Honorary Fellows

Dr. Dennis B. Beringer is the Senior Scientist for Flight-crew Performance Research, Aerospace Human Factors Research Laboratory, FAA Civil Aerospace Medical Institute.  He received advanced degrees in Engineering Psychology and Experimental Psychology from the Univeristy of Illinois and has conducted research in Aviation Psychology / Human Factors for over 45 years.  His research has involved flight-deck displays, controls, pilot training, flight-deck procedures, and static/dynamic anthropometry.  He has served in industry and academics, is a Fellow of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society (Aerospace Systems Technical Group and others) and member of the Editorial Board of Human Factors, and is a certified pilot in both fixed-wing and rotary-wing aircraft.  Dr. Beringer served on the Editorial Board of The International Journal of Aviation Psychology from its inception and then as Editor from 2015 through 2018, and also served as President of the Association for Aviation Psychology for 10 years.

Dr. Diane Damos received her doctorate in Aviation Psychology in 1977 from the University of Illinois. She held faculty positions in Industrial Engineering at SUNY Buffalo, Psychology at Arizona State University, and Human Factors in the Institute of Safety and Systems Management at the University of Southern California.  During her academic career, Dr. Damos’ research was focused on timesharing to develop new pilot selection measures. She currently teaches courses on pilot selection and interviewing for the Centre Quebecois de Formation Aeronautique in Montreal Canada. In 1997 Dr. Damos founded Damos Aviation Services, Inc. (DAS). This company specializes in developing pilot selection systems for airlines and flying training schools. Dr. Damos has consulted on pilot selection for air carriers and flight schools in the United States, Canada, Africa, the West Indies, and Asia. She has lectured and taught courses and seminars on pilot selection in Taiwan, South Africa, Spain, and Canada as well as in the United States. Dr. Damos is a Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society and the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society.  She is an Associate Fellow of the Aerospace Medical Association.  She served on the National Academy of Sciences/National Research Council Panel of Human Factors in Air Traffic Control Automation.   She served on the editorial board of the International Journal of Aviation Psychology from 1990 to 2017 and was a domain editor from 2017-2018.  She is a past president of the Association for Aviation Psychology.

Dr. R. Key Dismukes (1943-2020) received his PhD in biophysics from Pennsylvania State University and conducted postdoctoral research at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and the National Institutes of Health. He went on to serve as Director of Life Sciences at the Air Force Office of Scientific, then as Research Chief Scientist for Aerospace Human Factors in the Human Systems Integration Division at NASA Ames Research Center. His research advanced the science skilled performance in pilots and other experts, exploring peoples’ ability to manage challenging situations and their vulnerability to error. Specific topics of study included prospective memory, management of attention in concurrent task performance, pilots’ use of checklists and monitoring, and training crews to analyze their own performance. Dr. Dismukes published multiple books and numerous scientific papers in basic and applied psychology and neuroscience, and wrote on on the implications of science and social policy for the public. He also held airline transport pilot, B737, and Citation type, and glider instructor rating, and won the 2010 national championships for the 1-26 sailplane.​

Dr. John M. Flach received his Ph.D. (Human Experimental Psychology) from The Ohio State University in 1984. John was an assistant professor at the University of Illinois from 1984 to 1990 where he held joint appointments in the Department of Mechanical & Industrial Engineering, the Psychology Department, and the Institute of Aviation. In 1990 he joined the Psychology Department at Wright State University. He served as department chair from 2004 – 2013. He currently holds the rank of Professor. He teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in the areas of applied cognitive psychology and human factors. John is interested in general issues of coordination and control in sociotechnical systems. Specific research topics have included visual control of locomotion, interface design, decision-making, and sociotechnical systems. John is particularly interested in applications of this research in the domains of aviation, medicine, highway safety, and assistive technologies. In addition to more than 175 scientific publications, John is a co-author of three books: Control Theory for Humans (with Rich Jagacinski); Display and Interface Design (with Kevin Bennett); and What Matters? (with Fred Vorhoorst). John has also recently begun a blog, titled Perspicacity http://blogs.wright.edu/learn/johnflach/ .

Richard Jagacinski is a professor in the Psychology Department at Ohio State University with a courtesy appointment in Integrated Systems Engineering.   He has a B.S.E. degree in electrical engineering from Princeton University (advisor Bede Liu) and a Ph.D. in experimental psychology from the University of Michigan (advisor Dick Pew).  Rich served as an associate editor for Human Factors (1980-2004), on the editorial board of the Journal of Motor Behavior (1990-2004), and on the National Research Council Committee on Human Factors (1998-2005).   He is very grateful to have worked with many talented students and colleagues such as Jim Hartzell, Dan Repperger, Don Monk (target acquisition); Dick Gilson, Dwight Miller, Mike Burke (kinesthetic-tactual displays); Wade Allen, Al Miller (control theory); Alex Kirlik, Brian Plamondon (multi-level control); John Flach (Control Theory for Humans); Min-Ju Liao, Neil Greenberg, Tae Hoon Kim (aging);  Sehchang Hah (skill progression-regression); Stu Klapp, Steve Lavender, Mari Jones (spatio-temporal fragmentation); Walter Johnson (motion extrapolation); Karl Newell, Paul Isaac (performance prediction); Christine Charyton (creativity).  The efforts and insights of these and many other colleagues are deeply appreciated.

