The 2022 Summer School officially runs from 8:30am Monday, July 25th through 5:00 pm Friday, July 29th. For students arriving on Sunday, July 24th, there will be an optional social/networking activity in the afternoon. Below provides the anticipated schedule, though the exact ordering is potentially subject to change. While some of the topics may sound unfamiliar and potentially intimidating for those working primarily in Engineering Design areas, keep in mind that this Summer School is designed to be a first introduction, particularly for those without prior experience in these topics. The pace and scope will be adjusted accordingly.

Sunday, July 24th – Check-In

While not an “official” day of the Summer School, we will have an optional afternoon social and networking activity should you arrive earlier on Sunday. Specifically, you can see the Social Events page for more information about times and where to go.

Monday, July 25th – Optimal Transport

This day will focus on introducing the concept of Optimal Transport, its use in generative models of design, and methods and code libraries for efficiently computing it.

Tuesday, July 26th – Introduction to Information Geometry

This day will focus on introducing Information Geometry, with a specific focus on techniques and code libraries for learning using Differential Geometry (e.g., optimization or learning on Riemannian Manifolds, natural gradients etc.) that correspond to applications in generative and statistical models.

Wednesday, July 27th – Optimization and Generative Models

This day will dive deeper into optimization and learning in generative models (GANs, VAEs, Normalizing Flows) building upon the first two days. It will also cover applications that deal with non-continuous representations such as graphs, trees, permutations, and other common representations in Engineering Design, and how to modify the prior material to handle these cases.

Thursday, July 28th – Working on Challenge Problems & Technical Office Hours

This day will be focused primarily on individual and group time to continue work on the provided challenge problems, and for Technical Office Hours to help individual students with topics from the prior days or when attempting the challenge problems. This day also includes additional networking and forward looking invited Plenary sessions that discuss various Engineering Applications for which the week’s mathematical, statistical, or computational topics could be applied in students’ future careers beyond the Summer School.

Friday, July 29th – Synthesis and Dissemination

This day will be focused on contributing to collaborative writing projects within the group that summarize our progress on the challenge problem results and preparing brief presentations to the group and invited external guests from academia, government, and industry on promising approaches and lessons learned along with a closing networking event.

Beyond the Summer School

At the conclusion of the Summer School, participants can Opt-In to an alumni listserv to coordinate future explorations and follow-on papers, be informed of subsequent topics and openings for future summers, and be invited to a mini-reunion networking event at the 2022 ASME International Design Engineering Technical Conference in mid-August.