Human factors and interfaces

Dr. Shi Cao (pronounced SHER TSAO) studies human factors engineering. His research projects include human performance and situation awareness modelling, new technologies in aviation training, and the applications of virtual and augmented reality. He has developed cognitive models and human performance simulation systems that can be used to model and predict human performance and other human factors constructs in various work domains such as transportation and human-computer interaction. He is the Committee Chair of the Collaborative Aeronautics Program, Waterloo Institute for Sustainable Aeronautics.

Cosmin Munteaunu is a Human-Computer Interaction scholar, conducting sociotechnical research at the intersection of user experience design, digital inclusion, aging, natural language processing, and ethics. I take a primarily ethnomethodology approach to study how voice- and language-enabled interactive technology and media interfaces should be designed in a safe, effective, inclusive, and ethical manner, to empower digitally underrepresented groups such as older adults.

Dr. Samuel directs the User Performance Lab (UPL) at the University of Waterloo. Dr. Samuel’s research broadly spans surface transportation human factors, healthcare human factors and safety. Dr. Samuel utilizes a variety of experimental techniques to measure human performance and study human behavior. The core theme of his work is centered around the etiology of crashes (or errors) or the study of crash (error) causation. The goal is to advance user safety by accounting for the limitations of both, infrastructure and interface device design.

Specifically, Siby’s research deals with:
- Road User (drivers, pedestrians, bicyclists and motorcyclists) safety
- Caregiver Behavior and Medical Errors
- Autonomous vehicles, Connected vehicles and Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS)
- Design and assessment of Traffic Control Devices, Roadway Infrastructure and Automotive Interfaces
- Application of Virtual Environments for Rehabilitation and Occupational Therapy.
- Development and evaluation of population-specific, cognitive Training Interventions (novice drivers, older drivers aged 65 and above, pedestrians, special population with ADHD and mild cognitive impairments)
- Measurement of Driver

Catherine M. Burns is Professor in Systems Design Engineering at the University of Waterloo, Canada and Associate Vice President, Health Initiatives at the Office of Research at the University of Waterloo. In her past administrative roles she has been engaged with institutional and tri agency funding programs, research partnerships, Waterloo’s equity in research action plan, and research computing. Catherine was the founder of the Centre for Bioengineering and Biotechnology at Waterloo and led the centre from a faculty to an institutional centre over 8 years. In 2020 she chaired Waterloo’s Health Initiatives Task force to develop a health strategy in response to Waterloo’s 2025 Strategic Plan. In her role as AVP, Health Initiatives she is responsible for advancing Waterloo research in health and health technology. Catherine holds a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Human Factors and Healthcare Systems, has contributed over 300 publications and is the co-author of seven books and the PI on an NSERC CREATE Training program in biomedical technology and entrepreneurship which has trained over 40 graduate students from various faculties across campus.

Moojan Ghafurian is Co-director of the Social and Intelligent Robotics Research Laboratory (SIRRL). Prior to joining SYDE, she was a Research Assistant Professor at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (2020-2023) and the Inaugural Wes Graham postdoctoral fellow at the David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science (2018-2020) at the University of Waterloo. She got her PhD from the Pennsylvania State University in 2017, and her research interests and background are in human-computer/robot interaction, social robotics, affective computing, and cognitive science. She has published at multiple venues such as the IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing, International Journal of Social Robotics, ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems and the International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (AAMAS). Her work has been mentioned in different media, such as ACM TechNews, Semiconductor Engineering, CTV Kitchener, TNW, Penn State news, EurekAlert (AAAS), ScienceDaily, and University of Waterloo News.

Carolyn MacGregor is the Associate Dean, Teaching for the Faculty of Engineering and an Associate Professor in the Department of Systems Design Engineering at the University of Waterloo.

Prof. MacGregor has been actively involved in human factors research and consulting activities since 1980. She applies her engineering and psychology degrees to studying human factors, product design, and virtual environments. Past projects include the development of virtual trailblazing techniques for human navigation, as well as the development of the "veball”, a 3D input device with haptic feedback for manipulating virtual objects in 3D applications.

Professor MacGregor's main areas of teaching focus on human factors engineering, user-centred design, user research methods, and cognitive ergonomics. The field of cognitive ergonomics strives to understand how humans process and manipulate information so that their limitations and capabilities can be taken into account when designing effective tasks, interfaces, and system