Shermineh Afsary

Shermineh Afsary started Ph.D. in architecture with a major in health & wellness, and healthcare design, and a minor in building technology at the University of Kansas (KU) in 2016. She has also a master’s (MA) in architecture from KU and a master's degree in urban and regional planning from the University of Tehran. Having several years of professional experience in international firms, she has worked on the design and planning of several large and middle-scale hospitals and clinics, mixed-used urban complexes, higher education, and cultural buildings. Moreover, she is EDAC certified from the Center for Health Design, USA. She has several years of teaching experience. More than 4 years of it, since fall 2016, as a graduate teaching assistant at KU, she has taught various design studios, and lecture courses. 

Her specialties and interests are health & wellness in architecture, and urban spaces, healthcare design, human-centric design, sustainable development, evidence-based design, environmentally conscious design. Her doctoral dissertation is on the analysis of the design of community health centers, which was awarded the Doctoral Student Research Fund (DSRF) from graduate studies at KU. She was a researcher in a national research project of the USA on the evaluation of a community health center granted by the National Institute of Health (NIH), in collaboration with Morgan State University. She was also involved as the research assistant at the KU Institute for Smart Cities on the application of smart homes for elderly care within community healthcare. Moreover, she researched environmental-economic design and construction using robotic fabrication at the KU Robotic lab.