BIOGRAPHY

Dr. Shital Desai is an Assistant Professor in Interaction Design at the School of Arts, Media, Performance & Design and York Research Chair in Accessible Interaction Design at York University.  She heads the CFI funded Social and Technological Systems (SaTS) lab where she engages in research that focuses on UN Sustainable Development Goals of improving health and wellbeing of people. To that extent, she cocreates accessible technologies, services and governance policies for marginalised people and global health using Design Research methods. Her research is on developing human centered assistive technologies for seniors, people with dementia, and in general for health and wellbeing. A designer with almost 30 years of experience in industry and academia, she practices creative ways to incorporate STEAM in education, research and design practice.

Shital is a member of the WHO Dementia Knowledge Exchange peer review network where she shares her expert knowledge on dementia and technology in strengthening policies, service planning and health and social care systems for dementia. She is passionate about training students in Systems Design and Design thinking methods to address societal issues around accessibility and inclusivity. She was recently appointed Vice-lead of the Training Committee for the Connected Minds program.

Shital is the recipient of several awards and grants, including NSERC Discovery, CFI, 2021-22 AMPD Research award, 2022-23 York Research award, Petro Canada Young Innovator Award. She is one of the 24 semi-finalists for the Longitude Dementia award, where she is working with researchers in Canada and Netherlands to develop a prototype for cueing people with dementia in everyday activities. She was nominated for the 2023 Postdoctoral Supervisor of the Year Award.