This Year's Fab Academy Started

Fab Academy is a six-month intense curriculum teaching participants how to "make almost everything". It conveys basics of digital fabrication with 3D printers, laser cutters, micro controllers and appropriate design tools.

The course, which has been taken by more than 80 Fab Labs worldwide, was initiated by MIT professor and "Personal Fabrication" pioneer, Neil Gershenfield. RWTH Aachen's Chair for Media Informatics and Human-Computer Interaction led by Prof. Jan Borchers has been running Germany's first "Fab Lab" since 2009, and it is also Germany's first university node at Fab Academy, alongside Rhein-Waal and Ruhr West universities, in the project "3D Competence Center, Lower Rhine."

Last week, on January 17, this year's Fab Academy started. Next Monday, on January 29, Prof. Borchers will hold a Fab Academy guest lecture on "How To Make (Almost) Anything Usable". The talk, conveying basics of Usability and User-friendly Design to the several hundred international participants, starts at 3pm. Slides and the recorded lecture will be made freely available on the Chair i10 website.