. In the background is a thermal image of a student’s face used for investigating biometrics to monitor the student in various ways including the level of engagement and focus of attention. (Photo by Randy Montoya)


 A large portion of Sandia’s program today focuses on the uniqueness of the individual interacting with others and with machines. It involves using machines to help humans perform more efficiently and embedding cognitive models in machines so they interact with users more like people interact with one another.


The result is the ability for researchers to take advantage of the basic strengths of humans and machines while mitigating the weaknesses of each. Cognitive projects and research at Sandia span a whole gamut of areas, ranging from student training to assisting with Yucca Mountain licensing, from designing “smart” cars to using video-like games to train military personnel, and from determining how neurons give rise to memory to global terrorist threat detection. Funding for the research has come from the Office of Naval Research, Sandia’s internal Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) program, Department of Energy, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), and other government agencies. The CS&T program also benefits from collaborations with the University of New Mexico, the MIND Imaging Center in Albuquerque, and most recently the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Sandia is a National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) laboratory. The initial decision for Sandia to develop cognitive technologies is based on the belief that “there are numerous positive impacts cognitive systems technologies can have on our national security,” says Russ Skocypec, senior manager of Sandia’s Human, Systems, and Simulation Technologies Department.



Today’s conflicts, he says, are unlike others over the past century. Although all wars are driven by humans, major influences on the outcomes have differed. World War I was a chemists’ war, World War II a physicists’ war, and the Cold War an economic war. Today, he believes, “we are engaged in a human war that is influenced primarily by individual human beings rather than technology or bureaucracy.” That is why he considers it appropriate for Sandia, a laboratory with national security as its mission, to use its resources to better understand the minds of this country’s adversaries, as well as to use machines to enhance the Labs’ abilities to recognize patterns, deal with massive amounts of data, solve perplexing problems, and perform complex activities. While Sandia dipped its toes in cognitive research in the late 1990s, the Labs’ real effort in the area started in 2002 when the program won an internally funded LDRD grand challenge.


 COGNITION TEAM AT WORK – (Left to right)
Steve Verzi, Justin Basilico, Charlie Gieseler, Chris Davis (2nd row) Jon Whetzel, Russel Waymire, Ann Speed, Patrick Xavier, Zach Benz (right to back) Matt Glickman, Fred Rothganger, Brian Clark, Wendy Shanefelt, Brian Titu. (Photo by Tiana Chavez)
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