From evomusart at gmail.com Mon Oct 1 03:10:05 2012 From: evomusart at gmail.com (Penousal Machado) Date: Mon, 1 Oct 2012 09:10:05 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: evomusart 2013: 3rd Call for Papers Message-ID: Please distribute (Apologies for cross posting) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- CALL FOR PAPERS evomusart 2013 2nd International Conference on Evolutionary and Biologically Inspired Music, Sound, Art and Design 3-5 April 2013, Vienna, Austria Part of evo* 2013 evo*: http://www.evostar.org ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Following the success of previous events and the importance of the field of evolutionary and biologically inspired music, sound, art and design, evomusart has become an evo* conference with independent proceedings. Thus, evomusart 2013 is the eleventh European Event and the second International Conference on Evolutionary and Biologically Inspired Music, Sound, Art and Design. The use of biologically inspired techniques for the development of artistic systems is a recent, exciting and significant area of research. There is a growing interest in the application of these techniques in fields such as: visual art and music generation, analysis, and interpretation; sound synthesis; architecture; video; poetry; design; and other creative tasks. The main goal of evomusart 2013 is to bring together researchers who are using biologically inspired computer techniques for artistic tasks, providing the opportunity to promote, present and discuss ongoing work in the area. The event will be held from 3-5 April, 2013 in Vienna, Austria as part of the evo* event. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Publication Details ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Submissions will be rigorously reviewed for scientific and artistic merit. Accepted papers will be presented orally or as posters at the event and included in the evomusart proceedings, published by Springer Verlag in a dedicated volume of the Lecture Notes in Computer Science series. The acceptance rate at evomusart 2012 was 34.9% for papers accepted for oral presentation, or 46.5% for oral and poster presentation combined. Authors of selected papers may be invited to submit extended versions of their work to the Springer journal Genetic Programming and Evolvable Machines (GPEM). ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Topics of interest ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Submissions should concern the use of biologically inspired computer techniques -- e.g. Evolutionary Computation, Artificial Life, Artificial Neural Networks, Swarm Intelligence, other artificial intelligence techniques -- in the generation, analysis and interpretation of art, music, design, architecture and other artistic fields. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to: -- Generation - Biologically Inspired Design and Art -- Systems that create drawings, images, animations, sculptures, poetry, text, designs, webpages, buildings, etc.; - Biologically Inspired Sound and Music -- Systems that create musical pieces, sounds, instruments, voices, sound effects, sound analysis, etc.; - Robotic-Based Evolutionary Art and Music; - Other related artificial intelligence or generative techniques in the fields of Computer Music, Computer Art, etc.; -- Theory - Computational Aesthetics, Experimental Aesthetics; Emotional Response, Surprise, Novelty; - Representation techniques; - Surveys of the current state-of-the-art in the area; identification of weaknesses and strengths; comparative analysis and classification; - Validation methodologies; - Studies on the applicability of these techniques to related areas; - New models designed to promote the creative potential of biologically inspired computation; -- Computer Aided Creativity and computational creativity - Systems in which biologically inspired computation is used to promote the creativity of a human user; - New ways of integrating the user in the evolutionary cycle; - Analysis and evaluation of: the artistic potential of biologically inspired art and music; the artistic processes inherent to these approaches; the resulting artefacts; - Collaborative distributed artificial art environments; -- Automation - Techniques for automatic fitness assignment; - Systems in which an analysis or interpretation of the artworks is used in conjunction with biologically inspired techniques to produce novel objects; - Systems that resort to biologically inspired computation to perform the analysis of image, music, sound, sculpture, or some other types of artistic object. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Important Dates ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Submission: 1 November 2012 Notification to authors: 21 December 2012 Camera-ready deadline: 15 January 2013 Evo*: 3-5 April 2013 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Additional information and submission details ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Submit your manuscript, at most 12 A4 pages long, in Springer LNCS format (instructions downloadable from http://www.springer.com/computer/lncs?SGWID=0-164-6-793341-0) no later than November 1, 2012. Submission link: http://myreview.csregistry.org/evomusart13 page limit: 12 pages The reviewing process will be double-blind; please omit information about the authors in the submitted paper. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Programme committee ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Alain Lioret, Paris 8 University, France Alan Dorin, Monash University, Australia Alejandro Pazos, University of A Coruna, Spain Alice Eldridge, Monash University, Australia Amilcar Cardoso, University of Coimbra, Portugal Amy K. Hoover, University of Central Florida, USA Andrew Brown, Griffith University, Australia Andrew Gildfind, Google, Inc., Australia Andrew Horner, University of Science & Technology, Hong Kong Anna Ursyn, University of Northern Colorado, USA Antonino Santos, University of A Coruna, Spain Arne Eigenfeldt, Simon Fraser University, Canada Artemis Sanchez Moroni, Renato Archer Research Center, Brazil Benjamin Schroeder, Ohio State University, USA Bill Manaris, College of Charleston, USA Brian Ross, Brock University, Canada Carlos Grilo, Instituto Polit?cnico de Leiria, Portugal Colin Johnson, University of Kent, UK Dan Ashlock, University of Guelph, Canada Dan Costelloe, Independent Researcher (Solace One Ltd), Ireland Daniel Jones, Goldsmiths College, University of London, UK Douglas Repetto, Columbia University, USA Eduardo Miranda, University of Plymouth, UK Eelco den Heijer, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Netherlands Eleonora Bilotta , University of Calabria, Italy Erik Hemberg, University College Dublin, Ireland Francois Pachet, Sony CSL Paris, France Gary Greenfield, University of Richmond, USA Hans Dehlinger, Independent Artist, Germany Hern?n Kerlle?evich, National University of Quilmes, Argentina J. E. Rowe, University of Birmingham, UK James McDermott, University College Dublin, Ireland Jeffrey Ventrella, independent artist/researcher, USA John Collomosse, University of Surrey, UK Jon McCormack, Monash University, Australia Jos? Fornari, NICS/Unicamp, Brazil Juan Romero, University of A Coruna, Spain Marcelo Freitas Caetano, IRCAM, France Marcos Nadal, University of Illes Balears, Spain Matthew Lewis, Ohio State University, USA Michael O'Neill, University College Dublin, Ireland Nicolas Monmarch?, University of Tours, France Oliver Bown, University of Sidney, Australia Palle Dahlstedt, G?teborg University, Sweden Paulo Urbano, Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal Pedro Cruz, University of Coimbra, Portugal Penousal Machado, University of Coimbra, Portugal Peter Bentley, University College London , UK Philip Galanter, Texas A&M College of Architecture, USA Philippe Pasquier, Simon Fraser University, Canada Rafael Ramirez, Pompeu Fabra University, Spain Roger Malina, International Society for the Arts, Sciences and Technology, USA Roisin Loughran, University of Limerick, Ireland Ruli Manurung, University of Indonesia, Indonesia Scott Draves, Independent Artist, USA Simon Colton, Imperial College, UK Somnuk Phon-Amnuaisuk, University Tunku Abdul Rahman, Malaysia Stephen Todd, IBM, UK Takashi Ikegami, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan Tim Blackwell, Goldsmiths College, University of London, UK Vic Ciesielski, RMIT, Australia William Latham, University of London, UK ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Conference chairs ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Conference chairs Penousal Machado University of Coimbra, Portugal machado(at)dei.uc.pt James McDermott University College Dublin, Ireland jamesmichaelmcdermott(at)gmail.com Publication chair Adrian Carballal University of A Coruna, Spain adrian.carballal(at)udc.es -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/20121001/c6707e4e/attachment-0001.html From fhamker at uni-muenster.de Mon Oct 1 15:12:55 2012 From: fhamker at uni-muenster.de (Fred Hamker) Date: Mon, 1 Oct 2012 21:12:55 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: PhD/Post-Doc in Neuro-Computational Modeling of Visual Perception and Spatial Cognition (Hamker Lab) Message-ID: PhD/Post-Doc in Neuro-Computational Modeling of Visual Perception and Spatial Cognition (Hamker Lab) A PhD or postdoctoral position is available in the lab of Fred Hamker at Chemnitz University of Technology in the Department of Computer Science, given a final confirmation of funding. The position is for three years, starting March 2013. However, an earlier starting date could be possible if required. The research position is part of the EU project ?Spatial Cognition? in the program of Future Emerging Technologies: Neuro-bio-inspired systems. In our consortium, that consists of the following partners Fred Hamker, Chemnitz University of Technology, Germany (coordinator) Neil Burgess, University College London, England Pieter Medendorp, Radboud University Nijmegen, Netherlands Patrick Cavanagh, Universit? Paris Descartes, France Rufin VanRullen, Universit? Toulouse III Paul Sabatier, France a strong exchange of experimental and neuro-computational work is planned and required. The research at our lab aims at developing a large-scale model of visual perception focusing on the parietal cortex and its interactions with the Hippocampus, oculomotor and visual areas. Among others we will address research questions such as the updating of visual attention around eye movements, the subjective experience of a stable world, the perception of intra-saccadic displacements of visual stimuli and the role of corollary discharge. The final model will be demonstrated as a virtual human interacting in a virtual reality. See http://www.tu-chemnitz.de/informatik/KI/research/journal.html for our previous work in this field. In particular: Ziesche, A., Hamker, F. H. (2011) A Computational Model for the Influence of Corollary Discharge and Proprioception on the Perisaccadic Mislocalization of Briefly Presented Stimuli in Complete Darkness Journal of Neuroscience, 31(48): 17392-17405. The candidate should have an interest in developing neurocomputational systems, particularly with respect to data in the neurosciences and psychology. Experience in interdisciplinary projects or in experimental studies is welcome. Good programming experience is essential. The salary is according to German standards (PostDoc E13 TV-L, PhD initially 50% E13 TV-L). The university is an equal opportunity employer. Women are encouraged to apply. Disabled applicants will receive priority in case they have equal qualifications. Chemnitz is the third-largest city of the state of Saxony and close to scenic mountains. Major cities nearby are Leipzig and Dresden with a rich tradition of music and culture. Applications should be sent by email (preferably in PDF format) to (fred.hamker at informatik.tu-chemnitz.de) until October 20th. Later applications will be considered until the position is filled. I am happy to meet with potential candidates at the SfN meeting in New Orleans. Prof. Dr. Fred H Hamker Artificial Intelligence & Neuro Cognitive Systems Department of Computer Science Chemnitz University of Technology D - 09107 Chemnitz, Germany www: http://www.tu-chemnitz.de/informatik/KI/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/20121001/a17caa6f/attachment.html From morrison at fz-juelich.de Mon Oct 1 16:59:49 2012 From: morrison at fz-juelich.de (Abigail Morrison) Date: Mon, 1 Oct 2012 22:59:49 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: Postdoctoral/graduate research positions at the Simulation Lab Neuroscience Message-ID: <506A0445.1000506@fz-juelich.de> Hi everybody, we have several positions available at the postdoc and graduate level in the newly established 'Simulation Lab Neuroscience' at the Juelich Research Center. It is funded by the Helmholtz Association and the Ju?lich Aachen Research Alliance JARA (www.jara.org). As the 'Bernstein Facility for Simulation and Database Technology', the new lab contributes its expertise in simulation and database technology to the National Bernstein Network Computational Neuroscience (www.nncn.de). The lab is dedicated to the solution of fundamental questions in neuroscience through the use of the most advanced high performance computers. If you are passionate about both researching neuroscience and developing innovative technology in a dynamic and supportive environment, we would like to hear from you. Successful candidates will have an MSc, diploma or doctorate in a scientific subject, a strong interest in neuroscience and a proven track record in technological applications. Please see the full job ad for a more detailed description and application instructions: http://www.fz-juelich.de/SharedDocs/Stellenangebote/_common/gp/JSC/226-2012-JSC-E.html All the best, Abigail -- Prof. Dr. Abigail Morrison Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine (INM-6) Functional Neural Circuits Group J?lich Research Center http://www.fz-juelich.de/inm/inm-6/ Office: +49 2461 61-9805 Fax # : +49 2461 61-9460 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Forschungszentrum Juelich GmbH 52425 Juelich Sitz der Gesellschaft: Juelich Eingetragen im Handelsregister des Amtsgerichts Dueren Nr. HR B 3498 Vorsitzender des Aufsichtsrats: MinDir Dr. Karl Eugen Huthmacher Geschaeftsfuehrung: Prof. Dr. Achim Bachem (Vorsitzender), Karsten Beneke (stellv. Vorsitzender), Prof. Dr.-Ing. Harald Bolt, Prof. Dr. Sebastian M. Schmidt ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Kennen Sie schon unsere app? http://www.fz-juelich.de/app From nilton at brain.riken.jp Wed Oct 3 04:53:20 2012 From: nilton at brain.riken.jp (Nilton Kamiji) Date: Wed, 3 Oct 2012 17:53:20 +0900 Subject: Connectionists: INCF Japan Node Internation Symposium - Advances in Neuroinformatics 2012 Message-ID: Dear all, Apologies if you have received multiple copies. The INCF Japan Node (http://www.neuroinf.jp/) is organizing the INCF Japan Node International Symposium - Advances in Neuroinformatics 2012 - (http://www.neuroinf.jp/symposium2012) which will be held on Oct. 30, 2012 at Ohkouchi Hall in RIKEN, Wako, JAPAN. Three plenary lectures by Prof. Toshio Yanagida (Osaka Univ.), Dr Sean Hill (INCF) and Dr. Shiro Usui (RIKEN), and presentation and tutorials on INCF J-Node platforms are scheduled. More details can be found at: http://www.neuroinf.jp/symposium2012. Participation to Symposium and Reception party: free (registration needed) Registration: Send the following information by email: symposium2012 at nijc.brain.riken.jp [name, affiliation, participation to Reception Party yes/no] Registration deadline Oct. 10 The symposium flyer can be downloaded from: http://www.neuroinf.jp/symposium2012/Symposium2012Poster.pdf If you have any question, feel free to contact us at: symposium2012 at nijc.brain.riken.jp Neuroinformatics Japan Center, RIKEN Brain Science Institute From tomas.hromadka at gmail.com Tue Oct 2 16:25:20 2012 From: tomas.hromadka at gmail.com (Tomas Hromadka) Date: Tue, 02 Oct 2012 22:25:20 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: COSYNE 2013: Abstract submissions open October 8 Message-ID: <506B4DB0.40201@gmail.com> ================================================================= Computational and Systems Neuroscience (Cosyne) MAIN MEETING WORKSHOPS Feb 28 - Mar 3, 2013 Mar 4 - 5, 2013 Salt Lake City, Utah Snowbird Ski Resort, Utah http://www.cosyne.org ================================================================= The annual Cosyne meeting provides an inclusive forum for the exchange of empirical and theoretical approaches to problems in systems neuroscience, in order to understand how neural systems function. The MAIN MEETING is single-track. A set of invited talks are selected by the Executive Committee, and additional talks and posters are selected by the Program Committee, based on submitted abstracts. The WORKSHOPS feature in-depth discussion of current topics of interest, in a small group setting. Cosyne topics include but are not limited to: neural coding, natural scene statistics, dendritic computation, neural basis of persistent activity, nonlinear receptive field mapping, representations of time and sequence, reward systems, decision-making, synaptic plasticity, map formation and plasticity, population coding, attention, and computation with spiking networks. IMPORTANT DATES: Abstract submission opens: 08 Oct 2012 Abstract submission deadline: 16 Nov 2012 INVITED SPEAKERS: William Bialek (Princeton) Kwabena Boahen (Stanford) Carlos Brody (Princeton) Ila Fiete (U Texas, Austin) Yves Fregnac (CNRS-UNIC) Deborah Gordon (Stanford) Eve Marder (Brandeis) J Anthony Movshon (NYU) Paul Schrater (U Minnesota) Terrence Sejnowski (Salk) Barbara Shinn-Cuningham (Boston U) When preparing an abstract, authors should be aware that not all abstracts can be accepted for the meeting, due to space constraints. Abstracts will be selected based on the clarity with which they convey the substance, significance, and originality of the work to be presented. ORGANIZING COMMITTEE: General Chairs: Jonathan Pillow (UT Austin) and Nicole Rust (Penn) Program Chairs: Marlene Cohen (U Pittsburgh) and Peter Latham (UCL) Workshop Chairs: Jessica Cardin (Yale) and Tatyana Sharpee (Salk) Communications Chair: Kanaka Rajan (Princeton) EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE: Anne Churchland (CSHL) Zachary Mainen (Champalimaud) Alexandre Pouget (U Geneva) Anthony Zador (CSHL) From schwarzwaelder at bcos.uni-freiburg.de Thu Oct 4 03:35:56 2012 From: schwarzwaelder at bcos.uni-freiburg.de (=?ISO-8859-15?Q?Kerstin_Schwarzw=E4lder?=) Date: Thu, 04 Oct 2012 09:35:56 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: Open positions in Computational Neuroscience in Germany - visit the Bernstein Network booth #3733 at SfN 2012! Message-ID: <506D3C5C.1050905@bcos.uni-freiburg.de> Dear colleagues, at its booth #3733 at the upcoming SfN meeting in New Orleans, the German Bernstein Network Computational Neuroscience is presenting job offers and more than 20 study programs at more than 20 locations in Germany. We look forward to welcoming you at booth #3733! Best regards, Kerstin Schwarzwaelder -- Dr. Kerstin Schwarzw?lder Bernstein Coordination Site of the National Bernstein Network Computational Neuroscience Albert Ludwigs University Freiburg Hansastr. 9A 79104 Freiburg Germany phone: +49 761 203 9594 fax: +49 761 203 9585 schwarzwaelder at bcos.uni-freiburg.de www.nncn.de Twitter: NNCN_Germany YouTube: Bernstein TV Facebook: Bernstein Network Computational Neuroscience, Germany LinkedIn: Bernstein Network Computational Neuroscience, Germany -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/20121004/420032b0/attachment.html From ted.carnevale at yale.edu Wed Oct 3 15:51:08 2012 From: ted.carnevale at yale.edu (Ted Carnevale) Date: Wed, 03 Oct 2012 15:51:08 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: NEURON at SFN 2012 meeting Message-ID: <506C972C.4000806@yale.edu> I am again trying to build a list of presentations that report work that was done with NEURON. Unfortunately, it hasn't gotten any easier to identify these from SFN's "abstract planner" so please tell me if you know of something that should be included in the list. The list will be posted at http://www.neuron.yale.edu/neuron/static/sfn2012/ni.html and will be updated as I learn of more items. --Ted Carnevale ted.carnevale at yale.edu From gluck at pavlov.rutgers.edu Thu Oct 4 17:15:23 2012 From: gluck at pavlov.rutgers.edu (Mark A. Gluck) Date: Thu, 4 Oct 2012 17:15:23 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: Ph.D. Program in Behavioral and Neural Sciences (BNS) at Rutgers University-Newark (Deadline: December 15, 2012) Message-ID: Dear Colleagues: If you know of superb graduating seniors or research assistants at your institution who are interested in pursuing a Ph.D. in neuroscience, please pass this letter on to them or post it on an appropriate bulletin board. The goal of the Graduate Program in Behavioral and Neural Sciences (BNS) at Rutgers University-Newark is to provide outstanding training across all areas of neuroscience as well as to provide intensive instruction within one area of focus so that graduates will be prepared for careers as academicians, educators and research scientists. Students are fully funded by the graduate program (not by individual faculty) for five years with a current stipend of about $30,000/year plus tuition and comprehensive health insurance. The BNS curriculum offers a wide range of courses that provide both breadth and depth. The program has only a few required courses so that students may tailor coursework to their individual backgrounds and needs. Students are primarily trained to conduct independent research and to present and discuss their results orally and in written form. Students also gain experience in undergraduate and graduate teaching and mentoring. The campus of the BNS program is located in Newark, New Jersey, 13 miles from New York City, with extensive public transportation links between the two. For more information, and links to faculty profiles and related resources, see: http://www.neuroscience.newark.rutgers.edu The admissions link can also be reached directly at: http://www.bns.rutgers.edu/ The deadline for applications is December 15 and interviews of the top candidates will take place on Friday and Saturday, February 22-23, 2013. Late applications may be considered on a case-by-case basis. - Mark PS. RE SFN THIS MONTH IN NEW ORLEANS. Although I will not be there myself, several of the Rutgers-Newark Neuroscience faculty will be there, as will three of the graduate students and postdoctoral fellows from my own lab. If any potential PhD program applicants are interested in meeting with these faculty or members of my lab, please email me ASAP to set up. -- ___________________________________________ Dr. Mark A. Gluck, Professor Director, Rutgers Memory Disorders Project Center for Molecular and Behavioral Neuroscience Rutgers University Phone: (973) 353-3668/3298 197 University Ave. Newark, New Jersey 07102 Email: gluck at pavlov.rutgers.edu Lab: http://www.gluck.edu Memory Loss & Brain Newsletter: http://www.memorylossonline.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/20121004/5dba58f2/attachment.html From m.a.wiering at rug.nl Thu Oct 4 09:53:27 2012 From: m.a.wiering at rug.nl (M.A.Wiering) Date: Thu, 04 Oct 2012 15:53:27 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: Call For Papers: Symposium on Adaptive Dynamic Programming and Reinforcement Learning In-Reply-To: <75b0c40a10b420.506d94ce@rug.nl> References: <7650f207109b3e.506d9491@rug.nl> <75b0c40a10b420.506d94ce@rug.nl> Message-ID: <75b0e1dc10c904.506db0f7@rug.nl> ?Dear colleagues, Our apologies for any possible cross-postings of this announcement. We would like to invite you to submit papers to ADPRL'13, to be held in Singapore 15-19 April 2013, see: http://ieee-ssci.org(http://ieee-ssci.org/) 2013 IEEE Symposium on Adaptive Dynamic Programming and Reinforcement Learning Adaptive (or Approximate) dynamic programming (ADP) is a general and effective approach for solving optimal control problems by adapting to uncertain environments over time. ADP optimizes a user-defined cost function with respect to an adaptive control law, conditioned on prior knowledge of the system, and its state, in the presence of system uncertainties. A numerical search over the present value of the control minimizes a nonlinear cost function forward-in-time providing a basis for real-time, approximate optimal control. The ability to improve performance over time subject to new or unexplored objectives or dynamics has made ADP an attractive approach in a number of application domains including optimal control and estimation, operation research, and computational intelligence. ADP is viewed as a form of reinforcement learning based on an actor-critic architecture that optimizes a user-prescribed value online and obtains the resulting optimal control policy. Reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms learn to optimize an agent by letting it interact with an environment and learn from its received feedback. The goal of the agent is to optimize its accumulated reward over time, and for this it estimates value functions that predict its future reward intake when executing a particular policy. Reinforcement learning techniques can be combined with many different function approximators and do not assume any a priori knowledge about the environment. An important aspect in RL is that an agent has to explore parts of the environment it does not know well, while at the same time it has to exploit its knowledge to maximize its reward intake. RL techniques have already been applied successfully for many problems such as controlling robots, game playing, elevator control, network routing, and traffic light optimization. Paper submission:? ? 