University of Virginia
Ellen J. Bass

Home

Ellen Bass is an associate professor in the Department of Systems and Information Engineering in the School of Engineering and Applied Science at the University of Virginia. She has over twenty five years of experience in systems engineering with relevant experience in complex, dynamic systems. Bass's professional interests include cognitive systems engineering, human-automation interaction, intelligent decision support systems, and intelligent learning environments.

Since joining the University of Virginia in 2002, the theme of Bass’s research program is to understand and model how people perform in real-time complex systems in order to inform system requirements, procedures, display designs and training interventions. No researcher has developed comprehensive measures, modeling techniques and evaluation methods that capture the contribution of the human operator (knowledge, skills, and limitations), the dynamic task environment in which performance matters (including uncertainty), the tools used (algorithms, decision support tools, displays), organizational factors (such as team roles) and all of their interactions. She develops analytical frameworks, measures and methods that quantify total system performance including end users, their tools, the features of the task environment and external factors. The majority of her work involves modeling and supporting individual human judgment and decision-making. More recently she has expanded her research to examine team processes and performance.

At UVa, Bass has participated in fifteen funded projects as the principal investigator or co-PI. In total, these projects exceed $2M of funding for her research program. She has advised 1 Ph.D. and 11 M.S. degree recipients. She is currently advising five Ph.D. and three MS students.

For the IEEE Systems, Man and Cybernetics Society, Bass is the Vice President of Human-Machine Systems. She serves on the editorial board for two journals. She is the Program Chair Elect for the Cognitive Engineering and Decision Making Technical Group of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society (HFES). She is an active member of UVaPride. She is the faculty advisor of Girls Excited about Math and Science as well as the UVa student chapter of the HFES.

Before coming to U VA, Bass had extensive experience engineering architectures for real-time, complex systems. In 1984-1986, Bass was a sub-system engineer at IBM for the LAMPS MK III (helicopter) project. She developed data handling procurement specifications, supported resolution of fleet and operations problems, and reviewed related engineering change proposals and waivers. In 1986-1988, Bass was a test engineer working for IBM on the AN/BSY-1 (submarine) project. She integrated the hardware and software for a passive acoustic function and wrote the integration plans for two passive acoustic functions. In 1988-1992, Bass was a systems engineer for IBM and then for SAIC on Advanced Automation System (AAS), an air traffic control (ATC) project. She developed the operational concepts, requirements specifications, and the user documentation for adapting several AAS functions that defined the human-computer interface. She also was the technical leader of the adaptation system engineering team.

Prior to her U VA appointment, Bass had nine years of experience in cognitive systems engineering research and development. During the summer of 1993, Bass supported development of the Center-TRACON Automation System at the NASA Ames Research Center. She helped to determine how to assess the Final Approach Spacing Tool, an aid for terminal area ATC. She also helped to develop a training methodology for the Traffic Management Advisor, a tool that aids traffic managers. From 1994 through 1995, Bass developed a cognitive model for a simplified ATC task within the constraints of the SOAR architecture at the University of Nottingham. She investigated how an intelligent agent can learn through external interaction when feedback about decisions made is not immediately available. She has also worked on an architecture for distributed simulation that integrates intelligent, agent-based, operator aids with models of entities in the airspace system. The problem used as a basis for the effort was a joint experiment to use specially equipped helicopters in a partial free flight environment to move cargo between eleven sites around metropolitan Atlanta during the 1996 Summer Olympic Games. The focus of the simulation was to provide the cargo delivery operations personnel the ability to evaluate route plans and to support contingency planning.

From 1995 to 2001, Bass was a research engineer at Search Technology. On her final project at Search, Bass was the Principal Investigator (PI) on a NASA sponsored project to investigate automated real-time icing detection, measurement, and reporting methods. Bass was also the PI on a Phase II NASA SBIR: Turbulence Assessment and Monitoring System (TAMS), a system to improve communication about areas of clear air turbulence. As PI, she, with the help of her colleagues, developed and evaluated a TAMS prototype and analyzed the business case to assess TAMS’s commercial viability. The TAMS team completed a comprehensive pilot-in-the-loop evaluation in a full motion training simulator with four TAMS treatments and the current baseline condition.Bass was the PI on a USAF project that applied knowledge-based technology to aviation simulator training and was the human factors engineer on another USAF project developing a real-time pilot aid with similar technology. She was the artificial intelligence applications consultant on the In-flight Advisor Project at the University of Alabama Flight Dynamics Laboratory. Bass was a human factors consultant to Honeywell in the evaluation of Flight Path Management User Interface concept prototypes for the proposed High-Speed Civil Transport.