IDEAexchange

Please join us April 18th at 6:00 pm for Center for Design Innovation’s 2018 presentation and discussion series IDEAexchange.
Nick Hristov, WSSU and CDI Design Researcher

Please join a group of creative critical thinkers interested in learning how an interdisciplinary and interinstitutional team of students, faculty and staff in Winston Salem and around the continent are contributing to saving the Monarch Butterfly.

Biologist and Designer Dr. Nickolay Hristov will lead conversation about continent-wide research and discoveries centered at the Center for Design Innovation contributing to the protection of the Monarch Butterfly.

The brightly-colored, iconic monarch butterfly captures the imagination of the public with its annual transcontinental migrations, up to 3000 miles from southern Canada to central Mexico. Led by scientists in the last two decades, widespread citizen scientists have contributed to understanding the unique story of these migrations. Although still remarkably numerous, monarch butterflies have dwindled in numbers over the past quarter century. Relying on 3-D imaging and Laser Scanning technologies to gather data, and multimedia design to communicate the results with the public, research at CDI is playing a key part in a broad international effort to understand why and how to reverse the trend.

Join us Wednesday to learn more about butterflies, the technologies CDI researchers—students, staff, and faculty—are putting to work to measure their numbers, and the tools we’re using to share this new knowledge with the public.

Dr. Nickolay Hristov, Design Research Leader, writes:

“I grew up in the mountains of Bulgaria and didn’t cross the Atlantic Ocean to set foot in North America until I was 20. The reason for the adventure? Endless desire for learning! Lots of it! I completed my BS and MS from the University of Maine in Orono in Zoology and Wildlife Ecology along with Psychology and Computer Science in 1997. I received an MS and PhD in Animal Communication from Wake Forest University before completing postdoctoral work at Boston University and Brown University. In 2009, I joined the Center for Design Innovation (CDI), a research center of the University of North Carolina (UNC) system through a joint appointment as Assistant Professor in organismal biology at Winston-Salem State University and as the inaugural Design Researcher at CDI. I hold additional research and academic appointments at Wake Forest University and UNC School of the Arts.”

In addition to Lead PIs Hristov and Allen (WSSU), our team at CDI also includes UNCSA faculty Bruno Louchouarn, Project Coordinator Lisa Stack and Visual Technical Director (3D Modeling/Animation) Dennis Nikolaidis as well as a long list of students: Timothy Nixon, Zariah Jean, Georgina Dzikunu and Kari Dawson (WSSU); Grant Conversano, Chris Mathews, Trent Spivey, Raunak Kapoor and Peter Brown (UNCSA) and recent graduates Eve Savage and Brittani George (WSSU-2015) and Ryan Lebar, Eduardo Uruena and Joe Cornelius (UNCSA-2016). We work closely with collaborators from the US Department of Interior, – specifically Ryan Drum and Shauna Marquardt, US Fish and Wildlife Service and and Ralph Grundel and Wayne Thogmartin, USGeological Survey, and increasingly with colleagues from Canada and Mexico (CEC and CONANP). Butterfly

Great minds don’t always think alike. Join this special series where professional thinkers present unique ideas.