Dr. Richard S. Jensen is the founder of the International Symposium on Aviation Psychology and the force behind its growth over the many years the Symposium was hosted by the Ohio State University. He also founded and has edited The International Journal of Aviation Psychology since 1991, a leading publication in the field of Aviation Psychology. Dr. Jensen is Emeritus Professor of Aviation Psychology at Ohio State University. He’s also the owner of Flying J. Farm, a commercial farm of organic produce and beef in Central Ohio.

Dr. Richard W. Pew has over 50 years of experience in human factors and human performance as they relate to systems design and development. After starting his Air Force service as an Epee fencer at the 1956 Olympic Games (he finished 4th!), Dr. Pew was assigned to the Psychology Branch of the Aero-Medical Laboratory at Wright Patterson AFB. He was hired by J. C. R. Licklider at Bolt, Beranek, and Newman (now BBN) in 1958. In 1960 he went to the University of Michigan to earn his PhD under Paul Fitts and eventually became a Professor there. He has been Principal Scientist at BBN since 1974.

Dr. John Reising worked at the Air Force Research Laboratory until his retirement in 2006–after earning a Ph.D. in Industrial Psychology from Southern Illinois University in 1969. At AFRL, his work was concentrated on the development of advanced cockpits, taking them from the “knob and dial” era into the electronic crew stations we have today. That work was recognized via numerous awards including the Air Force Meritorious Civilian Service Medal (1987), German Air Force Special Recognition (1988), as well as the prestigious Harold Brown award in 1997–for outstanding research contributions to the United States Air Force. Dr. Reising is a Fellow of the Wright Laboratory (precursor to AFRL) and the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society. He has authored more than 100 technical publications in the area of advanced crew station development and evaluation. During his government career, he worked closely with the Naval Air Development Center. He also served on committees for the FAA and NASA, and chaired a NATO working group on advanced cockpits with member nations from the United Kingdom, France, Netherlands, Canada, Sweden and Germany. Dr. Reising is currently an adjunct professor at both Wright State University and the University of Dayton.

Dr. Malcom L. Ritchie (1920-2015) was a Professor of Engineering at Wright State University from 1969-1982, where he developed undergraduate and graduate programs in Human Factors Engineering. He held the status of Fellow in the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, the American Psychological Society, the Society of Engineering Psychologists, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He was an Associate Fellow of the American Institute for Astronautics and Aeronautics and a Life Senior Member of the Institute for Electrical and Electronic Engineers. Among his many publications, Dr. Ritchie coauthored with Alex Williams and Marvin Adelson the influential report, A Program of Human Engineering Research on the Design of Aircraft Instrument Displays and Controls in 1956. In 1957 he founded the research firm of Ritchie Inc. with the specialty of research on the tasks of human operators of aircraft and space vehicles. As a subcontractor he was active in design of the first three US space vehicles–Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo. He was educated at Texas Tech, Graceland University, the University of California at Berkeley, and the University of Illinois, earning a Ph.D. in 1953. He was the first Dean of Students at Graceland College, now Graceland University, and was a member of its Board of Trustees for many years.  A World War II Army pilot from 1941 to 1946, he was a B25 instructor for two years. He then flew 67 combat missions in the Pacific Theater as a P61 night fighter pilot. He also held a FAA commercial pilot license.

Dr. Thomas B. Sheridan is a champion in experimentation, modeling, and design of human-machine systems in air, highway and rail transportation, space and undersea robotics, process control, arms control, telemedicine, and virtual reality. He coauthored the classic text, Man-Machine Systems: Information, Control, and Decision Models of Human Performance that served as the introduction to the field of Human Factors for a generation of scientists and practitioners. He is currently Emeritus Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics at MIT.

Dr. Philip J. Smith is Professor and Chair of the Department of Integrated Systems Engineering at The Ohio State University. He is recognized as a leader in air traffic flow management, air traffic control, airline operations control, flight deck design, human automation interaction, collaborative decision making (CDM) and the design of distributed work systems in the National Airspace System, as well as in the design of systems for the integrated management of airport surface and airspace constraints. He is also conducting research on the human factors issues associated with the integration of unmanned aerial systems into the airspace system. His expertise encompasses cognitive systems engineering, human factors engineering, artificial intelligence, human-automation interaction and the design of problem-based learning environments.

