PEC's Vibha Bhatia bags IEA/Kingfar Award

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, July 8

Vibha Bhatia, a research scholar from Punjab Engineering College, has bagged the 2020 IEA/Kingfar Award for Student Research in Human Factors and Ergonomics Issues.

Vibha is the only student from India, irrespective of gender, to win the award.

Vibha also got a mention in the IEA Congress 2021 held at Vancouver, which was attended by world leaders and pioneers in Ergonomics & Human Factors.

“Work ergonomics is the scientific discipline and the profession that applies theory, principles, data and methods to design in order to optimise human wellbeing and overall system performance,” said Vibha.

“It aims at fostering the safe and healthy work environment for the workers and applies to almost in every occupation, ranging from white collar occupations, such as IT employee and dentists, to the rugged occupations like industrial labourers, vehicle drivers, agricultural workers and so on,” she added.

Vibha is also working to create a suitable solution to reduce the prevalence of musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) in the Indian population. Initially, she had started work on the design parameters of dental scaling tool handles.

She is using a motion tracking system to assess the dental postures in a simulated dental environment dynamically.