Rakesh Gangadharaiah, Ph.D.
Research Assistant Professor
rakeshg@clemson.edu
4 Research Drive
Greenville, SC 29607
Rakesh Gangadharaiah is a Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Automotive Engineering at Clemson University. His research focuses on human factors, user experience design, human-machine interaction, cognitive workload, driving simulation, and advanced driver assistance systems for civilian and military mobility applications.
Gangadharaiah’s work examines the growing role of infotainment systems, digital cockpits, automation, and artificial intelligence in modern vehicles. His research focuses on how these technologies can be designed to improve convenience, usability, safety, trust, and driver/operator performance. He is currently working on Clemson’s VIPR-GS projects, including research on Soldier workload assessment, off-road vehicle operations, visual scanning, and the human-centered design of advanced vehicle technologies. His work combines driving simulator studies, behavioral measures, eye-tracking, physiological sensing, surveys, and data analytics to better understand operator performance, workload, and situational awareness.
He has teaching experience in automotive human factors and vehicle design-related courses, with interests in mentoring students in human factors, user experience design, digital cockpit systems, software HMI design, research methods, and applied data analysis.
Before joining Clemson, Gangadharaiah worked at General Motors for 11 years, contributing to vehicle software architecture, embedded systems, driver information displays, digital cockpit systems, AUTOSAR-based communication, and human-machine interface design for production vehicles. This industry experience supports his applied research approach at the intersection of automotive engineering, human factors, user experience, and intelligent vehicle systems.
Gangadharaiah received his Ph.D. in Automotive Engineering from Clemson University. He earned a master’s degree from the Indian Institute of Science.
Research Interests: Human factors, user experience design, digital cockpit, infotainment, driver behavior, HMI, cognitive workload, driving simulation, visual scanning, transportation safety, and human-centered vehicle technologies (ADAS, automation, AI, off-road mobility).
See: Google Scholar