STUDY COMMITTEE BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION
William C. Howell, Chair, is currently retired but holds Adjunct Professorships at both Arizona State and Rice Universities. After earning his doctorate in psychology in 1958 from the University of Virginia, he joined the Aviation Psychology Laboratory at Ohio State University (OSU), eventually serving as its Director and holding a professorship in the OSU psychology department. In 1968 he moved to Rice University, where he was instrumental in establishing the doctoral-level psychology department that he chaired for 17 years. On leave from Rice, he served as Chief Scientist for Human Resources for the U.S. Air Force from 1989 to 1992, and following that, he was appointed Executive Officer for Science of the American Psychological Association—a position he held until his retirement in 1997. His research, mostly on topics in human performance and engineering psychology, has resulted in more than 125 publications. He has served on the editorial boards of seven journals; positions have included the Editorship of Human Factors and the Associate Editorship of American Psychologist and the Journal of Applied Psychology. He has held a variety of elected offices in the profession and appointments to advisory boards, including Presidency of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, Chair of the Technical Advisory Board for the Navy’s Tactical Decision Making Under Stress (TADMUS) program and the National Research Council’s (NRC’s) Committee on Human Factors, and the current Chairmanship of the Board of Convention Affairs of the American Psychological Association.
David A. Champion is Director of the Auto Test Department at Consumers Union (CU). An engineer with extensive experience in automotive testing, design, and development, Mr. Champion oversees testing operations at CU’s facility, the largest independent automobile testing center in the world. Before joining CU in 1997, Mr. Champion was a senior engineer with Nissan Motor Corporation, and before that he worked for Land Rover of North America, supervising start-up of their test facility and the hot climate test programs in Phoenix, Arizona. Prior to that, he worked for Land Rover UK, Ltd., where he led a new-vehicle development group. Mr. Champion received a bachelor’s degree
in mechanical engineering and metal and material science from the University of Aston in Birmingham, England.
Patricia R. DeLucia is Associate Professor in Experimental Psychology and former Associate Chairperson in the Department of Psychology at Texas Tech University, which she joined in 1991. She is also Coordinator of the Human Factors Psychology Program at the university. Dr. DeLucia’s teaching experience includes courses in human factors psychology, research methods, and perception—theory and applications. Her current research interests are focused on theoretical and applied issues in visual perception and performance, with applications in transportation (driving and aviation), among other areas. She has received numerous grants and published extensively on these topics. Dr. DeLucia received her doctorate in experimental psychology from Columbia University. She is on the editorial board of Human Factors and is a member of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, the American Psychological Association, the Association for Aviation Psychologists, and the Vision Sciences Society.
T. Bella Dinh-Zarr is Director of Traffic Safety Policy at the National Office of the American Automobile Association. Before that, she was Scientist in the Office of Plans and Policy of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, Research Associate with the Texas Transportation Institute, Fellow at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and Production Editor for the International Journal of Technology Assessment in Health Care. Dr. Dinh-Zarr has published on the topics of interventions to increase the use of safety belts and to reduce injuries from problem drinking. She received her doctorate in health policy from the University of Texas School of Public Health. She is a member of the American Public Health Association and the Delta Omega Public Health Honor Society.
Michael M. Finkelstein is Principal of Michael Finkelstein & Associates. He previously worked for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, serving as Policy Advisor for the Intelligent Vehicle Highway System, Associate Administrator for R&D, Associate Administrator for Rulemaking, and Associate Administrator for Planning and Evaluation.
He served as Chief of the Highway and Mass Transit Program Division in the Office of the Secretary of Transportation. Mr. Finkelstein has a master’s degree from Rutgers University. He has served as a member of numerous Transportation Research Board (TRB) committees—the Committee on Transportation Safety Management, the Committee for a Review of the National Automated Highway System Consortium Research Program, and the Committee to Review the Intelligent Vehicle Initiative (IVI) Program. He is currently a member of the Committee to Review the IVI Program, Phase 2. Mr. Finkelstein consults for an automobile manufacturer and an automotive supplier.
Philip W. Haseltine is President of the Automotive Coalition for Traffic Safety, Inc. (ACTS), a nonprofit safety organization funded by domestic and international automobile manufacturers and major suppliers, whose mission is to educate the general public and targeted audiences about technology-related safety issues. Prior to joining ACTS in 1988, Mr. Haseltine served as Chief of Staff of the U.S. Department of Transportation, where he directed the Office of the Secretary, and as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Policy and International Affairs. Before that he was Executive Director of Michigan’s Office of Highway Safety Planning and the Governor’s Highway Safety Representative. Mr. Haseltine has extensive experience with many initiatives for increasing safety belt use. He moderated the 2001 Seat Belt Summit, which considered policy options for increasing safety belt use in the United States. Mr. Haseltine holds a bachelor’s degree in economics from Michigan State University. He is a member of the Society of Automotive Engineers, the National Press Club, and the Washington Automotive Press Association.
