Deborah E. Dickerson

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Short Bio

Deborah Dickerson is an associate professor of industrial and systems engineering at Virginia Tech. She is the director of the Center for Innovation in Construction Safety, Health, and Wellbeing. Since joining the faculty at Virginia Tech, she has established an integrated research, instructional, and service program emphasizing innovative design solutions to occupational risks; and, intervention strategies to improve stakeholder willingness to adopt those innovations. Certified as a safety professional and industrial hygienist, Deborah entered her current academic career with over ten years of professional experience conducting health hazard exposure assessment and designing control strategies to reduce worker exposure to occupational health hazards. These prior experiences directly inform her current scholarly pursuits; in that the importance of eliminating hazards at the design-stage of equipment and materials, rather than attempting to control exposures during work operations, became quite evident.

Research Areas

Main Area: Human Factors Engineering and Ergonomics

• Worker Health and Safety
• Process Safety
• Healthy Work Design
• Health Behaviors
• Health Promotion
• Innovation Acceptance
• Training System Design
• Work Organization
• Prevention through Design
• User Experiences and User-centered Design