23 Nov 2012 ??? Decision:????????????????????? 05 Jan 2013??? Final submission:?? ?? 05 Feb 2013???????? Early Registration:??? 05 Feb 2013 Topics The symposium topics include, but are not limited to: Convergence and performance bounds of ADP Complexity issues in RL and ADP Statistical learning and RL, PAC bounds for RL Monte-Carlo and quasi Monte-Carlo methods Direct policy search, actor-critic methods Parsimoneous function representation Adaptive feature discovery Learning rules and architectures for RL Sensitivity analysis for policy gradient estimation Neuroscience and biologically inspired control Partially observable Markov decision processes Distributed intelligent systems Multi-agent RL systems Multi-level multi-objective optimization for ADPRL Kernel methods and value function representation Applications of ADP and RL Symposium Chair Marco Wiering, University of Groningen, Netherlands Symposium Co-Chairs Jagannathan Sarangapani, Missouri University of Science and Technology, USA Huaguang Zhang, Northeastern University, China -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/20121004/66963588/attachment-0001.html From opossumnano at gmail.com Thu Oct 4 09:26:13 2012 From: opossumnano at gmail.com (Tiziano Zito) Date: Thu, 4 Oct 2012 15:26:13 +0200 (CEST) Subject: Connectionists: =?utf-8?q?=5BANN=5D_MDP-3=2E3_released!?= Message-ID: <20121004132613.BAFAD12E00D5@comms.bccn-berlin.de> We are glad to announce release 3.3 of the Modular toolkit for Data Processing (MDP). This a bug-fix release, all current users are invited to upgrade. MDP is a Python library of widely used data processing algorithms that can be combined according to a pipeline analogy to build more complex data processing software. The base of available algorithms includes signal processing methods (Principal Component Analysis, Independent Component Analysis, Slow Feature Analysis), manifold learning methods ([Hessian] Locally Linear Embedding), several classifiers, probabilistic methods (Factor Analysis, RBM), data pre-processing methods, and many others. What's new in version 3.3? -------------------------- - support sklearn versions up to 0.12 - cleanly support reload - fail gracefully if pp server does not start - several bug-fixes and improvements Resources --------- Download: http://sourceforge.net/projects/mdp-toolkit/files Homepage: http://mdp-toolkit.sourceforge.net Mailing list: http://lists.sourceforge.net/mailman/listinfo/mdp-toolkit-users Acknowledgments --------------- We thank the contributors to this release: Philip DeBoer, Yaroslav Halchenko. The MDP developers, Pietro Berkes Zbigniew J?drzejewski-Szmek Rike-Benjamin Schuppner Niko Wilbert Tiziano Zito From john.hajda at sagecenter.ucsb.edu Thu Oct 4 18:45:23 2012 From: john.hajda at sagecenter.ucsb.edu (John Hajda) Date: Thu, 04 Oct 2012 15:45:23 -0700 Subject: Connectionists: Postdoc job announcement at UC Santa Barbara Message-ID: <506E1183.4050507@sagecenter.ucsb.edu> *SAGE JUNIOR FELLOW PROGRAM, SAGE CENTER FOR THE STUDY OF MIND, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SANTA BARBARA * **Three postdoctoral positions will be available beginning on July 1, 2013.The initial appointment is for one year, with a possible extension to a second year. The SAGE Center Junior Fellowship will foster interdisciplinary research in the study of brain-mind interaction at the postdoctoral level. We are seeking exceptional scholars who will engage in research and participate in teaching graduate-level courses at UCSB. In addition to developing research programs in close collaboration with individual faculty, Junior Fellows will enjoy special privileges, including access to Visiting SAGE Scholars and attendance at regular group meetings to collaborate and share information about the role of psychology, cognitive neuroscience, economics, political science, anthropology, biology, and philosophy on the study of mind. To be eligible for the Junior Fellows program, a candidate must be at an early stage of his or her postdoctoral career. Proposed research topics must be related to brain-mind interaction. We encourage candidates to apply as an interdisciplinary team with a common research topic; individual applicants may propose any suitable topic. If no viable team application is selected, the search committee will strive to create a team based on common interests of the top individual applicants. Team applicants, please send: 1.A complete CV, published article and three letters of recommendation *for each candidate* 2.A statement of research interests that outlines your team's proposed topic, the expected contributions of each team member, and a description of how your team's interests complement the goals of the SAGE Center. Individual applicants, please send: 1.A complete CV, published article and three letters of recommendation 2.A statement of your research interests and a description of how those interests complement the goals of the SAGE Center. Application materials are due by December 1, 2012. Letters of recommendation may be sent by applicants or by recommenders. Email the required application materials to juniorfellows at sagecenter.ucsb.edu ; include the last names of the members of your team---or your last name if you are applying as an individual---in the subject line of all correspondence. Alternatively, you or your recommenders may send hard copies to this address: Michael S. Gazzaniga, Ph.D. Director, Sage Center for the Study of Mind University of California, Santa Barbara Santa Barbara, California 93106-9660 http://www.sagecenter.ucsb.edu/ http://www.psych.ucsb.edu/~gazzanig/ The Department is especially interested in candidates who can contribute to the diversity and excellence of the academic community through research, teaching and service. The University of California is an Equal Opportunity Affirmative Action employer. -- John Hajda, Ph.D. Associate Director Sage Center for the Study of the Mind Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences University of California, Santa Barbara Santa Barbara, CA 93106-9660 Phone 805-893-4460 Fax 805-893-3228 hajda at sagecenter.ucsb.edu http://www.sagecenter.ucsb.edu/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/20121004/b1b60c0a/attachment-0001.html From weng at cse.msu.edu Sun Oct 7 17:34:34 2012 From: weng at cse.msu.edu (Juyang Weng) Date: Sun, 07 Oct 2012 17:34:34 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: Brain-Mind Magazine: Vol. 1, No. 2 Message-ID: <5071F56A.3020000@cse.msu.edu> Brain-Mind Magazine Vol. 1, No. 2, 2012 Table of Contents Editorial: Consciousness, Peer Review and More 1 Two Conscious Minds in the Same Brain? Split Brains and the Alien-Hand Syndrome 2 - 4 by /Gonzalo Munevar / *Abstract: *It is not uncommon, even for distinguished investigators in neuroscience, to believe that two independent consciousness, two minds, may exist side by side in split-brain patients. A split-brain patient is a severe epileptic whose corpus callosum -- the structure that connects the right and left hemispheres of the cerebral cortex -- has been severed. This belief arose in great part because some split-brain patients have been afflicted by the "alien-hand syndrome," in which the patient, say, would reach for an object with his right hand, only to have the left hand block or undo the action. This fascinating possibility of two minds in the same brain is undermined, however, by more recent understanding of how a cerebral structure called the supplementary motor area selects and inhibits plans for action (developed in the premotor cortex). Nevertheless, explaining the true cause of alien-hand syndrome can be fascinating in its own right. Brain Stories 2: Bonds and Feuds 5 - 7 by /Brian N. Huang / *Abstract: *A brain forms founds based on long-time accumulation of experience. When it was forced to choose friend and foe, the brain does so based on past personal experience. There is no absolute right or wrong. A brain is prone to bounds and feuds because of dopamine and serotonin modulation to the brain circuits. I present my personal stories that look childish from the view of a third person. However, stories of similar nature are taking place everywhere, from individuals to nations. IEEE TPAMI Banned Neural Network Approaches 8 - 10 by /Christopher S. Masfis / /*Abstract: *Consider the established convention of scientific journals and the checks-and-balances of power in scientific publications.Is it a healthy practice for a problem-oriented journal to ban a particular category of approaches to its problems? This article reports an instance. / A Theoretical Proof Bridged the Two AI Schools but a Major AI Journal Desk-Rejected It 11 - 12 by /Christopher S. Masfis / *Abstract: *Artificial Intelligence (AI) approaches fall into two schools, symbolic and connectionist, although a hybrid is possible. In each school, there have been many published theoretical models and experimental results. Inspired by the brain-like information processing, a theoretical proof established that all the models in these two schools are tightly related, via a mature automata theory well known in computer science. This predicted how the brain uses the best of the both schools. A major AI journal desk-rejected the submissions stating "without the possibility of further resubmission". The 2nd Open Letter to the US President Obama: Why US Should Be Friendly with Every Government? 13 - 15 by /Juyang Weng / *Abstract: *All minds are not only groupish in nature, but also partially blind because of a lack of experience and knowledge. For US national interest, the US government should make friends with every government, not to isolate any imaginary or real rivals in peaceful competition. I submit brain-inspired reasons. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/20121007/f3f82728/attachment.html From steve at cns.bu.edu Mon Oct 8 20:29:56 2012 From: steve at cns.bu.edu (Stephen Grossberg) Date: Mon, 8 Oct 2012 20:29:56 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: Adaptive Resonance Theory: How a brain learns to consciously attend, learn, and recognize a changing world Message-ID: The following review article about Adaptive Resonance Theory can now be downloaded from http://cns.bu.edu/~steve. It is the most comprehensive heuristic review of ART as a cognitive and neural theory that I have ever written. Grossberg, S. (2012). Adaptive Resonance Theory: How a brain learns to consciously attend, learn, and recognize a changing world. To appear in the 25th anniversary special issue of Neural Networks. Abstract Adaptive Resonance Theory, or ART, is a cognitive and neural theory of how the brain autonomously learns to categorize, recognize, and predict objects and events in a changing world. This article reviews classical and recent developments of ART, and provides a synthesis of concepts, principles, mechanisms, architectures, and the interdisciplinary data bases that they have helped to explain and predict. The review illustrates that ART is currently the most highly developed cognitive and neural theory available, with the broadest explanatory and predictive range. Central to ART's predictive power is its ability to carry out fast, incremental, and stable unsupervised and supervised learning in response to a changing world. ART specifies mechanistic links between processes of consciousness, learning, expectation, attention, resonance, and synchrony during both unsupervised and supervised learning. ART provides functional and mechanistic explanations of such diverse topics as laminar cortical circuitry; invariant object and scenic gist learning and recognition; prototype, surface, and boundary attention; gamma and beta oscillations; learning of entorhinal grid cells and hippocampal place cells; computation of homologous spatial and temporal mechanisms in the entorhinal-hippocampal system; vigilance breakdowns during autism and medial temporal amnesia; cognitive-emotional interactions that focus attention on valued objects in an adaptively timed way; item-order-rank working memories and learned list chunks for the planning and control of sequences of linguistic, spatial, and motor information; conscious speech percepts that are influenced by future context; auditory streaming in noise during source segregation; and speaker normalization. Brain regions that are functionally described include visual and auditory neocortex; specific and nonspecific thalamic nuclei; inferotemporal, parietal, prefrontal, entorhinal, hippocampal, parahippocampal, perirhinal, and motor cortices; frontal eye fields; supplementary eye fields; amygdala; basal ganglia: cerebellum; and superior colliculus. Due to the complementary organization of the brain, ART does not describe many spatial and motor behaviors whose matching and learning laws differ from those of ART. ART algorithms for engineering and technology are listed, as are comparisons with other types of models. Stephen Grossberg Wang Professor of Cognitive and Neural Systems Professor of Mathematics, Psychology, and Biomedical Engineering Director, Center for Adaptive Systems http://www.cns.bu.edu/about/cas.html http://cns.bu.edu/~steve steve at bu.edu -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/20121008/0332afac/attachment.html From chiestand at salk.edu Mon Oct 8 20:54:56 2012 From: chiestand at salk.edu (Chris Hiestand) Date: Mon, 8 Oct 2012 17:54:56 -0700 Subject: Connectionists: NIPS 2012 Registration Open Message-ID: <485D09FC-2285-4626-8031-B38D491A7049@salk.edu> Neural Information Processing Systems 2012 registration is open: https://nips.cc/Register/ NIPS 2012 Dates: Tutorials ? December 3, 2012 Conference Sessions ? December 3-6, 2012 Workshops ? December 7-8, 2012 Program Highlights can be found here: http://nips.cc/Conferences/2012/Program/ Accepted Papers are here: http://nips.cc/Conferences/2012/Program/accepted-papers.php Additional Information can be found here: http://nips.cc/Conferences/2012/ Early Registration Deadline: In order to qualify for reduced, early registration, pricing you must register and pay before November 9, 2012 23:59 PST. What's New in 2012: Venue: NIPS 2012 will be held in Lake Tahoe, Nevada, USA for the first time. Conveniently, the tutorials, conference, and workshops venue are in the hotels we are staying at (Harrah's and Harveys). An additional convenience, the main conference is at the same venue as the workshops. This means that Thursday afternoon does not need to be spent traveling for those attending both the conference and the workshops. Transportation: We highly recommend you reserve a private bus or shuttle seat with our transportation partner, Destination Tahoe. Please make your reservation by Monday, November 19 - after this date seating is not guaranteed but is distributed as available. **Deadline: Monday, November 19** For reservation details see our transportation page: http://nips.cc/Conferences/2012/Transportation Pricing: The price of tutorials has been reduced from $200 Regular / $120 Student to $175 Regular / $75 Student. Volunteering: Students can apply to volunteer at the conference in exchange for free registration: https://nips.cc/Volunteers/ Travel Support: Students and PostDocs can apply for travel support: https://nips.cc/TravelSupport/ You can register here: https://nips.cc/Register/ -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: smime.p7s Type: application/pkcs7-signature Size: 4798 bytes Desc: not available Url : https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/20121008/73a2127b/smime.bin From Eugene.Izhikevich at braincorporation.com Wed Oct 10 21:11:43 2012 From: Eugene.Izhikevich at braincorporation.com (Eugene Izhikevich) Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2012 18:11:43 -0700 Subject: Connectionists: 10 reasons to join Brain Corporation Message-ID: We apply neuroscience to robotics. We are intrigued by the challenge of understanding the brain and simulating neural computations. We are passionate about changing the world with smarter robots, and we are looking for exceptional people to join us in that mission. Benefits: 1. Work on the most exciting scientific challenge of the century. 2. Outstanding team of computational neuroscientists, programmers, and engineers. 3. Industry-level salary, stock options, end-of-year bonuses. 4. Health, dental, and vision insurance. 5. Free breakfast and lunch at work; lots of healthy choices. 6. Free iPhone 5 for new employees; free gadgets twice per year. 7. Live 5 minutes from the Pacific Ocean; surf or dive any day of the year, and bike to work. 8. Bring your family to sunny San Diego, home to World Famous San Diego Zoo, Sea World, Legoland, Wild Animal Park, and an hour from Disneyland. 9. Family-friendly events, all-expense-paid holiday retreats, deep-sea fishing. 10. Attend conferences like the annual SfN and COSYNE meetings (and yes, we all stay an extra day at the Cliff Lodge just to ski). We are a team with diverse backgrounds in computational neuroscience, computer science, or engineering. Bring your big ideas and help us change the world. -- Dr. Eugene M. Izhikevich Chairman & CEO Brain Corporation San Diego, California From m.biehl at rug.nl Fri Oct 5 10:10:09 2012 From: m.biehl at rug.nl (Michael Biehl) Date: Fri, 5 Oct 2012 16:10:09 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: Deadline extended: special session on interpretable models Message-ID: *Final submission deadline: November 23, 2012* Dear colleagues, we would like to draw your attention to a special session on *Interpretable systems in machine learning, data analysis, and visualization * at the *CIDM 2013 *conference (part of the* IEEE SSCI 2013*) in Singapore, April 2013. We would be happy to welcome many contributions concerning data analysis and visualization of complex data sets in various application contexts. This includes the biomedical domain and, in particular, the neurosciences. For further information, please visit: http://samm.univ-paris1.fr/Special-Session-on-Interpretable The main conference page is: http://www.ntu.edu.sg/home/epnsugan/index_files/SSCI2013/index.html Looking forward to seeing you in Singapore! *Fabrice Rossi *and* Michael Biehl *PS: our apologies for double or cross postings ---------------------------------------------------------- Prof. Dr. Michael Biehl Johann Bernoulli Institute for Mathematics and Computer Science University of Groningen P.O. Box 407, 9700 AK Groningen The Netherlands www.cs.rug.nl/~biehl m.biehl at rug.nl * * -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/20121005/2dd55ec0/attachment.html From marc-oliver.gewaltig at epfl.ch Wed Oct 10 08:58:18 2012 From: marc-oliver.gewaltig at epfl.ch (Gewaltig Marc-Oliver) Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2012 12:58:18 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: NEST demo at SfN 2012 Message-ID: <91BE986EBD4A5E44B19ED61C50B5B67404E33C22@REXMF.intranet.epfl.ch> Dear colleagues, I would like to invite you to a live demo of the Neural Simulation Tool NEST during the upcoming SfN 2012 in New Orleans. During the demo we will illustrate how to design and run simulations in NEST. The demo will be suitable for beginners and experienced users of NEST. The demo will take place on Tuesday October 16 13:30h-16:30h at the INCF booth (Exhibitors area booth #3536). More information about INCF's program at the SfN 2012 can be found at: http://www.incf.org/documents/sfn2012 See you in New Orleans Marc-Oliver Gewaltig on behalf of the NEST Initiative http://www.nest-initiative.org -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/20121010/eb6a5ede/attachment.html From raphael.ritz at incf.org Wed Oct 10 08:32:07 2012 From: raphael.ritz at incf.org (Raphael Ritz) Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2012 14:32:07 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: INCF at Neuroscience 2012 Message-ID: <50756AC7.8030601@incf.org> *** apologies for cross-posting *** Dear all, INCF is present at Neuroscience 2012 in New Orleans, LA, October 13-17. You are very welcome to come and visit us in booth #3536, located in the "NIH Area" close to other neuroinformatics exhibitors. As usual, we are hosting neuroinformatics demonstrations in our booth during all the exhibition days. You can find the schedule for the demos on our webpage: http://www.incf.org/documents/sfn2012/. We would especially like to point out that in the morning of Wednesday October 17, prior to the Neuroinformatics poster session, we are hosting an open mini-hackathon in the INCF booth - all developers are welcome for discussions and on-site coding. In addition, we want to highlight that this year we are placing a focus on data sharing. With the launch of the "INCF Data Space - get connected and share" (including Amazon credits for those willing to explore the cloud-based approach), the "Neuroimaging data sharing clinic" - bring your imaging data into the INCF XNAT repository while on site, and the "Walk-in Registration Clinic" - bring your (mouse) brain images into the INCF Waxholm space, we hope to have something to offer to many of you. You can also find us at the the SfN-sponsored "Neuroinformatics & Genomics" Social, 6:45 PM-8:45 PM, Sunday October 14 at the Hilton Riverside (Jasperwood). You can also follow us on Twitter (twitter.com/INCForg); we will be posting regular updates throughout the meeting. Hope to see you in New Orleans! Raphael -- Dr. Raphael Ritz Scientific Officer International Neuroinformatics Coordinating Facility Karolinska Institutet Nobels v?g 15 A SE-171 77 Stockholm Sweden Email: raphael.ritz at incf.org Phone: +46 8 524 87017 Fax: +46 8 524 87150 web: www.incf.org From shyam at amrita.edu Mon Oct 8 19:04:32 2012 From: shyam at amrita.edu (Shyam Diwakar) Date: Tue, 9 Oct 2012 01:04:32 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: Call for abstract - Amrita BioQuest 2013, Kerala, India Message-ID: <009a01cda5a9$4a64aba0$df2e02e0$@amrita.edu> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------- First call for abstracts Amrita BioQuest 2013 - International Conference on Biotechnology for Innovative Applications CALL FOR ABSTRACT SUBMISSION - Neurobiology and Computational Neuroscience track Conference dates: August 10-14, 2013 Venue: Amritapuri, Kollam, Kerala, India Website: http://amrita.edu/bioquest (Website is work under progress) Conference theme: "Biotechnology for Innovative Applications" ABSTRACT SUBMISSION WEBSITE: http://www.amritabioquest.org/abstracts ABSTRACT SUBMISSION OPEN: October 1, 2012 SUBMISSION DEADLINE: January 15, 2013 NOTIFICATION OF ABSTRACT ACCEPTANCE: March 15, 2013 Amrita BioQuest 2013 will be held in Kochi/Amritapuri, Kerala, India, on August 10-14, 2013. The conference will kick off with a day of workshops at Amrita's Medical campus at Kochi on August 10. The main tracks of Amrita BioQuest 2013 will follow on August 12-14. The workshops will be held at Amrita Institute of Medical Sciences located in Kochi (colonial name Cochin), the economic capital of Kerala, also known as the Queen of the Arabian Sea, connected by its international airport. The main meeting will be held at Amrita University campus at Amritapuri, a popular fishing village, which is one hour north of Kollam, 2.5 hours north of Trivandrum and three hours south of Kochi. Submissions can include experimental, model-based, as well as more abstract theoretical approaches relating to any of the tracks of the conference. We especially encourage research that mixes experimental and theoretical studies from the neuroscience community. We also accept papers that describe new technical approaches to theoretical and experimental issues in computational neuroscience or relevant software packages. STEERING COMMITTEE: Leland Hartwell, Nobel Laureate, President and Director Emeritus, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, Professor of Genome Sciences, University of Washington, USA Suresh Subramani, Distinguished Professor, Section of Molecular Biology, UCSD, USA PROGRAM CHAIR Bipin Nair, Dean, Amrita School of Biotechnology, Amrita University, Kollam, Kerala, India INVITED SPEAKERS (as of now): Egidio D'Angelo, Professor of Physiology and Director - Brain Connectivity Center, University of Pavia, Italy Gaute Einevoll, Professor of Physics, Norwegian University of Life Sciences (UMB) Upinder S. Bhalla, Professor, National Center for Biological Sciences (NCBS, TIFR), India Vijayalakshmi Ravindranath, Chair person, Centre for Neuroscience, Indian Institute of Science, India Rohit Manchanda, Professor, Indian Institute of Technology-Bombay, India. Boro Dropulic, Founder and CSO Lentigen Jaap Heringa, Professor of Bioinformatics and Director, Centre for Integrative Bioinformatics, Vrije Universiteit, Netherlands Gilles McKenna, Head of Department of Oncology and Director of Gray Institute for Radiation Oncology and Biology, University of Oxford, UK Jyostna Dhawan, Dean- inStem, NCBS, India. Michelle Hermiston, Department of Pediatrics, University of California San Francisco, USA Ruth J Muschel, CRUK/MRC Professor of Molecular Pathology, University of Oxford, UK S. Ramaswamy, CEO of c-CAMP, NCBS, Bangalore, India Terry Hermiston, Vice President, Site Head, US Innovation Center, Bayer Healthcare ABSTRACT SUBMISSION: Submission instructions, submission website, and a full description of the review process are at http://www.amritabioquest.org/abstracts AWARDS: Student posters presented at Amrita BioQuest 2013 will also be judged for prizes awarded at the conference. Ph.D. and student events: A special session is being considered for PhD students and other student researchers and a student contest is being planned during the conference. A student interaction session with Prof. Leland Hartwell, Nobel prize winner (and steering committee member - Amrita BioQuest 2013) is also being scheduled. