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Jens Brinkmann
Lead Researcher
j.brinkmann@auckland.ac.nz
09 373 7599
Jens is in the first year of his PhD program in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Auckland. Prior to that he worked at several consulting companies and gained experience in Santiago de Chile, Hannover/Germany and Wolfsburg/Germany. Before coming to Auckland, he hosted Virtual Assembly Meetings for Volkswagen, Wolfsburg.
Dr David Wynn
Principal Investigator
d.wynn@auckland.ac.nz
09 923 8178
After completing his PhD in 2007, David became a Senior Research Associate at the Cambridge Engineering Design Centre. While in Cambridge he was also a Fellow and Director of Studies in Engineering at Homerton College. David then moved to Canada where he worked at Bombardier Aerospace in the Product Development Engineering group, and where he was affiliated to the Department of Mechanical Engineering at McGill University.
David joined the University of Auckland as a Senior Lecturer in 2015. He leads the Design and Development Research Group.
Dr Aruna Shekar
Associate Investigator
a.shekar@massey.ac.nz
09 414 0800 ext. 43366
Aruna is a Foundation Board member of the Product Development & Management Association in New Zealand (www.pdma-nz.org), an affiliate of the PDMA (USA). This affiliate was initiated and set up by Aruna in 2007, and has grown to have a large database of professionals in the field. Aruna has very strong links with industry in the product development space. Her research is in conjunction with industrial product development – working to improve practices, increasing the speed and quality of development. She also works with colleagues at The University of Auckland (INNOVATIONZ team of researchers), and is an examiner for some of their Masters and PhD students in this field.
As a senior academic, she is interested in fostering creative and critical thinking and providing project-based learning opportunities in product development and engineering problem-solving. This leads to a systems view and a bias towards action research, leading to productive research partnerships with industry on product development practices.
Having lived in New Zealand for almost 25 years, Dr Shekar joined Massey University 19 years ago and has worked in three different countries, which allows her to bring a diverse, international perspective to both her research and teaching. “I have always believed that my role as a senior member of staff goes beyond teaching students the basic concepts. I explain theory with interesting examples and illustrations from real-world industrial case studies.”