Professor Mark Young is a human factors specialist with over 25 years’ experience applying his expertise in fields such as vehicle interface design and accident investigation.
Human factors looks at the interactions between people and the systems in which they work, with the aim of finding ways to optimise performance and safety, or gain a deeper understanding of why things have gone wrong.
Mark’s expertise can add an extra dimension to nC2’s work, in particular for our clients’ accident and failure investigation projects.
Professor Mark Young
While testing and analysis can be used to understand physical failure mechanisms, human factors explores how elements of the wider system, such as work practices, equipment design and safety culture, may have contributed to an incident, helping to identify more effective mitigations to prevent recurrence.
We can also call on Mark’s expertise to support clients’ applied research projects, for example if they are seeking the latest human factors thinking to inform product design or for inclusion in research funding proposals.
Having studied psychology, Mark completed a PhD in human factors in 2000 and joined Brunel University, where he applied human factors principles to vehicle automation design. He later spent 11 years as an investigator at the Rail Accident Investigation Branch, as well as contributing his expertise to investigations by the equivalent air and marine investigation bodies. He joined the University of Southampton as Professor of Human Factors in Transport in 2023.
Mark is President-Elect of the Chartered Institute of Ergonomics and Human Factors (CIEHF), is on the editorial board of the journal Ergonomics, and has authored over 70 peer-reviewed papers and several books on human factors.