Connectionists: 2014 Telluride Neuromorphic Cognition Engineering Workshop; Call for Participation

retienne retienne at jhu.edu
Fri Feb 7 11:51:50 EST 2014


  Telluride Neuromorphic Cognition Engineering Workshop


    2014 Neuromorphic Cognition Engineering Workshop:  The 20th
    Anniversary Edition


      Telluride, Colorado, June 29th - July 19th, 2014


      CALL FOR APPLICATIONS: Deadline is April 2nd, 2014

NEUROMORPHIC COGNITION ENGINEERING WORKSHOP
www.ine-web.org

Sunday June 29th - Saturday July 19th, 2014, Telluride, Colorado

We invite applications for a three-week summer workshop that will be 
held in Telluride, Colorado. Sunday June 30th - Saturday July 19th, 
2014. The application deadline is Wednesday, April 2nd and application 
instructions are described at the bottom of this document.?

*This is the 20th Anniversary of the Workshop, and ~25 years since the 
conception of the "Meadian" version of Neuromorphic Engineering.  Hence, 
we plan a celebratory Workshop, where some of the originators and 
benefactors of the field will participate in discussions of the 
successes and challenges**over the past 25 years and prognosticate the 
potential for the next 25 years. *

The 2014 Workshop and Summer School on Neuromorphic Engineering is 
sponsored by the National Science Foundation, Institute of Neuromorphic 
Engineering, Qualcomm Corporation, The EU-Collaborative Convergent 
Science Network (CNS-II), University of Maryland - College Park, 
Institute for Neuroinformatics -- University of Zurich and ETH Zurich, 
Georgia Institute of Technology, Johns Hopkins University, Boston 
University, University of Western Sydney and the Salk Institute.


        Directors:

  * Cornelia Fermuller, University of Maryland, College Park
  * Ralph Etienne-Cummings, Johns Hopkins University
  * Shih-Chii Liu, Institute of Neuroinformatics, UNI/ETH Zurich,
    Switzerland
  * Timothy Horiuchi, University of Maryland, College Park



        Workshop Advisory Board:

  * Andreas Andreou, Johns Hopkins University
  * Andre van Schaik, University Western Sydney, Australia
  * Avis Cohen, University of Maryland
  * Barbara Shinn-Cunningham, Boston University
  * Giacomo Indiveri, Institute of Neuroinformatics, Uni/Eth Zurich,
    Switzerland
  * Jonathan Tapson, University Western Sydney, Australia
  * Malcolm Slaney, Microsoft Research
  * Jennifer Hasler, Georgia Institute of Technology
  * Rodney Douglas, Institute of Neuroinformatics, Uni/Eth Zurich,
    Switzerland
  * Shihab Shamma, University of Maryland
  * Tobi Delbruck, Institute of Neuroinformatics, Uni/Eth Zurich,
    Switzerland


Previous year workshop can be found 
at:http://ine-web.org/workshops/workshops-overview/index.htmland the 
workshop wiki is athttps://neuromorphs.net/



        GOALS:

Neuromorphic engineers design and fabricate artificial neural systems 
whose organizing principles are based on those of biological nervous 
systems. Over the past 18 years, this research community has focused on 
the understanding of low-level sensory processing and systems 
infrastructure; efforts are now expanding to apply this knowledge and 
infrastructure to addressing higher-level problems in perception, 
cognition, and learning. In this 3-week intensive workshop and through 
the Institute for Neuromorphic Engineering (INE), the mission is to 
promote interaction between senior and junior researchers; to educate 
new members of the community; to introduce new enabling fields and 
applications to the community; to promote on-going collaborative 
activities emerging from the Workshop, and to promote a self-sustaining 
research field.



        FORMAT:

The three week summer workshop will include background lectures on 
systems and cognitive neuroscience (in particular sensory processing, 
learning and memory, motor systems and attention), practical tutorials 
on emerging hardware design, mobile robots, hands-on projects, and 
special interest groups. Participants are required to take part and 
possibly complete at least one of the projects proposed. They are 
furthermore encouraged to become involved in as many of the other 
activities proposed as interest and time allow. There will be two 
lectures in the morning that cover issues that are important to the 
community in general. Because of the diverse range of backgrounds among 
the participants, some of these lectures will be tutorials, rather than 
detailed reports of current research. These lectures will be given by 
invited speakers. Projects and interest groups meet in the late 
afternoons, and after dinner. In the early afternoon there will be 
tutorials on a wide spectrum of topics, including analog VLSI, mobile 
robotics, vision and auditory systems, central-pattern-generators, 
selective attention mechanisms, cognitive systems, etc.



