WINSTON-The Center for Design Innovation has selected its
first director Carol Strohecker. Previously she served a principal with MIT’s Media Lab Europe.
“We are extremely fortunate to have attracted a person of the caliber of Carol Strohecker to lead the CDI,” said Jim DeCristo, director of economic development and external affairs for the North Carolina School of the Arts. “Her credentials are impeccable and her enthusiasm for the project is undeniable.”
The Center for Design Innovation is a University of North Carolina inter- institutional collaboration between NCSA and Winston-Salem State University, in partnership with Forsyth Technical Community College.
The CDI was created in response to a 2003 Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy, developed by AngelouEconomics, that recommended that the region pursue a course to accelerate the growth of the emerging design cluster in the Piedmont Triad.
The mission of the CDI — which will specialize in the application of digital design in entertainment, life science, education, product design, and product marketing — is to generate and facilitate design-focused instruction, research, workforce development, and entrepreneurial activity; to promote educational programming that emphasizes innovation; and to act as a design-based business
cluster accelerator to make the Piedmont Triad a nationally recognized center of design.
“We believe that Carol Strohecker is the right person to lead the CDI in creating a powerful economic development engine that will build upon the strengths of the Piedmont Triad region,” said Randy Mills, assistant provost for administration and planning at Winston-Salem State University.
Strohecker is the founder of Strohecker Associates of Dublin, Ireland, generators of tools, programs and environments for learning. She was principal investigator of the Everyday Learning research group at Media Lab Europe, the European research partner of the MIT Media Lab (http://www.media.mit.edu/). Prior to joining MLE, she worked in the United States at Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories (http://www.merl.com) and in the Human Interface Group of Sun Microsystems (http://research.sun.com).
She earned the Ph.D. of Media Arts and Sciences from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1991 and the Master of Science in Visual Studies from MIT in 1986. She has served MIT’s Program in Media Arts and Sciences as a lecturer and as a Presidential Nominee on the MIT Corporation Visiting
Committee.
Center for Design Innovation: www.ncarts.edu/CDI
