Peter A. Hancock, D.Sc., Ph.D. is Provost Distinguished Research Professor in the Department of Psychology and the Institute for Simulation and Training, as well as at the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the Department of Industrial Engineering and Management Systems at the University of Central Florida (UCF). At UCF in 2009 he was created the 16th ever University Pegasus Professor (the Institution’s highest honor) and in 2012 was named 6th ever University Trustee Chair. He directs the MIT2 Research Laboratories. Prior to his current position he founded and was the Director of the Human Factors Research Laboratory (HFRL) at the University of Minnesota where he held appointments as Professor in the Departments of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Psychology, and Kinesiology, as well as being a member of the Cognitive Science Center and the Center on Aging Research. He continues to hold an appointment as a Clinical Adjunct Professor in the Department of Psychology at Minnesota. He is also an affiliated Scientist of the Humans and Automation Laboratory at Duke University, a Research Associate of the University of Michigan Transport Research Institute, and a Senior Research Associate at the Institute for Human and Machine Cognition in Pensacola, Florida. He is also a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Hawaii Academy.
Professor Hancock is the author of over one thousand refereed scientific articles, chapters and reports as well as writing and editing more than twenty books including: Human Performance and Ergonomics in the Handbook of Perception and Cognition series, published by Academic Press in 1999. Stress, Workload, and Fatigue, published in 2001 by Lawrence Erlbaum and Performance under Stress which was published in 2008 by Ashgate Publishing. He is the author of the 1997 book, Essays on the Future of Human‐Machine Systems and the 2009 text, Mind, Machine and Morality also from Ashgate Publishers. He has also made over 1,000 professional presentations on issues as diverse as human‐machine interaction, and psychological deception, to the reign of Richard III. He has been continuously funded by extramural sources for every one of the thirtysix years of his professional career. This includes support from NASA, NSF, NIH, NIA, FAA, FHWA, NRC, NHTSA, DARPA, NIMH, and all of the branches of US Armed Forces. He has also been supported by numerous State and Industrial agencies. He was the Principal Investigator on a Multi‐Disciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI), in which he directed $5 Million of funded research on stress, workload, and performance. It was the first MURI in behavioral science ever awarded by the US Army. He was also the recipient of the first ever research grant (as opposed to contract) given by the Federal Aviation Administration. To date, he has secured over $20 Million in externally funded research during his career. He has presented, or been an author on, over 1,000 scientific presentations. In 1999 he was the Arnold Small Lecturer of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society and in 2000 he was awarded the Sir Frederic Bartlett Medal by the Ergonomics Society of Great Britain for lifetime scientific achievement. He was the Keynote Speaker for the combined meeting of the International Ergonomics Association and the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society in 2000 in San Diego; the largest ever professional meeting of the discipline. In 2001 he won the Franklin V. Taylor Award of the American Psychological Association as well as the Liberty Mutual Prize for Occupational Safety and Ergonomics from the International Ergonomics Association, the latter Prize being an open, world‐wide competition. In association with his colleagues Raja Parasuraman and Anthony Masalonis, he was the winner of the Jerome Hirsch Ely Award of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society for 2001, the same year in which he was elected a Fellow of the International Ergonomics Association and was awarded a Doctor of Science (D.Sc.) degree from Loughborough University in England.
