Richard Pak

Dr. Richard Pak is Professor of Psychology and Director of the Human Factors Institute at Clemson University. He researches human interaction with autonomous systems, focusing on trust, aging, and cognitive factors.

Education:

• PhD Psychology, Georgia Institute of Technology, 2005
• MS Engineering Psychology, Georgia Institute of Technology, 2001
• BS Applied Psychology, Georgia Institute of Technology, 1997

Research Interests: Examines how age and cognitive abilities affect human-AI collaboration, trust repair strategies, and ethical AI design. Develops models for attention control in complex tasks.

Publication Trends: Recent work investigates AI etiquette, trust calibration across human lifespans, cognitive predictors of human-autonomy teaming, and psychomotor skill assessment.

Awards:

• Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Fellow (2022)
• Liberty Mutual Best Paper Award (2019)
• APA Fellow (2016)

Lab: Directs the Cognition and Automated Technology (CAT) Lab, funded by NSF and DoD grants to study human-AI collaboration.