Sharon Todd is chatting to Donna Duffy who is a Human Factors Engineering Specialist with over 25 years of experience in human factors and psychology. As a founding Co-Director of Human Engineered, Donna brings deep expertise to industries including Defence and aviation where she likes to drive organisational change and system design excellence. Previously Donna was an Associate Technical Fellow and Principal Human Factors Specialist at Boeing Defence Australia. Her contributions to programs suc...
Jul 11, 2025•35 min•Season 8Ep. 2
Sharon Todd chats to Professor Robyn Clay-Williams about Emergency Department design for underserved cohorts. Robyn leads a research program at the Australian Institute of Health Innovation, Macquarie University, in the field of human factors in healthcare. Over a career spanning nearly 45 years in aviation and healthcare, Robyn has worked extensively to develop and evaluate systems to make them fit for purpose and easier to use. Robyn provides expert advice to policymakers, clinicians, research...
Jun 01, 2025•37 min•Season 8Ep. 1
Sharon Todd is chatting to Sam Gerges about his ergonomics programs to minimise injuries and reduce injury costs in Vehicle Manufacturing. Sam is a qualified physiotherapist, egonomics and occupational health and safety specialist with over 15 years experience working in Australia, Japan and America. Experienced across many industries including manufacturing, oil and gas, forestry, retail and logistics, Sam possesses expert, practical knowledge of ergonomics and human factors, part, process and ...
May 16, 2025•44 min•Season 7Ep. 7
Heather Kahle talks with Sharon Todd about her work, her manual handling projects and the tools that she uses. As a Human Factors consultant and previous president of the Association of Canadian Ergonomists, Heather helps companies apply human organizational performance/human factors and ergonomics principles and methods. In 30 years with WorkSafeBC, she applies experience with investigations, MSI prevention, and error mitigation across many diverse industries. Heather's journey into the world o...
Apr 30, 2025•41 min•Season 7Ep. 6
Sharon Todd chats to Dr Puji Silva a mechanical and medical engineer about his work and research into litigation injury data. Puji primarily works in ergonomic risk assessments and litigation matters related to permanent injury in both workplace and public liability cases , applying his expertise in biomechanics, human factors, and safety design principles to improve workplace outcomes and legal evaluations. Dr. Pujitha Silva is a mechanical and medical engineer with extensive experience in huma...
Apr 15, 2025•44 min•Season 7Ep. 5
Dr Vanessa Huron discusses the use of drones in various environments and the human factors aspects of drone use. Dr Vanessa Huron holds a Bachelor of Science (First Class Honours) in Medical Microbiology and Immunology, Diploma in Innovation Management and a PhD in Microbiology from the University of New South Wales. Vanessa's research focuses on human factors and safety, accessibility management, and educational design and delivery applied across several domains, including Psychosocial hazards ...
Mar 12, 2025•40 min•Season 7Ep. 4
Sharon Todd chats to Professor Sidney Dekker about his experience in organisational psychology and his thoughts on incidents, blame and forgiveness. Sidney takes us on a roller-coaster ride; as he discusses error as a consequence of other factors, encourages us to set others up for success and challenges organisations to choreograph significant change into their responses to failure. Sidney Dekker (PhD Ohio State University, USA, 1996) is Professor in the School of Humanities, Languages and Soci...
Feb 24, 2025•51 min•Season 7Ep. 3
The HFESA president Kath Jones is chatting to Ari Antonovsky about his work on Human factors and 'Human Dependability.' Dr Antonovsky was originally trained as a Materials Engineer. Through his role as a Reliability Engineer in the resource industry in Australia, Indonesia and NZ, he became involved in working directly with maintenence and operations crews. His interest in human factors and the organiastional aspects of maintenance lead to PhD research at Curtin University, sponsored by Woodside...
Feb 09, 2025•35 min•Season 7Ep. 2
Kath Jones our HFESA President, is discussing Organisational Performance, Cognitive Demands, and Mental Health Maturity Assessment Tools with Stephanie Black. Stephanie Black is an experienced programs manager with a diverse cross-disciplinary background. Stephanie is passionate about enhancing organisational performance and human wellbeing amidst the complexities of modern technology and operational demands. She has successfully managed geophysics, IT, and QHSE projects, including award-winning...
Jan 28, 2025•43 min•Season 7Ep. 1
Paul Lambertson and Sharon Todd chat about his experience in Flight Deck design and his use of Systems Theoretical Process Analysis (STPA) (Levenson & Thomas 2018). Paul Lambertson has been in the aerospace industry for over twenty years and in that time he has had a focus on human to machine interface for the design and operations of flight decks. He has had lead projects on all of Boeings current commercial aircraft and has been fortunate to lead many teams. These team include human factor...
