Thursday, December 5, 2019
12:00pm-1:30pm
Room 2135, Bahen Centre
40 St. George Street
Registration required.
View all upcoming PsychEng seminars.
Abstract
Distraction is a significant contributing factor to young driver crashes. Crash risk is known to decrease with driving experience, partly because of the improved skills to control the vehicle, but also because of the improved capability to distribute attention, even when distracted. A series of empirical studies will be presented evaluating young drivers’ attention allocation both for manual driving (i.e., no or low level of automation) and for high levels of vehicle automation.
Studies evaluating different distraction mitigation techniques for young drivers’ manual driving will also be presented.
Biography
Professor Birsen Donmez joined the Department of Mechanical & Industrial Engineering in January 2010. She received her BS in Mechanical Engineering from Bogazici University in 2001, her MS (2004) and PhD (2007) in industrial engineering, and her MS in statistics (2007) from the University of Iowa. Before joining the University of Toronto, she spent two years as a postdoctoral associate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is the Canada Research Chair in Human Factors and Transportation.
Professor Donmez’s research interests are centered on understanding and improving human behavior and performance in multi-task and complex situations, using a wide range of analytical techniques. In particular, her research focuses on operator attention in multitask activities, decision support under uncertainty, and human automation interaction, with applications in various domains including surface transportation, healthcare, mining, and unmanned vehicle operations. Professor Donmez received an NSERC Discovery Accelerator Supplement (2016), the inaugural Stephanie Binder Young Professional Award from the HFES Surface Transportation Technical Group (2014), an Early Researcher Award from the Ministry of Economic Development and Innovation of Ontario (2015), the Early Career Teaching Award from the U of T Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering (2013), a Connaught New Researcher Award from the University of Toronto (2011), the Dr. Charles H. Miller Best Paper Award from the Canadian Association of Road Safety Professionals (2010), and a Dwight David Eisenhower Graduate Fellowship from the U.S. Department of Transportation (2006). She has served on multiple committees of the Transportation Research Board of the National Academies, as an associate editor for IEEE Transactions on Human-Machine Systems, and as the General Chair for AutomotiveUI’18. Her research has been featured by the CBC, Global TV News, Globe and Mail, and Toronto Star.
RSVP at least 24 hours before event using below link:
The PsychEng seminar series (part of the Collaborative Specialization in Psychology and Engineering) aims to spark and/or showcase interdisciplinary research at the intersection of engineering and psychology.
The seminars cover a wide range of topics between these two disciplines and provides a forum for discussion and critical analysis on corresponding research areas. The seminars are presented by psychology or engineering researchers and attended by professors, researchers and students in both (and occasionally other) fields.
The PsychEng seminar series is coordinated by Professor Li Shu.
