Gerry Recktenwald

Invention Bootcamp Director

Gerry Recktenwald is an Associate Professor in the Mechanical and Materials Engineering Department at Portland State University. He grew up in rural western New York State where he worked on farms, delivered flowers, painted houses and did other odd jobs that gave him a curiosity about how things worked. That explains the small and cramped workshop in his home basement where sensors, motors, microcontrollers and hacked consumer items are the raw materials for educational experiments. His current academic research is focused on improving engineering education and promoting innovation. He was the coordinator and instructor for the BSME Capstone course sequence, and in Fall 2017 he resumed his teaching of Freshman Engineering. Gerry has worked with Invention Bootcamp since 2017, and has been its Director since 2018. Invention Bootcamp is based on a curriculum he developed called Living with the Lab.