Principal Investigators
Dr. Shuchi Deb, the PI of this project, has been serving as an Assistant Professor in the Department Industrial, Manufacturing, and Systems Engineering at the University of Texas at Arlington since fall 2019. She received her Ph.D. in industrial engineering (Major) and Statistics (Minor) from the Mississippi State University. Her research interests focus on the application of emerging technologies and data science in human behavior and performance improvement. Dr. Deb is an advisory board member for the International Conference on Human Factors and Systems Interaction. She is also a member of the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers and Human Factors and Ergonomic Society.
Co-PI Emma Yang, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Industrial, Manufacturing, and Systems Engineering in the College of Engineering at UTA. She is also the director of the Sustainable and Intelligent Manufacturing (SIGMA) Lab (https://sigmalab.uta.edu/). Dr. Yang received her Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering and Operations Research from the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) in 2019, and she worked at the Department of Energy Industrial Assessment Center during her time at UIC. Dr. Yang’s research has been dedicated to sustainability practices in additive manufacturing, focusing on environmental sustainability, waste recycling, cost analysis, and production efficiency. Supported by the Department of Defense, Dr. Yang’s recent research centers around 5-axis, metal hybrid additive-subtractive manufacturing and its application in metal repair and (re)manufacturing. Dr. Yang is also dedicated to education and outreach activities that help train the next generation of the U.S. manufacturing workforce and ensure diversity and inclusion in STEM education.
Co-PI Amanda Olsen, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of Measurement and Statistics in the department of Curriculum and Instruction in the College of Education at UTA. She received her Ph.D. in Statistics, Measurement, and Evaluation in Education from the University of Missouri at Columbia and was also a postdoctoral research associate at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. As an applied quantitative methodologist, she engages in a variety of areas including multilevel modeling, multivariate statistics, program evaluation, research design, and complex survey design and analysis, in addition to substantive topics including equity, student-teacher relationships, and interdisciplinary collaborations. She has received over 10 million dollars as the PI or Co-PI from grant funders such as the U.S. Department of Education, the National Science Foundation, and the Meadows Foundation, among others.
Research Assistants
Taufiq Rahman is an MS student in the Department of Industrial Engineering at the University of Texas at Arlington. Taufiq works as a graduate research assistant at the Human Factors Lab. He is an expert in developing interactive virtual reality environments in VR headsets like HTC Vive and Oculus Quest using the Unity development platform. Taufiq has dynamic experience working in the Textile, Medical, and Automotive Industries in Quality and Supply Chain management roles. He recently completed his Program Manager internship at Tesla, where he was tracking and managing the future vehicle programs within the interior modules team
Rafia Rahman Rafa is an MS student in the Department of Industrial, Manufacturing, and Systems Engineering at the University of Texas at Arlington. Rafa received her Bachelor of Science Degree from Bangladesh University of Engineering & Technology in 2018. After her graduation, she worked in the industry for two and a half years. Rafa serves as a graduate research assistant in Dr. Shuchi Deb’s Human Factors Lab. She has been working on two federally funded projects under Dr. Deb’s supervision which uses virtual reality to create effective and accessible learning environments.
Faith Sowell is the head virtual reality developer for the Human Factors Lab. She has been working in the lab since Spring 2022, where she uses the Unity game development engine and C# programming to create virtual reality simulations of real-life situations, and gathers real-time data from the simulations to analyze for research. Faith has experience programming for different VR headsets, including the HTC Vive using the SteamVR interaction system, and the Oculus Quest II using OpenXR. During her time at the lab, Faith has worked on simulating a 3D printing and post-processing lab, a cityscape for researching pedestrian safety, and a compression machine lab.