Home

---

Curriculum Vitae / Resume Email Matthew

Matthew Bolton is a Ph.D. student at the University of Virginia in the department of Systems and Information Engineering. He has conducted research in a variety of fields including spatial awareness measurement, human cognitive modeling, quantitative models of human performance, and human centered systems engineering. This research has been applied to problems in a variety of domains including cockpit display technology, air traffic control, and engineering education materials. For his master’s thesis, Matthew Bolton conducted human subject experiments (with general aviation pilots) using new judgment based spatial awareness measures for the purpose of evaluating display parameters of Synthetic Vision Systems (SVS) – a cockpit display concept that visualizes terrain in front of aircraft to prevent controlled flight into terrain. This work helped evaluate SVS design features, exposed spatial awareness biases that manifest themselves in SVS, and compared the effectiveness of subjective and judgment based spatial awareness measures. For his Ph.D., Matthew Bolton is investigating the use of formal modeling techniques and automated analysis to design human computer interfaces (HCIs) for automated systems. Such techniques can be used to identify interface shortcomings, operator action recovery sequences that could transition the system out of dangerous states, operation conditions that could result in inconsistencies between the state of the operator’s mental model and the automation model’s state, and the automated design of HCI specifications. Matthew’s work is specifically investigating automated systems that require collaboration between multiple operators or teams of operators. Automated analyses of human-computer interfaces for such systems will require the modeling of multiple operators or teams of operators, their communications, and their shared knowledge about the system. It is hoped that these analyses will not only provide insights related to single operator HCIs but will aid in the evaluation and development of collaborative work environments and communication infrastructures. Matthew Bolton hopes to apply this work to HCIs related to aerospace, space exploration, and medical automated systems.