The da Vinci’s Cube: Arts-Integrated Pathways to Human-Centered Innovation
Sep 16, 2026 12-1:00pm Eastern/9-10am Pacific
What role do the arts play in fostering innovation? This webinar introduces the da Vinci’s Cube, a new framework that places human experience—emotion, sensory perception, empathy, and aesthetics—at the center of discovery and innovation. Developed with colleagues at Leonardo and Northeastern University and supported by the National Endowment for the Arts Research Labs program, this work explores how human feelings and senses help reveal possibilities that conventional innovation models often miss.
Extending Pasteur’s Quadrant, the da Vinci’s Cube adds a new dimension—contemplation of sentiment—highlighting the value of arts-informed inquiry in identifying opportunities, framing problems, and generating novel ideas. The session will examine implications for arts-integrative research, interdisciplinary collaboration, higher education, talent development, and organizational innovation, offering a new lens on how artistic and scientific ways of knowing can work together to advance creativity and impact.
Register
Registration to all a2ru webinars is free for all students, faculty and staff at a2ru member institutions and departments, as well an a2ru individual members. Please use your institutional email when registering.
Registration for non-members is $20; registration for non-member students is $10.
Speakers
Lisa D. McNair is the Deputy Executive Director at the Institute for Creativity, Arts and Technology (ICAT) and a professor in Engineering Education at Virginia Tech, with an affiliate appointment in the Department of Science, Technology, and Society. She received her PhD in Linguistics at the University of Chicago, and an M.A. and B.A. in English at the University of Georgia. Her research and teaching interests include interdisciplinarity, project-based learning, arts-integration, and community engagement.
Tom Martin is the Executive Director at the Institute for Creativity, Arts and Technology (ICAT) and a professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Virginia Tech, with courtesy appointments in the School of Architecture, the School of Design, the Department of Engineering Education, and the Department of Computer Science. He received his Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University. His research and teaching interests include wearable computing, electronic textiles, arts-integrated research, and interdisciplinary design teams for pervasive computing.