This week we’ll hear from two researchers about their UIST papers!

Location: HBK 2105 and Zoom

 

 

Talk Title: SustainaPrint: Making the Most of Eco-Friendly Filaments

Speaker:Maxine Perroni-Scharf, Ph.D. student, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, MIT

Abstract: 3D printing is widely used for prototyping and everyday objects, but it also generates significant plastic waste. Although biodegradable and recycled filaments offer a more sustainable alternative, their reduced and inconsistent mechanical strength often limits their use in functional prints. As a result, makers frequently rely on virgin plastics when durability is required. This talk situates sustainable 3D printing within the practical constraints of personal fabrication and examines how design tools can help makers better use eco-friendly materials.

In this talk, I will present SustainaPrint, an interactive system that supports multi-material 3D printing by assigning stronger filament to high-stress regions while maximizing the use of eco-friendly filament elsewhere. The system combines stress simulation, material-aware segmentation, and a low-cost mechanical testing toolkit that allows users to evaluate filament strength using simple known loads. Through printed examples of everyday load-bearing objects, I will discuss how these tools enable more reliable and accessible sustainable printing, and reflect on broader directions for material-aware interfaces in digital fabrication.

 

Bio: Maxine Perroni-Scharf is a Ph.D. student in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT, advised by Stefanie Mueller in the HCI Engineering Group at CSAIL.

Her research focuses on human-computer interaction, computer graphics, and computational fabrication, with an emphasis on machine-learning-driven design tools and material-aware 3D printing workflows for sustainable digital fabrication. Her work has appeared at CHI, SIGGRAPH, UIST, ICML, RA-L, and MobiSys.

Maxine has been supported by the Adobe Women in Technology Scholarship, the MathWorks Fellowship, the MIT Morningside Academy for Design Fellowship, and the MIT Andrew and Erna Viterbi Fellowship. She was previously a research intern at Adobe and Google, and actively serves on the Executive Committee of ACM Women in Graphics (WiGRAPH) and the MIT Graduate Application Assistance Program.

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Talk Title: TBD

Speaker: Haozhe Zhou

Abstract: TBD

Bio: TBD