Indoor environment design to stimulate astronaut cognition

Lead Researcher: Professor Veronica Soebarto; Professor Volker Hessel

(Adelaide-Nottingham Joint PhD)

A room cubicle is currently designed at UoA based as a mock-up environment with simulated luminous conditions, and this PhD can build on this together with UoA experts in human built-comfort, cognition psychology, and biomedical signal-processing.

Standardised, literature-described tests will guide the design of an optimised indoor biophilic design, which is tailored towards a spacecraft habitat with its unique spectral lights. The PhD research will need a candidate with background in architectural or landscape architectural design or engineering with interests or experience in human psychology (or vice versa). It shall elucidate combined effects of LED illumination and color temperature (chromatic appearance) on mood and creativity in the above mentioned tailored-for-purpose room; also concerning in-time-day effects (cognitive and subjective mood and lighting perceptions, alertness, as well as creative and analytical cognition. In a more far-fetching sense, the PhD research shall investigate human (astronaut)-machine interaction on the background of space plant growth and food.