“Are we free agents? Can we be morally responsible for what we do?” Galen Strawson revisited these questions in his book “Things that bother me: death, freedom, the self, etc.”, and concluded that luck swallows everything. Researchers in Sensor-Accelerated Intelligent Learning Laboratory (SAIL lab), led by Prof. Gong, are developing experiments to answer where the luck comes from and how to develop interventions to change ourselves.
Envision a student pursuing bachelor’s degree in college. During the period, will the student develop self-regulated learning skills or habits which has been considered as the perceived necessary competence of creating lifelong learners? What kind of factors (e.g., pedagogical, social, environmental) will drive the student to gain this type of skills or habits?
Envision a person struggling with mental or brain disorders. What are the modulators (e.g., environmental, social, self) during the progress of the disorders? Why some treatments work for the person, but others do not? Is there personalized solution existing?
With advances in ubiquitous sensing and computing, multimodal modeling systems enable collecting intensive longitudinal data via sensors and ecological momentary assessment (EMA) and present new insights in health and education. Researchers in SAIL lab have developed multimodal sensing system which captures brain activity (fNIRS), eye movement, fine-grained motion, ECG, EMG, and GSR to build insights and principles applied to mental health (e.g., anxiety, eating disorders), physical health (e.g., sports injury, epilepsy), and higher education (e.g., flipped classroom). Specifically, they leverage the knowledge of domain experts as collaborators from Department of Psychology, Department of Education, and School of Medicine to develop scientific tools (e.g., network approach and control theory) for revealing the underlying mechanisms.
Meanwhile, SAIL lab has received funding support from an industrial collaborator (NeuroSynchrony Inc.) to conduct this research applied to epilepsy.
Learn more about our work on our website.