Pratima Saravanan

Dr. Pratima Saravanan is an Assistant Professor in the School of Industrial Engineering and Management at Oklahoma State University, where she has been employed since July 2023. Previously, she held concurrent appointments as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Health Data Science and Analytics at Houston Methodist Hospital (2021-2023) and as a Lecturer at Texas A&M University's Department of Industrial & Systems Engineering (2022-2023).

Her educational background includes:

• PhD in Industrial Engineering with a focus on Human Factors from The Pennsylvania State University (2021)
• MS in Industrial Engineering from The Pennsylvania State University (2020)
• MS in Bioengineering from The Pennsylvania State University (2018)
• BE in Biomedical Engineering from PSG College of Technology, India (2015)

Dr. Saravanan's research spans cognitive sciences, human factors in healthcare, and clinical decision-making. She specializes in understanding human performance in complex systems, particularly in healthcare settings and emergency response scenarios. Her work integrates methodologies from human factors engineering, cognitive psychology, and data science to improve system design and human performance. She leads the Cognitive Performance Lab at Oklahoma State University, which focuses on studying human cognitive performance in various contexts including healthcare and emergency response.

Her recent publications demonstrate a strong focus on cognitive workload assessment, stress monitoring in healthcare professionals, decision-making processes, and prosthetic rehabilitation. Her work increasingly incorporates advanced analytical methods including machine learning, topic modeling, and physiological measurements to understand human performance in complex environments. She has published extensively on ICU nurse stress during the pandemic, firefighter decision-making, and prosthetic prescription methodologies.

Dr. Saravanan teaches courses including Work Design, Ergonomics, and Human Performance; Economic Decision Analysis; and Doctoral Research and Dissertation. She is currently involved in funded research projects including 'A Multi-level Investigation of Factors Influencing Community Health Program Efficacy' through the InSPIRE Program in the College of Education and Human Sciences, and 'Occupational Stress and Cognitive Workload among Urban and Wildland Fire Fighters: A Comparison Study' with the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston.