Week 1 Tasks: On my first day we were moving one lab space to another to make room for an office space for some new employees. We moved some furniture and painted some blotchy spots on the walls, but the majority of the time was spent deconstructing a treadmill and to move it to its new space. The treadmill is used for mental fatigue tests that will help design systems that give commanders the ability to understand their units mental state and subsequent ability to make difficult decisions. The second day I spent updating the Center's website about their currently funded projects. This gave me an opportunity to learn about all of their projects in more detail and understand all that they have going on. Wednesday I continued this task because there was a lot to update and a lot of the terms were complex and hard to understand. On Thursday I edited the code for an experiment's program. The experiment presented participants with various images and they had to decide if they thought it was a threat or not. I had to remove certain pictures that elicited no reaction and add in breaks for the participants so they could rest their arms because they were using a gun with a sensor to track the participants movements while they decided which was heavy.
Work Environment: The first couple of days I wore a T-shirt because I was told in advance we would be moving things around. After that I wore a flannel and kaki pants. The work environment is appropriately casual. It is a place with sensitive research and important work so people are working diligently and don't goof around, but it is also not rigid and it is very friendly. I like this environment and friendly the atmosphere is even though there are people from many different backgrounds with a wide variety of roles.
Service: The Center is funded by the U.S. Army so all of their research is for the Army and improving things such as soldier capability in the field, soldier training ability, and soldier status information. They do additional research on things such as tDCS and tACS (transcranial direct and alternating current stimulation) in which a cap stimulates the brain with small amounts of electricity. There are many products available to civilians so they want to know why certain things work well for some people and not for other people and how can they apply that to improve soldiers' mental capabilities.