Renran Tian

Before joining the Edward P. Fitts Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering in the fall of 2024, Renran Tian was an assistant professor at Purdue University in Indianapolis from 2018 to 2024.

Throughout his career, Tian has secured over $3.1 million in funding as the principal investigator from the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Indiana Department of Transportation and various automotive industry sponsors. Additionally, he serves as a major co-PI for multiple projects, with total funding of approximately $4 million. Tian is a prolific author with over 60 peer-reviewed publications in journals, books and conference proceedings. He is the founding chair of the Technical Committee on Human-Centered AI in Transportation for the IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems Society, where he organizes conference sessions, workshops and student competitions. Furthermore, he has served as an organizing committee member, associate editor and session chair for more than 30 international conferences. Tian is a member of HFES, IEEE, ACM, INFORMS, and IISE.

Research Interests

Tian’s research spans Human-Centered Computing, Human-AI Interaction, Cognitive Psychology, Crowdsourcing and Automated Driving. At the intersection of cognitive ergonomics and artificial intelligence, Tian’s work aims to optimize interactions between humans and intelligent systems by leveraging cognitive principles and ergonomic design. His research involves developing adaptive systems that align with human cognitive processes to enhance usability and effectiveness, creating intelligent tools that support and enhance human decision-making and cognition, ensuring AI systems are designed with a focus on safety, user satisfaction, and long-term usability, and applying AI methods to model and simulate human cognitive behaviors.

Visit Tian’s Cognitive Ergonomics and Intelligent Systems Laboratory

Education

Awards and Honors

• 2022 | CAREER Award, National Science Foundation
• 2019 | Best Paper Award, HCI International