As the Spring semester resumed last month, our students took a short break to focus on meeting with their mentors and making progress on their research projects. We resumed program our activities this week with a workshop led by Penn State Professor of Architecture and Design DK Osseo-Asare. Professor Osseo-Asare guided our students through the process of design thinking and the building of cuboctahedron. A Cuboctahedron is a polyhedron with 8 triangular faces and 6 square faces. It has 12 identical vertices, 2 triangles, 2 squares, and 24 identical edges. The building of the polyhedron is based on a project that Prof. Osseo-Asare is also guiding his students in one of his classes.

The ultimate goal of the project is for his students to build an environmentally sustainable cuboctahedron that will be hanging from the wall and in which veggies can be grown. The workshop with our EnvironMentors students was an overview of the project. our students not only got challenged in design thinking that they can apply to their own research projects.  They also gained new skills through the process of building the cuboctahedron. Please check out the pictures of the workshop.