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------- -- Dr. Shyam Diwakar VALUE @ Amrita - Virtual Amrita Laboratories Universalizing Education School of Biotechnology Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham (Amrita University) Amritapuri, Clappana P.O. Kollam, India. Pin: 690525 Ph:+91-476-2803116 Fax:+91-476-2899722 http://research.amrita.edu/compneuro -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/20121008/2eca6e14/attachment.html From nilton at brain.riken.jp Thu Oct 11 01:15:01 2012 From: nilton at brain.riken.jp (Nilton Kamiji) Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2012 14:15:01 +0900 Subject: Connectionists: RAST for SfN 2012, New Orleans, Oct. 13-17 Message-ID: Apologies if you have received multiple copies. Dear all, This is a reminder of the Related Abstract Search Tool (RAST) for SfN 2012. For the forth year, the Laboratory for Neuroinformatics at RIKEN Brain Science Institute is providing the RAST for SfN 2012! http://ras.ni.brain.riken.jp/SfN2012/ For mobile devices such as iPad, iPhone, and Android based tablets and smartphones, a web application is available at: http://ras.ni.brain.riken.jp/SfN2012/mobile/htdocs Since this is a web application, all you need is a web browser. The RAST allows you to search not only by providing keyword(s), but also by selecting one or multiple abstracts to search for its related abstracts. This feature may provide results focused on the user's interest. That is, abstracts related to a single abstract by means of document similarity may belong to a different research topic. However, abstracts mutually similar to multiple selected abstracts have higher chance in belonging to the similar topic. RAST also suggests possible candidates of keywords by automatically extracting major words from the list of related abstracts. You can also use these words to refine your search. Moreover, not all related abstracts will contain the provided keyword(s). These abstracts cannot be searched by the ordinary keyword search, and thus we call them "Hidden treasure". You can create a list by clicking on Add to Cart button at each abstract, where abstracts will be sorted by date and time. You can also print the list with or without the abstract body from your Printing Cart. You can restore your "Printing Cart" by saving the ID which is displayed on the top right corner. Try and find your "hidden treasures" with RAST! A quick guide is shown on the top page, and a detailed guide can be accessed by clicking on "How to use". Any comments or questions are very welcome at ras at ni.brain.riken.jp One minor comment: The Laboratory for Neuroinforwatics was closed on Sept. 28th. We are working on moving the RAST to the INCF Japan-node (Neuroinformatics Japan Center - NIJC). Hope you can find your "hidden treasures"! Shiro ------------------------------------------- Shiro USUI, Ph.D usui at eiiris.tut.ac.jp EIIRIS, ToyohashiTech.(Toyohashi Univ.Tech) Hibarigaoka, Tempaku, Toyohashi 441-8580 Japan Tel:+81-532-81-5154 Cel:+81-90-7175-0861 http://www.eiiris.tut.ac.jp ------------------------------------------- INCF Japan-node (NIJC) RIKEN BSI Hirosawa, Wako, Saitama 351-0198 Japan usuishiro at riken.jp Tel:+81-48-467-6454 Cel:+81-90-7175-0861 http://www.neuroinf.jp ------------------------------------------- From p.gleeson at ucl.ac.uk Fri Oct 12 10:59:25 2012 From: p.gleeson at ucl.ac.uk (Padraig Gleeson) Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2012 15:59:25 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: Building Bridges to Build Brains workshop (Edinburgh, Nov 2012) Message-ID: <5078304D.3080901@ucl.ac.uk> Dear colleagues, The UK Computational Neuroscience, Neuromorphic Hardware and Robotics communities in collaboration with eFutures, the network for the UK electronics academic community, are joining together for a two-day meeting to forge new research collaborations and tackle the key issues faced in these fields today. The Building Bridges to Build Brains meeting takes place at the Informatics Forum in Edinburgh on Tuesday 20th and Wednesday 21st November 2012 and includes plenary talks from each community as well as breakout sessions and networking opportunities. There will also be the opportunity to present your own problems and solutions at the meeting or for you or your student(s) to present a research poster at our poster reception. If you are interested in attending then please visit the Building Bridges to Build Brains webpage (http://efutures.ac.uk/bbtbb) for more information, or you can register directly here: http://efutures.ac.uk/bbtbb_reg. Registration including food and refreshments on both days is free and funds are also available to cover travel and accommodation for PhD students based in the UK wishing to present a poster at the meeting. For more information please contact efutures at ncl.ac.uk. We look forward to seeing you there! With best wishes, The Building Bridges to Build Brains Organising Committee: Andrew Brown (Southampton) Robert Cannon (Textensor) Marc de Kamps (Leeds) Steve Furber (Manchester) Padraig Gleeson (UCL) Anthony O'Neill (Newcastle) Leslie Smith (Stirling) David Willshaw (Edinburgh) ----------------------------------------------------- Padraig Gleeson Room 321, Anatomy Building Department of Neuroscience, Physiology& Pharmacology University College London Gower Street London WC1E 6BT United Kingdom +44 207 679 3214 p.gleeson at ucl.ac.uk ----------------------------------------------------- From szzoli at cs.elte.hu Thu Oct 11 13:44:44 2012 From: szzoli at cs.elte.hu (Zoltan Szabo) Date: Thu, 11 Oct 2012 19:44:44 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: Information Theoretical Estimators Toolbox Message-ID: <20121011194444.354c8b6b@cs.elte.hu> Dear Connectionist-ers, We are pleased to announce our recently released ITE (Information Theoretical Estimators) toolbox. The ITE package could be of interest to many of you: the estimation of information theoretical quantities (entropy, mutual information, divergence) plays a central role in numerous important problems of computational neuroscience. Unfortunately, available packages focus on (i) discrete variables, or (ii) quite specialized applications and information theoretical estimation methods. To fill in this serious gap, we have recently released ITE (i) a highly modular, (ii) free and open source, (iii) multi-platform toolbox package, which 1. is capable of estimating many different variants of entropy, mutual information and divergence measures. 2. offers a simple and unified framework to (a) easily construct new estimators from existing ones or from scratch, and (b) transparently use the obtained estimators in information theoretical optimization problems. 3. with a prototype application in a central problem family of signal processing, independent subspace analysis and its extensions. The homepage of ITE is "https://bitbucket.org/szzoli/ite/". Feel free to use it. Best, Zoltan ("http://nipg.inf.elte.hu/szzoli") From dayan at gatsby.ucl.ac.uk Fri Oct 12 09:09:32 2012 From: dayan at gatsby.ucl.ac.uk (Peter Dayan) Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2012 14:09:32 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: Gatsby PhD Programme Message-ID: <20121012130932.GA32711@gatsby.ucl.ac.uk> Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit, University College London 4 year PhD Programme The Gatsby Unit is a centre for theoretical neuroscience and machine learning, focusing on unsupervised, semi-supervised and reinforcement learning, neural dynamics, population coding, Bayesian and nonparametric statistics, kernel methods, and applications of these to the analysis of perceptual processing, neural data, natural language processing, machine vision and bioinformatics. It provides a unique opportunity for a critical mass of theoreticians to interact closely with each other, and with other world-class research groups in related departments at UCL, including Anatomy, Computer Science, Functional Imaging, Physics, Physiology, Psychology, Neurology, Ophthalmology and Statistics, the cross-faculty Centre for Computational Statistics and Machine Learning, the forthcoming Sainsbury Wellcome Centre for Neural Circuits and Behaviour, and also with other UK and overseas universities. The Unit has openings for exceptional PhD candidates. Applicants should have a strong analytical background, a keen interest in neuroscience and/or machine learning and a relevant first degree, for example in Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, Neuroscience, Physics, Psychology or Statistics. The PhD programme lasts four years, including a first year of intensive instruction in techniques and research in theoretical neuroscience and machine learning. All students are fully funded, regardless of nationality. The Unit also welcomes applications from students with pre-secured funding or who are currently soliciting other scholarship/studentships. Full details of our programme, and how to apply, are available at: http://www.gatsby.ucl.ac.uk/teaching/phd/ For further details of research interests please see http://www.gatsby.ucl.ac.uk/research.html and the individual faculty webpages at http://www.gatsby.ucl.ac.uk/members.html From stefano.panzeri at gmail.com Fri Oct 12 14:36:15 2012 From: stefano.panzeri at gmail.com (Stefano Panzeri) Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2012 19:36:15 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: Postdoctoral Position in Computational Neuroscience - MPI Tuebingen Message-ID: Postdoctoral Position in Computational Neuroscience Applications are sought for a postdoctoral position in computational neuroscience funded by the European FP7 FET Open project with acronym ?Si-Code? and full title ?Towards new Brain-Machine Interfaces: state-dependent information coding?. The postdoctoral candidate will be working in the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics in Tuebingen (Germany), under the supervision of N.K. Logothetis and O. Eschenko, and will also be involve in collaborations with the computational laboratory of S. Panzeri, a long term collaborator of the group. The project aims at understanding the impact of large scale brain dynamics to the responses and information processing properties of individual microcircuits. This aim will require integrating the information at multiple spatial and temporal scales obtained from the computational analysis of parallel neurophysiological recordings with multiple-contact electrodes in several brain areas, of simultaneous electrical stimulation and fMRI, and of neural-event triggered fMRI. The ideal candidate will have a strong background in numerate sciences (physics, mathematics, or engineering), with a good knowledge of dynamical systems and of communication theory, a good knowledge of empirical neuroscience and a keen interest in applying her/his numerate background to making major breakthroughs in the understanding of the brain. The position is available from the beginning of December 2012 up to the end of February 2015. Payment will be in accordance with German public service positions (TV?D Bund E13), including extensive social security plans. The conditions of employment follow the rules of the Max Planck Society for the Advancement of Sciences and those of the German civil service. The Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics seeks to increase the number of female scientists and encourages them to apply. Handicapped persons with comparable qualifications will receive preferential status. Interested candidates are encouraged to first approach Stefano Panzeri ( stefano.panzeri at gmail.com) attaching a statement of interest and a CV to their email. Formal applications, including a statement of interest, a CV and the name and addresses of two referees, should then be sent to Conchy Moya [conchy.moya at tuebingen.mpg.de] not later than 04.11.2012. Further information on the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics can be obtained atwww.kyb.tuebingen.mpg.de. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/20121012/77406c84/attachment.html From m.montemurro at manchester.ac.uk Fri Oct 12 16:06:39 2012 From: m.montemurro at manchester.ac.uk (Marcelo Montemurro) Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2012 21:06:39 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: Funded PhD in Computational Neuroscience - The University of Manchester Message-ID: <9C572F7C-DC3F-42D1-B9A7-69D95967CC45@manchester.ac.uk> Dear All, applications are invited for a 3-year PhD studentship to work on a project entitled 'Quantifying the contribution of melanopsin to the processing of complex visual information' under the supervision of Dr Marcelo Montemurro and Prof Robert Lucas at the Faculty of Life Sciences of The University of Manchester. The 3-year studentship will provide full support for tuition fees and an annual minimum tax-free stipend of ?13,590. This studentship is available to UK/EU nationals only due to the nature of the funding and is due to start October 2013. The successful applicant will work on the development of computational analysis methods based on information theory and their application to experimental data gathered at Lucas' lab. The student will also have the opportunity to receive training in experimental methods and actively participate in experiment design. The precise balance between the different types of approaches will be defined according to he the student's background and interests. Further details can be found at: http://www.mhs.manchester.ac.uk/postgraduate/studentships/featuredstudentship/fstudentship1 For enquires, please write to Dr Marcelo Montemurro (m.montemurro at manchester.ac.uk). Applications are invited up to 9.00 am Wednesday 14 November 2012. Regards, -- Dr. Marcelo A. Montemurro Faculty of Life Sciences University of Manchester Room 3.606 Stopford Building Oxford Road Manchester, M13 9PT UK phone: +44(0)161 306 3883 From gary at eng.ucsd.edu Sat Oct 13 13:17:45 2012 From: gary at eng.ucsd.edu (Gary Cottrell) Date: Sat, 13 Oct 2012 10:17:45 -0700 Subject: Connectionists: Fwd: Assistant Professor in Computational Cognitive Science - UC San Diego References: Message-ID: <4B238727-9883-4951-82FE-9C9DDD3A57E4@eng.ucsd.edu> Begin forwarded message: > From: Ayse Pinar Saygin > Date: October 12, 2012 10:19:25 PM PDT > To: undisclosed-recipients:; > Bcc: gary at eng.ucsd.edu > Subject: Fwd: Assistant Professor in Computational Cognitive Science - UC San Diego > > Dear friends and colleagues, > > Our department (UCSD Cogsci) has an opening for a tenure track assistant professor position in the computational area (computational neuroscience included). Please circulate to any colleagues or postdocs who may be interested. > > Cheers, Ayse > > > ---------- Forwarded message ---------- > From: Ayse Pinar Saygin > Date: Fri, Oct 12, 2012 at 10:21 PM > Subject: Assistant Professor in Computational Cognitive Science - UC San Diego > To: visionlist at visionscience.com > Cc: Marine Sinanyan > > > Assistant Professor in Computational Cognitive Science > > > DEPARTMENT OF COGNITIVE SCIENCE AT UCSD > > > > The Department of Cognitive Science http://cogsci.ucsd.edu within the Division of Social Sciences at UC San Diego is committed to academic excellence and diversity within the faculty, staff and student body. The department invites applications for a tenure-track position in computational cognitive science. > > > > The department has a preference for a junior researcher to be appointed at the assistant professor level. Applicants must have a Ph.D. at the time of appointment that will begin July 1, 2013. Areas of particular interest include: big data, machine learning, brain-computer interaction, but other specializations will be considered. An interdisciplinary perspective and experience with multiple methodologies is highly valued. Strong teaching and research skills in advanced computational methods are required. The preferred candidate will have experience or a willingness to participate in teaching, mentoring, research or service towards building an equitable and diverse scholarly environment. > > > > The department is truly interdisciplinary, with a faculty whose interests span anthropology, computer science, design, human development, linguistics, neuroscience, philosophy, perception, and psychology. UCSD Department of Cognitive Science was the first of its kind, and is part of an exceptional scientific community with close ties to California Institute of Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2), UCSD Supercomputer Center, the Institute for Neural Computation, and the NSF Temporal Dynamics of Learning Center. > > > > Salary is commensurate with qualifications and based on University of California pay scales. > > > > Review of applications will commence on 11/1/2012 and continue until the position is filled. Application will be accepted electronically at https://apol-recruit.ucsd.edu/apply Candidate should submit the following: a vita; reprints of up to four representative publications; a short cover letter describing background and interests and at least three references (name, title, address and email). Applicants are also asked to contribute a separate statement in which they describe their past or potential experience in activities that promote diversity. For further information about contribution to diversity statement, see http://facultyequity.ucsd.edu/Faculty-Applicant-C2D-Info.asp > > > > UCSD is an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer with a strong institutional commitment to excellence and diversity and to addressing dual career issues via the Partner Opportunities Program http://academicaffairs.ucsd.edu/aps/partneropp/ UCSD has many family-friendly policies http://academicaffairs.ucsd.edu/aps/advance-trainfamily/ > > > -- > Marine Sinanyan > Academic Personnel > > University of California, San Diego > Department of Cognitive Science > Department of Communication > Cognitive Science Building, Room 145 > 9500 Gilman Drive #0515 > La Jolla, CA 92093-0515 > > Office: 858.534.6770 > Fax: 858.534.1128 > > CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE: > The contents of this email message and any attachments are > intended solely for the addressee(s) and may contain confidential > and/or privileged information and may be legally protected from disclosure. > If you are not the intended recipient of this message or their agent, or if > this message has been addressed to you in error, please immediately > alert the sender by reply email and then delete this message and any > attachments. If you are not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified > that any use, dissemination, copying, or storage of this message or its > attachments is strictly prohibited. > > Best wishes, > > A.P. Saygin > Assistant Professor, UCSD > saygin at cogsci.ucsd.edu > http://www.sayginlab.org/apsaygin.html > > Gary Cottrell 858-534-6640 FAX: 858-534-7029 Computer Science and Engineering 0404 IF USING FED EX INCLUDE THE FOLLOWING LINE: CSE Building, Room 4130 University of California San Diego 9500 Gilman Drive # 0404 La Jolla, Ca. 92093-0404 "Probably once or twice a week we are sitting at dinner and Richard says, 'The cortex is hopeless,' and I say, 'That's why I work on the worm.'" Dr. Bargmann said. "A grapefruit is a lemon that saw an opportunity and took advantage of it." - note written on a door in Amsterdam on Lijnbaansgracht. "Physical reality is great, but it has a lousy search function." -Matt Tong "Only connect!" -E.M. Forster "You always have to believe that tomorrow you might write the matlab program that solves everything - otherwise you never will." -Geoff Hinton "I am awaiting the day when people remember the fact that discovery does not work by deciding what you want and then discovering it." -David Mermin Email: gary at ucsd.edu Home page: http://www-cse.ucsd.edu/~gary/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/20121013/b83dc2da/attachment.html From ted.carnevale at yale.edu Sat Oct 13 21:57:47 2012 From: ted.carnevale at yale.edu (Ted Carnevale) Date: Sat, 13 Oct 2012 21:57:47 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: A Neuroscience Gateway to high performance computing resources Message-ID: <507A1C1B.2040507@yale.edu> We are implementing a Neuroscience Gateway portal that will greatly reduce administrative and technical barriers to the use of high performance computing resources by computational neuroscientists. This will make it much easier to carry out computationally intensive tasks such as parameter space exploration, optimization, and simulation of large scale networks with tools like as NEURON, GENESIS 3, MOOSE, NEST, etc.. Come see our poster and live demonstrations at the 2012 meeting of the Society for Neuroscience Monday, October 15 between 2 and 5 PM at the Neuroinformatics Framework booth (#3537) and Wednesday, October 17 between 1 and 5 PM at poster presentation 928.18/GGG24 "A neuroscience gateway for high performance computing" N.T. Carnevale, S. Sivagnanam, K.K. Yoshimoto, V. Astakhov, A.E. Bandrowski, M.E. Martone, and A. Majumdar. From ahu at cs.stir.ac.uk Sat Oct 13 14:41:42 2012 From: ahu at cs.stir.ac.uk (Dr Amir Hussain) Date: Sat, 13 Oct 2012 19:41:42 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: Cognitive Computation journal (Springer): Table of Contents, Vol.4, No.3 / Sep 2012 Issue Message-ID: Dear Colleagues: (with advance apologies for any cross-postings) We are delighted to announce the publication of Volume 4, No. 3 / Sep 2012, of Springer's Cognitive Computation journal - www.springer.com/12559 This Issue is a Special Issue titled: "Computational Creativity, Intelligence and Autonomy," Edited by: Prof. J. Mark Bishop and Dr. Yasemin J. Erden The individual list of published articles (Table of Contents) for Vol. 4, No. 3 / Sept 2012 can be viewed here (and also at the end of this message, followed by an overview of the previous Issues/Archive listings): http://www.springerlink.com/content/1866-9956/4/3/ A list of the most downloaded articles (which can always be read for free) can be found here: http://www.springer.com/biomed/neuroscience/journal/12559#realtime Other 'Online First' published articles not yet in a print issue can be viewed here: http://www.springerlink.com/content/121361/?Content+Status=Accepted ======================================================= NEW: First ISI Impact Factor for Cognitive Computation of 1.000 for 2011! ======================================================= As you may know, earlier this year, Cognitive Computation was selected for coverage in Thomson Reuter?s products and services. Beginning with V.1 (1) 2009, this publication is now indexed and abstracted in: ? Science Citation Index Expanded (also known as SciSearch?) ? Journal Citation Reports/Science Edition ? Current Contents?/Engineering Computing and Technology ? Neuroscience Citation Index? Cognitive Computation has also recently received its first Impact Factor of 1.000 (Thomson Reuters Journal Citation Reports? 