Keith S. Jones, Ph.D.

Research Interests

Dr. Keith S. Jones is a human factors psychologist who specializes in human-computer interaction.

His current research focuses on two main areas:

• human-robot interaction
• human factors issues related to cybersecurity

Regarding human-robot interaction, Dr. Jones aims to answer questions such as:

• How do we enable robots to understand what actions a given person intends to perform?
• How do we enable robots to understand whether a given person can perform a given action safely?
• How do exoskeletons affect users' understanding of their action capabilities?

Regarding cybersecurity, Dr. Jones aims to answer questions such as: 

• How are social engineering attacks (e.g., phishing or vishing) undertaken?
• Who is most susceptible to social engineering attacks?
• What are the most important knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs) for cybersecurity professionals?

To date, Dr. Jones has been awarded over $2.9M in research funding from the National Science Foundation, the Office of Naval Research, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, and Microsoft, and has published numerous journal articles in peer-reviewed outlets and conference proceeding papers at international venues. 

Dr. Jones' former students work or have worked in academia (e.g., Air Force Academy), government (e.g., Sandia National Laboratories), and industry (e.g., Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, Facebook, Google X, FitBit, Sony PlayStation).

Selected Research

Human-Robot Interaction:

• Wheeler, N.J., & Jones, K.S. (In Press). People's sensitivity to the effect of robot wheel radius and weight on a wheeled-robot-climbing-step affordance. International Journal of Social Robotics.
• Jones, K.S., Widlus, B.P., & Garcia, N.A. (2020). Does lacking information about your affordances impact your perception of other's affordances? A test of the Embodied Simulation Hypothesis. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 27, 483-489.
• Jones, K.S., & Widlus, B.P. (2020). Do exploratory arm movements contribute to reach-ability judgments? Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 73(9), 1301-1310.
• Jones, K.S., Harris, D., Cherry, B., Sridharan, M. (2017). To ensure elder safety, caregiver robots must perceive elders' affordances. Workshop on Human Safety and Comfort in Human-Robot Interactive Social Environments: 9th International Conference on Social Robotics.
• Jones, K.S., & Schmidlin, E.A. (2011). Human-robot interaction: Toward usable personal robots. In Reviews of Human Factors and Ergonomics, Volume 7 (pp. 100-148). Santa Monica, CA: Human Factors and Ergonomics Society.

Human Factors Issues Related to Cybersecurity:

• Jones, K.S., Armstrong, M.E., Tornblad, M.K., & Namin, A. (In Press). How social engineers use persuasion principles during vishing attacks. Information and Computer Security.
• Armstrong, M., Jones, K.S., Namin, A.S., & Newton, D. (In Press). Knowledge, skills, and abilities for specialized curricula in cyber defense: Results from interviews with cyber professionals. ACM Transactions of Computing Education.
• Jones, K.S., Namin, A.S., & Armstrong, M.E. (2018). The core cyber-defense knowledge, skills and abilities (KSAs) that cybersecurity students should learn in school: Results from interviews with cybersecurity professionals. ACM Transactions of Computing Education.
• Armstrong, M.E., Jones, K.S., & Namin, A. (2017). Framework for developing a brief interview to understand cyber defense work: An experience report. Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society 60th Annual Meeting. 1318-1322.

More details regarding Dr. Jones' research and publications can be found via the following links:

• Google Scholar
• ResearchGate
• LinkedIn

Teaching Interests and Activities

Graduate Courses:

• Perception and Its Applications
• Human Factors Methods
• Human-Computer Interaction
• The Ecological Approach to Human Factors Psychology

Undergraduate Courses:

• Research Methods
• Human Factors Psychology