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Study Committee Biographical Information

Nancy J. Currie-Gregg (Chair), is the director of the Texas A&M University Space Institute and serves on the Board of Directors of the Texas Space Commission. A professor of engineering practice at Texas A&M University, she holds joint appointments in the Departments of Aerospace Engineering and Industrial & Systems Engineering. With a distinguished background in aerospace systems, safety engineering, and human-systems integration, she brings a unique blend of operational, technical, and leadership experience to the university’s research and education missions. She currently serves on the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s Board on Human-Systems Integration.

A former NASA astronaut, Dr. Currie-Gregg flew four space shuttle missions, logging more than 1,000 hours in space and contributing significantly to the development of human spaceflight operations. She held multiple senior leadership roles over her 30-year career at NASA’s Johnson Space Center. Following the Space Shuttle Columbia tragedy, she directed the Space Shuttle Program Safety and Mission Assurance Office, overseeing the return-to-flight effort. She later served more than a decade as the principal engineer and chief engineer at the NASA Engineering and Safety Center, where she led independent engineering assessments for high-risk human spaceflight programs. A retired U.S. Army Colonel and Master Army Aviator, she accrued more than 4,000 flight hours in rotary- and fixed-wing aircraft.

Dr. Currie-Gregg earned a bachelor’s degree in biological sciences from The Ohio State University, an MS in safety engineering from the University

of Southern California, and a PhD in industrial engineering from the University of Houston.

Bruce Bradtmiller, a physical anthropologist, is the senior consulting scientist emeritus at Anthrotech. Since joining the firm in 1983, Dr. Bradtmiller has designed, conducted, and directed numerous body size surveys and other anthropometric research projects. He has overseen the execution of major anthropometric surveys of U.S. military services as well as the nation’s law enforcement officers to better accommodate that population in its vehicular workspace. His leadership in overseeing surveys has included both traditional tape-and-caliper measurements as well as 3D surface scans.

Dr. Bradtmiller has worked on anthropometric accommodation for an array of products, including respirators, eyewear, helmets, gloves, dress and functional clothing, chemical protective garments, implantable cardiac defibrillators, automotive lumbar supports, infant car seats, and breast pumps.

He is an appointed expert to the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) Technical Committee 159 on Ergonomics, Subcommittee 3 on Anthropometry and Biomechanics, and the lead author of ISO standards on anthropometry. Dr. Bradtmiller received his BA in anthropology and French from Indiana University and his MA and PhD in anthropology from Northwestern University.

Rory A. Cooper (NAE) is a National Medal Laureate and the associate vice-chancellor for research for STEM and health sciences collaboration, a Distinguished Professor of Rehabilitation Engineering, and the FISA Foundation and Paralyzed Veterans of America Professor of Rehabilitation Engineering in the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. He also holds appointments in the Departments of Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Bioengineering, and Orthopedic Surgery. He is the founder, director, and chief executive officer of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs’ (VA’s) Human Engineering Research Laboratories and a senior research career scientist and research center director for the VA. From 1997 to 2018, he served as chair of the Department of Rehabilitation Science and Technology at the University of Pittsburgh. His research has centered on the engineering, invention, design, evaluation, and transfer of assistive technologies, including wheelchairs, robotics, and smart devices. He has authored more than 400 peer-reviewed journal papers and 10 books in the field of rehabilitation science and engineering and holds more than 30 patents. In 2024, he was named a member of the National Academy of Engineering in recognition of wheelchair innovations that transformed the health, mobility, and inclusion of people with disabilities and older adults. He has been named a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Royal Society of Medicine, the National Academy of

