Biography
Dr. Cowen serves as a Senior Human Systems Integration Professional of Monterey Technologies, Inc. (MTI) and Director of Human Factors Engineering. He has a Ph.D. in Cognitive Psychology, a MS in Industrial/Organizational Psychology and a BA (with honors) in Experimental Psychology.
Dr. Cowen is a former Naval Information Warfare Center (NIWC) employee working over 37 years at the Point Loma campus as a Human Factors Psychologist. Dr. Cowen was the human factors lead on many Naval Information Warfare Systems Command (NAVWAR) programs of records (PORs) including CANES, CND (computer network defense), NTCDL (Network Tactical Common Data Links), HAIPE (High Assurance Internet Protocol Encryptors), and a Human Factors consultant to GCCS, MTC2, and TDL (tactical data links) employing user centered design techniques as part of the POR system engineering process and has authored a NIWC-most-downloaded technical report describing user-centered design (UCD) as a NAVWAR best engineering practice. Dr. Cowen was a member of NIWC’s Institutional Review Board for 11 years and is CITI (Collaborative Institutional Training Initiative) Certified.
Currently, with MTI, Dr. Cowen is the Lead Human Factors Engineer (HFE) on the following Navy projects: User-Center Design for Large Unmanned Surface Vehicles; Agile Core Services HFE Support; Navy Electronic Chart Display Information System; and the Joint Warning and Reporting Network User Interface.
KEY PUBLICATIONS
2015 SSC Pacific TR 2061: User-Center Design (UCD) Process Description. Lead developer and author of recommended system engineering element for SPAWAR PORs. (http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a615926.pdf)
2010 Key Human System Integration Plan elements for command & control acquisition. In Proceedings of the Command and Control Research & Technology Symposium, Santa Monica, CA, June, 2010.
2008 SSC Pacific Publication Award: “A Review of Team Collaboration Tools for Crisis Response in the Military and Government.”
2002 Jerome H. Ely Award for single outstanding journal article published in Human Factors in 2001: “The use of 2-D and 3-D displays for shape understanding vs. relative position tasks.”
MTI Publications
Cowen, M.B. (2021). Task-Centered Approaches to Human Interface Design. Video poster for the National Defense Industrial Association’s 2021 Human Systems Digital Experience. (https://www.researchgate.net/publication/350641218_Task-Centered_Approaches_to_Human_Interface_Design; video: https://www.ndia.org/events/2021/3/2/2021-human-systems-digital-experience/posters).
Cowen, M.B. & Williams, R. (2021). Is Human-On-the-Loop the Best C2 Architecture to Deliver Rapid Relevant Responses (R3)? Paper accepted for presentation at the 2021 Joint Air & Space Power Conference.
Also see: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/M_Cowen/contributions