Published 11.2.23 The summer has seen marked progress on a new research complex that will expand the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition (IHMC) Pensacola campus. In June, the project marked a milestone, “topping out” the planned $40 million Healthspan, Resilience, and Performance Research Complex (HRP). “Topping out” is a builders’ rite traditionally held when the last beam (or its equivalent) is placed atop a structure during its construction. Work on the HRP has progressed steadily since the ceremonial groundbreaking in February 2023. The building is expected to be complete in spring 2024, said Phillip Turner, IHMC’s director of architectural and engineering services. “It has been particularly exciting to see the complex take shape in the downtown skyline,” Turner said. The building, once completed, will substantially increase IHMC’s footprint in downtown Pensacola, which we have called home since 1999. The 40,000 square-foot research complex is an investment in the intellectual capital of the region, creating a research nucleus that will help attract leading scientific minds to the region. DAG Architects, partnered with Atlanta-based Cooper Carry, designed the building. Brasfield & Gorrie leads the construction of the facility located at the corner of Garden and Alcaniz streets in Pensacola. When… Read More

Published 10.6.23 Dr. Judith Curry wants more people to appreciate the large uncertainties associated with climate science. It’s why Curry has worked to fight “groupthink” in science, advocate for transparency and engage critics. It is her way of keeping the conversation focused on the nuance that is a critical component of science and scientific discussion. Her appearance on Episode 158 of STEM-Talk, available now on podcast apps, YouTube and on IHMC’s website, reflects this. Curry is president of the Climate Forecast Application Network and the host of the blog, Climate Etc. She also is Professor Emerita of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology. In scientific circles, she is known as a contrarian for pointing out the uncertainties and limitations of climate modeling. Her blog is a forum for climate researchers, academics, and technical experts from other fields as well as citizen scientists to discuss climate science and policy. “In my opinion the worst possible scenario is that we are left to face extreme weather and climate impacts with a crippled energy system that drastically reduces our resilience,” Curry says. “Focusing on climate change leads us to ignore the broader ecological problems associated with our impact on… Read More

Published 9.18.23 Few people know more about muscle development than Dr. Donald Layman. As the world’s foremost authority on dietary protein and amino acids, he is known for his extensive research on muscle development and his studies of metabolic regulation for obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease. Layman’s interview with STEM-Talk co-hosts Drs. Ken Ford and Marcas Bamman is now available on IHMC’s website and YouTube as well as in popular podcast apps. “I think everyone knows that our body has a lot of protein in it,” Layman says. “What people don’t realize is we have a constant process of turnover. Every protein in the body has a half-life. Some last an hour or two, some last 30 or 40 days. We have this constant rate of repair and replacement going on. That’s why we need to pay attention to protein turnover. How well we do this process of protein turnover has a lot to do with long term health and aging.” Layman spent 31 years on the faculty at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where he is now a professor emeritus. His lab focused on understanding how metabolism works. Today, he works as Director of Research for the American Egg… Read More

Published 9.8.23 Nic Radford wants us to love ocean exploration the way we romanticize space exploration. He knows whereof he speaks. Radford is an engineer, roboticist, inventor, and entrepreneur who spent 14 years at Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center’s Dexterous Robotics Laboratory at NASA in Houston. He now is founder, president, and CEO of Nauticus Robotics Inc., a company that creates and deploys autonomous marine robotic systems. He launched the Fall 2023 Evening Lecture season at the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition (IHMC) with the talk, “From Outer Space to Inner Space: Developing Robots for Final Frontiers,” on Sept. 20. You can watch the lecture here if you missed it in person. “Space flight dominates our romantic thinking,” Radford said. “I’d like to see us explore Mars, but there are lot of pressing challenges here on Earth and those pressing challenges could use investment.” Radford calls Nauticus his life’s work and says it directly ties to his 14 years at NASA. Applying technological principles his team learned from spaceflight robotics, Nauticus challenges the aging and inefficient existing service infrastructure of the offshore industries, Radford says. “The ocean is fundamental to almost every aspect of human life but is… Read More

