February 27
@
12:00 PM
–
1:00 PM
Photographer: Meredith Forrest Kulwicki
UW-ISyE looks forward to welcoming Ann Bisantz, a SUNY Distinguished Professor of Industrial and Systems Engineering at the University at Buffalo, where she also serves as Vice Provost and Dean for Undergraduate Education.
US institutions of higher education are large, complex systems affected by both internal and external factors, answering to multiple stakeholders with often conflicting goals; which must be managed in the face of short-and long-term uncertainties and limited resources; and where there is substantial risk – both for individuals impacted by the system (i.e., students) and arguably for society writ large, if they fail in their missions. They are examples of “intentional” systems – where constraints and priorities are drawn from human-created structures rather than physical laws. Increasingly, these systems are managed, at least in part, through data reporting and analyses which bring together variables of interest across functions and at multiple scales. Creating meaningful reports and visualizations of these complex data sets in support of decision-makers is a critical function of a modern university.
Methods of cognitive engineering have been used across a variety of complex, high risk systems to support design of automation, information displays, and decision-support tools. Frameworks such as cognitive work analysis provide models to reveal both the demands stemming from the work domain, as well as the knowledge, skills and strategies that experts bring to bear on those demands. Typically, these methods are used prospectively, are inputs to a larger system design process.
This presentation combines expertise in higher education administration with a cognitive engineering research perspective to inform a work domain model of one significant university sub-system, undergraduate education administration, drawing parallels with a well-studied health care system. It proposes a process of visualization co-creation as an alternative work-centered approach to successful design of decision-support tools, and concludes with shared lessons learned from a comparison of this just-in-time approach to design based in prospective analysis and modelling.
Bio: Dr. Bisantz is a SUNY Distinguished Professor of Industrial and Systems Engineering at the University at Buffalo, which she also serves as Vice Provost and Dean for Undergraduate Education. Her contributions to the field of human factors engineering include investigating new techniques for displaying complex and uncertain information to decision makers; supporting the transition in complex work domains from legacy and manual information systems to more integrated, supportive IT systems; modeling human judgment and decision making; extending cognitive engineering methods which can be used to model complex human-technology work domains; and understanding aspects of human trust in automated systems. This research has been conducted in a number of complex work environments, including health care, military systems, emergency management, and transportation; and has included interdisciplinary collaborations with researchers in health care and information fusion. She has been PI or CoI on over 15M in funded research projects from agencies including the National Science Foundation, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, and numerous defense agencies. Bisantz is the past recipient of an NSF CAREER award, was recognized with a SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Research and Creative Activity, and is a Fellow of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society (HFES). She has served as an Associate Editor or on the Editorial Board of a number of journals and has served HFES as a member-at-large of the Executive Council. She is the recipient of the HFES Fitts’ Education award for her contributions to human factors education and was the 2020 HFES WOMAN Mentor of the year. She is past chair of the UB ISE department and since 2018 has served the UB as Vice Provost and Dean, where she is responsible for university-wide leadership for undergraduate education, including curriculum, policy, student success, advising coordination, general education, undergraduate research, and the UB Honors College. In 2024 Bisantz was appointed to the National Academy of Engineering Board on Human-System Integration. Her PhD is from the Georgia Institute of Technology.