From Pavis at iit.it Tue Mar 1 04:15:21 2016 From: Pavis at iit.it (Pavis) Date: Tue, 1 Mar 2016 09:15:21 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: Internship position in Computer Vision for automatic scene analysis - bc 72232 Message-ID: <0E09F354EB71FC40A4D51EE54D8A9C883B5EB22F@IITMXWGE016.iit.local> Internship position in Computer Vision for automatic scene analysis Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT) was established in 2003 and successfully created a large-scale infrastructure in Genova, a network of 10 state-of-the-art laboratories countrywide andrecruited an international staff of about 1100 people from more than 50 countries. IIT's research endeavor focuses on high-tech and innovation, representing the forefront of technology with possible applications from medicine to industry, computer science, robotics, life sciences and nanobiotechnologies. The Visual Geometry and Modelling (VGM) Lab at IIT (http://www.iit.it/pavis) invites qualified applicants to submit their CV?s for an internship position within the Biomedical Imaging group in Genoa under the supervision of Dr. Alessio Del Bue. Eligible candidates have a solid background in computer vision and image processing with particular emphasis on video analysis, excellent programming skills in C/C++ and Python. Experience in managing large scale of data will be considered an additional although not compulsory skill. A good knowledge of Matlab is a plus. Candidates should be strongly motivated and keen to work in an interdisciplinary research field. Eligible candidates need to have a Master?s Degree in Computer Science, Engineering, and related areas or a Ph.D. degree recently taken in the above mentioned scientific areas. The internship will be focused on the analysis of video recordings in time lapse (days/weeks/months) of an indoor environment to analyze the dynamic variations in the scene (people interactions, natural and artificial lighting changes). The techniques that will be used span from component analysis (PCA, Matrix factorization, time series analysis) to the use of Deep Learning toolboxes for the extraction of features. The aim of the project is to devise automatic methods for the total understanding of indoor environments with RGBD sensors. The candidate will develop a software in our pre-existing platform and learn new techniques at the basis of modern Computer Vision and Machine Learning systems. Please send the application including a CV with a publication list and a brief description of research interests and main accomplishments to pavis at iit.it quoting ?Internship BC 72232? in the email subject, by March 26, 2016. The activities will take place at the VGM Lab in Genoa. In order to comply with Italian law (art. 23 of Privacy Law of the Italian Legislative Decree n. 196/03), the candidate is kindly asked to give his/her consent to allow IIT to process his/her personal data. We inform you that the information you provide will be solely used for the purpose of assessing your professional profile to meet the requirements of Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia. Your data will be processed by Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, with its headquarters in Genoa, Via Morego 30, acting as the Data Holder, using computer and paper-based means, observing the rules on the protection of personal data, including those relating to the security of data. Please also note that, pursuant to art.7 of Legislative Decree 196/2003, you may exercise your rights at any time as a party concerned by contacting the Data Manager. Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia is an Equal Opportunity Employer that actively seeks diversity in the workforce. From newsletter at saso-conference.org Tue Mar 1 07:15:39 2016 From: newsletter at saso-conference.org (=?utf-8?b?SmFuLVBoaWxpcHAgU3RlZ2jDtmZlcg==?=) Date: Tue, 1 Mar 2016 13:15:39 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: =?utf-8?q?Call_for_Submissions=3A_Doctoral_Sympos?= =?utf-8?q?ium_on_Foundations_and_Applications_of_Self-*_Systems_?= =?utf-8?q?=28FAS*W=29?