Presenter

I am a human factors psychologist and an Assistant Professor of Health Informatics. I use cognitive field research methods such as cognitive task analysis, ethnographic observations, and surveys to characterize cognition, behavior, and needs of clinicians, patients, and families to develop interventions to support their healthcare related activities in clinical settings and beyond. The majority of my work is focused on cancer applications. I am currently PI of a Pfizer grant to develop a human-centered information toolkit to increase biosimilars uptake and a Co-I on a NIH-NCI grant to develop and evaluate a mobile application for breast cancer patient navigation. I am also a Co-I on an $1.8M, 5-year effort funded by the Centers of Disease Control (CDC), entitled Young and A Survivor (YAAS!) Network for Health Equity Among Young Breast Cancer Survivors. With over a dozen community partners, as well as clinicians and faculty, we are focused on developing tailored interventions to support young breast cancer survivors in the greater Chicago area. Additionally, I’m currently the PI of an effort funded by Center for Clinical and Translational Science (CCTS) through the NIH, focused on human-centered design of a point-of-care system intended for both, lab personnel and lay community users. During my time as a government contractor, I led and served as a core team member on a variety of Department of Defense and commercially funded projects developing and evaluating user interfaces and training systems. On a $12M effort, I was a core team member in developing and evaluating (via a pre/post-test that I had a key role in developing) a training game/experimental platform for intelligence analysts on mitigating decision making biases for the US Air Force. As a project manager and a technical team member, I helped develop an adaptive training package on the topics of attention/distraction for the Federal Railroad Administration. For the US Army, I helped develop and conduct an evaluation of cultural competency training. Through industry projects, I have extensive experience in applying human factors evaluation methods such as usability to both technology and low-tech solutions ranging from interfaces to support complex/collaborative work, to educational materials. My transition to academia in 2016 was motivated by the desire to develop a targeted research program focused on supporting patient-provider communication and teaming.