The Tom Triggs Award is awarded for a major systematic program of HFE-related research that has led to demonstrable improvements in the safety, efficiency and/or usability of systems, products and/or environments.

• This contribution may have been made at any time.
• Awarded to an Australian resident, preferably a member of the Society.
• Covers the research carried out over a period of at least 5 to 10 years.
• The award is in the form of a medal suitably inscribed with the recipient’s name and awarded at the Society’s Annual Conference for the year of the award.

In 2017 this award was combined with the John Lane Award, and renamed the Margaret Bullock Award.

Past recipients

2013 Roger Hall 2014 Robin Burgess-Limerick 2015 Not awarded 2016 Not awarded

About Tom Triggs (1939-2012)

Emeritus Professor Thomas J. Triggs (Tom Triggs), a mathematician, aeronautical engineer and applied experimental psychologist by training, was a distinguished international figure in human factors. He was a researcher, lecturer and research leader who mentored and nurtured many in the HFE profession. Tom held many roles within the HFESA, including President. Tom was a Fellow of the HFESA and of the HFES in the USA and was a recipient of both the Ron Cumming Memorial Medal (2000) and Alan Welford Award (2002). Tom’s career paralleled, in many ways, that of the late Professor Ron Cumming, who was one of his professional mentors. Tom studied aeronautical engineering at Sydney University and, like Ron Cumming, went on to do a PhD in applied experimental psychology and human factors at the University of Michigan in the United States under Professor Paul Fitts. He worked for a short while with Ron Cumming at the Aeronautical Research Laboratory in Melbourne on, among other things, visual landing aids for pilots. One of these is used world-wide. Tom spent the early years of his career in the United States and held a number of senior roles as a human factors researcher and research leader with several major companies, including Boeing, Battelle and Bolt, Beranek & Newman. Tom joined Monash University in Melbourne in 1973 and was promoted to Professor and head of department – and, on retirement, as Emeritus Professor. He taught applied experimental psychology and human factors to thousands of students and became internationally recognised for his research on attention, decision making, young driver safety, driver training and driving simulator research. Tom introduced driving simulators to Australia in the late 1980s and was one of the three original founders of the Monash University Accident Research Centre – MUARC – in Melbourne. He was Deputy Director of the Centre for more than 20 years. His human factors research spanned many domains, including road and aviation safety, driver and pilot performance and process control in nuclear power operations. There are many people in the HFESA and elsewhere who benefited from his intellect, wisdom, knowledge and kindness. As a legacy to his significant contribution to human factors in Australia and to the Society and, in recognition of his untiring devotion to intellectual rigour in human factors research, his desire to see research translated into action and his nurturing of so many junior colleagues and students, the Tom Triggs Memorial Medal was endorsed by the Board in August 2013.