IE faculty and students stand out at HFES

From Oct. 23 to 27, 2023, several of our faculty and students showcased their excellence and leadership at the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society (HFES) 67th annual meeting in Washington, D.C.

Drawing more than 1,500 attendees, the meeting is the signature HFES event and includes hundreds of research sessions, workshops, poster presentations, demonstrations, networking, student career and professional development activities, and more.

During the meeting, our UW-Madison HFES student chapter earned a gold award, which recognizes both the quantity and quality of chapter activities that contribute to the discipline, HFES, campus or their community. Continuing a long tradition of excellence, the UW-Madison chapter was among four Big 10 schools (and 18 institutions total) to receive the gold award in 2023.

Of the six pre-conference workshops, our ISyE faculty offered two. Emerson Electric Quality & Productivity Professor John Lee and Assistant Professor Anthony McDonald gave the workshop, “Behavioral data analytics,” while Professor Ranjana Mehta offered “Neuroergonomics: Theories, applications, and hands-on training.”

Lee also served as a panel expert in one of the largest discussion panels, “Does trust have value? A discussion about the importance of trust to human factors and engineering,” which drew more than 200 conference attendees.

In addition, faculty and students earned honors or contributed their expertise through service and leadership. Among them:

• Mehta was inducted as a 2023 HFES Fellow. She and former student Oshin Tyagi won the Best Computational Paper award from the Occupational Ergonomics Technical Group, and Mehta was appointed chair of the HFES Internal Affairs Division, which is one of five society divisions.
  
• Duane H. and Dorothy M. Bluemke Professor Rob Radwin won the A.R. Lauer Safety Award, which recognizes his outstanding contributions to human factors in the broad area of safety. Radwin also was co-organizer of the ErgoX Symposium Robotics track.
  
• Anna Konstant, a PhD student working with Radwin, received the Occupational Ergonomics Technical Group Student Travel Award.
  
• Graduate student Anna Linden received recognition as a “Student Member with Honors.”

Top photo caption: Our UW-Madison HFES chapter is a perennial HFES gold award recipient, racking up yet another honor in 2023. Submitted photo.