CERG Thesis projects

You can review information about the application process for PhD studies on this website.

CERG offers projects that can become the subject of PhD, Masters, or Honours theses for suitably qualified students in Psychology or ITEE. Arrangements can be discussed for suitably qualified students in other disciplines, such as engineering or medical sciences. Most projects are carried out in UQ's new state-of-the-art usability laboratory (UQUL) where we are based.

Below are details of some sample topics and the degree they would best suit. The qualifications most likely to make the project a success are listed. The names of academic staff members who can act as primary supervisors of specific projects are given, with email links. Other contact details for potential supervisors can be found on CERG's People page.

CERG supports the PhD oral defence as a mode of PhD thesis examination, for students for whom it is suitable. See our description of all aspects of a recent CERG PhD Oral Defence, both from the administrative point of view and the candidate's point of view.

You can find out more about CERG's research, personnel, publications, usability lab and equipment, as well as our news and activities on this website.

Thesis topic (degree)	Description and skill set needed	Contact
2008-1 Multisensory integration for the mobile user (Honours)	Most theories of people's ability to process information from multiple modalities (visual, auditory, haptic) are based on experiments in which the participant is sitting down. However, many new display technologies are designed for people who move about while working. In this project you would examine how self-motion affects people's ability to use multimodal displays.	Professor Penelope Sanderson Matt Thompson (CERG Research Coordinator)
2008-2 Inattentional blindness with Head Mounted Displays (Honours, Masters, PhD)	Research shows that information on head-mounted displays is sometimes neglected by viewers. In this project you would examine factors that might exacerbate or mitigate this potential problem, such as attention, motion, overlap between HMD and other information, etc.	Professor Penelope Sanderson Matt Thompson (CERG Research Coordinator)
2008-3 Auditory displays and affect/emotions (Honours, Masters, PhD)	Many auditory displays such as auditory alarms manipulate the pleasantness vs. unpleasantness of sound to guide the user's attention to desirable vs. undesirable situations. However, unpleasant sounds are annoying to listen to. As a result, workers often switch off such displays, losing useful information. How effectively can pleasant sounds guide attention to unpleasant situations, and how much learning is required?	Professor Penelope Sanderson
2008-4 Eyetracking study of human attention to multimodal displays (Masters, PhD)	When humans must divide attention across multiple tasks in a work environment, presenting information in different modalities can sometimes reduce workload and improve performance. We wish to use our eyetracker to explore more closely how attention is guided by multimodal displays. Results will help us form better theories of human attention and design better work environments. Good project for Psychology or ITEE training.	Professor Penelope Sanderson
2008-6 Tracking patient physiological trends with sonification (Honors, Masters, PhD)	In our respiratory sonification research to date we have established that expert and non-expert participants can detect and identify deviations from normality quite effectively. without having to attend to the display the whole time. We now wish to see if participants can track deviations from expected deviations in the same way! Suitable for students with psychology or biomedical background.	Professor Penelope Sanderson Dr Marcus Watson
2008-7 The effect of ambient noise (eg music) on the use of pulse oximetry and respiratory sonification (Honors, Masters, PhD)	When we discuss the use of sonification in the hospital theatre with anesthesia colleagues, they often wonder if theatre noise (suctioning, equipment, telephones, pagers, alarms, etc) would make sonification ineffective. In this project you would examine theoretical issues relating to the various effects of noise on human performance and design and conduct a study to test hypotheses about those effects with healthcare professionals. Suitable for psychology or ITEE (esp HCI) students.	Professor Penelope Sanderson
2008-9 Patient monitoring with a head-mounted display (Honors, Masters, PhD)	We have been exploring the use of head-mounted displays (HMDs) for patient monitoring by anesthetists. There are many underlying issues relating to attention that wait to be resolved. Take part in a study of the attentional effects of HMDs, either in the laboratory or in the field. Good for students with strong background in psychology of attention.	Professor Penelope Sanderson

Topics listed here will change as some are taken and new ones mounted. CERG academic staff are happy to discuss other potential topics that fall within our mission and strategic directions.

There is also information about the application process for PhD studies on this website.