BBCSS and COHSI Staff and Contact Information

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The following contact information should be used for all staff:

Board on Behavioral, Cognitive, and Sensory Sciences
Committee on Human-Systems Integration
The National Academies
Keck Center
500 5^th Street, NW – 11^th Floor
Washington, D.C. 20001
Tel: (202) 334-2678 | Fax: (202) 334-2210
Email: bbcss@nas.edu or cohsi@nas.edu

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BBCSS and COHSI Staff:

Biographies
Barbara A. Wanchisen, Ph.D.
Director, BBCSS
Interim Director, COHSI
Barbara Wanchisen received a B.A. in English and Philosophy from Bloomsburg University in Pennsylvania, an M.A. in English from Villanova University, and her Ph.D. in experimental psychology from Temple University. She is a long-standing member of the Psychonomic Society, the Association for Behavior Analysis, and the American Psychological Association. In January 2004, she became a Fellow of Division 25 (Behavior Analysis) of the American Psychological Association. She has served on the editorial boards of the Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior and The Behavior Analyst while also serving as a guest reviewer of a number of other journals. From November 2001 until April 2008, Wanchisen was the executive director of the Federation of Behavioral, Psychological, & Cognitive Sciences in Washington, DC. In 2004, she was instrumental in the founding of the Federation's Foundation for the Advancement of Behavioral and Brain Sciences, a non-profit organization that assumed the educational mission of the Federation. Previously, Wanchisen was Professor in the Department of Psychology and Director of the college-wide Honors Program at Baldwin-Wallace College, near Cleveland, Ohio.
Mary Ellen O’Connell, M.M.H.S.
Associate Director, BBCSS
Mary Ellen O’Connell has a B.A. (with distinction) from Cornell University and a Masters in the management of human services from the Heller School for Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University. She has served as study director for five consensus studies at the National Research Council: on prevention of mental disorders and substance abuse, international education and foreign languages, ethical considerations for research on housing-related health hazards involving children, reducing underage drinking, and assessing and improving children’s health. She also served as study director for the Committee on Standards of Evidence and the Quality of Behavioral and Social Science Research, a DBASSE-wide strategic planning effort; developed standalone workshops on welfare reform and children and gun violence; and facilitated meetings of the national coordinating committee of the Key National Indicators Initiative. She came to DBASSE from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), where she spent eight years in the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, most recently as director of state and local initiatives. Prior to HHS, she worked at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development on homeless policy and program design issues and for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts as the director of field services.
Susan Van Hemel, Ph.D.
Senior Program Officer
Susan Van Hemel received her Ph.D. in experimental psychology from the Johns Hopkins University. She has been with the NRC for almost 10 years and currently manages a project on the role of human factors in home healthcare sponsored by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. Dr. Van Hemel’s previous projects at the NRC include: a study of early childhood assessment; a study on staffing standards for aviation safety inspectors at the FAA; a study of organizational modeling research for the US Air Force; studies of Social Security disability determination for individuals with visual and hearing impairments; and workshops on technology for adaptive aging and on decision making in older adults. Before coming to the NRC, Dr. Van Hemel managed and performed work on commercial driver fatigue and CDL vision requirements, and numerous other studies on topics related to human performance and training. She is a member of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society and its technical groups on perception and performance and aging.
Laudan (Laudy) Aron, M.A.
Senior Program Officer
