Emily Shull recently graduated from the University of Iowa College of Engineering with a PhD in industrial and systems engineering. Soon she will begin her professional career as a general engineer at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) in the Office of Vehicle Crash Avoidance and Electronics Controls Research, part of the U.S. Department of Transportation.

During her time at the University of Iowa, Shull served as both an undergraduate and graduate research assistant at the Driving Safety Research Institute. She used her background in psychology (BA18) to apply a unique perspective of human attention to driving safety research. While at the Driving Safety Research Institute, Shull’s primary research interest was understanding how the transition of control can be effectively facilitated from partial automation back to the driver. Shull explored her research on transition of control in her thesis: “Maintaining Attention with Enhanced Human-Machine Interfaces (HMI) in Conditionally Automated Driving.” Shull’s research captured global interest when she presented her research on “The Gap Effect in Shifting Attention in Conditional Automation” at the International Conference on Traffic and Transportation Psychology in Gothenburg, Sweden, during the summer of 2022.

In Shull’s new role as a general engineer at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, she will work on an interdisciplinary team of scientists focusing on crash avoidance, advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS), and other intelligent vehicle technologies. Shull is looking forward to beginning her professional career at NHTSA and is eager to continue to build collaborative relationships along the way. 

Shull’s words of wisdom for other PhD students are: “The support you have around you means everything during your PhD studies. I could not have done this without the continued mentorship and guidance I received from everyone at the Driving Safety Research Institute. Go Hawks!”