An increasing tempo of interactions between Sandia’s Advanced Concept Group and the Albuquerque-based MIND Institute promises yet another new engineering direction opening to Sandia researchers: the human brain.
Following discussions last fall, the Institute is conducting a study of ways to accelerate learning for warfighters and intelligence analysts, says Rex Jung, a MIND Institute psychologist and neurologist and part-time staffer in Sandia’s ACG. The Institute is a national partnership committed to expanding neuroscience research by discovering new ways to understand human behavior, as well as to treat and cure brain disease and mental illness.
Sandia can provide computational power, systems expertise, and modeling, says Yonas, who describes the proposed project “as challenging as anything we’ve ever attempted at Sandia.”
ACG researchers — collaborating with the Consortium for Science, Policy, and Outcomes at Arizona State University — conducted a workshop on the policy implications of converging nano-, bio-, info-, and cognitive technologies for enhanced human cognition. These technologies raise complex technical, social, ethical, economic, and political issues and the workshop brought together neuroscientists, bioethicists, policy scholars, nanoscientists, and social experts to explore a wide range of possible public policies.