Dr. Cyriel Diels has a background in Psychology and Human Factors. Following his degree in experimental psychology at Utrecht University, his doctoral studies investigated self-motion perception and negative side effects associated with simulated and virtual environments at Loughborough University. Since then, he has worked in the field of driver behaviour and performance at the Transport Research Laboratory for a range of clients including Department for Transport, Highways Agency, European Commission, and various commercial organisations. Since 2009, he has been acting as the UK representative and chair of the national shadow committee of ISO Working Group 8 on in-vehicle Human Machine Interfaces. Following on from this he joined Jaguar Land Rover where he worked as a Human Factors specialist within advanced product development and research. In 2012, he started his current position as senior lecturer in Human Factors at the Industrial Design department with a particular focus on automotive and transport design.

Established as a world leader in the field of vehicle design and research, and with Professor Dale Harrow as Centre Director and inaugural Chair of the Hyundai Kia Laboratory, the Royal College of Art’s IMDC will be a multidisciplinary research centre with a design-led, human-centred approach at its core and the opportunity to focus on new ways of designing, influencing new behaviours, and developing new methodologies and mobility typologies that address societal issues. IMDC will operate at the intersection of design disciplines, at this time of radical change in modes of mobility – in technologies, but also in the commercial, social and cultural models with which they interact. Where previous university and corporate research has tended to focus on mechanics, engineering solutions to perceived problems and iterative developments leading to incremental market advantage, our track record in this area has demonstrated that the problem is much more subtle and complex, and requires human-centred approaches which are design-led. Previous research has tended to concentrate, in short, on the movement of objects, whereas the urgent need is to re-focus on the journey, the experience, the design of services and systems, and the complexity of the infrastructure and interactions that mobility in modern advanced societies entails. IMDC builds on Professor Dale Harrow’s successful research in autonomous vehicles, the design of the new emergency ambulance, and a new taxi for London.