Creativity in Research – Workshop II: Developing the Right Questions and How to Solve Them
- Clinical Fellows
- Graduate Students
- Instructors
- Medical Students
- Postdocs
Moved to March 10, 2026
Join us for interactive workshops aimed at graduate students and postdocs who may be feeling stuck or uninspired to see their research from a new angle. You will gain skills to boost your research productivity and improve your ability to define and solve research problems.
At Workshop II: Developing the Right Questions and How to Solve Them, we will learn some design thinking techniques for developing, refining, and addressing research questions. We will discuss how to expand your problem space and how iteration can help you solve your research questions.
Pizza will be provided at 12 PM and the first 5 registrants will receive a free copy of the Design School’s book, Creativity in Research!
Please consider joining Workshop I: Developing Your Research Process (March 3) – Click Here to Register. Also, in Spring Quarter sign up for BIOS 432 (Boost your Research Productivity with Design Thinking Tools).
Questions? Please contact the Instructors: Dr. Troy Dildine and Dr. Mekhala Dissanyake.
If you need a disability related accommodation to participate in this event (captioning, sign language interpreting, Braille, etc.), please contact the Diversity & Access Office at disability.access@stanford.edu or 650.725.0326. Requests should be received at least one week prior to the event.
About the Instructors:
Dr. Troy Dildine is a NIDA T-32 Postdoctoral Scholar within the Pain Division at Stanford University School of Medicine under the mentorship of Dr. Sean Mackey. He received his PhD from the Graduate Partnership Program (GPP) between the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health at the National Institutes of Health and the Clinical Neuroscience Department at Karolinska Institutet. Troy’s research is focused on identifying the influence of sociocultural factors on pain expression and pain assessment. With the help of the Jump Start award, Troy will be applying for an NIH K award to further his development and continue to advance his research in health equity.
Dr. Mekhala Dissanayake is a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Pediatrics. She received her PhD in Epidemiology at UNC Chapel Hill. As a public health researcher, her work is at the intersection of social epidemiology and health services research, focusing on how availability, accessibility, and quality of healthcare contribute to maternal health disparities. Her grant writing experience includes an R36 Dissertation Award as a doctoral student and an NIH Loan Repayment award for Health Disparities Research as a postdoc, the latter of which she developed in a Stanford proposal bootcamp. She hopes to support diverse groups of graduate students and postdocs in their grant writing process through her involvement in BIOS 432: Boost your Research Productivity With Design Thinking Tools. When she’s not writing grants, Mekhala is reading fantasy/science fiction novels, cooking, or playing pickleball.