Dr. Finder’s educational background includes a BS in Industrial Education and a MS in Safety from UW-Stout, a Doctorate of Industrial Technology from the University of Northern Iowa, and accreditation as a Certified Industrial Hygienist by the American Board of Industrial Hygiene. In 2003, Brian was recognized by the College of Technology, Engineering and Management for his teaching excellence and received UW-Stout’s Outstanding Graduate Faculty Award in August of 2010. In addition to researching the attenuation qualities of anti-vibration gloves, an experimental study of his identified that long-term/repeated cold exposure produces a semi-permanent form of peripheral nervous system impairment in meat processing workers. The results of this study were presented in March of 2006 at the 9th Annual Applied Ergonomics Conference in Orlando, Florida.

Having served as the Program Director for the M.S. Risk Control program, Brian presently teaches various courses within the Operations and Management Department, including Human Factors Engineering/Ergonomics, Fleet Risk Control Management, Principles of Occupational Risk Control / Safety and Field Problems in Risk Control. He also teaches a series of five courses which allows individuals to become certified by the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction and/or the Department of Transportation in order to teach traffic safety education.

Prior to joining the Risk Control Center faculty in January of 1995, Brian spent ten years as a safety and industrial hygiene technical support professional for high-tech, heavy/light manufacturing, agricultural, and food processing-related industries. He routinely provides industrial hygiene as well as safety-based consultation for various types of manufacturing and service-based organizations.

Dr. Susan Hallbeck, PE, CPE is the Robert D. and Patricia E. Kern Scientific Director of Health Care Systems Engineering in the Kern Center for the Science of Healthcare Delivery and faculty in Health Care Policy and Research, as well as Surgery at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN. She is a Professor and section head of Health Care Systems Engineering in the Mayo Medical School.

She is an emerita Professor in Industrial Engineering / Mechanical and Materials Engineering at the University of Nebraska Lincoln with a courtesy appointment in Surgery at the University of Nebraska Medical Center. While at the University of Nebraska, she served on the NIOSH Heartland Occupational Safety and Health Center (University of Iowa) Board of Advisors from their formation in 1999 until she moved to Mayo Clinic in 2012.

Susan earned her PhD from Virginia Tech, her MS from Texas Tech on a NIOSH traineeship and her BS from Iowa State University, all in Industrial Engineering.

She served as engineering lead for the VA Engineering Resource Center at the Nebraska-Western Iowa Veterans Health Administration Medical Center. She performed research at the Swedish National Institute for Working Life and The Netherlands Organization for Applied Scientific Research in the Quality of Worklife, Ergonomics and Innovation Department.

She is on the editorial board of Applied Ergonomics and an associate editor of and IIE Transactions on Healthcare Systems Engineering. She has over 90 archival peer-reviewed publications. She was elected Fellow in the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Fall 2014.

Susan’s research focus is to improve medical device ergonomics, teamwork and health care ergonomics for provider and patient safety. She is a certified professional ergonomist and professional engineer in industrial engineering with a specialty in human factors and ergonomics. Her work is currently focused in the operating room and emergency department.

For 30 years, Vikki Sanders has worked at the Department of Labor and industry as the Workplace Violence Prevention consultant for the state of Minnesota. She has worked 7 years as an OSHA investigator and 23 years as a Principal Consultant specializing in Workplace Violence, general industry safety and safety committees.

Vikki currently is the Public Sector Principal Safety Consultant for the Department of Labor and Industry specializing with public sector employers. Vikki has taught over 610 businesses and 55,000 employees on safety topics in a variety of industrial settings including healthcare, education, manufacturing, government and business.

As a Consultant/Trainer and Co-Author of the workplace violence prevention manual, Vikki Sanders offers practical tools of awareness and understanding that help make workplaces safer.