= Message-ID: **************************************************************************** FAS*W 2016 (SASO and ICCAC) Call For Doctoral Symposium Submissions Doctoral Symposium on Foundations and Applications of Self-* Systems (FAS*W) Augsburg, Germany, September 12 & 16, 2016 http://fasstar2016.informatik.uni-augsburg.de/ http://iccac2016.se.rit.edu/ http://uni-augsburg.de/saso2016 @SASO2016Conf **************************************************************************** Foundations and Applications of Self* Systems (FAS*) is the umbrella for two closely related but independent conferences, the International Conference on Self-Adaptive and Self-Organizing Systems (SASO) and the International Conference on Cloud and Autonomic Computing (ICCAC). The FAS* Doctoral Symposium provides an international forum for PhD Students working in research areas addressed by FAS*. In this forum, PhD students will get unique opportunities to subject their research to the scrutiny of external experts, gain experience in the presentation of research, connect to peers and experts addressing similar problems, and get advice from a panel of internationally leading researchers. Different from the technical tracks of the conference, the FAS* Doctoral Symposium focuses on the specific needs of young researchers at the beginning of their career. As such, particular emphasis will be placed on a critical and constructive feedback that shall help participants to successfully conclude their PhD studies. PhD students working in any area addressed by the FAS* conferences are invited to submit a Doctoral Symposium paper in which they describe the key motivation and objectives of their research project, and reflect on the methodology as well as the current status of their PhD studies. Complementing the thematic focus of FAS*, we particularly solicit contributions in the following areas: * Engineering of self-organizing and self-adaptive systems We solicit theoretical and applied works addressing fundamental principles underlying self-organizing systems, as well as methods that allow to quantify, model and reproduce the self-* characteristics of complex systems in biological, social, physical and technical systems. Examples include mechanisms underlying distributed decision- making and collective intelligence, software engineering challenges in self-adaptive systems, as well as general application of self-* principles in the engineering of technical systems. * Complex Cyber-physical and socio-technical systems We welcome contributions that apply self-* principles to address challenges in the design of complex cyber- physical and socio-technical systems. Particular examples include smart grid infrastructures, sensor networks, opportunistic networking scenarios, as well as large-scale social information systems. Works addressing challenges such as the security, privacy and anonymity of users, or mechanisms to prevent censorship, manipulation or unfairness in socio-technical systems are especially welcome. We further solicit works on socio- technical and socio-economic challenges in P2P systems, such as the design of incentive, trust and reputation mechanisms. * Self-* approaches in Massive-Scale Decentralized Systems Works in this area use self-* approaches to address challenges in the design and operation of massive scale decentralized systems. Examples include Peer-to-Peer technologies, as well as overlay topology management schemes. We are further interested in decentralized data mining and machine learning approaches, as well as decentralized approaches to monitor, model and adapt distributed systems. Works using self-* principles to address the inherent challenges in the design of massive-scale systems with unreliable and heterogeneous are of particular interest. * Autonomic Computing Systems Here we are interested in all works addressing the self-configuration, self-optimization and self-adaptation of cloud computing services, data centers and general distributed computing systems. Examples for questions addressed in this area include the monitoring and modeling of cloud services, the design of efficient resource allocation mechanisms, the application of data mining and machine learning techniques to analyze and predict the behavior of technical systems, as well as the characterization of distributed computing workloads. * Application of Self-* in Robotics and Spatial Computing Finally, we welcome contributions using self-* principles in the areas of robotics, swarm robotics and spatial computing. Here, examples for works of interest include environmental modeling and perception, machine vision, and self-adaptation mechanisms in robotics, distributed coordination and collective intelligence in multi- robot systems, as well as novel paradigms for the programming of autonomous, spatially distributed entities. --------------------------- Submission Instructions --------------------------- Submissions should have a length of max. six pages and be formatted according to the IEEE Computer Society Press proceedings style guide. Authors should submit their papers using the EasyChair installation of the main conference, which is available at: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=saso2016 Please note that only single-author submissions are accepted, which focus on the topic of the doctoral work. The name of the supervisor (? supervised