About

After the successful implementation of Dr. E’s Challenges for the LEGO NXT, we decided to create a similar series of challenges for the LEGO WeDo kit. The goal for this site is to create a set of challenges to promote science, math, and engineering education in classrooms.  We hope that the site provides opportunities for kids to help and learn from each other, and for teachers to find a valuable support community for trying engineering in the classroom.

We welcome all interested classrooms to take part in this experiment. We will be looking for advice and opinions all along the way – please do not hesitate to email us at any time.

Meet the team:

Ethan E. Danahy, “Dr. E”

Engineering Research Program Director

Dr. Ethan E. Danahy received the B.S. and M.S. degrees in Computer Science in 2000 and 2002 respectively, and a Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering in 2007, all at Tufts University, Medford, MA. He currently holds the position of Engineering Research Program Director at the Center for Engineering Education and Outreach, where he manages tool development projects while researching innovative and interactive techniques for assisting teachers with performing engineering education and communicating robotics concepts to students spanning the K-12 through university age range.
An engineer and computer scientist at heart, Ethan focuses on technology solutions assisting engineering education. As manager of several of the Center’s projects, he oversees the design, implementation, and deployment of these products, while simultaneously serving as one of the main developers in the group. Ethan finds Cheetos repulsive, but yet is oddly fond of a good orange handful of Doritos. Mmm…

Chris Rogers

CEEO Director

Chris got all three of his degrees at Stanford University, where he worked with John Eaton on his thesis looking at particle motion in a boundary layer flow. From Stanford, he went to Tufts as a faculty member, where he has been for the last million years, with a sabbaticals in between. Chris also has a strong commitment to teaching, and at Tufts has started a number of new directions, including learning robotics with LEGO bricks and learning manufacturing by building musical instruments. He was awarded the Carnegie Professor of the Year in Massachusetts in 1998 and is currently the director of the Center for Engineering Education and Outreach. His teaching work extends to the elementary school, where he talks with over 1000 teachers around the world every year on ways of bringing engineering into the younger grades. He has worked with LEGO to develop ROBOLAB, a robotic approach to learning science and math. ROBOLAB has already gone into over 50,000 schools worldwide and has been translated into 15 languages.He has been invited to speak on engineering education in Singapore, China, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Luxembourg, Switzerland, the UK, and in the US. He works in various classrooms once a week, although he has been banned from recess for making too much noise. Chris enjoys round, not square, ice cubes, and a nice pair of wool socks.

Nick Harmon

Summer Undergraduate

Nick is a fourth year Mechanical Engineering undergraduate at Tufts University. While studying at Tufts, Nick has organized the Tufts Energy Conference and joined Tau Beta Pi, the engineering honors society. He has spent his summers playing soccer, working at GE Aviation, and staffing the CEEO backroom, where he helped create this site. Nick has worked on and completed several other projects during his undergraduate career, from improving Arduino interfaces to creating innovative electronic musical instruments. Nick is rarely spotted without Jake, and vice versa.

Jake Lazarus

Summer Undergraduate

Jake is a better senior undergraduate studying Mechanical Engineering at Tufts University. Jake is a member of the Tufts tennis team, helped with the Tufts Energy Conference, and has spent his summer working for the CEEO. Among many educational projects, Jake has helped create this site, and spearheaded several LEGO engineering projects. He developed wireless server capability on the Beaglebone Black, which he promptly used to make a wireless carnival hammer game that operates off smartphones.

Rafi Yagudin

Site Webmaster

Rafi received his Bachelors of Science in Operations Management at University of Massachusetts, Amherst. During his undergraduate career, Rafi explored his interest in computer science and its impact on business operations, more specifically in quality improvement. Rafi took advantage of the Commonwealth Honors College curriculum which allowed him to explore his interests in more detail by taking intensive honors courses and writing an undergraduate thesis about statistical models in operations under the counsel of Dr. Soren Bisgaard.