HFES ASPIRE '25 was a busy event for the Aerospace Systems TG, with 9 lectures, 3 discussion panels, 6 posters, and overall large attendance. This newsletter summarizes the main highlights to catch up on everything that happened in Chicago.

Proceedings

This year, articles are published as free access on a roll-out basis on the Sage website. This is a major improvement compared to previous years and offers a much easier access to papers. You can visit the Conference Proceedings to find the papers using the author's name or title. To help you find papers from the Aerospace Systems track, first consult the conference program and then look for the title in the proceedings.

Note that this year the acceptance rate of papers was 50%.

Best paper awards

ASTG offered two best paper awards during the conference: one for best student paper and another for best overall paper. The selection was based on the reviewers' ratings during the peer-review and handed to the paper with the highest score from student work and non-student work. Congratulations to the winners!

Best Student Work

Jeevan Jayasuriya received the Best Student Work award from Katie Sabo, session chair. The work conducted with Adam Easton and Ranjana Mehta from University of Wisconsin-Madison investigated the effects of fatigue and vestibular impairment on fine motor skills. This is similar to the effects of microgravity experienced by astronauts in space

Best Overall Paper

The best overall paper was awarded to the team behind Measuring Anticipatory Monitoring Skills Using a Crew Briefing Task. 

• Dorrit Billman, NASA Ames Research Center

• Barth Baron, Jr., San Jose State University

• Paige Christine Corry, San Jose State University

• Lucas Cusano, NASA Ames Research Center

• Melissa Peterson, San Jose State University

• Randy Mumaw, San Jose State University and NASA Ames Research Center

The authors identified the skills and knowledge required for an effective descent briefing, as well as ways to reliably assess the pilot's anticipatory monitoring skills. 38 airline pilots followed an online training to learn about the effective briefing and participants were tested before and after the training. Scenarios tested included rapidly evolving weather conditions that would lead the airport to change landing runways such that the aircraft would need to conduct a steeper approach than initially planned. The results found that pilots increased their anticipatory monitoring from 47% pre-training to 84% post-training. Inter-rater reliability measures were all above 95%, showing strong agreement between raters.

Student Travel Grant

This year, ASTG offered 6 student travel grants. The $500 travel grant was offered to the presenter of a student work at ASPIRE '25 as part of the Aerospace track. We hope this initiative will support more students to attend the event in the future.

Congratulations to the recipients!

• Ainsley Kyle, from Oklahoma State University

• Anna Golendukhina, from Embry Riddle Aeronautical University

• Gwilym Couch, from Texas A&M University

• Md Rashedul Islam, Clemson University

• Jeevan Jayasuriya, from University of Wisconsin-Madison

• Maegan Schmitz, from California State University, Long Beach

Panel 1 - Space Human Factors Research: NASA's Human Capabilities Assessments for Autonomous Missions

The Aerospace track started ASPIRE '25 with this first panel, moderated by Kathleen Mosier (San Francisco State University), and bringing together John Lee (University of Wisconsin–Madison) and Leia Stirling (University of Michigan) to discuss how NASA's Human Capabilities Assessments for Autonomous Missions (HCAAM) program is exploring the future of autonomy in long-duration spaceflight. The HCAAM program brought together 7 universities that conducted controlled lab experiments in their home institutions as well as in NASA's space analogue environment for long-term mission - HERA. The conversation gave a rich look at how human factors research is shaping NASA's vision of astronaut autonomy.

You missed the panel? Read the summary on our website to learn the latest on space autonomy research.

Panel 2 - Ongoing Research Activities Supporting General Aviation Pilots and Weather Information Dynamics

What happens when weather conditions start slipping from marginal VFR to IFR-would you still take off and fly? That opening question set the tone for a fascinating morning panel at ASPIRE 2025, where leading human factors researchers discussed how general aviation (GA) pilots make sense of uncertain weather forecasts. Moderated by Barrett Caldwell (Purdue University), it invited three other panelists: Beth Blickensderfer (Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University), Michael Dorneich (Iowa State University), and Brandon Pitts (Purdue University).

We wrote a nice summary of this panel on our website to make sure you recapped the main findings.

Panel 3 - Sustainability in aviation

The ASTG also held an interesting panel in collaboration with the Sustainability TG on the promise of sustainable aviation. Leading HF researchers working on emerging technologies like drones and advanced air mobility (AAM) shared some of the lessons they have learned from their research in industry and academia. The panel was moderated by Shraddha Swaroop (CSULB), and included four panelists: Chris Wickens (Colorado State University), Oleksandra Molloy (University of New South Wales), Mark Shikerman (Wisk Aero) and Yining "Elena" Zhang (Rice University).

Read the summary of this panel on our website.

ASTG in action

Opening ceremony

The conference opened Monday evening with the different technical groups sharing their work to attendees. We were thrilled to see so many members eager to get involved with the Aerospace Systems TG. And yes… our giveaway airplanes definitely stole the show!

Circle of Excellence - ASTG Reached Gold

We are also excited to share that ASTG reached the Gold level as part of the HFES Circle of Excellence initiative. To achieve this level, the TG had to complete a series of activities for our members in the year, among which:

• 5 webinars

• 11 newsletters (like this one!)

• Being active on the HFES user forum (where you are receiving this message) and LinkedIn

• Organizing sessions with other TG as part of the conference (this year with Safety, Perception and CEDM)

• And supporting financially the Coalition of Affinity Groups (COAG) and iHFE ($250 each)

Philippe DP gave an 8-min interview on the Human Factors Podcast about the Circle of Excellence and the work done as part of ASTG.

Social night

We also gathered at a local bar on Wednesday evening with our friends from Sustainability TG. Many thanks to Nayara Faria for capturing the fun and sharing photos of the event.