2011) in 2011 ============================================ Reminder: New Cognitive Computation "LinkedIn" Group: ============================================ To further strengthen the bonds amongst the interdisciplinary audience of Cognitive Computation, we have set-up a "Cognitive Computation LinkedIn group", which has ~ 500 members already! We warmly invite you to join us at: http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=3155048 For further information on the journal and to sign up for electronic "Table of Contents alerts" please visit the Cognitive Computation homepage: http://www.springer.com/12559 or follow us on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/CognComput for the latest On-line First Issues. For any questions with regards to LinkedIn and/or Twitter, please contact Springer's Publishing Editor: Dr. Martijn Roelandse: martijn.roelandse at springer.com Finally, we would like to invite you to submit short or regular papers describing original research or timely review of important areas - our aim is to peer review all papers within approximately six weeks of receipt. We also welcome relevant high quality proposals for Special Issues - five are already planned for 2012-13, including a new special issue to celebrate the work of the late Professor John Taylor, founding Chair of Cognitive Computation's Editorial Advisory Board. With our very best wishes to all aspiring readers and authors of Cognitive Computation, Professor Amir Hussain, PhD (Editor-in-Chief: Cognitive Computation) E-mail: ahu at cs.stir.ac.uk (University of Stirling, Scotland, UK, www.cs.stir.ac.uk/~ahu/) Professor Igor Aleksander, PhD (Honorary Editor-in-Chief: Cognitive Computation) (Imperial College, London, UK) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Table of Contents: Springer's Cognitive Computation, Vol.4, No.3 / Sep 2012 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Special Issue: Computational Creativity, Intelligence and Autonomy Guest Editors: J. Mark Bishop and Yasemin J. Erden Computational Creativity, Intelligence and Autonomy J. Mark Bishop & Yasemin J. Erden http://www.springerlink.com/content/1740745l26r798p7/ Autonomous Cognitive Systems in Real-World Environments: Less Control, More Flexibility and Better Interaction Vincent C. M?ller http://www.springerlink.com/content/l780q5212532x742/ Towards Autonomous Creative Systems: A Computational Approach Rob Saunders http://www.springerlink.com/content/j81j6674832v4w23/ Physical Instantiation and the Propositional Attitudes Paul Schweizer http://www.springerlink.com/content/x181p009p70186t5/ A Computability Argument Against Superintelligence Ji?? Wiedermann http://www.springerlink.com/content/g1331040613240g1/ A Standardised Procedure for Evaluating Creative Systems: Computational Creativity Evaluation Based on What it is to be Creative Anna Jordanous http://www.springerlink.com/content/w57754222477g562/ Connotation in Computational Creativity Colin G. Johnson http://www.springerlink.com/content/npgl7881m455h2j1/ The Drive for Creativity and the Escape from Creativity: Neurocognitive Mechanisms Leonid I. Perlovsky & Daniel S. Levine http://www.springerlink.com/content/517un26h46803055/ The Mind?s Chorus: Creativity Before Consciousness Geraint A. Wiggins http://www.springerlink.com/content/n164631u76242552/ Creativity and Autonomy in Swarm Intelligence Systems Mohammad Majid al-Rifaie, John Mark Bishop & Suzanne Caines http://www.springerlink.com/content/e173721061638365/ Creativity Through Autonomy and Interaction Mark d?Inverno & Michael Luck http://www.springerlink.com/content/a012p60286214070/ The Self-Cognisant Robot Dimitar Kazakov http://www.springerlink.com/content/3571q6n1541hv47l/ Autonomy and Desire in Machines and Cognitive Agent Systems Kevin Magill & Yasemin J. Erden http://www.springerlink.com/content/b01576051w771287/ Using Human?Computer Interfaces to Investigate ?Mind-As-It-Could-Be? from the First-Person Perspective Tom Froese, Keisuke Suzuki, Yuta Ogai & Takashi Ikegami http://www.springerlink.com/content/d22u3587t14615p6/ ------------------------------------------------ Previous Issues/Archive: Overview: ------------------------------------------------ The full listing of the Inaugural Vol. 1, No. 1 / March 2009, can be viewed here (which included invited authoritative reviews by leading researchers in their areas - including keynote papers from London University's John Taylor, Igor Aleksander and Stanford University's James McClelland, and invited papers from Ron Sun, Pentti Haikonen, Geoff Underwood, Kevin Gurney, Claudius Gross, Anil Seth and Tom Ziemke): http://www.springerlink.com/content/1866-9956/1/1/ The full listing of Vol. 1, No. 2 / June 2009, can be viewed here (which included invited reviews and original research contributions from leading researchers, including Rodney Douglas, Giacomo Indiveri, Jurgen Schmidhuber, Thomas Wennekers, Pentti Kanerva and Friedemann Pulvermuller): http://www.springerlink.com/content/1866-9956/1/2/ The full listing of Vol.1, No. 3 / Sep 2009, can be viewed here: http://www.springerlink.com/content/1866-9956/1/3/ The full listing of Vol. 1, No. 4 / Dec 2009, can be viewed here: http://www.springerlink.com/content/1866-9956/1/4/ The full listing of Vol.2, No. 1 / March 2010, can be viewed here: http://www.springerlink.com/content/1866-9956/2/1/ The full listing of Vol.2, No. 2 / June 2010, can be viewed here: http://www.springerlink.com/content/1866-9956/2/2/ The full listing of Vol.2, No. 3 / Aug 2010, can be viewed here: http://www.springerlink.com/content/1866-9956/2/3/ The full listing of Vol.2, No. 4 / Dec 2010, can be viewed here: http://www.springerlink.com/content/1866-9956/2/4/ The full listing of Vol.3, No.1 / Mar 2011 (Special Issue on: Saliency, Attention, Active Visual Search and Picture Scanning, edited by John Taylor and Vassilis Cutsuridis), can be viewed here: http://www.springerlink.com/content/1866-9956/3/1/ The Guest Editorial can be viewed here: http://www.springerlink.com/content/hu2245056415633l/ The full listing of Vol.3, No.2 / June 2011 can be viewed here: http://www.springerlink.com/content/1866-9956/3/2/ The full listing of Vol. 3, No. 3 / Sep 2011 (Special Issue on: Cognitive Behavioural Systems, Guest Edited by: Anna Esposito, Alessandro Vinciarelli, Simon Haykin, Amir Hussain and Marcos Faundez-Zanuy), can be viewed here: http://www.springerlink.com/content/1866-9956/3/3/ The Guest Editorial for the special issue can be viewed here: http://www.springerlink.com/content/h4718567520t2h84/ The full listing of Vol. 3, No. 4 / Dec 2011 can be viewed here: http://www.springerlink.com/content/1866-9956/3/4/ The full listing of Vol. 4, No.1 / Mar 2012 can be viewed here: http://www.springerlink.com/content/1866-9956/4/1/ The full listing of Vol. 4, No.2 / June 2012 can be viewed here: http://www.springerlink.com/content/1866-9956/4/2/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The University of Stirling is ranked in the top 50 in the world in The Times Higher Education 100 Under 50 table, which ranks the world's best 100 universities under 50 years old. The University of Stirling is a charity registered in Scotland, number SC 011159. -- The University of Stirling is ranked in the top 50 in the world in The Times Higher Education 100 Under 50 table, which ranks the world's best 100 universities under 50 years old. The University of Stirling is a charity registered in Scotland, number SC 011159. From terry at salk.edu Wed Oct 17 12:44:44 2012 From: terry at salk.edu (Terry Sejnowski) Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2012 09:44:44 -0700 Subject: Connectionists: UCSD Computational Neuroscience Training Program Message-ID: UCSD GRADUATE PROGRAM IN COMPUTATIONAL NEUROSCIENCE http://neurograd.ucsd.edu/2page.php?id=doccomp Application deadline: December 3, 2012 http://neurograd.ucsd.edu/2page.php?id=gradadm ***** The goal of the Computational Neuroscience Specialization in the Neurosciences Graduate Program at UCSD is to train researchers who are equally at home measuring large-scale brain activity, analyzing the data with advanced computational techniques, and developing new models for brain development and function. Candidates from a wide range of backgrounds are invited to apply, including Biology, Psychology, Computer Science, Physics and Mathematics. The three major themes in the training program are: 1. Neurobiology of Neural Systems: Anatomy, physiology and behavior of systems of neurons. Using modern neuroanatomical, behavioral, neuropharmacological and electrophysiological techniques. Lectures, wet laboratories and computer simulations, as well as research rotations. Major new imaging and recording techniques also will be taught, including two-photon laser scanning microscopy and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). 2. Algorithms and Realizations for the Analysis of Neuronal Data: New algorithms and techniques for analyzing data obtained from physiological recording, with an emphasis on recordings from large populations of neurons with imaging and multielectrode recording techniques. New methods for the study of co-ordinated activity, such as multi-taper spectral analysis and Independent Component Analysis (ICA). 3. Neuroinformatics, Dynamics and Control of Systems of Neurons: Theoretical aspects of single cell function and emergent properties as many neurons interact among themselves and react to sensory inputs. A synthesis of approaches from mathematics and physical sciences as well as biology will be used to explore the collective properties and nonlinear dynamics of neuronal systems, as well as issues of sensory coding and motor control. ***** Participating Faculty include: * Henry Abarbanel (Physics): Nonlinear and oscillatory dynamics; modeling central pattern generators in the lobster stomatogastric ganglion. * Thomas Albright (Salk Institute): Motion processing in primate visual cortex; linking single neurons to perception; fMRI in awake, behaving monkeys. Director, Sloan Center for Theoretical Neurobiology * Darwin Berg (Neurobiology): Regulation synaptic components, assembly and localization, function and long-term stability. * Ed Callaway (Salk Institute): Neural circuits, visual perception, visual cortex Genetic tools for tracing neural pathways. * Gert Cauwenberghs (Bioengineering): Neuromorphic Engineering; analog VLSI chips; wireless recording and nanoscale instrumentation for neural systems; large-scale cortical modeling. * Sreekanth Chalasani (Salk): C. elegans: genes, networks and behavior Optical recording of olfactory processing. * Andrea Chiba (Cognitive Science): Spatial attention, associative learning, cholinergic neuromodulaiton of behavior, amygdala recordings * EJ Chichilnisky (Salk Institute): Retinal multielectrode recording; neural coding, visual perception. * Todd Coleman (Bioengineering): Brain-Machine Interfaces (BMI) * Garrison Cottrell (Computer Science and Engineering): Dynamical neural network models and learning algorithms * Virginia De Sa (Cognitive Science): Computational basis of perception and learning; multi-sensory integration and contextual influences * Mark Ellisman (Neurosciences, School of Medicine): High resolution electron and light microscopy; anatomical reconstructions. * Fred Gage (Salk Institute): Neurogenesis and models of the hippocampus; neuronal diversity, neural stem cells. * Timothy Gentner (Psychology): Birdsong learning. Neuroethology of vocal communication and audition * Robert Hecht-Nielsen (Electrical and Computer Engineering): Neural computation and the functional organization of the cerebral cortex. * Steve Hillyard (Neurosciences): EEG, perception, attention, memory, Event related potentilas, SSVEP * Harvey Karten (Neurosciences, School of Medicine): Anatomical, physiological and computational studies of the retina and optic tectum of birds and squirrels * David Kleinfeld (Physics): Active sensation in rats; properties of neuronal assemblies; optical imaging of large-scale activity. * William Kristan (Neurobiology): Computational Neuroethology; functional and developmental studies of the leech nervous system, including studies of the bending reflex and locomotion. * Scott Makeig (Institute for Neural Computation): Analysis of cognitive event-related brain dynamics and fMRI using time-frequency and Independent Component Analysis * Javier Movellan (Institute for Neural Computation): Sensory fusion and learning algorithms for continuous stochastic systems * Howard Poizner (Institute for Neural Computation): Motor systems, basal ganglia, reinforcment learning, Parkinson's disease. * Mikhael Rabinovich (Institute for Nonlinear Science): Dynamical systems analysis of the stomatogastric ganglion of the lobster and the antenna lobe of insects * Pamela Reinagel (Biology): Sensory and neural coding; natural scene statistics; recordings from the visual system of cats and rodents. * John Reynolds (Salk): Visual attention, cortex, psychophysics, neurophysiology, neural modeling * Massimo Scanziani (Biology): Neural circuits in the somotosensory cortex; physiology of synaptic transmission; inhibitory mechanisms. * Terrence Sejnowski (Salk Institute/Neurobiology): Computational models and physiological studies of synaptic, neuronal and network function. * Tanya Sharpee (Salk): Statistical physics and information theory approaches to sensory processing in natural auditory and visual environments. * Gabe Silva (Bioengineering): Cellular neural engineering * Nicholas Spitzer (Neurobiology): Regulation of ionic channels and neurotransmitters in developing neurons and neural function. * Charles Stevens (Salk Institute): Synaptic physiology; theoretical models of neuroanatomical scaling. * Roger Tsien (Chemistry): Second messenger systems in neurons; development of new optical and MRI probes of neuron function, including calcium indicators and caged neurotransmitters * Jing Wang (Biology): Representation of olfactory information in the nervous system of Drosophila * Ruth Williams (Mathematics): Probabilistic analysis of stochastic systems and continuous learning algorithms * Angela Yu (Cognitive Science): Sensory processing, attentional selection, perceptual decision-making, sensorimotor integration, learning, and adaptation. ----- On-line applications: http://neurograd.ucsd.edu/2page.php?id=gradadm The deadline for completed application materials, including letters of recommendation, is December 3, 2012. ----- From beckmann at fmrib.ox.ac.uk Mon Oct 15 05:14:05 2012 From: beckmann at fmrib.ox.ac.uk (Christian F. Beckmann) Date: Mon, 15 Oct 2012 11:14:05 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: =?windows-1252?q?International_Workshop_=27Connec?= =?windows-1252?q?tomes=27_-_In_memoriam_Rolf_K=F6tter=2E_November_1st=2C_?= =?windows-1252?q?2012=2C_Nijmegen=2C_The_Netherlands?= Message-ID: <8C6A1307-1F2E-4BAD-BAF3-604C46E1859F@fmrib.ox.ac.uk> Dear all, The Donders Institute of Brain, Cognition and Behaviour is pleased to announce an international workshop 'Connectomes', a workshop in memoriam of Rolf K?tter (1961-2010), Professor and Chair of the Section Neurophysiology & Neuroinformatics at the Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Radboud University Nijmegen. Rolf has been a pioneer in the field of connectomics and his work continues to have an impact across a variety of research areas. This workshop will feature scientific talks, discussing the current state of the art in Connectomics: connectivity databasing, graph-theoretic analysis of brain networks, neuromodelling in the clinical context, resting-state functional connectivity and integrated modelling architecture and connectivity. The workshop will be followed by the Donders Lecture by David van Essen (Washington University in St. Louis) titled "Mapping structure, function and connectivity in primate cerebral cortex" PROGRAM 09.00-09.15 Stan Gielen (Radboud University Nijmegen) Opening 09.15-10.15 Rembrandt Bakker (Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, Research Center J?lich) ?The CoCoMac macaque structural connectivity database 2nd edition: Open access made easy? 10.30-11.30 Mikail Rubinov (University of Cambridge) ?Weighted characterization of complex functional brain networks? 12.30-13.30 Klaas Enno Stephan (University of Z?rich) "Translational neuromodeling" 13.30-14.30 Claus Hilgetag (Universit?tsklinikum Hamburg-Eppendorf) "Linking connections and architecture of the cerebral cortex" 14.45-15.45 Stephen M. Smith (University of Oxford) "Dynamic network modelling from accelerated resting-state FMRI data" 16.00-17.15 DONDERS LECTURE David van Essen (Washington University in St. Louis) "Mapping structure, function and connectivity in primate cerebral cortex" 17.15-18.30 Drinks Places are limited, please register at http://www.ru.nl/donders/connectomes Registration for the workshop is free, Voluntary donations to the Rolf K?tter fund are welcome, please see the registration website for details. -- Christian F. Beckmann, DPhil Professor for Neuroimaging Analysis | MIRA Institute for Biomedical Technology and Technical Medicine | University of Twente | The Netherlands Principal Investigator: Statistical Imaging Neuroscience | Donders Centre for Cognitive Neuroimaging | Radboud University Nijmegen | The Netherlands Senior Research Fellow | Oxford Centre for Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging of the Brain (FMRIB) | University of Oxford | UK Hon. Senior Lecturer in MRI Methodology | Computational, Cognitive and Clinical Neuroscience Lab (C3NL) | Imperial College London | UK Mail: P.O. Box 9101 | NL-6500 HB Nijmegen | The Netherlands Visiting: Kapittelweg 29 | NL-6525 EN Nijmegen | The Netherlands Tel/Fax: +31 24 36 10880 / 10989 | e-mail: c.beckmann at donders.ru.nl From h.spiers at ucl.ac.uk Thu Oct 18 15:23:43 2012 From: h.spiers at ucl.ac.uk (Spiers, Hugo) Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2012 19:23:43 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: MEG post-doc at UCL Message-ID: <95D1BA75A3AB054481891058CC8B85E029CB2543@AMSPRD0104MB157.eurprd01.prod.exchangelabs.com> A postdoctoral position is available to study memory and navigation using MEG at UCL. http://www.ucl.ac.uk/spierslab/LabVacancies Dr Hugo Spiers Lecturer Institute of Behavioural Neuroscience, Cognitive, Perceptual and Brain Sciences Department, University College London, 26 Bedford Way, London WC1H 0AP +44 (0) 20 7679 7553 http://www.ucl.ac.uk/spierslab/ http://www.pattern-completion.net/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/20121018/c528dda6/attachment.html From jose.millan at epfl.ch Thu Oct 18 00:24:19 2012 From: jose.millan at epfl.ch (Jose del R. Millan) Date: Thu, 18 Oct 2012 06:24:19 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: TOBI Workshop IV Message-ID: <507F8473.2000702@epfl.ch> TOBI Workshop IV -- Call for participation *Practical Brain-Computer Interfaces for End-Users: Progress and Challenges* Lausanne, Switzerland January 23-25, 2013 http://www.tobi-project.org/tobi-workshop-4 *Theme:* The brain--computer interface (BCI) technology uses brain signals to directly drive external devices. Over the past decade, BCIs have begun to provide basic communication and motor control abilities to people with severe motor disabilities, thus offering a unique opportunity to improve their quality of life. TOBI, and similar efforts worldwide, promised to push the field forward, from laboratory to home environments, from research experimental setups to real-world prototypes, and from healthy participants to end-user studies. Progress along all these lines has been made, mainly because of a holistic user-centered approach and the integration of novel research components in areas such as hybrid BCI, online adaptation and mental states, as well as human-computer interaction. Yet, we are still facing challenges in bringing BCI to end-users for their daily use. *Goals:* The 4th and final TOBI workshop seeks to bring together all researchers, rehabilitation professionals, clinicians, and potential end-users in the field of BCI to share their progress, experience and prospects in practical BCIs for the end-users. We are thus soliciting contributions reporting progress in end-user studies as well as basic research facing the challenges in bringing BCI to end-users for their daily use. Topics of interest, but not limited to, include: ?End-user studies and experiences with BCI technology ?User-centered approaches and user training ?Development and benefits of hybrid BCIs ?Online adaptation and monitoring of mental states ?Human-computer interaction ?Novel BCI principles and paradigms ?Ethical issues in BCIs ?Technology transfer to industrial products *Scientific Program:* The scientific program will consist of a series of keynote talks, oral presentations, poster presentations, live demonstrations, and round tables. Papers accepted for presentation will be assigned either to an oral or poster session. In the same sessions, members of the TOBI project will report their achievements. _Keynote Speakers_ ?Prof. Niels Birbaumer, Univ. T?bingen & IRRCS S Camillo Hospital (Venice, Italy) ?Prof. Gr?goire Courtine, EPFL (Lausanne, Switzerland) ?Dr. Jos? L. Pons, CSIC (Madrid, Spain) More keynote speakers will be announced soon. _Confirmed Speakers_ ?Jos? del R. Mill?n ?Donatella Mattia ?Klaus-R. M?ller ?Gernot R. M?ller-Putz ?Andrea K?bler ?Roderick Murray-Smith ?R?diger Rupp ?Evert-Jan Hoogerwerf ?Gerd Gr?bler ?... *Round Table:* Round table discussions will provide the opportunity for a dialog between: ?Researchers ?Practicioners ?End-users ?Industrial companies *Cluster Session on BCI and Ethics:* Ethics appointees from BCI projects are invited to introduce and discuss important ethical issues of their projects. Please register for the session with a short abstract. *Demonstrations:* Practical live demonstrations of TOBI prototypes will present the state of the art of BCI to potential end-users and rehabilitation professionals. *Important dates:* Deadline for paper submission (2 pages): December 1, 2012 (Midnight Central European Time) Outcome of paper review: December 15, 2012 Deadline for final version of the paper:January 10, 2013 Deadline for early registration (70 EUR): January 10, 2013 Workshop date:January 23-25, 2013 *Registration Fees: *Early registration (until Jan. 10, 2013): 70 EUR Late registration (until Jan. 20, 2013): 120 EUR Onsite registration: 170 EUR -- Prof. Dr. Jos? del R. Mill?n Defitech Chair in Non-Invasive Brain-Machine Interface Center for Neuroprosthetics Institute of Bioengineering. School of Engineering Ecole Polytechnique F?d?rale de Lausanne (EPFL) EPFL STI-CNBI ELB 138. Station 11 CH-1015 Lausanne Switzerland Tel: +41-21-6937391 Fax: +41-21-6935307 jose.millan at epfl.ch http://people.epfl.ch/jose.millan -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/20121018/90754b08/attachment-0001.html From jutta.kretzberg at uni-oldenburg.de Mon Oct 15 04:45:33 2012 From: jutta.kretzberg at uni-oldenburg.de (Jutta Kretzberg) Date: Mon, 15 Oct 2012 10:45:33 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: Postdoc position in computational auditory neuroscience, Oldenburg, Germany Message-ID: <507BCD2D.4030605@uni-oldenburg.de> The cluster of excellence Hearing4all: Models, Technology and Solutions for Diagnostics, Restoration and Support of Hearing at the Carl von Ossietzky Universit?t Oldenburg (in collaboration with Medizinische Hochschule Hannover and Leibniz Universit?t Hannover) is seeking to fill as soon as possible the position of a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Field of Computational Auditory Neuroscience in the prospective Department of Neurosciences, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences. The position is available from 1 November 2012, for initially 2 years, with prospect for continuation for up to 3 more years. Payment is depending on previous experience (German TV-L E13, full time). The position is suitable for part-time work. A paramount goal of the cluster of excellence Hearing4all (www.hearing4all.de) is to transform audiology into an "exact" science based on the interplay between experiment and theory as well as between basic science and clinical research. In this framework the successful candidate is expected to contribute to one of the main research goals of the cluster, the development of a common model framework linking human, animal and model data. Working in close collaboration with experimental neuroscientists, clinicians and other theoreticians, tasks of the candidate will be - to develop physiologically realistic models of auditory information processing (e.g. networks of spiking neurons) - to analyze neural coding on different levels of the auditory system - and to establish interfaces for the integration of statistical, effective and physiological model approaches present in the cluster. Candidates are expected to have an academic university degree in the field of computer science, neuroscience, bioengineering, physics or a related discipline and have shown their ability to perform excellent scientific work, usually demonstrated by the outstanding quality of their Doctorate/PhD research and a good publication record. We are seeking candidates with strong analytical, modeling and programming skills. Preference will be given to applicants with neuroscience background. In particular knowledge about the auditory system of animals and / or humans would be a clear advantage. The University of Oldenburg strives to increase the proportion of women in science, so we especially encourage female candidates to apply. Handicapped applicants will be given preference if equally qualified. Please send your application including a cover letter, CV, list of potential referees, links to recent publications and copies of certificates for academic grades to Carl von Ossietzky Universit?t Oldenburg, Fakult?t V, Exzellenzcluster "Hearing4all" , Prof. Dr. Dr. Birger Kollmeier, 26111 Oldenburg or as an email attachment to the office of the cluster of excellence (karin.klink at uni-oldenburg.de). Application by email is preferred. Prof. Jutta Kretzberg (jutta.kretzberg at uni-oldenburg.de) can be contacted for further questions regarding the position. Selection of candidates will start November 1st and last until the position is filled. