Scholars and professionals rooted in both science and design are needed to understand how such complex facilities as workplaces, hospitals, schools and residential communities should be designed, furnished and equipped to promote health, well-being and facilitate human performance.

To fill this need, Cornell will offer a new doctorate in human behavior and design (HBD), the first program of its kind in New York state, beginning fall 2009.

Offered in the College of Human Ecology's Department of Design and Environmental Analysis (DEA), the program will draw on DEA's specialties in ergonomics; social, cognitive and environmental psychology; facility planning and management; and interior and industrial design. It will be the only program nationwide that is housed in a department equally represented by social scientists and designers. Its graduates will be well positioned to become scholars who teach and conduct research at colleges and universities; research scientists in laboratories in industry; and consultants for workplace and hospital planning and design firms.

"The timing of this program could not be better given the explosion of interest in environmental issues generally and, more specifically, in the relationship between the planning, design and management of the built environment and health and well-being," says DEA department chair Franklin Becker. "The doctorate will create a vital new pipeline into academia, business, design and government for graduates with expertise in areas such as product and patient safety, human performance, health and design, senior living, sustainability and healthy communities. These are pressing social issues, and we know the research generated by our Ph.D. students has the potential to make a real difference."

Becker points out that HBD is an applied science that integrates theory and research from the social sciences and design to meet human needs for environments that not only provide shelter and support safe, healthy and productive behaviors, but also are efficient and sustainable.

The program will begin with one to three students in its first several years, increasing to possibly five students over the next decade, Becker says.

"Cornell is unique in having a curriculum that integrates innovative approaches to facility planning and environmental design with the scientific analysis of human behavior as it both shapes and is shaped by the built environment within which it occurs," Becker adds. "This strong, integrated program is unique in that both the scientific and creative elements of the program are housed within the same department, and can directly draw from and build on each other."