On February 18, 2026, I gave a talk at the Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI). It was an absolute honor!

A huge thank you to Elizabeth Churchill for the invitation and to everyone who showed up, asked great questions, and made it such a thoughtful (and fun!) conversation. The energy in the room made it special.

My talk, titled, Designing for Complexity Across the Flight Project Lifecycle. Why Navigating Ambiguity, Emotion, and Power Dynamics in Aerospace Remains a Human-Only Mission highlights the work I did as a human-centered designer at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

If the title alone hasn’t piqued your interest, here’s the abstract:

After spending years working through every phase of the flight project lifecycle, I’ve realized that the most critical part of the system isn’t the hardware—it’s the humans. I’m here to talk about why Human-Centered Design is our most effective tool for risk mitigation. We’re often told AI is the future, but AI fundamentally lacks the ability to understand why we are building these systems and for whom we are building them.

If you’d like to watch or revisit the session, here’s the link to the recording.