Lucy Whitmore
With the incredible amount of information available in the world, humans have to form many different behavioral strategies in order to account for the variety of situations and information we could encounter. This makes the ability to flexibly adapt behavior to different contexts a critical component of human intelligence. For example, when we use computers, we know that Macs and PCs use different operating systems. We can apply what we now from using a Mac laptop to a Mac desktop, but we know we cant apply that same knowledge to […]
Haley Keglovits
Learning is paramount to human success, but the complex processes that underlie it are poorly understood. While cognitive models adequately explain some learning mechanisms, much remains to be discovered about the interactions between different mechanisms. Reinforcement learning (RL) is a slow and robust process that relies on external rewards to guide behavior. Working memory (WM) is a system that can retain recently acquired information for short periods of time. While previous research has demonstrated that both systems contribute to learning, the two mechanisms have rarely been studied together. In this […]
Pablo Paderes
The rise of mass incarceration and punishment over the past 4 decades in the U.S. is largely understood as a black issue, while immigrant incarceration and punishment are largely understood as brown problems. These analytical borders segregate rich bodies of theory and analysis from each other. My research will use in-depth interviews of formerly incarcerated people and black and brown social justice movement leaders to create an integrated, bottom-up analysis serving to guide archival research of current statistics and recent trends in order to understand the mass incarceration and punishment […]
Samara Michaelson
My work will focus on the autobiographical tendencies of James Baldwins texts as they engage with the sociopolitical and philosophical problems inherent to black autobiography’s genesisslaverywith the larger task of reexamining understandings of autobiography as a genre. The research will explore the history of African American literature in order to find how questions originating from the slave narrative are reformulated, and how the slave narratives resilient strain has injected itself into the nature of black literature so as to make autobiographical practice a fundamental method of communication. This will predictably […]
Thomas Yerxa
Computers learn to solve problems by slowly and continuously changing their strategy, this makes solving problems that involve discrete steps problematic. I will be researching the use of hyper dimensional computing to implement differentiable memory structures that interface with neural networks. Many data structures are inherently discrete which makes them difficult to incorporate into schemes because of the strategy utilized by computers during the training process. Recent work has shown that neural networks that have the ability to learn how to use external data structures outperform traditional networks in an […]
Elliot Lewis
In recent years, there has been a proliferation of speculation concerning the significance of new digital technologies on social relations, culture, and political economy. French philosopher and social theorist Bernard Stiegler is one of the more prominent of such New Media theorists, who aims at a philosophical transformation in our understanding of the technological mediation of social processes of individuation, production, and consumption. For my research, I am carrying out a critical study of Stieglers work, as it concentrates several pressing contemporary problematics within critical social theory into an exemplary […]
Brian Stone
In solid-state physics, the theory of electronic band structures successfully explains many physical properties of solids. Band structures, which describe the range of allowed energies of an electron in a solid, form the foundation of our understanding of solid-state devices, such as transistors and solar cells. I plan to develop, modify, and utilize computational tools that use band structures to analyze the electronic behavior of solids. More specifically, I will be using and modifying open-source materials analysis tools, such as pymatgen (Python Materials Genomics), to calculate and analyze band structures […]
Maria Krasilnikov
Listeria monocytogenes is a facultative intracellular bacterial pathogen that is being developed as a vaccine vector. The potential for L. monocytogenes as a vaccine vector stems from its ability to invade host cells and its genetic tractability, which allows us to make mutants that express antigens and are avirulent. However, it has been shown that in some instances infection with L. monocytogenes mutants causes the host to produce IL-10, which is an immunosuppressive cytokine. Thus, we believe that L. monocytogenes has the potential to be an even better vaccine vector […]
Peter Birghoffer
It is convenient to see the failure of the Comecon (Council for Mutual Economic Assistance), the economic union of Eastern Bloc countries, as a verdict on command economies. Central planning is commonly understood to have reduced the competitiveness of these countries to the point where they could no longer provide themselves with the resources required to maintain a viable economic portfolio. But the Comecons lack of success to keep up with the West cannot be ascribed to the shortcomings of central planning alone. In this project, I argue that a […]
Anagh Sinha
Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) is a devastating neuropsychiatric disorder affecting 16 million people in the United States, with an estimated public burden of $210 billion/year. Yet, mechanisms leading to MDD progression remain poorly understood. Persistent activation of microglia, resident immune cells of the brain, has been previously linked to depression. This activation also appears to be linked with changes in expression of cannabinoid receptor 2 (CB2). Targeted activation of CB2 has shown to bias microglia to a pro resolution state, but whether proper CB2 expression is necessary for the normal […]