Karen K. Giuliano, PhD, RN, MBA, FAAN is a nurse scientist and innovator with more than 25 years of experience spanning critical care nursing, medical product development, innovation, and patient-centered outcomes research. Her career reflects a unique integration of frontline clinical expertise with human-centered design and interdisciplinary collaboration. Karen’s work is driven by the question of how technology can better support safe, effective, and compassionate care. She focuses on the intersection of clinical needs, usability, product development, and innovation, with the goal of improving the process of care for clinicians and the experience of care for patients and families.

Karen’s program of research concentrates on two key areas with broad clinical impact: prevention of non-ventilator hospital-acquired pneumonia (NVHAP), one of the most common and preventable hospital-acquired infections, and improving the safety and usability of intravenous (IV) smart infusion pumps, which are essential for safe medication delivery but remain vulnerable to design flaws, alarm fatigue, and workflow disruption.

Currently, Karen is a professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, jointly appointed in the Institute for Applied Life Sciences and the Elaine Marieb College of Nursing, and an adjunct professor in the Ricco College of Engineering.  She is the founding Co-Director of the Elaine Marieb Center for Nursing and Engineering Innovation, where she leads interdisciplinary nurse-engineer collaborations with academic, clinical, and industry partners.  Karen is also a per diem Nurse Scientist at Baystate Health, which provides the real-world and ongoing connection to frontline clinicians that is so fundamentally important for her work. 

The combination of her cross-disciplinary research grounded in real-world clinical settings supports the creation of solutions that advance patient safety, reduce clinician burden, and set new standards for technology design and evaluation in healthcare.