Bio

Karen Chen joined NC State’s Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering as a faculty member in August 2016. Prior to joining ISE, she was a postdoctoral research associate at the Healthcare Systems Engineering Institute at Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts.

Chen’s research in human-technology interactions focuses on studying human performances and behaviors (in terms of limits and capacity), with applications in training, learning, and healthcare. She offers courses in Human Factors in Systems Design, Systems Safety Engineering, and Virtual Reality and Human Factors.

Chen is funded by National Science Foundation (NSF) and by National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH). She is a faculty member of the occupational safety and ergonomics (OSE) program of the NC Occupational Safety and Health Education and Research Center (ERC). She also collaborates with The Ergonomics Center of North Carolina for industry projects. Her work on virtual and mixed reality technologies is also disseminated via local media (WRAL5, CW22, PBC NC), outreach for K-12 students underrepresented in STEM, and panels at North Carolina Comicon.

Area(s) of Expertise

Chen's primary research interest is to advance the understanding of human performance and behavior and thereby design systems to match human capabilities and employ VR and mixed reality (MR) technologies (i.e., human factors of technologies) to support health, safety, work, learning, and many other fields. Her current research focuses on examining and characterizing human movements and behaviors in immersive virtual environments for training and learning. Her previous work focused on rehabilitative movements and therapeutic exercises in virtual reality for patients with chronic pain.

Publications

• Emotional States and Charging Behaviors in Human-System Interactions with Battery Electric Vehicles , SSRN Electronic Journal (2026)
• Applying Engineering Anthropometry to Mitigate Eye Strain in Virtual Environments , Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting (2025)
• Examining User Interactions With Signaling Elements in a Virtual Reality Learning Application , Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting (2025)
• Human Factors Extended Reality Showcase , Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting (2025)
• Human-Centered eXtended Reality for Occupational Applications in the Era of Industry 5.0: Introduction to the Special Issue , IISE Transactions on Occupational Ergonomics and Human Factors (2025)
• Measuring Size and Scale: The Development and Validation of the Assessment of Size and Scale Cognition (ASSC) , Research in Science Education (2025)
• Mental Models of Gestural Interaction for Information Processing in Virtual Reality , Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting (2025)
• Privacy-Aware EMG signal synthesis for ergonomic studies using a generative diffusion model , Biomedical Signal Processing and Control (2025)
• Understanding Emotional States and Charging Behaviors for Decision Making and Battery Preservation in Electric Vehicles , Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting (2025)
• Embodiment of Virtual Body and Extremities With Movement Control in Reaching Tasks Using Virtual Reality , Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Annual Meeting (2024)

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