Thayer Team Receives Constellation Prize for Peace Engineering

(l to r) Paula Olson, Emily Monroe, and Solomon Diamond with the 2026 Constellation Prize for Peace Engineering. (Photo by Evelyn Wilson)

The Prize seeks to help reimagine what engineering is for by celebrating engineers and their collaborators whose work embodies the ideals of environmental protection, social justice, human rights, and peace. 

Seed funding for this project was provided by the Design Initiative at Dartmouth (DIAD), which launched in 2021 to harness engineering know-how and design thinking to solve wicked challenges. 

Project Description

(Source: https://www.constellationprize.org/solomon-emily-paula)

Diamond, Monroe, and Olson demonstrate how engineers can design preventative measures against violence directly into the infrastructure of technology.

In a world where 3D-printed Machine Gun Conversion Devices (MCDs) can turn legal firearms into fully automatic weapons in minutes, this team confronted a complex socio-technical challenge. The resurgence of fully automatic weapons in crimes, the accessibility of digital manufacturing, and the involvement of young people in producing these devices created a crisis of lethality that could not be addressed through traditional regulation alone. Rather than taking a political stance, Diamond, Monroe, and Olson approached the problem through engineering design, asking how technology itself could be made safer.

Their approach reframes the challenge from punitive enforcement to preventative engineering and disarms violence by design. By using human-centered design principles, geometric analysis, and deep learning, the team created systems that automatically recognize components of MCDs and prevent their production, without monitoring unrelated user activity or restricting open-source creativity. By modifying the firmware and G-code—the "DNA" of the manufacturing process—they introduced a precise intervention that protects human life while preserving technological uses for educational and creative purposes.

Equally vital is the team's commitment to ethical stewardship and education. They brought together diverse stakeholders, including ATF officials, civil servants, prosecutors, academic institutions, and students. This approach created a collaborative ecosystem where knowledge is shared, and solutions are co-developed. Students engaged in the project were not simply observers; they learned to identify social impact, ethics, and responsibility as core to the engineering design process. The work exemplifies human-centered engineering in practice, demonstrating how engineers can leverage expertise to bridge gaps in pertinent socio-political challenges.

Diamond, Monroe, and Olson's project illustrates that engineering is more than tool-making: it is a force for systemic change. By transforming a confounding political and regulatory challenge into a solvable problem, they show that engineers can act as mediators between technical possibility, ethical responsibility, and public safety. Their work empowers the next generation of engineers to approach problems with curiosity and a commitment to creating safer, more just technologies.

Through their vision and rigor, this team has provided a model for Peace Engineering, showing how thoughtful design can anticipate harm, protect communities, and shape engineers to understand that the work they do today shapes the reality of tomorrow.