

Description

We have gathered a team of 20+ teaching staff in addition to the teaching assistants to join us, most of whom are from the Bionic Design and Learning Lab @ SUSTech, with advisory support from MIT. We sincerely appreciate their participation, expertise and experience in mechanical design and machine learning, experimenting with an integrated experience in research and education.

Course Instructor & Advisor

The course instructor sets the vision for the course, how the course is structured, and what is expected of all the participants. The lectures, project theme, grading structure, guidelines, and milestones for the project are determined and administered by the course instructor. The course instructor is available to offer advice to teams or to receive input from any student on any aspect of the course. The course instructor is also available to all teams for a design consultation in the mainDL lab.

The course instructor also works with the course advisor to collect teaching feedback and support.

The course instructor does not have a primary role in grading teams and team members in lab projects, but will supervise the process.

The course instructor works with the teaching staff to clarify and maintain the course vision; obtain detailed feedback about team progress, and identify ways to ensure that the goals of the course are met.

More details:

The course instructor is equivalent to the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of a company, setting the top-level vision, and having ultimate decision power.
The course instructor sets the vision for the course: how it will proceed and what is expected of all the participants.
The course instructor invests heavily in guiding lab instructors and facilitating cooperation between teams.
The course instructor may offer suggestions to lab instructors or individual students, but without insisting on executing details in a specific way. Similarly, the course instructor listens to feedback and stays in tune with the project so that adjustments can be made to help achieve course goals.
The course instructor is available to help with any mainDL-related issues.
Lab instructors and teaching assistants act to implement the course vision and facilitate their engineering team.

Admin Assistant

The admin assistant works closely with all members of the class to facilitate the delivery of the course, mainly in organizing lab meetings, process purchasing requests, and general admin support, with added roles in team communication and workshop preparation.

The admin assistant will contact all teams’ financial officers regarding any issues in processing purchases and receipts for reimbursement.

Teaching Assistant

The teaching assistants assist the course instructor in preparing materials for class and for the teams and work with the lab and workshop instructors in the team management. The course TAs are available to all students to provide advice, administrative assistance, and technical assistance.
Three teaching assistants are assigned different roles during this course:

TA Administrator: The TA administrator will work with the other TAs to facilitate team management. The TA administrator serves as the course librarian for all teams (explained below), and partially serves as the Meta Yoda for teams in lab hours. The TA administrator will also serve as the media coordinator to work with the course instructor on course recording.
TA Red & Blue: The TA Red & Blue provides general assistance to students in teams red and blue (30 students in total) at all times, and will work with the Lab Instructor during lab sessions.
TA Green & Yellow: The TA Green & Yellow provides general assistance to students in teams green and yellow (30 students in total) at all times, and will work with the Workshop Instructor during lab sessions

Meta Yoda & Course Librarian (TA)

The meta Yoda is a coach and support mechanism for the team Yoda Officers. The meta Yoda will arrange meetings with the Yodas during the term to provide tips about techniques for promoting balance and productive engagement within the team and to assist members in reaching their full potentials. In addition to coaching, the meta Yoda will be available to help think through any challenges or questions a team Yoda may have.

The Meta Yoda will contact the Yoda officers during lab/workshop hours to address issues on team building and communication.
The TA Administrator mainly communicates with the Yoda Officers during lab sessions.
The Admin Asst. Mainly communicates with the Yoda Officers during the workshop sessions.

The course librarian is a specialist in resources for all students and faculty, provides tips on how to find information. The librarian prepares resources organized specifically for the course and assists in-class exercises geared towards improving information gathering skills. The course librarian is available to work with team information officers, suggesting possible sources or search methods for different types of information.

The course librarian will contact all teams’ information officer on a weekly basis to provide support in information searching towards a working design.

