Prof. Dr. Gerald Ackner

Brief Biography

Prof. Dr. Gerald Ackner is Professor of Applied Cognitive Psychology at Furtwangen University, Tuttlingen campus. He heads the Usability and Psychophysiology Lab and serves as Vice Dean for Faculty Development at Faculty II: Engineering and Technology. His teaching in Engineering Psychology and Human Factors ranges from foundational topics, such as general and biological psychology and psychophysiological methods, to applied approaches including usability evaluation and driving simulation as a human factors method. He regularly supervises Bachelor's and Master's theses.

Before joining HFU in 2018, he spent thirteen years in the automotive industry at General Motors Europe, most recently as project lead for Advanced Technology. This included an industry-based doctorate: from 2007 to 2010 he worked as a doctoral candidate in the Active Safety advanced engineering group, receiving his PhD in Psychology from the University of Würzburg in 2012. He earned his diploma in Psychology, with a focus on traffic psychology, at the same university in 2006, after working as a research associate at the Interdisciplinary Centre for Traffic Sciences (IZVW). Some of his publications from this period were authored under his former name, Gerald Schmidt.

His time in vehicle development also produced several patents in the field of driver assistance, including work on estimating take-over time budgets in automated driving and on traffic light assistance systems.

Beyond teaching and research, Ackner serves as a contact person for discrimination, sexual harassment, and bullying at HFU and is actively involved in the university's committees, supporting the institution's commitment to diversity and equal opportunity.

Research Interests

Ackner's research addresses how people can interact safely and intuitively with increasingly automated and autonomous vehicle systems. One line of work examines take-over readiness and monitoring performance during highly automated driving (SAE Level 3), including how much lead time is actually required for a safe handover. A second line focuses on in-car HMI animations and their theoretical grounding, moving beyond generic design guidelines. More recent, as yet unpublished work extends this agenda to pedestrian behavior and to the acceptance of new technologies.

Across these projects, his broader interest is in how the usability and controllability of machines can be systematically assessed and improved from a cognitive-psychological and ergonomic perspective, with applications in vehicles as well as other human-machine systems.