Dr. Michael C. Hout

CSN Senior Advisor on Vision and Memory For School Bus Safety

Michael C. Hout is a nationally recognized cognitive scientist whose work bridges cutting-edge vision science, real-world safety applications, and the next generation of research leadership. As a Senior Advisor to Child Safety Network (CSN™), Dr. Hout brings deep expertise in visual cognition, attention, and eye-movement science to CSN’s mission of protecting children nationwide, particularly in understanding why drivers fail to perceive school buses, stop arms, and children in danger zones, and how evidence-based design and technology can change that behavior.

BIO: Michael C. Hout is the Associate Dean for Research in the College of Health, Education, and Social Transformation at New Mexico State University. He is a Professor in the Departments of Psychology and of Kinesiology, and is the Interim Director of the STEM+ Education Research Institute. He directs the Vision Sciences and Memory Laboratory and is the Director (and co-founder) of the Addison Care Virtual and Augmented Reality Lab on NMSU’s campus and is the Director of the Discovery Scholars Program (which gets undergraduates involved in research with faculty mentors). He is the Editor in Chief at the journal Attention, Perception, and Psychophysics, and completed a two-year “rotator” position as Program Director for the National Science Foundation, co-running the Perception, Action, and Cognition program and the Cognitive Neuroscience program. His research focuses primarily on visual cognition (including visual search, attention, eye movement control, and computational modeling), spanning both basic theoretical research and applied scenarios such as professional medical/security screening, and search and rescue. He has won several awards for research and teaching, including the Rising Star award from the Association for Psychological Science, as well as the Early Career Award for Exceptional Achievements in Creative Scholarly Activity from NMSU.

Through his advisory role with CSN, Dr. Hout applies these principles to large-scale public safety challenges, including the study of driver perception failures around school buses, the evaluation of emerging safety technologies, and the development of data-driven solutions to prevent illegal school-bus passing and child injuries. His involvement strengthens CSN’s commitment to rigorous science, measurable outcomes, and translating laboratory insights into life-saving real-world impact.