Organisation
General Chairs
David Unbehaun
University of Siegen, GermanyDavid Unbehaun is a researcher in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) focusing on the design and evaluation of human-centered and collaborative technologies in health, rehabilitation, therapy, and care. His research explores how interactive technologies can support people with dementia, their social environments, and care professionals, with a particular emphasis on participatory and co-design approaches. His work combines qualitative, quantitative, and design-oriented methods to investigate how technologies can be meaningfully integrated into real-world care and everyday settings. A particular focus of his research is on interactive and music-based technologies, assistive systems, and emerging technologies that can support social interaction, participation, and quality of life for people living with dementia.
Thomas Fritz
Thomas Fritz is a neuroscientist and Professor at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig, where he leads the research group Music Evoked Brain Plasticity within the Department of Neurology. His research investigates how music, emotion, movement, and cognition interact in the brain, with a particular interest in the mechanisms through which musical activity can influence motor control, learning, and emotional processing. A central focus of his work is the development of music-based technologies and interventions that translate insights from neuroscience into applications for rehabilitation and clinical populations. His research combines behavioral and neuroimaging methods with the development of interactive musical systems, exploring their potential to support motor and cognitive processes and to promote brain plasticity.
Max-Planck-Institut für Kognitions- und Neurowissenschaften, Leipzig, Germany
LUCA School of Arts, Genk, BelgiumNiels Hendriks
Niels is a design researcher and lecturer at the Caring. and design research and innovation lab. With a strong focus on participatory design for health, he advocates shifting the field from isolated objects toward a broader, system-oriented approach. His research actively involves marginalized groups, particularly in dementia, palliative care and aging in general. Alongside co-founding the international Dementia Lab conference to bridge research and practice, Niels shapes inclusive policy as an elected member of BEDA’s Accessibility & Low Barrier Design panel.
Paper Chairs
Amber de Coen
Amber De Coen is a PhD researcher and educator at LUCA School of Arts, Belgium. Coming from graphic and service design, she explores how participatory design can support person-centered care. She works with nonverbal people, including people with late-stage dementia and profound intellectual and multiple disabilities, and their carers to recognise and share expressions of personhood. She also contributes to the EduCare project, developing a care-centered educational framework that promotes well-being and inclusion in design education.
Caring and design research & innovation lab, LUCA School of Arts, Genk, Belgium
Max Montgomery
Universität Hamburg, Germany
Claire Craig
Claire Craig is a qualified Occupational Therapist and Professor of Design. Over the last 30 years my clinical practice and research have focused on the role of the arts and creative practice in promoting quality of life for people living with dementia. I continue to learn from and be inspired by the individuals I work alongside. I am excited to be part of DementiaLab 2027 with its person-centred ethos, its openness and focus on the potential of design and of meaningful making.
Royal College of Art, United Kingdom
Interdisciplinary Transformation University (IT:U), AustriaRalf Vetter
Ralf Vetter is a PhD student at the Interdisciplinary Transformation University (IT:U), Austria's youngest public technical university. Coming from psychology and human-computer interaction, he explores new roles for technology in dementia care. Using speculative and participatory design, he works with people living with dementia and their care partners to imagine alternative technological futures. He is interested in how personhood and posthuman theories intersect and inform design for dementia, and in the sociotechnical infrastructuring that makes technologies work in everyday care.
Communication Chairs
Francesca Toso
Francesca Toso is an Assistant Professor in the Human-centred Design group at the Faculty of Engineering Technology of the University of Twente. Francesca’s research activity primarily focuses on participatory research and design methods, involving people living with chronic conditions in designing technologies to support their quality of life. As this is strongly connected to the sense of identity that each of us creates and experiences in relation to others through personal and interpersonal relationships, in private and public environment, she focuses on relational aspects, qualitative data and intersectionality to understand and value the different perspectives. Francesca works with feminist design methods for involving patients, caregivers and marginalized communities in the design of services and technologies for health and well-being, specifically regarding dementia, hormonal health besides reproductive health and stroke rehabilitation.
University of Twente, The Netherlands
Katharina Thiel
University of Siegen, GermanyKatharina Thiel is an external PhD student at University of Siegen, where her research focuses on innovation and digitization in healthcare, bridging the gap between research and practice, making sure that insights reach the people who can put them to use.
Lisa Bormans
Lisa Bormans is a PhD researcher at the Faculty of Social Sciences at KU Leuven, Belgium. In her research she seeks to gain a deeper understanding of how people living with dementia make meaning of their condition, how these meaning-making processes emerge, and the role that media representations play in shaping them.
LUCA School of Arts, Genk, Belgium
LUCA School of Arts, Genk, BelgiumOctavia Roodt
Octavia Roodt is an artist and doctoral researcher at LUCA School of Arts (KU Leuven). She works at the intersection of graphic medicine, artistic research and care, with her doctoral research focusing on how visual narratives and participatory drawing practices can make the experiences of people living with dementia visible. Her comics-based workshops engage multiple senses and invite participants to explore how personal experiences can become meaningful and valuable within a wider community. She is a board member of Graphic Medicine Europe and works within the Caring. And Design Lab (Genk), the Media, Information and Persuasion Lab (Leuven) and the Unfolding Ecologies Research Cluster (Genk). Alongside, and interwoven with, her academic work, she creates illustrations and stories that explore themes of care, vulnerability and compassion. Through research, teaching and creative practice, she seeks to create spaces where lived experience can be shared, reflected upon and reimagined through art.
