Daniel K. Wood PhD, MSc

Dr. Wood is a cognitive neuroscientist and data scientist with over 10 years of experience in human movement, visual perception, attention, and cognition. He specializes in issues related to visual attention in cluttered and ambiguous environments, skilled and automatic behaviors e.g., driving, sports, repetitive movements, and visually guided reaching and grasping. Dr. Wood applies his expertise to the analysis of human factors issues related to a variety of contexts, including transportation and pedestrian accidents, slips, trips, and falls; and product warnings and safety information.

Prior to joining Exponent, Dr. Wood received his Ph.D. in neuroscience from Western University. His graduate work focused on how humans select targets, allocate attention, and avoid distractors in order to rapidly and efficiently navigate cluttered and ambiguous environments. Following his Ph.D., he completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Northwestern University, where he studied how the brain combines visual, motor, and cognitive factors while deciding where to look next during naturalistic search behavior.

Dr. Wood has expertise in a wide range of experimental techniques, including 3D motion capture of human and rigid-body kinematics, eye tracking, grip and lift force transduction, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), electroencephalography (EEG), surface and intramuscular electromyography (EMG), single-cell electrophysiology, histological techniques e.g., staining, dye- and virus-based neural tract-tracing, confocal microscopy, and neuropsychological assessment. He regularly employs various analytical techniques and technologies in his research, including statistics, machine learning, time-series analysis, data visualization, databases, and natural language processing.