Career

Professor Barbara Deml studied psychology at the University of Regensburg. Then she completed her doctorate in engineering at the Institute of Human Engineering at the University of the Bundeswehr Munich as part of the DFG Collaborative Research Center “High-Fidelity Telepresence and Teleaction”. In her dissertation, she dealt with the design of haptic human-machine interfaces in the field of telerobotics.

After research activities at the Technical University of Munich and Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, she returned to the University of the Bundeswehr as a junior professor of cognitive ergonomics. She then accepted an appointment at Otto von Guericke University of Magdeburg, where she took up the Chair of Human Engineering and Work Design.

In 2012, she accepted an appointment at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. Since then, she has headed the Institute for Human and Industrial Engineering. Prof. Barbara Deml has been Director in the Research Division Intelligent Systems and Production Engineering since June 2024.

How must work systems be designed so that they are technically functional, economically efficient and humane? Barbara Deml investigates how people process information, make decisions and perform motor and cognitive tasks in technical environments. She examines human work behavior and mental processes in control rooms, adaptive learning environments, but also in the context of learning systems and collaboration with robots.