Research Interest
Dr Emi Kiyota is an Associate Professor at the Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine and College of Design and Engineering, and Deputy Executive Director, Centre for Population Health at the National University of Singapore.
She is an environmental gerontologist, consultant and organizational culture change specialist, with more than 20 years of experience in designing and implementing person-centered care practice in long-term care facilities and hospitals globally. Her contributions include a vast array of national and international initiatives focused on quality improvement in the built environment for long-term care and ageing services, especially for older persons in low-middle income countries.
She has worked closely with international organisations such as the World Bank, the World Health Organisation, publishing journal articles and book chapters globally. She has played a pivotal role in developing and advising on pre-design programming for hospitals, senior housing and addiction treatment centres across the globe. In 2010, she founded charitable organisation Ibasho, commited to co-creating socially integrated, sustainable communities that value their elders, and successfully implemented elder-led community hubs in Japan, Nepal, and the Philippines.
Dr Kiyota holds a PhD. in architecture from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, a Master of Architecture and Master of Science in Horticulture Therapy from Kansas State University. She has received numerous fellowships in her field including the Loeb Fellowship at the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University, the Rockefeller Bellagio Residency Fellowship and the Atlantic Fellowship for Equity in Brain Health at the Global Brain Health Institute at University of California, San Francisco.
She is currently focused on creating socially integrated and resilient cities where elders are engaged and able to actively participate in their communities.
Her research interests include the development of community-based solutions for aging in place in Asia, design for brain health, and the intersection of ageing and climate change within the built environment.