Research and support facilities available to students in the program:
Human Factors researchers at Rice have access to approximately 9,400 square feet of research space. These facilities include an eye-tracking laboratory, an acoustically damped recording/testing room, a state-of-the-art usability assessment facility with one way glass and high resolution video/audio recording capabilities, and several medium fidelity driving simulators. 1,500 square feet are located in an off-campus building in the business district (the Applied Psychology Research Laboratory in the IBC Building), specifically chosen to be easily accessible to public transportation to allow for better access to the general public. We also have dedicated access to the Community Research Center (CRC), a 3,400 square foot facility located in the heart of the Texas Medical Center, (the world’s largest medical complex), which allows us easy access to patient and medical personnel populations for testing. We also have access to the Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen (OEDK), a design-teaching facility that has a full machine shop and state-of-the-art prototyping equipment and research space for student research.
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Teaching opportunities available to students in the program:
All students are required to take PSYC 561, Teaching in Psychology, to help them learn various aspects of classroom administration, pedagogical development, and teaching strategies under the guidance of a faculty member in a live classroom setting. There are opportunities for PhD students to compete for full teaching assignments each year, to aid those students who anticipate taking an academic positon upon graduation.
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Current research activities and projects being carried out by program faculty and/or students:
Human Factors research is being conducted across a wide range of areas, and is often multi-disciplinary, involving researchers from Engineering (Mechanical, Computer and Electrical, Bioengineering), Computer Science or one of the medical schools or hospitals in Houston. Major research areas include human performance modeling, cognition, visual attention, decision-making, usability, voting human factors, human computer interaction, educational technology, statistics, website design, perception of collision, motion, and depth, multisensory integration in normal and impaired vision, transportation human factors, health care, military human factors, teamwork and team effectiveness, simulation based training, and evaluation of training and development systems. For a more complete listing, please visit psychology.rice.edu/people.
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