North Carolina State University

Faculty Member, Psychology

Professor and Department Head

CHASS

About

Doug Gillan earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Macalester College (St. Paul, MN) in 1974 and a PhD in experimental psychology from the University of Texas at Austin in 1978.  For the two years following his doctorate, he was a National Science Foundation Fellow at Yale University and a Sloan Foundation Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania.  He worked in industry for the next ten years, conducting  taste research for General Foods Research Center’s Sensory Evaluation Department from 1980 to 1984, then human factors research and development for Lockheed Engineering and Sciences Company at NASA-Johnson Space Center in Houston.  In 1989, Gillan returned to academia, working in the Psychology Departments at Rice University (1989 – 1990),  the University of Idaho (1990 – 1994), and New Mexico State University (1994 – 2006).  He joined the Psychology Department at North Carolina State University as Head in July 2006.  Gillan’s research is in the general areas of human factors and human-computer interaction, with specific interests in information visualization, applications of psychological principles to real-world problems, and universal access to information.  He is a fellow in the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society.