by ... ?) should be clearly marked below the author?s name in the paper. Submissions should further adhere to the following structure: * Motivation: motivate the open problem that you want to address and briefly summarize existing approaches along with their deficiencies. * Objectives: describe the key objectives of your PhD project and argue how achieving them will solve the open problem outlined in the motivation. * Methodology: outline what methodology you will adopt to meet the objectives of your project. Clearly state on what existing works your work will build. * Research Plan: describe what preliminary results ? if any ? you have already achieved and summarize your plans for future work. Please add a rough schedule that allows to judge whether your research plan is feasible. Authors of accepted papers shall prepare a final, camera ready version of the paper, taking into account all feedback from reviewers, and formatted according to the IEEE Computer Society Press proceedings style guide. Doctoral Symposium papers will be advertised in the final program, and will be submitted to IEEE Xplore as part of the SASO proceedings. Papers will also be made available in the IEEE Digital Library. -------------------- Review Process -------------------- Each submission will be reviewed by at least two Doctoral Symposium experts (see list below) that cover the different areas of interest of the conference. Submissions will be evaluated based on their relevance to FAS*, the motivation and quality of the proposed research, as well as the suitability of the chosen methodology. Authors of accepted papers will have different opportunities to present their project at the conference. Besides a full presentation during the PhD Symposium session, an ?Elevator Pitch Session? will be organized during the main conference, where authors get the chance to briefly showcase their research. In addition, the Best Doctoral Symposium paper will be selected and the award will be presented during the main conference. Finally, selected authors will have the additional chance to present their work via a poster in the poster session of the main conference. --------------------------- Invited Talk --------------------------- To be announced --------------------------- Doctoral Symposium Experts --------------------------- * Ozalp Babaoglu ? University of Bologna, IT * Jacob Beal ? BBN Technologies, USA * Kurt Geihs ? Universitaet Kassel, DE * Tom Holvoet ? KU Leuven, BE * Manish Parashar ? Rutgers University, USA * Jeremy Pitt ? Imperial College London, UK * Mark Jelasity ? University of Szeged, HU * Burkhard Stiller ? University of Zurich, CH * Giuseppe Valetto ? Fondazione Bruno Kessler, Trento, IT * Salim Hariri ? University of Arizona, USA * Simon Dobson ? University of St Andrews, Scotland, UK * Antonio Bucchiarone - Fondazione Bruno Kessler, Trento, IT To be completed --------------------------- Important Dates --------------------------- Abstract Submission due: May 29, 2016 Paper Submission due: June 12, 2016 Notifications due: July 10, 2016 Camera ready version due: July 24, 2016 Conference date: September 12-16, 2016 --------------------------- Contact Information --------------------------- For any further information, please contact the Doctoral Symposium chairs: Pradeep Murukannaiah Department of Computer Science North Carolina State University Raleigh, NC, 27606, USA pmuruka at ncsu.edu http://www4.ncsu.edu/~pmuruka/ Dr. Ingo Scholtes Chair of Systems Design ETH Zurich CH-8092 Zurich Switzerland ischoltes at ethz.ch http://www.ingoscholtes.net From cgf at isep.ipp.pt Tue Mar 1 12:17:47 2016 From: cgf at isep.ipp.pt (Carlos Ferreira) Date: Tue, 1 Mar 2016 17:17:47 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: CFP [Springer LNCS]: Workshop on Big Data & Deep Learning in HPC Message-ID: <56D5CEBB.6060907@isep.ipp.pt> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Porto, Portugal June 30, 2016 First Workshop on Big Data & Deep Learning in High Performance Computing (http://bigdatadeeplearning2016.inesctec.pt/) in conjunction with VECPAR 2016 - High Performance Computing for Computational Science (http://vecpar.fe.up.pt/2016/) Paper Submission Deadline: 27 March 2016 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------ WORKSHOP ON BIG DATA & DEEP LEARNING IN HIGH PERFORMANCE COMPUTING ------------------------------------ The number of very large data repositories (big data) is increasing in a rapid pace. Analysis of such repositories using the "traditional" sequential implementations of ML and emerging techniques, like deep learning, that model high-level abstractions in data by using multiple processing layers, requires expensive computational resources and long running times. Parallel