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Melina Kunar Research Profile

Job Title
Associate Professor
Department
Psychology
Research Interests

Many tasks involve attention making it an important focus of research (e.g. driving, medical screening). My research investigates how people pay attention to their environment and how they use this information to inform preferences and decision making. The findings have many applications for health, economic and socially important tasks, such as how to improve search for cancers in medical images, how to improve human interaction with technology/Artificial Intelligence (AI) and how distraction interferes with road safety and driving (for example, by talking on mobile phones).

Biography

Dr Melina Kunar is an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Warwick. Dr Kunar completed her PhD at the University of Birmingham before being awarded a Fellowship to work at the University of Bangor. She then went to Harvard Medical School, USA, to complete a Postdoctoral Research Fellowship where she investigated the human mechanisms of cognition and attention. Dr Kunar is an expert in attention and her current research examines human-AI interactions and how people attend to AI prompts in tasks such as medical screening for cancers. Her research also investigates optimal ways for humans to interact with AI and technology to maximize the benefits, while minimising the costs (such as over-reliance effects and bias). Other research interests include the impact of distraction and technology on attention. She has worked with driver education programs, police training forces and Local Authorities to educate road users about the importance of paying attention to the road and to minimise distraction while driving. Dr Kunar is a Turing Fellow at the Alan Turing Institute, the UK's National Institute for Data Science and Artificial Intelligence.

Title Funder Award start Award end
EPS Small Grant:The Optimal Presentation of Computer Aided Detection in Low Prevalence Mammogram Search Experimental Psychology Society - EPS 07 Jan 2019 06 Jan 2020
Does double reading reduce miss errors of cancerous masses in simulated mammograms? Experimental Psychology Society - EPS 03 Nov 2015 02 Nov 2016
Do visual cues help or hinder decisions regarding the presence or absence of cancer indicators in simulated mammograms? British Academy 31 Aug 2013 31 Aug 2015
Improving breast cancer detection rates through understanding and modelling the patterns of radiologist performance Breast Cancer Campaign 01 Oct 2011 30 Sep 2014