Edward Burnell

Hello! I’m currently in my 5th year as a Mechanical Engineering PhD student at MIT. I used to work in industry on small electric airplanes and (flying) wind turbines, but after seeing how fragile and vital the communications of our design concepts were, went to school to research these difficult to verbalize shared ideas.

I’ve made a programming language and several tools for aerospace engineers which have been adopted by industry, but this kind of shared creative concept doesn’t only occur in engineering, so I’m looking to co-design with other groups of skilled practitioners representations and tools that build on their tacit knowledges.

I’m very excited to work with y’all in this class; there seems to be such a breadth and depth of experience with news / media / journalism, and I look forward to collaborating on projects and assignments!

Outside of research you’ll find me cooking, trying to get engineers + students to consider the social implications of their research, making mesmerizing gifs, or casually interviewing strangers about the habitus of their workplace.