Professor Merat is an experimental psychologist and research group leader of the Human Factors and Safety Group, Institute for Transport Studies, University of Leeds. Her main research interests involve understanding the interaction of road users with new technologies. She applies this interest to studying factors such as driver distraction and driver impairment, and she is an expert in studying the human factors implications of highly automated vehicles. She is currently involved in two main European Projects on automated vehicles. In the AdaptIVe project, she is studying drivers’ ability to resume control from automation in critical situations and investigating how this transition is achieved quickly and safely. For CityMobil2, Dr Merat is investigating pedestrians’ perceptions and views of fully automated low speed vehicles, which were demonstrated in a number of European Cities. Dr Merat is Chair of the TRB sub-committee on Human Factors in Road Vehicle Automation, and has appointments as expert advisor to the European Commission, AutoLiv Inc and the UK Department for Transport Committee on Connected and Automated Transport. She has also been guest editor of two journal publications in recent years (Human Factors Journal 2012, and Transportation Research Part F, 2014),bringing together the latest results of studies from around the globe on how vehicle automation may affect driver behaviour and performance.