I am a Professor at North Carolina State University and my research focus is on strategic innovation in the intersection of design, engineering, business and healthcare. For the last 17 years, I have served as a catalyst for transformation by leveraging a human centered design approach and design thinking strategies in academic, industrial settings and more recently in the healthcare sector. My experience in bringing the human centered design process to non-design disciplines and my ability to lead iterative idea generation processes make me a strong contributor to the proposed Patient Safety Laboratory project. I am trained as an industrial designer and recognized internationally as a leading academic in bringing the human centered design perspective to interdisciplinary teams inside and outside the classroom. My work with various engineering teams at NASA, Honda Manufacturing and Strathclyde University have prepared me for the holistic approach and rigor of working with systems engineering. My expertise in the iterative idea generation process contributed to the development of two patented innovative solutions for the healthcare sector: the post-natal unit bassinet project (led by Tully, with Stuebe and Seashore of UNC) and the Child Resistant Spray Device for Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, OH. I currently consult for the UNC Women’s Clinic (led by Stuebe and Tully) to provide a user-centered design approach in designing processes to incorporate SDoH screening and management into clinical work-flows. The final stage of this pilot work will be to train the health care team and test the human-centered design (HCD) screening and management process in UNCH-affiliated obstetric clinics. This collaboration demonstrates the value of the HCD approach in improving health services around complex, interrelated maternity health issues and its potential to generate innovative solutions with system-wide impacts.