George Orwell’s iconic dystopian novel 1984 famously featured cameras capable of discerning a person’s state of mind – their contentedness, truthfulness or trustfulness – simply by looking at their face. The year 1984 came and went without such a technology emerging, but as demonstrated by Diane Paverman ’13 and Eric Murray’s ’13 summer research on the functional near-infrared spectrometer (fNIRS), scientists are getting closer to achieving Orwellian-like surveillance capabilities.

Spencer Gulbronson, a candidate for May graduation from Hamilton, has been awarded a prestigious Thomas J. Watson Fellowship for 2012-13. Her project, titled “The Universal Language: Exploring Creative Approaches to Math Education,” was among 40 national winners of the Fellowships.

The total number of students on Hamilton’s campus may be smaller than an entire graduating class at big research universities, but that doesn’t mean Hamilton’s research opportunities are any more limited. In fact, as Matthew T. Farrington ’12, Diane Paverman ’13, Spencer Gulbronson ’12, Peter Lauro ’12 and alumnus Sam Hinks ’11 are discovering, research at Hamilton is just as engaging as it can be at large universities. The students are working with Professor of Computer Science Stuart Hirshfield to determine if computers can recognize the unique “signature” of a user’s brain.

Hamilton students and faculty are working with the U.S. Air Force this summer on a project that measures the neurological responses to fear, frustration and suspicion of humans as they interact with computers.

Four Hamilton students were co-authors of a paper accepted for presentation at the ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing held May 7-12 in Vancouver, B.C.

Having received a grant for $458,900 from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, Stuart Hirshfield, the Stephen Harper Kirner Chair of Computer Science, and Research Associate Leanne Hirshfield ’02 have begun studying the real-time, quantitative assessment of computer users’ mental states to enhance usability testing and to create adaptive computer systems. They are creating a state-of-the-art usability laboratory that allows them to make concurrent cognitive, physiological and behavioral user measurements.