News/Research

Conference Report: Haripriya Sathyanarayanan at EDRA53 Health in Design

16 Jun, 2022

Conference Report: Haripriya Sathyanarayanan at EDRA53 Health in Design

We're so pleased to have been able to support our amazing students this year in sharing their incredible research at the leading conferences in their field. Below Haripriya Sathyanarayanan shares her experience at the Environmental Design Research Association conference.

The Environmental Design Research Association is a major conference in the domain of evidence-based design and design research on design, health and well-being.

The conference was held in Greenville, SC and I was able to attend the conference virtually. I had the great opportunity to work with two working groups as a part of the EDRA Researchers in Professional Practice Knowledge Network that comprises of design researchers exploring and advancing the design of the built environment across disciplines and industries. We had been working since January on developing content for the workshop “Behind the Curtain: The Latest in Practice-Based Research” where I contributed to two presentations 1 “Partnership Models between Academia and Research 2 “Translating Research into Practice” both of which are critical and timely topics. Attended by practicing architects, academics, environmental design researchers, environmental psychologists, healthcare designers and researchers, the goals of the workshop included identifying challenges in practice based design research, growth in practice and discussing communication of research to make new knowledge user-friendly for adoption and application. I was able to present my perspective as a doctoral student working on a dissertation topic grounded in collaboration with stakeholders in pediatric healthcare design, engaged scholarship-co-production challenges, barriers for graduate student researchers and the benefit of such partnerships as a student and beyond academia. I enjoyed working with my groups, sharing and learning from them through the process. I was able to establish working relationships with people from leading design research firms through the same that I think are very valuable. This community is one I will continue to work with in future conferences and networking sessions.

The conference had an excellent line-up of speakers and topics this year. I particularly enjoyed the keynote address by Michael Murphy whose work on healthcare architecture I closely follow. Other keynote speakers included Robin Guenther whom I have had the opportunity to interview in my research, and leading researchers in evidence-based design research and education whom I have wanted to meet since the start of my doctoral program. It was a proud moment to witness research on topics that built on research by CBE Berkeley on the impact of daylight and views on health and well-being. I look forward to attending this conference in-person next year to present my research and findings.