AF's chief scientist speaks to human factors society

  • Published
  • By Amy Rollins
  • Skywrighter Staff
WRIGHT-PATTERSON AIR FORCE BASE, Ohio --  Dr. Mica Endsley, chief scientist of the U.S. Air Force, spoke to engineers and others involved in the human factors field during the Southern Ohio Chapter of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society 50th anniversary celebration Oct. 21 at the Hope Hotel at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.

An industrial engineer and the first female to serve as chief scientist, Endsley provides independent scientific advice to the secretary of the Air Force and the Air Force chief of staff as well as to its senior leadership.  

Endsley's research focuses on the design, development and evaluation of systems to support human situation awareness and decision-making in aviation, air traffic control, space, cyber, military command and control, medical, and power systems operations.

She is the author of more than 180 scientific articles and reports on situation awareness in individuals and teams, human automation integration, information dominance, human system integration, human error and training for situation awareness. Her presentation was on "Human System Integration: Challenges and Opportunities."

Endsley started her talk by pointing out current issues in the human systems integration (HSI) field: decision makers   ' perception that problems exist; poor understanding of what supporting the user means; human factors applied too late in the process; human factors practitioners not communicating at the   right level; growth of do-it-yourself systems; ways to improve acceptance of HSI; the value proposition challenge; HSI opportunities; development of analytical models that demonstrate a return on investment, especially with reference to reducing life cycle costs; and building HSI into program requirements.

Particularly intriguing was the chief scientist's support for a proposed human factors readiness level scale, much like the widely recognized scales involving technology and manufacturing readiness levels. She credited Air Force Maj. Eric Phillips with the idea for the new scale, which is currently in draft form and is being analyzed by a committee.

"I am hoping that overall we can all come together   as a community to agree to some broad scale that will give us better leverage into this process," Endsley said.

Integrating HSI and emphasizing its importance with such users as decision makers, the operational community and end users will result in a higher degree of effectiveness, she said.

Endsley was thanked for her participation and presentation by Dr. Thomas Eggemeier and Laurie Larsen-Quill, SOH chapter past presidents.

"As a highly respected engineer, it was particularly meaningful to have Dr. Endsley once more share her insights with our chapter-- this time as chief scientist of the Air Force," said Larsen-Quill, who served as event emcee