HPI was formally established in 1986 as an institute within the University of Texas System by the Board of Regents. It evolved as an outgrowth of research at The University of Texas at Arlington that addressed objective measurement of the many different parameters that we now collectively group under the heading "human performance". Dr. George V. Kondraske is the founding and current director.
HPI replaced (subsumed) the Center for Advanced Rehabilitation Engineering
which operated from 1983-1988. The Center for Advanced Rehabilitation Engineering
involving UTA, UT Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas, and the Dallas
Rehabilitation Institute and was motivated primarily by a 5 year project
sponsored by the National Institute of Handicapped Research (now the National
Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research). The focus of this
center was "Improved Methods of Measuring Function/Performance".
Although the scope of research at HPI has developed to encompass more broad
and generic issues related to the ability of any human to perform any task,
an important historical link includes the work of Drs. A.R. Potvin and W.W.
Tourtellotte who contributed significantly to quantification of neurologic
function and its application to clinical trials in neurology. Potvin and
Tourtellotte began a productive collaboration at The University of Michigan
while Potvin was conducting doctoral research (biomedical engineering) in
the late 1960's and where Dr. Tourtellotte (a neurologist) pioneered the
application in neurology of more objective measurements of what was then
termed "neurologic function".
Dr. Potvin was a founder and chair of joint graduate program in Biomedical Engineering at The University of Texas at Arlington (UTA) and The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center until he left for an industrial position in 1984. Dr. Kondraske conducted doctoral research under Drs. Potvin and Tourtellotte (1978-1982) and joined the faculty at UTA in 1982 (electrical and biomedical engineering) immediately after completing doctoral work. Dr. Tourtellotte has been with UCLA and the Veterans Administration Medical Center in Los Angeles since 1968, where he has continued to pursue research involving the application of objective measurements in neurology with colleague Dr. Karl Syndulko. HPI continues to collaborate with Drs. Syndulko and Tourtellotte.
Since inception in 1986, HPI has maintained a focused research theme aimed at the modeling and measurement of human performance. A major addition in the emphasis of ongoing research occurred around 1986 when modeling began to take on a more prominent role relative to performance measurement and instrumentation development.