Vincent Duffy
Associate Professor of Industrial Engineering and Agricultural & Biological Engineering
Vince Duffy joins Purdue as an Associate Professor in the School of Industrial Engineering with a joint appointment in Agricultural & Biological Engineering. His research in perception-based empirical model development in virtual and real environments has contributed to safety design. Some of the research led to the development of a test bed that had virtual reality integrated with live motion capture and computer-based ergonomics analysis capabilities. The work was supported by over $12 million in software grants from UGS-PLM Solutions for research and teaching that enabled real-time product design assessments for people with limited mobility. One virtual interactive product evaluation in 2004 was the first to demonstrate a methodology suitable for both virtual and real industrial environments.
His work has also shown how thermography can be used as a non-intrusive indicator of change in mental workload in driving. Potential applications for this research include real-time, unobtrusive, and automated mental workload assessment for human-system interaction during product development and interface design. Initial scientific contributions led to a series of external grants and contracts from General Motors, Ford, Nissan, and the most recent with the U.S. Army National Automotive Center (NAC-TARDEC) for validations of existing Virtual Soldier models. Vince is the editor of the forthcoming book titled Handbook of Digital Human Modeling, and Chair of the First International Conference on Digital Human Modeling to be held in Beijing, China in 2007. Dr. Duffy was previously a faculty member at The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and Mississippi State University. He received his Ph.D. and M.S.I.E. degrees from Purdue University.