2011 Activities

The Delaware Valley Chapter held three technical meetings and a dinner-business meeting during 2011.  One meeting was a roundtable discussion of Atul Gawande’s The Checklist Manifesto led by Floyd Glenn. Another meeting included a tour of The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia’s Center for Simulation, Advanced Education and Innovation demonstrating the facility’s simulators, which was followed by a lecture, “Simulation in Healthcare: What can Smart People Learn from Dummies” by Ellen S. Deutsch, MD, FAAP, FACS, Director of Peri-Operative Simulation, about current and future simulation projects to support both education and research activities. Our third meeting was a site visit to Environmental Tectonics Corporation to hear a lecture by Col. Paul W. Comtois (Ret.) entitled, “Aircraft Upset Recovery Training, What is it and Why do we need it.”

2010 Activities

The Delaware Valley Chapter had one technical meeting this year, a guided tour of the laboratories at Moss Rehabilitation Research Institute. Dr. Steven Jax explained his research in the Laboratory for Neural Control of Movement, and Dr. Laurel Buxbaum demonstrated her research in the Cognition and Action Laboratory.  Subsequent to the tours we discussed how the researchers at Moss Rehab apply theories and methods developed in the basic sciences to understand deficits that occur after a stroke.

2009 Activities

The Delaware Valley Chapter held three technical meetings, our biannual career panel at the University of Pennsylvania, and a holiday party during 2009.  One meeting involved a presentation by Raegan Hoeft of Lockheed Martin entitled “Investigating the Mechanisms that Drive Implicit Coordination in Teams.” At another meeting, Carol Stuart-Buttle, a member of our local chapter who is on the executive council of the national HFES shared information and insights about the national society structure and recent organizational changes.  We also held a meeting at Bresslergroup, touring the product development facilities. Rob Tannen, Director of Research, provided an overview and case studies of how end-user research, usability testing and ergonomics play a role in the product development process.

2008 Activities

The Delaware Valley Chapter held three technical meetings and a holiday party during 2008.  One meeting involved a presentation by Jim Stokes of CHI Systems on complex and highly interactive information visualizations, exploring the challenges for users and developers. At another meeting, we viewed and critiqued the concept for a new product to support knowledge-based work.  This presentation by Fred Reed, Chief Technology Officer of As It Is, Inc., of Amherst, NY, focused on leveraging internet-scale communal knowledge for personal-scale idea creation.  The meeting took the format of an informal focus group critiquing the tool concept and graphical interface design.  We also held a meeting at the National Aerospace Training and Research Center (NASTAR) at Environmental Tectonics Corp (ECT), touring the simulation and centrifuge facilities.  Scott Dyer, a Systems Engineer at ECT lead the tour and gave a presentation entitled “Human Factors Challenges of Space Tourism.”

2007 Activities

The Delaware Valley Chapter held eight meetings during 2007.  We began the year with a business meeting and ended the year with a holiday dinner, with technical meetings in between.  For one meeting, Dr. Tom Hewett, Professor of Psychology and Computer Science at Drexel University presented “DragonForce Evaluation: Improving Response Capabilities for First Responders.”  Another meeting included a tour of the Virtual Reality and Postural Orientation Laboratory at Temple University and a discussion of laboratory research by Dr. Emily Keshner, Professor and Chair of the Department of Physical Therapy.  Additional presentations included one by Tim Joganich, a senior engineer at ARCCA, Inc. on “Human Factors Evaluation of Restraint Systems for Military Vehicles” and another by Ronald Schaible of Robson Forensic, Inc. entitled “Product Safety Warnings: Human Factors Implications.”  We also had a round-table discussion on macroergonomics and held our biannual career fair at the University of Pennsylvania.