2025 Stephanie Binder Young Professional Award

Sponsored by:
Human Factors & Ergonomics Society - Surface Transportation Technical Group

Nominations are being accepted until Friday, August 29, 2025

Stephanie Binder was 35 years old when she tragically passed away in 2011. She was a human factors engineer at NHTSA and played a vital role in the Department’s efforts to combat distracted driving. She was the primary author of NHTSA’s overall driver distraction plan and played a leading role in the USDOT’s Distracted Driving Summits.

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To honor Stephanie’s memory and her impact on the field, the Surface Transportation Technical Group (STTG) of the Human Factors & Ergonomics Society (HFES) confers an annual Young Professional Award to a young human factors professional who demonstrates outstanding contributions to transportation human factors. The award will be conferred at the Annual Business Meeting of the HFES-STTG, at the 2025 Advance Systems and Practices through Innovation, Research, and Education (ASPIRE) Annual Conference.

Qualifications:

35 years old or younger (as of date of nomination).
Employed full time (in academia, industry, or government) in a surface transportation related field for at least two years beyond degree completion (currently enrolled students are not eligible).
Open to anyone globally who meets these qualifications.

Consideration Criteria:

Research: Advancing transportation human factors as demonstrated by journal articles, conference proceedings, technical reports, or product releases.
Outreach/Education: Demonstration of service to the human factors community. Examples include outreach to K-12, college students, or human factors professionals; workshops/seminars to the human factors community.
Other significant contributions to the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society or other professional/technical societies.

Nominees can directly apply or be nominated by a colleague. The nomination package needs to include:

A one-page statement that summarizes the nominee’s qualifications and three reasons why they should be considered for this award.
A curriculum vitae, resume, or comprehensive biosketch of the nominee.
Two letters of recommendations (*do not include more than two letters).

Submission:

All material should be placed into one pdf and the filename should be labeled “HFES_SB_[LastnameFirst initial].pdf” (e.g., HFES_SB_BoyleL.pdf).

Please email nominations or questions to Linda Ng Boyle (linda.boyle@nyu.edu) and cc the STTG Chair, Maryam Zahabi (mzahabi@tamu.edu). Include the following in the subject line: 'Nominee for Stephanie Binder Award' with First and Last name of nominee.