Dr. Heather Lum

Dr. Heather C. Lum is an assistant professor and director of the Virtual Environments & Cognitive Training Research (VECToR) laboratory as well as the associate director of the Center for Human, Artificial Intelligence, & Robot Teaming in the Advanced Capabilities for National Security Institute at Arizona State University. She earned her Ph.D. in applied experimental and human factors psychology from the University of Central Florida in 2011. Her primary research interests focus on perceptions of technology, specifically the ways in which technology impacts the way we interact with each other as humans. Other areas of interest include the use of psychophysiological measures such as eye tracking and vocal analyses to better determine and study the critical applied cognitive and experimental topics of interest such as spatial cognition, human-human and human-robot team interactions. Dr. Lum conducted research on human-non-human teaming in the summer of 2023 and 2025 as part of the U.S. Air Force Research Lab Summer Faculty Fellowship Program.

In addition to her research pursuits, Dr. Lum is the current chair elect for the Human-AI-Robot Teaming TG, past president of HF/E Women’s Organization for Mentoring and Networking (HFE WOMAN) and former events chair. She is also a K9 handler and training coordinator for the Yavapai County Search and Rescue Team-Search Dog Unit and a trainer/evaluator for the National Association for Search and Rescue.