David Woods

For four and a half decades David Woods (professor emeritus in Department of Integrated Systems Engineering at the Ohio State University) has helped organizations cope with complexity to operate safely and resiliently. Results from his accident investigations in aviation, energy, critical care medicine, disaster response, military operations, critical digital services, and space operations including advising the Columbia Space Shuttle Accident Investigation Board are captured in his books Behind Human Error and Resilience Engineering. In the 1980s wave of excitement over AI, he designed safe and effective joint human-AI systems. In the 1990s working with NASA, he led the pioneering studies on the safety of flight deck automation and AI in space operations (receiving an Aviation Week & Space Technology 1995 award). Based on NASA mishaps that occurred from 1999 to 2003, he first proposed the new field of resilience engineering to handle complexity safely including testifying to Congress in 2003 about safety at NASA. He is past-president of the Resilience Engineering Association and the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society. This year he received a Pioneer of Safety, Lifetime Achievement Award.