Lab & Workshop Instructor

The Lab Instructor mainly covers technical issues during lab hours, available to all teams, who serve as their laboratory instructors. And the Workshop Instructor plays a similar role, mainly during the workshop hours. The lab & workshop instructors attend many lectures and all of their team’s labs. During the lab and workshop, students make most decisions and design and build the product prototypes. Instructors facilitate team organization; provide advice on the product specification/contract; help with risk assessment and concept selection; provide technical advice; assist with prototyping techniques; and conduct informal design reviews. One of the key roles of the lab and workshop instructor is to help a team plan and adhere to, a product development schedule.

The lab instructors will contact all teams’ safety officer, team site manager, and tool officer on specific issues during lab sessions;
The workshop instructor will prepare focused tutorials helping student teams during the design process.

The lab and workshop instructors explain their thinking behind their suggestions. For example, the lab & workshop instructor will not say “do not do that because I did it once and it does not work”. The lab and workshop instructor will instead say “you should not do that because force does not equal mass times acceleration squared”. Instructors may encourage the testing of an idea using analysis or mockups to learn whether a concept is, or is not, viable, and to perhaps synthesize a new design from observations. The lab and workshop instructor should not allow students to incorrectly pursue a design on false hope.

The lab and workshop instructors also grade their lab and workshop section and team members on the basis of weekly performance in lab and workshop and their individual design notebooks. All lab and workshop instructors grade each team on the major project milestones.
The lab and workshop instructors act like technical managers, and thus they:

Augment the course instructor’s vision with detail (i.e., help teach the design process).
Help students organize their projects by helping them to select feasible design goals and create a workable schedule.
Act as coaches and facilitators.
Encourage students to create and learn, allowing them to take chances and make mistakes.
Allow students to have a period of discovery and invention.
Help the design team recognize problems and prompt for solutions.
Help the design team let go of dead-end ideas and refocus on workable solutions.
Require justification of a concept’s feasibility (analyses, experiments, or supporting data), preventing the design team from unduly pursuing concepts on the basis of a wish or hunch.

Student Mentor

Each team has 3 student mentors. The mentors are professionals with product development experience in research or industry. They volunteer their time to the class. They can assist with a wide variety of issues, ranging from technical details to team organization or business models. Most mentors will be able to come in when requested, and others are available through email. The mentors can be thought of as experienced advisors, as is common for startup companies.

Student Mentor Administrator will contact all student mentors on a weekly basis and collect student questions on machine design process.
Wasteless System Mentor will contact all teams’ system integrator on a weekly basis to support team-wise system integration towards a wasteless production line.

Technology Consultant

The technology consultant mainly in charge of working with the course instructor on developing the necessary tools to facilitate the overall vision of the mainDL lab. They will be in charge of developing the critical software, programming the system, and providing the necessary support in all parts of the course. Their main role is to support all teaching staff and student teams, although they usually do not meet with them directly. But if there’s any problem while using the software they developed, feel free to contact them.

Media Coordinator

The Media Coordinator is a mentor for the team Video Log Officers. The coordinators will arrange and initiate meetings with the video log officers form camera equipment disbursement and instruction, and meet with video log officers individually, on a weekly basis to collect media and provide technical and documentary narrative feedback.

The media coordinator administrator will contact all teams’ video log officer on a weekly basis to collect media files that records the team’s activities during the course.
The design notebook coordinator will be in charge of collecting all design notebook highlights (two-pages) from each students on Week 08, 10, 12 and 14. Distribute and collect the physical notebooks to all members of the class.

Domain Specialist

Domain specialists can provide on-demand consultancy in specific areas of expertise related to the course theme. Their responsibilities are not directly related to the teaching but more of providing a third-person perspective into the design process towards the project theme from their area of expertise. Students may contact them if any specific questions are out of the domain knowledge of the teaching staff.

Course Sponsor

Course sponsor donations provide resources for the team budgets, general supplies for projects, shop prototyping equipment in the mainDL lab, staff overtime, reference materials, team office materials (fax, printer, phone, etc.), and materials used for active in-class exercises. Sponsors also participate as reviewers in the final presentation.
More details:

The course sponsor may be thought of as seed investors in a new product development organization. Course sponsors are often interested in recruiting graduates from the class.
Sponsor donations have been a key enabler for the course. This support has become essential to offering mainDL in its current project-centric form. Without this support, the class design and activities would be significantly reduced.

