Named after the world-famous Wright brothers, Wright State University celebrated its 40th Anniversary in 2007. The University serves nearly 17,000 students, offering more than 100 undergraduate and 50 Ph.D., graduate, and professional degrees. The University is located in a beautiful 557-acre wooded setting. The entire campus is handicap accessible and one can travel around the campus both by sidewalks outside, and a tunnel network that connects almost all the buildings at the basement level. The University enjoys many partnerships with local, state, national and international entities. Wright-Patterson Air Force Base is a particularly significant partner in many ways. The Air Force donated the land on which Wright State University sits to the State of Ohio to establish the University in the early 60's. Today, many members of the faculty from the University and researchers from the Air Force Base continue the collaborative tradition in numerous scientific and technological development efforts.
Several academic programs at the University have a keen interest in aviation. The Department of Psychology is one of ten departments in the College of Science and Mathematics. It offers programs from Bachelors through Doctoral degrees in Psychology. At the Graduate level, the program focuses on Human Factors and Industrial/Organizational Psychology. The faculty also participates in the Neuroscience track of the interdisciplinary Biomedical Sciences Ph.D. program.
The Department of Biomedical, Industrial & Human Factors Engineering is one of four departments in the College of Engineering and Computer Science. It is the only academic unit, nationally, to share programs in these disciplines. The Department offers undergraduate, master, and doctoral degrees with research foci on Industrial & Human Systems, Material and Nanotechnolog, and Sensor and Signal Processing.
As part of the Boonshoft School of Medicine, the Aerospace Medicine program offers an Aerospace Medicine Residency and Master's Program. It is the oldest civilian aerospace medicine training program in the United States, having graduated more than 100 physicians from around the world since its inception in 1978. In addition to students from the United States, the program has attracted students from more than 20 foreign countries.
Wright-Patterson Air Force Base is among the largest and most organizationally complex Air Force installations. The base is named after the Wright brothers and Frank Stuart Patterson. The Wright brothers performed much of their aircraft development work at the Huffman Prairie that is now part of the base. Frank Stuart Patterson, the son and nephew of the co-founders of National Cash Register, was killed in a crash of his aircraft at Wilbur Wright Field in 1918. Wright-Patterson Air Force Base is home to the Air Force Material Command headquarters, a major United States Air Force Medical Center, the Air Force Institute of Technology, and the Air Force Research Laboratory headquarters and several of its Directorates.
Of particular relevance to the International Symposium of Aviation Psychology, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base was the location of the Psychology Branch of the Aerospace Medical Research Laboratory founded by Dr. Paul Fitts in 1945. The Psychology Branch was one of the earliest research organizations devoted to aviation psychology. The research organizations at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base have undergone many reorganizations since 1945, but throughout all of the changes, the Psychology Branch has survived and grown into the current Warfighter Interface Division, now headquartered at the Paul M. Fitts building.
Wright-Patterson Air Force Base is also home to the National Museum of the United States Air Force, the world's largest and oldest military aviation museum. The museum presents over 300 aircraft and aerospace vehicles along with thousands of historical items. Exhibits range from early aircraft built by the Wright brothers to the most modern combat aircraft and weapons.
Encompassing as it does the joint legacies of Paul Fitts and the Wright brothers, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base can be justifiably considered a cradle of both aviation psychology research and aviation itself. And, as the home of both the National Museum of the United States Air Force and the headquarters of the Air Force Research Laboratory, the base uniquely encapsulates the past, present and future of aviation.