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/20121015/c3ef43c4/attachment.html From pul8 at psu.edu Tue Oct 16 13:19:35 2012 From: pul8 at psu.edu (Ping Li) Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2012 13:19:35 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: Open-rank position: Systems Neuroscience at Penn State Message-ID: The Department of Psychology at Penn State (http://psych.la.psu.edu/) is recruiting for a systems or computational neuroscientist (open rank) with expertise in advanced data analysis techniques (e.g., graph theory, meta-analysis, data mining, structural equation modeling) as applied to neuroimaging (fMRI, EEG) data. Candidates with expertise in how structural or functional connectivity relates to behavior are especially encouraged to apply. We prefer candidates at the associate professor level or higher who can contribute leadership to the growing neuroscience and imaging communities, but we will consider outstanding junior candidates. The position is co-funded by the Children, Youth, and Families Consortium ( http://www.ssri.psu.edu/cyfc/), and successful applicants are expected to participate in and contribute to the Social, Life, and Engineering Sciences Imaging Center (http://www.imaging.psu.edu). Participation in and contribution to the Graduate Program in Neuroscience ( http://www.huck.psu.edu/education/neuroscience) and the Center for Brain, Behavior, and Cognition (http://cbbc.psu.edu/) would be welcome. Rich opportunities exist for collaboration within the department?s substantive focal areas (cognitive, developmental, social, clinical, and industrial/organizational psychology) and across the campus. Applicants who could also contribute to an overarching department initiative to enhance diversity and our understanding of diversity are particularly encouraged to apply. Candidates are expected to have a record of excellence in research and teaching, and a history or promise of external funding. Review of applications for the position begins November 1, 2012 and will continue until the position is filled. Candidates should submit a letter of application including concise statements of research and teaching interests, a CV, and selected (p)reprints. Junior candidates should submit at least three letters of recommendation; letters of recommendation for senior candidates will be requested from those selected as finalists. Electronic submission is strongly preferred; please submit materials at http://www.la.psu.edu/facultysearch/. If unable to submit electronically, mail materials to Neuroscience Faculty Search Committee ? Box A, Department of Psychology, Penn State, University Park, PA 16802. Questions regarding the application process can be emailed to Judy Bowman, jak8 at psu.edu, and questions regarding the position can be sent to Rick Gilmore, rogilmore at psu.edu. Employment will require successful completion of background check(s) in accordance with University policies. We especially encourage applications from individuals of diverse backgrounds. Penn State is committed to affirmative action, equal opportunity and the diversity of its workforce. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/20121016/593e7550/attachment.html From Roland.W.Fleming at psychol.uni-giessen.de Tue Oct 16 10:46:32 2012 From: Roland.W.Fleming at psychol.uni-giessen.de (Roland Fleming) Date: Tue, 16 Oct 2012 16:46:32 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: 11 PhD Positions (Marie Curie Initial Training Network) Message-ID: <4B209601-BB6A-48ED-8FC9-D65FDB63B250@psychol.uni-giessen.de> 11 PhD STUDENTSHIPS IN THE EU-FUNDED "PRISM" NETWORK Eleven full-time 36-month PhD studentships are available starting January 2013 as part of the EU-funded Marie Curie Initial Training Network on the Perceptual Representation of Illumination, Shape and Materials (PRISM: https://sites.google.com/site/prismitn/home). ABOUT THE NETWORK The PRISM network is a research and training consortium that brings together seven academic and two industrial partners from across Europe to study how the brain represents the illumination, shape and material properties of surface and objects in our surroundings (see partner list below). The network provides outstanding inter-disciplinary training opportunities through hands-on research projects, international lab exchanges, industrial secondments and specialist workshops and conferences. We invite applicants with a strong background in psychology, neuroscience, biology, physics, computer science, or engineering who are keen to understand how the brain represents the richly detailed ?look and feel? of surfaces, objects and illumination in the surrounding world. Studentships are generously funded at a rate set by the EU and with many opportunities for travel and networking. ELIGIBILITY Applicants should have a strong academic training, including an undergraduate degree in a relevant discipline. One exciting aspect of the network is that you get the opportunity to work and travel throughout Europe. The funding scheme has certain mobility requirements. Put simply, to take up one of our studentships you should move to a different country. For more specific details contact one of the people listed below. We particularly encourage female applicants and applicants from any ethnic background to apply. HOW TO APPLY Please send a CV and a brief (max. 1 page) cover letter explaining why you are interested in applying for the position to roland.w.fleming at psychol.uni-giessen.de and to the host investigator you would like to work with, from the list below. In your cover letter, please briefly explain in a couple of paragraphs: ? your research interests ? what you are looking for in a PhD ? why you would like to study at the host institution ? your longer term career goals CONTACT INFORMATION Full partners: -- Ankara, Turkey: Bilkent University Katja D?rschner: katja at bilkent.edu.tr -- Birmingham, UK: University of Birmingham Andrew Welchman: a.e.welchman at bham.ac.uk -- Bordeaux, France: INRIA Bordeaux Sud-Ouest Pascal Barla: pascal.barla at labri.fr -- Delft, Netherlands: TU Delft Sylvia Pont: s.c.pont at tudelft.nl -- Giessen, Germany: Justus-Liebig-Universit?t Gie?en Roland Fleming: roland.w.fleming at psychol.uni-giessen.de Karl Gegenfurtner: karl.r.gegenfurtner at psychol.uni-giessen.de -- Leuven, Belgium: KU Leuven Peter Janssen: peter.janssen at med.kuleuven.be -- Madrid, Spain: NextLimit Technologies* Mar?a Jos? Orellana: mariajose.orellana at nextlimit.com -- Paris, France: Universit? Paris Descartes Pascal Mamassian: pascal.mamassian at parisdescartes.fr * As this is an industrial partner, you will be enrolled for a PhD program at Giessen University, but NextLimit will be the primary host for the project. FIND OUT MORE For further information see the PRISM website: https://sites.google.com/site/prismitn/home -- Prof. Dr. Roland W. Fleming Kurt Koffka Junior Professor of Experimental Psychology University of Giessen FB06 - Psychology Otto-Behaghel-Str 10/F - 338 35394 Giessen Germany Tel: +49 (0)641 99-26140 Fax: +49 (0)641 99-26119 Email: roland.w.fleming at psychol.uni-giessen.de From triesch at fias.uni-frankfurt.de Mon Oct 15 15:02:18 2012 From: triesch at fias.uni-frankfurt.de (Jochen Triesch) Date: Mon, 15 Oct 2012 21:02:18 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: Winter School on Intrinsic Motivations: from Brains to Robots Message-ID: <6F78CB2D-242C-4B4A-9D55-D72572CFF4B8@fias.uni-frankfurt.de> ANNOUNCEMENT AND CALL FOR APPLICATIONS IM-CLeVeR/FIAS Winter School on: INTRINSIC MOTIVATIONS: FROM BRAINS TO ROBOTS Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies, Germany December 3-8, 2012 Application deadline: November 1, 2012 We invite applications from PhD students and post-docs for a one-week intensive winter school on biological and computational aspects of intrinsic motivations. The school will comprise interdisciplinary lectures by leading experts in the field and hands-on work on a mini-project (data analysis, computational modeling, experiments with real or simulated robots). The school is restricted to 20 participants. For details see: http://www.im-clever.eu/announcements/events/fias-winter-school SPEAKERS: Gianluca Baldassare, CNR Rome Andrew Barto*, University of Massachusetts Amherst Peter Dayan*, Gatsby Computational Neuoscience Unit, UCL, London Ralf Der, MPI for Mathematics in the Sciences, Leipzig Clay Holroyd*, University of Victoria, Canada Pierre-Yves Oudeyer, INRIA, Bordeaux Peter Redgrave, University of Sheffield Constantin Rothkopf, FIAS, Frankfurt J?rgen Schmidhuber*, IDSIA, Lugano Bert Shi*, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology Jochen Triesch, FIAS, Frankfurt (*=invited) FORMAT: The school will comprise lectures by leading experts in the morning and work on a small group project in the afternoons and evenings. Projects will be supervised by the school's speakers and additional project supervisors. The results will be presented at the end of the school. LOCATION AND ARRANGEMENTS: Frankfurt is a cosmopolitan city with easy access from across the globe and it has a vibrant neuroscience community. The Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies (FIAS) is a Foundation of the Goethe University Frankfurt and is located in the new science city Frankfurt-Riedberg. The registration fee is 150 Euros. Costs of accommodation and meals are covered by the school. Students' travel to and from Frankfurt is expected to be covered by the student's home institution. In exceptional cases, students can apply for partial reimbursement of travel expenses. This should be indicated in the application (see below). The school is funded by the European Union project IM-CLeVeR (Intrinsically Motivated Cumulatively Learning Versatile Robots, http://www.im-clever.eu) and the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies. APPLICATIONS: Applications should include: - Cover letter describing your motivation to participate in the school and your previous experience with reinforcement learning (max. 1 page) - CV including list of publications - Recommendation letters from 1-2 current or previous research supervisors - Request for partial reimbursement of travel expenses (if applicable) Applications should be sent electronically to Ms Gaby Ehlgen: ehlgen at fias.uni-frankfurt.de Deadline is November 1, 2012. SPONSORING: The school is organized and funded by the European Union project IM-CLeVeR (Intrinsically Motivated Cumulative Learning Versatile Robots, http://www.im-clever.eu) and the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies (FIAS, http://fias.uni-frankfurt.de). -- Prof. Dr. Jochen Triesch Johanna Quandt Research Professor Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies http://fias.uni-frankfurt.de/~triesch/ Tel: +49 (0)69 798-47531 Fax: +49 (0)69 798-47611 From ajyu at ucsd.edu Mon Oct 22 17:37:21 2012 From: ajyu at ucsd.edu (Angela J. Yu) Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2012 14:37:21 -0700 Subject: Connectionists: Tenure-track position at UCSD, Department of Cognitive Science Message-ID: Dear colleagues, Please note that my department has a computational cognitive science position open this fall (deadline: 11/01/12). Please encourage qualified candidates to apply. Best wishes, ------------------------------------------------ Angela J. Yu Assistant Professor Department of Cognitive Science UCSD, Mail Code 0515 9500 Gilman Drive La Jolla, CA 92093-0515 Email: ajyu at ucsd.edu Phone: 858-822-3317 Fax: 858-534-1128 Website: www.cogsci.ucsd.edu/~ajyu ------------------------------------------------ Begin forwarded message: > *Assistant Professor in Computational Cognitive Science* > > DEPARTMENT OF COGNITIVE SCIENCE AT UCSD > > The Department of Cognitive Science http://cogsci.ucsd.edu within the Division of Social Sciences at UC San Diego is committed to academic excellence and diversity within the faculty, staff and student body. The department invites applications for a tenure-track position in computational cognitive science. > > The department has a preference for a junior researcher to be appointed at the assistant professor level. Applicants must have a Ph.D. at the time of appointment that will begin July 1, 2013. Areas of particular interest include: big data, machine learning, brain-computer interaction, but other specializations will be considered. An interdisciplinary perspective and experience with multiple methodologies is highly valued. Strong teaching and research skills in advanced computational methods are required. The preferred candidate will have experience or a willingness to participate in teaching, mentoring, research or service towards building an equitable and diverse scholarly environment. > > The department is truly interdisciplinary, with a faculty whose interests span anthropology, computer science, design, human development, linguistics, neuroscience, philosophy, and psychology. UCSD Department of Cognitive Science was the first of its kind, and is part of an exceptional scientific community with close ties to California Institute of Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2), UCSD Supercomputer Center, the Institute for Neural Computation, and the NSF Temporal Dynamics of Learning Center. > > Salary is commensurate with qualifications and based on University of California pay scales. > > Review of applications will commence on 11/1/2012 and continue until the position is filled. Application will be accepted electronically athttps://apol-recruit.ucsd.edu/applyCandidate should submit the following: a vita; reprints of up to four representative publications; a short cover letter describing background and interests and at least three references (name, title, address and email). Applicants are also asked to contribute a separate statement in which they describe their past or potential experience in activities that promote diversity. For further information about contribution to diversity statement, see http://facultyequity.ucsd.edu/Faculty-Applicant-C2D-Info.asp > > UCSD is an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer with a strong institutional commitment to excellence and diversity and to addressing dual career issues via the Partner Opportunities Program http://academicaffairs.ucsd.edu/aps/partneropp/UCSD has many family-friendly policies http://academicaffairs.ucsd.edu/aps/advance-trainfamily/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/20121022/3cb190a5/attachment.html From gary at eng.ucsd.edu Mon Oct 22 16:35:23 2012 From: gary at eng.ucsd.edu (Gary Cottrell) Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2012 13:35:23 -0700 Subject: Connectionists: Fwd: Stanford theoretical neuroscience faculty search ; Nov 30th application deadline References: Message-ID: <0E239073-B294-403D-ACCF-D39CE6F29399@eng.ucsd.edu> Begin forwarded message: > From: Surya Ganguli > Date: October 21, 2012 10:11:06 PM PDT > To: sganguli at stanford.edu > Subject: Stanford theoretical neuroscience faculty search ; Nov 30th application deadline > > Dear colleagues, > > I just wanted to let you know that Stanford is conducting a faculty search this year in theoretical neuroscience (details below in the copy of the ad). We would very much appreciate your help in getting the word out, and in identifying excellent candidates and encouraging them to apply. The application deadline for full consideration is Nov 30th 2012. Thanks in advance for your help! > > best wishes, > Surya > > ----------------------------------------------- > Surya Ganguli > Department of Applied Physics > Stanford University > http://keck.ucsf.edu/~surya > ----------------------------------------------- > > STANFORD UNIVERSITY invites applications for a tenure-track appointment at the untenured assistant professor level in THEORETICAL NEUROSCIENCE to begin in the academic year 2013-14. The appointee would be expected to make contributions to theoretical neuroscience and to engage with theoretically and empirically inclined neuroscience researchers and trainees across a wide range of departments and to participate in the research training program of the Center for Mind, Brain, and Computation. The departmental home of the appointee could be in any one of several relevant departments spread across the Schools of Humanities and Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, and exact teaching responsibilities would be determined through the home department. Applicants should provide a curriculum vitae (including bibliography), a brief statement of research interests, a teaching statement, copies of scholarly papers, and three letters of reference. For full consideration, materials must be received by November 30, 2012. Please apply through AcademicJobsOnline.org at https://academicjobsonline.org/ajo/jobs/2180 > > > > Stanford University is an equal opportunity employer and is committed to increasing the diversity of its faculty. It welcomes nominations of, and applications from, women and members of minority groups, as well as others who would bring additional dimensions to the university's research and teaching missions. > Gary Cottrell 858-534-6640 FAX: 858-534-7029 Computer Science and Engineering 0404 IF USING FED EX INCLUDE THE FOLLOWING LINE: CSE Building, Room 4130 University of California San Diego 9500 Gilman Drive # 0404 La Jolla, Ca. 92093-0404 "Probably once or twice a week we are sitting at dinner and Richard says, 'The cortex is hopeless,' and I say, 'That's why I work on the worm.'" Dr. Bargmann said. "A grapefruit is a lemon that saw an opportunity and took advantage of it." - note written on a door in Amsterdam on Lijnbaansgracht. "Physical reality is great, but it has a lousy search function." -Matt Tong "Only connect!" -E.M. Forster "You always have to believe that tomorrow you might write the matlab program that solves everything - otherwise you never will." -Geoff Hinton "I am awaiting the day when people remember the fact that discovery does not work by deciding what you want and then discovering it." -David Mermin Email: gary at ucsd.edu Home page: http://www-cse.ucsd.edu/~gary/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/20121022/aa550a28/attachment-0001.html From gary at eng.ucsd.edu Tue Oct 23 12:08:14 2012 From: gary at eng.ucsd.edu (Gary Cottrell) Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2012 09:08:14 -0700 Subject: Connectionists: Fwd: [Comp-neuro] Cognitive Neuroscientist - Center for Brain, Biology and Behavior - UNL References: Message-ID: <7D24EBB7-CB62-49DC-B897-24DF479E93CC@eng.ucsd.edu> Begin forwarded message: > From: Srinivas Kota > Date: October 22, 2012 9:08:59 AM PDT > To: comp-neuro at neuroinf.org > Subject: [Comp-neuro] Cognitive Neuroscientist - Center for Brain, Biology and Behavior - UNL > > Dear All, > > The Center for Brain, Biology and Behavior at the University of Nebraska?Lincoln is recruiting a cognitive neuroscientist with fMRI expertise at the Associate or Full Professor rank. The successful candidate is expected to demonstrate excellence in research including an established record of grant funding. We have preference for candidates who can create and connect to initiatives in traumatic head injury and related areas. The interdisciplinary Center engages a broad spectrum of investigators, including a unique research collaboration with University Athletics, and is housed within a new 26,000 square foot building. The facility?s centerpiece is a new Skyra 3 Tesla Siemens scanner, as well as 12 high-density EEG/ERP, NIRS and TMS systems. The Skyra is integrated with a 256-electrode high-density EEG system and an eye tracker that enable simultaneous recordings. The Center is adjacent to the University?s Holland Computing Center with supercomputer resources and support. The tenure home for the successful candidate will be based on a match between candidate background, preferences and departmental interest. Candidate must have an earned Ph.D. Review of applications will begin December 2, 2012 and continue until the position is filled. To be considered for the position, please go to http://employment.unl.edu, requisition #120845 and complete the Faculty/Academic Administrative Form. Interested applicants should then submit a letter of application, curriculum vitae, research and teaching statement, pdfs of completed research, and letters of recommendation sent directly from three referees to: Dr. Dennis L. Molfese, Director, The Center for Brain, Biology and Behavior, 238 Burnett Hall, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, NE 68588-0308. Lincoln, Nebraska is a vibrant college town of approximately 260,000 that combines the cultural richness of a large university with the affordability of a Midwestern city. The University of Nebraska has an active National Science Foundation ADVANCE gender equity program, and is committed to a pluralistic campus community through affirmative action, equal opportunity, work-life balance, and dual careers. > > Sincerely, > Srinivas > > > Srinivas Kota, Ph.D > Postdoctoral Research Associate > Department of Psychology > University of Nebraska Lincoln > http://www.unl.edu/dbrainlab/ > > _______________________________________________ > Comp-neuro mailing list > Comp-neuro at neuroinf.org > http://www.neuroinf.org/mailman/listinfo/comp-neuro Gary Cottrell 858-534-6640 FAX: 858-534-7029 Computer Science and Engineering 0404 IF USING FED EX INCLUDE THE FOLLOWING LINE: CSE Building, Room 4130 University of California San Diego 9500 Gilman Drive # 0404 La Jolla, Ca. 92093-0404 "Probably once or twice a week we are sitting at dinner and Richard says, 'The cortex is hopeless,' and I say, 'That's why I work on the worm.'" Dr. Bargmann said. "A grapefruit is a lemon that saw an opportunity and took advantage of it." - note written on a door in Amsterdam on Lijnbaansgracht. "Physical reality is great, but it has a lousy search function." -Matt Tong "Only connect!" -E.M. Forster "You always have to believe that tomorrow you might write the matlab program that solves everything - otherwise you never will." -Geoff Hinton "I am awaiting the day when people remember the fact that discovery does not work by deciding what you want and then discovering it." -David Mermin Email: gary at ucsd.edu Home page: http://www-cse.ucsd.edu/~gary/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/20121023/70d2fee7/attachment.html From whitneytabor at yahoo.com Mon Oct 22 10:57:37 2012 From: whitneytabor at yahoo.com (Whitney Tabor) Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2012 07:57:37 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Connectionists: PhD studentships in Language Emergence and Related Areas --- University of Connecticut Message-ID: <1350917857.64581.YahooMailNeo@web160803.mail.bf1.yahoo.com> Ph-D Studentships in Language Emergence and related areas, Department of Psychology, University of Connecticut ? The formal study of natural language has focused largely on dyadic symbolic interaction:?? person A emits a string of symbols that person B detects and interprets, providing a basis for knowledge revision and, possibly, a course of action.? But natural languages generally arise in communities, and their grammatical structures (as well as their word inventories) ?change via community interaction.? A new, NSF-sponsored project in the University of Connecticut Department of Psychology takes up the experimental and formal study of language emergence in groups of interacting individuals.? One or more students are sought to participate in this project and to be involved in synergistic cognitive/language science activities at the University of Connecticut. ? The Language Emergence project involves a collaboration between Whitney Tabor, a psycholinguist at the University of Connecticut, Gene Robinson, a bee scientist at the University of Illinois, and Harry Dankowicz, a dynamical systems engineer at the University of Illinois.?? The project?s broad concern is to develop a formal theoretical framework for understanding the emergence and metamorphosis of communication systems in communities of interacting agents. ? Ideal candidates will combine formal training (e.g., in mathematics, physics, computational modeling, statistics, or a related area) with knowledge of conceptual issues in cognitive science. ? The following domains are particularly relevant: ? ---Knowledge of experimental semiotics (the experimental and computational study of language emergence and change) ---Knowledge of the formal theory of linguistic structure ---Knowledge of the field of psycholinguistics ---Knowledge of formal learning theories ---Knowledge of dynamical systems theory ---Knowledge of discrete math/formal language theory ---Knowledge of graph theory ---Knowledge of statistical analysis ---Programming ability ? The Department of Psychology (www.psychology.uconn.edu) at the University of Connecticut has a strong program in Psycholinguistics (http://web.uconn.edu/langcog/).? Recently, the university formed a Systems Science Network which links complex systems researchers from many UConn departments, including Computer Science and Engineering, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Geography, Kinesiology, Mathematics, Linguistics, and Psychology. ? This year, the University of Connecticut initiated an NSF-sponsored IGERT graduate training program called, ?Language Plasticity:? Genes, Brain, Cognition, Computation? (www.igert.cogsci.uconn.edu).? ?Highly synergistic with the Language Emergence Project,? the IGERT provides many additional Ph.D. stipend lines with extensive support mechanisms for interdisciplinary training including:? foundations courses in relevant fields, innovation workshops, innovation grants, primer courses in bridge areas,? and international internship opportunities. ? Many language researchers at the University of Connecticut are also researchers at Haskins Laboratories in New Haven (www.haskins.yale.edu), an independent speech and reading laboratory.? Haskins provides many additional opportunities for graduate training and postdoctoral work. ? To apply, submit an application to the Language and Cognition PhD program in Psychology at the University of Connecticut: ? http://www.psychology.uconn.edu/academics/graduate/graduate_program.html?? ?To learn more about the Language Emergence project and related opportunities, please contact Whitney Tabor (whitney.tabor at uconn.edu).? See also http://solab.uconn.edu/People/Tabor/tabor.html ? Whitney Tabor ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ? (860) 486-4910 (office) Department of Psychology ? ? ? ? ? ? ?? (860) 486-2760 (fax) University of Connecticut ? ? ? ? ? ? ? ?? (860) 486-6080 (lab) Storrs, CT 06269-1020 USA BOUS Room 124 (office) http://solab.uconn.edu/People/Tabor/tabor.html -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/20121022/e012875f/attachment-0001.html From m.montemurro at manchester.ac.uk Mon Oct 22 06:28:08 2012 