Esa Rantanen
Associate Professor
Esa Rantanen
Associate Professor
Education
BS, MS, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University; MS, Ph.D., Pennsylvania State University
Bio
Professor Rantanen trained as an airline pilot and worked as an air traffic controller before going back to school and into an academic career. Before joining the psychology faculty at RIT in 2007, Professor Rantanen was in the faculty of Institute of Aviation of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Professor Rantanen teaches the PSYC 642 Graduate Research Methods, PSYC 714 Graduate Engineering Psychology, and PSYC 234 Industrial and Organizational Psychology courses.
Professor Rantanen's theoretical research interests lie in the areas of human factors in complex and dynamic systems, human performance measurement and modeling, mental workload, decision making, and human error and reliability. His primary research focus is on the role of time and temporal mental models in human performance. Professor Rantanen is currently pursuing research in three applied domains: Air traffic control (air traffic controllers' situation awareness), healthcare (human error in medicine), and process control (control room displays).
Professor Rantanen is a member of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society (HFES; since 1993), Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE Systems, Man, and Cybernetics Society; since 1997), and Association for Aviation Psychology (AAP; since 1999). He serves in the editorial boards of journals 'Human Factors' and 'International Journal of Aviation Psychology'.
Select Scholarship
Dr. Esa Rantanen is a member of the faculty team of the AWARE-AI NSF Research Traineeship (NRT) Program. Graduate students from associated RIT PhD and MS programs are invited to review information on how to apply and benefits for Trainees at our website: https://rit.edu/nrtai. Women, Deaf or Hard-of-Hearing, and African American, Latino/a American, or Native American students are especially encouraged to apply.
Currently Teaching
In the News
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October 5, 2022
Faculty researchers secure another workforce development grant to support growth of machinists in manufacturing
Faculty researchers received a new grant from the National Science Foundation to develop a system that improves passage of tacit knowledge from skilled machinists to those coming into the field.
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January 31, 2022
AI research collaboration begins
Cecilia Alm, an associate professor in RIT’s College of Liberal Arts, was awarded nearly $2 million by the National Science Foundation to lead a team of RIT faculty addressing a lack of diversity in the artificial intelligence research community and gaps in AI curricula.
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September 21, 2021
RIT awarded nearly $2 million for NSF Research Traineeship Program, AWARE-AI
To help address a lack of diversity, as well as gaps in AI curricula, RIT was awarded a grant of nearly $2 million by the NSF to create a new research traineeship program for graduate students