Esther Sternberg M.D.
Director
UA Institute on Place, Wellbeing & Performance

Internationally recognized design and health and mind-body science pioneer, Esther Sternberg M.D. is Research Director, Andrew Weil Center for Integrative Medicine and Founding Director, University of Arizona Institute on Place, Wellbeing & Performance, linking AWCIM, UArizona’s Colleges of Medicine; Architecture Planning & Landscape Architecture; Engineering; Science and others. Dr. Sternberg is the Inaugural Andrew Weil Chair for Research in Integrative Medicine; Professor of Medicine, Psychology, Architecture, Planning & Landscape Architecture. Formerly Senior Scientist and Section Chief at the National Institutes of Health and founding member of the American Institute of Architects’ Design and Health Leadership Group and Research Consortium, she has advised the U.S. Surgeon General, U.S. General Services Administration, U.S. Department of Defense, U.S. Green Building Council, Australian Green Building Council, National Science Foundation’s IN2WIBE Network, the International WELL Building Institute’s Task Force on COVID-19 and the Vatican on design and health and currently Co-Chairs IWBI’s Health Equity Standard Advisory. Her Wellbuilt for Wellbeing research with the U.S. General Services Administration, using wearable devices to track health and wellbeing in the built environment, is informing healthy design standards and COVID re-entry design. Her expertise in designing for wellbeing extends across many building types, including office spaces, university buildings and campuses, healthcare facilities, and senior living communities. Dr. Sternberg has received the Federal Government’s highest awards, was recognized by the National Library of Medicine as one of 339 women who “Changed the Face of Medicine,” received an Honorary Doctorate in Medicine, Trinity College, Dublin, and served as member and Chair of NLM’s Board of Regents. She received her M.D. from McGill University, Montreal, Canada. She has authored over 235 scholarly articles, edited 10 technical books, authored two popular science-for-the-lay-public books: The Balance Within: The Science Connecting Health and Emotions, and her best-selling Healing Spaces: The Science of Place and Well-being, which helped ignite the design and health movement’s re-birth, 21st century style.