Inventors, and the Biomedical Engineering Society. He was a member of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s Committee for a Study on the Feasibility of Wheelchair Restraint Systems in Passenger Aircraft and the Committee on the Use of Selected Assistive Products and Technologies in Eliminating or Reducing the Effects of Impairments. Dr. Cooper earned a BS and an MS in electrical engineering from California Polytechnic State University and a PhD in electrical and computer engineering from the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Barbara M. Dunn is an independent aviation safety consultant and the current president of the International Society of Air Safety Investigators (ISASI). She is a member of the International Civil Aviation Organization’s Cabin Safety Working Group and Human Factors Working Group. Ms. Dunn is a safety professional with more than 40 years of experience in the transportation industry with a focus on accident prevention and investigation. In 2022, Ms. Dunn received the ISASI Jerome F. Lederer Award. She is a former recipient of the Canadian Minister of Transport’s Canadian Aviation Safety Award for her work to promote aviation safety with her work around critical incident stress response. In 2003, Ms. Dunn retired after 32 years as a working cabin crewmember for Air Canada. She has contributed to published papers on emergency evacuation and accident investigation procedures and has taught courses on accident preparedness and response and cabin safety.

Edwin R. Galea is a professor and the founding director of the Centre for Safety, Resilience and Protective Security and the Fire Safety Engineering Group of the University of Greenwich in London, where he has worked in the area of computational fire engineering research since 1986. His research interests include evacuation behavior, evacuation modeling, fire dynamics, and computational fluid dynamics fire modeling. His aviation-based fire and evacuation projects include design and certification analysis for airplanes such as A380, A340-600, Blended Wing Body concepts (for Airbus, Boeing, and JetZero), Mitsubishi Regional Jet, B777 variants, Dash8-400, CS100, CS300, and VIP-configured B747 aircraft. He has extensive experience in designing and running large-scale evacuation experiments and survey and interview protocols to collect human behavior data to assist in model development and validation. He has successfully evacuated, without incident, many thousands of people from aircraft, large buildings, hospitals, trains, passenger ships at sea (the largest with more than 2,000 passengers), and high-rise construction sites in central London. He has been involved in interviewing and surveying hundreds of survivors from incidents such as the World Trade Center 9/11 evacuation, the London Underground bombing, domestic fires, wildfires, and aircraft accidents. He is the author of more

than 300 academic and professional publications and has successfully supervised 35 PhD students in fire and evacuation-related studies. He is a visiting professor at Ghent University Belgium and the Western Norway University of Applied Sciences, Haugesund, Norway, and an associate editor of the Royal Aeronautical Journal and Safety Science.

He has served on several major investigations and legal cases as an expert in fire and evacuation, including the Swiss Air MD11 crash, the Paddington Rail Crash, the Admiral Duncan Pub bombing, and the Grenfell Tower Fire Inquiry. He has served on a number of standards committees concerned with fire and evacuation for organizations such as IMO, ISO, BSI, and the SFPE Task Group on Human Behavior in Fire. He assisted the IMO in framing the evacuation analysis guidelines for passenger ships, MSC Circ 1033, 1238, and 1533.

Among his many awards and honors are the 2001 British Computer Society Gold Medal, the 2002 Queen’s Anniversary prize, the 2006 and 2018 Royal Aeronautical Society Gold Award, the 2013 Royal Institution of Naval Architects Medal of Distinction, the 2014 The Guardian University Award for Research Impact, and the 2019 SFPE (UK Chapter) Best Research Project Award.

Professor Galea studied mathematics and physics at Monash University (BSc Hons, DipEd) in Melbourne, Australia, and received his PhD in astrophysics from the University of Newcastle, NSW, Australia.

Rush F. Green worked for The Boeing Company for more than 31 years. Before he retired from Boeing in 2022, Mr. Green was an associate technical fellow for human factors, where he performed research and analysis in physical human factors, including digital human modeling and ergonomic analyses of airplane design, and developed processes for the integration of human engineering. Prior to that, Mr. Green worked at Boeing as a human factors engineer, where his research included the development of human modeling software and the ergonomics of airplane designs. His research and analysis incorporated other topics, including anthropometry, biomechanics, passenger survivability, in-flight medical emergencies, flight attendant ergonomics, effects of aging, and passenger travel experience. Mr. Green has published articles and presented papers on aviation topics including digital human modeling and human factors simulation. Mr. Green has a BA in mathematics from Pomona College and an MS in biomechanics from the University of Oregon, Eugene.