Dr. Mei-Ching Lien's Attention and Performance Lab at Oregon State University's CUE in 2016.
Christian Sinnott - About Me
About Me
First generation student. Published interdisciplinary researcher.
Dr. Paul MacNeilage's Self-Motion Lab at Society for Neuroscience in 2019.
Academic History
I started my academic career at Oregon State University in 2009. While I was an undergraduate, I began working in Dr. Mei-Ching Lien's Attention and Performance Lab as a research assistant. Here, I was first exposed to research in psychology, and where I learned basics of experimental design, scientific presentation, and electroencephalography.
After I graduated with my B.A. in Psychology in 2014, I continued attending Oregon State University to earn my M.A. in Interdisciplinary Studies. While I continued working in Dr. Lien's lab, I also began working with Dr. Kathryn Becker-Blease to begin probing any possible differences between incoming university students from rural and non-rural areas in the United States.
Current Position
At the University of Nevada, Reno, my research focus has shifted towards self-motion perception. I currently work with Dr. Paul MacNeilage to quantify statistics of head movements during everyday behaviors. We then leverage this quantitative information to predict individual differences in head movement perception bias through Bayesian modeling methods.
My previous work with Dr. MacNeilage has involved development of a geometric model to predict optic flow on the retina, use of visual-inertial simultaneous localization and mapping to quantify head movements, development of an open source head- and eye-tracking wearable, and development and evaluation of a custom-built head-mounted display that functions underwater as part of a SCUBA system for neutral buoyancy training.
Participant wears underwater head-mounted display while completing experimental task. More detail can be found in Virtual Reality Software and Technology.
Open source positional head and eye-tracking headset, with joint head-eye data below. See more at Eye Tracking Research and Applications.
I also work as part of the Visual Experience Database - an NSF-funded project to collect 240 hours of open-access egocentric video, head movement and eye movement data during everyday tasks in natural environments. My primary roles on this project are documenting hardware and software set-up and helping to develop and optimize data analysis pipelines. More information about this project can be found here.
Moving forward, I plan to complete my doctoral studies in Spring 2023, with the intention of moving directly into industry or into a post-doctoral position in industry or academia.
In the News
A short piece at Nevada Today describing the Underwater VR project.
Nevada Today describing an early iteration of the Visual Experience Database headset and project.