San Francisco State University

Dr. Fernando Carvalho is Associate Professor in the School of Design at San Francisco State University. His design research and practice are primarily focused on healthcare service, products and systems, integrating participatory design and behavior change in the creation and improvement of healthcare service provision. Fernando earned a Ph.D. in Design from Loughborough University (UK), and an MFA in Industrial Design from the University of Notre Dame (USA). He holds two BFA degrees – Visual Communication, and Product Design – from the Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (Brazil). For the past four years, Dr. Carvalho has secured multiple internal and external grants and private donations to support the participation of design students from SFSU in the Biodesign Challenge.

Dr. Katharyn Boyer is Director of San Francisco State’s Estuary & Ocean Science Center, where her research and teaching have focused on science-informed restoration to increase the resiliency of coastal habitats and low-lying, vulnerable human communities since 2004. She is lead scientist on several multi-institution “living shorelines” projects, which incorporate habitat restoration into shoreline protection. She is actively involved in advancing management and informing policy, including as advisor on the California Ocean Science Trust’s Equitable Nature-Based Coastal Adaptation program. She earned a BS in Zoology at the University of Maryland, an MS in Ecology at San Diego State, and a PhD in Ecology at UCLA. She is a fellow of the California Academy of Sciences and received the 2021 Coastal and Estuarine Research Federation Outstanding Educator Award, 2021 San Francisco State University Distinguished Faculty Award for Excellence in Teaching, and 2024 Bay Nature Local Hero Award.

Josie Iselin is an artist, author, and book designer who has been telling seaweed and kelp stories for over a decade. Her two books An Ocean Garden: The Secret Life of Seaweed (2014, reprint 2023 OSU Press) and The Curious World of Seaweed (Heyday, 2019), tap her profound understanding of seaweed’s natural history and her deep connections within the seaweed science community. Both books have won the Tiffany Award for algal communications by the Phycological Society of America. Josie is co-director of the Above/Below campaign whose mission is to make the kelp forests of the oceans as understood as the forests on land. She is the lead author and content director of the campaign’s webstory, The Mysterious World of Bull Kelp, published in November 2023. Above/Below is embarking on the storytelling journey around the native West Coast Olympia oyster. She teaches in the School of Design at San Francisco State University, inspiring the integration of art and storytelling through portfolio design. Her work is on view at josieiselin.com