Penelope Sanderson
Research Leader
Queensland Research Laboratory
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Cognitive and Organisational Systems Engineering (COSE) |
Research focus
Penelope Sanderson is an internationally recognized expert in the area of cognitive systems engineering. Her specific focus is developing theories and methods that help us deliver better support for people's cognitive work in complex dynamic work domains, such as healthcare, air traffic control, process control, and power systems.
NICTA role
Within NICTA, Sanderson is Research Leader for the COSE project. She is also QRL Research Group Manager for NICTA's Making Sense of Data theme.
Background
Sanderson is Director of the ARC Key Centre for Human Factors at The University of Queensland where she also leads the Cognitive Engineering Research Group. She is a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia and in 2004 was awarded the US-based Human Factors and Ergonomics Society's (HFES) Distinguished International Colleague Award. She has twice been awarded HFES's Jeromy Ely Award for the Best Paper in Human Factors: in 2005 (with M. Watson) and in 1990 (sole author).
Sanderson has made significant contributions to the application of the Cognitive Work Analysis framework not only to the design of displays and interfaces but also to other phases of the system development life cycle, such as acquisition, test and evaluation, and team design. She has also developed innovative auditory displays for anesthesia monitoring, which are the subject of ongoing development.
Further major contributions include the synthesis of the Exploratory Sequential Data Analysis framework for the analysis of observational data, and the development of a supporting software environment, MacSHAPA, which is still used by many researchers worldwide. An open source version, OpenSHAPA, is under development in collaboration with researchers at several universities.
Sanderson received her BA(Hons I) from University of Western Australia in 1979 with the Australian Psychological Society and H.L. Fowler Prizes, her MA from University of Toronto in 1981, and her PhD from University of Toronto in 1985.
While working in the USA at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign from 1985 to 1996, Sanderson held grants from NSF, NASA, US Air Force Research Laboratory, and the US Department of Energy.
Since returning to Australia in 1997 she has held ARC and NHMRC funding in various forms, attracted funding from DSTO, Snowy Hydro Limited, Powerlink, Ergon Energy, and the Australian and New Zealand College of Anaesthetists, as well as being a CI on a Key Centre, a Centre of Excellence, two CRCs, and an NHMRC Centre of Research Excellence.
In 2009 Sanderson will spend a month in the UK on a Royal Academy of Engineering Distinguished Visiting Fellowship (host W. Wong, Middlesex Univ).
Publications
Visit the CERG Publications page.