Bobbie Seppelt

Bobbie D. Seppelt, Ph.D., M.S., is a Research Scientist in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology AgeLab, New England University Transportation Center, and at Touchstone Evaluations, Inc. She has over 15 years of experience in assessment and analysis of driver behavior in the context of vehicle automation, attention management, and distraction. She is a technical lead on two academic-industry partnerships: the Advanced Human Factors Evaluator for Attentional Demand (AHEAD) consortium, which is engaged in developing next generation driver attention measurement tools, and the Advanced Vehicle Technology (AVT) consortium, focused on developing an understanding of driver use of emerging vehicle technologies including production-level automated driving systems. She is co-chair on the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE)’s committee on Automated Vehicles and Driver-Vehicle Interface Challenges, and an invited expert on the Trilateral (US–EU–Japan) Human Factors of Vehicle Automation Working Group.

Her research interests include driver-vehicle interface design, operator trust and reliance on automation, and automated driving systems integration. She received her Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering in 2009 from the University of Iowa and her M.S. in Engineering Psychology in 2003 from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She is an author on over 30 technical contributions in transportation and related human factors areas.