PhD, P.Eng
Professor, Industrial Engineering
Canada Research Chair in Human Factors and Transportation
Email: donmez@mie.utoronto.ca
Tel: 416-978-7399
Office: RS305A
Research Group: Human Factors & Applied Statistics Lab
Research Area
Human Factors
Research Interests
Human factors; human adaptation to technology; designing feedback for guiding operator behavior; driver distraction mitigation; statistical modelling of crash data; decision support for emergency medical transport; interruptions in intensive care settings; unmanned vehicle supervisory control.
Bio
Professor Birsen Donmez joined the Department of Mechanical & Industrial Engineering in January 2010. She received her BS in Mechanical Engineering from Bogazici University in 2001, her MS (2004) and PhD (2007) in industrial engineering, and her MS in statistics (2007) from the University of Iowa. Before joining the University of Toronto, she spent two years as a postdoctoral associate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is the Canada Research Chair in Human Factors and Transportation.
Professor Donmez’s research interests are centered on understanding and improving human behavior and performance in multi-task and complex situations, using a wide range of analytical techniques. In particular, her research focuses on operator attention in multitask activities, decision support under uncertainty, and human automation interaction, with applications in various domains including surface transportation, healthcare, mining, and unmanned vehicle operations. Professor Donmez received an NSERC Discovery Accelerator Supplement (2016), the inaugural Stephanie Binder Young Professional Award from the HFES Surface Transportation Technical Group (2014), an Early Researcher Award from the Ministry of Economic Development and Innovation of Ontario (2015), the Early Career Teaching Award from the U of T Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering (2013), a Connaught New Researcher Award from the University of Toronto (2011), the Dr. Charles H. Miller Best Paper Award from the Canadian Association of Road Safety Professionals (2010), and a Dwight David Eisenhower Graduate Fellowship from the U.S. Department of Transportation (2006). She has served on multiple committees of the Transportation Research Board of the National Academies, as an associate editor for IEEE Transactions on Human-Machine Systems, and as the General Chair for AutomotiveUI’18. Her research has been featured by the CBC, Global TV News, Globe and Mail, and Toronto Star.
