Dr. Bethany Bracken

Dr. Bethany Bracken, is a Principal Scientist at Charles River Analytics. Throughout her career, Dr. Bracken has used a variety of behavioral, physiological, cognitive, molecular, and neuroimaging methodologies to answer questions about the neurobiology of human and animal behavior. Her research includes use of commercially available sensors to assess human physiological and neurophysiological state, including development of several custom sensors such as our Stand-Off Multimodal Biometric Assay (SOMBA) a technology to detect the cardiac signal using light reflected off the skin. Other sensors also include our now commercially available functional Near Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS) sensors, the fNIRS Pioneer™ and fNIRS Explorer™ sensors, a less obtrusive, and more rugged solution for functional imaging in real world environments. In addition, Dr. Bracken’s portfolio including multiple SBIRs and BAAs resulted in the design and release of our Sherlock™ software product, which now serves the basis of her research group’s approach to ingestion, processing, and analysis of sensor data for the purpose of human state assessment and performance prediction. At Charles River, she leads a team of talented scientists and engineers whose core focus is on projects involving neurophysiological and physiological sensing methods to assess human states such as stress, focused attention, and cognitive workload and to predict upcoming performance deficits.