Who We Are
We are led by Dr. Craig Zimring, with a core team of faculty and staff and various graduate research assistants and undergraduate student assistants.
Craig Zimring
Director
craig.zimring@design.gatech.edu
Craig Zimring, Ph.D., is the director of SimTigrate Design Lab and a professor of architecture at Georgia Tech's College of Design. He is also an environmental psychologist. His research focuses on understanding the relationships between the physical environment and human satisfaction, performance, and behavior, and how this understanding can lead to change. He focuses on high-stakes settings, where design impacts people at the most important times of their lives and where technical and social change provides opportunities for innovation.
He is a developer of the field of evidence-based design of healthcare with more than 100 scholarly and professional publications. He has served on the board of several organizations including the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Building Bridges program and the Environmental Design Research Association, and currently serves on the board of the Center for Health Design. He has won 10 awards for his research.
Jennifer DuBose
Associate Director
jennifer.dubose@design.gatech.edu
Jennifer R. DuBose, M.S., EDAC, is the associate director of the SimTigrate Design Lab and principal research associate in the College of Design at the Georgia Institute of Technology. She is responsible for the operations of the Lab as well as project development and research. She also heads up the Innovation Accelerator for the Cognitive Empowerment Program, working with people living with mild cognitive impairment to develop practical solutions to everyday challenges.
Her research focuses on evidence-based design for healthcare facilities seeking to expand the functionality of tools such as simulation, observation, and mockups for understanding the impact of space on behavior and outcomes. She has authored numerous peer-reviewed journal articles on evidence-based design topics such as the non-visual impacts of lighting, design of doffing spaces to reduce healthcare worker self-contamination, and how primary care team spaces can support collaboration.
Herminia Machry
Postdoctoral Fellow
herminia.machry@design.gatech.edu
Herminia Machry is an internationally licensed architect with a bachelor’s degree in architecture and urban planning (UFSC, 2004, Brazil), a master’s degree in architecture (USP, 2010, Brazil), and a Ph.D. in planning, design and the built environment (Clemson University, 2019). She has 15 years of experience in architecture firms, universities, and research centers. She has worked as a design practitioner on healthcare facility projects while teaching architecture and healthcare hospitality undergraduate courses. Herminia also has worked on several research projects mostly focused around healthcare design. At Clemson University she completed dissertation research about the design of neonatal intensive care units and worked as a graduate research assistant at the Center for Health Facilities Design and Testing. In February 2020, Herminia joined Georgia Tech as a postdoctoral fellow at the SimTigrate Lab, where she will continue working on research related to healthcare design and evidence-based design.
Leandro Miletto Tonetto
Research Affiliate
Leandro Miletto Tonetto is a professor of design at Universidade do Vale do Rio dos Sinos, Brazil, co-founder of Zooma Consumer Experience, and has been a visiting professor at the SimTigrate Design Lab. He has developed research projects for organizations such as U.N. Women (Brazil), Dropbox, and Samsung. His research focuses on design for well-being and emotion as a means to foster human development and health.
His work has been published in Applied Ergonomics, International Journal of Consumer Studies, and Quality Management in Health Care, among others. He is a board member of the Special Interest Group in Wellbeing, Happiness, and Health (SIGWell) of the Design Research Society. Tonetto is working with SimTigrate to develop methods for engaging people with mild cognitive impairment in collaborative design, and build a theoretical model for measuring empowerment.
Kimberly Bass Seaton
Faculty Support Coordinator
kimberly.seaton@design.gatech.edu
Kimberly Bass Seaton is the faculty support coordinator for the SimTigrate Design Lab. She has more than a decade of high-level experience in higher education in the areas of administrative, human resources, and event planning. Her areas of expertise include project coordination, office and inventory management, space organization, training and development, and creating processes and systems for various administrative procedures.
She received her B.A. in history and African-American studies from Mercer University and is a certified research administrator. Kimberly is passionate about being a motivational coach and speaker as well as working in higher education to help students prepare to be top-notch employees in whatever industry they aspire to after graduation.