Our Team » MIT Project Manus

Contact Quick Links:

For general inquiries about MIT Project Manus, please contact Sarah Gallaher at gallaher [at] mit.edu

For questions about the Mobius app, please contact Jonathan Hunt at jmhunt [at] mit.edu

For questions about the Make Impact Consortium, please contact Gene Sasso at makeimpact@mit.edu

Professor Martin Culpepper

MIT Maker Czar

Marty Culpepper, a Professor of Mechanical Engineering, is MIT's first Maker Czar. He is passionate about all aspects of making and breaking as demonstrated in his 2.72 class where the student teams spend the semester building desktop lathes. Professor Culpepper is the recipient of an NSF Presidential Early Career Award, two R&D 100 awards, a TR100 award and a Joel and Ruth Spira Teaching Award. He is not one to be afraid of getting his hands dirty. His favorite maker tools are mills and waterjets, though he's become fond of glass blowing.

Jonathan M. Hunt

Associate Director & Maker IT Guru

Jonathan is the Associate Director and Maker IT Guru on MIT's Project Manus. He has 20 years of IT leadership experience and is in his happy place when making solar panel jewelry, circuits or anything with his kids. He earned his Bachelors in Electrical Engineering from MIT and is responsible for managing the IT components including Mobius app development and data collection. His favorite tools include small mills, laser cutters and 3D Printers.

Oliver Thomas

Maker Digital Systems Architect

A jack of all trades and master of none, Oliver's superpower is that he is able to sound plausible in almost any situation. He styles himself an amateur technologian and a professional pitchman not trying to sell anything. He constantly struggles with being a passionate generalist in an age that increasingly values specialization. He strives to master his fears of crowds, clowns, and peak oil before any of them can do him in. He likes chocolate, dogs (but not chocolate near dogs), and making things. He believes that waterjet cutters > laser cutters even though lasers >> water, and that 3D printers will someday become really useful.

(Also, 25 years of enterprise IT, architecture, and software design experience at MIT, yada yada yada.)

Gene Sasso

Senior Program Manager

As the Senior Program Manager for the Project Manus, Make Impact Consortium, Eugene (Gene) Sasso helps Consortium partners design, deliver, and deploy products and services to students, augmenting their academic pursuits, and enhancing their postgraduate success. Gene arrived in higher education after a career as a thinker-doer focused (sometimes) on marketing, communications, and brand activity. He is an avid mentor and networker whose best days include contact with current and former students, sharing success and horror stories. Gene believes in life-centered design, where humans find their place, doing as little harm as possible to all of the other beings and systems on this and other planets. Gene’s goal is to live an inspired life.

Seth Avecilla

Maker Technical Specialist

Seth Avecilla specializes in delivering skills to students to shorten the path between their wildest ideas and reality. He is a Maker Technical Specialist for Project Manus. Having studied architecture and sculpture, he built large scale mixed-media installations, both for artists and high-end wayfinding signage, before running the fabrication shop for MIT's Program in Art, Culture and Technology. People come to him for welded metal fabrication, precision or unusual casting and moldmaking, and electronics. Sometimes you will find Seth dancing as though to shake his soul loose.

Robyn Goodner

Maker Technical Specialist

Robyn Goodner is thrilled to serve as a Maker Technical Specialist for Project Manus. Though her masters is in Operatic Performance, she has spent her entire professional career making and breaking in all sorts of media. Hailing from UMass Lowell, Tufts, and Olin College, she specializes in creating peer-to-peer training programs and optimizing makerspace accessibility. Her areas of making specialization include CNC machining and woodworking, though she is obsessively learning to make all of the things.

Conor McArdle

Video and Digital Content Specialist

Conor serves as the Video and Digital Content Specialist for Project Manus. He wears many hats, and is our in-house webmaster, filmmaker, photographer, audio editor, social media manager and more. Before his time at MIT, Conor worked in private high school education. He was a Digital Arts teacher at Vermont Academy and Assistant Director of Multimedia Strategy and Production at Peddie School. Conor uses his iMac and Adobe software for most of his making, but is excited to delve into the world of 3D printing.

Sarah Gallaher

Administrative Assistant II

Sarah is an avid maker of many things from baked goods and floral design, to picking up a hammer and building things around the house. Originally having been from Michigan, Sarah was a teacher of music there for two years before moving to Massachusetts. As a musician, Sarah sings, dabbles on the piano, and creates arrangements for various types of instrumentation. In her free time, she enjoys painting, dancing, creating costumes, and constantly striving to better herself through practice and study.

Eric Duyette

Flameworking Instructor

Eric is the Flameworking Instructor in MakerLodge & beyond excited to be working with the MIT Project Manus team. He has been behind the torch creating his art for 17 years and before that working at his father's company installing sheet & auto glass. Since 2005, Eric has taught over a thousand students how to safely melt glass with fire at his studio in Somerville, MA, the Sharon Arts School in NH and at various locations around the country. His favorite tools are lapidary wheels, glass lathes & of course his glass blowing torch. In his spare time, he loves seeing live music, bicycling, & spending time with friends & family.