I am a Ph.D. student at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). I use computational modeling to study task-driven saccadic decision making during visual search, object recognition, and face identification.

My research fuses findings and methods from computer vision, machine learning, psychology, and computational neuroscience. I intend to graduate in 2012. My advisor is Garrison Cottrell, a leader in the field of computational psychology and neural networks.

I grew up in a small town in rural Oklahoma, where I first began to explore artificial intelligence in 1996 by creating "bots" to play MMORPGs in high school. I graduated with a B.S. in computer science and philosophy from Oklahoma State University. Subsequently, I earned a M.S. in computer science from the University of Southern California (USC) , with an emphasis in artificial intelligence and neuroscience while working with Michael Arbib, an early pioneer in computational neuroscience and neural networks. I am currently pursuing a Ph.D. in computer science at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) , where I try to elucidate the mechanisms underlying human eye movements.

While most of my time is spent engaged in research, I also promote diversity in graduate education. I've given talks at the California Forum for Diversity and at several California State Universities to help undergraduates obtain a better idea of how to get into a Ph.D. program and what is expected of them once they are accepted. I am also actively involved in the Temporal Dynamics of Learning Center and I serve as Chair of the graduate student and postdoc committee.

Mailing Address:
Department of Computer Science and Engineering
University of California, San Diego
EBU3B
9500 Gilman Drive, Mail Code 0404
La Jolla, CA 92093-0404
USA

Email: ckanan AT ucsd DOT cs DOT ucsd DOT edu