Research Colloquium at the School of Interactive Arts and Technology, SFU Surrey presents:

Robert Rauschenberger

January 28, 2009 at 2:30 pm

SFU Surrey Campus, Room 5380 (5th Floor Galleria)

Abstract: In today’s talk, I will give an example of the ‘cognitive engineering’ approach my colleagues and I are pursuing at Siemens Corporate Research. More specifically, I will present the results of a study evaluating the performance of a new type of interface developed to aid airport security screeners. I will discuss the central (psychological) issue facing security screeners and describe the path we took in developing our interface solution. The path description will include a brief detour into earlier (basic science) work of mine on the effects of stimulus redundancy in visual search.

bio: Robert Rauschenberger received a B.A. in Liberal Arts from Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, NY, which fostered his firm belief in the value of a multidisciplinary approach to anything from art to science to life. He spent the following five years working under the strict but caring supervision of Steve Yantis at Johns Hopkins University, from where he graduated with a Ph.D. in cognitive psychology. While at Johns Hopkins, Robert continued his dedication to an interdisciplinary education by, among other things, teaching courses in the anthropology department. Most of Robert’s empirical work at Johns Hopkins was focused on attention, attentional capture and visual search. Following his graduation, Robert moved to Tucson, AZ, for a post doc with Mary Peterson on perceptual organization. After three years in Tucson, Robert was awarded a research grant from the National Science Foundation that allowed him to move to Boston, where he held concurrent appointments at Harvard and MIT (while also holding a Research Social Scientist position at the University of Arizona). Robert is currently a Principal Research Scientist at Siemens Corporate Research in Princeton, NJ, where he manages his department’s research in user experience, as well as the interns and Ph.D. students, and continues to collaborate with colleagues in academia. Robert also holds an Adjunct Professorship at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada. His publications have appeared in such journals as Nature and Psychological Science. Robert is a member of the editorial board of Attention, Perception & Psychophysics and has served as a Grant Selection Committee member of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.

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