Rens Brankaert is Assistant Professor of Active and Healthy Ageing with a specific interest in dementia in the systemic change group at Industrial Design. He set up and leads the Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) expertise center for Dementia & Technology. He approaches technology design from a person-centered perspective, and is interested in the impact of design on the various stakeholders and organization in healthcare. To investigate this, he applies Living Lab methodology. Brankaert also works on vitality for office environments and elderly communities.

Rens Brankaert studied Industrial Design at Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e). After obtaining his MSc in 2012, he went on to do his PhD research here as well, working on radical design approaches for people living with dementia. During his time as a PhD student, Brankaert also served as project lead in several health innovation projects for Optistaff BV, in close collaboration with Slimmer Leven 2020 and Brainport Development. In 2016, he was offered the Assistant Professor position he still holds today, where he focuses on embedding the Living Lab approach to support health innovation.

• Pleyade
• Slimmer Leven 2020

Partners

• GGZE
• Tilburg University
• Archipel
• Luckt
• Brainport
• Qwiek
• Active cues
• Vilans

Expertise area(‘s):
US, BE, US (main), CA (sub)

Squad: Inclusive design and thoughtful technology

Exemplary graduation projects of students I coached:
Thilly Coppelmans : Wijstijd
Myrte Thoolen : Sentic 

Research focus, projects I like to coach
“In my research I am  focusing on the first-person perspective of people with dementia. I am particularly interested in ‘warm technology’, focusing on supporting and improving the wellbeing of people. I want to develop technology that is very user friendly, not intimidating, improving the wellbeing of people and empowering them on a personal level. Other keywords: Person centered care, experience care.

Vision on education/coaching
“I like to connect students and stakeholders (Companies, experts, care partners. Designing always means cooperation with others. I prefer students who can work independently, know what they want and take responsibility for their own design process.  I do not plan fixed weekly meeting, but students can contact me if they need me. The more students work in my field of expertise and background, the better I can help them with the right literature, and share my experience.”

Click here for a link to Rens’ lecture on his project ‘Welthuis kompas’ for Universiteit van Nederland (in Dutch)

And here for his video for Alzheimer Nederland on warm technology (In Dutch)