By Christine Collins
The Daily Record has selected Towson University art professor Jan Baum as one of its 2013 Innovator of the Year award recipients.
The paper selects local professionals who have “created new products, services or programs that have improved their fields.”
Several items have been printed in TU’s Object Lab, including a structural bracelet designed by Assistant Professor Joshua DeMonte.
3D Maryland RMI event with Towson University during the 2013 Legislative session. Jan Baum printed heads of legislators and staff to show the new face of manufacturing.
L-R Scott Jensen, Jan Baum, Senator Brian Frosh, Mike Galiazzo, Senator JB Jennings
Baum is the innovator who runs Towson University’s Object Lab, where the cutting-edge technology of 3D printing turns concepts into solid forms. There, students turn ideas for everything from busts to bracelets to biomedical aid into the tangible object instead of farming out the job to an outside vendor. Her work this year also led to an object lab at a city high school where students ages 5-18 can learn digital fabrication – turning concept into tangible reality.
“Towson is at the forefront of the 3D revolution in Maryland,” Baum said recently. “Our Object Lab is the only one of its kind on a University System of Maryland campus, and Towson students are honing marketable skills.”
That kind of groundbreaking education, which mixes engineering with art, fit The Daily Record‘s bill for an innovator of special import.
“Innovators make the extraordinary ordinary,” says a website description of the award winners. “They make the impossible possible. In many ways, they turn dreams into realities.”
Oct 2nd Innovator of the Year Dinner
American Visionary Art Museum
6:00 PM