Nicholas Ward
Director, HumanFIRST Program
Office: L-107 Mechanical Engineering
Phone: 612-625-6446
E-mail: nicw@me.umn.edu
Home page
Ward's
HumanFIRST Program page
Research projects
Ward's CTS research projects
Nicholas Ward is Director of the ITS Institute's HumanFIRST Program at the University of Minnesota. This program comprises a multi-disciplinary team of University researchers and visiting scholars, utilizing a state-of-the-art driving simulator as well as instrumented vehicles for test track and field study research. The program takes a human-centered approach to improving traffic safety, focusing on the cognitive functioning of the driver as the center of the transportation system. These efforts are targeted at understanding the psychological bases of driver behavior, risk taking, and impairment in order to design safety interventions based on education, enforcement, engineering, and intelligent transportation systems. Current HumanFIRST research includes driver distraction, alcohol impairment, driver support systems, older and novice drivers, and measurement of driver safety cultures.
Ward obtained his Ph.D. in Human Factors psychology from Queen’s University (Canada) with a dissertation on driver visual behavior at rural railway crossings. He then spent more than eight years conducting human factors research in transportation safety and Intelligent Transportation Systems at the University of Leeds. This research focused on driver impairment, risk perception, driver aggression, assessment of older drivers, and the design and usability evaluation of ITS applications.