Engineering and the Environment, University of Southampton

Henrietta Howarth graduated from Imperial College, University of London in 1982. She obtained a PhD at the ISVR in 1989. She has had 25 years’ research experience in the multi-disciplinary Human Factors Research Unit which is a part of the Institute of Sound and Vibration Research. She leads consultancy projects in the HFRU and manages the HFRU ISO 9001 Quality Management System. She has managed EU research programmes, including FP5 projects VIBRISKS (A study of the risks of occupational vibration exposures) and VIBSEAT (Evaluation and improvement of suspension seat vibration isolation performance), and the development of a ‘Non-binding guide to good practice for implementing EU Directive 2002/44/EC on vibrations at work’ which was translated by the EC into all European languages. She has participated in collaborative research within Rail Research UK, Nissan, SNCF, Arup, Defra, and The Boeing Company. She is a member of British Standards Institution Sub-Committee GME 21/6 on human responses to mechanical vibration and shock. She provides lectures on community response to building vibration for the Human Responses to Vibration postgraduate programme for engineers and scientists at the ISVR.

Henrietta Howarth’s interests include: community response to vibration in buildings, passenger comfort in railway vehicles, motion sickness, human responses to combined noise and vibration, subjective responses to shock, assessment of the transmissibility of ‘anti-vibration’ gloves.

Primary research group:  ISVR Human Sciences Group