Dr. Meshkati instructing a Human Factors in Aviaion Safety course.

Dr. Najmedin Meshkati is a (tenured) Professor of Civil/Environmental Engineering and a Professor of Industrial & Systems Engineering at the Viterbi School of Engineering, University of Southern California (USC). He is an elected Fellow of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, an AT&T Faculty Fellow in Industrial Ecology, a NASA Faculty Fellow (Jet Propulsion Laboratory, 2003 and 2004), and a recipient of the Presidential Young Investigator Award from the National Science Foundation (NSF) in 1989.

 

Dr. Meshkati is the only full-time USC faculty member who has continuously been conducting research on human factors and aviation safety-related issues (e.g., cockpit design, pilot error, and runway incursions) and teaching in the USC Aviation Safety and Security Program, for the past twenty years. During this period, he has taught in the “Human Factors in Aviation Safety” and “System Safety” short courses. From 1992 to 1999, he also was the Director and had administrative and academic responsibility for the USC Aviation Safety, as well as for the Transportation Safety, and Process Safety Management programs. For the last two decades, he has worked with numerous aviation safety professionals from all over the world, taught aviation safety short courses for private and public sector organizations, including the US Navy and US Air Force.

 

Dr. Meshkati’s views on aviation safety have been cited and referred to in many major national newspapers and major international trade magazines, such as the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Australian, and Air Transport World. In the wake of the Valujet crash in 1996, he published a letter in the New York Times (“Does Valujet Pay Enough Attention to Safety,” October 4, 1996) and pointed out the matter of safety culture in that accident. That letter generated a lot of discussion in Washington, D.C., and in the Congress. Meshkati’s past work in this area, teaching of aviation safety at USC, and this letter lead the NTSB to invite him as one of the plenary keynote speakers to its special symposium “Corporate Culture and Transportation Safety”, held April 1997 in Washington, DC.

 

After a series of major aviation accidents and incidents in Alaska, Meshkati wrote an Op-Ed article entitled “There is hope for aviation safety (in Alaska),” which was published in the State of Alaska major newspaper, the Anchorage Daily News (May 2002).

 

A major research interest of Dr. Meshkati is in the role of national cultures in aviation safety and he has written several articles on the topic. One of such articles has been published in the October 1996 issue of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) Journal. In addition, he has also authored a chapter entitled "Macroergonomics and Aviation Safety: The Importance of Cultural Factors in Technology Transfer" in Hal Hendrick's and Brian Kleiner's edited book (2002), Macroergonomics: Theory, Methods, and Applications.

 

Another major area of Dr. Meshkati’s research since the tragic accident in Tenerife in 1977, for which he has been considered a world’s expert, deals with runway incursions. He has been studying the (common) causes of the runway incursion accidents at Tenerife and the Milan Linate airport and lecturing about major contributing human factors causes of runway incursions at other major airports. His unique efforts in this field, lead the FAA to invite him as the plenary speaker at the FAA Runway Safety Symposium in Alaska in 2002.  He is frequently quoted and his views on runway incursions are cited by major magazines and newspapers, most recently by Air Transport World (Sept 2003), The Australian (April 2, 2004), Wall Street Journal, the Wall Street Journal Europe, and the Asian Wall Street Journal (June 21, 2005), and the Los Angeles Times (November 24, 2005, and February 23, 2006). He was prominently featured in an hour-long special documentary on the 30^th anniversary of Tenerife accident which was made and broadcasted by the Discovery Channel on January 10 and 23, 2007.

 

Dr. Meshkati has been invited and given speeches at several aviation-related technical conferences. He has been invited by the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) symposiums on Flight Safety and Human Factors in 1993 and 1994. In 2001, he served as the plenary speaker at the FAA’s 3rd Workshop on Risk Analysis and Safety Performance Measurement in Aviation, held at the NASA/Langley Center in Hampton, Virginia.

 

Dr. Meshkati simultaneously received a B.S. in Industrial Engineering and a B.A. in Political Science in 1976, from Sharif (Arya-Meher) University of Technology in Iran and Shahid Beheshti University (National University of Iran), respectively; a M.S. in Engineering Management in 1978; and a Ph.D. in Industrial and Systems Engineering in 1983 from USC. He is a Certified Professional Ergonomist (CPE # 650).

 

Dr. Najmedin Meshkati

Professor
Department of Civil/Environmental Engineering
Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial & Systems Engineering

USC Viterbi School of Engineering
Kaprielian Hall (KAP), Rm 224D
University of Southern California
Los Angeles, California 90089-2531
U.S.A.
Tel: (213) 740-8765
Fax: (213) 744-1426
Email: meshkati@usc.edu
http://www-bcf.usc.edu/~meshkati/