Joyce Westerink

Joyce Westerink is a part-time Professor in the Human-Technology Interaction group. She holds the chair on Wellbeing and Psychophysiology. Since she joined Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) in 2012, she’s taught various courses and coached dozens of students on both the master’s degree and PhD levels. She has a long, ongoing career with Philips Research, where she has led and contributed to industrial research in many roles, projects and collaborations since 1985. Her key areas of expertise include psychology, physiology, user interfaces, human-computer interaction and stress.

Westerink is most interested in applying psychophysiology in products and applications that help people improve their lives. Her current research focuses on how general wellbeing (mental balance, eudemonia, stress, happiness, arousal) is reflected in physiology, and how we can unobtrusively measure that. This opens up a wide range of applications, including lifestyle, healthcare, business and sports, where psychophysiological measurements can help monitor human wellbeing and potentially guide improvement. At Philips, her research focuses on psychological topics in a technological context, such as visual perception & image quality, human factors & user interfaces, and more recently psychophysiology in the context of emotions, wellbeing and affective computing.

Good industrial research is directly useful for the customer, but also helps generate new knowledge that is more widely applicable.