Published 8.23.23 Baseball may be America’s pastime, but it also is a data scientist’s dream.  Dr. Josh Hagen, director of the Human Performance Collaborative at Ohio State University, learned firsthand how deep the data mining well can go when it comes to tracking baseball player performance.   Hagen, who appears on Episode 156 of the STEM-Talk podcast, was part of a longitudinal study of changes in a baseball player’s maximal strength as a result of resistance training. The study focused on the impact the exercise had on total home runs per game across three years of training in four competitive seasons for four teams.   “Baseball is a fascinating sport when it comes to math and statistics,” Hagen says. “As far as American sports, baseball has gone head-first into statistics. I’ve been floored by the amount of staffing and infrastructure these teams have (around data)…. Every swing, every pitch is biomechanically analyzed.”  Hagen’s STEM-Talk is co-hosted by IHMC Founder Ken Ford and IHMC’s Chief Strategic Partnership Officer Dr. Morley Stone, who has had an instrumental role in Hagen’s career.   The conversation covers Hagen’s work at the Human Performance Collaborate, which brings together multidisciplinary teams of researchers, sports scientists, data scientists, and practitioners… Read More

Published 8.17.23 The Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition is where Gabriela Sullivan’s passion for science education flourished.   This fall, she’s coming back to share it with the next generation.  As a high schooler, Sullivan was a regular volunteer at IHMC’s Science Saturdays STEM enrichment program for students in grades 3 through 6. She remembers being in awe of the researchers and teachers who could encourage and inspire a room full of young minds.  “Their ability to convey complex concepts in a way that was both understandable and exciting fascinated me,” she said. “It made me want a career that involved science education.”  She made that dream a reality. Sullivan graduated from the University of Florida and now works for the City of Ocala as water conservation coordinator. In October she will lead a Science Saturday of her own at the Ocala campus. Her topic will be healthy wetlands.  “Today’s youth will be the scientists of tomorrow, and throughout my session, I want students to feel engaged and included, knowing that there is a place for them in the field of science,” she said.  For nearly 16 years, Science Saturdays has been opening doors for kids like Sullivan. IHMC’s… Read More

Published 8.2.23 This summer, the ordinarily quiet classrooms of the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition’s Pensacola and Ocala campuses became engineering playgrounds as part of 2023 Summer Robotics Camp. Over the course of four, one-week sessions, 66 middle and high schoolers got these hands-on experiences and more designing their own LEGO robots, learning the basics of computer programming, and interacting with researchers. “We are reaching out to the next generation of scientists, helping them to discover what their future might look like,” said Dr. Ursula Schwuttke, IHMC’s Director of Educational Outreach. Any future in STEM requires strong teamwork and problem-solving skills, and Robotics Camp is designed to teach just that. Under the guidance of IHMC staff and volunteers from local high schools, campers worked in pairs to assemble LEGO Mindstorms robots. Students then used a block-based, visually appealing coding language to guide their creations through mazes and obstacle courses, debugging code and redesigning robots as they went. Campers attending the second Ocala session also learned how to program in Python. “You don’t get too many chances to actually mess around with robots in day-to-day life,” said Max Truong, a former Science Saturdays attendee who is now a rising… Read More

Published 7.21.23 What if the roots of a secret to treating chronic pain has lain for centuries in the tree leaves of a Southeast Asian evergreen? Dr. Chris McCurdy has spent the last 15 years of his career researching that question, with a focus on the medical efficacy of kratom and its alkaloids. Now, he’s back on STEM-Talk after five years to share what he and his lab at the University of Florida have learned since his 2018 interview on episode 61. McCurdy and his lab received two major grants from the National Institute of Drug Abuse to investigate kratom and its chemical components to better understand its potential to treat a multitude of conditions. “One of the things that has been touted about kratom is that it does give energy,” McCurdy notes. “Its traditional use was to boost energy for outdoor labor in the hot humid tropical environment of Southeast Asia. It has this sort of paradoxical effect of stimulation but also euphoria” at different dosing levels.  Kratom has been used in herbal medicine for hundreds of years to boost mood, energy and pain relief. Though it has become popular throughout the world for recreational purposes, it is being… Read More

