Irene Carbonell

Irene Carbonell serves as Lecturer of Industrial Technology and Packaging in Orfalea College of Business at California Polytechnic State University. She teaches and mentors student projects in various courses of the Packaging Program, including packaging design and development courses, and courses focusing on fiber-based packaging design, packaging performance testing, and packaging materials testing.

She uses a design thinking pedagogical approach in class projects and student mentoring. In 2019, Carbonell together with Professors de la Fuente and LaPorte, earned Cal Poly’s Learn by Doing Scholar Award for their four-year collaborative pedagogical research project, Design Thinking as a Framework for Teaching Packaging Innovation.

Her student project mentoring has brought national and international recognition to the Packaging Program. Her students have excelled at packaging design competitions, including; Institute of Packaging Professionals (IoPP) AmeriStar Package Award Competition, Worldstar Packaging Awards, Paperboard Packaging Alliance Student Design Challenge, Association of Independent Corrugated Converters (AICC) Packaging Design Competition, and International Corrugated Packaging Foundation (ICPF) Best of the Best Competition.

She holds a Bachelor of Engineering from Universitat Politècnica de València and a Master degree in Packaging from Michigan State University. After finishing her master thesis, she worked in the packaging industry as a packaging engineer and later as a project manager. Irene joined the Industrial Technology and Packaging Area in 2015.

Education

• M.S., Packaging

Michigan State University, 2011

• B.Eng., Agricultural Engineering

Univesitat Politècnica de València, 2009

Experience

• 2015 – Present

Lecturer and researcher, Industrial Technology and Packaging, California Polytechnic State University

• 2013 – 2014

Project Manager at Mid-Atlantic Packaging Inc., Montgomeryville, PA

• 2011 – 2012

Packaging Engineer at ITENE (Packaging, Transport, and Logistics Research Center), Valencia, Spain

• 2008 – 2009

Research Assistant at IATA (Institute of Agro-Chemistry and Food Technologies), Valencia, Spain

Courses at Cal Poly

• ITP 234: Packaging Design Fundamentals
• ITP 330: Packaging Fundamentals
• ITP 408: Paper and Paperboard Packaging
• ITP 430: Healthcare Packaging
• ITP 475: Packaging Performance Testing
• ITP 485: Packaging Development

Research Interests

• Packaging design and development
• Packaging innovation
• Eye-tracking technology applied to packaging usability

Recent Publications

• Carbonell I, de la Fuente J, and Afriyie P. Using Mobile Eye Tracking and Coefficient K for Analysing Usability Trials. Proceedings of the 29th IAPRI Symposium, Enschede, Netherlands, June 11-13, 2019, pp. 345-357. This paper won the Most Promising Research Award at the 29th IAPRI Symposium
• de la Fuente J, Carbonell I, and LaPorte M. Design Thinking in Packaging Education. Proceedings of the 29th IAPRI Symposium, Enschede, Netherlands, June 11-13, 2019, pp. 317-336
• de la Fuente J, Carbonell I, and LaPorte M. Design Thinking as a Framework for Teaching Packaging Innovation. Journal of Applied Packaging Research (2019) 11(1) pp. 39-69
• Carbonell I, de la Fuente J, Lowe T, Hill J, Roy S, and Twomey C. Using Eye-Tracking Technology for Analysing Usability Interactions. Proceedings of the 28^th IAPRI Symposium, Lausanne, Switzerland, May 9-12, 2017, pp. 517-531