Lesa Lorusso, PhD, MBA, MSArch, NCIDQ

Lesa Lorusso is the Healthcare Director of Research & Innovation at Gresham Smith, and a Professional Visiting Scholar at Texas A&M’s Center for Health Systems & Design. She is a firmwide resource at Gresham Smith, strengthening healthcare planning and design through research and innovation. She collaborates with the healthcare team to facilitate human-centered design and development and implementation of research strategy and scalable tools for knowledge sharing among healthcare planners and designers. She implements design thinking strategies throughout the healthcare practice and advise the Gresham Smith team on evaluative methodologies regarding healthcare facilities. Key roles involve identifying opportunities for EBD research and leading strategic implementation of research projects and developing external collaborative partnerships. She has collaborated on research funded by the Veterans Health Administration and the American Institute of Architects and was the principal investigator for a clinical trial with the VA investigating multisensory environments for people with dementia, awarded the Environmental Design Research Association’s Certificate of Research Excellence.