Amal Ponathil, a Ph.D. student in the Glenn Department of Civil Engineering, was awarded the Student Member with Honors at the 2020 Human Factors and Ergonomics Society’s annual meeting. The award, established in 1999, acknowledges students who have made an outstanding contribution to the discipline or to HFES during their tenure as a student. He has joined the select rank of students to have received this award which is the highest student honor awarded by the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society. Some of the requirements to be eligible for the award include serving as a first author on a peer-reviewed journal article related to human factors research, a presenter at a national or an international conference, significant contribution to industry projects, leadership roles at student chapters, and technical groups at HFES and receiving top grades in human factors classes. Currently, he works with Dr. Kapil Chalil Madathil in the Human Systems Integration Laboratory on developing decision support mechanisms for an online consumer’s contractor choice for home repairs.
