From erik at oist.jp Thu Oct 1 00:19:39 2015 From: erik at oist.jp (Erik De Schutter) Date: Thu, 1 Oct 2015 13:19:39 +0900 Subject: Connectionists: Open-rank Tenure-track Positions in Computer Science, Mathematics and Neuroscience Message-ID: The Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology [OIST] Graduat http://www.oist.jp) invites applications for faculty positions in computer science, mathematics and neuroscience. OIST emphasizes interdisciplinary research and teaching. Current faculty covers multiple disciplines in biology, chemistry, mathematics and physics; including a strong presence in experimental and theoretical neuroscience. Appointments can be made as Assistant Professor (tenure track), Associate Professor (tenured) or Professor (tenured). This is part of a plan to hire 50 new faculty members by 2023. We seek applicants with outstanding scholarship, creativity,https://groups.oist.jp/facultypositions Inquiries should be directed to Professor Ken Peach, Dean offaculty-recruiting at oist.jp Applications should be made online before 15th November 2015. OIST is a new, English-language graduate university offering a world-class research environment and has an international research community with faculty, students and staff from over 50 countries. Faculty receives research budgets and has access to top of the line equipment. The campus is located on a beautiful, subtropical island in Okinawa, Japan. OIST committed to increasing the diversity of its faculty, students and staff by having proactive policies in place. We provide a family-friendly working environment, including a bilingual child development center on campus. Applications from women and other underrepresented groups are strongly encouraged. See https://groups.oist.jp/ged. From tomas.hromadka at gmail.com Fri Oct 2 11:25:37 2015 From: tomas.hromadka at gmail.com (Tomas Hromadka) Date: Fri, 2 Oct 2015 11:25:37 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: PhD positions in Marie-Curie European Training Network (Synaptic Dysfunction in Alzheimer Disease) Message-ID: <560EA1F1.7080906@gmail.com> A Marie Sklodowska Curie Actions sponsored European Training Network in Synaptic Dysfunction in Alzheimer Disease (SyDAD) is seeking 15 PhD students. ============ www.sydad.eu ============ RESEARCH SCHOOL SyDAD is an interdisciplinary PhD programme including an innovative research programme with cutting edge methodology, an excellent training programme, international exchanges and a translational and collaborative orientation. AIMS 1. To foster a new generation of researchers with an innovative mind-set and full understanding of the requirements of academia, pharmaceutical companies, the clinics and the societal challenges. 2. To, through a collaborative research programme, elucidate how the different pathways underlying synaptic dysfunction in Alzheimer Disease (AD) relate to each other, to identify novel pharmaceutical targets and to elaborate a drug discovery platform. THE DOCTORAL EDUCATION PROJECTS AND THE DUTIES OF THE STUDENT The doctoral students will use biochemical, cell biological, electrophysiological and in vivo methods as well as clinical material. The network has access to a wide repertoire of cutting-edge methodology including super-resolution microscopy, mass spectrometry, in vivo electrophysiology and optogenetics. The doctoral students will be seconded to other sites of the network during shorter periods to best utilize the resources of the network and participate in a common training programme at the different sites of the network. PROJECTS For more information about the projects, please see the SyDAD web site www.sydad.eu Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden ESR 10: Targeting Cholesterol homeostasis and synaptic maturation. Contact: angel.cedazo-minguez at ki.se ESR 11: Synaptic proteome and A? interactome in AD brain and mouse models. Contact: susanne.frykman at ki.se ESR 13: EEG as a functional central biomarker in AD. Contact: vesna.jelic at ki.se ESR 14: Mitochondria stabilisers and synaptic function in AD. Contact: maria.ankarcrona at ki.se Apply to the projects at Karolinska Institutet at http://ki.se/en/about/jobs-at-karolinska-institutet University of Bordeaux, France ESR 2: Role of APP in presynaptic mechanisms. Contact: gael.barthet at u-bordeaux.fr ESR 7: Mitochondrial dysfunction in relation to synaptic function in mouse models of Alzheimer?s disease. Contact: Sandrine Pouvreau sandrine.pouvreau at u-bordeaux.fr ESR 12: Plasticity of local hippocampal circuits in mouse models of Alzheimer's disease: relation with episodic memory encoding. Contact: christophe.mulle at u-bordeaux.fr Apply to the projects at University of Bordeaux by e-mail: christophe.mulle at u-bordeaux.fr University of Milano, Italy ESR 1: Linking actin-dependent dendritic spine remodelling and ADAM10 activity in AD: the role of CAP2. Contact: monica.diluca at unimi.it ESR 9: A spine to nucleus signalling pathway in Alzheimer's disease. Contact: fabrizio.gardoni at unimi.it ESR 15: Development of cell permeable peptides capable of increasing ADAM10 activity. Contact: monica.diluca at unimi.it Apply to the projects at University of Milano by e-mail: monica.diluca at unimi.it and fabrizio.gardoni at unimi.it Deutsches Zentrum f?r Neurodegenerative Erkrankungen (DZNE), Bonn, Germany ESR 3: Cascade linking A? and tau-dependent toxicity to synapse loss. Contact: Mandelkow at dzne.de ESR 4: Loss-of-function genetic screening using CRISPR/Cas9. Contact: Daniele.Bano at dzne.de ESR 8. Synaptic plasticity and calcium remodelling. Contact: office-nicotera at dzne.de Apply to the projects at DZNE by e-mail: application at dzne.de Janssen Pharmaceuticals, Beerse, Belgium ESR 6: The roles of physiological and pathophysiological tau in synapse function and morphology. Contact: jpitaalm at ITS.JNJ.com Apply for the Janssen position here: http://jobs.jnj.com/s/u3z0MT Axon Neuroscience, Bratislava, Slovakia ESR 5: Rescue of truncated Tau-mediated synaptic dysfunction in vivo. Contact: novak at axon-neuroscience.eu For further information on the application process at Axon Neuroscience, please contact novak at axon-neuroscience.eu ENTRY REQUIREMENTS The entry requirements for each participating university will apply. ENTRY REQUIREMENTS OF MARIE SKLODOWSKA-CURIE ACTIONS The applicant should be a postgraduate researcher in the first four years (full-time equivalent) of their research activity, including the period of research training, who has not been awarded a doctoral degree. NOTE! Mobility rule: The researcher must not have resided or carried out his/her main activity (work, studies, etc) in the country of his/her host organisation for more than 12 months in the 3 years immediately prior to his/her recruitment. SKILLS AND PERSONAL QUALITIES - The applicants should have a genuine interest and solid education in Neuroscience at a master level or equivalent. - The applicants should have excellent practical skills in performing laboratory work. For specific requirements for the different projects, please contact the respective supervisor. - The applicants should have substantial experience in performing independent research projects, e g a Master thesis project - The applicants should have good collaborative skills and be open-minded. - The applicants should show good proficiency in written and spoken English equivalent to TOEFL or IELTS. APPLICATION PROCESS An application must contain the following documents in English: - A personal letter and curriculum vitae including references - A list of potential other project(s) within the SyDAD network the applicant applies for in prioritised order. - A copy of degree certificates and associated certificates. DEADLINE OF APPLICATION October 25th 2015 From jpfister at ini.uzh.ch Fri Oct 2 12:36:26 2015 From: jpfister at ini.uzh.ch (Jean-Pascal Pfister) Date: Fri, 2 Oct 2015 18:36:26 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: PhD position in Zurich Message-ID: <7E520F71-81CC-4A7A-BCAA-8ECED78C82CB@ini.uzh.ch> Applications are invited for one PhD student position at the University of Zurich. The position is funded by a SystemsX grant from the Swiss National Science Foundation. The project is entitled "Baysian learning of quantal parameters at single synapse resolution", and involves both experimentation and theory. Most models of synaptic transmission assume that all synapses between two neurons are identical. However, there is experimental evidence for significant heterogeneity in synaptic transmission between synapses. The major goal of this project is the development of an approach that allows for quantification of functional synaptic parameters incorporating single synapse heterogeneity. Half of the project will be devoted to experiments (electrophysiological and optophysiological investigation of synaptic transmission at Drosophila synapses), while the second part will involve modeling (Bayesian learning). The PhD student will be co-supervised by Prof. Martin M?ller (Institute of Molecular Life Sciences, University of Zurich) and by Prof. Jean-Pascal Pfister (Institute of Neuroinformatics, ETH and University of Zurich). Both institutes offer ideal environments for performing theory-driven experiments due to the presence of many theoretical and experimental labs. The candidate should hold a Master degree/Diplom in Physics, Biology, Neuroscience, Computational Neuroscience or a related field. She/he should have prior experience in an experimental lab, a very strong mathematical background, and good programming skills. The applicant should submit a CV, a statement of research interests, marks obtained for the Master/Diploma, and the abstract of the Master/Diploma thesis in electronic format to Jean-Pascal Pfister (jpfister at ini.uzh.ch) or Martin M?ller (Martin.Mueller at imls.uzh.ch). In addition, two referees should directly send a letter of recommendation by email. The position is offered for a period of three years, starting on the 1st of January 2016. Salary scale is provided by the Swiss National Science Foundation (www.snf.ch). Deadline for application is the 30th of October 2015 or until the position is filled. +++ Martin M?ller SNSF Assistant Professor Institute of Molecular Life Sciences University of Zurich Y55-K78 Winterthurerstrasse 190 8057 Zurich Switzerland www.imls.uzh.ch/mueller.html www.neuroscience.ethz.ch/research/molecular_cellular/mueller +++ Jean-Pascal Pfister SNSF Assistant Professor Theoretical Neuroscience Group Institute of Neuroinformatics University of Zurich and ETH Zurich Winterthurerstrasse 190 8057 Zurich, Switzerland www.ini.uzh.ch/~jpfister www.neuroscience.ethz.ch/research/computation_modeling/pfister From tomas.hromadka at gmail.com Mon Oct 5 22:10:07 2015 From: tomas.hromadka at gmail.com (Tomas Hromadka) Date: Mon, 5 Oct 2015 22:10:07 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: COSYNE 2016: Abstract submission is open, Workshop proposal deadline on Oct 31 Message-ID: <56132D7F.9010901@gmail.com> ==================================================== Computational and Systems Neuroscience 2016 (Cosyne) MAIN MEETING Feb 25 - Feb 28, 2016 Salt Lake City, Utah WORKSHOPS Feb 29 - Mar 01, 2016 Snowbird Ski Resort, Utah www.cosyne.org ==================================================== IMPORTANT DATES Abstract submission is now open! Abstract submission deadline: 13 November 2015 Workshop proposal deadline: 31 October 2015 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. MAIN MEETING 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. 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. This year we would like to foster increased participation from experimental groups as well as computational ones. Please circulate widely and encourage your students and postdocs to apply. 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. WORKSHOPS The workshops feature in-depth discussion of current topics of interest, in a small group setting. The goal is to provide an informal forum for the discussion of important research questions and challenges. Controversial issues, open problems, comparisons of competing approaches, and alternative viewpoints are encouraged. The overarching goal of all workshops should be the integration of empirical and theoretical approaches, in an environment that fosters collegial discussion and debate. Preference will be given to proposals that differ substantially in content, scope, and/or approach from workshops of recent years (examples available at www.cosyne.org). Relevant topics include, but are not limited to: sensory processing; motor planning and control; functional neural circuits; motivation, reward and decision making; learning and memory; adaptation and plasticity; neural coding; neural circuitry and network models; and methods in computational or systems neuroscience. CONFIRMED SPEAKERS: Blaise Aguera y Arcas (Google) Marisa Carrasco (NYU) Edward Chang (UCSF) Greg DeAngelis (Rochester) Mark Goldman (UC Davis) Sonja Hofer (Basel) Richard Mooney (Duke) Mala Murthy (Princeton) Peggy Series (Edinburgh) Reza Shadmehr (Johns Hopkins) Paul Smolensky (Johns Hopkins) Leslie Vosshall (Rockefeller) Xiao-Jing Wang (NYU) ORGANIZING COMMITTEE: General Chairs: Maria Geffen (U Penn) and Konrad K?rding (Northwestern) Program Chairs: Megan Carey (Champalimaud) and Emilio Salinas (Wake Forest) Workshop Chairs: Claudia Clopath (Imperial College) and Alfonso Renart (Champalimaud) Publicity Chair: Xaq Pitkow (Rice) EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE: Anne Churchland (CSHL) Zachary Mainen (Champalimaud) Alexandre Pouget (U Geneva) Anthony Zador (CSHL) CONTACT cosyne.meeting [at] gmail.com From thomas.j.palmeri at Vanderbilt.Edu Tue Oct 6 09:26:03 2015 From: thomas.j.palmeri at Vanderbilt.Edu (Thomas Palmeri) Date: Tue, 6 Oct 2015 08:26:03 -0500 Subject: Connectionists: Research Experience for Undergraduates at Vanderbilt (REU Summer 2016) In-Reply-To: <79FB56F3-7F96-46D3-B3FC-52BB47467FD3@vanderbilt.edu> References: <79FB56F3-7F96-46D3-B3FC-52BB47467FD3@vanderbilt.edu> Message-ID: (Please forward to interested and qualified undergraduates.) Research Experiment for Undergraduates (REU) at Vanderbilt (Summer 2016) We are looking for outstanding students interested in a Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) at the CatLab at Vanderbilt University this summer 2016. Our REU is part of an NSF-funded project entitled Perceptual Categorization in Real-World Expertise. This project uses online behavioral experiments to understand the temporal dynamics of perceptual expertise, measuring and manipulating the dynamics of object recognition and categorization at different levels of abstraction and assessing how those dynamics vary over measured levels of expertise, using computational models to test hypotheses about expertise mechanisms. Students have opportunities to work on projects ranging from the development of online experiments, development of analysis routines, and development and testing of computational models. This REU is especially appropriate for students interested in applying to graduate programs in psychology, vision science, cognitive science, or neuroscience. The REU provides a $5000 summer stipend, $500 per week for ten weeks; an additional $150 per week helps offsets the cost of housing and meals; a $250 travel allowance is also provided. REUs are restricted to undergraduate students currently enrolled in a degree program and must be U.S. citizens, U.S. nationals, or permanent residents of the United States. See http://catlab.psy.vanderbilt.edu/palmeri/catlab/research-experience-for-undergraduates-summer-2016 for details. ------------- Thomas Palmeri Professor of Psychology co-Director of Scientific Computing 507 Wilson Hall Vanderbilt University thomas.j.palmeri at vanderbilt.edu http://catlab.psy.vanderbilt.edu -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stefano.panzeri at gmail.com Fri Oct 9 05:47:50 2015 From: stefano.panzeri at gmail.com (Stefano Panzeri) Date: Fri, 9 Oct 2015 05:47:50 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: Joint Harvard-IIT postdoctoral position in computational neuroscience (Harvey and Panzeri Labs) Message-ID: Dear all, We will very soon open a new postdoctoral position in computational neuroscience in collaboration between the labs of Chris Harvey at Harvard Medical School (Boston) and of Stefano Panzeri at the Italian Institute of Technology (Rovereto, Italy). The post will be available from beginning of 2016 and is expected to be filled within the next couple of months. This postdoctoral position will be to work on neural population coding. The successful candidate will develop new analytical methods to study how populations of neurons encode sensory information and how this information is used to produce decisions. The candidate will apply these methods to large-scale recordings of neurons in sensory areas and posterior parietal cortex using calcium imaging methods in behaving rodents that navigate in a virtual reality environment. The successful candidate will work in Chris Harvey?s Lab at Harvard ( http://harveylab.hms.harvard.edu) and will have the opportunity to visit Panzeri?s lab (http://www.iit.it/en/people/stefano-panzeri.html) on a regular basis for scientific collaborations. Interested applicants should contact both Chris Harvey ( harvey at hms.harvard.edu) and Stefano Panzeri (stefano.panzeri at iit.it) by email, emailing their CV with the inquiry. Chris Harvey will be willing to meet prospective candidates at the SFN conference. For recent papers relevant to this postdoctoral opportunity, applicants are invited to consult the following articles: Harvey, C.D. et al. (2012) Choice-specific sequences in parietal cortex during a virtual-navigation decision task. Nature 484, 62?68 Zuo Y, et al (2015) Spike timing and spike rate make complementary contributions to perceptual decisions in rat S1 and S2 cortex. Current Biology 25: 357-363 Panzeri, S, et al (2015) Neural population coding: combining insights from microscopic and mass signals, Trends in Cognitive Sciences 19: 162-172 Regards, Chris Harvey and Stefano Panzeri harvey at hms.harvard.edu stefano.panzeri at iit.it -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From eb-ballester at bournemouth.ac.uk Wed Oct 7 04:56:13 2015 From: eb-ballester at bournemouth.ac.uk (Emili Balaguer-Ballester) Date: Wed, 7 Oct 2015 08:56:13 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: =?windows-1252?q?PhD_position_in_computational_ne?= =?windows-1252?q?uroscience=2E_=93Identification_of_Metastable_Cortical_D?= =?windows-1252?q?ynamics_Underlying_Cognitive_Decisions=94=2E__Bournemout?= =?windows-1252?q?h_University-IDIBAPS?= In-Reply-To: <6a7b450742d8410c8d25dc18a0be4612@Tremail.bournemouth.ac.uk> References: <6a7b450742d8410c8d25dc18a0be4612@Tremail.bournemouth.ac.uk> Message-ID: <4b0f253114614c38b705cae925dc6ef6@Tremail.bournemouth.ac.uk> PhD position in computational neuroscience. ?Identification of Metastable Cortical Dynamics Underlying Cognitive Decisions?. Bournemouth University-IDIBAPS. A PhD position is available in 3-years fully-funded project ?Identification of Metastable Cortical Dynamics Underlying Cognitive Decisions?; based at Bournemouth University (UK) and at the Biomedical Research Institute August Pi I Sunyer (IDIBAPS, http://www.idibaps.org/en_index.htm, University of Barcelona, Spain). Do we have analysis tools for a reliable identification of the dynamical processes underlying decision-making? This is a fundamental question, touching the very basics of our understanding of neural computation and hence one of the most exciting topics in neuroscience. However, to reconstruct in detail neural dynamics generating cognitive decisions is a major challenge for current methodologies. This would be a highly significant advance; for instance the identification of stable dynamical patterns of activity in hippocampus deserved to win the last Nobel Prize. The aim of the project is to develop innovative approaches designed for the identification of metastable dynamics underlying cognitive decisions. We aim for the fusion of statistical learning approaches to pattern discovery with methods for identifying neural attractor dynamics and neurocomputational modelling. The novel approach will reconstruct neural dynamics during tasks specifically designed at Sanchez-Vives Lab in rodents and in human subjects at the Bournemouth EEG lab. The training possibilities that this interdisciplinary project offers are multiple and relevant in building-up a high-profile as a neuroscientist. The student will benefit from the vibrant scientific environment of neural computation and neurosciences at BU and at the cortical networks lab; embedded in the renowned systems neuroscience network in Barcelona. Applicants holding a degree in Physics, Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics or similar disciplines are welcome. Interest or previous training in neuroscience and machine learning, as well master qualifications in these subjects, laboratory experience and a strong mathematical background would be very welcome. The researcher would be based at the Faculty of Science, Bournemouth University, and work with Dr Balaguer-Ballester at the Computational Neuroscience laboratory (http://dec.bournemouth.ac.uk/staff/ebb) and would spend prolonged periods of time in the Cortical Networks Lab (http://www.sanchez-vives.org/ IDIBAPS, Barcelona) led by Prof. Maria Victoria Sanchez-Vives; providing an outstanding opportunity to gain a diverse experience of both neuro-computational and experimental approaches. For more information and for applying please visit https://research.bournemouth.ac.uk/pgr/funded-phd-studentships-in-the-faculty-of-science-and-technology-2015/ For further details please do not hesitate to contact me: eb-ballester at bournemouth.ac.uk; twitter: @emilibalball . Kind regards Emili BU is a Disability Two Ticks Employer and has signed up to the Mindful Employer charter. Information about the accessibility of University buildings can be found on the BU DisabledGo webpages This email is intended only for the person to whom it is addressed and may contain confidential information. If you have received this email in error, please notify the sender and delete this email, which must not be copied, distributed or disclosed to any other person. Any views or opinions presented are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of Bournemouth University or its subsidiary companies. Nor can any contract be formed on behalf of the University or its subsidiary companies via email. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From paul.zhutovsky at gmail.com Wed Oct 7 04:00:22 2015 From: paul.zhutovsky at gmail.com (Paul Zhutovsky) Date: Wed, 7 Oct 2015 10:00:22 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: PhD Position in Deep Learning & Visual Neuroscience Message-ID: Hi there, we at EyeQuant, a visual neuroscience / machine learning startup based in Berlin have teamed up with a Marie Curie training network to offer a fully salaried PhD candidate position at the rapidly advancing intersection of Deep Learning, Computer Vision and Visual Neuroscience, starting as soon as possible. This is a really unique opportunity to obtain a PhD through a prestigious programme while working with and at a successful technology software startup, enabling you to simultaneously advance your career prospects both inside and outside of academia. Your supervisor and PI will be neuroscientist and EyeQuant co-founder Prof. Dr. Peter K?nig, who is the Director of the Institute of Cognitive Science and Head of the Neurobiopsychology Lab at the University of Osnabr?ck, Germany. You will be based in EyeQuant?s Berlin HQ, with regular trips to our Lab in Osnabr?ck. You can find more details and next steps here: http://www.eyequant.com/#!