From: m.montemurro at manchester.ac.uk (Marcelo Montemurro) Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2012 11:28:08 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: Funded PhD in Computational Neuroscience - The University of Manchester Message-ID: <46DC265F-5BFA-4099-A96B-F8EE693FB1EE@manchester.ac.uk> Dear All, applications are invited for a 3-year PhD studentship to work on a project entitled 'Quantifying the contribution of melanopsin to the processing of complex visual information' under the supervision of Dr Marcelo Montemurro and Prof Robert Lucas at the Faculty of Life Sciences of The University of Manchester. The 3-year studentship will provide full support for tuition fees and an annual minimum tax-free stipend of ?13,590. This studentship is available to UK/EU nationals only due to the nature of the funding and is due to start October 2013. The successful applicant will work on the development of computational analysis methods based on information theory and their application to experimental data gathered at Lucas' lab. The student will also have the opportunity to receive training in experimental methods and actively participate in experiment design. The precise balance between the different types of approaches will be defined according to he the student's background and interests. Further details can be found at: http://www.mhs.manchester.ac.uk/postgraduate/studentships/featuredstudentship/fstudentship1 For enquires, please write to Dr Marcelo Montemurro (m.montemurro at manchester.ac.uk). Applications are invited up to 9.00 am Wednesday 14 November 2012. Regards, -- Dr. Marcelo A. Montemurro Faculty of Life Sciences University of Manchester Room 3.606 Stopford Building Oxford Road Manchester, M13 9PT UK phone: +44(0)161 306 3883 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/20121022/75ea36c3/attachment.html From R.Bogacz at bristol.ac.uk Tue Oct 23 03:29:45 2012 From: R.Bogacz at bristol.ac.uk (Rafal Bogacz) Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2012 08:29:45 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: Decision making workshop in Bristol Message-ID: <50864769.9070106@bristol.ac.uk> Dear Colleagues, I would like to let you know about an interdisciplinary workshop in Bristol on decision making. Best wishes, Rafal Theoretical and Empirical Aspects of Decision-Making 17 - 18 December 2012 Bristol, United Kingdom Keynote Speakers: David Schmeidler (Interdisciplinary Centre, Herzliya) Andrew Colman (University of Leicester) Mohammed Abdellaoui (HEC, Paris) Ido Erev (Israel Institute of Technology) ***Registration deadline extended to Friday 9 November 2012*** The cross-disciplinary Decision-making research group at the University of Bristol explores the relationship between theoretical and empirical aspects of decision-making using mathematical, computational and experimental methods. We are hosting a two-day mini-conference to bring together theoreticians and experimentalists. We welcome abstracts (of no more than 200 words) from psychologists, economists, biologists, neuroscientists, philosophers and other decision researchers using normative or descriptive approaches to decision-making. Possible topics include (but are not limited to): * cognitive/behavioural neuroscience; * decision theory; * information theoretical approaches; * behavioural and experimental investigations; * computational models of decision-making (including bayesian decision-making); * behavioural economics, evolutionary approaches. As well as the four keynote speakers who will be presenting their work, contributed talks will be given by many (if not all) participants. If you wish to contribute, you will be prompted to enter your abstract and select your preferred method of presentation (talk/poster) as part of the registration process. Register online at http://www.bris.ac.uk/decisions-research/conference2012/ The deadline for registrations is Friday 9 November. A flat fee of ?100 is charged for conference attendance, which includes lunch and refreshments throughout the two days, as well as a three-course dinner at the Avon Gorge Hotel on 17 December. Conference participants are also eligible for reduced-rate accommodation at the Avon Gorge Hotel. For more information, go to http://www.bris.ac.uk/decisions-research/conference2012/ Enquiries: decisions-research-admin at bristol.ac.uk From sganguli at stanford.edu Mon Oct 22 01:46:31 2012 From: sganguli at stanford.edu (Surya Ganguli) Date: Sun, 21 Oct 2012 22:46:31 -0700 Subject: Connectionists: Stanford theoretical neuroscience faculty search ; deadline Nov 30th 2012 Message-ID: Dear colleagues, I just wanted to let you know that Stanford is conducting a faculty search this year in theoretical neuroscience (details below in the copy of the ad). The application deadline for full consideration is Nov 30th 2012. Please encourage qualified candidates to apply. Thanks in advance for your help, best wishes, Surya ---------------------------------------------- Surya Ganguli Department of Applied Physics Stanford University http://keck.ucsf.edu/~surya ----------------------------------------------- STANFORD UNIVERSITY invites applications for a tenure-track appointment at the untenured assistant professor level in THEORETICAL NEUROSCIENCE to begin in the academic year 2013-14. The appointee would be expected to make contributions to theoretical neuroscience and to engage with theoretically and empirically inclined neuroscience researchers and trainees across a wide range of departments and to participate in the research training program of the Center for Mind, Brain, and Computation. The departmental home of the appointee could be in any one of several relevant departments spread across the Schools of Humanities and Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, and exact teaching responsibilities would be determined through the home department. Applicants should provide a curriculum vitae (including bibliography), a brief statement of research interests, a teaching statement, copies of scholarly papers, and three letters of reference. For full consideration, materials must be received by November 30, 2012. Please apply through AcademicJobsOnline.org at https://academicjobsonline.org/ajo/jobs/2180 Stanford University is an equal opportunity employer and is committed to increasing the diversity of its faculty. It welcomes nominations of, and applications from, women and members of minority groups, as well as others who would bring additional dimensions to the university's research and teaching missions. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/20121022/255b9e3b/attachment.html From v.steuber at herts.ac.uk Tue Oct 23 05:15:39 2012 From: v.steuber at herts.ac.uk (Steuber, Volker) Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2012 10:15:39 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: CNS*2013: call for workshop proposals Message-ID: <18EF08266D889C41A14D1099C7102CE2BDDE75E819@UH-MAILSTOR.herts.ac.uk> 22nd Annual Computational Neuroscience Meeting CNS*2013 13-18 July 2013 Paris, France Call for Workshop Proposals We are requesting proposals for workshops from the international community of computational neuroscientists. Proposals from all levels of faculty as well as advanced postdoctoral fellows are welcome. This is a great opportunity to organise a small meeting with just a few of the headaches of actually organising it. Workshop proposals with confirmed speakers and proposals that specifically schedule room for discussion will be given preference. Based on previous experience with CNS meetings in Europe, it is anticipated that not all proposals can be accepted. Workshop proposal submission instructions for CNS*2013 The last two days (17-18 July) of the 22nd annual CNS*2013 meeting will be devoted to workshops, in which computational neuroscience topics can be presented and discussed. Workshops can be anywhere between one half to two days in duration. Usually several speakers are invited to introduce a unifying theme, but ample time for discussion should also be planned. Submit workshop proposals to: Volker Steuber, Workshop Chair, workshops at cnsorg.org. An archive of workshops held at previous CNS meetings is available at http://www.cnsorg.org/past-annual-meetings. The proposal should contain a workshop title, a brief description of workshop content (approximately 150 words), and a list of speakers. Please indicate who of the speakers have been contacted and who have confirmed their attendance. Workshops submitted before 10 January 2013 will be given preferential acceptance. Workshop proposals arriving after this date will be evaluated based on remaining space for additional workshops. No further workshop acceptances will be anticipated after 13 May 2013. Travel awards: Based on proposal evaluation, a limited number of travel awards will be available for postdoctoral researchers, women and minorities in science, technology, engineering and mathematics to be included as speakers. A few starting assistant professors may also be given consideration. Please indicate to the workshop chair which speakers you would like to be considered for this mechanism. Springer Computational Neuroscience Book Series: Some of the workshops may be published by the Springer Series in Computational Neuroscience. Workshop organizers interested in this mechanism should submit a book proposal to Ann.Avouris at springer.com and indicate in the workshop proposal their interest in publishing a book. Logistics: Rooms, AV equipment, snacks and beverages during breaks will be provided by OCNS to the workshop organizers. Registration: Workshop registration will occur through the OCNS registration web site for CNS*2013. All workshop participants, including speakers must register. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: CNS2013_call_for_workshop_proposals.pdf Type: application/x-pdf Size: 83315 bytes Desc: CNS2013_call_for_workshop_proposals.pdf Url : https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/20121023/bf06b65a/CNS2013_call_for_workshop_proposals-0001.bin From terry at salk.edu Tue Oct 23 20:09:46 2012 From: terry at salk.edu (Terry Sejnowski) Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2012 17:09:46 -0700 Subject: Connectionists: NEURAL COMPUTATION - November, 2012 In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Neural Computation - Contents -- Volume 24, Number 11 - November 1, 2012 Article Adaptive Metric Learning Vector Quantization for Ordinal Classification Shereen Fouad, Peter Tino Letters A Network of Spiking Neurons for Computing Sparse Representations in an Energy Efficient Way Tao Hu, Alexander Genkin, and Dmitry Chklovskii The Hippocampus as a Stable Memory Allocator for Cortex Leslie Valiant Adaptive Classification on Brain Computer Interfaces Using Reinforcement Signals Alberto Llera, Vicenc Gomez and Bert J Kappen The Basal Ganglia Optimize Decision Making Over General Perceptual Hypotheses Nathan Lepora, Kevin Gurney A Neural Circuit for Robust Time-to-Contact Estimation Based on Primate MST N. Andrew Browning Regulation of Ambient GABA Levels by Neuron-Glia Signaling for Reliable Perception of Multisensory Events Osamu Hoshino Incremental Slow Feature Analysis: Adaptive Low-Complexity Slow Feature Updating From High-Dimensional Input Streams Varun Raj Kompella, Matthew D. Luciw, and Jurgen Schmidhuber On Convergence Rates of Mixtures of Polynomial Experts Eduardo Fonseca Mendes, Wenxin Jiang Shared and Specific Independent Components Analysis for Between-Group Comparison Shahabeddin Vahdat, Mona Maneshi, Christophe Grova, Jean Gotman, and Theodore E Milner Neural Relax Elisa Benedetti, Marco Budinich ------------ ON-LINE -- http://www.mitpressjournals.org/neuralcomp SUBSCRIPTIONS - 2012 - VOLUME 24 - 12 ISSUES USA Others Electronic Only Student/Retired $70 $193 $65 Individual $124 $187 $115 Institution $1,035 $1,098 $926 Canada: Add 5% GST From shadmehr at jhu.edu Tue Oct 23 21:28:16 2012 From: shadmehr at jhu.edu (Reza Shadmehr) Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2012 21:28:16 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: Hopkins faculty position Message-ID: Faculty Position Johns Hopkins University, Department of Biomedical Engineering The Department of Biomedical Engineering at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and the Kennedy Krieger Institute invite applications for a tenure track position at the level of Assistant Professor. We seek an individual with strong training in biomedical engineering as it relates to human health and behavior. Candidates with interests in rehabilitation, robotics, learning disabilities, neuroscience, or pediatrics are of particular interest. An individual with interests in human studies is required. The candidate should have a PhD in biomedical engineering or a related field, with experience working with multidisciplinary groups. This individual will be expected to develop an independent research program, interact with clinicians and researchers, serve as a mentor for PhD students, and teach within the biomedical engineering program. This position represents a unique opportunity to interface between The Johns Hopkins Department of Biomedical Engineering and Kennedy Krieger, a non-profit research and clinical institute. The successful candidate will have a laboratory within the Kennedy Krieger Institute in order to interface with researchers, clinicians and patients. They will also hold a tenure track appointment in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine with all of the responsibilities and privileges of primary faculty in that department. The Kennedy Krieger Institute is dedicated to helping children and adolescents with disorders of the brain, spinal cord, and musculoskeletal system. It is a research, clinical, and educational institute with a dynamic and multidisciplinary team of professionals. Researchers at Kennedy Krieger hold academic appointments at Johns Hopkins University and are international leaders in the effort to diagnose, treat, and ultimately cure childhood neurological diseases. The Department of Biomedical Engineering at Johns Hopkins has a mission to improve health through excellence in research and education at the interface of engineering, biology, and medicine. It is the number one ranked biomedical engineering program in the US according to US News & World Report. Areas of strength relevant to this position include neuroscience, medical imaging and computational modeling. Applicants should send 3 documents, including 1) a curriculum vitae, 2) a 2-page statement of research interests, and 3) the names and addresses of four professional references to: bmefacultysearch at jhu.edu -- ===================== Reza Shadmehr Johns Hopkins School of Medicine www.ShadmehrLab.org From marc-oliver.gewaltig at epfl.ch Wed Oct 24 05:04:32 2012 From: marc-oliver.gewaltig at epfl.ch (Gewaltig Marc-Oliver) Date: Wed, 24 Oct 2012 09:04:32 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: NEST 2.0 released under GPL Message-ID: <91BE986EBD4A5E44B19ED61C50B5B67404E448BB@REXMF.intranet.epfl.ch> Dear Colleagues, Dear NEST users, We are very happy to announce the final release of NEST 2.0.0. It is available to you at http://www.nest-initiative.org/index.php/Software:Download This version is the first to be released under the GNU General Public License version 2 (or later), which replaces the old NEST license. Thanks to your testing, discussions, feature requests and bug reports, we were able to fix the a large number of bugs since release candidate 4. In particular, we changed the following: * New neuron models: ginzburg_neuron [1] and izhikevich [2] * New function DataConnect to connect networks based on connectivity data * New functions GetConnections, GetSynapseStatus and SetSynapseStatus to efficiently query connections * Fixed regression that restricted the number of neurons connected * Fixed numerical instabilities of the AdEx model * Greatly optimized SLI interpreter * Fixed build failure when compiling with GCC 4.6+ * Tests that use GSL now return success if NEST is compiled without GSL support to spike_detectors and music_out_proxys to 128 * Fixed typo in Topology User Manual * Changed license from proprietary NEST License to GNU GPL v2 or later A complete list of changes, also for previous versions, is available at the extended changelog on our website at http://www.nest-initiative.org/index.php/Software:Release_Notes For a list of features provided by NEST, see the feature list on our website at http://www.nest-initiative.org/index.php/Software:Features As always, send bug reports to bugs at nest-initiative.org or to the NEST user mailing list. On behalf of the NEST Initiative Marc-Oliver Gewaltig, President [1] Iris Ginzburg, Haim Sompolinsky. Theory of correlations in stochastic neural networks (1994). PRE 50(4) p. 3171 [2] Izhikevich, Simple Model of Spiking Neurons, IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks (2003) 14:1569-1572 ---- Marc-Oliver Gewaltig EPFL- BLUE BRAIN PROJECT Quartier de l?innovation B?timent J ? 3?me ?tage CH-1015 Lausanne - Switzerland Tel. +41 21 6931866 Web: http://people.epfl.ch/marc-oliver.gewaltig -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/20121024/9ba1b4f2/attachment.html From akozlov at nada.kth.se Thu Oct 25 06:12:12 2012 From: akozlov at nada.kth.se (Alexander Kozlov) Date: Thu, 25 Oct 2012 12:12:12 +0200 (MEST) Subject: Connectionists: PhD positions in Computational Neuroscience Message-ID: The Erasmus Mundus Joint Doctoral Program "EuroSPIN" (European Study Programme in Neuroinformatics) is inviting applications from students having a solid background in mathematics, physics, computer sciences, biochemistry or neuroscience (on a master level or equivalent), in all cases with computer science skills. Documented interest in research like activities (e.g. demonstrated in the form of master thesis work, or participation in research related activities) is of large importance. Also fluency in English is requested. Four partners participate: - Bernstein Center Freiburg, Germany - KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden - National Centre for Biological Science, India - University of Edinburgh (UoE), UK They are all research leaders in the Neuroinformatics field, but they have complementary strengths. Each student will spend most of the time at two of the partner universities, and also receive a joint (or double) PhD degree following a successful completion of the studies. The mobility periods, as well as the courses a student will follow, are tailored individually based on: a) the PhD students background; b) which constellations of partners that are involved, as well as c) the specific research project. During the PhD period each student has one main supervisor from each of the two universities that grant the PhD degree. There are excellent scholarship opportunities for students accepted to an Erasmus Mundus Joint Doctorate programme. An employment contract will be given to all selected PhD students during the study time, which is 4 years. If you are interested, go to our webpage: http://www.kth.se/eurospin If you have questions, send us email to . Deadline for Application (both EU and non-EU students): 30 Nov 2012. EuroSPIN Coordinators, Stockholm, SWEDEN. From mohajerin.nima at gmail.com Wed Oct 24 20:01:15 2012 From: mohajerin.nima at gmail.com (Nima) Date: Wed, 24 Oct 2012 20:01:15 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: Standard dataset Message-ID: Dear all, I am trying to compare performances of some feed forward neural networks against each other. Is there any standard dataset to test a neural network on? Thanks, /Nima -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/20121024/b09c2e47/attachment.html From tat at tchumatchenko.de Thu Oct 25 12:15:33 2012 From: tat at tchumatchenko.de (Tatjana Tchumatchenko) Date: Thu, 25 Oct 2012 12:15:33 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: Call for papers: Correlated activity and coding Message-ID: <508965A5.2010909@tchumatchenko.de> Dear colleagues, I am a guest editor for Frontiers Research Topic entitled * **Correlated neuronal activity and its relationship to coding, dynamics and network architecture* see here for details: http://www.frontiersin.org/Computational_Neuroscience/researchtopics/Correlated_neuronal_activity_a/1155 We think that the interplay between neuronal correlations, dynamics and architecture is a very timely topic that many of you might be working on. If you have work a project related to neuronal interactions and coding, please consider submitting a manuscript. We are looking forward to your submissions! Abstract: Correlated and synchronous activity in populations of neurons has been observed in many brain regions and has been shown to play a crucial role in cortical coding, attention, and network dynamics. Accurately measuring and estimating spiking correlations and synchrony in vivo presents several methodological difficulties. For example, despite recent advances in multicellular recording techniques, the number of neurons from which spiking activity can be simultaneously recorded remains orders magnitude smaller than the size of local networks. In addition, there is a lack of consensus on the distribution of pairwise spike cross correlations obtained in extracellular multi-unit recordings in any brain region. These limitations highlight the need for theoretical and modeling approaches to understand how correlations emerge and to decipher the functional role of correlated and synchronous activity in the brain. Contributions to this special topic should advance our understanding of how correlations and synchrony are shaped by neuronal dynamics and network structure. Contributions addressing the impact of coordinated activity on coding and network dynamics are also welcome. Examples include 1. Sources of spiking synchrony and correlations in recurrent networks. 2. The impact of cellular and synaptic dynamics on the coordinated activity of neuronal populations. 3. The role of network structure and connectivity motifs in network dynamics. 