Officers

Camille Major: Camille is a Board Certified Professional Ergonomist, an authorized trainer for OSHA, Past-President of the North Texas chapter of HFES, a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc., and participates on the Industrial Advisory Council at the Texas A&M University, School of Rural Public Health. She has Safety/Ergonomics experience in healthcare, soft drink bottling, space, medical devices, automotive, and defense. Utilizing her Six Sigma skills, she has developed successful ergonomics programs and continues to seek innovative solutions to meet business needs. Currently, she is a Safety, Quality, & Environmental Manager.

- Katie Grosteffon: Katie is a Consultant and Ergonomics Advisor for Humantech, providing contract support for BP with their office ergonomics program. She conducts workstation assessments and manages the office ergonomics software for the Houston campus. Katie has a bachelors degree in Engineering Sciences from Harvard University and a masters degree in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Michigan. She has achieved recognition as an Associate Ergonomics Professional.

- Ranjana Mehta: Ranjana is an assistant professor at Texas A+M University. Her research is focused on neuroergonomic assessments (brain and body) of workload, stress, and fatigue and investigating changes in motor and cognitive functions with aging and obesity. She is the co-director of the Texas A+M Ergonomics Center, and teaches occupational biomechanics, ergonomics of the low back, and psychophysiology

Christopher Parker: Principal Human Factors Engineering consultant with Atkins, Inc where he leads the Atkins Americas Human Factors team. He is educated and practiced in applications of Human Factors Engineering (HFE), Human Systems Integration (HSI), ergonomics and related disciplines for both commercial and government clients for over 15 years. Mr. Parker began his career working at NASA’s Johnson Space Center on the International Space Station project and since then he has been a project manager, analyst, and lead researcher on a variety of projects mostly in the maritime and oil & gas domains. Mr. Parker possesses a variety of skills and experience varying from usability analyses of prototype combat systems to leading program–level HFE and HSI support for large acquisition and design programs working from both the Company and Contractor sides in the government, commercial maritime, rail and oil & gas industries. Clients have included BP, Shell Oil Company, American Bureau of Shipping (ABS), U.S. Coast Guard, U.S. Navy, NASA, Canadian Forces, Austal USA Shipyards, and Mass Transit Railway (MTR) Hong Kong. He holds a Master’s degree in Human Factors and Ergonomics.

- Carroll Thronesbery: Carroll develops advanced automation for the Engineering Directorate at Johnson Space Center. His roles on these projects emphasizes human-computer interaction with intelligent systems. Recent projects include support for analyzing engineering problem reports and support for software and systems engineers, especially during early system development. He has developed proof of principle prototypes for a storyboard concept of operations tool and a tool for portfolio management of spaceflight medical risks. He has a Ph.D. in Cognitive Psychology from the University of Houston.

- Stephan Kotin: Stephan is a Human factors researcher at Hewlett-Packard whose focuses include hardware interaction design for desktops, notebooks, mobile devices, and accessories, human-computer interaction, and physical ergonomics. Stephan holds a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from Stephen F. Austin State University and a Masters of Arts in Applied Cognitive Psychology from the University of Houston-Clear Lake.

(Elections Director) - Christy Harper: Christy is currently working as the Human Factors Research Manager for the Notebooks group in HP covering both hardware and software usability. Her area of expertise is contextual and ethnographic research and human factors research applied to new product design. Prior work has included digital entertainment products, handheld computers and websites. She holds a Masters degree in Psychology from the University of Houston-Clear Lake.

(Program Director) - Phil Kortum: Phil is an assistant professor at Rice University in Houston, TX. His primary interests are in the research and development of highly usable systems in the voting and mobile computing domains and in the characterization of measures of usability and usable systems. Prior to joining Rice University he worked for over 15 years in the defense and telecommunications industry, where he researched and help field award-winning user-centered systems. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin.

- Camille Peres: Camille is an assistant professor at Texas A&M University’s School of Public Health. Currently, her primary research interests focus on discovering and investigating cognitive mechanisms associated with effective procedure use (particularly in industrial settings), ergonomic impacts of software design, and auditory displays. She is the director of the Research on the interface between Human and Machines RIHM lab at Texas A&M and teaches Human Factors. She is the co-director of Texas A&M's Ergonomics Center and has been active in the Houston HFES chapter since 2003. She is the proud awardee of the first annual Clete Booher Houston HFES Service Award and has also been active in committees and other service for the National HFES organization.

- Melissa Meingast: Melissa is a Master Technologist and manager of the human factors and usability research program for the Industry Standard Server (ISS) division of Hewlett-Packard. Her areas include the design, management, and execution of research programs for servers, rack and infrastructure products, and enterprise and SMB applications, software, and websites, as well as the production of both strategic and tactical design recommendations. Melissa holds a Masters degree in Human Factors Psychology from Rice University, and is currently a board member for the Association of Women in Computing.

- Rachel Leach: Rachel works for BP  a Health Systems Advisor.  Rachel is a member of the wider Performance and Systems team supporting regional health teams, employees and contractors in their use of global health systems.  She provides the lead role in the implementation, support and development of the suite of office ergonomics tools.  Rachel holds a BS in Industrial Engineering and a MS in Safety Engineering from Texas A&M University, and has achieved certification as a Certified Professional Ergonomist

- Andrew Muddimer: Andrew has been working for Schlumberger since 1995, he has had various roles all in the Human Factors and Ergonomics domain, designing oilfield equipment of all types, wherever people work, cabins, trucks, boats, rigs, anything. Most recently he has been focused on Usability of software for the Oilfield. Andrew holds a BSc from Loughborough Univiersity in the UK in Human Factors.