Stewart A Birrell is a distinguished academic and Professor of Human Factors for Future Transport within the National Transport Design Centre (ntdc), additionally is Centre Director for Future Transport and Cities at Coventry University. He received his PhD in Ergonomics from Loughborough University, UK in 2007, and first-class degree in Sport Science in 2002. In 2023 Prof Birrell was on the Stanford University list of top 2% of scientists and academics worldwide.

Stewart has spent nearly 20 years working within the transportation sector within industry and academia, with expertise ranging from trust in automation, driver behaviour, biometrics, and information requirements – all underpinned by the design and user experience of human to future transport interaction, and their evaluation using driving simulators, extended reality (xR) and field operational trials (FOTs). Currently, he applies innovative Human Factors methodologies to enable real-world and virtual evaluation of user interaction with Connected and Automated Mobility Vehicle (CAM), eMobility and charging, Urban Air Mobility (UAM), and innovative rail technologies and services.

Prof Birrell is Principal Investigator (PI) on over £1m of Innovate UK funded project since 2021, and Co-I, academic lead and Board Member for the £20m, seven-year Motability Foundation funded National Centre for Accessible Transport (www.ncat.uk) providing research evidence for industry and policy makers in equitable transport.

Professor Birrell has over 110 journal and conference papers, book sections and articles published across Engineering, Social Sciences and Computer Science, with over 80% of journal articles in Q1 with 5% in the Top 1% of journals. Stewart is also Technical Author on the BSI Flex 1887: Human Factors for Remote Operations of Vehicles, and an Editor of the internationally renowned IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems.

Key Research Areas

• Information requirements for drivers / users in automated vehicles
• Driver state monitoring and biometrics for adaptive interfaces
• Design of internal and external HMI for user trust in AVs
• Driver behaviour and effect on real-world range of electric vehicles and wireless charging
• Bidirectional charging with user and driver behaviour
• Accessible Transport providing evidence for industry and policy makers through ncat
• User experience and willingness to pay for innovative rail technologies and services
• Human Factors in Urban Air Mobility and drone delivery services

Methodologies

• Driver-in-the-loop simulator evaluation of new in-vehicle information systems and technologies
• Field Operational Trials (FOTs) for benchmark and evaluation of user interaction with technology and driver behaviour / performance
• Mixed modality virtual prototyping (physical buck enhanced with VR or AR)
• User requirements capture and generation of functional requirements
• Public and user engagement in Future Transport