He is an expert in the effects of design on human-computer dialogue, controlled experiment design and statistical analysis. He received an MA (Hons) in Psychology & Business Studies and a PhD in Usability Engineering, both from the University of Edinburgh. He has published over 30 peer-reviewed papers in leading inter-disciplinary journals (e.g. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, Interacting with Computers) and conferences (CHI, Interact, Interspeech, BCS HCI, LREC) and has presented his work at globally leading institutions (e.g. UCL Interaction Centre, Birmingham and Edinburgh Universities). Dr Cowan is a member of the British Psychological Society (BPS) and The ACM and is Programme Committee member for CHI 2017. He has held over €100,000 of competitive funding from prestigious sources (e.g. EPSRC, British Academy), leading a number of these projects as PI.