Barrett S. Caldwell

Expertise: Human Factors Engineering; Team Performance; Distributed Expertise
Affiliation: Purdue University
Certification/Education: PhD, Social Psychology; SB, Aeronautics & Astronautics; SB, Humanities
Research Link(s): http://www.grouperlab.org, http://web.ics.purdue.edu/~bcaldwel/

FINESSE Research Objectives

Mission Operations and Information Flow; Communications and Task Coordination Integrating Multiple Mission and Performance Objectives; Team-Based Event Detection, Interpretation, and Response

Biography

Barrett S. Caldwell, PhD is a Professor in Industrial Engineering (and Aeronautics & Astronautics) at Purdue. His PhD (Univ. of California, Davis, 1990) is in Social Psychology; his two BS degrees are from MIT (1985), representing an interdisciplinary integration of Aeronautics and Astronautics with Humanities. Prof. Caldwell’s research team, known as the Group Performance Environments Research (GROUPER) Laboratory, examines and improves how people get, share, and use information well. GROUPER research highlights human factors engineering approaches to information flow, task coordination, and team performance in settings from healthcare to spaceflight to STEM education. Prof. Caldwell has authored over 150 scientific publications and graduated 14 PhD and over 30 MS thesis students as advisor or co-advisor.

Projects since 2005 have been funded by sources including Idaho National Laboratory, Motorola, NASA, and the United Space Alliance. He has served on multiple National Research Council activities, including as a track co-chair for the NAE Frontiers of Engineering Conference, and as a member of an NAE / IOM working group on Traumatic Brain Injury in the Military. He is a Fellow of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society (HFES), and a Purdue University Faculty Scholar. In October 2013, Prof. Caldwell took over as Secretary-Treasurer of the HFES, one of only two officer positions in the Executive Council of one of the leading human factors and ergonomics research societies in the world. In addition, Prof. Caldwell has served as the Director and PI of the Indiana Space Grant Consortium, a NASA-funded program emphasizing STEM literacy, education, and workforce development for the State of Indiana. He has served on the Executive Committee of the National Council of Space Grant Directors, and on NASA-wide working groups to improve the placement of students into internship opportunities across all 10 NASA Centers.