HFES President's Message June 19, 2025
Posted June 19, 2025
Hello colleagues and friends,
In some parts of the world, summer is here which means being in the pool when you can, scheduling summer vacations if you can, and staying hydrated!! For others it means finally getting some relief from the cold. Whichever situation you are in, I do hope you’re able to enjoy the longer days and get some sunshine (with sunscreen on of course!). Here are some musings and events for you this month.
Continued response to actions regarding funding changes
Grant funding
HFES has been working continuously with our partner Lewis-Burke to monitor and respond to the catastrophic funding reductions that have been occurring since January. As of the date that I’m writing this (June 17, 2025), there has been some good news on that front:
“A federal judge in Boston on Monday said the termination of National Institutes of Health grants for research on diversity-related topics by President Donald Trump's administration's was ‘void and illegal,’”
Reporting by Daniel Wiessner in Albany, New York and Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by Will Dunham
Of course, this is far from over, but it is promising.
For our colleagues with NIOSH funding, those battles are still continuing. These implications for OSHA and the health and safety of workers really cannot be overstated. Our government relations committee (led by Mica Endsley) has been on the hill speaking with about the need for this funding and research and, again, we are watching this closely.
Ability to participate in ASPIRE
We are aware that many people are concerned about their ability to participate in ASPIRE—either due to funding cuts or because of travel restrictions to the US. The organizing committee is exploring several options regarding how to address the different needs.
► Raising funds for those who want to come but do not have the travel funds
► Making some parts of the meeting available virtually for those who will not be able to come regardless of funding availability.
Please be patient with us as we explore these options. The site for the meeting is expensive and was chosen several years ago. Thus, we are working to be a fiscally responsible as possible as well as responsive to the needs of the members and the science. Future meeting sites will be less costly and thus, easier for us to be flexible in these types of situations.
We will have decisions made and options available in the next couple of weeks.
Blue Ribbon panel on the Future of Science and Education in HF/E
Recently, I put together a panel of people from academia and industry who have differing levels of experience in HFES to discuss how we move forward in these changing and uncertain times. The goals are two fold—first, to identify ways to respond immediately to the threats to the research, application, and practice of HF/E and second, to identify longer term threats that we need to start preparing for today. Stay tuned for more insights and information from this group. If you have thoughts and insights for this group, please let us know, president@hfes.org or skemp@hfes.org.
Accomplishing our Outreach Strategic goal
I’m writing to you today as I leave a meeting of the American Nuclear Society (ANS)—Nuclear Plant Instrumentation, Control Human-Machine Interfaces Technology (NPIC-HMIT)—a real mouth full I know (Shout out to Brian Green and Niav Hughes-Green for inviting me! It was a great time, and I learned so much)! The discussions about how to effectively integrate AI with the new nuclear technologies coming online and the humans who will be operating them was ubiquitous. I attended this conference representing HFES because although they do human factors work, many there were not aware of HFES. People were interested in learning more about us and were particularly interested in the special events we have coming up during HFES ASPIRE in October. The good news is that we have premier HFES members in this organization. At the same time, like many other domains (e.g., industrial hygiene—ask Susan Kotowski about this ;) ) there is likely not enough dissemination of the science, application, and practice of HF/E needed to make this work effective, efficient, and safe.
I know many of you are members in other conferences and associations that are associated with HF/E and you may be experiencing the same thing. Do you have ideas about how we can effectively reach out to these folks? For instance, should we have “road show” where we attend other conference and present who we are and what we do. Here’s what I presented at the NPIC-HMIT (PPTX 3,007 KB). Should we invite some folk to our meetings for a day free of charge? We also have the regional meetings now (save the date for Friday, April 17, 2026 for the next one!), maybe invitations to those would be more reasonable. Let us know your ideas (president@hfes.org) – we need to get the word out to those who need us!!!
