Meet Kristofer Kusano, AAAM member and Staff Safety Researcher at Waymo. Get to know Kristopher in his own words.
How long have you been a member of AAAM?
At least 9 years? I was a student member, I think from 2010 to 2015, then a professional from 2021 to present.
What inspired you to join AAAM?
My advisor, Clay Gabler, loved AAAM as an organization and conference, and he made it no secret to his students. I began attending the AAAM annual meeting as a graduate student. Some of my very first papers and presentations as an aspiring scientist were at AAAM. As I started and progressed through my career in industry, AAAM continued to be a valuable place for me to publish my research, keep track of trends in the field, and interact with my peers. I also deeply value AAAM’s focus on supporting and developing students through activities like the Student Symposium and Clay Gabler Scholarship.
What are your main areas of interest in the field of Automotive Medicine?
My primary area of research has been safety impact studies, both prospective and retrospective, of vehicle automation technologies. In graduate school at Virginia Tech, I did simulation-based studies of prospective studies of active safety systems such as forward crash prevention and lane departure prevention systems. I produced national estimates of crash and injury prevention potentials if all vehicles had these emerging technologies. Later, I worked at Toyota developing highway automation systems. Most recently, I have done both simulation studies and retrospective studies about the safety impact of fully automated vehicles (SAE level 4 systems) as a researcher at Waymo. Although it’s not a panacea for traffic safety, I’m encouraged about the potential of vehicle automation to improve road safety.
How do you think the field is changing, and what trends do you see coming up on the horizon?
Vehicle automation is a potential game-changer for many aspects of transportation, safety included. It’s been a long road to get to the point where you can ride a car with no driver, and there is still work to be done to develop and expand the technology, but I do think within my lifetime we may see a large change in the transportation system driven by automated vehicles. It’s hard to predict the exact course of the future, but I strongly believe AAAM is well-positioned to address some of the big unanswered problems in an increasingly automated transportation system. There will continue to be many biomechanics challenges as vehicles transform if no one needs to be in a driver’s seat. Defining objective measures of “good driving behavior” to evaluate automated systems remains a critical gap, and the human behavioral research being done in this field could help inform some of these models.
What advice would you give to someone interested in this field?
Just as the transportation system may change, working in the safety field is also adapting. The more I progress through my career, the more I value the skill of being a lifelong learner. Being in research means we need to develop highly specialized skills, but the skills needed to succeed will likely change over the course of your career. Being open to new tools and ways of working will help everyone in this field (and others) to adapt.
What’s one thing — either field-related or not — you learned in the last month?
After saying you should be a lifelong learner, I’m not sure I’ve learned much in the last month related to our field (but I’m sure that will change once the AAAM annual meeting rolls around this fall). Although I’ve never worked in aerospace, I get a lot of inspiration from space exploration. I like to think that building autonomous vehicles is one of the many “moonshot” problems of our generation, just as human space flight was during the Apollo era. Recently, I’ve been impressed with the progress of the commercial space flight program, and that “normal” (albeit financially well-off) individuals can now travel to space. I hope we can make similar progress in improving road safety.
What’s something about you (a fun fact) that not many people know?
I almost didn’t study engineering, which probably would mean I wouldn’t be in the traffic safety field today. I was quite a committed musician in high school (I played saxophone and other woodwinds both in concert and jazz bands). I almost studied music performance or education, but somehow, in the end, I decided to go to engineering school instead. It’s interesting how many engineers I meet are also musicians.
Is there anything else you’d like to share with your colleagues?
I look forward to seeing many of my colleagues at this year’s AAAM annual meeting. We’re still in the planning phases, but we’re hoping to organize an “Automated Vehicle Meet-up” activity in Indianapolis (stay tuned for more details).