IOE PhD student Dan Nathan-Roberts Emcees Ergonomic Conference in Beijing
Tauber Fellow Dan Nathan-Roberts, an Industrial and Operations Engineering Ph.D. pre-candidate, recently attended the 17th World Congress on Ergonomics in Beijing, China where he presented a paper on mobile phone design. Surprisingly, he was also called upon to act as an announcer at the triennial conference organized by the International Ergonomics Association.
As the only international student volunteer at the conference, Nathan-Roberts was asked to act as a master of ceremonies due to his previous experience in China as well as his fluency in English. “I introduced speakers, asked guests to be seated and introduced attendees to the cultural performances. I also assisted in translating and delivering a presentation from Spanish to English for a Chilean professor who is doing very good ergonomic work, but doesn't speak English. I worked with her and a student from Mexico to translate and deliver her presentation,” he said.
“My presentation was on work that I did with my advisor Dr. Yili Liu and students from the Undergraduate Research Opportunity (UROP). The conference proceeding focused on aesthetic preference of mobile phone design with the eventual goal of understanding the physical ergonomic and aesthetic trade-offs,” he said.
Following the conference, Nathan-Roberts visited Tsinghua, known as the MIT of China, where he toured the Industrial Engineering department and rode in a state-of-the-art driving simulator. He was also treated to a tour of Beijing Institute of Technology, another of China’s top Industrial Engineering programs.
Because Nathan-Roberts lived in Beijing after earning his undergraduate degree, he has several friends still living there. “The conference was a great opportunity to see them again as well as visit my old neighborhood,” he said.
He completed his 14-week Tauber Team Project during the summer of 2008 at the Intel Corporation in Chandler, AZ. His team took 3rd place at the Tauber Institute’s Spotlight!2008 competition, earning him a $3,000 academic scholarship.
Nathan-Roberts recently worked as an ORISE Research Fellow for the Food & Drug Administration where he studied human factors and ergonomic issues in medical device safety. He is now back at U-M starting his third year in the IOE Ph.D. program.
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