        *2014 TOPIC AREAS:*

 1. *Human Cognition: Decoding Perceived, Attended, Imagined Acoustic
    Events  and Human-Robot Interfaces*Project Leaders: Shihab Shamma
    (UM-College Park), Malcolm Slaney (Microsoft), Barbara
    Shinn-Cunningham (Boston U), Edward Lalor (Trinity College, Dublin)
 2. *Motion and Action Processing on Wearable Devices*Project Leaders:
    Michael Pfeiffer (INI-UZH), Ryad Benosman (UPMC, Paris), Garrick
    Orchard (NUS, Singapore), and Cornelia Fermüller (UMCP)
 3. *Planning with Dynamic Neural Fields: from Sensorimotor Dynamics to
    Large-Scale behavioral Search*Project Leaders:  Yulia Sandamirskaya
    (RUB, Bochum) and Erik Billing (U. Skovde)
 4. *Neuromorphic Olympics*Project Leaders:  Jorg Conradt (TUM, Munich)
    and Terry Stewart (U. Waterloo)
 5. *Embodied Neuromorphic Real-World Architectures of Perception,
    Cognition and Action*Project Leaders:  Andreas Andreou (JHU) and
    Paul Verschure (UPF, Barcelona)
 6. *Terry Sejnowski (Salk Institute) -- Computational Neuroscience
    (invitational mini-workshop)*



        LOCATION AND ARRANGEMENTS:

The summer school will take place in the small town of Telluride, 9000 
feet high in southwest Colorado, about 6 hours drive away from Denver 
(350 miles). Great Lakes Aviation and America West Express airlines 
provide daily flights directly into Telluride. All facilities within the 
beautifully renovated public school building are fully accessible to 
participants with disabilities. Participants will be housed in ski 
condominiums, within walking distance of the school. Participants are 
expected to share condominiums.

The workshop is intended to be very informal and hands-on. Participants 
are not required to have had previous experience in analog VLSI circuit 
design, computational or machine vision, systems level neurophysiology 
or modeling the brain at the systems level. However, we strongly 
encourage active researchers with relevant backgrounds from academia, 
industry and national laboratories to apply, in particular if they are 
prepared to work on specific projects, talk about their own work or 
bring demonstrations to Telluride (e.g. robots, chips, software). 
Wireless internet access will be provided. Technical staff present 
throughout the workshops will assist with software and hardware issues. 
We will have a network of PCs running LINUX and Microsoft Windows for 
the workshop projects. We encourage participants to bring along their 
personal laptop.

No cars are required. Given the small size of the town, we recommend 
that you do not rent a car. Bring hiking boots, warm clothes, rain gear, 
and a backpack, since Telluride is surrounded by beautiful mountains.

Unless otherwise arranged with one of the organizers, we expect 
participants to stay for the entire duration of this three week workshop.


        FINANCIAL ARRANGEMENTS:

Notification of acceptances will be mailed out around the April 15th, 
2014.  The Workshop covers all your accommodations and facilities costs 
for the 3 weeks duration. You are responsible for your own travel to the 
Workshop, however, sponsored fellowships will be available as described 
below to further subsidize your cost.

Registration Fees:  For expenses not covered by federal funds, a 
Workshop registration fee is required. The fee is TBD per participant 
for the 3-week Workshop.  This is expected from all participants at the 
time of acceptance.

Accommodations:  The cost of a shared condominium, typically a bedroom 
in a shared condo for senior participants or a shared room for students, 
will be covered for all academic participants.  Upgrades to a private 
rooms or condos will cost extra. Participants from National Laboratories 
and Industry are expected to pay for these condominiums.


        Fellowships:  This year we will offer two Fellowships to
        subsidize your costs:

 1. Qualcomm Corporation Fellowship:  Three non-corporate participants
    will have their accommodation and registration fees ($2750) directly
    covered by Qualcomm, and will be reimbursed for travel costs up to
    $500. Additional generous funding from Qualcomm will provide $5000
    to help organize and stage the Workshop.
 2. EU-CSNII Fellowship (http://csnetwork.eu/) which is funded by the
    7th Research Framework Program FP7-ICT-CSNII-601167: The top 8 EU
    applicants will be reimbursed for their registration fees ($1250),
    subsistence/travel subsidy (up to Euro 2000) and accommodations cost
    ($1500). The registration and accommodation costs will go directly
    to the INE (the INE will reimburse the participant's registration
    fees after receipt from CSNII), while the subsistence/travel
    reimbursement will be provided directly to the participants by the
    CSNII at the University of Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain.


        HOW TO APPLY:

Applicants should be at the level of graduate students or above (i.e. 
postdoctoral fellows, faculty, research and engineering staff and the 
equivalent positions in industry and national laboratories). We actively 
encourage women and minority candidates to apply.

Anyone interested in proposing or discussing specific projects should 
contact the appropriate topic leaders directly.


The application website is (after February 7th, 2014):
ine-web.org/telluride-conference-2014/apply-info 
<http://ine-web.org/telluride-conference-2014/apply-info>

Application information needed:

  * Contact email address.
  * First name, Last name, Affiliation, valid e-mail address.
  * Curriculum Vitae (a short version, please).
  * One page summary of background and interests relevant to the
    workshop, including possible ideas for workshop projects. Please
    indicate which topic areas you would most likely join.
  * Two letters of recommendation (uploaded directly by references).

*Applicants will be notified by e-mail.*
7th February, 2014 - Applications accepted on website
2nd April, 2014 - Applications Due
15th April, 2014 - Notification of Acceptance

-------------------------

-- 
-------------------------------------------------
Ralph Etienne-Cummings
Professor
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
The Johns Hopkins University
105 Barton Hall
3400 N. Charles Street
Baltimore, MD 21218
Tel: (410) 516 3494
Fax: (410) 516 2939
Email: retienne at jhu.edu
URL:  http://etienne.ece.jhu.edu/

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