After finishing her university education in Cognitive Psychology, Marieke Martens started her career at TNO in 1996. She has always been working in the area of driving behaviour, traffic safety, road design, driver support systems and driver state (fatigue, workload, attention, expectations), intelligent transportation systems, and automated driving. These studies are part of exploratory research, projects for the Ministry of Transport, European Union, OEMs and service providers. She combines her work as a Principle Scientist within TNO with a professorship in the same area.
From 2014 to 2019, she has worked as Professor of ITS & Human Factors at the University of Twente. Currently, she is a professor at Eindhoven University of Technology in the area of Automated Vehicles & Human Interaction. Topics include Human Machine Interaction, external HMI, situational awareness, mode awareness, automation surprise, and trust. She is a member of ISO standardization committees in this area and a member of bodies connected to the UNECE in the area of automated driving, road safety, and human factors.

The Pop in Your Job:
I enjoy doing work that matters. In the last 10 years, automated vehicles have become a hot topic. Some years ago, the more technologically oriented people claimed that the more user-oriented research would disappear since technology would solve everything. Now the times have changed and we see that humans remain to play an important role, since interaction with people is important for safety, switching the systems on and off, trust and acceptance. I think that the combination of TNO and the University offers me the ideal package since with my PhDs we can do more fundamental work and link this to the applied setting with real concept innovations at TNO. That is what makes me tick, working on innovations that make the world a safer and more enjoyable place.

TNO is an independent not-for-profit research organisation for applied research. They connect people and knowledge to create innovations that boost the competitive strength of industry and the well-being of society in a sustainable way. TNO’s goal is to connect, change, and accelerate - Innovation for life. Eindhoven University of Technology has the ambition to be among the leading universities in science and technology. With an open eye for developments in the world around us, we aim to be an internationally defining academic institution that pushes the frontiers of science and technology and educates engineers of the future who combine in-depth knowledge about technology with the skills to address.