HFES Awards

Full Members, Fellows, and Emeritus Fellows in good standing may nominate worthy candidates for the awards noted below. Candidates need not be members of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society. The invitation to submit award nominations is published in the January issue of the HFES Bulletin. Candidates for the award may self-nominate or ask collegues to submit nominations on their behalf.

For 2012 awards, the deadline for submissions is March 30, 2012.

To submit a nomination for one of the awards, the nominating member must

• submit the candidate's résumé or curriculum vitae, a nominating letter, and at least two and not more than three letters of support from individuals who know the candidate well enough to assess his or her candidacy in terms of the award's criteria; and
• send all nomination packages via email to Lynn Strother. Please submit the package as a single file in PDF format.

Nominations are sought for the following awards:

Hal W. Hendrick Distinguished International Colleague Award. This award recognizes a non-U.S. citizen who has made outstanding contributions to the human factors/ergonomics field. Candidates are considered based on the significance of their contributions and their worldwide recognition within and outside the HF/E profession.

Paul M. Fitts Education Award. This award recognizes a person who has made exceptional contributions to the education and training of HF/E specialists. Candidates should either be currently or previously engaged in college or university teaching of HF/E material or should have written significant textbooks in the field. The principal criteria for evaluation are the influence that the candidate has had on students and/or how extensively the candidate's work has been used by educators in general. If the criterion for the award is student influence, as many as five testimonials from current or previous students may be submitted in addition to the curriculum vitae or résumé and letters of recommendation.

This award is open to all Society members who train or educate and is not restricted to academic educators.

A. R. Lauer Safety Award. This award recognizes a person for outstanding contributions to human factors aspects in the broad area of safety. This includes HF/E work that has led to reduced accidents and injuries in such areas as industry, aviation, surface transportation, and consumer products. Candidates' accomplishments should be related to safety or safety training technology as demonstrated by research or application of HF/E principles. Emphasis should be placed on both programmatic and recent contributions to the field of endeavor.

Alexander C. Williams, Jr., Design Award. This award is intended to recognize those who have made outstanding contributions to the conception or design of any product, service, or system that has had a significant impact on users and exemplifies the excellent use of empirical human factors/ergonomics design principles. "Product, service, or system" may include consumer or business products, training systems, communications systems, computing systems, display systems, control systems, highly procedural systems such as the air traffic system, or any combination of one or more people and equipment designed to perform some goal-oriented function. The product, service, or system need not necessarily be extremely large or complex. The essential criteria are that the product, service, or system has achieved operational status and that its conception and design are based on the outstanding application of experimentally determined HF/E design principles.

In addition to the curriculum vitae or résumé and letters of support, other evidence of the success of the design will be accepted, such as testimonials from users' performance evaluations or papers or reports that substantiate the extent to which the submission is based on experimentally derived HF/E design principles.

Jack A. Kraft Innovator Award. This award honors a person for significant efforts to extend or diversify the application of HF/E principles and methods to new areas of endeavor. In addition, candidates must have made effective efforts to encourage the application of HF/E knowledge and techniques in new areas. The field of endeavor should differ from previous military, space, government, or industry-supported work. Candidates will be evaluated on the significance of their effort to society in general, the adequacy of the effort to accomplish intended objectives (e.g., thoroughness of problem analysis, effectiveness of proposed or achieved solutions), and the impact of their effort on the HF/E profession.

Oliver Keith Hansen Outreach Award. This award recognizes members and nonmembers who engage in significant activities that broaden awareness of the existence of the human factors/ergonomics profession and the benefits it brings to humankind.

Award winners are notified prior to the HFES Annual Meeting and are recognized during the opening plenary session.

HFES also presents the following awards each year, which are not open for nominations:

• Jerome H. Ely Human Factors Article Award for the best paper published in the previous year's volume
• Best Ergonomics in Design Article Award for the best article published in the previous year's volume
• Arnold M. Small President's Distinguished Service Award
• Alphonse Chapanis Student Paper Award. Students are encouraged to compete for this award by submitting a proposal for consideration for the 2012 Annual Meeting. The award application form will be available to accepted authors in May.

View the complete list of past award recipients from the 2011-2012 Directory and Yearbook.

Nonmembers may purchase the entire HFES Directory and Yearbook here.