Congratulations to former BEST Labber Jon Cagan for winning the 2018 Doherty Award for innovative teaching and curricular development from Carnegie Mellon University!

Jon is currently the George Tallman and Florence Barrett Ladd Professor in Engineering, in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University, with courtesy appointments in the School of Design and Computer Science. He specializes in innovative product design, artificial intelligence and product development processes. He has over 200 research publications and 6 issued patents.  Dr. Cagan received his Bachelor of Science in 1983 and Master of Science in 1985 from the University of Rochester, and his Ph.D. in 1990 from the University of California at Berkeley. All of his degrees are in Mechanical Engineering. Dr. Cagan is also a registered Professional Engineer.

Excerpt from news article: Jonathan (Jon) Cagan developed the “integrated product development with colleagues in the College of Fine Arts (CFA) and Tepper School of Business helped put Carnegie Mellon on the map as a world leader in design innovation education and research, and resulted in the formation of the Integrated Innovation Institute. Within the institute, Jon co-created the Master of Integrated Innovation for Products and Services program almost 20 years ago as a professional degree in new product development. More recently, he co-founded the Master of Science in Technology Ventures (MSTV), a bicoastal degree that teaches students how to start, manage and succeed in new venture creation. In this program, students can complete their M.S. in a traditional technology area in Pittsburgh and the entrepreneurial MSTV degree in Silicon Valley. Today, 150 students graduate annually from the Integrated Innovation Institute and its programs. Jon also helped to create the Venture Bridge, now part of the Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship, a pre-accelerator at the Silicon Valley campus to enable students and alumni to transition their idea from concept to startup.”

Jon has co-authored three renown books on product innovation: Creating Breakthrough Products, Built to Love: Creating Products That Captivate Customers, and The Design of Things to Come: How Ordinary People Create Extraordinary Products.

Jon has won many other prestigious awards, including the CMU College of Engineering’s Outstanding Research Award, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers’ Fellow Award, the ASME Design Theory and Methodology Award and more than a dozen best and other honored paper awards.

Also see blog on Jon’s interview with Forbes Magazine on Innovators of Tomorrow.

Jon’s dissertation was titled:“Innovative Design of Mechanical Structures from First Principles”. A journal version was published in AIEDAM. Below are some photos of Jon Cagan at UC Berkeley:  Jon at his desk in the former BEST Lab and his PhD hooding at commencement in 1990.