Monica L.H. Jones PhD

ABOUT ME

I have a diverse background in engineering applications of physical ergonomics, anthropometry, and biomechanics. Motivated by 8 years of practice as an industrial engineer, my approach to research is pragmatic and seeks to accurately quantify an individual’s interaction with products and workspaces. As an Assistant Research Scientist within the UMTRI, my research focuses on improving vehicle safety for the whole population of individuals who travel in road vehicles. Applying an occupant-centric approach, my research addresses issues with accommodation, safety, anthropometry and ergonomics for vehicle design. I have placed emphasis on vulnerable populations including child passengers and obese occupants, in addition to military and law enforcement personnel. I am also interested in physical ergonomic assessment of workplace design and developing force generation and posture prediction algorithms for digital human figure modeling software used for industrial ergonomics and military applications. Most recently, I have led the development of a vehicle-based platform to enable the objective characterization of occupants’ psychophysical, kinematic and physiological response to vehicle motion under a driver’s and automated control.

Research Areas

Vehicle Occupant Safety & Accommodation

• Develop knowledge and models that accurately represent seat belt fit, occupant posture and accommodation, especially for the more-vulnerable vehicle occupants.

Engineering Anthropometry

• Improve the design of products and workspaces through the study of human physical dimensions and capabilities.
• Parametric modeling of human anatomy, which accounts for morphological variances of human body shapes across populations.

Vehicle Occupant Behavior and Dynamics

• Development of an experimental platform to quantify occupant response in passenger vehicles. Involves simultaneous measurement of vehicle motion, passenger's kinematics, psychophysical and physiological responses during specified driving conditions.
• Quantify passenger susceptibility to motion sickness to guide the design of automated vehicles.

Physical Ergonomic Assessment of Workspace Design

• Accurate representation of task posture and force requirements, which are essential for assessment of worker capabilities given that the risk of injury is greatly increased when job task requirements approach worker capabilities.