Professor Sarah Sharples

Professor Sarah Sharples, Pro-Vice-Chancellor at the University of Nottingham, will present the MCDDM monthly seminar for May 2021.

Capturing human performance in a digital manufacturing setting – opportunities, risks and myths

Within human joint cognitive systems, people, technologies, and artefacts work together to achieve collaborative goals. However, due to the variability within human performance, which contributes to the innovation and brilliance demonstrated by people within resilient systems, it is not appropriate to simply transfer approaches to measurement that are applied to mechanical systems or materials to the human-technology collaborative system. This talk will discuss different ways that can be used to capture human collaborative performance and highlight directions of future work that can help to ensure that we design systems which are effective and innovative for the future.

Professor Sarah Sharples is Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Equality, Diversity & Inclusion and People, where she has responsibility for development and implementation for the EDI strategy to support staff and students. She is also a Professor of Human Factors in Engineering. She leads the EPSRC (Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council) Connected Everything Network Plus; is co-director of the EPSRC Horizon Centre for Doctoral Training and is involved in research in areas including digital manufacturing, transport, and health care.

She is on the Science Advisory Council for the Department for Transport; and is a member of the Council of the EPSRC and Athena SWAN Governance. From July 2021, she will be Chief Scientific Advisor for the Department for Transport.