Hammond partnered with Simmons in the department of neuroscience at Brown University in Providence, R.I. He participated in projects exploring the flight and sonar activities of echo-locating bats while they fly in difficult acoustic conditions.

"We observed bats with thermal infrared cameras while they were flying close together in groups, then reconstructed their sound emissions and locations for input into a computational model of echo processing in the bat's auditory system," said Simmons. "Then, we made single-cell recordings from the bat's auditory system to learn how the computations are done in the bat."

The anthrax scare following Sept. 11 inspired John Hammond '03, a behavioral neuroscience major, to do an independent study on the relationship between brain functions and social contagion with Alan Childs, associate professor of psychology.