Published 7.14.23 New York Yacht Club American Magic’s move to Pensacola has resulted in a collaboration with the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition (IHMC).  Since 2018, the professional sailing team has used the Port of Pensacola for seasonal training. In 2023, they decided to make Pensacola their permanent home. This strategic move is expected to generate 170 jobs in advanced manufacturing, engineering, design, and high-tech research and development.  The collaboration originated when Pensacola Mayor D.C. Reeves included IHMC on a city tour with the racing team.   “Soon after this introduction, members of the IHMC team toured the American Magic facilities, and the brainstorming began,” said Ryan Tilley, IHMC’s director of strategic program execution and innovation.  Leading the collaboration for IHMC has been Research Scientist Dr. Matt Johnson. Johnson said that on the tour, the team highlighted a number of technical challenges they were working on, including improving the interface used by the crew.   “They are constantly developing and testing new ideas,” Jonson said. “Considering IHMC’s experience designing interfaces for advanced technology, it was a natural fit for collaboration between the two organizations.”  Johnson’s research areas include human-machine teaming, human-machine system design, human-centered computing, human-machine interface design, and multi-robot… Read More

Published 6.28.23 You can thank Bob Newhart for Dr. Brain Cole’s career.  The classic 1970s sitcom gave Cole, then an impressionable middle schooler, a vision of the impact a physician could have on the lives of patients with good humor.  “If you ask any individual in health care, the reason I chose this is I love to help people,” Cole says on the latest episode of STEM-Talk. “On ‘The Bob Newhart Show’ he was able to help people, but he did so with a sense of humor.”   Something about the low-key way that psychology, sociology and humor fit together to make an impact on people appealed to young Cole. He says he has carried that with him throughout a career that led him to becoming a renown orthopedic surgeon.  Today on STEM-Talk, Cole shares his journey with Dr. Ken Ford, IHMC’s founder and chief executive officer, and Dr. Marcas Bamman, Senior Research Scientist at IHMC.   Cole specializes in cartilage restoration, orthobiologics, and advanced surgical techniques for the treatment of knee, elbow, and shoulder injuries. He is the team doctor for the NBA’s Chicago Bulls and the co-team doctor for the Chicago White Sox. He also is the host of… Read More

Published 6.15.23 At the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition (IHMC), we stand on the shoulders of those who have come before us.  This month, IHMC honored seven people who helped build the Institute from a closet in the computer science department at the University of West Florida into a research center with an international reputation in artificial intelligence, computer science, robotics and exoskeletons, and healthspan, resilience, and performance research.   “Without the contributions of these individuals, IHMC quite simply would not be where it is today,” said Founder and CEO Dr. Ken Ford. “Their own sense of commitment to excellence inspired, and continues to influence, the culture of IHMC. We are grateful to each of them.”  The honorees named to Emeritus status were:  Senior Research Scientist Emeritus, Dr. James Allen  Dr. Allen is a pioneer in artificial intelligence with substantial contributions to natural language understanding research. He is a professor emeritus at the University of Rochester where he has been on the faculty since 1978.  Dr. Allen joined IHMC in 2006 and served as an Associate Director.  Computational linguistics is at the root of speech recognition systems, text-to-speech synthesizers, automated voice-response systems, internet search engines, text editors, language… Read More

Published 6.13.23 Longtime listeners know Dr. Dominic D’Agostino’s reputation and his research into the physiological benefits of nutritional ketosis. Since his last STEM-Talk in 2019, a tremendous body of research has been added to the literature about the therapeutic potential of ketosis. Listen to Episode 153 now or wherever you listen to podcasts. The high-fat, low-carb ketogenic diet has been linked to advances in the treatment of: • Alzheimer’s • Cancer • Migraines • Type-2 diabetes • Psoriasis • Sleep apnea • Psychiatric disorders • Traumatic brain injuries • And a host of other diseases and disorders, which we cover in today’s interview. D’Agostino is an IHMC colleague and a tenured associate professor of molecular pharmacology and physiology at the University of South Florida Morsani College of Medicine. He specializes in neuroscience, molecular pharmacology, nutrition, and physiology.   In this episode, hear our conversation about:  — Evidence-based applications of the ketogenic diet on neurodegenerative disorders such as epilepsy, Alzheimer’s Parkinson’s disease.   — Possible applications for the ketogenic diet in the treatment of schizophrenia, bipolar and other psychiatric disorders.    — Research on whether therapeutic ketosis via ketone esters could help treat epilepsy and other seizure disorders.  — Studies that examined… Read More