/jobs#phd-candidate-research-engineer Please note that in order to be eligible for the MARIE SK?ODOWSKA-CURIE grant, you must not have carried out your main research activity for more than 12 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pkpilly at hrl.com Thu Oct 8 20:08:53 2015 From: pkpilly at hrl.com (Pilly, Praveen K) Date: Fri, 9 Oct 2015 00:08:53 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: Post doc research staff positions at HRL Laboratories in Malibu, CA Message-ID: The Information and Systems Sciences Laboratory (ISSL) at HRL Laboratories (www.hrl.com) is looking for two exceptional postdocs to join a world-class team aiming to build revolutionary non-invasive stimulation systems that can accelerate skill acquisition and boost learning and memory for the general population. Successful candidates will work alongside leading scientists and engineers across the US and Europe. This project will be a very collaborative and inter-disciplinary effort. We are specifically looking for individuals with expertise in one or more of the following topics: neural statistical modeling, high-density EEG decoding, pattern recognition applied to brain/body signals, machine learning with very limited training data, closed-loop transcranial stimulation, brain-machine interfaces, and computational neuroscience. One individual will be tasked with developing, implementing, and validating real-time pattern recognition algorithms for decoding high-density EEG signals to inform non-invasive stimulation for memory enhancement. The other individual will be responsible for developing, implementing, and validating statistical and computational models that can interpret natural as well as stimulation-modulated brain activity at multiple time points to predict future behavioral performance in realistic memory tasks. Knowledge of declarative and/or procedural memory systems and sleep consolidation is desired, but not strictly required. Individuals with a keen interest in translating basic neuroscience research into real-world applications are especially encouraged to apply. These are post-doctoral positions with an initial appointment for one year and renewal contingent upon satisfactory performance. The Information and Systems Sciences Laboratory conducts groundbreaking research in three thrust areas: Complex Networks, Cyber-Physical Resilience and Brain-Machine Intelligence. We create new and innovative capabilities for diverse applications such as cyber-security, unmanned autonomous systems, human performance augmentation, big data analytics, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, and electronic warfare. The goal of our research in Brain-Machine Intelligence is to understand how humans process information and effectively interact with the environment to develop smarter autonomous systems, enhance human performance, and develop novel processing systems. Our research starts with the development of large-scale, neurobiologically and behaviorally faithful brain region models. We apply these models along with real-time measurements of brain activity (EEG, fMRI, fNIRS) to create advanced brain-computer interfaces, human decision aids, and neurostimulation-based enhanced training systems. We also use our models to develop novel, brain-inspired sensor exploitation, machine learning, and control algorithms, and to develop low size, weight and power brain-based processing hardware for resilient autonomous systems, dexterous robots, and threat warning applications. HRL offers a competitive salary and benefits package, a small company atmosphere, and an ideal work location overlooking the Pacific Ocean. We also provide a collaborative technical culture committed to producing the leading R&D in the world. Interested candidates are requested to apply on line at HRL's website (http://www.hrl.com/careers/cars_jobs.html). Due to the large number of resumes that we receive from various sources, HRL has chosen to only accept employment inquiries submitted through our website. Please contact Dr. Praveen Pilly (pkpilly at hrl.com) for any questions related to this job opportunity. Applications will be accepted and reviewed until the positions are filled. https://www4.recruitingcenter.net/Clients/HRL/PublicJobs/controller.cfm?jbaction=JobProfile&Job_Id=10677&esid=az https://www4.recruitingcenter.net/Clients/HRL/PublicJobs/controller.cfm?jbaction=JobProfile&Job_Id=10678&esid=az -- Praveen K. Pilly, Ph.D. Research Staff Member Center for Neural and Emergent Systems Information and Systems Sciences Laboratory HRL Laboratories Email: pkpilly at hrl.com Tel: 310-317-5492 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sml at essex.ac.uk Thu Oct 8 05:14:37 2015 From: sml at essex.ac.uk (Lucas, Simon M) Date: Thu, 8 Oct 2015 09:14:37 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: PostDoc: General Video Game AI Message-ID: I have an opening for a post-doc (senior research officer) to work on General Video Game AI. The aim is to further develop hybrid approaches involving: ? Monte Carlo Tree Search ? Rolling Horizon Evolutionary Algorithms ? Deep Neural Networks The methods will be tested on a range of Game AI challenges, in particular using our General Video Game AI evaluation server: http://gvgai.net Salary: ?31,342 - ?36,309 per annum Closing date: 9 November 2015 More details of the post can be found here: http://tinyurl.com/gvgai-pd For a recent paper on general video game AI, see here: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=7038214&tag=1 Best wishes, Simon Lucas Professor Simon Lucas Head of School Computer Science and Electronic Engineering University of Essex -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From c.clopath at imperial.ac.uk Wed Oct 7 14:16:54 2015 From: c.clopath at imperial.ac.uk (Claudia Clopath) Date: Wed, 7 Oct 2015 19:16:54 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: PhD opportunities in Computational Neuroscience Message-ID: Computational Neuroscience Laboratory Headed by Dr. Claudia *Clopath* Department of Bioengineering Imperial College London -----------------Requirements:----------------- The Computational Neuroscience Laboratory, headed by Dr. Claudia Clopath, is looking for a talented PhD student, interested in working in the field of computational neuroscience, specifically addressing questions of *learning and memory*. The perfect candidate has a strong mathematical, physical or engineering background (or equivalent), and a keen interest in biological and neural systems. Demonstrated programming skills are a plus. -----------------Research topic:----------------- Learning and memory are among the most fascinating topic of neuroscience, yet our understanding of it is only at the beginning. Learning is thought to change the connections between the neurons in the brain, a process called *synaptic plasticity*. Using mathematical and computational tools, it is possible to model synaptic plasticity across different time scales, which helps understand how different types of memory are formed. The PhD candidate will be working to build those models of synaptic plasticity, and study the functional role of synaptic plasticity in artificial neural networks. They will have the opportunity to collaborate with experimental laboratories, which study connectivity changes and behavioural learning. Candidates should be EU nationals. ----------------- The lab:----------------- The Computational Neuroscience Laboratory is very young and dynamic, and publishes in prestigious journals, such as Nature and Science. It is part of the Department of Bioengineering, which conducts state-of-the-art multidisciplinary research in biomechanics, neuroscience and neurotechnology. The lab is at *Imperial College London*, the 3rd ranked university in Europe, is in the top 10 worldwide, and is located in the city centre of London. More information can be found at: http://www.bg.ic.ac.uk/research/c.clopath/lab/index.html ----------------- How to apply:----------------- Candidates should send a single pdf file, consisting of a 1-page motivation letter, CV (mentioning that they are EU nationals) to clopathlab.imperial at gmail.com, with the subject containing 'PHD2016'. In addition, candidates should organize two letters of references to be sent to clopathlab.imperial at gmail.com. The application *deadline is **Oct 25th* (both for the application as well as for the two letters of references). Skype Interviews will be held on the Oct 29th. ----------------- Funding:----------------- The candidate will apply to an Imperial College PhD scholarship. Deadline for funding application is on Nov 12. More information can be found at: http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/studentfinance/prospectivepgstudents/phdscholarships/icphd -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From xwe at cis.upenn.edu Sat Oct 10 21:29:26 2015 From: xwe at cis.upenn.edu (Wei Xu) Date: Sat, 10 Oct 2015 21:29:26 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: NAACL HLT 2016 - Call for Papers Message-ID: == The 15th Annual Conference of the North American Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics: Human Language Technologies (NAACL HLT 2016) == NAACL HLT 2016 will feature long papers, short papers, demonstrations, and a student research workshop, as well as associated tutorials and workshops. In addition, some of the presentations at the conference will be of papers accepted for the new Transactions of the ACL journal ( http://www.transacl.org). The conference invites the submission of long and short papers on substantial, original, and unpublished research in all aspects of automated language processing and creation of language resources. The short paper format may also be appropriate for a small, focused contribution, a work in progress, a negative result, an opinion piece or an interesting application nugget. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to the study of the following language areas, tasks, genres and approaches to language analysis: * Linguistic Areas of Study * - Discourse: anaphora resolution, discourse relation tagging, theories and systems for text organization evaluation, methods for analysis of dialog structure (spoken or written) and discourse semantics - Morphology - Phonology and phonetics - Pragmatics - Prosody - Semantics: event, lexical, distributional, formal, extra-propositional, grounding and ontologies - Tagging, chunking, syntax and parsing * Application Tasks * - Dialogue and interactive systems, automatic speech recognition other spoken language processing - Image/video description generation - Language understanding, language generation, summarization, information extraction, question answering, information retrieval, machine translation, recognizing textual entailment and semantic equivalence, relation extraction, text simplification - Mathematical models of language - Predicting speaker/writer characteristics - Sentiment analysis, text categorization (of words, sentences and longer texts), text quality prediction, style analysis and lexicon induction - Spelling and grammar correction and computer-aided learning - Tokenization/word segmentation for Chinese and similar languages and word segmentation in spoken utterances * Research Goals * - Cognitive modeling and psycholinguistic research - Corpus creation and evaluation - End-user application building - Integrate language and other modalities - Linguistic theories for NLP - Machine learning for NLP - Sociolinguistic research * Approaches to Language Processing Tasks * - Machine learning: topic modeling, structured prediction, deep learning, bayesian models, kernel methods, generative models, discriminative models, semi-supervised learning, representation learning - Optimization - Exploiting multilingual resources - Modeling linguistic knowledge (e.g., grammars) - Algorithm development for NLP - Corpus/data analysis * Genres * - Biological and medical text (BioNLP) - Chat and Email (private unedited written dialog) - Literature - News - Social media: twitter, blogs, discussion forums and other social media - Spoken dialog and other spoken genres - Search log analysis * Languages * - Low-Resource Languages - Morphologically rich languages - Other specific living language(s) = Important Dates = * Deadline for BOTH Long and Short paper submission: Jan 6, 2016 * Author response period: Feb 10?15, 2016 * Notification to authors: Mar 2, 2016 All deadlines are 11:59PM Pacific Time. Please DO NOT submit the same paper in long and short paper form. = Submissions = * Long Papers * NAACL HLT 2016 long paper submissions must describe substantial, original, completed and previously unpublished work. The long paper deadline is January 6, 2016 by 11:59PM Pacific Standard Time (GMT-8). Each submission will be reviewed by at least three program committee members. Long papers may consist of up to eight (8) pages of content, plus unlimited pages for references. Upon acceptance, final versions of long papers will be given one additional page (up to 9 pages with unlimited pages for references) so that reviewers? comments can be taken into account. Papers will be presented orally or as a poster presentation as determined by the program committee. There will be no distinction in the proceedings between long papers presented orally and those presented as poster presentations. * Short Papers * NAACL HLT 2016 also solicits short papers. Short paper submissions must describe original, completed and previously unpublished work. The short paper deadline this year is also January 6, 2016 by 11:59PM Pacific Standard Time (GMT-8). Types of short papers include: - A small, focused contribution - A negative result - An opinion piece - An interesting application nugget Short papers may consist of up to four (4) pages of content, plus unlimited pages for references. Upon acceptance, short papers will be given five (5) pages in the proceedings and unlimited pages for references. Authors are encouraged to use this additional page to address reviewers comments in their final versions. Short papers will be presented in one or more oral or poster sessions. While short papers will be distinguished from long papers in the proceedings, there will be no distinction in the proceedings between short papers presented orally and those presented as poster presentations. Each short paper submission will be reviewed by at least three program committee members. * Electronic Submission * Papers should be submitted electronically using the Softconf START conference management system at the following URL: https://www.softconf.com/naacl2016/papers The site will be open for accepting submissions one month before the conference deadline. * Multiple Submission Policy * Papers that have been or will be submitted to other meetings or publications must indicate this at submission time. Authors of papers accepted for presentation at NAACL HLT 2016 must notify the program chairs by the camera-ready deadline as to whether the paper will be presented. All accepted papers must be presented at the conference to appear in the proceedings. We will not accept for publication or presentation papers that overlap significantly in content or results with papers that will be (or have been) published elsewhere. Authors submitting more than one paper to NAACL HLT must ensure that submissions do not overlap significantly (>25%) with each other in content or results. Authors should not submit short and long versions of papers with substantial overlap in their original contributions. What is Considered ?Unpublished Work?? All prior peer-reviewed publications, either at a conference or workshop, are considered published prior work. Preprints such as those on arXiv.org and technical reports that are not peer reviewed are not considered prior published work for purposes of submission. Authors must state in the online submission form the name of the workshop or preprint server and title of the non-archival version. The version submitted to NAACL HLT should be suitably anonymized and not contain references to the prior non-archival version. Reviewers will be told: ?The author(s) have notified us that there exists a non-archival previous version of this paper with significantly overlapping text. We have approved submission under these circumstances, but to preserve the spirit of blind review, the current submission does not reference the non-archival version.? Reviewers are free to do what they like with this information. = Contact = * Program Co-Chairs * Ani Nenkova, University of Pennsylvania Owen Rambow, Columbia University Email: naacl2016-program at googlegroups.com * General Chair * Kevin Knight, USC Information Sciences Institute -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stephan.chalup at newcastle.edu.au Mon Oct 12 11:31:33 2015 From: stephan.chalup at newcastle.edu.au (Stephan Chalup) Date: Mon, 12 Oct 2015 15:31:33 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: Special Issue "Manifold Learning and Dimensionality Reduction" Message-ID: Dear Colleagues, The journal "Algorithms" is having a special issue on "Manifold Learning and Dimensionality Reduction" http://www.mdpi.com/journal/algorithms/special_issues/Manifold_Learning Deadline for manuscript submissions: 30 November 2015 Please feel free to contact me directly if you have any questions. Regards, Stephan --------------------- Stephan Chalup, PhD The University of Newcastle, Australia Tel. +61 2 492 16080 E-mail Stephan.Chalup at newcastle.edu.au http://robots.newcastle.edu.au/~chalup -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sroy at biostat.wisc.edu Fri Oct 9 21:52:06 2015 From: sroy at biostat.wisc.edu (Sushmita Roy) Date: Fri, 09 Oct 2015 20:52:06 -0500 Subject: Connectionists: Postdoctoral position in Computational Systems Biology Message-ID: <56186F46.7000102@biostat.wisc.edu> A 2 year postdoctoral position is available in the Roy's research group in computational network biology and genomics at the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery (WID), University of Wisconsin, Madison. We are a computational biology group developing tools, based on statistical machine learning, for addressing problems in regulatory networks. The specific project position we are seeking to fill aims to develop probabilistic graphical model based approaches for predicting global response (e.g. genome-wide mRNA levels) in brain and neural tissue in response to various environmental toxins as well as prioritizing important genes and pathways that are important for these responses. The WID, established in 2010, has state of the art research and computing infrastructure co-located with the Morgridge Institute for Discovery (MIR) at a 300,000 sq. feet building. The WID was voted the 2012 Laboratory of the Year and offers a unique interdisciplinary and highly collaborative environment bringing together scientists spanning broad computational and biological disciplines: Epigenetics, Systems Biology, Optimization, Living Environment Laboratory and Bionates. REQUIREMENTS: A PhD in a quantitative field (e.g. computer science, machine learning, statistics, engineering) with strong background in machine learning and probabilistic graphical model and looking to expand their knowledge about cellular systems are strongly encouraged to apply. Research experience in computational biology or bioinformatics will considered be a plus. To apply, please send (1) CV with publications, (2) statement of research describing current research and future goals, and, (3) contact information of two references. Please send this information to sroy at biostat.wisc.edu -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From wermter at informatik.uni-hamburg.de Tue Oct 13 12:10:18 2015 From: wermter at informatik.uni-hamburg.de (Stefan Wermter) Date: Tue, 13 Oct 2015 18:10:18 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: [jobs] 3 PhD positions in neural language robotics Message-ID: <561D2CEA.5050806@informatik.uni-hamburg.de> The Knowledge Technology Research Group at the University of Hamburg invites applications for three Early Stage Researchers (ESR) within the Marie Sklodowska-Curie European Training Network "SECURE" - Safety Enables Cooperation in Uncertain Robotic Environments. Research area: The general area is knowledge technology, intelligent systems and artificial intelligence, in particular neural networks and natural language processing for safe cognitive robots. There are three research positions (3 PhD studentships called Early Stage Researcher positions - ESR) which will be filled in the context of cognitive robots (Darwin-OP/Nao/Nicu/iCub or related). The ESR focus on the following topics: ESR A: A neuro-probabilistic robot interaction model for learning and inferring safe actions ESR B: A self-organising neural model for prosodic recognition and threat sound localisation ESR C: A deep neural learning model to identify dangerous situations through spoken language The positions commence on 1.1.2016 or as soon as the position can be filled. The term is fixed to three years. They are remunerated at the salary level in accordance with the regulations for the Early Stage Researcher (ESR) in EU Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions Innovative Training Networks (ITN) (http://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/portal/doc/call/h2020/common/1617603-part_3_msca_v2.0_en.pdf) and are fulltime positions (39h/week). Tasks: Duties include academic services in the project named above. Research associates can also pursue research and further academic qualifications. Requirements: A university degree in a relevant subject. In particular, at least an MSc or equivalent in Artificial Intelligence, Computer Science or Engineering with a focus on Intelligent Computing is required. Excellent programming skills (Python, C++ etc.) are needed and a background in at least one of neural networks/natural language processing/robotics would be needed for these positions. The posts involve traveling within Europe. Each PhD student will be expected to spend secondments at other European partner sites. According to EU mobility rules, the ESR researchers must not have resided or carried out their main activity (work, studies, etc.) in Germany for longer than 12 months in the 3 years immediately prior to their recruitment. Early-Stage Researchers are defined as those who are, at the time of selection, in the first four years (full-time equivalent) of their research careers. The University aims to increase the number of women in research and teaching and explicitly encourages women to apply. Equally qualified female applicants will receive preference in accordance with Hamburgs Higher Education Act (HmbHG). Severely disabled applicants will receive preference over equally qualified non-disabled applicants. Additional Info on the European Training Network SECURE: SECURE is a new Marie Sklodowska-Curie European Training Network (ETN) with the primary aim to train a new generation of researchers on safe cognitive robot concepts for human work and living spaces on the most advanced humanoid robot platforms available in Europe. The Early-Stage Research (ESR) fellows will be trained for a PhD through an innovative concept of project-based learning and constructivist learning in supervised peer networks where they will gain experience from an intersectoral programme involving universities, research institutes, large and SME companies from public and private sectors. The training domain will integrate multidisciplinary concepts from the fields of cognitive human-robot interaction, computer science and intelligent robotics where a new approach of integrating principles of embodiment, situation and interaction will be pursued to address future challenges for safe human-robot environments. In case of questions, please contact Prof. Dr. Stefan Wermter, Head of Knowledge Technology or consult our website at https://www.informatik.uni-hamburg.de/wtm/. Applications should include an application letter, full curriculum vitae, best publication if applicable, copies of degree certificate(s) and transcripts. The application deadline is 1.11.2015. Please email applications in a single pdf file to: Ms Katja Koesters, katja.koesters at informatik.uni-hamburg.de *********************************************** Professor Dr. Stefan Wermter Chair of Knowledge Technology Department of Computer Science, WTM, Building F University of Hamburg Vogt Koelln Str. 30 22527 Hamburg, Germany Email: wermter AT informatik.uni-hamburg.de http://www.informatik.uni-hamburg.de/~wermter/ http://www.informatik.uni-hamburg.de/WTM/ *********************************************** From sml at essex.ac.uk Mon Oct 12 11:47:03 2015 From: sml at essex.ac.uk (Lucas, Simon M) Date: Mon, 12 Oct 2015 15:47:03 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: Fully Funded PhD Studentships Message-ID: EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Intelligent Games and Game Intelligence (IGGI) 11 fully-funded 4-year studentships available for 2016/17 Covers fees at Home/EU rate and a tax-free stipend IGGI is an exciting opportunity for you to undertake PhD research in Intelligent Games and Game Intelligence, working with world-leading academics and top industrial games partners. We currently have 23 students working on research in areas such as: * artificial intelligence (AI), * emotion and immersion in games, * new ways to interact with games, * applications such as using games to help neurological patients and to learn how children acquire language * intrinsic motivation in computational creativity * crowdsourcing solutions via gamification * ... We have 11 studentships available for 2016/17 entry. Could you be one of our next cohort of students (www.iggi.org.uk/ourstudents/), who are putting advanced research ideas into digital games and finding ways to improve people's lives using games technologies? IGGI is a collaboration between the University of York, the University of Essex and Goldsmiths, University of London. We