The weekly Entrepreneurship Hour speaker series is back every Friday during the academic year, free and open to the public to attend.

Kathleen Sienko is an Arthur F. Thurnau Professor, Miller Faculty Scholar, and Associate Professor of Mechanical and Biomedical Engineering at the University of Michigan. She earned her Ph.D. in 2007 in Medical Engineering and Bioastronautics from the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Science and Technology, and holds an S.M. in Aeronautics & Astronautics from MIT and a B.S. in Materials Engineering from the University of Kentucky.

She is the co-director of the Center for Socially Engaged Design and directs both the Sensory Augmentation and Rehabilitation Laboratory (SARL) and the Laboratory for Innovation in Global Health Technology (LIGHT). LIGHT focuses on the co-creative design of frugal innovations to address healthcare challenges in resource-limited settings.

Professor Sienko has led efforts at the University of Michigan to incorporate the constraints of global health technologies within engineering design at the undergraduate and graduate levels and has led design ethnography field sites in India, Ghana, Uganda, Ethiopia and Nicaragua as the Director of the Global Health Design Initiative. She is the recipient of a CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation, a Teaching Innovation Prize from the UM Provost, and a UM Undergraduate Teaching Award.

In addition to Professor Sienko’s expertise topics, she consults on Design Process and Professional Development.