Mine Detection
Assistant Human Factors Engineer
As the lead engineering activity for Mine Countermeasure (MCM) Mission Packages (MP), the Naval Surface Warfare Center Panama City Division (NSWC PCD) provides equipment, personnel, and expertise to soldiers.
One of the main responsibilities of the NSWC PCD engineers it to test out several different models of mine detectors. Provided by the leading companies, the mine detectors go through rigorous and thorough testing to ensure they are using the best equipment possible.
Testing included weeks of testing outdoors with several different types of mines. Participants would sweep different areas to see how many mines they would detect with the device. They would then take a survey about the ergonomics and usability of the device. Battery life of the devices were also tested. Given these results the devices were ranked based on their performance.
AAV Upgrade
Lead Human Factors Engineer
Assault Amphibious Vehicles (AAV) is a fully tracked amphibious land vehicle used by the Marine Corps to conduct related combat support. Since their introduction in the 1970’s the console has not been updated. In 2016 the Department of Defense (DoD) decided it was time to update the electronic system.
As the Human Factors Engineer it was my job to turn the wet gauges of the AAV into a simple easy to read digital console. To make sure that I knew enough about the vehicle to properly design for it, I spent a week training on how to operate and maintain the vehicle.
At this training I was able to meet and interview soldiers that have had experience operating the vehicles in real life situations. I also met and collaborated with the engineers that would be upgrading the vehicles. I was able to get a better understanding of the electrical components, their abilities, and any limitation I might run into.
Surgery at Sea
Human Factors Engineer
During combat the likelihood that a sailor will get injured is high. There are times when the injury is serious enough that is requires some sort of surgery. Getting the sailor back to the mainland for surgery could take a very long time. This requires emergency surgery in a moving ship.
For this particular project, the Human Systems Integration (HSI) team set out to research whether this type of medical procedures is possible under high sea states. This required a device to be attached to a catamaran for a week. This device measured all the necessary XXX to determine sea state.
Using the data from the catamaran, an operating room was built to simulate the motion for each different sea states. over the course of 2 months, we had trained Navy surgeons conduct several surgeries under different sea states on test dummies to determine whether it was possible or not.
The surgeons were surveyed before the surgery, monitored during the surgery using cameras and EEG caps, and surveyed after the surgery to evaluate their mental and physical states. We also had a civilian surgeon assess the performance of each surgeon.