train the next generation of leading researchers, designers, developers and entrepreneurs in digital games. Why IGGI? IGGI gives you the chance to work on a focused research topic to extend the forefront of current knowledge in digital games technology and applications. IGGI gives you the opportunity to work with our industrial partners on your research, allowing you the possibility to contribute directly to the future of games. You'll have the opportunity to undertake industrial placements during the programme. These give you first-hand experience of the gaming industry, contributing to your research, as well as giving you the skills needed to succeed in a career in the games industry or games research. Our partners include organisations such as: Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, The Creative Assembly, Codemasters, 22Cans, Eutechnyx, Roll7, Rebellion, Game Republic, UKIE, TIGA, The Knowledge Transfer Network, BT, Age UK, Sue Ryder. Check them all out at http://www.iggi.org.uk/our-industrial-partners/ Your research work with partners like these will help to increase the use of games as a tool for scientific research and societal good, as well as creating more fun and profitable games that exploit research advances. Your research will take up around 80% of your time, working closely with one or more expert supervisors. This research will be supplemented by a tailored teaching and training programme where you will develop games and undertake other activities in small teams with the other IGGI PhD students. See http://www.iggi.org.uk/ourstudents/ for example of the IGGI students work to date. You'll also develop through events such as: * the IGGI Games Jam, a 48 hour Game Development Challenge to enhance your skills in game design and development and teamwork. This is part of a global Games Jam, so you will be working with and competing against teams from across the world; * the IGGI Symposium, a student-led event that is a showcase for student research alongside industry and academic speakers; * industry days, where practitioners from industry share insights into their business and present real-world problems for teams to solve. You'll receive practical skills training from a range of academic leaders. Core modules include: * Games Development * Games Design * Research Skills You will have the opportunity to access cutting-edge advanced optional modules from all three institutions with topics such as: Advanced Computer Vision; Multi-Agent Interactions and Games; Storytelling in Theatre, Film and Television; User-Centred Design; AI for Game Developers; Graphics and Geometry for Games; Understanding Social Media; Intelligent Systems and Robotics; Machine Learning and Data Mining; Media Theory. Apply for IGGI We have 11 fully-funded studentships to award to outstanding students that cover fees and an annual stipend of ?14,057 (or ?16,057 with London weighting if studying at Goldsmiths) for four years (at rates current for 2015/16; this may increase according to EPSRC minimum payments guidance). You can contact potential supervisors directly (see http://www.iggi.org.uk/supervisors/ for a list), or we can help you to choose a principal supervisor from York, Essex or Goldsmiths based on your interests and background. Please visit http://www.iggi.org.uk/apply/ for full details of how to apply to the IGGI programme. In previous years we have had substantial competition for IGGI studentships, and we encourage good students to submit applications as early as possible. The deadline for applications is midnight (GMT) on Sunday 31st January 2016. Shortlisting will take place on Friday 19th February and successful candidates will be contacted on Monday 22nd February. Interviews will be held at the University of Essex on Friday 4th March, 2016. Professor Simon Lucas Head of School Computer Science and Electronic Engineering University of Essex -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From simone.scardapane at uniroma1.it Mon Oct 12 09:49:56 2015 From: simone.scardapane at uniroma1.it (Simone Scardapane) Date: Mon, 12 Oct 2015 15:49:56 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: SS on Distributed Learning Algorithms for Neural Networks @ IJCNN 2016 Message-ID: <561BBA84.8070400@uniroma1.it> [Apologies if you receive multiple copies of this CFP] -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Call for papers: IJCNN 2016 Special Session DISTRIBUTED LEARNING ALGORITHMS FOR NEURAL NETWORKS Vancouver, Canada, 25-29 July 2016 http://ispac.diet.uniroma1.it/ijcnn-2016-special-session-distributed-nn -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Scope and motivations -------------------------------------------------------------------------- In the era of big data and pervasive computing, it is common that datasets are distributed over multiple and geographically distinct sources of information (e.g. distributed databases). In this respect, a major challenge is designing adaptive training algorithms in a distributed fashion, with only partial or no reliance on a centralized authority. Indeed, distributed learning is an important step to handle inference within several research areas, including sensor networks, parallel and commodity computing, distributed optimization, and many others. Based on the idea that all the aforementioned research fields share many fundamental questions and mechanisms, this special session is intended to bring forth advances on distributed training for neural networks. We are interested in papers proposing novel algorithms and protocols for distributed training under multiple constraints, analyses of their theoretical aspects, and applications for multiple source data clustering, regression and classification. Topics -------------------------------------------------------------------------- The topics of interest to be covered by this Special Session include, but are not limited to: * Distributed algorithms for training neural networks and kernel methods * Theoretical aspects of distributed learning (e.g. fundamental communication constraints) * Learning on commodity computing architectures and parallel execution frameworks (e.g. MapReduce, Storm) * Energy efficient distributed learning * Distributed semi-supervised and active learning * Novel results on distributed optimization for machine learning * Cooperative and competitive multi-agent learning * Learning in realistic wireless sensor networks * Distributed systems with privacy concerns (e.g. healthcare systems) Important dates -------------------------------------------------------------------------- * Paper submission deadline: January 15, 2016 * Notification of paper acceptance: March 15, 2016 * Camera-ready deadline: April 15, 2016 * Conference: July 25-29, 2016 Further details -------------------------------------------------------------------------- For additional details, please visit the special session's website, or contact one of the organizers: Massimo Panella, Sapienza University of Rome (massimo [dot] panella [at] uniroma1 [dot] it). Simone Scardapane, Sapienza University of Rome (simone [dot] scardapane [at] uniroma1 [dot] it). From rrosenb1 at nd.edu Tue Oct 13 09:59:03 2015 From: rrosenb1 at nd.edu (Robert Rosenbaum) Date: Tue, 13 Oct 2015 09:59:03 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: Four faculty positions in applied statistics and stochastics Message-ID: <72062EC4-D560-4172-B330-D045CAB0967A@nd.edu> The Department of Applied and Computational Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Notre Dame is seeking applications for four faculty positions, three in applied statistics and one in applied stochastics. Ideally, two of the statistics positions will be at the post-tenure level and the remainder will be tenure track. The department is highly supportive of collaborative research and encourages applications from computational neuroscientists. Feel free to contact me (Robert.Rosenbaum at nd.edu) with general questions about the department, etc. Applicants for the post-tenure job are invited to contact the chair, Andrew Sommese (sommese at nd.edu). The department will begin reviewing applications on Nov 1, so please apply soon if interested. For more information and to apply, see here for statistics: http://apply.interfolio.com/30595 and here for stochastics: http://apply.interfolio.com/30609 ? Robert Rosenbaum Assistant Professor Department of Applied and Computational Mathematics and Statistics University of Notre Dame From nteneva at uchicago.edu Mon Oct 12 17:22:03 2015 From: nteneva at uchicago.edu (Nedelina Teneva) Date: Mon, 12 Oct 2015 16:22:03 -0500 Subject: Connectionists: CFP: "Multiresolution Methods for Large Scale Learning" workshop, NIPS 2015 Message-ID: MULTIRESOLUTION METHODS FOR LARGE SCALE LEARNING NIPS 2015 Workshop, December 12, 2015 http://people.cs.uchicago.edu/~risi/NIPS15workshop/index.html Submission deadline: November 3, 2015 CALL FOR PAPERS There is a spate of exciting new work at the intersection of multiresolution/multiscale numerical methods and machine learning, including: - New approaches to defining multiresolution (wavelets) on graphs. - New applications of hierarchical matrices in Gaussian Process inference. - The introduction of Scattering Networks. - Various multiscale graph models. - New multiscale matrix decompositions and multiresolution matrix factorizations. The goal of this workshop is to bring together leading researchers from Harmonic Analysis, Signal Processing, Numerical Analysis, and Machine Learning, to explore the synergies between all the above lines of work. The workshop will comprise a combination of invited and contributed talks, and poster presentations. Researchers wishing to present their work are invited to submit an extended abstract by email to multiresolution .nips15 at gmail.com by November 3, 2015(max. 2 pages in NIPS format, not including references, anonymity not required). The organizers will select a subset of the abstracts for oral or poster presentation, and notify the authors by November 6. ORGANIZERS Inderjit Dhillon, University of Texas at Austin Risi Kondor, University of Chicago Robert Nowak, University of Wisconsin-Madison Michael O'Neil, NYU Nedelina Teneva, University of Chicago INVITED SPEAKERS Francis Bach, INRIA Jure Leskovec, Stanford Michael Mahoney, Berkeley Sayan Mukherjee, Duke Michael O'Neil, NYU Ilya Safro, Clemson University Pierre Vandergheynst, EPFL -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From edizquie at indiana.edu Fri Oct 9 12:44:26 2015 From: edizquie at indiana.edu (Eduardo J. Izquierdo) Date: Fri, 9 Oct 2015 12:44:26 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: Postdoctoral Position in Computational Neuroscience at Indiana University Message-ID: Dear Colleagues, We are happy to announce that we are in the process of hiring a postdoctoral scientist interested in developing and analyzing integrated neuromechanical models of behavior at Indiana University. If you could forward the attached ad to anyone who might be interested, or suggest suitable candidates, it would be greatly appreciated. Sincerely, Eduardo J. Izquierdo Randall D. Beer Postdoctoral Position in Computational Neuroscience, Indiana University, Bloomington Applications are invited for a post-doctoral in Computational Neuroscience. The position will be available in Spring 2016, but the starting date is flexible. The initial appointment will be for one year, with the possibility of renewal for a second year. The successful candidate will be working with Professors Eduardo Izquierdo and Randall Beer to construct and analyze integrated neuromechanical models of behavior in the nematode worm C. elegans. The ideal candidate will have completed their doctoral studies, and should have expertise in modeling and computational neuroscience. Experience in parameter optimization algorithms, dynamical systems theory, and information theory would be preferred but not necessary. Strongest consideration will be given to applications received before December 31, 2015; however, applications will be considered until the position is filled. Interested candidates should review the application requirements and submit their applications at https://indiana.peopleadmin.com/postings/1962. Questions regarding the position can be directed to Professors Eduardo Izquierdo or Randall Beer at Cognitive Science Program, Indiana University, 1900 East 10th St., 819 Eigenmann, Bloomington, Indiana 47406-7512 or, by email, edizquie at indiana.edu or rdbeer at indiana.edu. Indiana University is an equal employment and affirmative action employer and a provider of ADA services. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ethnicity, color, race, religion, sex, sexual orientation or identity, national origin, disability status or protected veteran status. Applications from women and minority group members are especially encouraged. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dyyeung at cse.ust.hk Tue Oct 13 05:25:07 2015 From: dyyeung at cse.ust.hk (Dit-Yan Yeung) Date: Tue, 13 Oct 2015 17:25:07 +0800 Subject: Connectionists: Faculty Positions, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) Message-ID: <561CCDF3.4070508@cse.ust.hk> *Faculty Positions* *The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology* *Department of Computer Science and Engineering* HKUST Job ID: 2549 The Department of Computer Science and Engineering, HKUST (http://www.cse.ust.hk/) will have substantiation-track faculty openings at all levels of Professor, Associate Professor and Assistant Professor for the 2016-2017 academic year. We are looking for outstanding candidates with demonstrated research expertise and experience in one or more of the following areas: * Cybersecurity * Deep learning * Robotics (possible joint appointment under clustered hiring in Autonomous Systems and Robotics) * Human-computer interaction (possible joint appointment under clustered hiring in Design Thinking and Entrepreneurship) More details about the clustered hiring campaign of HKUST can be found at http://jobs.ust.hk/ under "25th Anniversary Clustered Hiring". Strong candidates in other core computer science and engineering research areas will also be considered. Applicants should have an earned PhD degree and demonstrated potential in teaching and research. The department has about 40 faculty members, recruited from major universities and research institutions around the world, and about 800 students (including about 200 postgraduate students). The medium of instruction is English. We were ranked 8th among all computer science and engineering departments worldwide according to the QS World University Ranking in 2015. The University is committed to increasing the diversity of its faculty, and has a range of family-friendly policies in place. Salary is highly competitive and will be commensurate with qualifications and experience. Fringe benefits include medical/dental benefits and annual leave. Housing will also be provided where applicable. For appointment at Assistant Professor level, initial appointment will normally be on a three-year contract. A gratuity will be payable upon completion of contract. *Application Procedure* Applications including a cover letter, curriculum vitae (including the names and contact information of at least three referees), a research statement and a teaching statement (all in PDF format) should be sent through e-mail to csrecruit at cse.ust.hk. Priority will be given to applications received by 15 December 2015. Applicants will be promptly acknowledged through e-mail upon receiving the electronic application material. (Information provided by applicants will be used for recruitment and other employment-related purposes.) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: dyyeung.vcf Type: text/x-vcard Size: 308 bytes Desc: not available URL: From bressler.stevenl at gmail.com Wed Oct 14 09:40:17 2015 From: bressler.stevenl at gmail.com (Steven Bressler) Date: Wed, 14 Oct 2015 09:40:17 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: Funded PhD Positions Available Message-ID: PHD POSITIONS IN COMPLEX SYSTEMS & BRAIN SCIENCES CENTER FOR COMPLEX SYSTEMS & BRAIN SCIENCES FLORIDA ATLANTIC UNIVERSITY Applications are currently being accepted for funded PhD training in Complex Systems & Brain Sciences. The aim of this 5-year graduate program is to train scientists to perform cutting-edge brain research that combines computational modeling, laboratory biology, and medical imaging. Students learn how this combination can yield powerful insights into the operation of the human brain as a complex dynamical system. Individuals with undergraduate degrees in any pertinent discipline are invited to apply. The program offers multi-year stipends and tuition remission. Our students learn to fully participate in multi-disciplinary approaches to brain research. Past graduates have pursued careers at academic institutions such as Harvard, Brown, Emory, NYU, the Salk Institute, and the Neurosciences Institute, at private industry companies such as IBM and Mathworks, and at research institutions such as NIH, US Air Force, NASA, and NRL. Research opportunities are available using behavioral, computational, and neuroscientific methods. Research projects will focus on approaches to understanding the brain as a complex system, with possible concentrations in areas such as computational neuroscience, cognitive neuroscience, systems neuroscience, neurorobotics, molecular neurobiology, cellular physiology, and neuronal regeneration. A new 3T scanner and multi-channel EEG recording systems will be available for neuroimaging research. Opportunities also exist for research collaborations with the new Marcus Neuroscience Institute at Boca Raton Regional Hospital (BRRH). Desirable qualifications include: * training in neuroscience * training in cognitive science * training in complexity, network science, or graph theory * quantitative training in physics, mathematics, computer science, or related fields * programming experience (Matlab, C/C++, python, R) * English speaking and writing skills FACULTY Elan Barenholtz: Psychophysical and computational approaches to visual and multisensory perception and recognition. Janet Blanks: Gene therapy, retinal degeneration, neuroprotection in the retina, mammalian retinal development and differentiation. Steven Bressler: Cognitive neurodynamics: cognitive dynamics in large-scale cortical networks. Armin Fuchs: Analysis of large scale brain activity patterns and combining noninvasive recording technologies, i.e. EEG, MEG and functional MRI. Howard Hock: Mechanisms for detection of motion information serving different perceptual functions; role of global-to-local feedback in formation of global motion patterns; computational models for motion detection and perception of bistable motion; motion mechanisms spared by cortical brain damage; motion percepts diagnostic for perceptual grouping of object surfaces. Sang Hong: Color vision, motion processing, visual awareness, facial expression perception, and multi-sensory integration using psychophysical, eye-tracking, and fMRI methodologies. Scott Kelso: Mechanisms of self-organization underlying the coordination of brain and behavior. Howard Prentice: Ischemic adaptations, neurodegenerative disease, brain anoxia, mitochondrial dysfunction and aging processes. Wen Shen: Electrophysiology of channels and receptors, transporters in neurodevelopment and adult system, signal transduction in retinal circuits. Summer Sheremata: Visual short-term memory and attention. Robert Stackman: Neurobiology of learning and memory, spatial navigation, brain representations of space, mouse models of Alzheimer's disease. Emmanuelle Tognoli: EEG coordination dynamics of human behavior: large-scale integration within and between brains. Robert Vertes: Neurophysiology/neuroanatomy. Functional organization of the brainstem and its role in controlling activity of the forebrain. Jang Wu: Neurotransmitters and neurological disorders. Qualified students are encouraged to apply to the program by following the instructions at the Center for Complex Systems & Brain Sciences web site ( http://www.ccs.fau.edu/). Applications should be submitted by February 15, 2016. The Center for Complex Systems & Brain Sciences at Florida Atlantic University is located in Boca Raton, situated between West Palm Beach and Fort Lauderdale, with easy access to the rich cultural life of the Miami-Dade metropolitan area. Steven L Bressler, PhD Interim Director and Professor Center for Complex Systems & Brain Sciences Florida Atlantic University -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From bobak.shahriari at gmail.com Tue Oct 13 12:10:03 2015 From: bobak.shahriari at gmail.com (Bobak Shahriari) Date: Tue, 13 Oct 2015 16:10:03 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: CFP: NIPS 2015 Workshop on Bayesian Optimization (deadline Oct 23) Message-ID: NIPS 2015 Workshop on Bayesian Optimization Montreal, QC, Canada, 12 December 2015 bayesopt.github.io *Workshop overview:* The NIPS Workshop on Bayesian Optimization is calling for contributions on theoretical models, empirical studies, and applications of Bayesian optimization. This year will focus on scaling existing approaches to larger evaluation budgets, higher-dimensional search spaces, and more complex input spaces. While the computational complexity of common probabilistic regression models used in Bayesian optimization have confined it to relatively low-dimensional problems and small evaluation budgets, there have, in recent years, been several advances in scaling these probabilistic models to more demanding application domains. Furthermore, many applications of Bayesian optimization only make sense when considering concurrent evaluations, which departs from the traditional, strictly sequential Bayesian optimization framework. Recent theoretical and practical efforts have addressed the mini-batch, or parallel, evaluation framework. Finally, as always, We also welcome challenge papers on possible applications or datasets. *Important dates:* Submission deadline: October 23rd, 2015 Notification: November 2nd, 2015 Camera ready: December 4th, 2015 *Invited speakers:* Zoubin Ghahramani (University of Cambridge) Andreas Krause (ETH Zurich) Jeff Schneider (Carnegie Mellon University) Marc Deisenroth (Imperial College London) *Further details and instructions:* See also the workshop website for more details and submission instructions. Submissions can be made through cmt.research.microsoft.com/BO2015. *Organizers:* Nando de Freitas (Google DeepMind/Oxford University) Ryan Adams (Harvard University) Bobak Shahriari (University of British Columbia) Roberto Calandra (TU Darmstadt) Amar Shah (University of Cambridge) Best, Bobak -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From bjmiller at mit.edu Wed Oct 14 15:11:41 2015 From: bjmiller at mit.edu (Ben Miller) Date: Wed, 14 Oct 2015 15:11:41 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: 1st CfP: CMN'16, Seventh International Workshop on Computational Models of Narrative (7 March 2016 / 11-13 July 2016) Message-ID: <561EA8ED.3010200@mit.edu> * ---FIRST CALL FOR PAPERS--- Seventh International Workshop on Computational Models of Narrative (CMN'16) Advancing the Science of Narrative Special Focus: Computational Narrative and the Humanities a satellite workshop of: Digital Humanities 2016 (DH2016) 11-13 July 2016 Krak?w, Poland http://narrative.csail.mit.edu/cmn16/ ---IMPORTANT DATES--- 7 March 2016. Submission deadline. 11 April 2016. Notification of acceptance. 16 May 2016. Final Camera Ready Versions Due. 11-13 July 2016. CMN?16. 