After Emily Shull earned a PhD in industrial and systems engineering, the University of Iowa College of Engineering graduate embarked on a professional career at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), part of the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT).
Shull works in the Office of Vehicle Crash Avoidance and Electronics Controls Research as a general engineer. On an interdisciplinary team of scientists, Shull focuses on crash avoidance, advanced driver assistance systems, and other intelligent vehicle technologies. Shull embraced the beginning of her professional career at NHTSA and is eager to continue to build collaborative relationships along the way.
At Iowa, Shull served as an undergraduate and graduate research assistant at the Driving Safety Research Institute (DSRI). She used her background in psychology (she earned a BA in 2018) to apply a unique perspective of human attention to driving safety research.
“Emily Shull is one of the most dedicated and qualified students I’ve had the pleasure to work with,” said John Gaspar, DSRI director of human factors research. “I have no doubt that Emily will become a leader in science and engineering and contribute substantially to the future of automotive human factors.”
Shull’s primary research interest was understanding how the transition of control can be effectively facilitated from partial automation back to the driver. Shull 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, in 2022.
Shull was awarded the 2023 UTC Student of the Year Award by the DOT at the Council of University Transportation Centers Annual Awards Ceremony in Washington, D.C. Shull was also awarded the SAFER-SIM Excellence Award.
Shull offered words of wisdom for other PhD students: “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!”