Faculty Mentor: Stan Franklin

Faculty Mentor's Department: Computer Science-Institute for Intelligent Systems

Telephone Number and/or E-mail: 678-1341; franklin@memphis.edu

Project Description: How Minds Work: An autonomous agent senses and acts upon its environment in the service of its own agenda. An autonomous agent with human-like cognitive capabilities is called a cognitive agent. By a “conscious” software agent, we mean one designed within the constraints of Bernard Baars' Global Workspace Theory of Consciousness. The CSRG group revolves around the design and implementation of “conscious” software agents. Like the Roman god Janus, the “conscious” software projects have two faces, the science face and the engineering face. The science side fleshes out the global workspace theory of consciousness, while the engineering side explores architectural designs for software information agents that promise more flexible, more human-like intelligence within their domains. The fleshed out global workspace theory is yielding hopefully testable hypotheses about human cognition. The architectures and mechanisms that underlie consciousness and intelligence in humans can be expected to yield information agents that learn continuously, adapt readily to dynamic environments, and behave flexibly and intelligently when faced with novel and unexpected situations. <http://csrg.cs.memphis.edu/>

Requirements for Student Applicants: some programming experience, preferably in Java, would be a help, but not necessary.

Starting Date: anytime

Method of Compensation (Volunteer, Academic Credit, or Stipend): Any of these would be possible.

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Faculty Mentor: Lan Wang

Faculty Mentor 's Department: Computer Science

Telephone Number and/or Email Address: 901-678-2727, lanwang@memphis.edu

Project Description: We welcome undergraduate 
students to our Networking Research Lab (NetLab).  NetLab's research areas include: fault-tolerance and security in network protocol design; network measurement techniques; scalable network simulator 
design; routing protocol design; and sensor network protocols.

Requirements for Student applicants: good programming skills and good problem solving skills (unix experience is a plus).

Starting Date: Jan. 2006

Method of Compensation:  Volunteer, Academic Credit, or Stipend (all are possible depending on the students' experience level).

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Faculty Mentor: Dr. T.L. McCauley

Faculty Mentor 's Department: Computer Science

Telephone Number and/or Email Address: 901-678-2486, tmccauly@memphis.edu

Project Description: Social Robotics: The “Frankenstein Complex” is a term coined by science fiction writer Isaac Asimov to describe the fear that people have towards out-of-control technology.  Hollywood and the media play on these fears and, thereby, exacerbate them – at least that is the hypothesis.  The Center for Advanced Robotics in the FedEx Institute of Technology is preparing to conduct a large scale survey to gauge whether the “Frankenstein Complex” is real and, if so, what factors might affect a person’s attitude towards highly intelligent robots.  We need volunteers to help conduct the data gathering component of this research.

Requirements for Student applicants: Applicants need to contact Dr. McCauley for an interview.

Method of Compensation: These positions are on a voluntary basis.