Brandon Pitts Receives 2023 Stephanie Binder Young Professional Award
Pitts was presented this award at the STTG Business Meeting during the 2023 HFES Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C. from October 23-28, 2023.
Annually, the HFES-STTG confers a Young Professional Award to a rising Human Factors professional who demonstrates outstanding contributions to transportation human factors. This award honors Stephanie Binder, a Human Factors Engineer at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), who tragically passed away at the age of 35 in 2011. Stephanie played a vital role in the Department's efforts to combat distracted driving and was the primary author of NHTSA's overall driver distraction plan.
Awardees must demonstrate a commitment to advancing transportation human factors via their research and/or service to the human factors community and professional society. Pitts is a nationally-recognized researcher in human-automation interaction, interface design, and accessibility for personal mobility and transportation. He has contributed new data, insights, and innovative approaches to ensure that people, especially older drivers and travelers with disabilities, can understand, access, and use emerging intelligent transportation systems. In 2022, he co-led a team in winning 1st place in the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) Inclusive Design Challenge (IDC) for their life-size universally-designed EASI RIDER autonomous vehicle prototype.
At Purdue, Pitts is the Director of the Next-generation Human-systems and Cognitive Engineering (NHanCE) Research Lab, Executive Committee Member of the Joint Transportation Research Program (JTRP), and a Faculty Associate with the Center on Aging and the Life Course (CALC).
Related links:
EASI RIDER team wins 1st place in DOT Inclusive Design Challenge