Lawrence Neeley

Dr. Lawrence Neeley joined the Olin faculty as an Assistant Professor of Design and Entrepreneurship in 2011. He brings to Olin his passion for design, prototyping, manufacturing and entrepreneurship; and strives to share these passions with his students and the Olin community. Both his research and educational efforts help designers rapidly imagine, realize and offer compelling real world products. Before coming to Olin full time, Dr. Neeley spent three years as a postdoctoral associate in mechanical engineering at nearby MIT. During this time, he also had the pleasure of teaching User-Oriented Collaborative Design (the sophomore design class) at Olin every spring semester. In 2007, Dr. Neeley served as a global manufacturing research fellow for the Stanford Product Realization Network. In this role he conducted and documented site visits of manufacturing facilities associated with a multitude of industries in California and Shenzhen, China. Dr. Neeley holds a Ph.D. and an M.S. in mechanical engineering from the Center for Design Research at Stanford University where he received the Stanford University Legacy Achievement Award given by the Black Community Services Center, a silver medal in IDEA2003 for the design of a wine decanting cradle and the Stanford School of Engineering Dean's Doctoral Distinction Diversity Award. His dissertation research was in the area of adaptive design expertise. His thesis: A Theory of Design Thinking and Innovation examined the nature and nurture of design thinking. Dr. Neeley also holds a B.S. in mechanical engineering from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County where he was a Meyerhoff Scholar and graduated as a member of the Phi Beta Kappa and Tau Beta Pi academic honor societies. Outside of the classroom he enjoys imagining what might be and then making it so, cutting metal and anything related to custard.