emotions, stress, and fatigue, that are vital to realistically simulating the human thought processes. Later, Forsythe developed the framework for a program that incorporated both cognition and organic factors. In follow-up projects, methodologies were developed that allowed the knowledge of a specific expert to be captured in the computer models as well as providing synthetic humans having memory of experiences. The approach allowed a computer to apply its knowledge of specific experiences to solving problems in a manner that closely paralleled what people do on a regular basis. Forsythe says a strange twist occurred along the way. "I needed help with the software," he recalls. "I turned to some folks in robotics, bringing to their attention that we were developing computer models of human cognition." The robotics researchers immediately saw that the model could be used for intel- ligent machines, and the whole program emphasis changed. Suddenly the team was working on cognitive machines, not just synthetic humans. The work on cognitive machines took off in 2002 with a contract from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to develop a real- time machine that can infer an operator's cognitive processes. Early this year, work began on Sandia's Next Generation Intelligent Systems Grand Chal- lenge project. "The goal of this Grand Challenge is to significantly improve the human capability to understand and solve national security problems, given the exponential growth of information and very complex environments," says Larry Ellis, the principal investigator. "We are integrating extraordinary perceptive techniques with cognitive systems to augment the capacity of ana- lysts, engineers, war fighters, critical decision makers, scientists, and others in crucial jobs to detect and interpret meaningful patterns based on large volumes of data derived from diverse sources." "Overall, these projects are developing technology to fundamentally change the nature of human-machine interactions," Forsythe says. "Our