Research by Cole Bowyer represents the final installment of a three-piece honors thesis project spanning 18 years of academic work at VMI.

The first part was done by William Flathers, ’09, who used his work as the research centerpiece for his successful application for a Marshall Scholarship; he was VMI’s first awardee.  Unfortunately, computation power was too limited at that time to make a useful application.  I waited 14 years for hardware to advance before trying again with Binh Tran, ’23, whose mathematical work developing an open-source filter object earned him the first-place undergraduate research prize for electrical engineers in the IEEE Region 3 (there are 6 regions in the US).  The project concluded with Cole’s work, who combined the research efforts of Will and Binh into a freely available program that families of hearing impaired children may use.  He plans to publish his results in the IEEE Potentials journal, with an international circulation of over 90,000 printed copies.

Featured on WDBJ7 and in a recent news article from VMI, my work with Cole was the final piece of our program to help parents of children with hearing impairments. The Audiogram Emulator is ready for people to use. Inspired by my own experience as a parent of a child with a hearing impairment, this project seeks to assist parents by providing a way to hear what sounds are muted and what sounds are clear, enabling them to better communicate with their kids.

Col. James C. Squire, Ph.D., P.E.

Professor, VMI Electrical and Computer Engineering
Interests: Engineering pedagogy (theory of teaching), instrumentation, patent law, and biomedical engineering

Squire graduated from West Point in 1989 and was awarded a Bronze Star while serving in the Persian Gulf Conflict as a military intelligence officer. He is the first professor in Virginia to be selected twice by the State Council of Higher Education for their Outstanding Faculty Award; once in 2004 (Rising Star category) and again in 2025. In 2008 he joined the VMI Class of 2009 as their Honorary Brother Rat.