Academic Credentials
  • Ph.D., Psychology, University of Oregon, 2013
  • M.S., Psychology, University of Oregon, 2009
  • B.A., Psychology, University of Iowa, 2007
Licenses & Certifications
  • Certified English XL Tribometrist (CXLT)
Professional Honors
  • Post-doctoral Research Scholar, Department of Neurology, University of Iowa Hospitals & Clinics, 2013-2015
  • Graduate Fellowship, Institute of Neuroscience: Systems Physiology Training Program #5 (T32 GM007257-33), National Institutes of Health, 2009-2010
Professional Affiliations
  • Human Factors and Ergonomics Society
  • The Psychonomic Society

Dr. Lester is a cognitive psychologist with expertise in memory, perception, visibility, attention, and information processing. He applies this knowledge to analyses of accidents and injuries, safety, and consumer decision-making.  

Dr. Lester has unique expertise in the domain of aging and its influence on information processing and behavior, including the impact of aging on sensation and perception, attention, memory, and decision-making. His knowledge and experience have been applied to investigations of human performance issues with respect to transportation, vehicle safety technologies, medical devices, and various consumer products — including food and beverage, and automobiles. Dr. Lester's consulting in product liability has focused on a human factors approach to class action litigation, in which consumer decision-making processes are examined through the cognitive mechanisms that drive consumers to make purchase decisions in the marketplace.

In addition, Dr. Lester performs quantitative injury and risk analyses using large-scale incident and injury data from various sources, including the Consumer Product Safety Commission's (CPSC) National Electronic Injury Surveillance System (NEISS), and FDA's Manufacturer and User Facility Device Experience (MAUDE).

Dr. Lester conducts and oversees human-subject testing to assess product use and to gather user opinions for various products in an automotive environment. He incorporates elements of experimental design, cutting-edge data acquisition and analysis techniques, psychophysics, questionnaires, and observational techniques to conduct comprehensive evaluations of automotive environments and vehicle technologies. As part of this work, Dr. Lester has conducted research on Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) in passenger vehicles. He also has unique consulting experience on collision mitigation systems (CMS) in commercial trucking applications.

Prior to joining Exponent, Dr. Lester completed his Ph.D. at the University of Oregon, where he studied visual perception, attention, and spatial processing. Following graduate school, he completed post-doctoral training at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics, in the Division of Neuroergonomics in the Department of Neurology, where he studied aging, vision and attention, and driver behavior in simulated and naturalistic environments.