The WERC Workers
Faculty and Staff Directory
Richard Niemeyer
Director
Dr. Richard Niemeyer is an Associate Professor in the United States Air Force Academy’s Department of Behavioral Sciences & Leadership and the Director of the Academy’s Warfighter Effectiveness Research Center. After graduating from the University of California, Riverside, in 2011 with a Ph.D. in sociology, he co-founded the UC Riverside Institute for the Applications of Mathematics and Integrated Science. He served as its deputy director until 2013. Since then, he has organized multiple transdisciplinary meetings, workshops, and panels on the sociobiological determinants of health, the mathematical modeling of social conflict, and the neuro-sociological foundations of criminal behavior. His current research focuses on explaining cognitive security and social processes in isolated, confined, and extreme environments from a transdisciplinary and mechanistic perspective.
Cassie Eng
USAFA Faculty – Research Neuroscientist
Dr. Cassondra (Cassie) Eng is an Assistant Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience in the U.S. Air Force Academy’s Department of Behavioral Sciences & Leadership and Affiliate Faculty at Stanford University School of Medicine. She earned her Ph.D. in Cognitive Neuroscience and Developmental Psychology from Carnegie Mellon University, where she also completed the IES-funded Program for Interdisciplinary Education Research. She subsequently completed an NIH-funded Postdoctoral Fellowship at Stanford’s Center for Interdisciplinary Brain Sciences Research. She specializes in multimethod, human-centered technologies that integrate psychometric assessments of cognition with wearable sensing systems–including portable neuroimaging (fNIRS), eye tracking, and physiological monitoring–to study brain and behavior in realistic, high-demand environments. Her research focuses on advancing human performance, cognitive readiness, and resilience through applied, translational science. She leverages immersive XR/VR/AR technologies to develop and evaluate training approaches that support brain plasticity, attention regulation, and physical health.
Sarah Bostrom
Research Scientist
Sarah R. Bostrom, Ph.D. is a Research Scientist in the Warfighter Effectiveness Research Center (WERC) at the United States Air Force Academy. She earned her Ph.D. in Criminal Justice from Sam Houston State University in 2021. Her dissertation included original data collection and examined the impact of differential guardianship expectations on victimization on a college campus. Her current research focuses broadly on the contextual and social risks of victimization. More specifically, Dr. Bostrom is particularly interested in susceptibility to deceptive communication and improving cognitive security. In her work on cognitive security, she has collaborated with an interdisciplinary team to more clearly define the phenomenon of deceptive communication and develop a techno-social framework that holistically maps the communicative process of distribution and reception. Much of her cognitive security work is currently under review with preprints available at CrimRxiv. Some of her recent work appears in Crime & Delinquency, Social Science, and more.
Yigit Topoglu
Research Scientist
Yigit Topoglu is a Research Scientist in the Warfighter Effectiveness Research Center at the U.S. Air Force Academy. He researches in the human-robot interaction field to make robots more immersive and interactive for teaming environments. After completing his BS degree from electrical and electronics engineering at Middle East Technical University located in Ankara, Turkey in 2018, he graduated from Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA with an MS degree in 2021 and a PhD degree in 2026, working on integrating neuroimaging techniques in complex human-robot interaction scenarios. His research interests are focused on assessing human behavior using neural and physiological signals alongside behavioral and psychological measures during both naturalistic human-robot social conversations and collaborative teaming.
Howard Fung
Research Assistant
Howard Fung is a Research Assistant working at the Warfighter Effectiveness Research Center. He graduated with a bachelor’s degree in psychology in 2025 from Trinity College in Hartford, CT. His academic interests are eating psychopathology, disordered eating behaviors, and hunger states on executive functioning and cognition. He has previous human subject research experience in investigating social cognition and executive functioning with functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS). His current role in the lab involves supporting ongoing projects employing fNIRS.
Class of 2029 cadets
Owen Bebarta
Class of ’29
Meghan Chen
Class of ’29
Taylor Davis
Class of ’29
Jakhai Hudson
Class of ’29
Emma Martinez
Class of ’29
Grace Muresan
Class of ’29
Class of 2028 cadets
Dalton Cox
Class of ’28
Jacquelyn Galella
Class of ’28
Gabriel Golbach
Class of ’28
Sophia Luna Garcia
Class of ’28
Ginger Lowak
Class of ’28
Lillian Reed
Class of ’28
Zachary Rodgers
Class of ’28
Class of 2027 cadets
John Alves
Class of ’27
Kaylin Chan
Class of ’27
Ayden Fry
Class of ’27
Lily Haeberle
Class of ’27
Catherine Louden
Class of ’27
Erika Safranek
Class of ’27
Class of 2026 cadets
Kylee Greene
Class of ’26
Dr.
Richard Niemeyer
Director
Dr.
Cassie Eng
USAFA Faculty – Research Neuroscientist
Dr.
Daniel Holman
Research Scientist
Dr.
Sarah Bostrom
Research Scientist
Mr.
Neal Dickman
Lab Manager
Dr.
Yigit Topoglu
Research Scientist