Sana Sharma, MDes

CO-FOUNDER & ADVISOR

Sana Sharma (she/her) is an Aurelia Institute co-founder and advisor. With expertise in architecture, product design, and digital strategy, Sana highlights the human element in science and technology through her work.

At Aurelia Institute, Sana led brand, human-centered design, and Aurelia’s first foray into full-scale space architecture through the development of the TESSERAE space habitat pavilion — a life-size, modular architectural mockup that connects the public with potential futures for life in space. She leads research at the MIT Media Lab for the Astronaut Ethnography Project, which distills the lived experiences of astronauts and cosmonauts in order to share them with the next generation of designers and builders for space.

Prior to her work in space, Sana held design leadership roles across a diversity of scientific domains at IBM Quantum, Watson Health, and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. She also teaches human-centered design and prototyping at the University of Washington.