Laura Militello

Laura Militello, M.A., is a co-founder and CEO at Applied Decision Science. Laura is a leading authority on cognitive task analysis (CTA) methods – the tools and techniques for uncovering human cognition. She has extensive experience conducting CTA across a broad range of military and healthcare domains including reconnaissance and attack piloting, personnel recovery, unmanned aerial system control in terminal airspace, sepsis recognition, bladder cancer treatment, and chronic pain management. Ms. Militello contributed to the development of a set of applied cognitive task analysis methods (ACTA) for use by practitioners and she has conducted more than 20 cognitive task analysis workshops for human factors professionals and students. She coauthored Perspectives on Cognitive Task Analysis: Historical Origins and Modern Communities of Practice, an important textbook for instruction on methods and approaches for studying decision-making behavior in complex settings. Her applied research includes user interface design for medical informatics and medical devices, as well as military systems. She has experience applying cognitive engineering principles to studies of system-level issues such as cross-agency collaboration in crisis management, crewing configurations for Future Vertical Lift aircraft, and consultations between primary care clinicians and specialty clinics in the Veterans Health Administration. Laura received her Master of Arts in Experimental Psychology and Human Factors from the University of Dayton in 1995.