Carolina Gill
Professor of Industrial Design
Bio
Carolina Gill is a Professor in Industrial Design who specializes in teaching and applying design methods and processes as tools for innovation. She joined NCSU in 2016 and teaches undergraduate and graduate research lectures and studios. Her research focus is on strategic innovation in the intersection of design, engineering, and healthcare. For the last 21 years, she has served as a catalyst for transformation by leveraging a human centered design approaches and design thinking strategies in academic, industrial settings and more recently in the healthcare sector. In her teaching, she specializes in Problem Based Learning, industry and interdisciplinary collaborative learning.
She is the author and co-author of a number of articles related to Human Centered Design in healthcare, engineering and product design education, design pedagogy, visualization and design thinking. Her work has been published in international conferences proceedings. She has been recognized with the best paper award in the 2016 Engineering and Product Design Education Conference, the 2011 Building Bridges Excellence Award by the College of Engineering at Ohio State University and the 2009 Erasmus Mundus Research Fellowship (Global Innovation Management Program from the University of Strathclyde). She has been involved in industry collaborations with UNC medical Center, Technibilt, Lenovo, Bosch, Center for Advanced Hindsight Duke University, Honda of America, Nationwide Children’s Hospital, Orton Ceramics and Columbus McKinnon. More recently, her research efforts have been rewarded with a significant government agency grant (AHRQ) in collaboration with UNC Women’s hospital and Ohio State’s school of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences to apply human centered design methods to develop a patient safety learning lab around postnatal care.
Prior to arriving to NC State in 2016, Gill was an Associate Professor in Industrial Design at The Ohio State University. She joined Ohio State in 2003 and served the department in administrative roles that included Graduate Program Chairperson (2014-2016), Director of the Industrial Design Major (2006-2010) and Director of the Foundations Program (2003-2006). She has also taught at University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, Scotland, the NASA Engineering Training Program and Istituto Europeo di Design in Barcelona, Spain.
Currently, Professor Gill is a Co-Director Health-Centered Design Lab and her work is funded by the Association for Healthcare Research and Quality.
Education
M.S. in Industrial Design Georgia Institute of Technology
B.S. in Industrial Design Universidad Javeriana, Bogota, Colombia
Area(s) of Expertise
Design Education, Design Thinking and Design Strategy, Industry and Interdisciplinary Collaborations, Design for Service and Social Innovation
Publications
- A human-centered approach for sharing patient experiences through digital storytelling: a research through design study , DESIGN SCIENCE (2024)
- Human-centered design in the context of social determinants of health in maternity care: methods for meaningful stakeholder engagement , INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF QUALITATIVE STUDIES ON HEALTH AND WELL-BEING (2023)
- Screening and Referral for Social Determinants of Health: Maternity Patient and Health Care Team Perspectives , HEALTH EQUITY (2022)