Air Force Academy’s Cadet Summer Research Program interns find home at IHMC

Students have long had a home at the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition.

This summer’s student collaborators included cadets from the U.S. Air Force Academy participating in the Cadet Summer Research Program. This program offers opportunities for cadets to get out of the classroom and experience real-world research and development that align with their majors, interests, and potentially their career fields.

Senior Research Scientist Dr. Kevin Gluck, who worked with the students, says that although they won’t all pursue science or engineering in the Air Force, it is certain research and development will play a role in all their careers.

“Their experiences at IHMC this summer established a foundation they will build on in their senior capstone project, and they will carry those lessons about rigorous scientific processes and advanced methodologies forward with them as new officers and emerging leaders within the Air Force,” Gluck says.

All the cadets are majoring in Systems Engineering with a Human Factors focus. They are working on a project funded by a three-year grant from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research whose goal is to improve scientific understanding of the biological, physiological, and cognitive variations in people in response to nutritional stress, sleep stress, and physical stress.

The cadets are working on retrospective modeling, simulation, and analysis on data sets from previous studies in which those stressors were factors in changes in performance over days or even weeks. Research Scientist Dr. Drew Cranford worked closely with the cadets and praised their work — and their work ethic.

The students got a crash course on how to create and run cognitive models within a cognitive architecture, then they learned how to optimize parameters of the model to predict individual performance as stress varied over the course of the study, Cranford says.

They focused on changes in cognitive performance because of sleep stress. They also are evaluating the validity of computational theories against the human performance data. They have reviewed data including the results of a psychomotor vigilance tests and a second cognitive assessment of working memory.

“This initial focus will provide a foundation for their senior capstone project as we extend the methods to model individual performance heterogeneity in stress response across multiple tasks including attention, visual vigilance, working memory, and reasoning/decision making tasks, and other studies that involve different kinds of stressors,” Cranford says.

“They have surely impressed with their desire to learn and enthusiastic work ethic.”

Intern Weiss O’Connor says he was surprised to learn the detrimental, cumulative effects of sleep deprivation on people.

“Before this project, I assumed that long-term sleep deprivation could have some negative effects, but that humans could eventually adapt to those conditions,” O’Connor says. “With some context from biomathematical models, I’ve seen how detrimental effects continue to progress with sustained deprivation.”

Cadet Kate Judy was intrigued by the use of computational modeling to improve understanding of human performance, as well as the application of this project to real-life, defense-related projects.

“I have not stopped learning since I got here, but the idea of using computers to model and help further study the human brain is simply not something I was familiar with up until now,” Judy says. “I know I have just barely scratched the surface in the first five weeks, and I am excited to continue learning as we progress through our capstone project.”

Critical to the success of the grant and the summer research program is for the students to bite off a substantive but manageable chunk of work to pursue.

Connor Manion, like the others, says the Cadet Research program is a tremendous educational asset that offers students the chance to gain valuable skills.

Manion says stress and fatigue are frequent topics of discussion at the Air Force Academy. IHMC has given Manion the opportunity to learn more about both in a scientifically meaningful way.

While the intellectual aspects of the research program have been valuable, Manion says there have been other benefits.

“The most surprising thing that I have learned is how it is possible to enter a new environment and build a life that suits the way I want to live,” Manion says. “The routine at IHMC has given me the opportunity to explore how it will be showing up to my first assignment or subsequent assignments as I go into my career in the operational Air Force. I believe this facet of my Cadet Research Program trip will have the most profound impact on my life.”

IHMC is a not-for-profit research institute of the Florida University System where researchers pioneer science and technology aimed at leveraging and extending human capabilities. IHMC researchers and staff collaborate extensively with the government, industry and academia to help develop breakthrough technologies. IHMC research partners have included: DARPA, the National Science Foundation, NASA, Army, Navy, Air Force, National Institutes of Health, IBM, Microsoft, Honda, Boeing, Lockheed, and many others.