Profile

Dr. Myra Blanco leads VTTI's Center for Automated Vehicle Systems and serves as interim leader of the Policy, Reliability, and Security Group. She is responsible for oversight of the Center, as well as for ensuring the quality of the design, execution, and interpretation of research efforts. Dr. Blanco is formally trained in human factors engineering and specializes in dealing with the human information processing and perception aspects of different types of new technologies.
She has directed research efforts in naturalistic, on-road, test track, and simulator test environments and she has authored and co-authored more than 60 publications on driver performance and safety. Her experience also includes evaluation of in-vehicle devices, distraction, driver behavior, training, work/rest cycles, fatigue, and active safety systems for light and heavy vehicles.
Dr. Blanco was instrumental in leading the coordination between the automotive industry and Commonwealth of Virginia agencies, which led to the formation of the recently announced Virginia Automated Corridors Initiative.
Dr. Blanco chairs the Safety Forum for the Intelligent Transportation Society of America (ITSA) and the ISO Task Force on Terms and Definitions for Automated Vehicles. She is also a member of the Transportation Research Board (TRB) of the National Academies and the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE), from which she received the SAE International J. Cordell Breed Award for Women Leaders in 2013.

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