About
How can art and design open new pathways for engaging with science and environmental issues, and simultaneously advance the research in the fields?

In this talk, experiential designer Tomomi Sayuda shares her approach to connecting scientists, citizens, and the more-than-human world through playful, participatory design. Her work explores how fun, surprise, and discovery can become entry points for learning and acting together on complex issues—from coral reef conservation to ocean microplastics.

Drawing on her recent projects such as Coral Rescue: Conserve Together and OMNI Microplastics & Ocean Litter, Sayuda discusses how participants—children, adults, and researchers—learn and produce knowledge by moving fluidly between scientific observation and creative expression. Through this iterative crossing of disciplines, she proposes an expanded vision of STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Mathematics) education and research: one where science gains emotional resonance and art becomes a tool for inquiry.

Together, we will consider how such experiential and creativity-driven approaches can foster new, inclusive forms of citizen science—and how playfulness itself can become a method for interdisciplinary research and community transformation.

Speaker: Tomomi Sayuda
Experience Designer | Design Researcher, DLX Design Lab, Institute of Industrial Science, The University of Tokyo

Graduated from Royal College of Art MA Design Products, Grand Prize winner of WIRED Creative Hack Award 2023, a jury member of D&AD 2021 and Good Design Award 2024-2025, selected work for Japan Media Arts Festival 2021. Tomomi Sayuda was involved in exhibition experience and service design at FJORD London, a museum design company GSM project Dubai, and Bascule in Tokyo before acquiring her current position at The University of Tokyo. She has been involved in project direction and implementation of international design led science research projects centred on Citizen Science. She was a Visiting Senior Research Fellow at the National University of Singapore and a Lecturer at Musashino Art University.

Organised by
Eiko Honda, Assistant Professor in Japanese Studies, Department of Global Studies.