Najmedin (Najm) Meshkati, Ph.D., CPE

Najmedin MeshkatiNajmedin (Najm) is a (tenured, full) Professor of Civil/Environmental Engineering and a Professor of Industrial and Systems Engineering at the Viterbi School of Engineering, University of Southern California (USC). He was a Jefferson Science Fellow, and a Senior Science and Engineering Advisor, Office of Science and Technology Adviser to the Secretary of State (2009-2010), Washington, DC. He is a member of the Global Advisory Council of the Civilian Research and Development Foundation (CRDF) Global, chaired by Ambassador Thomas Pickering.

For the past 25 years, he has been teaching and conducting research on risk reduction and reliability enhancement of complex technological systems, including nuclear power, aviation, and petrochemical and transportation industries. He has served as a member on a national panel in the United States investigating a major recent accident: The National Academy of Engineering/National Research Council’s Committee on the Analysis of Causes of the Deepwater Horizon Explosion, Fire, and Oil Spill to Identify Measures to Prevent Similar Accidents in the Future (2010-2011) which produced the Macondo Well Deepwater Horizon Blowout: Lessons Learned for Improving Offshore Drilling Safety (published by the National Academies Press, 2012).

Dr. Meshkati has inspected many petrochemical and nuclear power plants around the world, including Chernobyl (1997), Fukushima Daiichi and Daini (2012). He has worked with the U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board, as an expert advisor in human factors and safety culture, on the investigation of the BP Refinery explosion in Texas City (2005), and also served as a member of the National Research Council (NRC) Committee on Human Performance, Organizational Systems and Maritime Safety. He also served as a member of the NRC Marine Board’s Subcommittee on Coordinated R&D Strategies for Human Performance to Improve Marine Operations and Safety.

Dr. Meshkati is the only full-time USC faculty member who has continuously been conducting research on human factors and aviation safety-related issues (e.g., cockpit design and automation, crew resource management, safety management system, safety culture, and runway incursions,) and teaching in the USC 60+ old internationally renowned Aviation Safety and Security Program, for the past 25 years. During this period, he has taught in the “Human Factors in Aviation Safety” and “System Safety” short courses. From 1992 to 1999, he also was the Director and had administrative and academic responsibility for the USC Professional Programs, which included Aviation Safety, as well as for the Transportation Safety, and Process Safety Management (which he designed and developed) programs. He has worked with numerous safety professionals from all over the world and has taught safety short courses for private and
public sector organizations, including the US Navy, US Air Force, US Forest Service, Metrolink, Exelon, the Republic of Singapore Air Force, Singapore Institution of Safety Officers, etc.

Dr. Meshkati is an elected Fellow of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, an AT&T Faculty Fellow in Industrial Ecology, a NASA Faculty Fellow (Jet Propulsion Laboratory, 2003 and 2004), and a recipient of the Presidential Young Investigator Award from the National Science Foundation (NSF) in 1989. He is the 2007 recipient of the Oliver Keith Hansen Outreach Award from the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society (HFES) and was honored by the HFES for his “scholarly efforts on human factors of complex, large-scale technological systems.”

He is the co-editor and a primary author of the book Human Mental Workload, North-Holland, 1988. His articles on public policy; the risk, reliability, and environmental impact of complex, large-scale technological systems; and foreign policy-related issues have been published in several national and international newspapers and magazines such the New York Times, International Herald Tribune, Los Angeles Times, Baltimore Sun, Houston Chronicle, Sacramento Bee, MIT Technology Review, Japan Times, Korea Herald (South Korea), Gulf Today (Sharjah, UAE), Times of India, Hurriyet Daily News (Istanbul, Turkey), Strait Times (Singapore), Iran News (Tehran, Iran), South China Morning Post (Hong Kong), Winnipeg Free Press, Waterloo Region Record, Windsor Star (Canada), Scientific Malaysian, etc. As chairman of the “group of expects” of the International Ergonomics Association (IEA), Dr. Meshkati coordinated international efforts which culminated in the joint publication of the United Nations’ International Labor Office (ILO) and IEA Ergonomic Checkpoints: Practical and Easy-to-Implement Solutions for Improving Safety, Health and Working Conditions book in 1996, for which he received the Ergonomics of Technology Transfer Award from the IEA in 2000. According to the ILO, this book has so far been translated and published into 16 languages including Arabic, Bahasa Indonesia, Bahasa Malaysian, Chinese, Estonian, Farsi, French, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Thai, Turkish, and Vietnamese.

Dr. Meshkati simultaneously received a B.S. in Industrial Engineering and a B.A. in Political Science in 1976, from Sharif (Arya-Meher) University of Technology and Shahid Beheshti University (National University of Iran), respectively; a M.S. in Engineering Management in 1978; and a Ph.D. in Industrial and Systems Engineering in 1983 from USC. He is a Certified Professional Ergonomist.