Andrew Neal

Professor Andrew Neal is a Professor of Business and Organizational Psychology at the School of Psychology, Faculty of Health, Medicine and Behavioural Sciences at the University of Queensland. He leads a large program of applied research into human performance and safety in complex environments, which has received more than $10 million in funding from the ARC, Federal and State Governments, and industry. His work focuses on improving the safety and effectiveness of critical national infrastructure through understanding human factors in complex systems.

Professor Neal's research spans two primary areas: (1) Performance, safety and effectiveness of people at work, where he has published influential papers on safety climate and work role performance, including the highly cited Griffin, Neal and Parker (2007) paper that developed a theory of work role performance explaining how behaviors like adaptivity and proactivity contribute to individual, team, and organizational effectiveness; and (2) Workload, decision making, and self-regulation, where his research has improved understanding of how people manage task demands in complex systems such as air traffic control and emergency response. He has developed computational models to simulate decision-making processes in environments requiring tradeoffs between competing goals like safety versus productivity.

His recent publications demonstrate a strong trend toward computational modeling of human decision-making processes, particularly in safety-critical environments. There's a clear progression from theoretical frameworks to applied computational models that can predict human behavior in complex systems. His work increasingly bridges cognitive psychology with organizational behavior, focusing on how individual cognitive processes scale up to team and organizational performance. Recent publications also show growing interdisciplinary collaboration, particularly with neuroscientists and medical researchers, expanding the application of his models to healthcare settings.

Professor Neal has successfully supervised numerous PhD students and has been principal or associate advisor on multiple doctoral projects. His research program has attracted significant funding, with current projects including "Cognitive Neuroscience framework for Attentional Control Traits and States" (2023-2026), "A dynamic model of work-related effort, recovery, and affective well-being" (2021-2025), and "Designing work roles for crew operating multiple unmanned aircraft" (2021-2025). Past funding includes multiple ARC Discovery and Linkage Projects, as well as substantial grants from Defence Science and Technology Group.