Postdoc / Human factors, cognitive ergonomics

We are looking for a highly motivated postdoctoral researchers for building together innovative projects to apply for Marie-Sklodowska Curie European Fellowships to the next call (September 2018). MSCA-EF are prestigious fellowships funded by the European Commission. They offer a rare opportunity to talented scientists: the chance to set up research programmes of their own. They provide an attractive grant for 1 to 2 years including salaries (around 2500€ net per month, with social care included) and allowances for mobility, family and research.

The topic and team below have been identified for welcoming you to develop your research project at UBS and helping you to write a winning proposal for the European submission in September.

General description of the project:
Keywords: Human Machine Cooperation, vessel’s bridge, Ecological Interface Design

Project context:
The Marie‐Curie fellowship aims at designing and evaluating an integrated decision support system to aid the cognitive and cooperative activities of watch officers on a vessel ship’s bridge.
The fellow will work on “The new generation of integrated ship navigation bridge” in the framework of the Passion Project (ADEME Investissement d’avenir). PASSION project aims at providing the shipyards with an integrated bridge adapted to the cognitive activities involved in decision making and facilitating them; it is expected that this integrated bridge be a real team member, taking a more active part in high-level teamwork tasks like situation analysis and proposal of solutions. The PASSION project is dedicated to the design and development of such an integrated bridge.

The theoretical part of the fellowship will consist in a literature review on the following topics: work activities on a bridge, Human-Machine System on the bridge, human factors, human errors and maritime accidents, useful methodologies to redesign bridge layout and equipment. It will aim at identifying the more critical situations and the main causes of error and maritime accidents as well as the potential solutions to support cognitive and collective activities on a vessel’s bridge.

The empirical part of the fellowship would consist in:
cognitive and cooperative work analysis (in naturalistic settings or on simulator), focusing on the more critical tasks or situations;
the design of an innovative system. Cognitive Work Analysis (CWA) could be used to design an Ecological Interface but other approaches could be relevant;
comparison between two bridge layouts (a classical one and an innovative one) on simulator, using an experimental methodology. System and interface evaluation would rely on Situation Awareness and Workload assessment but also on team work analysis. Several methods and measurements could be proposed (quantitative or qualitative, on-line or off-line). Methodological triangulation would be appreciated.

References:
Chauvin, C., Lardjane, S., Morel, G., Clostermann, J. P., & Langard, B. (2013). Human and organisational factors in maritime accidents: Analysis of collisions at sea using the HFACS.Accident Analysis & Prevention, 59, 26-37.

Grech, M., Horberry, T., & Koester, T. (2008).Human factors in the maritime domain. CRC Press.
Burns, C. M., & Hajdukiewicz, J. (2004). Ecological interface design. CRC Pres

Host research team:
Lab-STICC Laboratory (UMR CNRS 6285). Created since 2008, the Lab-STICC is a multidisciplinary research laboratory in the field of Information and communication science and technology. Researchers work in a single structure within one central theme: “from sensor to knowledge”.

IHSEV Team. IHSEV is a multidisciplinary team that focuses on the interaction between humans and systems. It adresses different kind of systems like robots, virtual environnements, socio technic system or simulation but put always the role and the relation between the human the system at the main concern of the researches

MSCA-EF are prestigious fellowships funded by the European Commission. They offer a rare opportunity to talented scientists: the chance to set up research programmes of their own. They provide an attractive grant
for 1 to 2 years including salaries and allowances for mobility, family and research Applicants must be «Experienced Researchers» (i.e. by the time of the MSCA deadline, be in possession of a doctoral degree or have at least four years of full-time equivalent research experience). Applicants can be of any nationality but must not have spent more than 12 months in France in the 3 years immediately prior to MSCA deadline.
 
To apply, please e-mail your expression of interest to anne-sophie.refloch@2PE-bretagne.eu (object of the email : MSCA application), joining the following documents (in pdf format):
 
- a CV (including a list of publications and the exact date of your stay in each position and/or country)
 
- a research outline document (up to 2 pages) describing the possible research activities you want to pursue at UBS and identifying the research synergies with the UBS faculty members / pre-identified topic.
 
Following the reception of your application, the eligibility of your profile for a MSCA-EF application will be checked, and then the identified supervisor will select the most promising applications regarding the excellence-based competitive conditions and evaluation criteria of the MSCA-IF programme and contact them in due course for further discussions and proposal writing until September 2018. If funded, the project proposed in September 2018 could start in May 2019.

To be crystal clear, this is the responsibility of the fellow to develop and write his/her own application proposal, but the supervisor will be deeply involved in the co-writing of the proposal and you will also
receive dedicated support from the European office to write a persuasive proposal in a continuous follow-up process.