Dr. Ben Knott joined ARLIS as Director of Research in June 2023. Prior to his role at ARLIS, he was a senior scientist and S&T manager within the Department of Defense, focused primarily on research to understand human interaction and socio-technical systems. He served for two years as the Department of the Air Force’s basic research representative within the Pentagon’s Office for Science, Technology, and Engineering. He also held a three-year post in Tokyo, Japan with the Office of Naval Research Global where he served as the Science Director for Warfighter Performance and the Regional Director for science liaison offices in Australia, Singapore and Japan. As Program Officer for the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) he developed and led the Trust and Influence program, sponsoring research on trust between human and machine agents, social influence, and the role of culture and social process in human conflict and extremism.
Dr. Knott received his Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology from The Catholic University of America in Washington, DC in 1999. As a student, he received fellowships at the Army Research Institute and the National Rehabilitation Hospital’s Assistive Technology Research Center. He was a DoD consultant for Booz-Allen and Hamilton before moving to Austin, TX to take a position with the Human Factors Engineering group at AT&T Labs. At AT&T he was at the forefront of research, development and design of natural language user interfaces. In 2005 Dr. Knott moved to Dayton, Ohio working as Lead Scientist for General Dynamics before accepting a government position with the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base (WPAFB). At AFRL, he served as the Director of the Collaborative Technologies Lab and the S&T Advisor for the Applied Neuroscience Branch of the Human Effectiveness Directorate. In these roles, he led several International Project Arrangements with the Defense Science and Technology Lab (DSTL) in the UK and the Defense Science and Technology Group (DSTG) in Australia.
Dr Knott has peer-review publications in the areas of human–machine teaming, human factors design, cognitive neuroscience, virtual environments, and the human dimensions of cyber defense. In addition, he is an inventor on over 65 US patents in the areas of speech user interface design, speech-recognition technologies, human factors methods, and telecommunications.
h-index = 45; i10-index = 95