Jan 12, 2025•40 min•Season 6Ep. 11
Chris Polaczuk and Steve Kolose chat to Sharon Todd about their participative tradie programme. Musculoskeletal injuries have resulted in significant lost productivity in the New Zealand Construction industry and are especially prevalent in the specialist trades. Despite recent advances in health, safety and technology meaningful interventions to reduce these injuries in construction remain elusive. To compound the issue pain and injury has been accepted as part of the trade and an inevitability...
Dec 02, 2024•41 min•Season 6Ep. 10
Professor Catherine Burns talks to SharonTodd (CPE) about her experiences with system design and AI systems in health. Catherine M. Burns is Professor in Systems Design Engineering at the University of Waterloo, Canada and Associate Vice President, Health Initiatives at the Office of Research at the University of Waterloo. In her past administrative roles she has been engaged with institutional and tri agency funding programs, research partnerships, Waterloo’s equity in research action plan, and...
Nov 06, 2024•33 min•Season 6Ep. 9
Sharon Todd is chatting to Adjunct Professor Kate Conroy one of the HFESA's Keynote speakers at our annual conference in Brisbane this year. Dr Kate Conroy is a specialist in building trustworthy, ethical, and assured robotics, autonomous systems, and artificial Intelligence (RAS-AI) systems in both military and civilian domains. Dr Conroy works in AI Safety and Assurance Queensland Government and is Responsible AI Lead Royal Australian Air Force. With a PhD in philosophy from Rutgers University...
Oct 30, 2024•32 min•Season 6Ep. 8
Kath Jones is chatting to Dr John Chan about Burnout. Dr. John Chan is the managing director at Infinite Potential, an independent not-for-profit think tank that develops high-quality, rigorous research, evaluation, and practical solutions to address some of the most pressing workplace problems. An Industrial/Organisational psychologist with 20+ years of global experience designing people strategies to transform how we work and our relationship with work. As a thought leader in the leadership, b...
Oct 18, 2024•35 min•Season 6Ep. 7
Kath Jones is chatting to Professor Anjum Naweed one the the keynote speakers at the HFESA conference in Brisbane in November this year about Simulation and AI. Professor Anjum Naweed is from the Appleton Institute for Behavioural Science in South Australia—the Adelaide-based campus of CQUniversity. Anjum is a Certified Professional Ergonomist with a background in psychology and expertise in human factors and systems thinking. He has over 15 years of experience across a range of industry sectors...
Sep 24, 2024•29 min•Season 6Ep. 6
Sharon Todd and Professor Mark Young the current President of the CIEHF discuss his work in automated transport and the Think Human project to be launched in the midlands of the UK. Professor Mark Young is Professor of Human Factors in Transport within the Transportation Research Group at the University of Southampton and current President of the Chartered Institute of Ergonomics and Human Factors (CIEHF). Mark has nearly 30 years’ experience working in human factors across transport modes in bo...
Aug 28, 2024•38 min•Season 6Ep. 5
Sharon Todd is chatting to Chris Fitzgerald about his practical application of Ergonomics and Humans factors to minimise injury risk. Chris Fitzgerald is a passionate Certified Professional Ergonomist whose career emphasis has been on facilitating meaningful and durable improvement in the design of work. His original career was in Prosthetics and Orthotics, but after 5 years of working in clinical environments, he transferred to Ergonomics to work in occupational settings and has operated his ow...
Aug 15, 2024•57 min•Season 6Ep. 6
Sharon Todd is chatting to Adam Scott, the Director of Cardiac Sciences at the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital. Adam has a PhD in Cardiac Medicine, from the University of London, Imperial College in the UK. Adam is an Adjunct Professor at QUT and is the Founder and Chairman of the White Cloud Foundation. He is passionate about creating solutions for problems in the health sector that have previously not been able to be solved. In doing so, he has created a Robotic Ultrasound solution to enab...
Jul 31, 2024•41 min•Season 6Ep. 4
Kath Jones from the HFESA is chatting to Tim Bentley about Mental Health Awareness, respect and safety. Professor Tim Bentley is an experienced research leader with more than two decades in research and academic leadership roles. Tim joined the School of Business and Law at Edith Cowan University as Professor of Work and Wellbeing in 2019, and in 2023, took up the position of Director of the ECU Mental Awareness, Respect and Safety (MARS) Centre. The MARS Centre was created as part of a multi-mi...
Jul 15, 2024•51 min•Season 6Ep. 3
Why do we seek to blame someone or say it is Human Error without firstly using a systems thinking approach to analyse the influencing factors surrounding an incident? Sharon Todd discusses 'Blame' and what we can 'Learn' from a Systems Thinking approach with Gemma Read. Associate Professor Gemma Read is the Director of the Centre for Human Factors and Sociotechnical Systems and an Associate Professor in Psychology at the University of the Sunshine Coast. She has degrees in behavioural science an...
