As a rising junior, Emmerson Zhaime ’17 worked with Stuart Hirshfield, the Stephen Harper Kirner Chair of Computer Science, and several other students to study blood oxygen concentration related to meditation, using wireless functional near-infrared spectroscopy to observe changes.
Going into the research Zhaime expected to be doing nothing but coding but found himself also teaching study participants to meditate using emWave software and taking oxygen readings as they mediated and rested.
“It was good experience for me to think about different applications of computer science apart from the usual technical stuff that I always think of when I think of computer science,” says Zhaime, who majors in computer science and math, is a resident advisor and, in his spare time, is developing a textbook-exchange website for students.
He’s considering going into software engineering after he graduates from Hamilton but he liked doing research so much that he’s also thinking about graduate school. As a rising sophomore Zhaime worked with Physics Professor Gordon Jones analyzing data related to the aCORN Project, which looks at neutron decay and is a collaboration between Hamilton and several other institutions. The National Institutes of Standards and Technologies organizes the project.
