Core Faculty
Ivan K. Ash, PhD 2005, U.of Illinois at Chicago- Dr. Ash's research area is Cognitive Psychology. His recent projects have included investigating the role of representational change in creative problem solving, and looking at the effects of surprising information on judgement making.
James P. Bliss, PhD 1993, U. Central Florida - Dr. Bliss studies the occurrence of alarm (and automation) mistrust, the factors contributing to the development of mistrust, and how designers and trainers can optimize compliance to automated systems. He also studies the use of virtual environments for training complex tasks such as surgery, firefighting, soldiering, and navigating unfamiliar environments.
Poornima Madhavan, PhD 2005, U. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign - Dr. Madhavan is interested in studying human decision making processes in complex environments that embody risk, stress, time pressure, and, uncertainty. She currently uses simulated environments such as military, aviation, and, defense/homeland security to investigate answers to the above questions.
Mark W. Scerbo, PhD 1987, U. Cincinnati - Dr. Scerbo's main interest concerns human performance with adaptive technology. In addition, Dr. Scerbo studies issues concerning vigilance, human-computer interaction, and simulation.
Affiliated Faculty
Donald D. Davis, PhD 1982, Michigan State U. - Dr. Davis' research interests lie in the general area of organizational change and improvement. He is currently investigating the management of advanced technology, leadership and organizational culture, organizational influences on human resource practices.
Debra Major, PhD 1992, Michigan State U. - Dr. Major works closely with the Eastern Virginia Medical School to investigate decision-making factors influencing team coordination. She also studies women and minorities in information technology careers.
James R. Comstock, Jr.,PhD 1983, Old Dominion U. - Dr. Comstock currently works at NASA Langley Research Center.His research focuses on visual perception and performance in the cockpit.
Lawrence J. Prinzel, III, PhD 1998, Old Dominion U. - Dr. Prinzel also works at NASA Langley Research Center.He studies cockpit display of information, including synthetic vision systems.
Jeffrey T. Hansberger, PhD 2003, George Mason U. - Research Psychologist with the Army Research Laboratory's Human Research and Engineering Directorate. Dr. Hansberger is interested in the many human dimensions of command and control (C2) within military, emergency response, and organizational settings. He attempts to balance theoretical issues with applied complex design challenges in the targeted field and environment with an emphasis on distributed cognition among the users, artifacts, and their environment.
Ahmed K. Noor, PhD - Eminent Scholar and William E. Lobeck Professor of Aerospace Engineering, Director of ODU's Center for Advanced Engineering Environments. Dr. Noor's current professional activities focus on intelligent design and synthesis environments, novel learning technologies / paradigms, aerospace structures, structural and computational mechanics, multiscale modeling, simulation and visualization, and new computing systems.
Kara A. Latorella, PhD 1997, SUNY-Buffalo - Element Lead, Robust Automation/Human Systems element in Integrated, Intelligent Flightdeck Aviation Safety program, at NASA Langley Research Center, Hampton, Virginia. Dr. Latorella is responsible for coordinating with researchers to provide input to proposal development process, to formulate a 5 year research plan in coordination with 5 other element leads, and brief this plan to NASA HQ and external review panels.
Alan T. Pope, PhD 1975, U. Florida - Research Scientist at the Manned Systems Engineering Department of NASA's Langley Research Center, Hampton, VA. Dr. Pope's teaching interests include psychophysiology, health psychology and behavioral medicine. His research interest is biocybernetics, including physiologically modulated simulations, videogames and virtual environments.
James A. Onate, PhD 2004, UNC-Chapel Hill - Dr. Onate is Assistant Professor and the Director of the Sports Medicine Research Laboratory at ODU. His main teaching responsibilities include human anatomy, biomechanics and motor learning concepts related to sports medicine rehabilitation. His current research projects include evaluating biomechanical aspects of jump-landing tasks, utilization of motor learning theories (e.g., augmented feedback) to influence motor skill acquisition and dynamic movement patterns, clinical assessments of postural control, and military sports medicine injury prevention screenings.
Rani Muhdi, PhD 2008, Auburn U. - Dr. Muhdi is Assistant Professor in the Systems Engineering and Engineering Management Dept. at ODU. His research focuses on bridging the gap between the development and representation of occupant performance and behavior data in evacuation models and implementing optimization techniques to building layout designs.
Shannon R. Bowling, PhD 2003, Clemson U. - Dr. Bowling is Assistant Professor in the Systems Engineering and Engineering Management Dept. at ODU. His research interests include the modeling of human performance in complex environments by the use of virtual reality technology, optimal information allocation for education and training purposes, the development of new statistical methods and techniques, the development and evaluation of automated inspection systems and how these systems affect trust and distrust of the users of these systems, and the modeling of complex manufacturing systems to improve quality.
Frederic McKenzie, PhD 1994, U. Central Florida - Dr. McKenzie's research is focused on three topics: Medical modeling and simulation, human behavior representation, and software architectures for simulation. To date, various projects in these areas have led to publications relating research in augmenting standardized patients for medical training and assessment, modeling human-like intelligent agents especially crowds, and formal descriptions of distributed simulation architectures. Many of these projects also involve virtual reality and scientific visualization.
Ginger Watson, PhD U. Iowa - Dr. Watson's is an assistant professor in ODU's Darden College of Education and a research scientist at VMASC. Her research focuses on learning effects in simulation and gaming environments, specifically investigating how context fidelity affects learning and skill acquisition for learners with differing experience. Dr. Watson has over 17 years of experimental design experience in areas of simulator fidelity trade-off, validation, sickness, performance assessment, device development, drug-induced driver impairment, and driver response to advanced vehicle technologies.