or distributed computing are possible approaches that can make analysis of very large repositories and exploration of high-level representations feasible. Taking advantage of a parallel or a distributed execution of a ML/statistical system may: i) increase its speed; ii) learn hidden representations; iii) search a larger space and reach a better solution or; iv) increase the range of applications where it can be used (because it can process more data, for example). Parallel and distributed computing is therefore of high importance to extract knowledge from massive amounts of data and learn hidden representations. The workshop will be concerned with the exchange of experience among academics, researchers and the industry whose work in big data and deep learning require high performance computing to achieve goals. Participants will present recently developed algorithms/systems, on going work and applications taking advantage of such parallel or distributed environments. ------------------------------------ LIST OF TOPICS ------------------------------------ All novel data-intensive computing techniques, data storage and integration schemes, and algorithms for cutting-edge high performance computing architectures which targets Big Data and Deep Learning are of interest to the workshop. Examples of topics include but not limited to: - parallel algorithms for data-intensive applications; - scalable data and text mining and information retrieval; - using Hadoop, MapReduce, Spark, Storm, Streaming to analyze Big Data; - energy-efficient data-intensive computing; - deep-learning with massive-scale datasets; - querying and visualization of large network datasets; - processing large-scale datasets on clusters of multicore and manycore processors, and accelerators; - heterogeneous computing for Big Data architectures; - Big Data in the Cloud; - processing and analyzing high-resolution images using high-performance computing; - using hybrid infrastructures for Big Data analysis. - New algorithms for parallel/distributed execution of ML systems; - applications of big data and deep learning to real-life problems. ------------------------------------ SUBMISSION ------------------------------------ Papers submitted to this workshop should not exceed 12 pages in length. The papers should be formatted according to the rules of the Springer Series Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS). All accepted papers will be published by Springer in the series entitled Lecture Notes in Computer Science. The proceedings will be distributed in electronic format to participants of VECPAR 2016. You should make your submissions through the EasyChair system: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=bdl2016 ------------------------------------ REGISTRATION ------------------------------------ All participants must attend the VECPAR 2016 conference. http://vecpar.fe.up.pt/2016/registration.html ------------------------------------ ORGANIZATION ------------------------------------ Carlos Ferreira (LIAAD - INESC TEC LA and Polytechnic Institute of Porto) Jo?o Gama (LIAAD - INESC TEC LA and University of Porto) Albert Bifet (Telecom ParisTech) V?tor Santos Costa (CRACS - INESC TEC LA and University of Porto) Rui Camacho (LIAAD -INESC TEC LA and University of Porto) Carlos Ferreira ISEP | Instituto Superior de Engenharia do Porto Rua Dr. Ant?nio Bernardino de Almeida, 431 4249-015 Porto - PORTUGAL tel. +351 228 340 500 | fax +351 228 321 159 mail at isep.ipp.pt | www.isep.ipp.pt From gluck at pavlov.rutgers.edu Tue Mar 1 18:38:23 2016 From: gluck at pavlov.rutgers.edu (Mark Gluck) Date: Tue, 1 Mar 2016 18:38:23 -0500 Subject: Connectionists: Now Available: New 3rd edition of "Learning and Memory: From Brain to Behavior" (Gluck, Mercado, & Myers, 2016. Macmillan/Worth Publishers) Message-ID: <5E02E7EA-8388-4864-959B-B07E9E1C5D18@pavlov.rutgers.edu> Now Available: New 3rd edition of "Learning and Memory: From Brain to Behavior" (Gluck, Mercado, & Myers, 2016. Macmillan/Worth Publishers) Dear Colleagues, For those of you who teach a learning and memory course at either the undergraduate or graduate level, the newest edition of our textbook "Learning and Memory: From Brain to Behavior? has just been published by Macmillan/Worth. To receive a complimentary instructors review copy, please see the book?s web page at: http://www.macmillanhighered.com/Catalog/product/learningandmemory-thirdedition-gluck and click on the ?Request Free Exam Copy? button. The book is also available on Amazon.Com at http://www.amazon.com/Learning-Memory-Mark-Gluck/dp/1464105936/ref=sr_1_5?