Biographies

Dr. Michelle Sams
Director, US Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences (ARI)

On 18 March 2007, Dr. Michelle Sams was appointed to the position of Director, US Army Research Institute (ARI) and Chief Psychologist of the United States Army. She became a member of the Senior Executive Service (SES) in November 2004, and was awarded the position of Technical Director at ARI. Dr. Sams received her B.S. in Biology, M.S. in Psychology and a Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology respectively from New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, NM. She began her professional career in 1987 as an Engineering Psychologist for the US Army Testing and Evaluation Command at White Sands Missile Range, NM, where she designed and conducted human factors tests of weapons platforms and training systems. In 1989, Dr. Sams joined ARI as a research psychologist conducting research in manpower, personnel, and training modeling and prediction, cognitive workload assessment, and computer-based foreign language training. In 1994, Dr. Sams joined the ARI Plans, Programs, and Budget office to provide program planning assistance to ARI senior leadership and serve in the Pentagon as the ARI liaison to the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Army, Research and Technology and to the HQDA G-1. In 1997 Dr. Sams went to private industry to become a Program Manager and a Principal Investigator for Teknowledge Corporation's Training Systems Group. This group conducted advanced technology research for various DoD agencies in the areas of intelligent tutoring and performance support systems, and natural language understanding for dialog-enabled agents. She has been a consultant for various training technology initiatives in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness, and the National Science Foundation. Dr. Sams is a member of: The Association of the United States Army, The American Psychological Association, the Society for Applied Learning Technology, the International Artificial Intelligence in Education Society, Human Factors Society, and the National Training Systems Association. She has published over 32 book chapters, journal articles, technical reports and conference papers.