Dear Fellow HART TG Members,
It was a privilege to serve as the 2025 Chair for our active and inclusive TG of over 380 members, begun just six years ago by now-board member Dr. Lixiao Huang (Arizona State University [ASU]). Thank you to everyone who shared your work as featured presenters at our monthly meetings ("monthly conversations"), in HFES journals, as presenters in HART sessions at ASPIRE, and at our networking events. Thank you to everyone who joined monthly member conversations. Thank you to the 102(!) of you who pitched in to review ASPIRE submissions and those of you who chaired our ASPIRE sessions. Because of you, our TG had another excellent year of community, achieving gold status in the new TG Circle of Excellence program.
I would like to acknowledge our logo contest participants-thank you all for sharing logo ideas. We now have a new TG logo: Alejandra Hilbert's (Oregon State University) submission was selected for adoption, and I think you will all love it:
Our 2026 TG Chair, Dr. Areen Alsaid (University of Michigan-Dearborn), and I invite you to please stay or get involved this coming year. Areen plans to continue the monthly conversations and we hope you will attend these as you are able. She invites you to propose and coordinate ASPIRE conference activities (e.g., speed networking) and activities for engaging more students, early-career, and industry folks. Other opportunities where your help is needed include helping our TG connect and develop suggesting TG initiatives that help us grow and succeed individually as HART professionals and as a HART community.
Our 2026 Program Chair, Dr. Jessie Yang (University of Michigan), with Areen and I invite you to support our TG's 2026 ASPIRE Symposium activities. Opportunities are numerous and your support of any of them will be greatly appreciated. They include managing "Best Student Paper" and/or "Early-Career Contribution" award programs, helping with the HART TG's 2026 ASPIRE Symposium program, and helping plan the 2026 version of this year's "Making AI that Works for People" Symposium. And please continue to make time to help with ASPIRE submission reviews, consider serving as a Session Chair, and start thinking about poster and paper submissions.
Please reach out to Areen or Jessie to volunteer or find out more about opportunities.
Our TG's high level of activity and the sense of community I--and hopefully you also—feel were made possible by everyone's participation. I would like to thank the many of you who committed to participating as an officer or member of the TG Development Leadership Board. First, a special thanks to Program Chair Dr. Güliz Tokladi (Collins Aerospace). Güliz, with the support fo Vice Program Chair Dr. Jessie Yang (University of Michigan), did a tremendous amount of work for our TG, most notably wrangling 109 ASPIRE program submissions into 16 HART-themed ASPIRE sessions. She coordinated 102 reviewers and to rounds of reviews, navigated a new process review process, organized selected papers into themed sessions, coordinated six joint sessions with other TGs, and more. Güliz's efforts extended to other initiatives, including the selection of student presenters to receive ASPIRE travel awards and co-planning the "Making AI that Works for People" Symposium.
Our other officers were also deeply engaged, and I greatly enjoyed and appreciated them; they include 2025 Vice Chair (and 2026 Chair) Dr. Areen Alsaid, Secretary/Treasurer Maria Fields (University of Michigan), Webmaster Aakash Yadav (University of Wisconsin-Madison), Historian Dr. Tom Meyer (Liberty University), and Outreach Ambassador Dr. Jing Yang (University at Buffalo). Our board members were fantastically supportive; thank you, Dr. Lixiao Huang (ASU), Dr. Joe Lyons (AFRL 711th Human Performance Wing), Dr. Heather Lum (ASU), Dr. Andres Rosero (George Mason University), Dr. Katya le Blanc (Idaho National Laboratory), Dr. David Grimm (ASU), Dr. Eric Holder (Army Research Laboratory), Dr. Myounghoon (Philart) Jeon (Virginia Tech), Dr. Ericka Rovira (U.S. Military Academy West Point), and Dr. Joonbum Lee (University of Wisconsin-Madison).
Please keep an eye on the HFES Connect site and our HART TG website for forthcoming information about 2026 plans and activities.
Happy New Year!
Kelly
2025 Chair
HART TG
P.S. We are still waiting to find out election results for the Vice Chair and Vice Program Chair positions. A big thank you to everyone who volunteered to be on the ballot!!