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1456873978&sr=1-5&keywords=Learning%20and%20Memory%20%20gluck%20myers%20mercado Additional information on the book follows: Third Edition ?2016 Learning and Memory: From Brain to Behavior Mark A. Gluck (Rutgers University-Newark) , Eduardo Mercado (University at Buffalo-The State University of New York) , Catherine E. Myers (Department of Veteran Affairs, New Jersey Health Care System; Rutgers University-Newark) With its modular organization, consistent chapter structure, and contemporary perspective, this groundbreaking survey is ideal for courses on learning and memory, and is easily adaptable to courses that focus on either learning ormemory. Instructors can assign the chapters they want from four distinctive modules (introduction, learning, memory, and integrative topics), with each chapter addressing behavioral processes, then the underlying neuroscience, then relevant clinical perspectives. The book is further distinguished by its full-color presentation and coverage that includes comparisons between studies of human and nonhuman brains. The new edition offers enhanced pedagogy and more coverage of animal learning. TABLE OF CONTENTS: Introductory Module 1. The Psychology of Learning and Memory 2. The Neuroscience of Learning and Memory Learning Module 3. Habituation, Sensitization, and Familiarization: Learning about Repeated Events 4. Classical Conditioning: Learning to Predict Important Events 5. Operant Conditioning: Learning the Outcome of Behaviors 6. Generalization and Discrimination Learning Memory Module 7. Episodic and Semantic Memory: Memory for Facts and Events 8. Skill Memory: Learning by Doing 9. Working Memory and Cognitive Control Integrative Topics Module 10. Emotional Influences on Learning and Memory 11. Social Learning and Memory: Observing, Interacting, and Reenacting 12. Development and Aging: Learning and Memory across the Lifespan - Mark Gluck ___________________________________ Dr. Mark A. Gluck, Professor Center for Molecular & Behavioral Neuroscience Rutgers University ? Newark 197 University Ave. Newark, New Jersey 07102 Web: http://www.gluck.edu Email: gluck at pavlov.rutgers.edu Ph: ( 973) 353-3298 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From bjoern.kindler at kip.uni-heidelberg.de Thu Mar 3 09:48:16 2016 From: bjoern.kindler at kip.uni-heidelberg.de (Bjoern Kindler) Date: Thu, 3 Mar 2016 15:48:16 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: 1st HBP Neuromorphic Computing Application Workshop on 22 March 2016 at 15:00 CET via web stream References: <6062CF3E-7C48-49D2-920F-6BAE52F35548@kip.uni-heidelberg.de> Message-ID: Dear Friends and Colleagues, after completion of the large-scale SpiNNaker and BrainScaleS neuromorphic computing systems as part of the EU Human Brain Project we will be offering regular application workshops for potential users from academia, industry and education. The first workshop will take place on March, 22nd from 3pm to 6pm CET. Attendance is via remote access (YouTube stream), so you will not have to travel ! Active participation is still possible and encouraged. During the workshop both systems will be introduced and the access concept demonstrated together with a few applications. To learn more, please consult : http://neuromorphic.eu best wishes, Karlheinz Meier --- Karlheinz Meier phone: +49 6221 54 9831 Kirchhoff-Institut f?r Physik secretary: +49 6221 54 9830 Universit?t Heidelberg fax: +49 6221 54 9839 Im Neuenheimer Feld 227 e-mail: meierk at kip.uni-heidelberg.de D-69120 Heidelberg web: http://www.kip.uni-heidelberg.de/user/meierk/?lang=en From mireille.bonnard at univ-amu.fr Wed Mar 2 07:47:26 2016 From: mireille.bonnard at univ-amu.fr (BONNARD Mireille) Date: Wed, 2 Mar 2016 12:47:26 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: Brain Connectivity Workshop 2016, Marseille (France) In-Reply-To: <1456918633286.62843@univ-amu.fr> References: <1456918633286.62843@univ-amu.fr> Message-ID: <1456922846233.9218@univ-amu.fr> Brain Connectivity Workshop 2016, Marseille (France) Registration is open now! (reduced rates until March 30th) When: 22nd to 24th June, 2016 Link to official website: http://bcw2016.org We are happy to announce the 15th edition of the Brain Connectivity Workshop (BCW) to take place in Marseille from the 22nd to the 24th of June 2016. The Brain Connectivity Workshop (BCW) is a well-established workshop series, which has been held annually in Europe, USA, Australia and Asia for the last 14 years. BCW is an official satellite of the annual meeting of OHBM, which is held in Geneva, Switzerland in 2016. BCW attracts every year a public of 100-200 participants working in cognitive, computational and clinical neurosciences. The discussions are centered on all themes around brain connectivity including structural and functional imaging, modeling, brain