{"id":6646,"date":"2021-05-17T09:33:00","date_gmt":"2021-05-17T13:33:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/?p=6646"},"modified":"2021-05-10T16:12:48","modified_gmt":"2021-05-10T20:12:48","slug":"reaching-for-the-sky","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/2021\/05\/17\/reaching-for-the-sky\/","title":{"rendered":"Reaching for the Sky"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The United States Air Force employs some of the most sophisticated technology in the world \u2014 using futuristic aircraft, hi-tech satellites, and cutting-edge drones in its mission of keeping America safe. But without the humans controlling that technology, all of it would be useless. \u201cWe\u2019re such a technology-focused world right now, but sometimes we forget about who\u2019s going to end up using that technology,\u201d says Anne Cybenko \u201905, deputy executive director of the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), headquartered in Dayton, Ohio.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">As a psychologist, Cybenko worked for years researching the interaction between people and machines \u2014 exploring how human and artificial intelligence can together be more than the sum of their parts. Now, in her current role, she oversees the welfare and working environment of the Air Force lab\u2019s 11,200 employees across 10 states. \u201cMy focus is always on the person,\u201d she says, \u201cusing my understanding of human behavior to create an environment where people want to work.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Growing up, Cybenko initially wanted to be a doctor. But arriving at Colgate to study pre-med, she got hooked on psychology during a first-year course on the malleability of the human mind and memory. \u201cI thought, if I could do this for the rest of my life, I\u2019d be happy,\u201d she says. She dove into the program, headed the Colgate Psychology Club, and spent three summers in Professor Rick Braaten\u2019s lab studying memory in songbirds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cMy undergraduate experience taught me how to do research,\u201d she says. \u201cIf I had an idea, it was always encouraged.\u201d In another course at Colgate, Cybenko studied <a href=\"https:\/\/www.colgate.edu\/academics\/departments-programs\/psychological-and-brain-sciences\" target=\"_blank\" aria-label=\"psychology (opens in a new tab)\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">psychology<\/a> and the law, which ended up being the focus of her PhD work at University of California\u2013Riverside. She then took a postdoc at the University of Dayton Research Institute, supporting the Air Force. There, she became fascinated by a project applying psychology to military intelligence.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">She began exploring questions of how humans interact with technology, eventually becoming a researcher in the AFRL\u2019s 711th Human Performance Wing. \u201cThere\u2019s no point in creating a machine that does something a human is already good at \u2014 so we want to figure out what are humans not good at, and create tools to do that.\u201d One of her projects, for example, focused on how Air Force intelligence officers could effectively use publicly available sources, such as social media platforms, to augment other sources of information to create a better picture of military threats. \u201cWe\u2019re talking about the life and death of U.S. citizens here, so determining what\u2019s real and what\u2019s fake is vital,\u201d she says.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Promoted to her new role as deputy executive director last November, Cybenko brings the unique perspective of someone who was recently a scientist herself; already she has cut through some military bureaucracy so researchers in different fields can work together in a more effective, multidisciplinary way. \u201cI\u2019m fighting for the bench scientist, who is in turn fighting for the war fighter,\u201d she says. \u201cThere\u2019s no better mission than helping the Air Force \u2014 they\u2019re the ones that protect our country, and I am lucky to have a part in that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As deputy executive director of the Air Force Research Laboratory, Anne Cybenko \u201905 oversees 11,000 employees across 10 states.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1210,"featured_media":6652,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_hide_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_featured_image_duplicate_dismissed":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[688,687,99],"coauthors":[153],"class_list":["post-6646","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-alumni-updates","tag-air-force","tag-military","tag-psychology"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/palXSH-1Jc","amp_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2021\/05\/5Q9A2668_demo.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6646","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1210"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6646"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6646\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6717,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6646\/revisions\/6717"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6652"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6646"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.colgate.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=6646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}