Course Instructor	Song Chaoyang	songcy@sustech.edu.cn Room 606, 7 Innovation Park	course preparation and delivery
Course Advisor	David Wallace	drwallace@mit.edu.cn MIT	provide training and guidance in course preparation
Admin Assistant	Fu Tian	sirgroup@outlook.com	budget, final presentation
Teaching Assistants	Zhang Baolin	12032422@mail.sustech.edu.cn	supervise team Red, all reports & final presentation [Teaching Assistant] for Wednesday Workshop [Course Librarian] & [Meta Yoda]
	Jiang Wei	12032814@mail.sustech.edu.cn	supervise team Blue, all reports and final presentation [Teaching Assistant] on Wednesday & Friday Lab
	Yu Dongwei	12032423@mail.sustech.edu.cn	supervise team Green, all reports & final presentation [Teaching Assistant] on Wednesday Lab [Course Librarian] & [Meta Yoda]
	Zhang Zhen	12032428@mail.sustech.edu.cn	supervise team Yellow, all reports and final presentation [Teaching Assistant] on Wednesday & Friday Workshop
Lab & Workshop Instructors	Xiao Xiaochuan	xiaoxc@sustech.edu.cn	safety, lab instruction, assignments & reports
	Guo Weijie	11510615@mail.sustech.edu.cn	lab instruction, workshop, final presentation
	Zhao Dan	zhaod2018@mail.sustech.edu.cn	workshop instruction
Student Mentors	Wang Zhenhong	11930356@mail.sustech.edu.cn	Red Apple Splitter Machine Task Force mechanical design, motors & control
	Ge Sheng	ge@aspring.design	Red Banana Speedy Picker Task Force mechanical design, robot learning
	Yang Linhan	11950013@mail.sustech.edu.cn	Red Cherry Dex Picker Task Force gripper design, robot learning
	Feng Shihao	12032726@mail.sustech.edu.cn	Green Apple Splitter Machine Task Force mechanical design, robot control
	Sun Haoran	sun@aspring.design	Green Banana Speedy Picker Task Force mechanical design, machine vision
	Guo Ning	11930729@mail.sustech.edu.cn	Green Cherry Dex Picker Task Force mechanical design, robot manipulation
	Guo Yuqin	12032421@mail.sustech.edu.cn	Blue Apple Splitter Machine Task Force mechanical design, robot control
	He Haibin	he@aspring.design	Blue Banana Speedy Picker Task Force system integration, computer engineering
	Wang Teng	wangt6@mail.sustech.edu.cn	Blue Cherry Dex Picker Task Force mechanical design, system integration
	Luo Qichen	luo@aspring.design	Yellow Apple Splitter Machine Task Force mechanical design, system integration [Student Mentor Administrator]
	Yu Chengming	11930324@mail.sustech.edu.cn	Yellow Banana Speedy Picker Task Force robot design, control & manipulation
	Liu Xiaobo	11930807@mail.sustech.edu.cn	Yellow Cherry Dex Picker Task Force machine vision, robot grasping [Wasteless System Mentor]
Technology Consultant	Wan Fang	wan@aspring.design	software development, technical support, robot learning, machine vision, robot manipulation
	Zheng Shuxin	zheng@aspring.design	computer science, robot learning
	Wu Weipeng	wu@aspring.design	computer science and engineering
Media Coordinator	Chen Mingdong	11711903@mail.sustech.edu.cn	industrial design, robot design, graphics [Design Notebook Coach]
	Jiang Haiyang	11712703@mail.sustech.edu.cn	industrial design, robot design, photography [Media Coordination Coach]
	He Jin	2439065229@qq.com	Industrial design, course identity
Domain Specialist	Wu Jing	wuj@sustech.edu.cn	Provide domain consultancy in robotic system integration