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Congratulations to Amna Pir Muhammad – now a SAFER Doctor!

Jan, 21 2025

SAFER warmly congratulates Amna Pir Muhammad on successfully defending her PhD thesis, Bridging Worlds: Integrating Human Factors in Agile Automated Vehicle Development, on January 21, 2025. 

Amna, a doctoral student at the Department of Interaction Design and Software Engineering at Chalmers University of Technology, has focused her research on integrating human factors into the agile development of automated vehicles (AVs). Her work has been part of the SHAPE-IT project, funded by the EU’s Horizon 2020 program under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement 860410. 

Access Amna’s thesis here!


Key findings 
Amna’s research highlights strategies to incorporate human factors knowledge into agile AV development, addressing challenges such as inadequate tools, expertise gaps, and the integration of human-centric considerations into iterative processes. Her findings emphasize: 

  • The importance of requirements strategies for agile development, including structural, organisational, and workflow perspectives. 
  • The need for strategic placement of human factors expertise within organizations to maximize their impact. 
  • The role of continuous experimentation in providing rapid feedback and insights into human interactions with complex AV systems. 

Amna’s work contributes to advancing safer, more user-centered automated vehicle technologies, offering practical approaches for integrating human factors into the development process. 

Once again, congratulations to Dr. Amna Pir Muhammad on this remarkable achievement! 

Read more about the SHAPE-IT project here.

PhD defense details 

  • Main supervisors:  Eric Knauss, University of Gothenburg, Jonas Bärgman, Chalmers University of Technology and Alessia Knauss, Zenseact.
  • Examiner: Richard Torker
  • Opponent: Professor Anne Hess, Technical University of Applied Sciences Würzburg-Schweinfurt
  • Committee members:
    • Associate Professor Maya Daneva, University of Twente
    • Professor Marianne Karlsson, Chalmers Tekniska Högskola
    • Professor Daniel Amyot, University of Ottawa

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