Dr Rebecca Cain, Assistant Professor in Experiential Engineering with WMG at the University of Warwick  is to lead a £1.3 million programme to literally engineer better environments for patients and medical staff.

She has been awarded a prestigious Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) Fellowship through EPSRC’s  Challenging Engineering award scheme which is designed to challenge the research leaders of the future to be creative and ambitious in the early stages of their career.

The scheme enables future leaders of engineering research to build a research group that will exploit creative research and develop novel solutions to some of the many problems posed to society. Unlike standard proposals, Challenging Engineering places the emphasis on the vision for a new direction of research, and on leadership.

The award will  help her build a research team tasked to improve the user experience of healthcare environments, through user participation in design, engineering and decision making. The work will be highly inter-disciplinary drawing  together engineering research with  expertise in design, architecture, anthropology, psychology, science, ICT and healthcare. Hospitals and industry will provide real opportunities for testing novel design approaches (for example, in creating a better experience for patients in the Emergency Department). Patients, staff, and decision makers will be involved throughout the process. 

The new research team will be based in the Digital Lab at the University of Warwick and the programme is supported by the following partners: WMG; Arup; NHS West Midlands; Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Partnership Trust; Plymouth Hospitals NHS Trust; Warwick Medical School; Edward Cullinan Architects; and Enprecis Inc. 

For further information please contact:

Dr Rebecca Cain,WMG, University of Warwick
Tel: 02476 575951

Peter Dunn, Head of Communications, University of Warwick 
Tel: 024 76 523708 Mobile 07767 655860 p.j.dunn@warwick.ac.uk

PR17 1st March 2010