Professor
Human Centered Design & Engineering (HCDE)
Director
Center for Engineering Learning & Teaching
Mitchell T. and Lella Blanche Bowie Endowed Chair
- atman@uw.edu
- 314 Sieg Building
- Cynthia Atman's CV
Cynthia J. Atman (Cindy) is the founding director of the Center for Engineering Learning & Teaching (CELT), a professor in Human Centered Design & Engineering, and the inaugural holder of the Mitchell T. & Lella Blanche Bowie Endowed Chair at the University of Washington. She was director of the NSF-funded Center for the Advancement of Engineering Education (CAEE), a national research center that was funded from 2003-2010. Her research focuses on design expertise, design education and the use of reflection to support learning. She is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE.) Dr. Atman holds a Ph.D. in Engineering and Public Policy from Carnegie Mellon University.
Education
PhD, Engineering and Public Policy, Carnegie Mellon University
MS, Industrial and Systems Engineering, The Ohio State University
BS, Industrial Engineering, West Virginia University
Selected Talks
Design Signatures: A journey from design expertise to design awareness
Distinguished Lecture at the American Society of Engineering Education (ASEE), June 2024.
- Video
- Slide deck
Good designers do ‘X’
Keynote presentation at Transdisciplinary Engineering conference, July 2023.
- Video
- Slide deck
Researching and Teaching Engineering Design
Extraordinary Engineering Impacts on Society Symposium, National Science Foundation's Directorate for Engineering and organized by the National Academy of Engineering, August 2022.
- Video
Design Process Expertise: The Importance of Design Awareness
Distinguished Lecture Series, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, March 10, 2021.
- Video
- Slide deck
Design Heard: Interpretations of the Design Process
Cynthia J. Atman and Dharma Dailey, April 2, 2018.
- Video
- Slide deck
Concrete & Sticky: An Informal Theory of Change (With Three Worked Examples)
Invited Keynote Speaker. IEEE Professional Communication Conference, Madison, Wisconsin, July 25, 2017.
Inspiring Change Agents to Transform Engineering Education: Challenges and Strategies of Engineering Education Pioneers
Invited Distinguished Lecture Series, 2014 ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition, Indianapolis, IN, June 18, 2014.
Engineering Education Research: Some History and Examples from the U.S.
Invited Opening Address, Danish Centre for Engineering Education Research and Development, Copenhagen University and Aalborg University, June 8, 2007.
Selected Publications
Reid Bailey, Jennifer Turns, Krina Patel, Susannah Howe, Micah Lande, Eli Paten, & Cindy Atman (2025.) Student reactions to using design signatures to promote design intentionality. American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference. Montreal, Canada, June 2025.
Jennifer Turns, Reid Bailey, Susannah Howe, Krina Patel, Daria Kotys-Schwartz, Micah Lande, Eli Patten, Nicole Batrouny & Cynthia J. Atman (2025). Using Design Signatures to Make the Invisible Visible: Designing Activities for Design Process Learning. International Journal of Engineering Education, Vol. 41, No.4, pp . 928-946.
Atman, C. J. (2020). Hope, Stress, Sketch & Kvetch: Emphasizing Caring Through Reflection in Online Teaching in the Pandemic, Advances in Engineering Education, December 2020. Link here.
Atman, C. (2019) Design Timelines: Concrete & Sticky Representations of Design Process Expertise. Design Studies, Volume 65, November 2019, pages 125-151. (Invited paper for the 40th anniversary issue of Design Studies focused on “Design as a Discipline”.) Link here.
Shroyer, K., Terri Lovins, Jennifer Turns, Monica E. Cardella, Cynthia J. Atman (2018). Timescales and Ideaspace: An examination of idea generation in design practice, Design Studies, Volume 57, July 2018, Pages 9-36. (Design Studies Best Paper 2018 award). Link here.
Atman, C.J., Sheppard, S.D., Turns, J., Adams, R.S., Fleming, L.N., Stevens, R., Streveler, R.A., Smith, K.A., Miller, R.L., Leifer, L.J., Yasuhara, K., & Lund. D. Enabling Engineering Student Success: The Final Report for the Center for the Advancement of Engineering Education. San Rafael, CA: Morgan & Claypool Publishers, 2010. Link here.
Atman, C.J., Yasuhara, K., Adams, R. S., Barker, T., Turns, J., and Rhone, E. (2008). “Breadth in Problem-Scoping: A Comparison of Freshman and Senior Engineering Students.” International Journal of Engineering Education, 24(2), 234-245.
Atman, C.J., Adams, R. S., Cardella, M. E., Turns, J., Mosborg, S., and Saleem, J. J. (2007). “Engineering Design Processes: A Comparison of Students and Expert Practitioners.” Journal of Engineering Education, 96(4), 359-379.
Adams, R. S., Turns, J., and Atman, C.J. (2003). “Educating Effective Engineering Designers: the Role of Reflective Practice.” Design Studies, 24(3), 275-294. (Design Studies Best Paper 2013 award).
Atman, C.J., Chimka, J. R., Bursic, K.M., and Nachtmann, H.L. (1999). “A comparison of Freshman and Senior Engineering Design Processes.” Design Studies, 20(2), 131-152.
Selected Websites, Apps, Art Installations, etc.
Design Signatures Website: desigsignatures.org. The design signatures website presents research on design expertise, a pointer to the Design Signatures App, and all the teaching materials for the Dear Design seminar and workshops.
Design Signatures App (web-based) https://app.design-awareness.com The intent of the app is to allow users to track their design processes – to see what kinds of “design signatures” their processes look like and enable them to reflect on their design processes.
Atman, C.J., “Engineering Education Research Centers as Incubators with Dr. Cindy Atman” on the Research in Engineering Education podcast. Part One, April 29, 2024, Part Two, May 2, 2024.
Good Designers do “X” (GDDX) Collection: This is a collection of 180 statements by 35 scholars who responded to the query: “When you talk to someone and say “Good designers do ‘X’”, what are the top 4 or 5 things you list?”. The resulting collection is a beautiful mosaic of what design can mean. You can find out more about this collection the following ways:
- In a technical report in the UW HCDE Technical Report series published in July, 2025. Link here.
- On a page in the teaching resources section of our Design Signatures website where you will find links to a Google Sheets database, pdf files to print card decks, a Miro board, a Figma file and descriptions of several teaching exercises using the collection.
Art Installations:
Atman, C. J., Dina K Chawla, Jesse Yu, Nirmmall Kuttapaa, Paige Han, Rupal Patel, Sarah Stumme, Saumik Shashwat, Shay Duan, Xiaoyi Xue, Yit Chung, Eileen Zhang. “Design Process Resilience”, Spring 2025 - ongoing.
