Adam Britt ’06 of Rochester, NY spent
summer vacation doing research as part the University Fellows program
at St. Lawrence. For Adam, a double major in math and computer
science, this was something completely different from how he’s
used to spending his summers.
Throughout the summer, Adam, with his faculty mentor Dr. Ed Harcourt, assistant
professor of mathematics and computer science and statistics, worked on his research, “Modeling
Episodic Memory Migration Using Neural Networks.” The research
focused mostly on Adam writing a computer program in C++ to model episodic memory
migration by trying to mimic empirical results of a study done by Dr. Shannon
Hannigan, assistant professor of
psychology.
“Episodic memory migration is a large name for a memory error we all make,” Adam
says. “When we go to the store, we do not remember each individual
time we went there, but create a general schema of that store. These schemas
are not perfect and we often make errors.”
Adam will be able to take his research skills with him. Neural networks are used
in many various applications and are becoming another widely used tool programmers
are using to solve contemporary problems.