function and clinics. BCW is highly influential in the field due to the traditionally high quality of speakers and a long track record of innovation. For instance, both, the Connectome and The Virtual Brain have been born within the BCW community. The typical BCW format -a first educational day of lectures held by international authorities in their fields, followed by two days of shorter talks with ample time for discussion provides a unique forum for creativity, controversy and brainstorming. BCW 2016, introduced by a first day of tutorials by experts in their field, will feature focused sessions on themes such as perturbing the brain, mapping the brain, and brain dynamics in function (cognition) and dysfunction (epilepsy). NB: Please note that European Cup of Football will be held in France during this period and hotels are going to be booked fast! Confirmed educational lecturers (day 1) and workshop speakers (days 2-3) include: * Fabrice Bartolomei (Aix-Marseille University, Marseille, France) * Michael Breakspear (QIMR, Brisbane, Australia) * Vince Calhoun (University Of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM) * Karl Friston (UCL, London, UK) * Jorge Gonzalez-Martinez (Cleveland Clinic, Cleveland, OH) * Marc Goodfellow (University of Exeter, Exeter, UK) * Charles Gray (Montana State University, Bozeman, MT) * Claudius Gros (Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main, Germany) * Sean Hill (EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland) * Martin Hoffman-Apitius (Fraunhofer Institute SCAI, St Augustin, Germany) * Esther Krook-Magnuson (University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN) * Pierre Luppi (Lyon Neuroscience Research Center, Lyon, France) * Randy McIntosh (Baycrest Research Center, Toronto, ON) * Lionel Naccache (ICM, Paris, France) * Ivan Soltesz (UC Irvine, CA) * Olaf Sporns (Indiana University, Bloomington, IN) * William Stacey (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI) * Gregor Thut (University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK) * Stephan Van Gils (University of Twente, Ae Enschede, The Netherlands) * Michael Wibral (Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main, Germany) A special evening lecture will be delivered by Patrick Chauvel (Aix-Marseille University, Marseille, France). A detailed program is coming soon. Organizing committee Viktor Jirsa, Chair (INS, Aix-Marseille University, UMR 1106 INSERM) Demian Battaglia, Christian B?nar, Mireille Bonnard, Monique Esclapez (INS, Aix-Marseille University) Andrea Brovelli (INT, Aix-Marseille University), Maxime Guye (CRMBM, Aix-Marseille University, UMR 7339 CNRS & APHM) Ingo Bojak (University of Reading, UK). An event sponsored by: University Aix-Marseille, Brain Products, Bionics, Springer EPJ Nonlinear Biomedical Physics Journal, Codebox, Institute of System Neuroscience Inserm, Institute of Neuroscience Timone, Center for Magnetic Resonance in Biology and Medicine, Mediterranean Society of Neuroscience (IBRO member) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From e.falotico at sssup.it Thu Mar 3 10:47:59 2016 From: e.falotico at sssup.it (Falotico Egidio) Date: Thu, 03 Mar 2016 16:47:59 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: Human Brain Project workshop on Neurorobotics @ Biorob2016 - Call for Contributions Message-ID: Dear colleagues (with advance apologies for any cross-postings), We invite submissions for oral or poster presentations at the Huma Brain Project workshop on Neurorobotics that will be organized on June 26th, at the sixth IEEE RAS/EMBS International Conference on Biomedical Robotics and Biomechatronics ? BioRob 2016, in Singapore. http://sssa.bioroboticsinstitute.it/workshops/biorob2016 Prospective authors should submit the extended abstract (one A4 page, in PDF format) by March 30th, 2016 . Notification of acceptance will be received no later than April 8th. For submission please refer to the following link: http://sssa.bioroboticsinstitute.it/workshops/biorob2016/HBPPaperSubmissionForm ABSTRACT Neurorobotics is already an established branch of robotics that in the last years, taking advantage from an increase in the accessibility of existing neuroscientific data and knowledge, allowed building robotic systems that can exhibit robustness, adaptability and several features of the human intelligence. Reciprocally, significant developments in robotics and machine learning put robotics in the service of neuroscience as experimental platforms or test-beds of brain models. In the last years, advanced insights and the increasing availability of cheap processing power has led Neurorobotics to follow two tracks of research with different goals and methods: The first track