Renewable Energy Grid

Professor Andrew Thatcher is Chair of Industrial/Organisational Psychology at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. He is the Chair of the HFES Social Impact Committee and a member of the HFE and sustainability Task Force of the HFES. He is Chair of the IEA’s Future of Work Task Force and an Editor of the journal ‘Ergonomics’. Hs area of research interest is HFE and sustainability, green ergonomics, and sustainable work systems.

Antony Hilliard, P.Eng. (Ph.D. Industrial Engineering, U. Toronto) is a Senior Scientist in human-technology interaction with Hitachi Energy Research (formerly ABB Corporate Research). His past work includes network visualization, transmission equipment user interfaces, domain analysis of power network operation, and electric vehicle fleet charging.

Katya Le Blanc is a senior human factors scientist at Idaho National Laboratory. She has led research and development for design of human-system interfaces for nuclear power plant control rooms, transmission system technologies, and cyber security for electric grid operation. She is currently working on research to develop visualizations to support transmission operator decision making and address challenges of new technology implementation and increased renewable integration.

Dr. Esa M. Rantanen trained as a commercial pilot. He also has seven years of experience as an air traffic controller and an air traffic control instructor. Dr. Rantanen has a Bachelor of Science and a Master of Aeronautical Science degree form Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, Daytona Beach, FL, a Master of Science in Industrial Engineering degree from the Pennsylvania State University, with specialization in human factors/ergonomics engineering, and a Ph.D degree is from Penn State as well, in Engineering Psychology. 

Dr. Rantanen has served as an assistant professor at the Institute of Aviation of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Presently he is an associate professor of psychology at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) in Rochester, NY. He is primarily involved in the MS in Experimental Psychology program and supervising graduate students’ thesis research in the Engineering Psychology track of the program, as well as in the new PhD program in Cognitive Science. 

Dr. Rantanen has an Extended Faculty Appointment in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering and the Engineering Ph.D. program in the College of Engineering. He is also an Affiliate of The Global Cybersecurity Institute (GCI) and Center for Human-Aware AI (CHAI) at RIT. Dr. Rantanen’s research interests lie in the areas of human factors in complex systems, human performance measurement and modeling, situation awareness, mental workload, decision making, and human error and reliability.