The WOW Experience: An EEG investigation of Awesome Engineering

The world surrounding us is filled with moments able to take our breath away, leaving us in a state of awe. This project aims to, for the first time, investigate the feeling of wonder (awe) in relation with human artefacts. This involves using Electroencephalography (EEG) to identify characteristic patterns in brain activity during the presentation of awesome stimuli. The findings will help to theorize the importance of understanding causality and the fulfilling of expectation that might play an important role in such cognitive phenomenon. The project would particularly suit students who have some basic understanding in running user studies, and signal processing (to analyse EEG data).

Multisensory Emotions: What Emotions Technology can mediate

The aim of this project is to help in understanding the relationship between different sensory modalities in their ability to communicate and express emotions. Every day’s life is full of examples highlighting these connections. Sound, touch, smell, taste, and vision all play a role in our emotional experiences. So far, this connection between senses and emotions has never been explored from a computational perspective. In this project we approach the problem in the Bayesian framework. Results may support us in designing new user interfaces for different contexts and purposes. The project would particularly suit students who have some basic understanding in running user studies, and are interested in HCI.