4. Ensemble encoding strategies in interconnected neuronal populations. Best regards, Tatjana Tchumatchenko -- Dr. Tatjana Tchumatchenko Postdoctoral Fellow Center for Theoretical Neuroscience Columbia University 1051 Riverside Dr, NYC 20032, USA Independent Research group leader (starting 2013) Max Planck Institute for Brain Research Max-von-Laue-Str 3 60438 Frankfurt am Main, Germany -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/20121025/3fb01098/attachment.html From tren.huang at gmail.com Thu Oct 25 13:01:34 2012 From: tren.huang at gmail.com (Tren Huang) Date: Thu, 25 Oct 2012 11:01:34 -0600 Subject: Connectionists: Standard dataset In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Hi Nima, The UCI machine learning repository may be a good starting point: http://archive.ics.uci.edu/ml/ Best, Tren -- Tren Huang, Research Associate Computational Cognitive Neuroscience Lab University of Colorado Boulder On Wed, Oct 24, 2012 at 6:01 PM, Nima wrote: > Dear all, > > I am trying to compare performances of some feed forward neural networks > against each other. > Is there any standard dataset to test a neural network on? > > Thanks, > /Nima > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/20121025/c1fdb48a/attachment.html From djaeger at emory.edu Thu Oct 25 15:05:26 2012 From: djaeger at emory.edu (Jaeger, Dieter) Date: Thu, 25 Oct 2012 19:05:26 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: Computational Neuroscience Training at Emory and Georgia Tech Message-ID: <5A5A0407AFA3CE489A16D5CF16661836791C88AA@e14mbx12w.Enterprise.emory.net> Interested PhD applicants are invited to consider our new Emory University and Georgia Institute of Technology joint Training Program in Computational Neuroscience "From Cells to Systems and Applications" (http://compneurosci.college.emory.edu). Students can apply through the Georgia Tech Biomedical Engineering Program (http://www.bme.gatech.edu), or the Emory Neuroscience Program (http://www.emory.edu/NEUROSCIENCE). The application deadline is Dec. 1 for both programs. Our interdisciplinary computational neuroscience training fellows are supported by an NIH Blueprint training grant, and have the opportunity for rotations and thesis work at both Institutions. Academic foci include "Circuits and Synapses", "Learning & Memory", "Motor Systems", and "Sensory Systems". Enquiries to djaeger at emory.edu. - Dieter Jaeger -- Dieter Jaeger Professor Department of Biology, Emory University 1510 Clifton Rd., Atlanta, GA 30322 404 727 8139, e-mail: djaeger at emory.edu http://www.biology.emory.edu/research/Jaeger ________________________________ This e-mail message (including any attachments) is for the sole use of the intended recipient(s) and may contain confidential and privileged information. If the reader of this message is not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution or copying of this message (including any attachments) is strictly prohibited. If you have received this message in error, please contact the sender by reply e-mail message and destroy all copies of the original message (including attachments). -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/20121025/96c6631d/attachment-0001.html From arpaiva at cnel.ufl.edu Thu Oct 25 16:37:12 2012 From: arpaiva at cnel.ufl.edu (Antonio Paiva) Date: Thu, 25 Oct 2012 15:37:12 -0500 Subject: Connectionists: Standard dataset In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Nima, If you plan to use the datasets from the UCI repository, it might be insightful to read the paper by W Duch and N Jankowski on this year's IJCNN (http://hel.fizyka.umk.pl/ftp/pub/papers/kmk/12-Cheap-WCCI.pdf). Regards, Antonio On Thu, Oct 25, 2012 at 12:01 PM, Tren Huang wrote: > Hi Nima, > > The UCI machine learning repository may be a good starting point: > > http://archive.ics.uci.edu/ml/ > > Best, > Tren > -- > Tren Huang, Research Associate > Computational Cognitive Neuroscience Lab > University of Colorado Boulder > > > On Wed, Oct 24, 2012 at 6:01 PM, Nima wrote: >> >> Dear all, >> >> I am trying to compare performances of some feed forward neural networks >> against each other. >> Is there any standard dataset to test a neural network on? >> >> Thanks, >> /Nima > > From rsun at rpi.edu Thu Oct 25 15:59:24 2012 From: rsun at rpi.edu (Professor Ron Sun) Date: Thu, 25 Oct 2012 15:59:24 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: Full professor position, Department of Cognitive Science, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Message-ID: <7DD7FB61-3D4B-44A1-A204-8465A53BE3A8@rpi.edu> The Department of Cognitive Science in Rensselaer?s School of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences (HASS) enjoys particular strength in computational cognitive science/modeling, human-level artificial intelligence, and perception and action, with very high annual research expenditures, a vibrant graduate program offering dedicated MS and PhD degrees in Cognitive Science, and three BS degrees: Cognitive Science, Philosophy, and Psychology. The Department invites applications, expressions of interest, and nominations for the positions of (1) Department Head and Professor with tenure or (2) Professor with tenure. The successful applicant should be a well-funded research leader with an international reputation in computational cognitive science and/or artificial intelligence, and expertise specifically in one or more of the areas in which the Department, in keeping with HASS?s Faculty Expansion Initiative, is hiring: ?computational linguistics, ?cognitive neuroscience, ?cognitive psychology, ?cognitive robotics, and ?the development and study of ontologies and semantics from a cognitive-science perspective. Founded in 1824, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute is the nation?s oldest technological university. With approximately 5,000 undergraduate and 2,500 graduate students from across the country and around the world, the university offers more than 145 programs at the bachelor?s, master?s, and doctoral levels. Rensselaer is located in Troy, NY, the heart of the "Tech Valley" region of the Hudson River Valley. The university?s Curtis R. Priem Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC) offers scholars and students opportunities for creative interdisciplinary research in the arts, performance technologies, science, and engineering. Screening of applications will begin immediately and will continue until the position is filled. To apply, please submit a letter of interest, curriculum vitae, and the names and contact information for five (5) professional references to: Dean?s Office: School of Humanities, Arts & Social Sciences Search: Cognitive Science Attn: Kimberley Osburn Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute 110 8th Street Troy, NY 12180 Please send electronic submissions to: osburk at rpi.edu ======================================================== Professor Ron Sun President, International Neural Network Society Cognitive Science Department Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute 110 Eighth Street, Carnegie 302A Troy, NY 12180, USA phone: 518-276-3409 fax: 518-276-3017 email: dr.ron.sun [AT] gmail.com web: http://sites.google.com/site/drronsun ======================================================= From hans.ekkehard.plesser at umb.no Fri Oct 26 03:09:25 2012 From: hans.ekkehard.plesser at umb.no (Hans Ekkehard Plesser) Date: Fri, 26 Oct 2012 07:09:25 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: Permanent Position as Associate Professor in Informatics at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences Message-ID: <804D49B1C89D8041BA86584B95EA390B198231B6@A-EXCH-MBX2.ans.umb.no> The Department of Mathematical Sciences and Technology at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences (UMB) is inviting applications for a permament position as associate professor in informatics. The position is part of the basic science section at the department with research groups in computational biology, image analysis and spectroscopy, and energy physics. Informatics research in the department is focused on computational biology (computational neuroscience including NEST and LFPy developement, and cardiac modeling) and pattern recognition. We are looking for an eager and inspiring researcher and educator in informatics, with a focus on applications in computational science. For details on the position and to submit your application, please see http://www.jobbnorge.no/job.aspx?jobid=87697 Deadline for applications is November 25th, 2012. For information about living and working in Norway, please see http://www.nyinorge.no/en/New-in-Norway/ You are very welcome to contact me directly if you have any questions about the position! Best regards, Hans E Plesser -- Dr. Hans Ekkehard Plesser, Associate Professor Head, Basic Science Section Dept. of Mathematical Sciences and Technology Norwegian University of Life Sciences PO Box 5003, 1432 Aas, Norway Phone +47 6496 5467 Fax +47 6496 5401 Email hans.ekkehard.plesser at umb.no Home http://arken.umb.no/~plesser From jkrichma at uci.edu Fri Oct 26 13:28:56 2012 From: jkrichma at uci.edu (Jeff Krichmar) Date: Fri, 26 Oct 2012 10:28:56 -0700 Subject: Connectionists: Call For Papers - International Workshop on Neuromorphic and Brain-Based Computing Systems (NeuComp 2013) Message-ID: <0FADE557-6AFF-4856-AE26-76AEE37ABDA1@uci.edu> CALL FOR PARTICIPATION International Workshop on Neuromorphic and Brain-Based Computing Systems (NeuComp 2013) http://www.neucomp2013.org/ Friday March 22, 2013, Grenoble, France held in conjunction with DATE'13 conference (http://www.date-conference.com) **Description** Biological neural systems are well known for their robust and power-efficient operation in highly noisy environments. Biological circuits are made up of low-precision, unreliable and massively parallel neural elements with highly reconfigurable and plastic connections. Two of the most interesting properties of the neural systems are its self-organizing capabilities and its template architecture. Recent research in biologically-plausible neural networks has demonstrated interesting principles about learning and neural computation. Understanding and applying these principles to practical problems is only possible if large-scale neural simulators or circuits can be constructed. This workshop will outline key modelling abstractions for the brain and focus on recent neural network models. Aspects of neuronal processing and computational issues related to modelling these processes will be discussed. Hardware and software solutions readily usable by neuroscientists and computer scientists and efficient enough to construct very large networks comparable to brain networks will be presented. **Target Audience and Workshop Format** The workshop is designed to attract both newcomers to neuromorphic computing, as well as neuromorphic researchers who wish to interact with the DATE community to stimulate new ideas, topics and collaborations. Since this is a hot area but one that is probably new to a large segment of the DATE community, half of the workshop will be devoted to a comprehensive introduction to Neuromorphic and Brain-Based Computing, where the audience will be exposed to basic definitions, key concepts, abstractions, design flows, and design constraints; also some highly visible research projects will be presented as exemplars to provide an overview of existing and emerging solutions in this domain. The other half of the event will create a forum for interactive discussion and exchange of ideas and experiences between researchers through posters and demonstrations, with the goal of highlighting details on applicability, performance, and strengths of current solutions. Our aim is for attendees to learn about emerging Neuromorphic and Brain-Based computing techniques, highlight publicly available modelling and simulation tools, and view directions for longer term research. **Topics of interest** Authors are invited to submit original unpublished works on topics from a wide range of Neuromorphic and Brain-Based computing areas, including but not limited to: - Formal models - Hardware architectures - Software tools - Systems and applications - Simulation Infrastructures **Submission** Submissions are invited in the form of 2-page extended abstract describing the novelties and advantages of the work. Submissions must be done through Easychair at https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=neucomp2013 All submissions will be evaluated with regard to their suitability for the workshop, originality and technical soundness. Selected submissions will be accepted for oral presentation and/or poster/interactive presentations. This workshop does not require blind submissions. Informal proceedings with accepted papers will be made available at the workshop as detailed below. **Important dates** - Submission deadline November 26th, 2012 - Notification of acceptance December 10th, 2012 - Final program December 15th, 2012 **Informal Workshop Digest** NeuComp 2013 will distribute an informal workshop digest to all workshop participants. NeuComp 2013 presenters are encouraged to submit papers for inclusion in this informal workshop digest. Note that since the informal workshop digest is only distributed to workshop participants (and is not archived as part of DATE or ACM/IEEE digital libraries), authors are free to submit their work to other archival conferences and journals. **Workshop format** The workshop will combine oral and interactive sessions (posters and demonstrations) together with invited talks representing major neuromorphic research projects (e.g., BrainScaleS, NeuCod, SpiNNaker, SyNAPSE). The event will be designed to be highly interactive, with ample time for discussion and cross-disciplinary engagement. **Confirmed Invited speakers** - Claude Berrou (Telecom Bretagne, FR) - Daniel Hammerstrom (DARPA and Portland State University, USA) - Steve Furber (Manchester University, UK) - Jeff Krichmar (UC Irvine, USA) - Karlheinz Meier (Heidelberg University, GER) - Emre Neftci (UCSD, USA) - Narayan Srinivasa (HRL, USA) **Technical Program Committee** Jeff Krichmar University of California ? Irvine, Irvine, USA (Technical Program Co-Chair) Philippe Coussy Universit? de Bretagne-Sud/Lab-STICC, FR (Technical Program Co-chair) Angelo Arleo Universit? Pierre et Marie Curie, FR Claude Berrou Telecom Bretagne/Lab-STICC, FR Romain Brette ENS Paris, FR Gert Cauwenbergh UCSD, USA Jorg Conradt TU Munich, GER Nikil Dutt UC Irvine, USA Steve Furber Manchester University, UK Karlheinz Meier Heidelberg University, GER Vijaykrishnan Narayanan Pennsylvania State University, USA Narayan Srinivasa HRL, USA Massimiliano Versace Boston University, USA **Organizers** Philippe Coussy, Universit? de Bretagne-Sud/Lab-STICC, Lorient, FR Nikil Dutt, University of California ? Irvine, Irvine, CA USA If you have any questions about paper submission or the workshop, please contact philippe.coussy at univ-ubs.fr and dutt at ics.uci.edu. Jeff Krichmar Department of Cognitive Sciences 2328 Social & Behavioral Sciences Gateway University of California, Irvine Irvine, CA 92697-5100 jkrichma at uci.edu http://www.socsci.uci.edu/~jkrichma -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: neucomp2013-CFP-final.pdf Type: application/pdf Size: 432230 bytes Desc: not available Url : https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/20121026/29c4ff7e/neucomp2013-CFP-final-0001.pdf From kiebel at cbs.mpg.de Fri Oct 26 09:31:36 2012 From: kiebel at cbs.mpg.de (Stefan Kiebel) Date: Fri, 26 Oct 2012 15:31:36 +0200 (CEST) Subject: Connectionists: postdoc position: computational neuroscience/fMRI In-Reply-To: <772617734.3787.1351258257314.JavaMail.root@zimbra> Message-ID: <1235700570.3789.1351258296987.JavaMail.root@zimbra> We are seeking a postdoc to work in the group 'Modelling of dynamic perception and action' at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences (MPI-CBS), in Leipzig, Germany (http://www.cbs.mpg.de/depts/n-3/dyn). The goal of the group is to develop models for human perception, learning and decision making using Bayesian inference. The specific project is to model the neural mechanisms of value-based decision making. This project is in collaboration with the group of John O?Doherty at Caltech (http://www.odohertylab.org/). An emphasis will be placed on linking the theoretical modeling work at Leipzig to experimental findings based on neuroimaging data acquired at Caltech. We expect strong interactions between both groups, supported by a generous travel budget for visits between the MPI-CBS and Caltech groups. The research will be conducted at the MPI-CBS in Leipzig, Germany, an internationally leading centre for cognitive and imaging neuroscience. For theoretical work, the institute is equipped with high-performance computing facilities. For experimental work, the institute is equipped with a 7.0 T MRI scanner, two 3.0 MRI scanners, a 306 channels MEG system, a TMS and several EEG systems. All facilities are supported by experienced IT and physics staff. The candidate must have a PhD (or equivalent) in computational neuroscience, physics, or a related field. Essential skills comprise prior experience in computational neuroscience or decision making. Experience in modelling of neuroimaging data and matlab programming expertise would be advantageous. The position is for three years, starting at the candidate?s earliest convenience. Salary is dependent on experience and according to German Public service regulations. Interested candidates are encouraged to get in touch at their earliest convenience. Applications are considered until 30th of November 2012 but reviewing of the applications will start immediately. For questions about this position please contact Dr. Stefan Kiebel (kiebel at cbs.mpg.de). The following documents should be included in the application in a single PDF-file and sent by email to dynamics at cbs.mpg.de: A cover letter including a brief description of personal qualifications and future research interests, curriculum vitae, and contact details of two personal references. We seek to increase the number of women in those areas where they are under-represented and therefore explicitly encourage women to apply. We are committed to employing more handicapped individuals and especially encourage them to apply. -- Dr. Stefan Kiebel Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences Leipzig, Germany Phone: ++49 341/9940-2435 Fax: ++49 341/9940-2221 http://www.cbs.mpg.de/~kiebel From brent.doiron at gmail.com Fri Oct 26 23:51:26 2012 From: brent.doiron at gmail.com (Brent Doiron) Date: Fri, 26 Oct 2012 23:51:26 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: Program in Neural Computation at the Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition in Pittsburgh Message-ID: Computational neuroscience brings many ideas and tools associated with computation to the study of the nervous system. Major influences have come from the success of biophysical models of neural activity, the enduring appeal of the brain-as-computer metaphor, and the increasing prominence of statistical and machine learning methods throughout science. Here in Pittsburgh we have an exceptionally large and vibrant community of neuroscientists who develop and/or apply cutting-edge computational methods in their work. We encourage qualified and motivated students to apply to the graduate Program in Neural Computation sponsored by the Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition. The Program is jointly run through Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh, and seeks to train high caliber PhD students in the growing field of computational neuroscience. Applicants seeking to merge experimental and computational training are especially encouraged to apply. Please see the following for more information http://www.cnbc.cmu.edu/computational-neuroscience APPLICATION DEADLINE: Dec 1, 2012. http://www.cnbc.cmu.edu/pnc List of participating faculty: Those whose expertise is primarily computational include: Brent Doiron (Pitt, Mathematics) Bill Eddy (CMU, Statistics and Machine Learning) Bard Ermentrout (Pitt, Mathematics) Chris Genovese (CMU, Statistics) Satish Iyengar (Pitt, Statistics) Rob Kass (CMU, CNBC, Statistics, and Machine Learning) Pat Loughlin (Pitt, Bioengineering) Tom Mitchell (CMU, Machine Learning) Paul Munro (Pitt, Information Science and Telecommunications) David Plaut (CMU, CNBC and Psychology) Jonathan Rubin (Pitt, Mathematics) Cosma Shalizi (CMU, Statistics) Dave Touretzky (CMU, Computer Science) Val?rie Ventura (CMU, Statistics) Byron Yu (CMU, Biomedical and Electrical and Computer Engineering) Additional faculty whose expertise is both computational and experimental include: John Anderson (CMU, Psychology and Computer Science) Aaron Batista (Pitt, Bioengineering) Steven Chase (CMU, CNBC and Biomedical Engineering) Marlene Cohen (Pitt, Neuroscience) Neeraj Gandhi (Pitt, Otolaryngology) Charles Kemp (CMU, Psychology) Seong-Gi Kim (Pitt, Radiology) Tai Sing Lee (CMU, CNBC and Computer Science) Anne-Marie Oswald (Pitt, Neuroscience) Lynn Reder (CMU, Psychology) Mark Redfern (Pitt, Bioengineering) Andrew Schwartz (Pitt, Neurobiology) Matthew Smith (Pitt, Ophthalmology) Daniel Simons (Pitt, Neurobiology) Michael Tarr (CMU, CNBC and Psychology) Robert Turner (Pitt, Neurobiology) Nathan Urban (CMU, CNBC and Biology) Wei Wang (Pitt, Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation) Douglas Weber (Pitt, Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation) -- Brent Doiron, PhD Assistant professor Department of Mathematics University of Pittsburgh Pittsburgh, PA, 15260 www.math.pitt.edu/~bdoiron -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/20121026/ac95711b/attachment.html From jbaimon at sandia.gov Mon Oct 29 12:09:52 2012 From: jbaimon at sandia.gov (Aimone, James Bradley) Date: Mon, 29 Oct 2012 16:09:52 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: Computational Neuroscience staff position at Sandia National Laboratories Message-ID: <387158083FC22D43AF38637EBFD90C2811A4BEFF@EXMB02.srn.sandia.gov> Dear colleagues, Sandia National Laboratories has a staff position open for a computational neuroscientist in our cognitive modeling department. A portion of the full job posting is appended below. To see more details and apply, search for Job ID #641996 at www.sandia.gov/careers/ps-forward Best, Brad Aimone -------------------------- James Bradley Aimone, Ph.D. Senior Member of Technical Staff Cognitive Modeling Department Sandia National Laboratories Phone: (505) 284-3147 Fax: (505) 844-4728 Job Summary We are seeking computational neuroscientists to join our interdisciplinary research program in developing multi-scale models of neural processes. We are particularly interested in the cellular and circuit level mechanisms underlying human cognitive functions such as learning, memory, decision-making, etc. Example research topics of interest include the development and validation of large-scale high-fidelity neural simulations, algorithmic understanding of neural circuits, neural basis of decision-making, neuromorphic computing, and methods for analysis of both real and simulated neural data. Candidates should be able to demonstrate a strong background in neuroscience, and an understanding of relations between neuroscience, cognitive science, and computation. Successful staff members at Sandia are expected both to contribute to ongoing projects and to develop new lines of research with potential for application in solving complex problems. Job duties may include writing proposals, conducting research both independently and in teams, giving presentations, publishing in peer-reviewed journals, and contributing to program development. The positions are located at Sandia's Albuquerque, NM, USA site. This job series typically applies integrated technical judgment--which requires using the scientific method to recognize and formulate problems, to collect data through observation and experimentation, and to formulate and test hypotheses--to anticipate, innovate, and deliver solutions to Sandia National Laboratories missions. Roots the work in the fundamentals of science and engineering while applying a deep understanding of engineering and scientific principles. Creates and applies scientific theories and laws and engineering methods used within scientific and engineering disciplines to develop or demonstrate new designs, concepts, materials, machines, products, processes, or systems. Uses physical and computational simulation, analysis, and evaluation as inherent activities of development. Plans, conducts, and executes Sandia's science and engineering programs within the spectrum of fundamental research, development, or demonstration. Participates in the development and application of computational capabilities to solve problems in science and engineering. Applies methods and techniques that merge disciplines in science and engineering with computer science. Includes the research, development, deployment and in-depth technical support of general scientific and engineering application software and related tools. Primary Job Duties Plans, conceives, conducts, or manages research and development for Sandia's customers and sponsors. Directs systematic study toward a fuller knowledge or understanding of the fundamental aspects of phenomena and of observable facts, and discovers new approaches to achieve goals. Creates new understandings and capabilities by using the scientific method's hypothesis, test, and evaluation techniques; critical review; or similar engineering research and development methods. Initiates, designs, develops, executes, and evaluates new processes, products, or systems through basic and applied research. Uses engineering principles to research, design, or develop structures, instruments, machines, experiments, processes, systems, theories, or technologies; to construct or operate the same with full cognizance of their design; or to forecast their behavior under specific operating conditions. Undertakes development and possible technology transfer of solutions, products, principles or technology. Undertakes creative work, making systematic use of investigation or experimentation, to discover or revise knowledge of reality, and uses this knowledge to devise new applications. Knowledge, Skills & Abilities Advanced technical degree or significant equivalent experience. Technical knowledge and competencies appropriate to the position. Thorough knowledge of and applied experience with scientific and engineering methods and with the discipline's standards for the ethical conduct of research. Thorough knowledge of and experience with designing, planning, and executing research, design, and development projects. Demonstrated knowledge of and experience with implementing Sandia policies affecting research, design, and development activities, projects, or initiatives. Demonstrated ability to team across disciplines. Required 1. A Ph.D. in Neuroscience, Cognitive Science, or related field. 2. Passion for applying fundamental neuroscience to develop theories of cognitive function that can be implemented and tested computationally. 3. Experience with neuroscience research methods and data analysis. 4. Strong publication record. 5. Excellent interpersonal, communication and writing skills. 6. Demonstrated ability to contribute to, form, and lead multidisciplinary teams. 7. Willingness to travel. 8. Ability to obtain and maintain a U.S. Department of Energy security clearance. Desired 1. Laboratory experience in any of: electrophysiology, neural imaging, connectomics, pharmacological manipulations combined with measurement of neural activity. Experimental experience is preferred over clinical experience. 2. Demonstrated abilities in mathematical, physical, and computational modeling of neural or cognitive function. 3. Understanding of related domains, such as: physics, biochemistry, theory of computation, numerical analysis, brain inspired computing, high performance computing. