Meet grad student Jah’inaya Parker: Making sense of multitasking

Jah’inaya Parker is a PhD student in industrial and systems engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. A Graduate Engineering Research Scholar, she is co-advised by Emerson Electric Quality & Productivity Professor John Lee and Associate Professor Anthony McDonald. Parker studies human performance evaluation, specifically dual tasking and how completing two tasks simultaneously affects performance. Parker, who is originally from Springfield, Massachusetts, earned her bachelor’s degree in industrial engineering from the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

What factors led you to choose UW-Madison for your graduate education?
My biggest considerations were research and community. My advisor and lab aligned a lot with what I wanted to do. The GERS community made moving to and thriving in Wisconsin seem possible.

How did you get interested in your research area?
In today’s world, most jobs, devices or systems require multitasking to some extent. However, it’s very common that these systems aren’t designed or optimized for multitasking.

What do you enjoy most about your research?
The behavioral aspect. Understanding how people perceive, interpret and react to things is quite enriching. Given how applicable the findings often are, this knowledge can be applied to nearly anything.

In what ways do you receive support here as a grad student?
I think my first line of support in research is my lab mates—they are very familiar with my struggles with research and can often give me some guidance and encouragement. When I need a break from school, it’s my friends—they’re also grad students and so they know what I’m going through, but because we don’t work on the same things it’s easier to be more casual and open about life.

What do you like best about being part of the GERS community?
It’s very supportive. It gives me something to look forward to that’s not related to my work or classes. It provides a supporting and caring social environment that goes a bit further than a group of engineers.

What do you like to do in your free time?
I like to play around with digital editing. I like to make my own icons for my posters and presentations if I can’t readily find the right ones.

What do you hope to do when you’ve finished your degree … and how did you choose that path?
I want to work with user-performance research, perhaps in a national lab or for an industry research company. I like to work on teams toward a common goal. Solving specific problems can be really challenging and rewarding. Research helped me pick this path. It has shown how asking questions and inquiring methodically can actually uncover solutions.

What would you say to encourage prospective students to attend grad school here in the College of Engineering?
Our department is rich in resources. A lot of our faculty are at the forefront of their field and often bring their peers to guest lecture, visit or even recruit.

The College of Engineering’s Graduate Engineering Research Scholars (GERS) is celebrating its 25th anniversary in the 2024/2025 academic year. The program was established to recognize excellence in research and/or scholarship and to enhance the experiences and opportunities of graduate students from underrepresented groups in the College of Engineering.

Besides offering financial support, GERS empowers students by facilitating community gatherings for peer support, provides professional development opportunities and connects fellows with resources on and off campus for their advancement as scholars.