Jul 01, 2024•44 min•Season 6Ep. 2
Kath Jones is chatting to Sandra Lam about the psychological health of "fly in fly out" (FIFO) workers. Kath Jones holds qualifications in psychology and occupational therapy and has been an active member of the HFESA for 15 years and is currently as executive board member for the society. She practices human factors and ergonomics through engaging with organisations on designing mentally healthy workplaces as a work health and safety regulator. Sandra Lam is an Endorsed Organisational Psycholog...
Jun 17, 2024•42 min•Season 6Ep. 1
Dr Robyn Coman from the University of Wolllongoing is discussing Extended Reality Simulation with Dr Shiva Pedram from the University of Newcastle, and Grace Kennedy from Acema. Dr Shiva Pedram is an experienced UX Research Specialist and Service Designer, specialising in the intersection between Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and service design within emerging technologies. With 12+ years of dedicated work in industry & academic environments, she has strategically led efforts to research,...
May 31, 2024•40 min
Sharon Todd and Andrew Wright discuss User Testing in good design. The views expressed by Andrew Wright within the HFESA PodCast are his own and not those of any organisation he works for or with, or linked to any project he works on – past or present. Andrew is a Principal Human Factors Consultant at Tactix Sener, primarily supporting the transport, nuclear and defence industries throughout the product and system lifecycle and providing Experience Design in Digital and Built Environments. Andre...
May 18, 2024•44 min•Season 5Ep. 8
Carlo , Robyn and Vinod are discussing the impact that the absence of suitable seating and poorly designed seating has on older adults in public places. The public seating project identified poor design, the coping behaviours of older adults needed and the impact that poor seating has on people with physical limitations and on their social identity. An audit tool was devised to gather data, to understand the problem and to inform the guidance that can be provided to those designing public spaces...
Apr 22, 2024•22 min•Season 5Ep. 7
Sharon Todd is exploring Naturalistic Decision Making with Brian Moon. He is the Chief Technology Officer for Perigean Technologies LLC and Executive Director of the Naturalistic Decision Making Association. A leading practitioner and researcher in the field of NDM, Mr. Moon applies qualitative and quantitative research methods to a wide range of problems, from the elicitation of expert knowledge to the study and design of technology for use in workplace environments. Mr. Moon holds an M.Sc. in ...
Apr 12, 2024•42 min•Season 5Ep. 6
Grace Kennedy is my special guest. She is a Systems Engineer and Human Factors professional with over 15 year's experience in the Infrastructure, Rail, Healthcare, Manufacturing and Defence Research sectors in Australia and the UK. Research Interests and Expertise: Model-Based Systems Engineering (MBSE), Organisational Systems Engineering (how to model “soft”/human aspects within the context of enterprise systems). Enterprise modelling and architectures. Human Systems Integration. Systems Ergono...
Mar 27, 2024•43 min•Season 5Ep. 5
Sharon Todd's special guest is Daisy Veitch talking about the importance of body size and shape in product and system design. Daisy Veitch, PhD. is an expert in applied Anthropometry, the fit of wearable items and body shape and size data. Daisy Veitch is a Director of Anthropometry at Anthrotech, Inc., a leading company in human body measurement and analysis. She has a PhD in Industrial Design Engineering from TU Delft, in The Netherlands where she explored replicating the feel of human tissue ...
Mar 13, 2024•41 min•Season 5Ep. 4
Sharon Todd chats to Steph Cassidy about a Psychosocial Risk Management Project that was successfully rolled out with a bus company. The project is called Healthy Minds Work. Steph's passion lies in assisting Australian workplaces to maintain their maximum productivity. Steph, an Occupational Therapist and Ergonomist has 30 years of experience in managing and preventing work-related injury or illness. It is this, combined with her own executive-level management experience, that adds strength to ...
Feb 28, 2024•42 min
Sharon Todd's special guest is Barry Kirby the current President of the CIEHF. He is a Chartered Ergonomist and Human Factors Practitioner (C.ErgHF), Chartered Engineer (CEng), a Fellow of the Institute of Ergonomics and Human Factors (FIEHF) and a Member of the Institute of Engineering and Technology (MIET). Barry has over 17 years’ experience working as a Human Factors Consultant, with skills in user engagement, product design and specification, simulation, trials as well as business and strat...
Feb 18, 2024•54 min•Season 5Ep. 3
Sharon Todd's guests are Dr Jon Spiro and Anthony Lock, founders of the Nexus Human Factors Training in Healthcare in WA. The views expressed by Dr Jon Spiro and Anthony Lock within this HFESA Podcast are their own and not those of any organisation they work for or with. Dr Jon Spiro is a consultant cardiologist and Senior clinical lecturer at the University of Western Australia. Having trained in the UK, Jon took up his current fulltime public position as a consultant interventional cardiologis...
Jan 31, 2024•58 min•Season 5Ep. 2
