VCU News Center – Director Named for VCU da Vinci Center

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News releases and media advisories

For immediate release:
9/16/2009

Anne Buckley
VCU Communications and Public Relations
(804) 828-6052
albuckley@vcu.edu

Director Named for VCU da Vinci Center

Kenneth B. Kahn, Ph.D.

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.

About VCU and the VCU Medical Center:

Virginia Commonwealth University is a major, urban public research university with national and international rankings in sponsored research. Located on two downtown campuses in Richmond, VCU enrolls more than 32,000 students in 205 certificate and degree programs in the arts, sciences and humanities. Sixty-five of the programs are unique in Virginia, many of them crossing the disciplines of VCU’s 15 schools and one college. MCV Hospitals and the health sciences schools of Virginia Commonwealth University compose the VCU Medical Center, one of the nation’s leading academic medical centers. For more, see www.vcu.edu.