Alan Pope, PhD

Alan Pope, PhD, Distinguished Scientist and Chair of the Taksha Center for BioCybernetics (TCBC), is an engineer and psychologist who has conducted Manned Systems Engineering research as a Research Scientist at NASA Langley Research Center (LaRC) since 1980. Dr. Pope’s research has been directed at developing human response measurement technologies to assess the effects of advanced crewstation concepts on the crew’s ability to perform flight management tasks effectively. He originated the scientific study of hazardous awareness states in monitoring environments as well as the study of physiologically-based adaptive automation.

Beginning in 1995, he has conducted research and published journal articles and book chapters developing his concept of biocybernetic adaptation. Dr. Pope is inventor of over 25 inventions and holds 13 US patents in the fields of physiologically modulated simulations and games, virtual reality, and aviation synthetic vision systems. He was awarded the 1998 American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Contribution to Society Award, the 2000 NASA Exceptional Achievement Medal, the DARPA 2006 Foundations of Augmented Cognition Award, the 2012 NASA Exceptional Service Medal, the 2013 NASA Langley Technology Transfer Mentor of the Year Award and is the senior member of the LaRC research team awarded the 2017 NASA Group Achievement Award.

Dr. Pope holds an MS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Tennessee and a PhD in Clinical Psychology from the University of Florida. In 1988, he co-founded the Behavioral Medicine Institute in Newport News, Virginia, and engaged in clinical practice there until 2001. Dr. Pope was elected to serve on the Board of Directors, Association for Applied Psychophysiology and Biofeedback, 2010-2012. He has served as Co-Chair of the International Conference on Physiological Computing Systems, 2016-2018, and serves on the Editorial Review Board of Perceptual and Motor Skills. He has served as adjunct faculty at three Virginia universities and has served as Adjunct Research Assistant Professor, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Eastern Virginia Medical School since 1995. Dr. Pope is currently a LaRC Distinguished Research Associate conducting research with Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) technologies for future human factors applications in cognitive training, system adaptation and human-autonomy teaming.