11-16 July 2016. DH2016. ---WORKSHOP AIMS--- The workshop series, Computational Models of Narrative (CMN) is dedicated to advancing the computationally-grounded scientific study of narrative. Now in its seventh iteration, the workshop has a tradition of crossing academic borders and bringing together researchers from different disciplines on a common object of study. Narrative provides a model for organizing and communicating experience, knowledge, and culture. Investigations of narrative operations in textual, aural, and visual media have been systematically pursued in the humanities since before the early structural linguistics and folklorist inspired work of the Russian Formalists, and in the computing sciences since before the early cognitive science inspired work on scripts and frames. Research continues on computational approaches across the humanities and sciences. In order to appreciate the various domains and approaches connected to the computationally enabled study of narratives and narrative theory, it is becoming increasingly clear that research in this area requires engagement from many communities of interest. Peer-reviewed full proceedings from CMN?13, ?14, and ?15 are each available in the OpenAccess Series in Informatics (OASIcs) published by Schloss Dagstuhl; peer-reviewed proceedings from CMN?11 and CMN?12 were published by AAAI and LREC, respectively. ---SPECIAL FOCUS: COMPUTATIONAL NARRATIVE AND THE HUMANITIES--- This inter-disciplinary workshop will be an appropriate venue for papers addressing fundamental topics and questions regarding narrative. Papers should be relevant to the computational modeling, and scientific or humanistic understanding of narrative. The workshop will have a special focus on how the computational modeling, analysis, or generation of narrative has affected approaches in the humanities for studying and generating narrative in or across textual, aural, or visual media. Possible themes could connect to the representation of narrative, connections between cognition and narrative or knowledge representation and narrative, the use of heuristics to handle complexity, incorporation of insights about human thinking, the use of narrative to organize information in the humanities, the relationship between top-down and bottom-up approaches for narrative understanding, or how narrative is seen to function differently depending upon the medium. Regardless of its topic, reported work should provide insight of use to the scientific understanding or computational modeling of narratives. Discussing technological applications or motivations is not prohibited, but is not required. We accept both finished research and more tentative exploratory work. We invite and encourage submissions either as full papers or position papers, through the workshop's EasyChair website:https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=cmn16 We also invite you to submit an abstract soon so that we can gauge the number of submissions we can expect. (Submitting an abstract is possible without submitting the full paper at the same time.) Full papers should contain original research and have to fit within 16 pages; position papers can report on work-in-progress, research plans or projects and have to fit within four pages plus one page of references. Illustrative Topics and Questions - How can computational narratives be studied from a humanities point of view? - Are generative models of narrative texts, movies or video games possible, desirable, and useful? - What comprises the set of possible narrative arcs? Is there such a set? How many possible story lines are there? - Is narrative structure universal, or are there systematic differences in narratives from different cultures? - How are narratives affected by the media used to convey them? - What aspects of cross-linguistic work has narrative research neglected? - What opportunities are there for narrative analysis across languages? - What makes narrative different from a list of events or facts? - How do conceptions and models of spatiality or temporality influence narrative and narrative theory? - What are the details of the relationship between narrative and language, image, or sound? - How is narrative knowledge captured and represented? - How are narratives indexed and retrieved? Is there a universal scheme for encoding episodic information? - What shared resources are required for the computational study of narrative? What should a ?Story Bank? contain? - What shared resources and tools are available, or how can already-extant resources be adapted to the study of narrative? - What are appropriate formal or computational representations for narrative? - How should we evaluate computational and formal models of narrative? - Can narrative be subsumed by current models of higher-level cognition, or does it require new approaches? - How do narratives mediate our cognitive experiences, or affect our cognitive abilities? - How can narrative systems be applied to problem-solving? - How far are we from a theory of narrative adaptation across media? ---ORGANIZING COMMITTEE--- - Antonio Lieto (University of Turin, Italy) - Ben Miller (Georgia State University, USA) - R?mi Ronfard (Inria, LJK, University of Grenoble, France) - Stephen Ware (University of New Orleans, USA) - Mark A. Finlayson (Florida International University, USA) ---PROGRAM COMMITTEE--- David Elson, Columbia University & Google Floris Bex, Utrecht University Rossana Damiano, University of Turin Kerstin Dautenhahn, University of Hertfordshire Pablo Gerv?s, Complutense University of Madrid Andrew Gordon, ICT Livia Polanyi, LDM Associates Marie-Laure Ryan, University of Colorado Boulder Tim Tangherlini, UCLA Mariet Theune, University of Twente Atif Waraich, Manchester Metropolitan University Mehul Bhatt, University of Bremen Emmett Tomai, University of Texas-Pan American Neil Cohn, UCSD Inderjeet Mani, Yahoo Labs Loizos Michael, Open University of Cyprus Chris Meister, Hamburg University Fritz Breithaupt, Indiana University Benedikt L?we, Universit?t Hamburg * -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From vijay at physics.upenn.edu Thu Oct 15 11:28:37 2015 From: vijay at physics.upenn.edu (Vijay Balasubramanian) Date: Thu, 15 Oct 2015 08:28:37 -0700 Subject: Connectionists: Fellowships in Theoretical and Computational Neuroscience at the University of Pennsylvania Message-ID: <561FC625.90601@physics.upenn.edu> *Postdoctoral Fellowships with the Computational Neuroscience Initiative **at the University of Pennsylvania* The Computational Neuroscience Initiative (CNI) of the University of Pennsylvania seeks exceptional candidates for a CNI Postdoctoral Fellowship. Candidates with strong quantitative skills from a variety of fields including neuroscience, cognitive science, psychology, physics, mathematics, and engineering will be considered. The selected Fellow will join an inter-disciplinary research environment in historic Philadelphia. CNI Fellows will be encouraged to foster collaborative research between multiple labs. The CNI supports interdisciplinary and collaborative research at the frontier of knowledge about the brain, behavior, and the mind. We focus on systems-level approaches that integrate theory and computation with experiment. Our members include faculty, post-docs, and students from multiple programs and departments at Penn. Our research and training spans the three major elements of the field of Computational Neuroscience: 1) Theory ? understanding the brain as an information-processing machine; 2) Experiments ? providing quantitative methods to aid in the design, implementation, analysis, and interpretation of empirical studies that probe all levels of brain function, from molecules to behavior; and 3) Applications ? including robotics, brain-machine interfaces, and new clinical tools. For more information about the CNI, please visit our website at https://cni.upenn.edu. Applications may be submitted by email to compneuro at sas.upenn.edu, and should consist of a CV and a cover letter stating the candidate's research experience and reasons for applying to this Fellowship. Please arrange for up to three letters of recommendation to be sent to the same email address with the candidate's name in the subject line. Review of applications will begin on November 15 and continue on a rolling basis until the positions are filled. The University of Pennsylvania values diversity and seeks talented individuals from diverse backgrounds (http://jobs.hr.upenn.edu). Vijay Balasubramanian, Director David Brainard, Co-Director Joshua Gold, Co-Director -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From angelo.arleo at inserm.fr Sat Oct 17 11:55:57 2015 From: angelo.arleo at inserm.fr (angelo.arleo at inserm.fr) Date: Sat, 17 Oct 2015 17:55:57 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: Fully-funded PhD position in Computational Neuroscience at the Vision Institute, Paris, France Message-ID: <6A96FC12-A1C0-46F6-8B2D-D6E4E2EDDAD5@inserm.fr> PHD POSITION IN COMPUTATIONAL NEUROSCIENCE AT THE INSTITUTE OF VISION, PARIS, FRANCE Job description Applications are invited for one PhD position at the Aging in Vision and Action laboratory, Institute of Vision (University Pierre & Marie Curie Sorbonne Universities, INSERM CNRS, Paris, France). The PhD student will model visual-based spatial cognitive functions. She/he will build a spatial learning model based on spiking neural networks accounting for existing knowledge on the neural substrates of spatial memory and navigation in animals and humans. She/he will use this model to study the impact of healthy visual aging on neural coding and adaptation mechanisms mediating spatial orientation and navigation. The PhD student will work hand-in-hand with experimentalists in our laboratory. This project will be carried under the supervision of Angelo Arleo & Denis Sheynikhovich (Institute of Vision, Paris, France). Requirements Applicants should have a strong quantitative background (physics, engineering, computer science, applied mathematics), and a keen interest in reverse-engineering the brain. Knowledge on computational neuroscience, machine learning, image processing and programming languages (Matlab, C or Python) are a plus. The successful candidate is expected to work in an interdisciplinary environment with collaborations with biologists, theoreticians and clinicians. She/he will be awarded a 3-year PhD fellowship from the University Pierre and Marie Curie Sorbonne Universities. Working environment and laboratory The Institute of Vision is one of the top international centers for integrated research on vision and eye diseases. It is located at the heart of Paris, on the campus of the National Hospital Center for Ophthalmology. The Institute of Vision includes multidisciplinary research groups, which share state-of-the-art platforms for human and animal experimentation. It also harbors a clinical investigation center, which fosters truly translational research activity. More information can be found online. The Aging in Vision and Action laboratory aims at evaluating and understanding the functional aspects of the degeneration mechanisms related to visual aging. This research has the potential to produce fundamental knowledge suited for opening to assistive technological developments and rehabilitation solutions. The faculty members of the Aging in Vision and Action laboratory are specialized in visual psychophysics, neurobiology of spatial orientation, neural coding, neurocomputational modeling, and clinical evaluation. The group has access to a wide range of state-of-the-art platforms including eye trackers, motion capture rooms, virtual reality environments, brain imaging, artificial street labs and home labs. How to apply Candidates should send a single pdf file containing a motivation letter, a full CV, and names and contact information of at least two referees, to angelo.arleo at inserm.fr. Short listed candidates will be contacted for an interview (either face-to-face or via videoconference). For further inquiries, please contact Angelo Arleo, angelo.arleo at inserm.fr, phone: +33 (0)1 53 46 26 52. Best regards, Angelo ARLEO Institute of Vision, Aging in Vision and Action Lab, CNRS - INSERM - University Pierre&Marie Curie, 17, rue Moreau F-75012 Paris, France Phone: +33 (0)1 53 46 26 52 Mobile: +33 (0)6 46 84 09 56 Email: angelo.arleo at inserm.fr; angelo.arleo at upmc.fr -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From volker.roth at unibas.ch Fri Oct 16 09:44:31 2015 From: volker.roth at unibas.ch (Volker Roth) Date: Fri, 16 Oct 2015 15:44:31 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: University of Basel (Switzerland): open PhD position in Machine Learning / Signal Processing. Message-ID: <5620FF3F.1070004@unibas.ch> University of Basel (Switzerland): open PhD position in Machine Learning / Signal Processing. Applications are invited for a PhD position in computer science, associated with the interdisciplinary research project "Computer-aided Methods for Diagnosis and Early Risk Assessment for Parkinson's Disease Dementia'', which is funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation. General description. In collaboration with the Section of Clinical Neurophysiology at the University Hospital of Basel as well as with the Department of Psychology of the University Basel we investigate biomarkers for prediction of Parkinson's disease dementia in the early pre-symptomatic stage. Patients with risk of Parkinson's disease dementia should be identified by using quantitative EEG, genetic risk markers and neuropsychological tests. Our contribution. The main focus of our research group at the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science will concern machine learning models for prediction, feature selection, structure detection, connectivity analysis and causality mining based on EEG and near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) signals as well as genetic markers. The position will be associated with the PhD program "Image Understanding and Intelligent Data Analysis''. Prerequisites. Candidates should have a Master's degree in computer science, applied mathematics, physics or related fields. They are interested to work in an interdisciplinary research environment and have good communication skills (English). Successful candidates will be awarded a fellowship with a competitive salary. Applications with a full CV, short statement of research interests and names of at least one referee should be submitted in electronic form to: volker.roth at unibas.ch Submission deadline: Nov 30, 2015 -- ======================================================================= Prof. Dr. Volker Roth Department of Mathematics and Computer Science University of Basel Tel.: +41-(0)61-2670549 Spiegelgasse. 1, email: volker.roth at unibas.ch CH-4051 Basel, Switzerland http://bmda.cs.unibas.ch/ ======================================================================= From kenneth.harris at ucl.ac.uk Fri Oct 16 09:56:40 2015 From: kenneth.harris at ucl.ac.uk (Harris, Kenneth) Date: Fri, 16 Oct 2015 13:56:40 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: Postdoctoral opportunities in London and Stockholm Message-ID: Dear Connectionists, I would like to advertise three postdoctoral jobs at the interface of computational, systems, and molecular neuroscience. These positions form part of a new collaboration between UCL, University of Oxford, and the Karolinska Institute. The aim of this project is to understand the great diversity of cell types present in cortex, and their roles in cortical circuits and in the resulting computations. While the three positions require diverse skill sets, all offer the opportunity to work as part of a closely integrated, multidisciplinary team focused on solving one of the most important challenges in current neuroscience. Further details about the project can be found at https://www.ucl.ac.uk/cortexlab/neuromics. Position 1: Molecular analysis of cortical tissue The successful applicant will apply novel multiplexed RNA analysis techniques to cortical tissue, to characterize the molecular fingerprints of distinct cortical cell types. This position would suit a scientist with experience of molecular biology, as well as strong knowledge and interest in systems neuroscience. Prior experience of in situ RNA methods would be beneficial but is not essential for outstanding applicants. The successful applicant will be based initially in Stockholm to learn and refine the novel molecular techniques to be used, and will then move to London to apply them to tissue previously studied in vivo two-photon calcium imaging. Position 2: In vivo recording The successful applicant will use two-photon microscopy with genetically encoded calcium sensors to record from large neuronal populations in subjects performing behavioral tasks, which will then be subjected to post-hoc molecular analysis. In addition to experimental recordings, this position will involve computational work to analyze the large amount of data produced by these experiments. This position would suit a scientist with experience of experimental neurophysiology as well as strong quantitative/computational skills. Prior experience with two-photon microscopy would be beneficial but is not essential for outstanding applicants. The position will be based in London. Position 3: Computational analysis and modeling The successful applicant will develop new computational methods to process the large amounts of data arising from these experiments, and to use it to build computational models of cortical circuit interactions. The data arising from the project is diverse, consisting of images, video, and high-dimensional gene expression vectors. Analysis of this unique data set will require a combination of techniques including digital image processing, machine learning, as well as neural circuit modeling. The position would suit a candidate with a background in computational neuroscience, theoretical physics, computer science, mathematics, or engineering. Prior experience with digital image processing and machine learning techniques would be beneficial but is not essential for outstanding applicants. The position will be based in London. To apply for one of the positions, go to http://www.ucl.ac.uk/hr/jobs, click "Current employment opportunities at UCL", and enter Reference number 1501576 (molecular), 1503273 (recording), or 1503434 (computational). For an informal discussion, please send a CV to kenneth.harris at ucl.ac.uk. The closing date for applications is November 8th, 2015. --------------------- Kenneth D. Harris Professor of Quantitative Neuroscience Institute of Neurology, Department of Neuroscience, Physiology, and Pharmacology University College London 21 University Street London WC1E 6DE Phone: +44 (0) 20 3108 2410 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From eero at cns.nyu.edu Fri Oct 16 12:29:23 2015 From: eero at cns.nyu.edu (Eero Simoncelli) Date: Fri, 16 Oct 2015 12:29:23 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Connectionists: Doctoral studies in Computational/Theoretical Neuroscience at NYU Message-ID: <201510161629.t9GGTN124462@calaf.cns.nyu.edu> New York University is home to a thriving interdisciplinary community of researchers using computational and theoretical approaches in neuroscience. We are interested in exceptional PhD candidates with strong quantitative training (e.g., physics,mathematics, engineering) coupled with a clear interest in brain sciences. A listing of faculty, sorted by their primary departmental affiliation, is given below. Doctoral programs are flexible, allowing students to pursue research across departmental boundaries. Nevertheless, admissions are handled separately by each department, and students interested in pursuing graduate studies should submit an application to the program that best fits their goals and interests. Center for Neural Science (CNS) (deadline: 1 December) [http://www.cns.nyu.edu/doctoral/] * Andre Fenton - Molecular, neural, behavioral, and computationalaspects of memory. * Paul Glimcher - Decision-making in humans and animals. Neuroeconomics. * Roozbeh Kiani - Vision and decision-making. * Wei Ji Ma (also in Psychology) - Perception, working memory, and decision making. * Tony Movshon - Vision and visual development. * Bijan Pesaran - Neuronal dynamics and decision making. * Alex Reyes - Functional interactions of neurons in a network. * John Rinzel (also in Mathematics) - Biophysical mechanisms and theory of neural computation. * Robert Shapley - Visual physiology and perception. * Eero Simoncelli - Computational vision and audition. Statistical estimation. * Xiao-Jing Wang - Computational neuroscience, decision-making and working memory, neural circuits. Neuroscience and Physiology program, School of Medicine (deadline: 1 December) [http://neuroscience.med.nyu.edu/training-programs/graduate-program-neuroscience-physiology-school-medicine] * Gyorgy Buzsaki - Rhythms in neural networks. * Dmitry Rinberg - Sensory information processing in the behaving animal. * Mario Svirsky - Auditory neural prostheses; experimental/computational studies of speech production/perception. Psychology, Cognition & Perception program (deadline: 1 December) [http://www.psych.nyu.edu/programs/cp/] * Todd Gureckis - Memory, learning, and decision processes. * David Heeger (also in CNS) - fMRI, computational neuroscience, vision, attention. * Michael Landy - Computational approaches to vision. * Laurence Maloney - Mathematical approaches to psychology and neuroscience. * Gary Marcus - Origins of the human mind. * Denis Pelli - Visual object recognition. * Jonathan Winawer - Visual perception and memory. Mathematics (deadline: 18 December ) [http://math.nyu.edu/degree/phd/] * David Cai - Nonlinear stochastic behavior in physical and biological systems. * David McLaughlin - Nonlinear wave equations, computational visual neuroscience. * Aaditya Rangan - computational neurobiology, numerical analysis. * Charles Peskin - Mathematical biology. * Michael Shelley - Modeling and large-scale computation, computational visual neuroscience. * Daniel Tranchina - Information processing in the retina. * Lai-Sang Young - Dynamical systems, statistical physics, computational modeling and theoretical neuroscience. Computer Science (deadline: 12 December) [http://www.cs.nyu.edu/web/Research/Areas/graphicsvisionui.html] * Davi Geiger - Computational vision and learning. * Yann LeCun - machine learning, hierarchical visual processing, robotics. Economics (deadline: 18 December) [http://econ.as.nyu.edu/page/phd] * Andrew Caplin - Economic theory, neurobiology of decision. * Andrew Schotter - Experimental economics, game theory, neurobiology of decision. From marcus.hutter at gmx.net Thu Oct 15 20:55:01 2015 From: marcus.hutter at gmx.net (Marcus Hutter) Date: Fri, 16 Oct 2015 11:55:01 +1100 Subject: Connectionists: Research Fellow Position Available at AI@RSCS@ANU Message-ID: <56204AE5.2040505@gmx.net> Position: Research Fellow Intelligent Agents Group Research School of Computer Science Australian National University We are seeking an outstanding Research Fellow with excellent mathematical background and research expertise in * Machine Learning or * (Algorithmic) Information Theory or * (Bayesian) Statistics or * Artificial Intelligence or * related area. Possible backgrounds are a PhD, or near completion of a PhD, in mathematics, physics, computer science, engineering, or related. * Location: Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, Australia * The new employee will interact with Marcus Hutter and other people in the RSCS at the ANU. * The position is available immediately - fixed term - for 2 years - potential prolongation by another 2 years. * Salary Range for Research Fellow: Level B: A$90'000 - A$100'000 per year plus 17% superannuation. * Enquiries: Prof. Marcus Hutter, E: marcus.hutter at anu.edu.au, T: +61 2 6125 1605, F: + 61 6125 8651. * Closing Date: 30 November 2015 * Further information for applicants: http://jobs.anu.edu.au/cw/en/job/505313/ RSCS also has a couple of "tenure track" positions available, initially for 5 years. Exceptional candidates in all areas related to computer science will be considered. For details, see http://jobs.anu.edu.au/cw/en/job/505791/ Thanks for your interest ______________________ Marcus Hutter, Professor Associate Director RSCS RSISE, Room B259, Building 115 Australian National University Corner of North and Daley Road Canberra ACT 2601, Australia Phone: +61(0)2 612 51605 (time zone GMT+10:00) Fax: +61(0)2 612 58651 Email: marcus.hutter at anu.edu.au http://www.hutter1.net/ --------------------------------------------------------------- The Australian National University (ANU) is located in the city of Canberra, the Federal Capital of Australia. The ANU consistently ranks top among all Universities in the southern hemisphere, in the top 5 in the Asia/Pacific region, and in the top 50 worldwide. From ilpincy+ants at gmail.com Fri Oct 16 16:03:22 2015 From: ilpincy+ants at gmail.com (Carlo Pinciroli) Date: Fri, 16 Oct 2015 16:03:22 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: [1st CFP] ANTS 2016: Tenth International Conference on Swarm Intelligence Message-ID: *** Apologies if you have received this CFP more than once *** ANTS 2016 Tenth International Conference on Swarm Intelligence September 7-9, 2016. Brussels, Belgium Call for papers prepared on October 5, 2015 More details and up-to-date information at http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/ants2016 Scope of the Conference ======================= Swarm intelligence is the discipline that deals with the study of self-organizing processes both in nature and in artificial systems. Researchers in ethology and animal behavior have proposed a number of models to explain interesting aspects of social insect behavior such as self-organization and shape-formation. Recently, algorithms and methods inspired by these models have been proposed to solve difficult problems in many domains. An example of a particularly successful research direction in swarm intelligence is ant colony optimization, the main focus of which is on discrete