Lab Director

​Dr. Jing Feng
Email: [email protected]
CV| Google Scholar
​ResearchGate | LinkedIn
Jing Feng is a Professor in the Human Factors and Applied Cognition Program at the Department of Psychology, North Carolina State University. She completed her undergraduate study at Zhejiang University in China, and received her M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in Cognitive Psychology at the University of Toronto in Canada. Prior to joining NC State, she received postdoctoral training at the Rotman Research Institute at Baycrest on cognitive neuroscience of aging, and at the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, University of Toronto, on human factors in driving. ​​
Dr. Feng conducts research integrating theories of attention and relevant applications in human factors. On the theoretical side, she studies attention across the visual field, individual differences and age-related changes in attention, as well as the effects of cognitive training. On the practical side, she applies these theoretical findings to understand aging and driving, driver distraction, driver-automation interaction, and the design of information displays.

She is recognized with the Earl Alluisi Award for Early Career Achievement from Division 21 (Applied Experimental and Engineering Psychology) of the American Psychological Association (APA) in 2021 and has been elected to an APA Fellow in 2023.

Graduate Students

Lingfan Cui
Email: x[email protected]
​CV | LinkedIn
Lingfan Cui is a third-year Ph.D. student in Human Factors and Applied Cognition at NC State University. He received his bachelor's degree in psychology from NC State and master's degree in education from Johns Hopkins University​. He is interested in the way of new technology application in the real world. In the Applied Cognitive Psychology (ACP) Lab, he has conducted research on various aspects related to driving safety and driver-automation interaction. Specifically, his research examined cognitive load and driver hazard detection, the interplay between trust and attention in monitoring automation, and the method to measure remote operation performance. 
Xiao Yu
Email: [email protected]​
LinkedIn
Xiao Yu is a first-year Ph.D. student in Human Factors and Applied Cognition at North Carolina State University. She completed her undergraduate studies in Psychology at Zhejiang University and received her master’s degree in Information Studies from the University of Texas at Austin. Her research interests lie in human cognition in driving environments, with a focus on perception, attention, and decision-making during interactions with autonomous and semi-autonomous vehicles.
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Alumni

