Jan Theeuwes

After obtaining a BSc in Mechanical Engineering (1981), he studied Psychology at Tilburg University receiving a BSc and MSc in Experimental Psychology (1987) with the highest honour (cum laude). In 1992 he received a PhD from the Vrije Universiteit with the highest honor. He worked from 1988 until 1999 at the TNO Human Factors Institute in Soesterberg conducting applied research for governments, car companies (BMW, Caterpillar Volvo) and the EU. In 1999 he was appointed full professor at the VU. He has published more than 250 peer-reviewed papers. In 2010 he was elected into the Royal Dutch Academy of Science (KNAW). In 2001 he was awarded the first Bertelson Award in recognition of outstanding psychological research from the European Society for Cognitive Psychology. He was the president of ESCOP from 2016 to 2018. He is one of the principal advisors of the Dutch Department of Transportation (Rijkswaterstaat) regarding road design and signing. Last year, with two former PhD students he started a new company named Attention Architects, which focuses on eye tracking in applied settings https://attentionarchitects.com/.

His main interest is to acquire fundamental knowledge on a wide array of subjects including perception, attention, memory and emotion using a wide range of methods, including behavioral (RT measurement), eye tracking, functional MRI, psychophysiological recordings (e.g., ERP), patient work and modeling. He has published papers on attentional and oculomotor capture, working memory, multimodal integration, remapping, face perception, visual search, emotion, unconscious processing, the attentional blink, reward processing as well as several applied papers involving road design and headlamp glare. In 2012 he published a book Designing Safe Road Systems (http://www.ashgate.com/isbn/9781409443889)