Gustavo Paulon’s quest to design smarter, safer helmets for first responders has earned two best paper awards from the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society’s Occupational Ergonomics Technical Group (OETG).
Paulon is a third-year Ph.D. student in the Department of Industrial & Systems Engineering (ISE) whose research explores optimizing helmet design and ergonomics to reduce the risk of traumatic brain and neck injuries in high-risk occupations.
At the society’s annual HFES meeting in October, the paper “Firefighter Helmets and Neck Muscle Fatigue,” led by L.H. Wei, Ph.D., and co-authored by Paulon, won the Best Research to Translational Paper Award, and “Static Optimization-Based Cervical Spine Load Estimation to Evaluate Firefighter Helmet Effects,” led by Paulon himself, won the Best Computational Paper Award.
The papers explore how helmet weight and balance influence cervical spinal loading and neck-muscle strain and fatigue, factors that can contribute to long-term musculoskeletal injuries among firefighters.
His research explores OpenSim-based computational musculoskeletal head-neck models that estimate cervical spinal intervertebral forces for various helmet designs. This model-based estimation helps identify helmet inertial properties, which incur minimum cervical spinal loading for various age and sex groups.
OETG selects one winner in three categories: Translational, Experimental and Computational Paper. The criteria include peer-reviewed comments, full-length paper quality, ideation and presentation performance. Paulon’s work stood out among submissions from top-tier universities in the United States.
“Receiving this award is incredibly meaningful because it represents recognition from a community I deeply respect and validates the importance of using computational methods to better understand injury risk,” Paulon said. “This work demonstrates how computational approaches can enhance traditional ergonomic methods, allowing us to better capture individual variability and make more informed decisions about occupational risk.”
Paulon’s awards build upon his ongoing research with UF Associate Professor Suman K. Chowdhury, Ph.D., which was in collaboration with the Department of Homeland Security’s Science and Technology Directorate. Their research aims to optimize helmet fit and ergonomics to reduce the risk of traumatic brain and neck injuries in high-risk occupations.
“Gustavo represents the very best of what a Ph.D. student should be,” said Chowdhury. “He combines deep technical rigor with creativity and an incredible work ethic. Watching him grow into a confident researcher has been one of the most rewarding parts of my role as a faculty advisor. These awards are a well-deserved recognition of both his scientific contributions and his character.”
Paulon’s achievement highlights UF’s growing leadership in human-centered product and device research and design, particularly advancing safety and injury prevention for first responders and military personnel.