The Foundry Community welcomes and is mainly comprised of a diverse group of Babson, Olin and Wellesley students from a wide variety of disciplines and interests. The design of this community is intentional and cultivated, as the widest array of disciplines leads to the deepest creativity through shared exploration and knowledge transfer. This transdisciplinary community works together to build the culture of The Weissman Foundry. Additionally, to this end, the Weissman Foundry culture is a safe mental and physical space that enables unfettered exploration into creative thinking in the service of new and important ideas, systems and artifacts.
The Foundry provides a highly creative space to individuals or small teams for research, art/design, academic, and entrepreneurial startups to collaborate, experiment, and build. The 10,000 square foot facility provides areas for large project work as well as workbenches, access to advanced fabrication machinery, traditional tools, AR/VR and connections to expertise and training to move all forms of research and projects forward.
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The Team
Janos Stone
I love to turn ideas into technologies that enable creativity and make value.
Stone is an artist, designer and serial entrepreneur. At the center of Janos Stone’s creative discipline is his ability to observe patterns in systems, artifacts or concepts. Once patterns are uncovered, he finds where the patterns overlap in order to hybridize ideas and generate solutions. Specifically, Janos uses postmodern “art thinking”, to find unusual yet harmonious solutions by merging disparate patterns. These uncommon, often nascent solutions, are important, as they discover new value and disrupt old methodologies.
In his first venture, Mecube, Janos created the first 3D design to 3D printing mobile app. More recently, he was co-founder and Chief of Product for Kwambio. In its second round of fundraising Kwambio raised $1.2MM and began partnerships with established and emerging designers to produce a highly curated collection of customizable homewares, accessories, and art, manufactured on-demand. Currently Janos is working on a privacy shelter for refugees. His design uses thick origami principles, is flat packable, requires no adhesives or fasteners, can be assembled by robot and costs around $9.As an educator, Janos takes an experiential and transdisciplinary approach to teaching. Janos’ focus is to Increase a student’s inherent creativity through a combination of metacognition tools, mindfulness, embracing Prior Knowledge and a comfort in failure.
Janos Stone holds a BFA in sculpture and design from the Rhode Island School of Design and an MFA in sculpture from Boston University. His work and support media can be found at: janosstone.com
Weissman Foundry Faculty Advisory Cohort
Candida Brush
PH.D. cbrush@babson.edu, Professor
F.W. Olin Distinguished Professor of Entrepreneurship
Vice Provost of Global Entrepreneurial Leadership
Victor Seidel
PH.D. vseidel@babson.edu
Associate Professor
Erik Noyes
PH.D enoyes@babson.edu
Associate Professor
Aaron Hoover
PH.D.
Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering
Amy Banzaert
PH.D
Lecturer in Engineering; Director of Engineering Studies