Dr. HeeSun Choi 
CV | Google Scholar
​ResearchGate | LinkedIn
HeeSun Choi is an Assistant Professor in Human Factors in the Department of Psychological Sciences at Texas Tech University. She was an associate service fellow in Division of Safety Research and Center for Robotics Research at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. Dr. Choi completed her undergraduate study with dual degrees in psychology and business (2007) at Yonsei University, and received her M.A. (2013) and Ph.D. (2016) degrees in human factors and applied cognition from Department of Psychology, North Carolina State University. Prior to graduate school, she worked in the information technology industry in South Korea from 2007 to 2010. She studies human attention, cognition, and age-related declines, with a focus on occupational and driving safety.
Dr. Michael Geden
CV | Google Scholar
​ResearchGate | LinkedIn
Michael Geden is passionate about the use of modern statistical methods to behavioral and attentional problems. He completed a maters in statistics alongside his doctorate in human factors psychology in 2018, with further postdoctoral training at the Center for Educational Informatics at NCSU. Dr. Geden is now a Senior Data Scientist at Modern Hire. His primary research focus has been on elucidating the mechanisms through which mind wandering, or task-unrelated thoughts, influences our behavior during driving, reading, and in our day to day lives. He has also worked on a wide variety of other projects including but not limited to improving the usability of technical documentation at SAS, developing novel measures of anticipatory thinking, modeling the influence of different types of stressors of college GPA, and the breaking down the influence of source pedigree on trust in decision support systems. 
Dr. Robert Sall
CV | Google Scholar
​ResearchGate | LinkedIn
Robert Sall received his PhD in Human Factors and Applied Cognition from North Carolina State University in 2020. In the most general sense, his research uses theoretical cognitive science to solve real-world lapses of human attention and visual perception. Specifically, this work focuses on (1) reducing cognitive errors in diagnostic radiology, and (2) improving the attentional capacities of drivers across the lifespan. Dr. Sall was a Human Factors Scientist at Exponent and a Product Research Manager at Royal Caribbean. He is now a Senior Human Factors Researcher at J. S. Held.
Dr. Blake Wagner
CV | ​LinkedIn
Blake Wagner is a Senior Human Factors Engineer at MITRE. He was a UX Researcher at Meta and a Senior Human Factors Researcher at Google. He received his PhD in Human Factors and Applied Cognition from North Carolina State University in 2023. Prior to that, Blake graduated from NC State in 2016 with a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology and completed a Masters degree in Experimental Psychology at Appalachian State University in August of 2018. Dr. Wagner is passionate about applying principles of cognitive psychology to unique applied settings. His dissertation research focused on the effect of cognitive load in driver interaction with automated vehicles. Previously, he has also investigated visual cognition using eye-tracking technologies to measure the effects of cognitive control during mock hiring scenarios. 
Dr. Jing Yuan
CV | LinkedIn
​ResearchGate
Jing Yuan is currently a senior manager at Takeda Pharmaceuticals. She was a postdoctoral research scientist in the Applied Cognitive Psychology (ACP) Lab starting from September 2021 to June 2023, and then a postdoctoral fellow of the Measurement and Regulator Science (MaRS) Program at Duke University. Dr. Yuan received her Ph.D. in lifespan developmental psychology at NC State in 2021 summer. Her work involves the application of emotion and cognitive research in domains such as caregiving, driving, and prosthesis design. In the ACP lab, her projects involved developing a new attention training program for older drivers to improve their hazard detection in driving, inventing a new visuospatial attention task to assess walking safety, unraveling the mechanisms of prosthesis users' preferences using the human-factor research method, etc. Her ultimate goal is to use her research to help adults, especially older adults, live an emotionally, cognitively, socially, and physically healthy life.
Dr. Hallie (Clark) MacEldowney
​CV | LinkedIn
Hallie (Clark) MacEldowney was a tried and true NCSU student, having completed all of her bachelor's,  master's and doctoral degrees here. During her graduate training, she worked on various projects over the past several years, all of which focus on highly automated vehicle technologies. She believes that maintaining the user, or the driver in this instance, at the forefront of the design and considerations will create a safer and more effective advanced technology for the roadway. Over the past years, Dr. MacEldonwney has taken her academic skills to practice in the industry, by crafting survey design and user studies as a UX Researcher at Lenovo.
Jonathan Kasko
CV | ​ResearchGate
Jonathan Kasko was interested in human factors and usability issues in applied virtual reality settings. His research focused on using driving simulators to examine attention as it relates to driver safety in both older and younger driver populations. His first year project examined the relationship between driver experience and hazard detection using skin conductance response as a physiological measurement. His second year project investigated how various attentional functions relate to crash risks in specific hazardous driving situations among older drivers.
Dr. Michael Wilkinson
CV | ​ResearchGate
Michael Wilkinson served in the U.S. Armed Forces for seven years. Upon hanging up his uniform for the last time, he moved into industry working as a Lead Technician for Corning Inc’s. fiber optics division while taking courses at Cape Fear Community College. Through his studies, he found a passion for Psychology and moved to Raleigh to attend NCSU where he graduated with a B.A. in Psychology, minoring in Cognitive Science. Michael completed his doctoral education in the Human Factors & Applied Cognition program as well as obtaining a certificate in Applied Statistics & Data Management at NCSU. His research focused on human factors design of virtual reality, and time perception and slow motion phenomenology related to human performance. Dr. Wilkinson is now the Head of Research and Design at Rune Technologies.
Dr. Xiaolu Bai
​CV | LinkedIn | Google Site
Xiaolu Bai is an Associate Research at AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety. She received her doctoral training in Human Factors and Applied Cognition at North Carolina State University. Her dissertation research focuses on driver engagement in automated driving. Dr. Bai have a background in psychology and have always been passionate about understanding how people think, feel, and behave, and using that knowledge to design products that are effective and enjoyable to use. Prior to receiving her doctoral degree from NC State, she completed her B.S. degree in Psychological Science & Applied Statistics from Purdue University and M.S. degree in Psychology (Option in Human Factors) from California State University, Long Beach. 
Applied Cognitive Psychology Lab
Human Factors and Applied Cognition Program @ NC State

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