Published 6.6.23 “Leaving your jet in the jungle is not heroic. I’m a survivor.” That sentiment is one that Retired Air Force Maj. Brian Shul expressed often in the years after being shot down during the Vietnam War. Sustaining devastating burn injuries in the crash, he recovered and continued to serve his country, piloting secret missions in the Cold War while flying the SR-71, the world’s fastest aircraft. He told his story often as part of his encore career in which he continued to inspire. Telling his story was among the last things he did. He died of a cardiac arrest in a hospital in Reno, Nev. On May 20, 2023. He had collapsed while speaking at the Nevada Military Support Alliance’s annual event, according to news outlets. He was 75. Back in 2015, the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition was honored to host Shul for an Evening Lecture. You can watch his talk here. He also was a guest on IHMC’s podcast SEM-Talk in episode 15. Listen to that conversation here.  

Published 5.19.23 How long can you sustain attention in a cognitively or physically demanding situation where a lapse in focus due to boredom or fatigue could have life-or-death consequences?  That’s the question at the heart of a cooperative research project between the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition (IHMC) and the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) now under way.  The project is the cover story of the latest issue of our newsletter, available here. Assessing and Augmenting Performance in Extreme Environments (A2PEX) aims for real-time assessment and augmentation of Airmen cognitive performance in long-duration missions in extreme environments.  The goal is to develop robust wearable devices and an integrated system that overcomes fatigue and stress by continually sensing, assessing, and augmenting human performance. The five-year project is sponsored by AFRL’s Materials and Manufacturing Directorate and supported by the 711th Human Performance Wing.   Principal Investigators are IHMC’s Dr. Morley Stone and Dr. Tim Broderick. It draws on team members from IHMC’s human performance, robotics, and human-centered computing teams, and on Stone’s earlier work within AFRL on the Sense, Assess, Augment paradigm.  Broderick says A2PEX “…is developing and manufacturing materials and technologies that will allow us to sense key biomarkers of… Read More

Published 5.18.23 Mark Shelhamer was set upon a path that would take him from “nerdy band kid” to the chief scientist for NASA’s Human Research Program by his Uncle Stanley.  “One of the smartest people I knew, even though he was not highly educated,” Shelhamer says. “He had been a surveyor in a coal mine. He was ‘the cool uncle,’ so he made it cool to be interested in science and math.”   Uncle Stanley also gifted 10-year-old Mark with a Radio Shack 150-in-1 Electronics Kit. The idea that he could wire up a radio in a few minutes and listen to broadcasts from hundreds of miles away on something he built with his own hands, “was magic to me.”  He’s been using that magic ever since in a career spent learning about spaceflight and its impact on human beings.  In this STEM-Talk, Shelhamer talks about his work with NASA and as an advisor to the commercial and consumer spaceflight industry. Shelhamer is an otolaryngology professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and is the director of the school’s Human Spaceflight Lab. He also the director and founder of the Bioastronautics at Hopkins initiative This fascinating discussion covers his… Read More

Published 5.8.23 The transition from military to civilian life comes with challenges, including how to translate that experience into the civilian workplace. The Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition is proud to be part of a U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) program to help close that gap. SkillBridge is a DoD program to give military personnel civilian work experience in the last 180 days of their service career — a bridge from one world to the next. This spring, IHMC renewed its commitment to the program becoming a SkillBridge worksite. The DoD covers salary and benefits while in the program, which allows IHMC to train and leverage highly skilled service members in preparation for permanent roles at no cost, said Ryan Tilley, IHMC’s director of strategic program execution and innovation. “SkillBridge gives IHMC early access to the experience, skills, and unmatched work ethic service members bring to the table,” Tilley said. “It’s a huge benefit to us.” The SkillBridge partner vetting process was updated in January 2023. As part of that process, IHMC had to craft a comprehensive training plan and model the job description for the role that the service member may fill. That included details such as… Read More

