Dr. Deniz Marti joined USC ICT in March 2023, after a postdoctoral Pedagogy Fellowship at Harvard University, and will take up her first faculty position as Assistant Professor in Manufacturing Systems Engineering and Management, CSUN, in August 2025. We wish her all the best, and wanted to celebrate Dr. Marti’s time at ICT by commissioning this essay on her research and achievements to date.
BYLINE: Dr. Deniz Marti, User Experience Researcher, USC ICT
I have always been fascinated by how people think—how they sift through complexity, respond to uncertainty, and make decisions that reverberate far beyond the moment. But it wasn’t until I encountered the field of cognitive ergonomics during my undergraduate studies in industrial engineering that I realized there was a formal discipline dedicated to understanding and optimizing this very process. Here was a field that looked closely at how humans interact with tools, systems, and technologies—not only in terms of efficiency, but in terms of perception, attention, cognition, and even emotion. It was a perfect convergence: engineering precision paired with psychological nuance.
That convergence—between systems and human sense-making—has shaped my academic journey ever since. My research has always been guided by a belief that technology should amplify human judgment rather than displace it. Whether the system is a cockpit interface, an AI-based decision aid, or an immersive virtual reality environment, my goal is to understand how design influences thinking, and how we might build systems that support rather than subvert human agency.
I grew up in Istanbul and pursued my undergraduate degree at Boğaziçi University, one of Turkey’s most rigorous institutions. The campus, overlooking the Bosphorus, is a place where history and modernity converge—a fitting backdrop for my growing interest in how technical systems intersect with the human mind. While studying industrial engineering, I found myself increasingly drawn to questions of human-centered design. I wanted to know not just how systems function, but how people function within them.
This interest led me to pursue a Ph.D. in systems engineering at The George Washington University. There, I delved deeper into the mechanics of decision-making, particularly in high-stakes contexts. My doctoral work explored risk communication and cognitive ergonomics, with a strong interdisciplinary bent. One of my core investigations involved studying how NASA engineers reason through complex scenarios—how they balance competing demands, evaluate ambiguous data, and coordinate with others under pressure. It was not enough to assume rational decision-making; I wanted to understand how actual humans, with real cognitive constraints and social dynamics, navigate uncertainty.
After completing my Ph.D., I took up a postdoctoral fellowship at Harvard’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. There, I turned my attention to critical thinking and design-thinking in STEM education—particularly how engineers learn to reason about problems that resist simple answers. It was during this time that I became increasingly interested in immersive and interactive technologies: not just as tools for entertainment or visualization, but as environments where reasoning, problem-solving, and decision-making could be studied and supported in new ways.
That interest brought me to the Institute for Creative Technologies (ICT) at the University of Southern California, where I joined the Mixed Reality Lab as a postdoctoral researcher in 2023. ICT is a rare place: one where rigorous science and creative exploration not only coexist but propel each other forward. At ICT, my research has focused on Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and trust in artificial intelligence, especially in the context of high-stakes decision-making. I have worked extensively with immersive systems—particularly in augmented and virtual reality—to explore how we might visualize complexity, externalize thinking, and design interfaces that support users under cognitive load.
One of my recent projects at ICT has been the development of EVOLVE: a method for Elicitation and Verification of Learning via Experts. The goal is to bridge human behavioral data with expert judgment to create more robust theoretical models of decision-making in immersive settings. Rather than merely tracking behavior, EVOLVE draws on the insights of domain experts to evaluate why a user made a particular choice or took a specific path. The method has been published and is now being explored for further applications in training, simulation, and educational technologies (read more here).
I’ve also had the opportunity to present this work beyond the lab. At IITSEC 2024—the premier modeling, simulation, and training conference—I co-presented a talk titled “Enhancing Operational Decision-Making with Adaptive Head-Mounted Display Interfaces.” The audience included researchers, military personnel, engineers, and designers, all interested in how we might better support human operators working at the edge of their cognitive and sensory capacities. It was gratifying to see not only interest, but traction—proof that these ideas have resonance beyond academic circles.
And that, to me, is the true measure of success in research: not publications alone, but translation. Does the work support someone else’s judgment? Improve their confidence? Make a difficult decision just a little clearer? My ambition has never been to build tools for their own sake, but to develop technologies that acknowledge the reality of human complexity—tools that are aligned with the rhythms, constraints, and capabilities of actual people.
I’m now preparing to begin my first faculty position as Assistant Professor in Manufacturing Systems Engineering and Engineering Management at California State University, Northridge. It’s a new chapter, and one I welcome with enthusiasm and humility. I’ll continue my research into immersive and AI-enhanced systems, with a sharper focus on developing technologies that align not only with technical specifications but with human needs and behaviors. The opportunity to guide students through this space—where systems engineering meets cognitive psychology, where VR meets decision science—is an extraordinary privilege. If I can offer them a sense that engineering is not just about machines, but about meaning, then I’ll consider myself successful.
Of course, research isn’t done in isolation, and neither is growth. ICT offered me far more than technical resources. It gave me a creative and intellectual playground—one where I could take risks, think boldly, and collaborate with some of the most thoughtful people I’ve ever met. I’ll never forget seeing my own avatar riding in a virtual tank during a user study, or the sense of wonder that came from testing early-stage prototypes that turned science fiction into something tactile. There were birthday celebrations, hallway debates about AI ethics, and occasional celebrity sightings in the Light Stage. But above all, there was a sense of shared purpose: that we were here not just to develop technology, but to ask what kind of technology the world actually needs.
In that sense, ICT was more than a job. It was a rehearsal space for the kind of academic life I want to lead—one that blends rigor with imagination, theory with application, and technical expertise with a deep concern for the human condition. I leave this community with enormous gratitude, a renewed sense of clarity, and a commitment to paying forward the mentorship, generosity, and intellectual freedom I found here.
As I step into this next phase of my career, I carry with me the conviction that our greatest technologies will be those that understand us—not as data points, but as thinkers, learners, and decision-makers. And I remain committed to building systems that are not only intelligent, but wise.
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