Possible Student Research Projects 


We have immediate openings for graduate students interested in the topic of vestibular adaptation to space flight. See project description below. 


Below is some idea of the range of student projects available. (See the Research page for some perspective on these projects.) Projects involve experiments on human subjects, computerized data analysis, and mathematical modeling, in various combinations and to varying degrees. 
 
Vestibular Adaptation
  • context-specific adaptation of the inter-aural translational linear VOR, using head position and other context cues
  • analysis of the three-dimensional properties of eye movements (horizontal, vertical, torsional) during translational motion
  • Kalman filter modeling of the combination of visual and vestibular information during translation
Other Adaptation and Orientation Projects
  • context-specific adaptation of saccade gain in parabolic flight
  • analysis of the trajectories of the eyes during saccades, with the head in different orientations or in different gravity fields
  • development of adaptation procedures to enhance the rate and/or extent of saccade adaptation
Dynamics of Physiological Systems
  • mathematical modeling of the generation of nystagmus (a type of reflexive eye movement)
  • detection of rapid eye movements (nystagmus fast phases) using computational techniques from the analysis of nonlinear dynamical systems
  • application of eye movement analysis algorithms to data from vestibular patients
  • development of a model of adaptation of saccadic eye movements, and determination of the optimal variability ("noise") in such a model
 Engineering
  • development of scleral search coil system (digital signal processing, electronics, computer programming)
  • implementation of commercial video-based system for measuring eye movements
 
 
 
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