Keith S. Jones

Keith S. Jones is a Professor and Department Chair at Texas Tech University in the Department of Psychological Sciences. As a human factors psychologist, his research bridges human-robot interaction and cybersecurity, focusing on how humans perceive robotic capabilities and how social engineering attacks exploit human vulnerabilities.

• Education: Ph.D. in Human Factors Psychology (2000) from the University of Cincinnati.

His work in human-robot interaction investigates how people perceive others' physical affordances, informing robot design for elder care and navigation. In cybersecurity, he analyzes phishing/vishing attacks, user susceptibility, and warning message effectiveness. Funding sources include the National Science Foundation, Office of Naval Research, and Microsoft. Former students hold roles at institutions like Amazon, Apple, and Sandia National Laboratories.

Recent research trends highlight the use of transformer models (e.g., BERT) for phishing detection, affordance perception in assistive robotics, and persuasion principles in social engineering. Publications span journals like Ecological Psychology and International Journal of Social Robotics. Teaching includes graduate courses in Human Factors Methods and Human-Computer Interaction.