In 2002, he received the Wojciech Bogumil Jastrzebowski Medal of the Polish Ergonomics Society for contributions to world ergonomics and in the same year was named a Fellow of the Ergonomics Society of Great Britain. He has been a multiple‐term Member of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), National Research Council’s Committee on Human Factors and in that capacity has served as Chair and Organizer for a number of sub‐committees. In 2003 he won the Liberty Mutual Medal of the International Ergonomics Association, a world‐wide competition for innovative advances in occupational safety and ergonomics. In 2006 he won the Norbert Wiener Award of the Systems, Man and Cybernetics Society of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE), being the highest award that Society gives for scientific attainment. It is of interest also to note that the company ‘Geek Squad’ which is presently a subsidiary of ‘Best Buy’ was founded by Robert Stephens while working in Dr. Hancock’s Laboratory at Minnesota. In 2007 Dr. Hancock was the recipient of the John C. Flanagan Award for of the Society of Military Psychologists of the American Psychological Association for lifetime achievement and he was also the 2007 recipient of the A.R. Lauer Award of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society for lifetime contributions to safety. In 2008 he received the Otto Edholm Award of the Ergonomics Society as well as the Raymond F. Longacre Award of the Aerospace Medical Association for outstanding accomplishment in the psychological and psychiatric aspects of aerospace medicine. That same year he won the Andrew P. Sage Award of the Systems, Man and Cybernetics Society of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) for the best published work in the Journals of the Society which numbered over three‐hundred for the year. In 2009, he was named University Pegasus Professor of the University of Central Florida, this represents one of the highest awards of UCF which is now the second largest single university in the United States. Professor Hancock is only the 16th individual ever to be so‐named in the history of the Institution. In 2011 he was the winner of the Taylor Award winner of the Aerospace Human Factors Association and gave the opening Plenary Keynote Address at the Graz International Conference on Aviation Psychology. He also won the Admiral Leland Kollmorgen Spirit of Innovation Award of the Augmented Cognition Society. A 2011 member of the Cosmos Club, his current experimental work concerns the evaluation of behavioral response to high‐stress conditions, as well as the issue of trust and transparency in human automation/autonomy interaction. His theoretical work concerns technology’s influences on perception and action and also human relations with robots and the possible futures of this latter symbiosis.
In 2012 he presented the Frederick Howell Lewis Distinguished Lecture, of Psi Chi, the International Honor Society in Psychology at the Annual Meeting of the American Psychological Association, was also named winner of the Oliver Keith Hansen Award of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society for achievement in outreach activities, and was also named Fellow of the Aerospace Medical Association. He is a Fellow and past President of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society and Fellow and past President of the Society of Engineering Psychologists as well as being a former Chair of the Board of the Society for Human Performance in Extreme Environments. He is a Ricardian researcher, an area in which he has published extensively, including the Internationally Best‐Selling text, Richard III and the Murder in the Tower, published in hardback by the History Press in 2009 and has now entered its third paperback printing. For this work he was the recipient of the 2012 John Davey Research Grant for Medieval Studies from the Richard III Foundation which enabled him to pursue further empirical research on the causes and effects of ‘Buckingham’s Rebellion’ of 1483. In 2013 Hancock was the recipient of the Alexander Williams Award of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society as well as the Gersoni Award of the Society of Military Psychologists of the American Psychological Association. In 2014, Dr. Hancock also received the William E. Collins Award from the Aerospace Medical Association; an open competition for the best article on aerospace human factors and ergonomics. His book: Hoax Springs Eternal: The Psychology of Cognitive Deception, from Cambridge University Press was published in the same year. In 2015 he was presented with the William Floyd Award of the Institute for Ergonomics and Human Factors of Great Britain in which he is a Chartered Fellow and was made Fellow of the Aerospace Human Factors Association and Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society of Great Britain. He was awarded the Ergonomics Development Award and was the recipient of the inaugural John Wilson/Elsevier Award both of the International Ergonomics Association. Notably, in 2015, he was elected only the 13th ever Honorary Member of the American Society of Heating, Radiation, and Air Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE), which organization has been in existence since 1894. In doing so, he joined a list of twelve prior individuals, so named, including one past‐President of the United States. In 2015, Dr. Hancock became the only two‐time recipient of the John Davey Award for Medieval Studies by the Richard III Foundation. Most recently he has been elected a Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society (RAeS) and in 2016 was named the 30th Honorary Member of the Institute of industrial and Systems Engineers (IISE). In 2017, he was elected a Member of the International Academy of Aviation and Space Medicine as well as receiving the Specialist Silver Medal Award from the Royal Aeronautical Society. In 2018 he was the recipient of the International Ergonomics Association (IEA) Outstanding Educators Award, (IEA), 2018. In early 2019, Professor Hancock was named as a Member of the 2019 Class of Inductees into the National Center for Simulation’s, Modelling and Simulation “Hall of Fame.” He currently serves as a member of the United States Air Force, Scientific Advisory Board (SAB), while simultaneously serving on the US Army Science Board (ASB). In July of 2019, he was elected as the forthcoming President of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society (HFES). He is only the second person ever to have been elected to that position twice. Among a number of hobbies, Dr. Hancock plays golf (poorly) and collects and studies antique maps.