Peter D. Loeb is Professor of Economics and former Chair of the Department of Economics at Rutgers University, where he has taught courses in econometrics, advanced economic statistics and statistical analysis, economics and quantitative analysis, and applied economics. Dr. Loeb has published on the effectiveness of seat belt legislation on motor vehicle fatality and injury rates and is coauthor of a book entitled Causes and Deterrents of Transportation Accidents: An Analysis by Mode. Other areas of transportation that he has investigated include
the effect of alcohol consumption and related variables on motor vehicle fatalities. He has a doctorate in economics from Rutgers University. Dr. Loeb is a member of the American Economic Association, the Southern Economic Association, the Eastern Economic Association, and the Transportation Research Forum.
Donald W. Reinfurt retired as Deputy Director of the Highway Safety Research Center (HSRC) and Adjunct Professor in the Department of Biostatistics, both at the University of North Carolina. He joined HSRC in 1968 and held positions of increasing responsibility, from Research Assistant and Research Associate to Staff Associate, Associate Director, and Deputy Director. Dr. Reinfurt is an expert on traffic safety data and has written numerous reports and articles on highway safety topics, including safety belt use. He earned a doctorate in statistics from North Carolina State University. Dr. Reinfurt is a Fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Automotive Medicine and previously served on the TRB Committee to Review Federal Estimates of the Relationship of Vehicle Weight to Fatality and Injury Risk.
Judith M. Tanur is Distinguished Teaching Professor in the Department of Sociology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. Her research interests include statistics, methodology, survey research, and social psychology. She received a doctorate in sociology from State University of New York at Stony Brook. Dr. Tanur is a Fellow of the American Statistical Association (ASA) and recipient of ASA’s Founders’ Award, a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and an elected member of the International Statistical Institute. She serves on the Board of Trustees of the National Opinion Research Center and on the Board of Directors of the Social Science Research Council. Dr. Tanur has served as a member of numerous NRC committees, including the Committee on Applied and Theoretical Statistics and the Committee on National Statistics, chairing its Advanced Research Seminar on Cognitive Aspects of Survey Methodology.
David C. Viano retired as Principal Scientist for Safety Integration at General Motors Corporation North America, where he held numerous
positions of responsibility, including Manager of Advanced Body, Interior and Safety for Saab Automobile AB and Principal Research Scientist for GM Research Laboratories. Currently, he is the Director of the Sport Biomechanics Laboratory and Adjunct Professor of Engineering at Wayne State University. Dr. Viano is an expert on occupant restraint systems, biomechanics, and injury control. He is also Adjunct Professor of Traffic Safety at Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden, and Editor-in-Chief of Traffic Injury Protection. He received a Ph.D. in applied mechanics from the California Institute of Technology and a Doctor of Medicine from Karolinska Institute and Medical University in Stockholm, Sweden. Dr. Viano has served on numerous NRC panels, including the Committee to Identify Research Needs for Occupant Restraints, the Committee to Review the Status and Progress of the Injury Control Program at CDC, and the Committee on Trauma Research. He holds stock in an automobile company.
Allan F. Williams is Chief Scientist at the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, where he has held increasing positions of responsibility—Social Psychologist, Senior Behavioral Scientist, Vice President for Research, and Senior Vice President for Research—since joining the organization in 1972. Dr. Williams has published extensively on a wide range of highway safety topics including safety belt use and has been involved in numerous driver surveys. He received his doctorate in social psychology from Harvard University. Dr. Williams has served as Associate Editor of Crash Prevention and Injury Control and the Journal of Traffic Medicine. He has also served on the NRC Committee on Injury Prevention and Control, the TRB Committee for a Study of Consumer Automotive Safety Information, and the TRB Committee to Identify Research Needs for Occupant Restraints.
Johanna P. Zmud is President of NuStats Partners, LP, a research and consulting firm that provides behavioral analysis and demographic forecasting to corporations and public agencies throughout the United States and Mexico. Dr. Zmud has 18 years of market research experience with a special interest in the problems associated with survey approaches to complex policy issues. She has published papers on statistical imputation, controlling item nonresponse in survey research,
quality in survey research among non-English-speaking populations, instrument design, and stated preference applications. She received her doctorate in communication research from the Annenberg School of Communication at the University of Southern California. Dr. Zmud chairs TRB’s Committee on Travel Survey Methods and is a member of TRB’s Committee on Public Transit Marketing and Fare Policy.
