2025 UX Speaker Series
Sana Sharma
Co-Founder & Chief Design Officer, Aurelia Institute
Research Affiliate, MIT Space Exploration Initiative
THURSDAY, MARCH 13
4:30 – 5:20 P.M.
Gowen Hall, room 201
Designing a Meaningful Life in Space: Human-Centered Design for Human Spaceflight
Sana Sharma (she/her) is Co-Founder and Chief Design Officer at Aurelia Institute, a non-profit space architecture R&D lab, and a researcher at the MIT Space Exploration Initiative. At Aurelia, she helms the Institute’s first foray into human-scale space architecture through the development of the TESSERAE exhibition pavilion — a life-size, modular space habitat that engages the space community and the public with what life in space may look like in the future. As a researcher at MIT, Sana leads the Astronaut Ethnography Project, which captures and distills the lived experiences of astronauts and cosmonauts to inform the future of space design, engineering, and education. Her personal art + design work includes Fluid Expressions, a novel art and craft system designed exclusively for use in microgravity. Beyond space, Sana has designed experiences for healthcare, AI, and quantum computing, balancing scientific context and human needs in her work.
The UX Speaker Series is hosted Thursdays in Winter Quarter by the Department of Human Centered Design & Engineering at the University of Washington. Presentations are open to the public.
Depending on the speaker's preference, a recording will be posted to this webpage after the event. View the full schedule at hcde.uw.edu/ux.