BRADFORD, Pa. — Aaron Straus, the University of Pittsburgh at Bradford’s new creative engineering coordinator, will tell you he has the coolest job on campus.
Straus oversees premium space in the university’s new George B. Duke Engineering and Information Technologies Building, which is home to a makerspace, machine shop and projects lab containing equipment ranging from a T-shirt press to a plasma cutter that can cut intricate designs in metal plates and sheet metal as easily as mom’s sewing shears shape a paper snowflake.
He knows how to use the equipment and is now teaching pretty much everyone he can meet. For that, he’s added another machine to his office — an espresso maker.
On a recent evening, over a dozen students gathered in the…