Laudy Aron holds a B.Sc. in Mathematics from McGill University and an M.A. in Demography from the University of Pennsylvania. Prior to joining DBASSE, Ms Aron served as the Director of Policy Research at the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) for two years and prior to that she was a Senior Research Associate at the Urban Institute for fifteen years. Ms Aron has over 20 years of professional experience conducting research and policy analysis on a wide range of social welfare issues, including behavioral health and disability, child welfare and at-risk youth, education, employment and training, and homelessness and family violence. Her work has involved conceptualizing, implementing, and disseminating both qualitative and quantitative research that is designed to be of greatest use to policymakers, program officials, and others. Drawing on diverse research methods, she has conducted national program evaluations, survey designs, data analyses, and reviews of the literature for many foundations and federal agencies, including the U.S. Departments of Health and Human Services, Education, Labor, Justice, and Housing and Urban Development. Ms Aron has co-authored three books—one on homelessness and two on publicly-funded programs for children with disabilities—and written book chapters, journal articles, and reports on many topics. Recent work includes a state-by-state assessment of the public mental health service system (for the National Alliance on Mental Illness), a study of how advances in neuroscience will affect non-profit behavioral healthcare providers (for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation), the social services needs of victims of human trafficking (for the National Institute of Justice), and an evaluation of the homeless service system in Santa Monica, California (for the City of Santa Monica).
Cherie Chauvin, M.S., M.A.
Program Officer
Cherie Chauvin joined BBCSS in 2008 as the Study Director for two studies involving national security. She possesses an MS in Strategic Intelligence from the National Defense Intelligence College (Washington, DC), an MA in International Relations from The Maxwell School at Syracuse University (Syracuse, NY), and a BS in Cognitive Science from the University of California at San Diego (La Jolla, CA). Previously, Ms Chauvin was with the Department of Defense, Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), where her last position was Intelligence Officer and Platform Manager in the Directorate of Human Intelligence, Asia Pacific Division. As such, she supported military operations and liaison relationships in Japan, South Korea and Mongolia. During her time with DIA Ms Chauvin deployed to Afghanistan where she conducted intelligence collection operations in Kabul to answer strategic and tactical military intelligence requirements. In recognition of her service, she was awarded both the DIA Civilian Expeditionary Medal and the Department of the Army Commander’s Award for Civilian Service.
Julie Kang, M.A.
Christine Mirzayan Fellow
Julie Kang is currently working at the National Academy of Sciences as a Christine Mirzayan Science and Technology policy fellow.  She received a B.A. in Communications from the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, and a M.A. in Cognitive Psychology from the University of California, Riverside where she is currently working on her Ph.D. She has received recognition at the local level (Advancing Women in Transportation scholarship), University level (University of California Center for Transportation) and national level (Eisenhower Transportation fellowship) for her work in human systems interaction.  Recently, she has presented her research on eye movements as an index of driving workload at the Driving Assessment conference with a grant from the National Rural Summit on Traffic Safety Culture Scholarship.  Julie has published in the 2008 Transportation Research Board's conference proceedings papers and the journal of Accident Analysis and Prevention.
Matthew D. McDonough, M.A.
Senior Program Assistant
Matthew McDonough is a graduate of The George Washington University with an M.A. in anthropology and a concentration in international development. In four years working at the NRC he has staffed the Board on Life Sciences, the Board on Behavioral, Cognitive, and Sensory Sciences, the Committee on Human-Systems Integration, and the Board on Children, Youth, and Families. In addition to assisting with the work of BBCSS and COHSI, McDonough currently provides support to two projects involving national security. He has supported such studies as Guidelines for Human Embryonic Stem Cell Research, Human-Systems Integration in the Design Process: A New Look, Human Behavior in Military Contexts, and Early Childhood Assessment: Why, What, and How. The Red Sox are the best team ever.
Renee L. Wilson Gaines
Senior Program Assistant
Renée L. Wilson Gaines is a graduate of Howard University with a B.A. in Criminal Justice/Sociology and is currently working to complete her paralegal certification.  Renée joins BBCSS after more than 20 years of law office, non profit, and academia experience.  In her short time working at the NRC, she has staffed the Panel to Review O*NET, the Committee on the Role of Human Factors in Home Healthcare, and the Committee on Field Evaluation of Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences-Based Methods and Tools for Intelligence and Counterintelligence.  She is a die-hard native New Yorker who considers herself an ambassador for the City.