Anja Schwab

Anja Schwab served in the Tactile Research Lab at the Naval Aerospace Medical Research Laboratory from August of 2001 until November, 2002 as a visiting Scientist from Germany. During her brief tenure with the Tactile Research Lab, she worked on a number of projects, including a continuation of work that was started with Chris Brill on localization of vibrotactile sites around the body. Her primary project included a study performed during a brief period at Princeton University that started the morning of Sept 11, 2001. Because of the tragedy in nearby New York City, she was reassigned to do grief counseling for German nationals in the Deutsche Bank building, adjacent to Ground Zero, for several weeks before returning to Pensacola to continue her work with NAMRL.

For the majority of her visit to the United States she worked on the perception of apparent movement on the abdomen produced by vibrotactile stimuli. She evaluated the equivalence of illusory versus true sequential stimuli, comparing movement produced by tactile saltation against that produced by veridical series of vibratory bursts. Upon returning to Germany she has served in a number of roles with the German Air Force, and is writing up her research as a dissertation for submission to Mannheim University in Mannheim Germany, under the direction of Prof. Dr. Rupert Hoelzl in Mannheim and Dr. Cholewiak.