ABOUT THE AUTHORS

David D. Woods, Ph.D. is Professor at Ohio State University in the Institute for Ergonomics and Past-President of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society. He was on the board of the National Patient Safety Foundation and served as Associate Director of the Veterans Health Administration’s Midwest Center for Inquiry on Patient Safety. He received a Laurels Award from Aviation Week and Space Technology (1995). Together with Erik Hollnagel, he published two books on Joint Cognitive Systems (2006).

Sidney Dekker, Ph.D. is Professor of human factors and system safety at Lund University, Sweden, and active as airline pilot on the Boeing 737NG. He has lived and worked in seven countries, and has held visiting positions on healthcare safety at medical faculties in Canada and Australia. His other books include Ten Questions About Human Error: A New View of Human Factors and System Safety (2005), The Field Guide to Understanding Human Error (2006), and Just Culture: Balancing Safety and Accountability (2007).

Richard Cook, M.D. is an active physician, Associate Professor in the Department of Anesthesia and Critical Care, and also Director of the Cognitive Technologies Laboratory at the University of Chicago. Dr. Cook was a member of the Board of the National Patient Safety Foundation from its inception until 2007. He counts as a leading expert on medical accidents, complex system failures, and human performance at the sharp end of these systems. Among many other publications, he co-authored A Tale of Two Stories: Contrasting Views of Patient Safety.

Leila Johannesen, Ph.D. works as a human factors engineer on the user technology team at the IBM Silicon Valley lab in San Jose, CA. She is a member of the Silicon Valley lab accessibility team focusing on usability sessions with disabled participants and accessibility education for data management product teams. She is author of “The Interactions of Alicyn in Cyberland” (1994).

Nadine Sarter, Ph.D. is Associate Professor in the Department of Industrial and Operations Engineering and the Center for Ergonomics at the University of Michigan. With her pathbreaking research on mode error and automation complexities in modern airliners, she served as technical advisor to the Federal Aviation Administration’s Human Factors Team in the 1990’s to provide recommendations for the design, operation, and training for advanced “glass cockpit” aircraft and shared the Aerospace Laurels Award with David Woods.