optimization problems. Ant colony optimization has been applied successfully to a large number of difficult discrete optimization problems including the traveling salesman problem, the quadratic assignment problem, scheduling, vehicle routing, etc., as well as to routing in telecommunication networks. Another interesting approach is that of particle swarm optimization, that mainly focuses on continuous optimization problems. Here too, a number of successful applications can be found in the recent literature. Swarm robotics is another relevant field. Here, the focus is on applying swarm intelligence techniques to the control of large groups of cooperating autonomous robots. ANTS 2016 will give researchers in swarm intelligence the opportunity to meet, to present their latest research, and to discuss current developments and applications. The three-day conference will be held in Brussels, Belgium, on September 7-9, 2016. Relevant Research Areas ======================= ANTS 2016 solicits contributions dealing with any aspect of swarm intelligence. Typical, but not exclusive, topics of interest are: Behavioral models of social insects or other animal societies that can stimulate new algorithmic approaches. Empirical and theoretical research in swarm intelligence. Application of swarm intelligence methods, such as ant colony optimization or particle swarm optimization, to real-world problems. Theoretical and experimental research in swarm robotics systems. Publication Details =================== Conference proceedings will be published by Springer in the LNCS. series. The journal Swarm Intelligence will publish a special issue dedicated to ANTS 2016 that will contain extended versions of the best research works presented at the conference. Further details will soon be published on the web site. Conference Location =================== Auditorium R42.4.502, Solvay Brussels School of Economics and Management, Campus du Solbosch, Universit? Libre de Bruxelles, Av. F.D. Roosevelt 42, 1050 Brussels, Belgium. Best Paper Award ================ A best paper award will be presented at the conference. Further Information =================== Up-to-date information will be published on the web site http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/ants2016/. For information about local arrangements, registration forms, etc., please refer to the above-mentioned web site or contact the local organizers at the address below. Conference Address ================== ANTS 2016 IRIDIA CP 194/6 Tel +32-2-6502729 Universit? Libre de Bruxelles Fax +32-2-6502715 Av. F. D. Roosevelt 50 http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/ants2016 1050 Bruxelles, Belgium email: ants at iridia.ulb.ac.be Important Dates =============== Submission deadline March 2, 2016 Notification of acceptance May 4, 2016 Camera ready copy May 18, 2016 Conference September 7-9, 2016 ANTS 2016 Organizing Committee ============================== General chair Marco Dorigo, Universit? libre de Bruxelles, Belgium Vice-chairs Mauro Birattari, Universit? libre de Bruxelles, Belgium Thomas St?tzle, Universit? libre de Bruxelles, Belgium Technical program chairs Manuel L?pez-Ib??ez, University of Manchester, UK Xiaodong Li, RMIT University, Australia Kazuhiro Ohkura, Hiroshima University, Japan Publication chair Carlo Pinciroli, ?cole Polytechnique de Montr?al, Canada -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From fmschleif at googlemail.com Fri Oct 16 09:27:52 2015 From: fmschleif at googlemail.com (Frank-Michael Schleif) Date: Fri, 16 Oct 2015 15:27:52 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: Review paper about Indefinite Proximity Learning Message-ID: Dear all, I would like to point you to our recently published review paper about ''Indefinite Proximity Learning'' published at NECO which is now also available as --- open access --- article http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/full/10.1162/NECO_a_00770#.ViD6Et-oHCI ABSTRACT Efficient learning of a data analysis task strongly depends on the data representation. Most methods rely on (symmetric) similarity or dissimilarity representations by means of metric inner products or distances, providing easy access to powerful mathematical formalisms like kernel or branch-and-bound approaches. Similarities and dissimilarities are, however, often naturally obtained by nonmetric proximity measures that cannot easily be handled by classical learning algorithms. Major efforts have been undertaken to provide approaches that can either directly be used for such data or to make standard methods available for these types of data. We provide a comprehensive survey for the field of learning with nonmetric proximities. First, we introduce the formalism used in nonmetric spaces and motivate specific treatments for nonmetric proximity data. Second, we provide a systematization of the various approaches. For each category of approaches, we provide a comparative discussion of the individual algorithms and address complexity issues and generalization properties. In a summarizing section, we provide a larger experimental study for the majority of the algorithms on standard data sets. We also address the problem of large-scale proximity learning, which is often overlooked in this context and of major importance to make the method relevant in practice. The algorithms we discuss are in general applicable for proximity-based clustering, one-class classification, classification, regression, and embedding approaches. In the experimental part, we focus on classification tasks. all the best Frank-Michael Schleif -- ------------------------------------------------------- PD Dr. rer. nat. habil. Frank-Michael Schleif School of Computer Science The University of Birmingham Edgbaston Birmingham B15 2TT United Kingdom - email: fschleif at techfak.uni-bielefeld.de http://promos-science.blogspot.de/ ------------------------------------------------------- From machizawa at hiroshima-u.ac.jp Mon Oct 19 11:40:47 2015 From: machizawa at hiroshima-u.ac.jp (Maro Machizawa) Date: Tue, 20 Oct 2015 00:40:47 +0900 Subject: Connectionists: Postdoc/Assistant Professor & visiting professor positions Message-ID: Dear potential applicants on the Connectionists mailing list, Please find attached PDF announcement for: A position of postdoc/assistant professor (research) and visiting opportunities for associate/full professors at the Center for KANSEI Innovation at Hiroshima University, Japan. Looking forward to hearing from motivated candidates. Best Wishes, Maro Machizawa, PhD (Neurology) Assistant Professor Dept. Psychiatry & Neurosciences Center for KANSEI Innovation TEL: +81(0)82-257-1722; FAX: +81(0)82-257-1723 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: HiroshimaCOI_CareerOpportunities.pdf Type: application/pdf Size: 45881 bytes Desc: not available URL: From jens.lindemann at uni-bielefeld.de Mon Oct 19 04:01:58 2015 From: jens.lindemann at uni-bielefeld.de (Jens Peter Lindemann) Date: Mon, 19 Oct 2015 10:01:58 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: Postdoc Position: Computational Neuroethology / Insect Vision Message-ID: <5624A376.2090207@Uni-Bielefeld.DE> Bielefeld University Department of Neurobiology & Cluster of Excellence ?Cognitive Interaction technology? (CITEC) Postdoc Position in the field of Computational Neuroethology of Visually Guided Insect Orientation Behaviour (A13, 2x3 years depending on performance) It is the overarching goal of to the Neurobiology group at Bielefeld University to strive to understand how biological systems integrate perception with action. We focus ? with behavioural, neural and modelling approaches - on the context of visual orientation, visual pursuit, spatial learning and navigation and seek to abstract principles that allow artificial systems to move, orient and navigate autonomously and intelligently. What do we expect? ------------------ We are seeking a highly-motivated candidate who meshes synergistically with the research profile of the group and strives for understanding the computational mechanisms underlying visually guided behaviour of insects (preferably blowflies or bumblebees). Quantitative behavioural, electrophysiological and/or modelling approaches targeting the neural mechanisms underlying behavioural control define the field of activity. You are expected to have a PhD and first-hand experience with at least one of the mentioned approaches proven by high-quality publications. While conducting your own research project you should also be dedicated to cooperate and interact with other researchers in the group working with complementary approaches and to actively contribute ideas and expertise. You are an ideal candidate if you are experienced in doing experimental and/or modelling analyses on insects. Moreover, knowledge in advanced techniques in data analysis, programming experience (preferably Matlab) as well as excellent writing skills are essential. However, even if you match this profile only in parts, you are encouraged to apply - given you are prepared to develop with great enthusiasm new skills, learn new techniques and are eager to contribute interesting research results to the overall research field of the group. Apart from doing excellent research you are expected to teach with great commitment (four hours per week) in BSc programmes as well as in the international MSc programme ?Behaviour: From Neural Mechanisms to Evolution?. Since our BSc programmes are taught in German, candidates not yet sufficiently proficient in German are expected to acquire sufficient language proficiency within two years to teach independently in the BSc programmes. The successful candidate is also expected to contribute significantly to applications for third-party research funds. What do we offer? ----------------- We offer a position in an enthusiastic research team working in a stimulating environment with excellent facilities for laboratory work as well as computational analyses (e.g. high-speed video techniques, virtual reality arenas for behavioural and neurophysiological experiments, and innovative approaches to data analysis). The Neurobiology group is cooperating with other groups in the Faculty of Biology as well as at the Center of Cognitive Interaction Technology (CITEC) in Bielefeld, but also internationally. Where to apply? --------------- For further inquiries about the position, please contact: Prof. Dr. Martin Egelhaaf, Neurobiology & CITEC, Bielefeld University martin.egelhaaf at uni-bielefeld.de Please send your application including a letter - outlining your academic education and past research, - your motivation for this position and your specific experience (max. 2 pages), - CV, - list of publications and - contact details of 2-3 referees in a single (!) PDF file to Prof. Dr. Martin Egelhaaf Neurobiology & CITEC Bielefeld University neurobiologie at uni-bielefeld.de Applications will be considered until the position is filled. What are the research goals of our group? ----------------------------------------- Insects, such as blowflies or bumblebees (our current experimental animals), manage to solve complex spatial tasks: Flying insects, in general, avoid collisions with obstacles, and are able to detect appropriate landing sites and to approach them. Blowflies, for instance, perform highly virtuosic pursuit maneuvers of conspecifics in the context of mating behaviour. Bumblebees navigate to goals, such as their nest or a feeding site, over even large distances by using spatial landmark information that is perceived, learnt, and subsequently retrieved for finding the goal. With their miniature brains insects outperform man-made autonomous systems in these tasks at least with respect to computational expenditure and energy efficiency. Our research is based on the assumption that the brains of insects acquire the relevant spatial information about the environment by means of their visual system. Distances to objects can be computed from the movement of the objects? images across the eyes (?optic flow?). Any nearby object appears to move much faster than distant ones if the animal translates, e.g. moves on a straight course. Given the small number of nerve cells in insect brains and their limited reliability, extracting such information needs to rely on extremely efficient mechanisms. As a consequence of millions of years of evolution, these mechanisms are tightly linked to the sophisticated locomotion and gaze strategies of insects. We want to elucidate the computational principles, down to the level of neurons and neural networks, that generate and control visually guided behaviour in complex cluttered environments. In addition to experimental analyses with a wide range of methods, we also employ modelling approaches to derive formalised descriptions of the computational mechanisms in the insect?s brain. As a group affiliated with the Centre of Excellence 'Cognitive Interaction Technology' (CITEC), we cooperate with other CITEC colleagues in the field of computer science to incorporate the smart computational principles of biological visual systems into artificial systems, bringing them closer to the performance of their biological counterpart. For further information about our research profile have a look at our web site at http://web.biologie.uni-bielefeld.de/neurobiology. From chriskanan at gmail.com Mon Oct 19 14:16:47 2015 From: chriskanan at gmail.com (Christopher Kanan) Date: Mon, 19 Oct 2015 14:16:47 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: Funded MS and PhD Programs in Imaging Science at RIT Message-ID: *RIT GRADUATE PROGRAMS IN IMAGING SCIENCE* https://www.cis.rit.edu/ Application deadline: January 15, 2016 http://www.cis.rit.edu/graduate-programs/graduate-application-process ***** The Chester F. Carlson Center for Imaging Science at the Rochester Institute of Technology is inviting applications to its Ph.D. and M.S. programs in Imaging Science. *We have extremely active research groups in computer vision, machine learning, human vision, virtual reality, remote sensing, optics, medical imaging, astronomy, and more.* Graduate students at *both* the M.S. and Ph.D. levels are typically funded as Graduate Teaching Assistants during their first year, and as Research Assistants thereafter. The stipend for newly accepted Ph.D. students is currently $20,000, which does not include summer stipend. More details, including program structure, applications, and faculty members are available on our website: https://www.cis.rit.edu/ The closing date for applications is January 15, 2016. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From icml2016pc at gmail.com Mon Oct 19 16:10:08 2015 From: icml2016pc at gmail.com (ICML2016 Program Chairs) Date: Mon, 19 Oct 2015 16:10:08 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: ICML 2016 Call for Papers Message-ID: The 33rd International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML 2016) will be held in New York City from June 19 to 24, 2016. The conference will consist of one day of tutorials, followed by three days of main conference sessions, followed by two days of workshops. We invite submissions of papers on all topics related to machine learning for the conference proceedings, and proposals for tutorials and workshops. This year, ICML will adopt a single reviewing cycle, with a single paper deadline on February 5th. Submissions are managed through CMT : https://cmt.research.microsoft.com/ICML2016/Default.aspx Paper Format and Electronic Submission The submission of papers and the management of the paper reviewing process for the main conference will be entirely electronic. Submissions will be accepted until 02/05/2016, 23:59 Universal Time (3:59pm Pacific Daylight Time). Detailed formatting and submission instructions for authors will be available soon on the conference web site. Submitted papers can be up to eight pages long, not including references, and up to ten pages when references and acknowledgement are included. Any paper exceeding this length will automatically be rejected. Authors have the option of submitting a supplementary file containing further details of their work; it is entirely up to the reviewers to decide whether they wish to consult this additional material. The supplementary material must be submitted as a zip file, even if it only contains a single PDF document. All submissions must be anonymized and must follow the formatting guidelines in the templates; otherwise they will automatically be rejected. It is not appropriate to submit papers that are identical (or substantially similar) to versions that have been previously published, or accepted for publication, or that have been submitted in parallel to other conferences. Such submissions violate our dual submission policy. There are several exceptions to this rule: 1. Submission is permitted of a short version of a paper that has been submitted to a journal, but has not yet been published in that journal. Authors must declare such dual-submissions either through the CMT submission form, or via email to the program chairs (icml2016pc at gmail.com). It is the author's responsibility to make sure that the journal in question allows dual concurrent submissions to conferences. 2. Submission is permitted for papers presented or to be presented at conferences or workshops without proceedings (e.g., ICML or NIPS workshops), or with only abstracts published. 3. Submission is permitted for papers that have previously been made available as a technical report (or similar, e.g., in arXiv). In this case we suggest the authors not cite the report, so as to preserve anonymity. Finally, note that previously published papers with substantial overlap written by the authors must be cited in such a way so as to preserve author anonymity. Differences relative to these earlier papers must be explained in the text of the submission. For example, (?This work develops [our earlier work], which showed that??) Reviewing Criteria Accepted papers must contain significant novel results. Results can be either theoretical or empirical. Results will be judged on the degree to which they have been objectively established and/or their potential for scientific and technological impact. Organizing Committee General chair: John Langford (Microsoft Research) Program co-chairs: Nina Balcan (CMU) and Kilian Weinberger (Cornell University) Local organization chairs: Peder Olsen (IBM Research) and Marek Petrik (IBM Research) Tutorial co-chairs: Alina Beygelzimer (Yahoo! Labs) and Bernhard Schoelkopf (Max Planck Institute) Workshop co-chairs: Ruslan Salakhutdinov (University of Toronto) and Fei Sha (USC) Financial co-chairs: John Cunningham (Columbia University) and Gert Lanckriet (UCSD) and Robert Schapire (Microsoft Research) Publication co-chairs: Dan Roy (University of Toronto) and David Sontag (NYU) Workflow co-chairs: Jacob Gardner (Cornell) and Matthew Kusner (WUSTL) Sincerely, Nina Balcan (program co-chair) Kilian Weinberger (program co-chair) Jake Gardner (co-workflow chair) Matt Kusner (co-workflow chair) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rhaefner at bcs.rochester.edu Wed Oct 21 16:20:28 2015 From: rhaefner at bcs.rochester.edu (Ralf Haefner) Date: Wed, 21 Oct 2015 16:20:28 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: All-Level Faculty Positions in Interdisciplinary Research in Neurally-inspired Computing and Data Science Message-ID: <624D80A9-06F7-486A-B17B-0730AF28A07D@bcs.rochester.edu> All-Level Faculty Positions in Interdisciplinary Research in Data Science The University of Rochester has made data science the centerpiece of its 5-year strategic plan, committing to 20 new faculty lines in diverse areas, a new building, and the establishment of the Goergen Institute for Data Science. We are currently seeking applicants for tenure track or tenured positions in interdisciplinary research areas within data science. This search complements department-specific searches in data science currently underway. The interdisciplinary search focuses on recruiting candidates who are excited about engaging in collaborative research that connects advances in computational models and methods to the humanities, sciences, or medicine. Successful candidates will receive a primary appointment in one of the departments supporting the search, and a secondary appointment in at least one other department. Departments and programs supporting this search include Biomedical Engineering, Brain & Cognitive Sciences, Computer and Electrical Engineering, Computer Science, Digital Media Studies (a program of Art & Art History, English, and History), Linguistics, and Political Science. Potential cross-appointments with the School of Medicine and Dentistry will also be considered. Focus areas for this year?s interdisciplinary search are: ? Neurally-inspired Computing: Research in artificial neural networks, including the fundamental theory of deep learning, practical applications to tasks such as perception, or as a tool for modeling and understanding biological neural networks. ? Computer Vision and Image Analysis: Research in the theory and applications of computational methods of image or video understanding, with a particular interest in applications to biomedicine or the humanities. ? Computational Linguistics: Research in the theory or applications of natural language processing, with a particular interest in applications to linguistics, the social sciences, or the humanities. Apply online at: https://www.rochester.edu/faculty-recruiting . Direct questions about the search (but not applications) to michelle.vogl at rochester.edu . For more information about the Goergen Institute for Data Science, visit http://www.rochester.edu/data-science . Applicants should hold a PhD and will be required to supply a set of refereed scholarly publications, names of references, and research and teaching statements. The application will ask applicants to select a set of disciplines most relevant to their research area. Review of applications at any rank will begin immediately and continue until the positions are filled. For full consideration, applications should be completed by January 15th, 2016. The University of Rochester is a private, Tier I research institution located in western New York State. It consistently ranks among the top 30 institutions, both public and private, in federal funding for research and development. The university has made substantial investments in computing infrastructure through the Center for Integrated Research Computing (CIRC) and the Health Sciences Center for Computational Innovation (HSCCI). The university includes the Eastman School of Music and the University of Rochester Medical Center, a major medical school, research center, and hospital system. The greater Rochester area is home to over a million people, including 80,000 students who attend the 8 colleges and universities in the region. The University of Rochester has a strong commitment to diversity and actively encourages applications from candidates from groups underrepresented in higher education. The University is an Equal Opportunity Employer. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sala038 at aucklanduni.ac.nz Wed Oct 21 17:59:19 2015 From: sala038 at aucklanduni.ac.nz (shafiq burki) Date: Thu, 22 Oct 2015 10:59:19 +1300 Subject: Connectionists: PAKDD workshop on Bio-Inspired Data Mining (BDM'16)- Auckland, NZ. Message-ID: 5Th PAKDD workshop on Bio-Inspired Data Mining (BDM'16)- Auckland, NZ. ********************************** Apologies for Multiple postings.... Paper submission deadline: December 23, 2015 Author notification: January 22, 2016 Camera-ready due: February 8, 2016 Workshop day: 19 April 2016 *********************************************************** ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ To submit your paper use the following link: Web site: http://conference.fos.auckland.ac.nz/bdm/bdm16/index.html Submission page: http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=bdm16 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ PAKDD 5th workshop on "Biologically Inspired Techniques for Data Mining (BDM'16)", is to be held in conjunction with 20th Pacific-Asia Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (PAKDD'16 ), 19-24 April, 2016, Auckland, New Zealand. PAKDD is one of the major conferences in knowledge discovery and data mining. The workshop calls for high quality research papers outlining current research, literature surveys, theoretical and empirical studies, and other relevant work including but not limited to the following areas: 1. Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) PSO based clustering PSO based classification PSO based outlier detection PSO based feature selection 2. Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) ACO based clustering ACO based classification ACO based outlier detection ACO based feature selection ACO based rules mining ACO based sequential patterns mining 3. Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) ANN based pattern matching and discovery Classification rules discovery using ANN Forecasting and prediction analysis using ANN 4. Genetic Algorithms (GAs) Clustering, classification and parameter tuning using GAs GAs based feature extraction and selection Learning Classifier Systems 5. Artificial Immune System(AIS) AIS for intrusion detection AIS for data clustering AIS for decision support system 6. Fuzzy Systems (FS) and biologically inspired techniques Fuzzy clustering Fuzzy classification Fuzzy Association rules discovery 7. Bee Colony Optimization (BCO) BCO for pattern matching Clustering using BCO 8. Evolutionary Neural Nets, Evolutionary SVMs, and Evolutionary Decision Trees 9. Computational Intelligence in Recommender System ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ To submit your paper use the following link: https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=bdm16 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ For more information please contact: Dr. Shafiq Alam, University of Auckland, New Zealand. sala038 at aucklanduni.ac.nz -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From triesch at fias.uni-frankfurt.de Sun Oct 25 12:21:54 2015 From: triesch at fias.uni-frankfurt.de (Jochen Triesch) Date: Sun, 25 Oct 2015 17:21:54 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: 10 Open PhD Positions in Frankfurt, Germany: International Max Planck Research School for Neural Circuits Message-ID: <8B58AA15-DDD8-4661-8624-9453C6F38CA6@fias.uni-frankfurt.de> Call for Applications IMPRS for Neural Circuits The International Max Planck Research School (IMPRS) for Neural Circuits was funded in 2011 by the Max Planck Society and offers ten positions every year for excellent students holding a relevant Master?s or Bachelor?s degree to perform research resulting in a PhD. The program is taught in English. All positions are completely funded by the school and/or participating Labs. The common focus of the IMPRS for Neural Circuits will be the understanding of neural circuits (from the simple to the large and complex), at all scales required to achieve this understanding. This ambitious objective will require analyses at the molecular, cellular, multi-cellular, network and behavioral levels, with the full understanding that macroscopic phenomena (spatial patterns, dynamics) can be scale-dependent, and that reductionism is not always sufficient as a method. In the IMPRS for Neural Circuits we offer a multidisciplinary program to excellent doctoral students with backgrounds in neuroscience, mathematics, physics, computer science, (bio) chemistry, biology and medicine as well as research experience in the participating institutions of the Frankfurt Neuroscience community (see website for participating Faculty members). Students will participate in a tailor-made educational program including research rotations and neuroscience classes but also in trainings in transferable skills. We welcome excellent students to apply to the program. Till January 15, 2016, it will be possible to apply for a position starting in the Fall of 2015. You can apply via our electronic registration system. After the deadline, the Faculty members will select around 25 students to participate in the interview symposium in Frankfurt (March 2016). Shortly after the symposium, the students will receive a letter with an offer or rejection. More information can be found on our website www.imprs.brain.mpg.de. Please send an email to Dr. Arjan Vink, arjan.vink at brain.mpg.de, if you have more specific questions. -- 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 neurogirl at hotmail.com Thu Oct 22 07:54:29 2015 From: neurogirl at hotmail.com (neuro girl) Date: Thu, 22 Oct 2015 07:54:29 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: Post-doctoral Position in Translational Studies of Neuromodulation Message-ID: Dear Colleagues, We are inviting applications for a postdoctoral position in the recently established animal laboratory of the Department of Stereotactic and Functional Neurosurgery of the University Hospital of Cologne (http://neurochirurgie.uk-koeln.de/de/stereotaxie). Our lab concentrates on highly translational studies focusing on functional neuromodulation techniques such as deep brain stimulation. We are especially interested in its application in the context of neuropsychiatric disorders such asTourette syndrome, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), and Alzheimer?s disease (AD). Each experimental set is designed to deliver practical answers for the clinical team of the department. Current projects for instance use optogeneticstimulation to develop of an OCD rat model facilitating research on closed-loop stimulation systems; others collect empirical evidences supporting the clinical implementation of deep brain stimulation as a therapeutic strategy to treat AD. A PhD or MD/PhD degree(s) with robust background in neuroscience is essential;knowledge in neurophysiology, animal behavior and/or computational neuroscience is an asset. Strong language and writing skills in English are essential; fluency in German is a plus. The successful candidate is a highly driven team-orientedindividual with good communication skills. We work as a team and the team success is our main measure of achievement. The position is available in January 2016 for an initial period of 2 years with possibility of extension up to 2 additional years. We offer employment with a salary and social benefits based on the collective agreement for public service employees in the academic and science sector (TV-L E13 adjusted based on experience). TheUniversity Hospital of Cologne promotes gender equality and therefore particularly encourages female scientists to apply. Preferential status will be given to handicapped persons, if equally qualified. Interested candidates should send their inquiries or applications (cover letter including a brief statement of research interests, CV, publication list, as well as names and contact details of up to 3 referees) both to Prof. Dr. Visser-Vandewalle (veerle.visser-vandewalle at uk-koeln.de) and Dr. Sesia (thibaut.sesia at uk-koeln.de). With best regards, Dr. Thibaut Sesia Junior Group Leader Klinik f?r Stereotaxie und Funktionelle Neurochirurgie Universit?tsklinikum K?ln (A?R) Kerpener Str. 62 D - 50937 K?ln -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From terry at salk.edu Sat Oct 24 17:21:57 2015 From: terry at salk.edu (Terry Sejnowski) Date: Sat, 24 Oct 2015 14:21:57 -0700 Subject: Connectionists: NEURAL COMPUTATION - November 1, 2015 In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Neural Computation - Volume 27, Number 11 - November 1, 2015 Available online for download now: http://www.mitpressjournals.org/toc/neco/27/11 ----- Article STICK: Spike Time Interval Computational Kernel, a Framework for General Purpose Computation Using Neurons, Precise Timing, Delays, and Synchrony Xavier Lagorce, Ryad Benosman Letters Visual Decisions in the Presence of Measurement and Stimulus Correlations Manisha Bhardwaj, Samuel Carroll, Wei Ji Ma, and Kresimir Josic Hierarchical Error Representation: A Computational Model of Anterior Cingulate and Dorsolateral Prefrontal Cortex. William H. Alexander, Joshua W Brown Bayesian Feature Selection With Strongly-regularizing Priors Maps to the Ising Model Charles K. Fisher, Pankaj Mehta A Novel Parameter Estimation Method for Boltzmann Machine Takashi Takenouchi Bandit-Based Task Assignment for Heterogeneous Crowdsourcing Hao Zhang, Yao Ma, and Masashi Sugiyama ------------ ON-LINE -- http://www.mitpressjournals.org/neuralcomp SUBSCRIPTIONS - 2015 - VOLUME 27 - 12 ISSUES Student/Retired $75 Individual $134 Institution $1,075 MIT Press Journals, One Rogers Street, Cambridge, MA 02142-1209 Tel: (617) 253-2889 FAX: (617) 577-1545 journals-cs at mit.edu ------------ From vicen.gomez at upf.edu Fri Oct 23 11:15:11 2015 From: vicen.gomez at upf.edu (=?UTF-8?B?VmljZW7DpyBHw7NtZXo=?=) Date: Fri, 23 Oct 2015 17:15:11 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: [Cfp] 25th of October, NIPS 2015 Workshop on Multi-Agent Systems Message-ID: <562A4EFF.60906@upf.edu> NIPS 2015 Workshop on Learning, Inference and Control of Multi-Agent Systems 12 December 2015, Montreal, Canada https://malic15.wordpress.com/ Submission deadline: 25 October 2015 1. Call for Papers Authors can submit a 2-6 pages paper (excluding references) that will be reviewed by the organization committee. The papers can present new work or give a summary of recent work of the author(s). All papers will be considered for the poster sessions. Out-standing long papers (4-6 pages) will also be considered for a 20 minutes oral presentation. Submissions should be sent per email to malic... at gmail.com. Please use the standard NIPS style-file for the submissions. Your submission should be anonymous, so please do not add the author names to the PDF. 2. Workshop Overview In the next few years, traditional single agent architectures will be more and more replaced by actual multi-agent systems with components that have increasing autonomy and computational power. This transformation has already started with prominent examples such as power networks, where each node is now an active energy generator, robotic swarms of unmaned aerial vehicles, software agents that trade and negotiate on the Internet or robot assistants that need to interact with other robots or humans. The number of agents in these systems can range from a few complex agents up to several hundred if not thousands of typically much simpler entities. Multi-agent systems show many beneficial properties such as robustness, scalability, paralellization and a larger number of tasks that can be achieved in comparison to centralized, single agent architectures. However, the use of multi-agent architectures represents a major paradigm shift for systems design. In order to use such systems efficiently, effective approaches for planning, learning, inference and communication are required. The agents need to plan with their local view on the world and to coordinate at multiple levels. They also need to reason about the knowledge, observations and intentions of other agents, which can in turn be cooperative or adversarial. Multi-agent learning algorithms need to deal inherently with non-stationary environments and find valid policies for interacting with the other agents. Many of these requirements are inherently hard problems and computing their optimal solutions is intractable. Yet, problems can become tractable again by considering approximate solutions that can exploit certain properties of a multi-agent system. Examples of such properties are sparse interactions that only occur between locally neighbored agents or limited information to make decisions (bounded rationality). 3. Goal The fundamental challenges of this paradigm shift span many areas such as machine learning, robotics, game theory and complex networks. This workshop will serve as an inclusive forum for the discussion on ongoing or completed work in both theoretical and practical issues related to the learning, inference and control aspects of multi-agent systems 4. Format The workshop will serve as a platform to bring researchers from the different relevant communities together and foster discussions about the next necessary developments for multi-agent systems. The workshop will consists of five to six invited talks, a few contributed talks and a poster session. 5. Confirmed Speakers Michael L. Littman (Brown University) Frans Oliehoek (University of Amsterdam) Christian Blum (University of the Basque Country) Michael Bowling (University of Alberta) Roderich Gross (University of Sheffield) Karl Tuyls (University of Liverpool) Vito Trianni (Italian National Research Council) 6. Topics Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning POMDPs, Dec-POMDPS and Partially Observable Stochastic Games Multi-Agent Robotics, Human-Robot Collaboration, Swarm Robotics Game Theory, Algorithms for Computing Nash Equilibria and other Solution Concepts Swarm Intelligence Evolutionary Dynamics Complex Networks Mechanism Design Ad hoc teamwork 7. Workshop Organizers Vicen? G?mez (Universitat Pompeu Fabra) Gerhard Neumann (Technische Universit?t Darmstadt) Jonathan Yedidia (Disney Research) Peter Stone (University of Texas) -- Vicen? Gomez Cerda Departament de Tecnologies de la Informacio i les Comunicacions Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona http://www.mbfys.ru.nl/staff/v.gomez/ tel: +34 93 542 29 52 From dengdehao at gmail.com Sat Oct 24 23:18:37 2015 From: dengdehao at gmail.com (Teng Teck Hou) Date: Sun, 25 Oct 2015 11:18:37 +0800 Subject: Connectionists: [INNS-BigData 2016] Call for Papers Message-ID: <003e01d10ed3$d8c78de0$8a56a9a0$@gmail.com> [Apologies for cross-postings] ########################################### The INNS Big Data conference 2016 October 23-25, 2016, Thessaloniki, Greece CALL FOR PAPERS ########################################### Homepage: http://www.innsbigdata.org ########################################### Big data is not just about storage of and access to data. Analytics play a big role in making sense of that data and exploiting its value. But learning from big data has become a significant challenge and requires development of new types of algorithms. Most machine learning algorithms can't easily scale up to big data. Plus there are challenges of high-dimensionality, velocity and variety. The neural network field has historically focused on algorithms that learn in an online, incremental mode without requiring in-memory access to huge amounts of data. This type of learning is not only ideal for streaming data (as in the Industrial Internet or the Internet of Things), but could also be used on stored big data. Neural network technologies thus can become significant components of big data analytics platforms and this inaugural INNS Conference on Big Data will begin that collaborative adventure with big data and other learning technologies. Thus the aim of this conference is to promote new advances and research directions in efficient and innovative algorithmic approaches to analyzing big data (e.g. deep networks, nature-inspired and brain-inspired algorithms), implementations on different computing platforms (e.g. neuromorphic, GPUs, clouds, clusters) and applications of Big Data Analytics to solve real-world problems (e.g. weather prediction, transportation, energy management). Awards ########################################################### * Best papers will be selected and awarded as follows: - Best regular paper - Best student paper * This will be based on a combination of reviewers' comments, presentations and importance and quality judged by a panel. * Best paper awards (500 Euros) are donated by the sponsor Springer Verlag, Germany and will be commemorated by a certificate. ########################################################### Important Dates ########################################################### Special Session Proposals February 15, 2016 Tutorials and Workshops Proposals February 15, 2016 Paper Submission March 21, 2016 Paper Decision Notification May 16, 2016 Camera Ready Submission of papers June 13, 2016 ########################################################### Co-Sponsors * International Neural Network Society (INNS) * Springer Plenary Speakers * Francesco Bonchi, Yahoo Research Labs and ISI, Italy * Piotr Mirowski, Google DeepMind, London, UK * Hany Choueri, The Chief Data Scientist, Bank of England, UK (tbc) Advisory Board * Walter Freeman, University of California, Berkeley, USA * Ali Minai, University of Cincinnati, USA * Danil Prokhorov, Toyota Tech Center * Theodore Trafalis, University of Oklahoma, USA * Kumar Venayagamoorthy, Clemson University, USA * Bernard Widrow, Stanford University, USA General Chairs * Plamen Angelov, Lancaster University, UK * Yannis Manolopoulos, Aristotle University, Greece PC Chairs * Lazaros Iliadias, Democritus University, Greece * Asim Roy, Arizona State University, Tempe, USA * Marley Vellasco, PUC-Rio, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Special Sessions Chairs * Alessandro Ghio, University of Genoa, Italy * Irwin King, Chinese University of Hong Kong, China Tutorials/Workshops Chair * Nikola Kasabov, Auckland Universitty of Technology, New Zealand * Bernardete Ribeiro, University of Coimbra, Portugal Poster Session Chairs * Yi Lu Murphy, University of Michigan-Dearborn, USA * Liang Zhao, University of Sao Paulo, Brazil Awards Chair * Araceli Sanchis de Miguel, Carlos III University, Spain Competitions Chair Adel Alimi, University of Sfax, Tunisia Panel Chair * Leonid Perlovsky, Harvard University, Boston, USA Sponsors/Exhibit Chairs * James Dankert, BAE Systems, USA * Rosemary Paradis, Lockheed Martin, USA Publication Chairs * Danilo Mandic, Imperial College, London, UK * Mariette Awad, American University of Beirut, Lebanon International Liaison * De-Shuang Huang, Tongji University, Shanghai, China * Petia Georgieva, University of Aveiro, Portugal Publicity Chairs, * Teng Teck Hou, Singapore Management University, Singapore * Simone Scardapane, The Sapienza University of Rome, Italy * Jose Antonio Iglesias Martinez, Carlos III University, Spain Paper Submission and Publication ########################################################### * Original works submitted as a regular paper limited to a maximum of 10 pages in Springer format will be published in the proceedings to be available electronically as a Springer book to download for delegates. * It will be peer-reviewed by at least three PC members on the basis of technical quality, relevance, originality, significance and clarity. * At least one author of an accepted submission to the conference should register with a regular fee to present their work at the conference. ########################################################### Topics and Areas include, but not limited to: * Autonomous, online, incremental learning - theory, algorithms and applications in big data * High dimensional data, feature selection, feature transformation - theory, algorithms and applications for big data * Scalable algorithms for big data * Learning algorithms for high-velocity streaming data * Big data streams analytics * Deep neural network learning * Machine vision and big data * Brain-machine interfaces and big data * Cognitive modeling and big data * Embodied robotics and big data * Fuzzy systems and big data * Evolutionary systems and big data * Evolving systems for big data analytics * Neuromorphic hardware for scalable machine learning * Parallel and distributed computing for big data analytics (cloud, map-reduce, etc.) * Big data and collective intelligence/collaborative learning * Big data and hybrid systems * Big data and self-aware systems * Big Data and infrastructure * Big data analytics and healthcare/medical applications * Big data analytics and energy systems/smart grids * Big data analytics and transportation systems * Big data analytics in large sensor networks * Big data and machine learning in computational biology, bioinformatics * Recommendation systems/collaborative filtering for big data * Big data visualization * Online multimedia/ stream/ text analytics * Link and graph mining * Big data and cloud computing, large scale stream processing on the cloud -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From redish at umn.edu Fri Oct 30 17:14:54 2015 From: redish at umn.edu (David Redish) Date: Fri, 30 Oct 2015 16:14:54 -0500 Subject: Connectionists: PhD positions available in Systems Neuroengineering at the University of Minnesota Message-ID: We would like to announce PhD positions available for our interdisciplinary training program in *Systems Neuroengineering: *Interacting with the Brain: Mechanisms, Optimization, and Innovation. Funded by an IGERT grant from NSF. Interested students should apply to one of the University of Minnesota's PhD programs in Neuroscience, Biomedical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or Mechanical Engineering. The program provides a generous stipend and tuition coverage as well as access to cutting-edge research in neuroengineering. Minnesota is also home to the largest collection of medical device manufacturers in the world and our program provides opportunities for IGERT trainees to gain practical experience working with these companies. Through our education and research-training model, students in our program learn to develop the skills to revolutionize neurotechnologies and advance our understanding of neuroscience processes underlying these technologies. The Systems Neuroengineering IGERT Program has over 40 outstanding faculty members who have made significant contributions to neural decoding, neuromodulation, neural interfacing, and neuroimaging research, and who are committed to graduate training. Many of them are world class leaders who have shaped where the field is in cutting-edge research, including noninvasive brain-computer interface controlling quadcopter, deep-brain stimulation, high field MRI imaging, and dynamic brain mapping. Interested students should go to http://igert-ne.umn.edu/. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: IGERT flyer - 2015.pdf Type: application/pdf Size: 470474 bytes Desc: not available URL: From ckello at ucmerced.edu Wed Oct 28 01:30:29 2015 From: ckello at ucmerced.edu (Chris Kello) Date: Wed, 28 Oct 2015 05:30:29 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: Ph.D. positions available in Cognitive and Information Sciences Message-ID: The Cognitive and Information Sciences graduate program at the University of California, Merced has positions available for Ph.D. students entering Fall 2016. We offer interdisciplinary training in human neural, behavioral, and social processes and their dynamics. The program is research-intensive, and a wide range of projects and collaborations are available for students to join, and take on leading roles as they progress through the program. Topics include language, speech, communication, movement coordination, interpersonal interaction, human-computer interaction, philosophy of mind, philosophy of cognitive science, memory, executive control, search, neural networks, learning, and dynamical and complex systems. The word "information" in CIS denotes our emphases on data science and engineering, computational modeling, and technological applications that support and even emulate intelligent behaviors. Students who graduate from our Ph.D. program have career opportunities in academia as well as technology industries. Please visit our program website for information about CIS: http://cogsci.ucmerced.edu/ Applications may be submitted through the graduate division website: http://graduatedivision.ucmerced.edu/ For full consideration, applications should be received by December 15, although we will continue to accept applications through January 15. Top candidates will be invited and reimbursed to visit the campus February 5-6, to meet with our faculty and students and learn more about the program. Multi-year offers of financial support are available, which include full tuition and competitive stipends. If you have any further questions, please email the faculty member(s) who most closely align with your research interests. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mm at pdx.edu Thu Oct 29 14:09:03 2015 From: mm at pdx.edu (Melanie Mitchell) Date: Thu, 29 Oct 2015 11:09:03 -0700 Subject: Connectionists: Faculty positions in machine learning at Portland State University Message-ID: Dear Colleagues, We are aiming to hire at least one new faculty member in machine learning, and people who work in the area of neural computation are highly encouraged to apply. Please see announcement below. Best, Melanie Mitchell The Computer Science Department at Portland State University (PSU) invites applications for multiple tenure-track assistant professor faculty positions to begin Fall 2016. Exceptional applicants at other ranks will also be considered. Specific areas of computer science under consideration are: artificial intelligence; machine learning; data mining; data-intensive systems; secure and trustworthy cyberspace; and networks and systems of connected things. Our department currently has 24 tenure-track faculty members and offers BS, MS, and PhD degrees. Portland State is Oregon?s largest university, and is located in downtown Portland, Oregon, offering proximity to world-class restaurants, cultural venues, exceptional outdoor activities, and collaborations with Portland?s burgeoning software industry. For more information and instructions on how to apply, please visit http://www.pdx.edu/computer-science/open-faculty-positions . -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Wael.El-deredy at manchester.ac.uk Thu Oct 29 15:58:11 2015 From: Wael.El-deredy at manchester.ac.uk (Wael El-deredy) Date: Thu, 29 Oct 2015 19:58:11 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: PhD opportunity in Manchester: Network modelling of brain stimulation and its effect on brain plasticity Message-ID: Medical Research Council funded PhD studentship at the university of Manchester, UK Electrical stimulation, such as transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS) can enhance brain plasticity, and so promote learning, but mechanisms are unclear. tACS has been shown to induce membrane oscillations which can enhance perception if applied at the appropriate frequency and phase. With EPSRC funding we have shown that plasticity of touch is dependent on the frequency of tactile stimulation and are currently collecting MRI data (of key neurotransmitter concentrations and network connectivity) and developing computational network models to better understand this phenomenon. We think electrical stimulation may interact with the network in a similar way. The resonance frequency of network oscillations influences the interaction of tACS with the brain. Deeper understanding of this process could allow us to enhance the effect of tACS on brain plasticity, and potentially improve its therapeutic effect. Objectives: 1. To develop a neurocomputational network model incorporating tACS. Consider the effect on network plasticity at a range of frequencies and phase. 