Akshay Sharma

Bio

Research Interests

Associate Professor and chair of industrial design, Akshay is passionate about using design as a catalyst for positive change. He has led multidisciplinary student teams looking at issues related to social impact. He has worked on projects related to financial literacy for micro financing that is being implemented in rural India and will reach 500,000 women in next four years. Another project uses cell phones for creating an information management system for vaccination records to be used in developing countries; a version of this system is being used by Jaipur foot for managing their patient information. He believes good design ought to translate into joy and happiness for the end user. 

1. Design thinking for Social Impact through strategies aimed at regeneration of resources. Looking beyond sustainability to reverse the course and regenerate depleted natural resources.
2. Alternative energy strategies for low income family residences in SW virginia and rural India.
3. Design visualization for exploring new ideas and use of sketching as a tool for innovation in design process.

Current Projects

1. Collaborating with  Xue Yu, Stephen DiVerdi, Yotam Gingold on developing a VR based sketching application for Industrial Designers. https://cragl.cs.gmu.edu/
   More details: https://cragl.cs.gmu.edu/scaffoldsketch/
2. Ongoing collaboration with Dr. Johari at George Mason University. We have worked together on a number of funded initiatives, few notable examples are:
   https://news.vt.edu/articles/2012/07/072412-caus-immune.html
   https://www.amazon.com/Designing-Development-International-Education-Engineering/dp/1627050035
   This partnership also resulted in support for eight industrial design students over the Summer of 2023, to work on a research project with a team of researchers at George Mason and Iowa State University.

Selected Uploads

• CV-Short Format
• immune
• laXmi
• raXsa