Congres Human Factors 2016 was a great success
On 24 and 25 November, Human Factors NL – Association for ergonomics – organized its biennial congress.
The first day was organised in cooperation with two associated European organizations in the field: the FEES (Federation of European Ergonomics Societies) and the CREE (Centre for Registration of European Ergonomists). More than seventy participants from several European countries took part. The themes were “Ergonomics in Design for All” in the morning and “Ergonomics and Creativity” in the afternoon.
In the afternoon the IEA/Liberty Mutual award was presented. This annually award recognizes outstanding original research leading to the reduction or mitigation of work-related injuries and/or to the advancement of occupational safety research. This important prize was presented to Peter Coenen, Idsart Kingma, Cécile Boat, Paulien Bongers and Jaap van Dieën, researchers from the VU University and VU University Medical Center.
The theme of the second day was “the human factor in the digital world”. William Peter de Ridder, director of Future Studies, opened with numerous examples of future developments. He explained that the digital influence on our work, private live and transport develops so fast that already many of this examples are reality.
The four sub-themes during the rest of the day were also filled with exciting and inspiring presentations and lively discussions. The more than one hundred participants were unanimously enthusiastic about the confrontations and the new insights they took out of the sessions.
Three prizes were awarded at the end of the day.
Suzanne Hiemstra-Mastrigt (TU Delft) won the Human Factors NL Dissertation Award 2016 for her thesis “Comfortable passenger seats: Recommendations for design and research” sponsor of this award is the SRE.
The Pieter Rookmaaker price for Mobility was presented to Marian Loth (TU Delft) for her design of a hygienic train toilet. Sponsor of this award is Intergo.
Jan Dul won the Human Factors NL prize in 2016 for his outstanding achievements in the broad field of human factors and ergonomics. Sponsor of this award is vhp Human Performance.