Workshop Chairs
Maarten Houben
Maarten Houben is an Assistant Professor at the Eindhoven University of Technology in the Department of Industrial Design and the TU/e Expertise Center for Dementia & Technology (ECDT). Maarten is passionate about designing and researching multisensory and tangible technologies that positively impact the well-being of vulnerable users or communities by providing social, sensory, and aesthetic enrichment in sensitive settings. Maarten adopts an inclusive co-design approach by closely involving end-users and stakeholders such as vulnerable people, their social context, care practitioners, and policymakers in the design process of emerging technologies that address quality of life.
Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands
Tina Mallon
Tina Mallon is a postdoc researcher at the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf since 2014, certifited music therapist, and board member of the Deutsche Musiktherapeutische Gesellschaft e.V. Her research spans across dementia care in long-term care setting, palliative care, interprofessional collaboration and the development of music therapy concepts for patients with mental health conditions.
University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, GermanyStories & Impact Chairs
Andrea Wilkinson
Dr. Andrea Wilkinson is a Senior Researcher, Lecturer, and Professor of Design based in Belgium. Coordinator of the Erasmus Mundus Joint Masters (Response_Able Futures) and co-founder of the Dementia Lab Conference, she focuses on healthcare equity and service-based care pathways. Her work examines how co-design with individuals with dementia, autism, and disabilities shapes inclusive products and creative practice. An international educator and mom, she also contributes to the Erasmus+ EduCare project to advance care-centered design education frameworks.
Caring and design research & innovation lab, LUCA School of Arts, Genk, Belgium
Ans Tummers-Heemels
Eindhoven University of Technology, The NetherlandsIr. Ans Tummers-Heemels has a master in Industrial Engineering. Board member of the German Alzheimer’s foundation “Alzheimer Forschung Initiative” and network liaison of the interdepartmental “Dementia & Technology Expertise Center” at the University of Technology in Eindhoven. In my research I am particularly interested in the salutary effect of “affective presence” interventions (for example by using touch), following the concept of "warm technology" that can play a positive role in alleviating loneliness, stress and anxiety.
Rick Eurlings
Aumens
Dominik Schulz
TU Clausthal, GermanyDominik Schulz is a PhD candidate and research associate with the Human-Centered Information Systems Group at the Department of Computer Science, TU Clausthal, Germany.
His research focuses on participatory design in care: how nursing staff and care researchers shape the technologies that enter their everyday practice. He conducts design case studies in nursing homes and nursing schools, working with smart glasses, telepresence robots and a voice-based assistant for nursing documentation
AumensVincent Eurlings
DC / PhD Day Chairs
Sarah Bartels
Dr Sara Laureen Bartels is an assistant professor of psychosocial innovation in dementia, and coordinates the psychosocial research line at the Alzheimer Centrum Limburg, Maastricht University. Her research focuses on methodologies and methods for the development, evaluation, and implementation of (digital) interventions for caregivers and people living with dementia. She is also Chair of INTERDEM Academy, a European network that offers training and education to early- and mid-career researchers. Dr Bartels is also affiliated to Karolinska Institute, Sweden.
Maastricht University, The Netherlands
Rita Maldonado Branco
Rita Maldonado Branco, PhD, designer and assistant researcher at the Department of Communication and Art, University of Aveiro, within the Design for Health group of the Research Institute for Design Media and Culture (ID+). Rita’s research has mainly focused on design for health and care, and participatory design, particularly with people with dementia and their families. She chaired the last edition of Dementia Lab 2025 at the University of Aveiro.
ID+, DeCA, University of Aveiro, Portugal
University of Siegen, GermanyClaudia Müller
Prof. Dr. Claudia Müller heads the research group “Information Systems / IT for the Ageing Society” at the University of Siegen (USI). Her research focuses on the participatory design of socio-technical systems in health and care. She has led and contributed to numerous interdisciplinary R&D projects in areas including dementia care, robotic systems for healthcare, community-based and rural healthcare, Caring Communities, and IT-supported learning infrastructures.
Community and Engagement Chairs
Rens Brankeart
Rens Brankaert is a full (endowed) professor in the chair "Successful Technological Innovations in Healthcare" at Tranzo, Tilburg University. Professor (lector) in the Health Innovations & Technology group at Fontys University of Applied sciences, and departmental fellow in Industrial Design, University of Technology Eindhoven (TU/e). His work focuses on the design and study of technology, systems and services for people living with dementia and their ecology of care, using design research and living lab methodology, He is also co-director of the Dementia & Technology expertise center at TU/e, and an active member of the international HCI and Dementia community.
Eindhoven University of Technology, The NetherlandsClaudia Lima
University of Porto, PortugalEindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands