(Kavan) I'm one of those people
who really believes nobody should be left behind.
If you want to learn, we have a responsibility
to provide that opportunity.
Traditionally they have this impression
that engineering is not for the people we cannot see. Wrong.
We have to change that.
If we as a community don't make those
educational tools available to them, they are always feel
alien about the engineering.
(student 1) I don't want it to touch the edge of this.
(student 2) Oh, yeah.
As long as you're pegs in then, I'm just gonna take them out.
Yeah.
(Kavan) I was sitting in an airplane one day and
I was telling myself,
How am I supposed to teach
the fly mechanism to the person who cannot see?
I assembled a team and we start
to build a wind tunnel which is customized
so they can understand the viscous, drag, lift mechanism.
(student) It will be very loud.
[loud fan turning on]
(Kavan) We also
had some noise associated with the wind.
And when the wind comes in, change the angle of attack.
You have different lift and how we can land also.
They could completely hold it,
feel it and relate with the concept.
(Grad student) Okay.
So that's the drag portion.
And then we also have a lift force.
(Kavan) One of the students was working in my lab.
When she learned
about my passion to develop educational tools.
She said, I have a blind roommate.
(Valeria) I came here because my friend, she got me
into more into aerospace and mechanical engineering.
You can feel the other symmetrical letters.
(student) Do you think that makes a big difference?
(Valeria) It's easier to read this type of one.
Because I'm legally blind.
To understand something, I need to touch it.
Or have a motion that directs me to it.
(Sahand) Kavan
looks at the social impacts of engineering work.
And that's something that I wasn't exposed before.
For my Ph.D.
Kavan was my advisor,
and I had a conversation with him,
and I didn't know about the limitations in education
for visually impaired students.
So when he mentioned that, I was like, Oh, that's great.
We can work something that
has led to my work and connects to your work as well.
We picked this robot for educational purpose
because we have this shell around the system
because we have this, it's safe and people can use it
without getting harm and they understand
all these physics that is behind the system.
(Kavan) We can explain the stability of the helicopter's
flight, hovering, pitch and all this beautiful concept
that we teach in the Aerospace Engineer Department.
We could bring these type of lessons to the people
who never had the opportunity before.
(Isaac) There's more than just a visual learner.
There's auditory learners and there's tactile learners.
And so I think that it's important
to be able to really focus on bringing
as much inclusion into play when demonstrating and
or teaching concepts as complex as engineering
and or other concepts within the STEM fields.
(Kavan) Another very exciting project that we are involved is
we are very lucky.
We have a very good and comprehensive
college of optical science.
So my team and I, we are working with
Dr. Nasser Peyghambarian to develop some smart glasses
which has an onboard sensor for navigate the environments.
(Nasser) This is sort of an example that the blind
can be told what's going on.
The technology
that is currently in use in the self-driving cars by
but on a person.
(Kavan) we are sensing
the objects around and we can have an audio
feedback to say what I am seeing right now.
Just imagine a student that has those glasses as well.
They can navigate to the campus with no need to help
that build up the confidence
that we need to see the people who are not like us.
(Student) The button on your right hand.
If you push up.
(Valeria) Okay.
(Sahand) A lot of engineers like me understand that
there is this impact that you could have
socially in people's life.
(Kavan) It's very warm
heartening when I see next generation,
when I see them, they have the same passion
as I do
to develop things that doesn't exist
for the people who really need it.
Education really matters.
Things happen in the university.
You cannot have a technology. You cannot have a health.
You cannot have anything
without having the right education in the right place.
(Sahand) I see the difficulties and I see there's a solution,
That's basically the purpose of engineering
if it could make someone's life easier.
I mean, what's better than that?