Najmedin Meshkati
Najmedin (Najm) Meshkati is a Professor at the Sonny Astani Department of Civil/Environmental Engineering and a Professor at the Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at the Viterbi School of Engineering, University of Southern California (USC). Prior to this, he was an Associate Professor and the Associate Executive Director at the Institute of Safety and Systems Management, and the Director of the School of Engineering Continuing Education programs which included: the 54-year old USC Aviation Safety Program, Transportation Safety, and Process Safety Management. Prior to joining USC in 1985, he was Project Director for Decision Dynamics Corporation, Research Engineer at the SKC Research Inc., and lectured at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California.
Meshkati is an elected Fellow of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, an AT&T Faculty Fellow in Industrial Ecology, a NASA Faculty Fellow at Jet Propulsion Laboratory in 2003 and 2004. 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...[and] efforts to enhance public awareness of critical human factors issue [and] the benefits it brings to humankind.”
Meshkati is a recipient of the Presidential Young Investigator Award from the National Science Foundation (NSF) in 1989. His analysis of the Bhopal disaster earned him the 1988 American Society for Training and Development International Research Award. He is the recipient of the 2000 TRW Award for Excellence and Outstanding Achievement in Teaching from the USC Viterbi School of Engineering; and the 1996, 2003, 2006, and 2007 Professor of Year Award (Excellence in Teaching and Dedication to Students Award) from the Daniel J. Epstein Department of Industrial & Systems Engineering. He also received the Ergonomics of Technology Transfer Award from the International Ergonomics Association in 2000, and the Cooperation and Appreciation Award from the Ministry of Manpower, Government of Indonesia in 1985. His doctoral dissertation at USC won the 1983 Phi Beta Kappa Alumni Award for Research and Innovation. Most recently, he received the Mortar Board’s Honored Faculty Award (2007-2008), from the University of Southern California’s Chapter of the Mortar Board.
Meshkati’s research is concerned primarily with the risk reduction and reliability enhancement of complex and large-scale socio-technical systems.