2. Determine the frequency and phase dependence of tACS enhancement of sensory (touch) plasticity, in terms of both sensory perception and MRI and EEG markers of plasticity. 3. Determine the frequency dependence of tACS enhancement of the imbibition of return (IOR) visual task to compare to touch. IOR is a marker of impulsive behaviour and attentional bias common in a number of mental health conditions. 4. Test the temporal dynamics of tACS induced plasticity to determine how long they last. MR-compatible tactile devices and tACS equipment is available in our lab. The computational modelling will extend our current work on neural mass models. MR measurements will be made at the Welcome Trust Clinical Research Centre. Repetitive stimulation has been shown to affect cognition, perception and emotion. It is potentially a route for non-invasive therapeutic delivery without side-effects. By understanding how stimulation affects neural plasticity we can optimise its delivery. This 3.5-year full-time MRC DTP studentship provides full support for tuition fees, annual tax-free stipend at Research Council UK rates (currently ?14, 057) and conference/travel allowance. The project is due to commence October 2016 and is open to UK/EU nationals only due to the nature of the funding. This project provides in depth training in 2 of the key DTP skills priority areas, namely imaging and modelling. The student will learn the theory, implementation and analysis of a number of key MRI techniques and neurocomputational modelling will form a core part of the PhD. There is well-recognised skills gap in physical sciences and maths in the biomedical field. The Centre for Imaging Sciences has an international reputation for developing such skills, providing quantitative cutting-edge MRI techniques for clinical research and translation. Applicants should hold (or be expected to obtain) a minimum upper-second class undergraduate degree in a related area. A relevant Masters degree or equivalent research experience would be an advantage. Any queries regarding the suitability of qualifications should be directed to the primary supervisor. Please direct applications in the following format to Dr Laura Parkes (Laura.Parkes at manchester.ac.uk): ? Academic CV ? Official academic transcripts ? Contact details for two suitable referees ? A personal statement (750 words maximum) outlining your suitability for the study, what you hope to achieve from the PhD and your research experience to date. Any enquiries relating to the project and/or suitability should be directed to Dr Parkes. Applications are invited up to and including 25 November 2015. Further details on the MRC DTP scheme and additional PhD project opportunities can be found on our website: http://www.mhs.manchester.ac.uk/mrcdtp http://www.manchester.ac.uk/research/laura.parkes/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From abarbu at csail.mit.edu Thu Oct 29 12:29:37 2015 From: abarbu at csail.mit.edu (Andrei Barbu) Date: Thu, 29 Oct 2015 12:29:37 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: Postdoc position at MIT in a subset of computer vision, NLP, cogsci, and neuroscience Message-ID: The MIT/Harvard Center for Brains, Minds and Machines (CBMM, http://cbmm.mit.edu) has a postdoctoral fellowship available at MIT in the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. We are looking for candidates with a strong interest in expanding their research by collaborating outside of their core areas. Candidates should have expertise in a subset of: - computer vision - natural language processing - cognitive science - neuroscience CBMM is an NSF Science and Technology Center (STC) with a wide charter to investigate the science of intelligence. Because of this, the position offers flexibility in the research projects being pursued with the requirement that they be cross- disciplinary and informed by cognitive science, behavioral experiments, or neuroscience. CBMM is a large effort spanning multiple institutions and offers many opportunities to collaborate with top experts across multiple domains. Email applications to Boris Katz (boris at mit.edu) or Shimon Ullman (shimon.ullman at weizmann.ac.il). From m.gomez.rodriguez at gmail.com Tue Oct 27 05:35:56 2015 From: m.gomez.rodriguez at gmail.com (Manuel Gomez Rodriguez) Date: Tue, 27 Oct 2015 10:35:56 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: Tenure-track openings at MPI-SWS Message-ID: Tenure-track openings ================= Applications are invited for tenure-track faculty positions in all areas related to the theory and practice of software systems, including security and privacy, embedded and mobile systems, computational social science, legal, economic, and social aspects of computing, NLP, machine learning, information and knowledge management, programming languages and verification, and parallel and distributed systems. A doctoral degree in computer science or related areas and an outstanding research record are required. Successful candidates are expected to build a team and pursue a highly visible research agenda, both independently and in collaboration with other groups. MPI-SWS, founded in 2005, is part of a network of over 80 Max Planck Institutes, Germany's premier basic research facilities. MPIs have an established record of world-class, foundational research in the sciences, technology, and the humanities. The institute offers a unique environment that combines the best aspects of a university department and a research laboratory: Faculty enjoy academic freedom, receive institutional funding and attract additional third-party funds to build and lead a team of graduate students and post-docs; they supervise doctoral theses, and have the opportunity to teach graduate and undergraduate courses. The institute offers outstanding technical infrastructure and administrative support, as well as internationally competitive compensation. The institute is located in Kaiserslautern and Saarbruecken, in the tri-border area of Germany, France and Luxembourg. We maintain an international and diverse work environment and seek applications from outstanding researchers worldwide. The working language is English; knowledge of the German language is not required for a successful career at the institute. Qualified candidates should apply at https://apply.mpi-sws.org/. To receive full consideration, applications should be received by December 15, 2015. The institute is committed to increasing the representation of minorities, women and individuals with physical disabilities in Computer Science. We particularly encourage such individuals to apply. The initial tenure-track appointment is for five years; it can be extended to seven years based on a midterm evaluation in the fourth year. A permanent contract can be awarded upon a successful tenure evaluation in the sixth year. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sharpee at salk.edu Fri Oct 30 12:23:48 2015 From: sharpee at salk.edu (Tatyana Sharpee) Date: Fri, 30 Oct 2015 09:23:48 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Connectionists: Focus session on sensorimotor circuits at 2016 APS March Meeting Message-ID: Dear Colleagues, Please consider submitting an abstract for the next APS March Meeting, and i n particular, for the Focus Session "Physics of Sensorimotor Neural Circuits .? The meeting will take place in Baltimore, MD, on March 14-18, 2016. Abstract submission deadline: November 6, 2015, 5:00pm EST You can submit abstracts for CONTRIBUTED TALKS for this Focus Session and ot hers (see below for a list of session especially relevant to neuroscience). As a session organizer, I?d like to invite you to submit exciting new work o n sensory and/or motor neural systems. The focus session will consist of 2 i nvited talks and ~8 contributed talks. Submission and relevant information is through the APS site: http://www.aps.org/meetings/march/scientific/index.cfm Please note that only APS members (or members of reciprocal societies) can s ubmit the abstracts. You can obtain your membership online. Invited and Focus sessions of relevance to neuroscience will include, among others,? 1. Large Scale Neuroscience Projects 2. Theoretical physics and networks of real neurons 3. Inference in Biophysics 4. Principles of Cell-to-Cell communication 5. Brain Morphology and Mechanics: From Cortex Folding to Neuronal Growth to Compression Stiffening 6. Robophysics: physics meets robotics 7. Physics of sensorimotor neural circuits 8. Neural control of behavior 9. Maximum entropy models: a promising link between statistical physics, inf erence, and biology 10. Critical transitions in biological systems Some of the invited speakers include: Vijay Balasubramanian (U Pennsylvania) William Bialek (Princeton U) Gwyneth Card (Janelia Farm) David van Essen (Washington U, St. Loius) Adrienne Fairhall (U Washington) Surya Ganguli (Stanford U) Mark Goldman (UC Davis) Alexei Koulakov (CSHL) Thierry Mora (ENS) Stephanie Palmer (U Chicago) Hanchuan Peng (Allen Institute) Elad Schneidman (Hebrew U) Terry Sejnowski (Salk Institute) Naftali Tishby (Hebrew U) Gasper Tkacik (IST Austria)? and others. We are now accepting abstract submissions for contributed talks on a broad range of topics on the intersection of physics and neuroscience, such as quantitative experimental protocols, modeling of neural dynamics, analysis of collective computation in neural circuits, and others.? Best Regards, Tatyana Tatyana O. Sharpee, PhD Associate Professor Helen McLoraine Developmental Chair Computational Neurobiology Laboratory Salk Institute for Biological Studies La Jolla, CA 92037 From nteneva at uchicago.edu Thu Oct 29 15:30:24 2015 From: nteneva at uchicago.edu (Nedelina Teneva) Date: Thu, 29 Oct 2015 14:30:24 -0500 Subject: Connectionists: 2nd CFP: NIPS 2015 workshop "Multiresolution Methods for Large Scale Learning Message-ID: MULTIRESOLUTION METHODS FOR LARGE SCALE LEARNING NIPS 2015 Workshop, December 12, 2015 http://people.cs.uchicago.edu/~risi/NIPS15workshop/index.html Submission deadline: November 3, 2015 CALL FOR PAPERS There is a spate of exciting new work at the intersection of multiresolution/multiscale numerical methods and machine learning, including: - New approaches to defining multiresolution (wavelets) on graphs. - New applications of hierarchical matrices in Gaussian Process inference. - The introduction of Scattering Networks. - Various multiscale graph models. - New multiscale matrix decompositions and multiresolution matrix factorizations. The goal of this workshop is to bring together leading researchers from Harmonic Analysis, Signal Processing, Numerical Analysis, and Machine Learning, to explore the synergies between all the above lines of work. The workshop will comprise a combination of invited and contributed talks, and poster presentations. Researchers wishing to present their work are invited to submit an extended abstract by email to multiresolution .nips15 at gmail.com by November 3, 2015(max. 2 pages in NIPS format, not including references, anonymity not required). The organizers will select a subset of the abstracts for oral or poster presentation, and notify the authors by November 6. ORGANIZERS Inderjit Dhillon, University of Texas at Austin Risi Kondor, University of Chicago Robert Nowak, University of Wisconsin-Madison Michael O'Neil, NYU Nedelina Teneva, University of Chicago INVITED SPEAKERS Francis Bach, INRIA Jure Leskovec, Stanford Michael Mahoney, Berkeley Sayan Mukherjee, Duke Michael O'Neil, NYU Ilya Safro, Clemson University Pierre Vandergheynst, EPFL -- Nedelina Teneva -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From naotsu at gmail.com Wed Oct 28 05:32:40 2015 From: naotsu at gmail.com (Naotsugu Tsuchiya) Date: Wed, 28 Oct 2015 20:32:40 +1100 Subject: Connectionists: 2nd Monash Brain Function Workshop --- Multi-modal approaches to understand brain functions Message-ID: 2nd Monash Brain Function Workshop --- Multi-modal approaches to understand brain functions *- Deadline for poster abstracts and early registration: 15 Nov 2015* *- Registration - http://ecommerce.med.monash.edu.au/product.asp?pID=626&cID=2 * *Date:* Dec 14 (Mon) 2015 *Venue:* Auditorium, Monash Biomedical imaging, 770 Blackburn Rd, Clayton *Overview* The goal of this workshop is to offer an opportunity for neuroscientists from different backgrounds to interact and exchange ideas. Specifically, we encourage participation of neuroscientists who are interested in understanding neural systems involved in perception and behaviour, and those who combine multiple methodologies, such as electrophysiology, advanced signal processing, computational modelling and cognitive neuroscience. Registration: $50 AUD ($25 AUD for students & postdocs or those who are affiliated with ARC Centre of Excellence for Integrative Brain Function) Organizers: Nao Tsuchiya, Nic Price, Alex Fornito, Jeroen van Boxtel, Gary Egan (Monash University) Contact: for questions about this event, please contact Nao Tsuchiya ( naotsugu.tsuchiya at monash.edu) Keynote Speakers: Peter Dayan (computational neuroscience, - UCL, UK) Zhaoping Li (computational neuroscience, psychophysics - UCL, UK) *Speakers:* 1. Lucy Palmer (Florey Institute, Neurophysiology) 2. Andrew Zalesky (University of Melbourne, Neuroimaging/Connectome) 3. Masafumi Oizumi (RIKEN BSI, Japan & Monash University, Computational Neuroscience) 4. Peter Bossarts (University of Melbourne, Neuroeconomics) 5. Pascal Molenberghs (Monash University, Social Neuroscience) 6. Jennifer Windt (Monash University, Philosophy/Cognitive Neuroscience) or 7. Maureen Hagan (Monash University, physiology, Neurophysiology) Supported by Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Integrative Brain Function. -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Nao (Naotsugu) Tsuchiya, Ph.D. homepage: http://users.monash.edu.au/~naotsugt/Tsuchiya_Labs_Homepage 1. ARC Future Fellow 2. Associate Professor - School of Psychological Sciences, Faculty of Biomedical and Psychological Sciences, Monash University - Monash Institute of Cognitive and Clinical Neurosciences, Monash University http://med.monash.edu.au/psych/email-sig/miccn-email-sig.jpg orcid.org/0000-0003-4216-8701 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From luca.oneto at unige.it Tue Oct 27 07:15:00 2015 From: luca.oneto at unige.it (Luca Oneto) Date: Tue, 27 Oct 2015 12:15:00 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: SS on KERNELS and ML at ESANN 2016 - 2nd CALL Message-ID: [Apologies if you receive multiple copies of this CFP] Call for papers: special session on "Advances in Learning with Kernels: Theory and Practice in a World of growing Constraints" at ESANN 2016 European Symposium on Artificial Neural Networks, Computational Intelligence and Machine Learning (ESANN 2016). 27-29 April 2016, Bruges, Belgium - http://www.esann.org DESCRIPTION: Kernel methods consistently outperformed previous generations of learning techniques. They provide a flexible and expressive learning framework that has been successfully applied to a wide range of real world problems but, recently, novel algorithms, such as Deep Neural Networks and Ensemble Methods, have increased their competitiveness against them. Due to the current data growth in size, heterogeneity and structure, the new generation of algorithms are expected to solve increasingly challenging problems. This must be done under growing constraints such as computational resources, memory budget and energy consumption. For these reasons, new ideas have to come up in the field of kernel learning, such as deeper kernels and novel algorithms, to fill the gap that now exists with the most recent learning paradigms. The purpose of this special session is to highlight recent advances in learning with kernels. In particular, this session welcomes contributions toward the solution of the weaknesses (e.g. scalability, computational efficiency and too shallow kernels) and the improvement of the strengths (e.g. the ability of dealing with structural data) of the state of the art kernel methods. We also encourage the submission of new theoretical results in the Statistical Learning Theory framework and innovative solutions to real world problems. In particular, topics of interest include, but are not limited to: - Budget (time, memory, energy) Learning - Structured input and output (e.g. graph/tree kernels) - Structural Features and Sparse Feature Spaces - Feature learning, weighting and ranking - Large Scale Kernel Methods - Statistical analysis and generalization bounds - Multiple Kernel Learning - Mixed Hard/Soft Constraints - Kernel complexity - Deeper Kernels - Novel Kernelized Algorithms (e.g. online learning, preference learning) - Applications to relevant Real-World Problems SUBMISSION: Prospective authors must submit their paper through the ESANN portal following the instructions provided in http://www.elen.ucl.ac.be/esann/index.php?pg=submission. Each paper will undergo a peer reviewing process for its acceptance. Authors should send as soon as possible an e-mail with the tentative title of their contribution to the special session organisers. IMPORTANT DATES: Paper submission deadline : 20 November 2015 Notification of acceptance : 31 January 2016 The ESANN 2016 conference : 27-29 April 2016 SPECIAL SESSION ORGANISERS Luca Oneto , Davide Anguita , University of Genoa (Italy), Fabio Aiolli, Michele Donini , Nicol? Navarin , University of Padua (Italy) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Luca Oneto, PhD University of Genoa web: www.lucaoneto.com DITEN Department e-mail: Luca.Oneto at unige.it SmartLab Laboratory e-mail: Luca.Oneto at gmail.com Via Opera Pia 11a Fax: +39-010-3532897 16145 Genoa ITALY Phone: +39-010-3532192 www.smartlab.ws ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From irina.illina at loria.fr Tue Oct 27 17:55:58 2015 From: irina.illina at loria.fr (Irina Illina) Date: Tue, 27 Oct 2015 22:55:58 +0100 (CET) Subject: Connectionists: Master2 (research) position at Multispeech Team, LORIA and INRS (Nancy, France) In-Reply-To: <41783980.11780761.1445982776334.JavaMail.zimbra@loria.fr> Message-ID: <1498747398.11780922.1445982958323.JavaMail.zimbra@loria.fr> Master2 (research) position at Multispeech Team, LORIA and INRS (Nancy, France) Speech intelligibility: how to determine the degree of nuisance Irina Illina, Patrick Chevret General information Supervisors * Irina Illina , LORIA, Campus Scientifique - BP 239, 54506 Vandoeuvre-l?s-Nancy, T?l : 03 54 95 84 90, bureau C147, illina at loria.fr * Patrick Chevret, INRS, 1 rue du Morvan, 54519 Vandoeuvre-l?s-Nancy, T?l : 03 83 50 85 67, patrick.chevret at inrs.fr Motivations The intelligibility of speech means the ability of a conversation to be understood by a listener located nearby. The level of speech intelligibility depends on several criteria: the level of ambient noise, the possible absorption of part of the sound spectrum, acoustic distortion, echoes, etc. The intelligibility of speech is used to assess the performance of telecommunication systems or absorption in rooms. The speech intelligibility can be evaluated: * subjectively: listeners hear several words or sentences and answer different questions (the transcription of sounds, the percentage of perceived consonants, etc.). The scores are the value of intelligibility?; * objectively, without involving listeners, using acoustic measures: the index of speech intelligibility (speech transmission index, STI) and the interference level with speech. Subjective measures are dependent of listeners and require a large number of listeners. This is difficult to achieve, especially when there are different types of environments. Moreover, it is necessary to evaluate this measure for each listener. Objective measures have the advantage of being automatically quantifiable and to be precise. However, which objective measures can measure the nuisance of the environment on the intelligibility of speech and people's health remains an open problem. For example, the STI index consists of measuring the energy modulation. But the energy modulation can be produced by the machines, yet it does not match the speech. Subject In this internship, we focus on the study of various objective measures of speech intelligibility. The goal is to find reliable measures to evaluate the level of nuisance of environment to speech understanding, to long-term mental health of people and to productivity. Some possible solutions?consist to correlate the word confidence measure, noise measurement confidence and subjective measures of speech intelligibility. To develop these measures, the automatic speech recognition system will be used. This internship will be performed through collaboration between our Multispeech team of LORIA and INRS ( National Institute of Research and Safety ). INRS works on professional risk identification, analysis of their impact on health and prevention. INRS has a rich corpus of recordings and subjective measures of speech intelligibility. This corpus will be used in the context of this internship. Our Multispeech team has great expertise in signal processing and has developed several methodologies for noise estimation. The Multispeech team developed the complete system of automatic speech recognition. Required skills Background in statistics and object-oriented programming. References [1] S. Wijngaarden, J. Verhave, H. Steeneken The Speech Transmission Index after four decades of development, 2012 [2] P. W. Barnett Overview of speech intelligibility Proc. I.O.A Vol 21, Part 5, 1999. ? ? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From irina.illina at loria.fr Tue Oct 27 17:55:42 2015 From: irina.illina at loria.fr (Irina Illina) Date: Tue, 27 Oct 2015 22:55:42 +0100 (CET) Subject: Connectionists: Master2 (research) position at Multispeech Team, LORIA (Nancy, France) In-Reply-To: <1144019873.11780809.1445982829027.JavaMail.zimbra@loria.fr> Message-ID: <571553580.11780916.1445982942371.JavaMail.zimbra@loria.fr> Master2 position at Multispeech Team, LORIA (Nancy, France) Automatic speech recognition: contextualisation of the language model based on neural networks by dynamic adjustment Framework of ANR project ContNomina The technologies involved in information retrieval in large audio/video databases are often based on the analysis of large, but closed, corpora, and on machine learning techniques and statistical modeling of the written and spoken language. The effectiveness of these approaches is now widely acknowledged, but they nevertheless have major flaws, particularly for what concern proper names, that are crucial for the interpretation of the content. In the context of diachronic data (data which change over time) new proper names appear constantly requiring dynamic updates of the lexicons and language models used by the speech recognition system. As a result, the ANR project ContNomina (2013-2017) focuses on the problem of proper names in automatic audio processing systems by exploiting in the most efficient way the context of the processed documents. To do this, the student will address the contextualization of the recognition module through the dynamic adjustment of the language model in order to make it more accurate. Subject Current systems for automatic speech recognition are based on statistical approaches. They require three components: an acoustic model, a lexicon and a language model. This stage will focus on the language model. The language model of our recognition system is based on a neural network learned from a large corpus of text. The problem is to re-estimate the language model parameters for a new proper name depending on its context and a small amount of adaptation data. Several tracks can be explored: adapting the language model, using a class model or studying the notion of analogy. Our team has developed a fully automatic system for speech recognition to transcribe a radio broadcast from the corresponding audio file. The student will develop a new module whose function is to integrate new proper names in the language model. Required skills Background in statistics and object-oriented programming. Localization and contacts Loria laboratory, Multi speech team , Nancy, France Irina.illina at loria.fr dominique.fohr at loria.fr Candidates should email a detailed CV and diploma References [1] J. Gao, X. He, L. Deng Deep Learning for Web Search and Natural Language Processing , Microsoft slides, 2015 [2] X. Liu, Y. Wang, X. Chen, M. J. F. Gales, and P. C. Woodland. Efficient lattice rescoring using recurrent neural network langage models , in Proc. ICASSP, 2014, pp. 4941?4945. [3] M. Sundermeyer, H. Ney, and R. Schl?ter. From Feedforward to Recurrent LSTM Neural Networks for Language Modeling . IEEE/ACM Transactions on Audio, Speech, and Language Processing, volume 23, number 3, pages 517-529, March 2015. ? