Bio

Farzaneh Eftekhari is an Assistant Professor of Packaging Design at University of Texas at Arlington. Her background is in product design and she holds PhD in Design from North Carolina State University (NCSU). In her PhD research, she studied the unique intersection of disciplines and their contribution in design thinking process. She was interested to explore the type of skills, space and methods that design thinkers need for integrated innovation. She has Master in Design Studies in Risk and Resilience at Harvard University. At Harvard, she conducted research on water-stress risk in the agriculture sector in the Middle East. Her research goal was to include the bottom-up perspective in water-stress risk communication. She suggested a better stakeholders knowledge transformation platform to make invisible groundwater resources as a visible factor for residents and to promote a community-level action for farmers through that platform and finally to motivate young farmers to bring innovation and sustainable farming to the local agricultural community.

Prior to MDes at Harvard, she studied at Arizona State University‚ Master of Science in Design. At ASU, Dr. Eftekhari conducted research on health risk communication in vulnerable population with fieldwork in rural areas in Mexico and immigrant communities in Lisbon, Portugal.