Elham Morshedzadeh, Ph.D., is a faculty member in the Tilman J. Fertitta Family College of Medicine and a Presidential Frontier Assistant Professor of Industrial Design in the College of Architecture and Design at the University of Houston. She also directs the UH Health Design Lab, where she leads interdisciplinary initiatives at the intersection of health care, community-centered design and usability. Her work focuses on improving health outcomes by integrating user research, evidence-based design and participatory approaches into clinical and community settings.

In her role with UH Health, Morshedzadeh collaborates with clinicians, engineers, students and community partners to develop innovative design methodologies, workflow solutions and research-informed prototypes that address unmet needs in health care delivery. She frequently works across disciplines, medicine, engineering and the social sciences, to create environments, products and experiences that enhance patient care, reduce barriers to access and strengthen community engagement. She also mentors undergraduate, graduate and medical learners through research training, community-driven projects and interdisciplinary studio courses.

Her research and teaching emphasize community-centered participatory design, health care usability and human-centered innovation. She has led or collaborated on numerous funded projects supported by the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, the Office of National Drug Control Policy, the NIH Blueprint MedTech program and multiple University of Houston initiatives. Her work spans telehealth systems, gerontechnology, community empowerment, pediatric telemedicine, veteran healthcare needs and human-centered AI for clinical training. She has also published widely and presented her work at national and international conferences.

Before joining the University of Houston, Morshedzadeh served as an Assistant Professor of Industrial Design at Virginia Tech, where she founded the Health Design and Policy Lab and held roles on the scientific advisory board for the Integrated Translational Health Research Institute of Virginia (iTHRIV), the Center for Gerontology, the Human-Centered Design graduate program committee and the Center for Human-Computer Interaction. Internationally, she taught in Japan and Iran, bringing more than a decade of professional design experience into her academic work.

She has been honored with multiple awards, including the 2021 Young Educator Award from the Industrial Designers Society of America, the Presidential Frontier Faculty Position at the University of Houston, the Junior Faculty Award from the Institute for Critical Technology and Applied Science at Virginia Tech, and Japan’s prestigious MEXT doctoral scholarship.

Morshedzadeh serves as the South District representative for the Women in Design Committee within the Industrial Designers Society of America, working to strengthen opportunities for female and nonbinary designers. She is also an active member of several national and international professional organizations focused on design research, human factors and health care innovation.

She earned her doctorate in design science from Chiba University in Japan, where she developed the User-Product Interaction Evaluation (UPIE) Model. She also holds a master’s degree in industrial design from the Islamic Art University of Tabriz and a bachelor’s degree in industrial design from Alzahra University of Tehran.