Maker Faire Bay Area 2012

Democratizing Design: Enabling the Crowd and the Next Generation

In this presentation, LTC Nathan Wiedenman, Program Manager for DARPA's Adaptive Vehicle Make portfolio of programs, describes several of the agency's advanced manufacturing initiatives. The AVM portfolio is focused on compressing development timelines by a factor of at least five and opening the aperture for innovation to a broader community through a series of design prize challenges. Separate from AVM, the MENTOR program is focused on inspiring the next generation of innovators by introducing students at 1,000 high schools to distributed digital design and programmable manufacturing technologies.

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About the Maker(s)

Nathan Wiedenman

Nathan Wiedenman

- Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)

Lietenant Colonel (LTC) Nathan Wiedenman, Ph.D., serves as Program Manager for the Adaptive Vehicle Make portfolio of programs in DARPA's Tactical Technology Office. His interests lie in the fields of advanced/multi-functional materials, advanced ground vehicle concepts and adaptive manufacturing processes. He earned his B.S. in engineering from Harvey Mudd College, his M.S. in mechanical engineering from the University of California at Berkeley and his Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is an armor officer, and prior to joining DARPA, he served in and commanded units equipped with several versions of the M1 Abrams main battle tank.

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