Sean Peel

My career has encompassed practicing, studying, and teaching design across a range of contexts. I have investigated and applied design engineering, strategic design innovation, and user centred design in maxillofacial, orthopaedic, and cardiovascular fields.

In particular, I have liaised with surgeons, prosthetists, and engineers to develop designs for patient-specific guides and implants in cranio-maxillofacial surgery; and have led the development of publications describing such innovations in peer-reviewed journals. I worked part-time on a Ph.D. to refine quality procedures and to standardise a personalised implant design process. In parallel, I developed and implemented a certified ISO 13485 quality management system for implant design. More recently, I have planned hundreds of robotically-assisted hip and knee replacements, at the cutting edge of orthopaedic surgery.

In my previous role, I led the writing of a successful ARC funding bid on behalf of, and in collaboration with an industrial partner and senior academic investigators. Similarly, I extended my publication record with a range of peer-reviewed contributions on medical design innovation. They addressed mechanical circulatory support specifically, and patient-centred healthcare more generally. This work explored themes of entrepreneurship, design management, usability, quality-of-life, and emotional wellbeing in high-risk scenarios.

At the University of Queensland, I have independently co-ordinated, lectured, and tutored for the brand new Design: Experience (DSGN1200) course, in the new university-wide Bachelor of Design program. I love distilling complex and multi-faceted problems into manageable, testable, and explanatory concepts, especially for students and non-designers.