Visiting Artist Lecture: Raja Schaar

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Raja Schaar, IDSA, is Program Director and Assistant Professor of Product Design at Drexel University’s Antoinette Westphal College of Media Arts and Design. She also co-chairs IDSA’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Council. She is an industrial designer with an extensive background in museum exhibit design and healthcare design who is passionate about ways design can make positive impact on society at the intersections of health equity, the environment justice, and STEAM education.

Raja’s interdisciplinary research focuses on addressing inequities in maternal health through wearable technology; methods for engaging black girls and underrepresented minorities in STEM/STEAM through design and technology and dance; innovation and entrepreneurship education; and biologically-inspired design and sustainability. Raja studies the ethical implications of design and technology through the lenses of science fiction and speculative design.

Before joining Drexel's Product Design faculty, Raja taught at Georgia Tech School of Industrial Design and the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at GA Tech and Emory University. She has been a practicing exhibition designer for nearly 20 years with exhibitions across the country. Raja received her BSID from Georgia Tech in 2001 and completed her graduate work at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2003.

Sponsored in part by the Target Fund