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/20121029/dec07d02/attachment.html From evomusart at gmail.com Tue Oct 30 05:08:46 2012 From: evomusart at gmail.com (Penousal Machado) Date: Tue, 30 Oct 2012 10:08:46 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: evomusart 2013: deadline extension Message-ID: I am writing to let you know that the submission deadline for EvoMUSART 2013 has been extended to Sunday, 11 November 2012. Many people contacted the organisers expecting a deadline extension so we have allowed this. Please note that there will be no further extensions, and the deadline extension to 11 November will be the very FINAL date that papers can be accepted. Submission information for EvoMUSART is available at www.evostar.org. EvoMUSART takes place in conjunction with the co-located Evo* events from 3-5 April 2013 at the Vienna University of Technology and we hope to see you there! Please distribute (Apologies for cross posting) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- CALL FOR PAPERS evomusart 2013 2nd International Conference on Evolutionary and Biologically Inspired Music, Sound, Art and Design 3-5 April 2013, Vienna, Austria Part of evo* 2013 evo*: http://www.evostar.org ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Following the success of previous events and the importance of the field of evolutionary and biologically inspired music, sound, art and design, evomusart has become an evo* conference with independent proceedings. Thus, evomusart 2013 is the eleventh European Event and the second International Conference on Evolutionary and Biologically Inspired Music, Sound, Art and Design. The use of biologically inspired techniques for the development of artistic systems is a recent, exciting and significant area of research. There is a growing interest in the application of these techniques in fields such as: visual art and music generation, analysis, and interpretation; sound synthesis; architecture; video; poetry; design; and other creative tasks. The main goal of evomusart 2013 is to bring together researchers who are using biologically inspired computer techniques for artistic tasks, providing the opportunity to promote, present and discuss ongoing work in the area. The event will be held from 3-5 April, 2013 in Vienna, Austria as part of the evo* event. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Publication Details ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Submissions will be rigorously reviewed for scientific and artistic merit. Accepted papers will be presented orally or as posters at the event and included in the evomusart proceedings, published by Springer Verlag in a dedicated volume of the Lecture Notes in Computer Science series. The acceptance rate at evomusart 2012 was 34.9% for papers accepted for oral presentation, or 46.5% for oral and poster presentation combined. Authors of selected papers may be invited to submit extended versions of their work to the Springer journal Genetic Programming and Evolvable Machines (GPEM). ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Topics of interest ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Submissions should concern the use of biologically inspired computer techniques -- e.g. Evolutionary Computation, Artificial Life, Artificial Neural Networks, Swarm Intelligence, other artificial intelligence techniques -- in the generation, analysis and interpretation of art, music, design, architecture and other artistic fields. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to: -- Generation - Biologically Inspired Design and Art -- Systems that create drawings, images, animations, sculptures, poetry, text, designs, webpages, buildings, etc.; - Biologically Inspired Sound and Music -- Systems that create musical pieces, sounds, instruments, voices, sound effects, sound analysis, etc.; - Robotic-Based Evolutionary Art and Music; - Other related artificial intelligence or generative techniques in the fields of Computer Music, Computer Art, etc.; -- Theory - Computational Aesthetics, Experimental Aesthetics; Emotional Response, Surprise, Novelty; - Representation techniques; - Surveys of the current state-of-the-art in the area; identification of weaknesses and strengths; comparative analysis and classification; - Validation methodologies; - Studies on the applicability of these techniques to related areas; - New models designed to promote the creative potential of biologically inspired computation; -- Computer Aided Creativity and computational creativity - Systems in which biologically inspired computation is used to promote the creativity of a human user; - New ways of integrating the user in the evolutionary cycle; - Analysis and evaluation of: the artistic potential of biologically inspired art and music; the artistic processes inherent to these approaches; the resulting artefacts; - Collaborative distributed artificial art environments; -- Automation - Techniques for automatic fitness assignment; - Systems in which an analysis or interpretation of the artworks is used in conjunction with biologically inspired techniques to produce novel objects; - Systems that resort to biologically inspired computation to perform the analysis of image, music, sound, sculpture, or some other types of artistic object. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Important Dates ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Submission: 11 November 2012 Notification to authors: 21 December 2012 Camera-ready deadline: 15 January 2013 Evo*: 3-5 April 2013 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Additional information and submission details ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Submit your manuscript, at most 12 A4 pages long, in Springer LNCS format (instructions downloadable from http://www.springer.com/computer/lncs?SGWID=0-164-6-793341-0) no later than November 11, 2012. Submission link: http://myreview.csregistry.org/evomusart13 page limit: 12 pages The reviewing process will be double-blind; please omit information about the authors in the submitted paper. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Programme committee ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Alain Lioret, Paris 8 University, France Alan Dorin, Monash University, Australia Alejandro Pazos, University of A Coruna, Spain Alice Eldridge, Monash University, Australia Amilcar Cardoso, University of Coimbra, Portugal Amy K. Hoover, University of Central Florida, USA Andrew Brown, Griffith University, Australia Andrew Gildfind, Google, Inc., Australia Andrew Horner, University of Science & Technology, Hong Kong Anna Ursyn, University of Northern Colorado, USA Antonino Santos, University of A Coruna, Spain Arne Eigenfeldt, Simon Fraser University, Canada Artemis Sanchez Moroni, Renato Archer Research Center, Brazil Benjamin Schroeder, Ohio State University, USA Bill Manaris, College of Charleston, USA Brian Ross, Brock University, Canada Carlos Grilo, Instituto Polit?cnico de Leiria, Portugal Colin Johnson, University of Kent, UK Dan Ashlock, University of Guelph, Canada Dan Costelloe, Independent Researcher (Solace One Ltd), Ireland Daniel Jones, Goldsmiths College, University of London, UK Douglas Repetto, Columbia University, USA Eduardo Miranda, University of Plymouth, UK Eelco den Heijer, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Netherlands Eleonora Bilotta , University of Calabria, Italy Erik Hemberg, University College Dublin, Ireland Francois Pachet, Sony CSL Paris, France Gary Greenfield, University of Richmond, USA Hans Dehlinger, Independent Artist, Germany Hern?n Kerlle?evich, National University of Quilmes, Argentina J. E. Rowe, University of Birmingham, UK James McDermott, University College Dublin, Ireland Jeffrey Ventrella, independent artist/researcher, USA John Collomosse, University of Surrey, UK Jon McCormack, Monash University, Australia Jos? Fornari, NICS/Unicamp, Brazil Juan Romero, University of A Coruna, Spain Marcelo Freitas Caetano, IRCAM, France Marcos Nadal, University of Illes Balears, Spain Matthew Lewis, Ohio State University, USA Michael O'Neill, University College Dublin, Ireland Nicolas Monmarch?, University of Tours, France Oliver Bown, University of Sidney, Australia Palle Dahlstedt, G?teborg University, Sweden Paulo Urbano, Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal Pedro Cruz, University of Coimbra, Portugal Penousal Machado, University of Coimbra, Portugal Peter Bentley, University College London , UK Philip Galanter, Texas A&M College of Architecture, USA Philippe Pasquier, Simon Fraser University, Canada Rafael Ramirez, Pompeu Fabra University, Spain Roger Malina, International Society for the Arts, Sciences and Technology, USA Roisin Loughran, University of Limerick, Ireland Ruli Manurung, University of Indonesia, Indonesia Scott Draves, Independent Artist, USA Simon Colton, Imperial College, UK Somnuk Phon-Amnuaisuk, University Tunku Abdul Rahman, Malaysia Stephen Todd, IBM, UK Takashi Ikegami, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan Tim Blackwell, Goldsmiths College, University of London, UK Vic Ciesielski, RMIT, Australia William Latham, University of London, UK ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Conference chairs ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Conference chairs Penousal Machado University of Coimbra, Portugal machado(at)dei.uc.pt James McDermott University College Dublin, Ireland jamesmichaelmcdermott(at)gmail.com Publication chair Adrian Carballal University of A Coruna, Spain adrian.carballal(at)udc.es -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/20121030/5f32137e/attachment.html From n.lepora at sheffield.ac.uk Mon Oct 29 11:13:48 2012 From: n.lepora at sheffield.ac.uk (Nathan Lepora) Date: Mon, 29 Oct 2012 15:13:48 -0000 Subject: Connectionists: Living Machines II: Preliminary Call for Papers, Satellite Events and Sponsors Message-ID: ______________________________________________________________ Preliminary Call for Papers, Satellite Events and Sponsors The 2nd International Conference on Biomimetic and Biohybrid Systems 29th July to 2nd August 2013 Natural History Museum, London http://csnetwork.eu/livingmachines (Paper deadline: March 15th, 2013) ______________________________________________________________ ABOUT LIVING MACHINES 2013 The development of future real-world technologies will depend strongly on our understanding and harnessing of the principles underlying living systems and the flow of communication signals between living and artificial systems. Biomimetics is the development of novel technologies through the distillation of principles from the study of biological systems. The investigation of biomimetic systems can serve two complementary goals. First, a suitably designed and configured biomimetic artefact can be used to test theories about the natural system of interest. Second, biomimetic technologies can provide useful, elegant and efficient solutions to unsolved challenges in science and engineering. Biohybrid systems are formed by combining at least one biological component-an existing living system-and at least one artificial, newly-engineered component. By passing information in one or both directions, such a system forms a new hybrid bio-artificial entity. The development of either biomimetic or biohybrid systems requires a deep understanding of the operation of living systems, and the two fields are united under the theme of "living machines"-the idea that we can construct artefacts, such as robots, that not only mimic life but share the same fundamental principles; or build technologies that can be combined with a living body to restore or extend its functional capabilities. Biomimetic and biohybrid technologies, from nano- to macro-scale, are expected to produce major societal and economical impacts in quality of life and health, information and communication technologies, robotics, prosthetics, brain-machine interfacing and nanotechnology. Such systems should also lead to significant advances in the biological and brain sciences that will help us to better understand ourselves and the natural world. The following are some examples: . Biomimetic robots and their component technologies (sensors, actuators, processors) that can intelligently interact with their environments. . Active biomimetic materials and structures that self-organize and self-repair. . Biomimetic computers-neuromimetic emulations of the physiological basis for intelligent behaviour. . Biohybrid brain-machine interfaces and neural implants. . Artificial organs and body-parts including sensory organ-chip hybrids and intelligent prostheses. . Organism-level biohybrids such as robot-animal or robot-human systems. ACTIVITIES The main conference will take the form of a three-day single-track oral and poster presentation programme, 30th July to 1st August 2013, that will include six plenary lectures from leading international researchers in biomimetic and biohybrid systems. Currently agreed speakers are Mark Cutkosky, Stanford University (Biomimetics and Dextrous Manipulation); Terrence Deacon, University of California, Berkeley (Natural and Artificial Selves); Ferdinando Rodriguez y Baena, Imperial College London (Biomimetics for medical devices); Robert Full, Stanford University (Locomotion); Andrew Pickering, University of Exeter (History of living machines). Submissions will be in the form of full papers or extended abstracts. The proceedings will be published in the Springer-Verlag LNAI Series. Submissions are also invited for an exhibition to feature working biomimetic or biohybrid systems and biomimetic/biohybrid art. Active researchers in biomimetic and biohybrid systems are also invited to propose topics for 1-day tutorials or workshops on related themes. ABOUT THE VENUE The organisers are delighted to have secured the Natural History Museum in London (http://www.nhm.ac.uk/) as the venue for our conference. The NHM is an international centre for the study of the natural world featuring many important biological collections. The NHM is in South Kensington, the Museum district of the UK capital, and a short journey from many of London's tourist sights. SUBMITTING TO LIVING MACHINES 2013 We invite both full papers and extended abstracts. All contributions will be refereed. Full papers are invited from researchers at any stage in their career but should present significant findings and advances in biomimetic or biohybid research; more preliminary work would be better suited to extended abstract submission. Full papers will be accepted for either oral presentation (single track) or poster presentation. Extended abstracts will be accepted for poster presentation only. Details of submission formats will be circulated in an updated CfP and will be posted on the conference web-site. Submissions of papers are invited in, but not limited to, the following topics and related areas. Biomimetics can, in principle, extend to all fields of biological research from physiology and molecular biology to ecology, and from zoology to botany. Promising research areas include system design and structure, self-organization and co-operativity, new biologically active materials, self-assembly and self-repair, learning, memory, control architectures and self-regulation, movement and locomotion, sensory systems, perception, and communication. Biomimetic research, particularly at the nano-scale, should also lead to important advances in component miniaturisation, self-configuration, and energy-efficiency. A key focus of the conference will be on complete behaving systems in the form of biomimetic robots that can operate on different substrates on sea, on land, or in the air. A further central theme will be the physiological basis for intelligent behaviour as explored through neuromimetics-the modelling of neural systems. Exciting emerging topics within this field include the embodiment of neuromimetic controllers in hardware, termed neuromorphics, and within the control architectures of robots, sometimes termed neurorobotics. Biohybrid systems usually involve structures from the nano-scale (molecular) through to the macro-scale (entire organs or body parts). Important implementation examples are: Bio-machine hybrids where, for instance, biological muscle is used to actuate a synthetic device. Brain-machine interfaces where neurons and their molecular machineries are connected to microscopic sensors and actuators by means of electrical or chemical communication, either in vitro or in the living organism. Intelligent prostheses such as artificial limbs, wearable exoskeletons, or sensory organ-chip hybrids (such cochlear implants, and artificial retina devices) designed to assist the disabled or elderly, or to aid in rehabilitation from illness. Implantable or portable devices that have been fabricated for monitoring health care or for therapeutic purposes such as artificial implants to control insulin release. Biohybrid systems at the organism level such as robot-animal or robot-human communities. Biohybrid systems may take advantage of progress in the field of synthetic biology. Contributions from biologists, neuroscientists, and theoreticians, that are of direct relevance to the development of future biomimetic or biohybrid devices are also welcome, as are papers considering ethical issues and/or societal impacts arising from the advances made in this field. Satellite events LM2013 will support satellite events, such as workshops or tutorials, in any of the areas listed above, which can be scheduled for either the 29th July or 2nd August. Attendance at satellite events will attract a small fee intended to cover the costs of the meeting. There is a lot of flexibility about the content, organisation, and budgeting for these events. Please contact us if you are interested in organising a satellite event! EXPECTED DEADLINES March 15th, 2013 Paper submission deadline April 29th, 2013 Notification of acceptance May 20th, 2013 Camera ready copy July 29-August 2nd 2013 Conference SPONSORSHIP Living Machines 2013 is sponsored by the Convergent Science Network (CSN) for Biomimetic and Biohybrid Systems which is an EU FP7 Future Emerging Technologies Co-ordination Activity. CSN also organises two highly successful workshop series: the Barcelona Summer School on Brain, Technology and Cognition (http://bcbt.upf.edu/bcbt12/) and the Capoccaccia Neuromorphic Cognitive Engineering Workshop (http://capocaccia.ethz.ch/capo/wiki/2012). Other organisations wishing to sponsor the conference in any way and gain the corresponding benefits by promoting themselves and their products to through conference publications, the conference web-site, and conference publicity are encouraged to contact the conference organisers to discuss the terms of sponsorship and necessary arrangements. We offer a number of attractive and good-value packages to potential sponsors. We are looking forwards to seeing you in London. Conference Secretariat: living-machines at sheffield.ac.uk c/o Gill Ryder, Sheffield Centre for Robotics Department of Psychology University of Sheffield Western Bank Sheffield, S10 2TN United Kingdom Organising Committee: Tony Prescott (co-chair) Paul Verschure (co-chair) Nathan Lepora (programme chair) Carme Buisan Anna Mura -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/20121029/ff83c244/attachment-0001.html -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/gif Size: 9996 bytes Desc: not available Url : https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/20121029/ff83c244/attachment-0002.gif -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: image/gif Size: 2727 bytes Desc: not available Url : https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/20121029/ff83c244/attachment-0003.gif From P.J.Lisboa at ljmu.ac.uk Wed Oct 31 08:29:10 2012 From: P.J.Lisboa at ljmu.ac.uk (Lisboa, Paulo) Date: Wed, 31 Oct 2012 12:29:10 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: re. Special session at ESANN 2013: Sparsity for interpretation and visualization in inference models Message-ID: <4A16DE0A294AED4F8E0F9C9FC592A60940287598@EXMB1.jmu.ac.uk> Dear colleague, The ESANN deadline is fast approaching, now just one month away. We hope that you are interested in submitting to this special session, in which case this will be indicated as an option on the submission page. Please do ensure that your paper is submitted by the deadline of 30 November. With regards, Paulo Lisboa and Vanya van Belle Special session proposal at the 21th ESANN European Symposium on Artificial Neural Networks, Computational Intelligence and Machine Learning Bruges (Belgium), 24 - 26 April 2013 www.esann.org Sparsity for interpretation and visualization in inference models Vanya Van Belle, (1,2), Paulo Lisboa, (2), (1) KU Leuven (Belgium), (2) Liverpool John Moores University (UK) Machine learning methods have proved to be very flexible and generalizing methods for classification and regression purposes. A drawback of these methods is their intrinsic black-box nature resulting in a lack of transparency of the predictions and decisions. In order to extend the use of artificial neural networks and machine learning methods to application domains where visualization and interpretation of decision models are considered to be superior to maximal performance, adaptations to enable the derivation of insights into the decision process are necessary. This special session focuses on the use of sparsity mechanisms to improve interpretability, transparency and visualization of methods. Contributions involve, but or not restricted to, the following topics: - Feature selection limited to interpretation and visualization - Sparsity in dual space leading to interpretability - Inference with prototypes - Compact representation of models, e.g. nomograms - Data visualization - p-norm regularization suitable for interpretation - Low rank approximations suitable for interpretation - Applications to real-world data Deadline ________________________________ Prospective authors are invited to submit their contributions before 30 November 2012. ________________________________ ________________________________ Important Notice: the information in this email and any attachments is for the sole use of the intended recipient(s). If you are not an intended recipient, or a person responsible for delivering it to an intended recipient, you should delete it from your system immediately without disclosing its contents elsewhere and advise the sender by returning the email or by telephoning a number contained in the body of the email. No responsibility is accepted for loss or damage arising from viruses or changes made to this message after it was sent. The views contained in this email are those of the author and not necessarily those of Liverpool John Moores University. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/20121031/87ae9226/attachment.html From zahedi at mis.mpg.de Mon Oct 29 07:08:30 2012 From: zahedi at mis.mpg.de (Keyan Ghazi-Zahedi) Date: Mon, 29 Oct 2012 12:08:30 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: Workshop on Conceptual and Mathematical Foundations of Embodied Intelligence Message-ID: <2C7CC9D3-B9AB-491D-8D77-B9362454C612@mis.mpg.de> Dear Connectionists-list members, we want to draw the attention of cognitive and computational neuroscientists interested in embodied intelligence to the following workshop. Conceptual and Mathematical Foundations of Embodied Intelligence Leipzig, February 27 - March 01, 2013 Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences We welcome registration at http://www.mis.mpg.de/calendar/conferences/2013/ei.html There is no registration fee to attend the workshop. The registration will be confirmed or rejected until December 15, 2012, depending on the total number of registrations. All registrations submitted before November 30, 2012, will be considered with higher priority. Speakers - Randall D. Beer (Indiana University, USA) - Paul Bourgine (?cole Polytechnique, France) - Karl Friston (University College London, United Kingdom) - David Krakauer (University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA) - Thomas Metzinger (Johannes Gutenberg-Universit?t Mainz, Germany) - Kevin O'Regan (Centre National de Recherche Scientifique, France) - Frank Pasemann (Universit?t Osnabr?ck, Germany) - Daniel Polani (University of Hertfordshire, United Kingdom) - Helge Ritter (Universit?t Bielefeld, Germany) - J?rgen Schmidhuber (Istituto Dalle Molle di Studi sull'Intelligenza Artificiale, Switzerland, and Technische Universit?t M?nchen, Germany) - Naftali Tishby (The Hebrew University, Israel) Abstract In the last few decades, an overwhelming number of case studies produced the evidence that intelligent behavior of naturally evolved agents efficiently involves the embodiment as part of the underlying control process. Nowadays, there is no question that the exploration and exploitation of the embodiment represent important mechanisms of cognition. The shift from the classical view to the modern embodied view, also referred to as the cognitive turn, not only framed a novel way of thinking about intelligence but also identified a number of fundamental principles that intelligent systems obey. Well known examples are the principle of cheap design, morphological computation, and information self-structuring. Although there is general consensus on the intuitive meaning of such principles, the field of embodied intelligence currently lacks a formal theory. We think that the mathematical foundations of the core concepts have to be advanced and unified, in order to be able to realize and better understand cognitive systems that exploit their embodiment in an autonomous and completely intrinsic way. Information theory, dynamical systems theory, and information geometry already turned out to be useful in this regard. However, there is much more, and also much more to do. Summarizing, the goal of the workshop is to identify the core concepts and to advance the theoretical foundations of embodied intelligence. Non-exhaustive list of topics Concepts - system environment distinction/separation - levels of embodiment and agency - sensori-motor contingencies - morphological computation - information self-structuring - learning and adaptation - ... Formal methods - information theory - information geometry - dynamical systems - Bayesian networks - causal information flows - ... Apologies if you receive multiple copies of this email, but please forward this email to anyone you consider interested. With best wishes, Nihat Ay, Ralf Der, Keyan Ghazi-Zahedi, Georg Martius