Innovation in Product Design - From CAD to Virtual Prototyping

Innovation in Product Design gives an overview of the research fields and achievements in the development of methods and tools for product design and innovation.  It presents contributions from experts in many different fields covering a variety of research topics related to product development and innovation. Product lifecycle management, knowledge management, product customization, topological optimization, product virtualization, systematic innovation, virtual humans, design and engineering, and rapid prototyping are the key research areas described in the book. It also details successful case studies developed with industrial companies.
Innovation in Product Design is written for academic researchers, graduate students and professionals in product development disciplines who are interested in understanding how novel methodologies and technologies can make the product development process more efficient.


Monica Bordegoni has been a full professor at the Faculty of Industrial Design of the Politecnico di Milano since December 2004. She teaches the courses Virtual modeling of industrial products and Virtual Prototyping at the Faculty of Industrial Design, and Virtual Prototyping at the Faculty of Industrial Engineering. She is a member of the board of the Design PhD program.
Monica Bordegoni coordinates the Virtual Prototyping Lab of the Department of Mechanical Engineering. Her main current research activities include methods and tools for virtual prototyping of products and processes, virtual/augmented/mixed reality for industrial applications, multimodal interaction techniques, haptic technologies and haptic interaction and their application in the engineering and industrial design sectors, and emotional engineering.
Her research has received grants from European and national funded projects. Recently, she was deputy coordinator of the European project FP6-IST Touch and Design (www.kaemart.it/touch-and-design), the coordinator of the European project FP6-IST SATIN - Sound And Tangible Interfaces for Novel product design (www.satin-project.eu), and the coordinator of the national project MIUR-FIRB PROGIMM (www.kaemart.it/progimm).
She is the author and co-author of about 200 scientific papers mainly published in international journals and proceedings of international conferences.
She chaired the Italian Chapter of Eurographics from 2001 to 2008. She has been a member of the scientific and program committees at several international conferences (ASME-IDETC/CIE, ASME-WINVR, TMCE, RO-MAN), and she has been the chair of the ASME-WINVR 2011 conference. She is a member of ACM, IEEE, ASME and Eurographics associations.
Caterina Rizzi has been a full professor at the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Bergamo since November 2001. She teaches the courses Technical Drawings, Virtual Prototyping and Methods and Tools for Product Life Cycle at the Faculty of Engineering. She is a member of the board of the Engineering of Industrial Production PhD program at the University of Padua.
Caterina Rizzi coordinates the V&K (Virtualisation and Knowledge) research group including 10 people (www.unibg.it/vk). She has been working in the area of product development process tools and techniques (CAD, CAM, PDM, PLM, etc.) since 1985. Her main research topics are: virtual prototyping, ICT tools for product development processes, ergonomics and virtual human modelling, physics-based modelling and simulation of non-rigid products, knowledge-based systems, methodologies and tools for systematic innovation, and intellectual property management.
She has participated in several European projects funded by the European Union and national research projects, where she also acted as project co-ordinator.  Recently she has been co-ordinator of the national I4BIO (Innovation for Bioengineering) project funded by Fondazione Cariplo and DESPRO (Design Prosthesis) project.
She is the author and co-author of more than 160 scientific papers published in international journals and conference proceedings.
She has been member of the scientific and program committees at several international conferences (ASME-WINVR, TMCE, Triz Future Conference), and she was the chair of the 10th ETRIA World TRIZ Future Conference 2010.
She has been Director of the Center for Innovation and Knowledge Management of the University of Bergamo (http://www.unibg.it/struttura/struttura.asp?cerca=coges_intro) from 2008 onwards.
Since May 2006 she has been Head of the Patenting Committee at University of Bergamo.