Published 5.4.23 An IHMC team has wrapped up a three-year project refining an underwater eye-tracking tool to detect the early signs of neurological hazards in divers. Neurologic decompression sickness, hypoxia, hypercarbia, and Central Nervous System (CNS) O2 toxicity, all are hazards of working in undersea environments. Small eye-movement cameras, known as video-oculographic (VOG) systems, have been used extensively for clinical assessment of eye movements, a quantifiable marker of neurologic function. In a project supported by the Office of Naval Research Undersea Medicine Program, the IHMC team modified the Pupil Labs ocular camera system into a waterproof form that fits in the U.S. Navy MK 20 full-face dive mask. The Pupil Labs system is a mobile, open-source, natural gaze-based system validated across clinical and operational settings. The IHMC team is led by Senior Research Scientist Jeff Phillips and Research Associate Connor Tate. “Navy divers are exposed to harsh conditions and high levels of stress during submerged critical missions such as search and rescue or explosive ordinance disposal,” Tate said. Standard laboratory eye-tracking systems provide reliable measures on neurological status, but, Tate noted, “there wasn’t yet a fully waterproofed device for monitoring and evaluation in the submerged environment until our team developed… Read More

Published 5.2.23 Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition research also includes small scale efforts in local efforts.   One such example is work by IHMC Research Scientist David Fries, who is using Bayou Texar as a test bed for a project to enlist residents in tracking the bayou’s health. It is a timely project that complements ongoing efforts to improve the waterway, which includes a nearly $6 million grant, announced by the City of Pensacola in November 2022.  With two grants totaling $100,000 from the Pensacola & Perdido Bays Estuary Program Community Grant Program, Fries launched a citizen science initiative with six monitoring stations linking augmented- and virtual-reality technologies with the real-world bayou. The effort aims to build a living map of the health of one of Pensacola’s signature waterways.  “The goal is to enable a water management information system, generated by the people, working with machines to better understand nature and to monitor and effect a change in the waterway,” Fries said.  Fries recruited homeowners to attach data collection devices to their docks and property lines. Those devices feed into software to analyze the data collected. It includes:  Photos and social sharing for citizens to share photos of… Read More

Published 4.19.23 In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, Dr. John Ioannidis wrote an article in March 2020 questioning government statistics about the fatality rate of COVID-19. The backlash was swift and brutal, and John’s reputation as one of the most influential scientists in the world took a beating.    Here, John makes his second appearance on STEM-Talk to discuss his extensive research into the pandemic. Episode 151 is available now on our podcast page, as well as in popular podcast apps and on YouTube. John talks about his most recent peer-reviewed paper that looked at the age-stratified infection fatality rate of COVID-19 in the non-elderly population.   The study found that the pre-vaccination fatality rate for those infected may have been as low as 0.03 percent for people under 60 years old, and 0.07 percent for people under 70, far below the World Health Organization’s prediction of a 3.4 percent fatality rate.  Over the past two decades, John’s research has earned him a global reputation as a consummate physician and researcher, which contributed to The Atlantic describing him in 2010 as one of the most influential scientists alive. He is a professor of medicine, epidemiology and population health… Read More

Published 4.17.23 IHMC is purchasing a new NovaSeq X Plus genetic sequencing device that will help elevate the Institute’s footprint as a regional hub of excellence in human performance research.  IHMC will be among the first labs in the country to have the newest version of this device, which allows for next-generation sequencing capacity to better understand genetics, genomics, epigenetics, and transcriptomics.   “The information contained in our genes and how they are activated and regulated is extremely important in understanding risks of disease, along with differences between individuals and the responses of each person to a treatment or exposure to stress,” says Dr. Marcas Bamman, Senior Research Scientist and Director of Healthspan, Resilience, and Performance Research at IHMC. “Scientific advances resulting from such a capability are truly game-changing because the information gained will help us optimize approaches to healthspan, resilience, and ultimately human performance.”  The ability to perform sequencing analysis of both RNA and DNA is foundational in biomedical sciences, however, the tools to perform this analysis typically are found at major biotechnology research hubs or in private industry locations.   “With IHMC being among the first institutions to acquire the device, we will not only be among the leaders in… Read More