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Hugo.Larochelle at USherbrooke.ca Mon Oct 26 11:13:36 2015 From: Hugo.Larochelle at USherbrooke.ca (Hugo Larochelle) Date: Mon, 26 Oct 2015 15:13:36 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: CfP: ICLR 2016 - Conference Track (updated) Message-ID: Update: Submissions and the review process, with a single round of reviewing, will again this year be supported by CMT rather than OpenReview.net. We hope to use OpenReview.net in the near future. ------------------------------------------------------------------- 4th International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR 2016) ------------------------------------------------------------------- Website: http://www.iclr.cc/ Submission deadline for title and abstract: November 12th, 2:00pm Pacific Standard Time, 2015 Submission deadline for arXiv paper ID: November 19th, 2:00pm Pacific Standard Time, 2015 Location: Caribe Hilton, San Juan, Puerto Rico, May 2-4, 2016 Overview -------- It is well understood that the performance of machine learning methods is heavily dependent on the choice of data representation (or features) on which they are applied. The rapidly developing field of representation learning is concerned with questions surrounding how we can best learn meaningful and useful representations of data. We take a broad view of the field, and include in it topics such as deep learning and feature learning, metric learning, kernel learning, compositional models, non-linear structured prediction, and issues regarding non-convex optimization. Despite the importance of representation learning to machine learning and to application areas such as vision, speech, audio and NLP, there was no venue for researchers who share a common interest in this topic. The goal of ICLR has been to help fill this void. A non-exhaustive list of relevant topics: - unsupervised, semi-supervised, and supervised representation learning - metric learning and kernel learning - dimensionality expansion - sparse modeling - hierarchical models - optimization for representation learning - learning representations of outputs or states - implementation issues, parallelization, software platforms, hardware - applications in vision, audio, speech, natural language processing, robotics, neuroscience, or any other field The program will include keynote presentations from invited speakers, oral presentations, and posters. As usual, ICLR will feature two tracks: a Conference Track and a Workshop Track. However, this year, conference and workshop submissions will be reviewed separately, in two different periods. This call for paper is thus only for conference contributions. Workshop submissions will be received a few months before the conference and be subject to a lighter review. A future call for papers will be sent with more details on the Workshop Track. Note that some of the submitted papers that are not accepted to the Conference Track will be invited to be presented under the Workshop Track. ICLR Submission Instructions ---------------------------- 1. By November 12th (2:00pm Pacific Standard Time) authors are asked to submit through CMT the title, abstract, author list, subject areas and a draft of their paper: https://cmt.research.microsoft.com/ICLR2016Conference/ 2. Then, as soon as possible, authors must post on arXiv their submission: http://arxiv.org . 3. Finally, by November 19th (2:00pm Pacific Standard Time), authors must update their submission in CMT with the arXiv ID of their finalized paper. They must also update their PDF submission within CMT. Note that there can be up to 3 days of delay between sending a manuscript on arXiv and receiving your arXiv ID. It is thus important to post your submission on arXiv early. Note also that you can always update your submission on arXiv later on. Submissions without an arXiv ID after November 19th will be automatically removed from CMT. For more information on paper preparation, including the mandatory style files, please see http://www.iclr.cc/ . Submission deadline: November 12th (2:00pm Pacific Standard Time) for title, abstract and preliminary draft, November 19th (2:00pm Pacific Standard Time) for arXiv ID and final submission PDF. Notes: i. Regarding the conference submission's 6-9 page limits, these are really meant as guidelines and will not be strictly enforced. For example, figures should not be shrunk to illegible size to fit within the page limit. However, in order to ensure a reasonable workload for our reviewers, papers that go beyond the 9 pages should be formatted to include a 9 page submission, with supplementary material appended at the end of the manuscript and clearly marked as an appendix, which will be optionally reviewed. ii. Paper revisions will be permitted, and in fact are encouraged, in response to comments from and discussions with the reviewers (see "An Open Reviewing Paradigm" below). An Open Reviewing Paradigm -------------------------- 1. Submissions to ICLR are posted on arXiv prior to being submitted to the conference. 2. Authors submit their paper to the ICLR conference track via the CMT ICLR 2016 conference track website. 3. After the authors have submitted their papers via CMT, the ICLR program committee designates anonymous reviewers as usual. 4. The submitted reviews are published without the name of the reviewer, but with an indication that they are the designated reviews. 5. Anyone can openly (non-anonymously) write and publish comments on the paper. Anyone can ask the program chairs for permission to become an anonymous designated reviewer (open bidding). The program chairs have ultimate control over the publication of each anonymous review. Open commenters will have to use their real names. 6. Authors can post comments in response to reviews and comments. They can revise the paper as many times as they want, possibly citing some of the reviews. Reviewers are expected to revise their reviews in light of paper revisions. 7. The review calendar includes a generous amount of time for discussion between the authors, anonymous reviewers, and open commentators. The goal is to improve the quality of the final submissions. 8. The ICLR program and area chairs will consider all submitted papers, comments, and reviews and will decide which papers are to be presented in the conference track, which will be invited to be presented in the workshop track, and which will not appear at ICLR. 9. Papers that are presented in the workshop track or are not accepted will be considered non-archival, and may be submitted elsewhere (modified or not), although the ICLR site will maintain the reviews, the comments, and the links to the arXiv versions. Organizers ---------- Yoshua Bengio, Universit? de Montreal, General Chair Yann LeCun, New York University and Facebook, General Chair Hugo Larochelle, Twitter and Universit? de Sherbrooke, Senior Program Chair Brian Kingsbury, IBM Watson Group, Program Chair Samy Bengio, Google, Program Chair Contact ------- The organizers can be contacted at iclr2016.programchairs at gmail.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From cie.conference.series at gmail.com Wed Oct 28 17:57:49 2015 From: cie.conference.series at gmail.com (CiE Conference Series) Date: Wed, 28 Oct 2015 21:57:49 +0000 (GMT) Subject: Connectionists: CiE 2016: Pursuit of the Universal - 1st CfP - Paris, 27/6-1/7/2016 Message-ID: 1st CALL FOR PAPERS: COMPUTABILITY IN EUROPE 2016: Pursuit of the Universal Paris, France June 27 - July 1st, 2016 http://lipn.univ-paris13.fr/CIE2016/ IMPORTANT DATES: Submission deadline for contributed papers: December 15, 2015 Notification of authors: March 3, 2016 Deadline for final revisions: March 31, 2016 CiE 2016 is the twelfth conference organized by CiE (Computability in Europe), a European association of mathematicians, logicians, computer scientists, philosophers, physicists and others interested in new developments in computability and their underlying significance for the real world. Previous meetings have taken place in Amsterdam (2005), Swansea (2006), Siena (2007), Athens (2008), Heidelberg (2009), Ponte Delgada (2010), Sofia (2011), Cambridge (2012), Milan (2013), Budapest (2014) and Bucharest (2015). CiE 2016's Motto is: "Pursuit of the Universal". The year 2016 brings the eightieth anniversary of the publication of Alan Turing's seminal paper featuring the Universal Turing Machine. Just as the semantics of the machine gave rise to Incomputability, and pointed to future directions in proof theory, AI, generalised computability, the underlying role of typed information and natural language, and the computability and definability underpinning bioinformatics: so our conference subtitle honours Turing's role in anticipating the quest for universal computational frameworks across a wide spectrum of scientific and humanist disciplines. TUTORIAL SPEAKERS: Bernard Chazelle (Princeton University) Mikolaj Bojanczyk (University of Warsaw) INVITED SPEAKERS: Janet Abbate (Virginia Tech) Natasha Alechina (University of Nottingham) Vasco Brattka (Universit?t der Bundeswehr M?nchen) Barry Cooper (University of Leeds) Steffen Lempp (University of Wisconsin) Andr? Nies (University of Auckland) Sarah Rees (University of Newcastle) Reed Solomon (University of Connecticut) SPECIAL SESSIONS: Computable and constructive analysis (organizers: Daniel Gra?a, Elvira Mayordomo) Computation in bio-chemical systems (organizers: Alessandra Carbone, Ion Petre) Cryptography and information theory (organizers: Danilo Gligoroski, Carles Padro) History and philosophy of computing (organizers: Liesbeth de Mol, Giuseppe Primiero) Symbolic dynamics (organizers: Jarkko Kari, Reem Yassawi) Weak arithmetics (organizers: Lev Beklemishev, Stanislas Speranski) Contributed papers will be selected from submissions received by the PROGRAM COMMITTEE consisting of: Marcella Anselmo (Universit? di Salerno) Nathalie Aubrun (Ecole Normale Sup?rieure de Lyon) Georgios Barmpalias (Chinese Academy of Sciences) Marie-Pierre Beal (Universit? Paris-Est Marne-la-Vall?e) Arnold Beckmann (Swansea University) Laurent Bienvenu (Universit? Paris 7), PC co-chair Paola Bonizzoni (Universit? di Milano-Bicocca) Alessandra Carbone (Universit? Pierre et Marie Curie) Douglas Cenzer (University of Florida) Liesbeth De-Mol (Universit? Lille 3) David Doty (University of California Davis) J?r?me Durand-Lose (Universit? d'Orl?ans) Volker Diekert (Universit?t Stuttgart) Martin Escardo (University of Birmingham) Fran?ois Fages (INRIA Paris-Rocquencourt) Enrico Formenti (Universit? de Nice-Sophia Antipolis) Daniela Genova (University of North Florida) Noam Greenberg (Victoria University of Wellington) Valentina Harizanov, (George Washington University) Hajime Ishihara (Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology) Natasha Jonoska (University of South Florida), PC co-chair Jarkko Kari (University of Turku) Lila Kari (University of Western Ontario) Margarita Korovina (University of Manchester) Marta Kwiatkowska (University of Oxford) Karen Lange (Wellesley College) Benedikt L?we (Universiteit van Amsterdam) Florin Manea (Kiel University) Paulin de Naurois (Universit? Paris 13), Organizing committee chair Keng Meng Selwyn Ng (Nanyang Technological University) Arno Pauly (University of Cambridge) Mario Perez-Jimenez (Universidad de Sevilla) Ion Petre (?bo Akademi University) Mehrnoosh Sadrzadeh (Queen Mary University of London) Alexis Saurin (Universit? Paris 7) Shinnosuke Seki (The University of Electro-Communications Tokyo) Paul Shafer (Ghent University) Alexander Shen (Universit? Montpellier 3) Alexandra Soskova (Sofia University) Mariya Soskova (Sofia University) The PROGRAMME COMMITTEE cordially invites all researchers (European and non-European) to submit their papers in all areas related to computability for presentation at the conference and inclusion in the proceedings at https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=cie2016 Papers must be submitted in PDF format, using the LNCS style (available at ftp://ftp.springer.de/pub/tex/latex/llncs/latex2e/llncs2e.zip) and should have a maximum of 10 pages, including references but excluding a possible appendix in which one can include proofs and other additional material. Papers that build bridges between different parts of the research community are particularly welcome. ___________________________________ CiE 2016 http://lipn.univ-paris13.fr/CIE2016/ ASSOCIATION COMPUTABILITY IN EUROPE http://www.computability.org.uk CiE Conference Series http://www.illc.uva.nl/CiE CiE Membership Application Form http://www.lix.polytechnique.fr/CIE Computability (Journal of CiE) http://www.computability.de/journal/ CiE on FaceBook https://www.facebook.com/AssnCiE Association CiE on Twitter https://twitter.com/AssociationCiE From boracchi at elet.polimi.it Mon Oct 26 18:04:13 2015 From: boracchi at elet.polimi.it (Giacomo Boracchi) Date: Mon, 26 Oct 2015 23:04:13 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: "Concept Drift, Domain Adaptation & Learning in Dynamic Environments" SS @ IEEE IJCNN2016 Message-ID: CALL FOR PAPERS Special Session on "Concept Drift, Domain Adaptation & Learning in Dynamic Environments" which will be held at IJCNN 2016 (within IEEE WCCI 2016), July 25 - 29, 2016, Vancouver, Canada. http://home.deib.polimi.it/boracchi/events/ijcnn2016_SS/index.html http://www.wcci2016.org/ ********************************************************** IMPORTANT DATES Paper submission: January 15th, 2016 Paper Decision notification: March 15th, 2016 Camera-ready submission: April 15th, 2016 Conference Dates: July 25 - 29th, 2016 *********************************************************** One of the fundamental goals in computational intelligence is to achieve brain-like intelligence, a remarkable property of which is the ability to incrementally learn from noisy and incomplete data, and ability to adapt to changing environments. The special session aims at presenting novel approaches to incremental learning and adaptation to dynamic environments both from the more traditional and theoretical perspective of computational intelligence and from the more practical and application-oriented one. This Special Session aspires at building a bridge between academic and industrial research, providing a forum for researchers in this area to exchange new ideas with each other, as well as with the rest of the neural network & computational intelligence community. *Topics* Papers must present original work or review the state-of-the-art in the following non-exhaustive list of topics: ? Methodologies, algorithms and techniques for learning in dynamic/non-stationary environments ? Incremental learning, lifelong learning, cumulative learning ? Domain adaptation and dataset-shift, covariate-shift adaptation ? Semi-supervised learning methods for handling concept-drift ? Ensemble methods for learning under concept drift ? Learning under concept drift and class unbalance ? Change-detection tests and anomaly-detection algorithms ? Algorithms for information mining in nonstationary datastreams ? Applications that call for learning in dynamic/non-stationary environments, and for incremental learning, such as: o Adaptive classifiers for concept drift and recurring concepts o Intelligent systems operating in dynamic/non-stationary environments o Intelligent embedded and cyber-physical systems ? Applications that call for change and anomaly detection, such as: o fault detection o fraud detection o network-intrusion detection and security o intelligent sensor networks ? Cognitive-inspired approaches to adaptation and learning ? Development of test-sets benchmarks for evaluating algorithms learning in non-stationary/dynamic environments ? Issues relevant to above mentioned or related fields *Keywords* Concept drift, nonstationary environment, change/anomaly detection, domain adaptation, incremental learning, data streams. *Paper Submission* THE DEADLINE FOR THE PAPER SUBMISSION TO THE SPECIAL SESSION IS THE SAME OF IEEE WCCI 2016, January 15th 2016. All the submissions will be peer-reviewed with the same criteria used for other contributed papers. Perspective authors will submit their papers through the IEEE IJCNN/WCCI 2016 conference submission system at http://www.wcci2016.org/ Please make sure to select the Special Session nr 26 "Concept Drift, Domain Adaptation & Learning in Dynamic Environments" from the "S. SPECIAL SESSION TOPICS" name in the "Main Research topic" dropdown list; Templates and instruction for authors will be provided on the IEEE IJCNN/WCCI webpage http://www.wcci2016.org/ All papers submitted to the special sessions will be subject to the same peer-review procedure as regular papers, accepted papers will be published in the conference proceedings. Further information about IEEE IJCNN/WCCI 2016 can be found at http://www.wcci2016.org/ For any question you may have about the Special Session or paper submission, feel free to contact Giacomo Boracchi, giacomo.boracchi at polimi.it *********************************************************** Special Session on "Concept Drift, Domain Adaptation & Learning in Dynamic Environments" @ IEEE IJCNN/WCCI 2016 *Organizes* . Giacomo Boracchi (Politecnico di Milano, Dipartimento di Elettronica, Informazione e Bioingegneria, Italy) giacomo.boracchi at polimi.it . Robi Polikar (Rowan University, Glassboro, NJ, USA) polikar at rowan.edu . Manuel Roveri (Politecnico di Milano, Dipartimento di Elettronica, Informazione e Bioingegneria, Italy) manuel.roveri at polimi.it . Gregory Ditzler, (University of Arizona, AZ, USA) ditzler at email.arizona.edu *Technical Program Committee* . Alfred Bifet, University of Waikato, New Zealand . Gianluca Bontempi, Universit? Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium . Yaochu Jin, University of Surrey, England, UK . Georg Krempl, University Magdeburg, Germany . Ludmilla Kuncheva, University of Bangor, Wales, UK . Leandro L. Minku, University of Birmingham, UK . Harris Papadopoulos, Frederick University, Cyprus . Leszek Rutkowski, Czestochowa University of Technology, Poland . Shiliang Sun, East China Normal University . Marley Vellasco, Pontif?cia Universidade Cat?lica do Rio de Janeiro, Brasil . Shengxiang Yang, Brunel University, England, UK *********************************************************** -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From abouchachia at bournemouth.ac.uk Sat Oct 31 14:55:48 2015 From: abouchachia at bournemouth.ac.uk (Hamid Bouchachia) Date: Sat, 31 Oct 2015 18:55:48 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: Open research positions (1Postdoc + 2PhDs) Message-ID: <6a8d4dcbb5e84b598003c5af7f8eec36@Mailand.bournemouth.ac.uk> The Department of Computing at Bournemouth University (United Kingdom) has 1 Postdoc and 2 PhD positions in the area of Machine Learning for Big Data. These positions are part of the EU-funded H2020 project PROTEUS: Scalable online machine learning for predictive analytics and real-time interactive visualization (PROTEUS) [http://www.proteus-bigdata.com/] which explores the development of original research on online machine learning for Big Data. PROTEUS investigation and development results will be evaluated and validated in an industrial setting on-site provided by the world largest steel producer, ArcelorMittal - Spain. In a nutshell PROTEUS aims at developing: ? New strategies for real-time hybrid computation, batch data and data streams. ? Real-time scalable machine learning for massive, high-velocity and complex data streams ? Real-time interactive visual analytics for Big Data. ? Targeted implementation of the algorithms for Apache Flink. ? Real-world industrial validation of the project outcome. We are seeking talented and enthusiastic candidates with excellent analytical, communication and scientific writing skills. Candidates must have strong analytical background in Machine Learning and Data Mining, preferably in online (supervised and unsupervised) learning applied to data streams. They also need to have very good Java/Scala programming skills, and good experience with Big Data streaming platforms and the associated computing models. It is expected that the postdoc applicants hold (or close to accomplish) a PhD degree and should have an excellent publication record in the areas of interest. The PhD candidates on the other hand must hold a University degree (MSc) in Machine Learning, (Applied) Mathematics, Statistics, Computer science or Engineering and are expected to demonstrate outstanding qualities and be motivated to complete their PhD in 3 years. An IELTS score of 6.5 minimum (or equivalent) is essential for candidates for whom English is not the first language. The selected candidates are expected to contribute to the generic research and the related publication activities. Terms of employment ? For Postdoc: o The appointment is for 2 years o A gross salary of ?28695 (~ ?40000) per year ? For the PhD positions: o The appointment is for 3 years o A gross salary of ?20198 (~?28000) per year. The registration fees are waived for 36 months ? Great support for your personal development and career planning including skill development courses, summer schools, conference visits, etc. ? A broad package of fringe benefits (e.g. health insurance, child daycare, excellent technical infrastructure and sports facilities). Information and application These posts are open to both EU and International candidates. Please direct your queries and application to the PI Dr Hamid Bouchachia (see contact at the footer). To apply, please send: ? A letter motivating the application. ? A detailed CV, including education, research experience and the list of publications (NB: For the postdoc the list of publications is mandatory). ? Transcripts of academic records. Application deadline ? Postdoc: January 31th, 2016. ? PhD: December 15th, 2015 All the best, Hamid ======================================= Hamid/Abdelhamid Bouchachia, PhD Associate Professor Intelligent Information Processing Lab Department of Computing Faculty of Science & Technology Bournemouth University Fern Barrow, Poole, BH12 5BB United Kingdom Tel: +44 (0) 1202 962401 E-mail: abouchachia at bournemouth.ac.uk http://dec.bournemouth.ac.uk/~abouchachia/ BU is a Disability Two Ticks Employer and has signed up to the Mindful Employer charter. Information about the accessibility of University buildings can be found on the BU DisabledGo webpages This email is intended only for the person to whom it is addressed and may contain confidential information. If you have received this email in error, please notify the sender and delete this email, which must not be copied, distributed or disclosed to any other person. Any views or opinions presented are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of Bournemouth University or its subsidiary companies. Nor can any contract be formed on behalf of the University or its subsidiary companies via email. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jpezaris at gmail.com Sat Oct 31 13:41:50 2015 From: jpezaris at gmail.com (John Pezaris) Date: Sat, 31 Oct 2015 13:41:50 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: AREADNE 2016 Conference Announcement Message-ID: Dear Colleagues, We are very pleased to announce that planning is well under way for AREADNE 2016 where we will be Celebrating 10 Years of AREADNE Conferences! The coming session will be held 22-26 June 2016 at the Nomikos Conference Centre in Santorini, Greece. Check the web site http://areadne.org for details, and contact us at info at areadne.org with questions. See you in Santorini, John Pezaris Nicho Hatsopoulos AREADNE 2016 Co-Chairs