Monifa Vaughn-Cooke joined the University of Maryland, College Park in 2012. Her M.S. degree focused on human factors and medical device design and her Ph.D. focused on the application of human reliability tools to the healthcare system. Monifa's interdisciplinary research synthesizes sociology, psychology, systems engineering and risk assessment. Her research aims to identify the behavioral mechanisms associated with system risk propagation to inform the design of user-centric products and systems, with the ultimate goal of improving productivity and safety. She received a B.S. (Biomedical Engineering) from The University of Southern California, her M.S. (Industrial and Systems Engineering) from The University of Southern California, 2006, and Ph.D. (Industrial Engineering) from The Pennsylvania State University, 2012.