Dr. Smith is a Fellow of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, and has received numerous awards, including the Air Traffic Control Association David J. Hurley Memorial Award for Research in Collaborative Decision Making, 2009; Best Paper Award for the 2008 Air Traffic Control Association Conference; the National Aviation Safety Award, Airline Dispatchers Federation, 2001; and the Human Factors Best Article Award (Best Paper in Human Factors), 1999. He is also on the editorial boards of the AIAA Journal of Air Transportation and the HFES Journal of Cognitive Engineering and Decision Making and a member of the FAA REDAC Human Factors Subgroup. In addition, he has served on two National Academy Study Panels to evaluate the state of the art in air traffic controller staffing models.

Dr. Henry L. Taylor

(1933-2019) received his Ph.D. in experimental psychology from Florida State University in 1965. He served in the United States Air Force serving from1957-1980, including a tour as a combat aircrew member on a C-130E aircraft in Vietnam, and retired as a Colonel.  From 1980-2001, he was Professor of Aviation and Psychology and Director of the Institute of Aviation at the University of Illinois.

Dr. Taylor was a certified flight instructor, and his research studied the design and instructional use of flight training devices, simulators and personal computers. He published over 100 research reports and presented over 125 research and scholarly papers. He was president of both American Psychological Association’s (APA’s) Division 19, Society of Military Psychology, and Division 21, Applied Experimental and Engineering Psychology; president of the Aerospace Human Factors Association (AsHFA); the Illinois Public Airport Association; and the of the University Aviation Association (UAA). He was a Fellow of APA, Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, the American Psychological Society, the Aerospace Medical Association, and AsHFA. He was a member of the Governor of Illinois Board of Aeronautical Advisors from 1986-1988, and a member of the USAF Scientific Advisory Board (1993-1997) and a consultant to the Institute for Defense Analysis, the U.S. Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences and the San Jacinto Community College.

Over his career, Dr. Taylor received numerous civilian and military awards, including the Longacre Award in 1992, the Franklin V. Taylor Award in 1994, the Paul T. Hansen Award in 1997, the John C..Flanagan Award 2000, the Aerospace Human Factors Association Presidential Award in 2001 and the American Psychological Association’s Presidential Citation in 2009.

Dr. Christopher D. Wickens received his bachelor’s degree in physical sciences from Harvard College in 1967 and his Ph.D. in experimental psychology from the University of Michigan in 1974. From 1969 to 1972 he served in the U.S. Navy. He had a long career at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign as professor of both psychology and aviation. From 1983 to 2005 he served as head of the Human Factors Division at the University of Illinois. He is currently a senior scientist at Alion Science Corporation, Micro Analysis & Design Operations, Boulder, Colorado, and professor emeritus at the University of Illinois. He has co-authored two textbooks in engineering psychology and in human factors, two books on air traffic control human factors, a book on applied attention theory, and is the author of more than 200 research articles in refereed journals. His research interests focus on applications of attention models and theories to the design of complex displays (particularly in aviation) and to the understanding of human multitasking capabilities. He is a fellow of the Human Factors & Ergonomics Society and received the society’s annual award for education and training of human factors specialists, along with the University Aviation Association President’s Award (2005), Flight Safety Foundation Airbus Human Factors Award (2005), Federal Aviation Administration Excellence in Aviation Award (2001), Henry L. Taylor Founder’s Award, and Aviation, Space & Environmental Medicine Human Factors Association Award (2000). He is an avid mountain climber.

Dr. Earl L. Wiener On June 14, 2013, the field of aviation psychology lost a renowned aviation human factors researchers when Dr. Earl Wiener passed away after a long struggle with Parkinson’s disease. Dr. Wiener was Professor Emeritus of management science and industrial engineering at the University of Miami. He received his B.A. in psychology from Duke University and his Ph.D. in psychology and industrial engineering from The Ohio State University. He served as a pilot in the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Army and was rated in fixed-wing and rotary-wing aircraft. Dr. Wiener conducted research in the areas of human vigilance, automobile and aviation safety, and accidents occurring to the elderly. He made extensive contribution to aviation human factors research, including pioneering studies of flight deck automation and crew resource management. Through field studies with various airlines, he contributed scientific insight to pilot training for automated aircraft, and he identified potential pitfalls of advanced flight-deck technology that could result in pilot error. Dr. Wiener served on the National Research Council (NRC) Committee on Human Factors, the NRC Study Panel on Air Traffic Control Automation, and the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration Research, Engineering and Development Advisory Council. He was a fellow of the Human Factors Society and the American Psychological Society, president of the Human Factors Society, associate editor of Human Factors, and was on the editorial board of Accident Analysis and Prevention and Journal of Safety Research. He published numerous papers and co-edited two books: Human Factors in Aviation (1988) and Cockpit Resource Management (1993). According to his family, one of Dr. Wiener’s proudest moments was riding across the Golden Gate Bridge on his unicycle to celebrate his 40th birthday. Dr. Wiener was an extremely influential aviation psychologist and a great credit to our profession. He will be profoundly missed.