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January 18, 2018

Gold award for student chapter of Human Factors and Ergonomics Society

Written By: Silke Schmidt

The HFES student chapter visits Madison-based consulting company bb7.

At the fall 2017 meeting of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society (HFES), a team of undergraduate and graduate students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison received the gold tier of the Outstanding Student Chapter Award. The award was established in 1999 to recognize student chapters that have made significant contributions to the discipline, to HFES as a professional organization, and to their campus and community during the previous academic year (2016/2017). UW-Madison was one of 14 universities—and the only one in Wisconsin—to receive the gold award this year.

Graduate students Lo Grepo (left) and Ja Young Lee at a community outreach event.

The current president of the HFES student chapter is Morgan Price and its faculty advisor is Professor Robert Radwin in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering. The science of ergonomics and human factors use knowledge of human abilities and limitations to design systems, organizations, jobs, machines, tools, and consumer products for safe, efficient, and comfortable human use.

The students were judged for their accomplishments in eight different categories: outreach and volunteerism; information dissemination; social activities; guest speakers; recruitment; collaboration with other organizations; field trips; and mentorship.

Highlights of these activities included networking with five academic and industry guest speakers; a field trip to bb7, a Madison-based product development and design consulting company; a joint research conference with the student chapter of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS); and both leadership and participation in three campus and community outreach events that were of particular interest to K-12 students and their families.


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