Jack L. Auflick, Ph.D.

Director, Human Factors

Dr. Auflick is a Human Factors–Engineering Psychologist based in Packer Engineering’s office in Ann Arbor, Michigan.  His areas of specialization include cognitive aspects of flight cockpit displays, human-machine interfaces for automotive and medical device applications, driver distraction and crash avoidance, human error analysis, and risk modeling.  He has additional experience in related areas including the operational assessment and evaluation of human performance within complex or hazardous working environments.  Dr. Auflick is also well versed in experimental design and statistical methods that range from basic non-parametric to univariate and advanced multivariate approaches.  His applied research has been sponsored in part by government agencies including the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Department of Energy, Department of Defense, and private sector companies such as British Petroleum, Ford Motor Company, Visteon, and Nissan.

Prior to joining Packer Engineering, Dr. Auflick worked briefly for a medical device manufacturing firm evaluating intra-cardiac device interfaces and usability.  He spent a number of years at Nissan and Visteon (Ford) working as a senior project engineer in the areas of advanced product design, driver distraction, and automotive digital entertainment. Additional experience has included work at the Idaho National Laboratory and Los Alamos National Laboratory, where Dr. Auflick focused on analysis of human error within the nuclear and nuclear–related defense industry, including the development of a unique expert system for quantifying the probability of human error and creation of a new training program on Human Reliability Analysis for the NRC.  Dr. Auflick has received commendations and awards for creation of a risk–based model to identify potential digital controller failures in conjunction with the DOE’s Year 2000 initiative, for a new ATC controller interface in conjunction with the FAA’s Multiple Parallel Approach Project, and from internal recognition programs at Nissan.  He currently holds five U. S. patents for automotive entertainment and safety products.