Melisa is a Research Fellow of the Emerging Technologies Research Lab, and a full-time member based at the Department of Design MADA. As a design researcher, her works sits at the intersection between of Design Anthropology, Participatory Design and Everyday Design. In her PhD she developed ‘Everyday Designing for Revaluing ED4R’, a practical and theoretical approach that allows her to do situated and collaborative research, combining design ethnography and practice-based design methodologies. 

Her revaluing orientation is informed by her sustainability agenda and a design intention to actively intervene in transforming unwanted things at positions of devaluation. Particularly her focus for the applicability of ED4R has guided her research practice and analysis with projects in the second-hand charity sector, health care design, and traffic noise transformation. In her role at the Emerging Technologies Research Lab, she is currently formulating an interdisciplinary project about e-waste to continue her ongoing collaboration with the charity sector and in preparation for the upcoming implementation of the e-waste ban from landfills by the Victorian Government.

Melisa has a PhD from the School of Design at RMIT, a Masters of Design (by research) from Monash University, and she was trained as an Industrial Designer at Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana (UPB) in Medellin, Colombia. She has done design teaching at these three Universities and Design Schools. Her work has been published in areas of design research.