A Carle Illinois College of Medicine (CI MED) Health Innovation Professor has been selected to receive an international award for ergonomics and human factors. Caroline Cao has received the International Ergonomics & Human Factors Association (IEA) Fellow Award recognizing her outstanding and sustained performance in the field of ergonomics and human factors at an international level, as well as an extensive publication record in international journals or international consulting or service at a high level. The award will be presented at the IEA2024 Congress in Jeju, South Korea in August.
Cao is a researcher, educator, and entrepreneur in the design and development of medical systems and devices, and enabling or immersive technology (AR/VR, simulation and training, decision aid, haptics, sensory substitution, navigational aid, robotics, etc.) for laparoscopic—also called “minimally invasive”—surgery and robotic surgery.
Sometimes called “keyhole surgery”, laparoscopic techniques involve using imaging technology to view and guide the manipulation of tiny instruments inside the human body. This deprives the surgeon of the sense of touch as well as depth perception. Cao explains, “I started my academic career studying how people manipulate remotely… and looking for ways to enhance that, restoring the haptic feedback that’s missing, the depth perception that’s missing… and of course designing the surgical tools for laparoscopic surgery, and looking at how we can scale up—how we can make all surgeons perform at the top level.”
Cao’s new project is XR+AI for Empathy Training (XAI4ET). XAI4ET is interdisciplinary and promises a kinder world. Cao and colleagues are leveraging simulation training and immersive technology to teach empathy to doctors and first responders—such as EMTs, police, or firefighters. This project is funded by Strategic Research Initiatives and involves colleagues in CI MED, the Department of Industrial & Enterprise Engineering, the College of Education, the School of Art & Design, the College of Applied Health Sciences, the College of Media, the Police Training Institute, and the National Center for Supercomputing Applications.
XAI4ET is envisioned as a combination think-tank, design studio, and R&D laboratory that researches and teaches empathy using simulation technology and artificial intelligence (AI). Health care and law enforcement will be the foundation, as the project grows to tackle empathy training in other domains, with one possible goal being the deployment of innovative technologies in the marketplace.
At Illinois, Cao serves in several capacities, including director of engineering innovation and medical simulation at CI MED. In the Department of Industrial and Enterprise Systems Engineering (ISE) Cao is a professor. In The Grainger College of Engineering, she is the director of applied health technology initiatives.
Editor's note: The original version of this article by the Department of Industrial & Enterprise Engineering can be found here.