focuses on neuro-inspired computing paradigms that mimic nervous system functions based on Spiking Neural Networks. This does not only foster our understanding of biological systems but also contributes to future technical applications in artificial systems. In the past, limited processing power and the lack of appropriate models and tools shifted the focus of research far away from biological neural networks. Recently a number of projects like the US BRAIN Initiative and the Human Brain Project have taken up the challenge by combining efforts from the fields of neuroscience and computer science to enable the large scale modeling and simulation of biological neural networks with billions of spiking neurons. The second track, extending the theory of classical artificial neural networks, mostly relies on simpler neuron models but integrate them in novel network architectures. These networks are extensively used in robotics, allowing mimicking the function of some brain areas in order to reproduce complex behaviors with a reduced computational cost. This workshop seeks to present and discuss advances in neuroscientific models for cognition and new perspectives in control for robotic applications based on both biologically-inspired and artificial neural networks. The final goal is to bring together researchers from both robotics and neuroscience in order to explore how to maximize the progress at the multidisciplinary frontier evaluating the advantages of both tracks of the Neurorobotics research. TOPICS OF INTEREST - Bio-inspired sensory-motor coordination and adaptive control - Active perception - Neurocontrollers - Self-organization and sensory-motor mapping - Predictive behaviour - Bio-inspired learning robots - Robot imitation and learning by demonstration - Memory-based algorithms - Cognitive behaviours in robots - Reservoir computing - Deep learning - Neuromorphic computing for robotics KEYNOTE SPEAKERS ?Giorgio Metta (Italian Institute of Technology, Italy) - ?The use of motor invariants can improve action discrimination? ?Tomohiro Shibata (Kyushu Institute of Technology, Japan) ? ?Functional Robotic Assistance of Human Motor Learning? ?Ruediger Dillman (Research Center for Information Technology, Germany) - ?Modelling Cortical Sensor-Motor Control Functionalities with a Spiking Neural-Robot Control Simulator? ?Sunil L. Kukreja (National University of Singapore, Singapore) ? ?Integration of Neuromorphic Tactile Perception with Haptic Feedback in a Virtual and Augmented Reality World for Advanced Robotic Control? Best Regards, Egidio Falotico, Cecilia Laschi (The BioRobotics Institite,Scuola Superiore Sant?Anna , Italy) Florian R?hrbein, Florian Walter (Technical University of Munich, Germany) Organizers From graduateprograms at bccn-berlin.de Fri Mar 4 09:51:09 2016 From: graduateprograms at bccn-berlin.de (Robert Martin) Date: Fri, 4 Mar 2016 15:51:09 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: [last call for applications] *Graduate Programs in Computational Neuroscience* in Berlin; MSc and PhD; 6 PhD scholarships; deadline March 15, 2016 Message-ID: <56D9A0DD.5040401@bccn-berlin.de> [Apologies for cross-posting] *Doctoral* and *Master Program* "Computational Neuroscience" at the Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience Berlin in Berlin, Germany Application deadline SOON: *March 15, 2016* Begin of courses: October 2016 Internet: www.computational-neuroscience-berlin.de _Doctoral Program_ The Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience Berlin and the TU Berlin invite applications for *6 fellowships* of the Research Training Group "Sensory Computation in Neural Systems" (GRK 1589/2, https://www.eecs.tu-berlin.de/grk_15891/). The *scientific program* of the research training group combines techniques and concepts from machine learning, computational neuroscience, and systems neurobiology in order to specifically address sensory computation. Doctoral candidates will work on interdisciplinary projects investigating the mechanisms of neural computation, address the processes underlying perception on different scales and different levels of abstraction, and develop new theories of computation hand in hand with well-controlled experiments in order to put functional hypotheses to the test. The training group offers structured supervision complemented by a teaching and training program. Each student will be supervised by two investigators with complementary expertise and will be associated with the Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience Berlin (https://www.bccn-berlin.de/) a leading research center dedicated to the theoretical study of neural processing. Candidates are expected to hold a Masters degree (or equivalent) in a relevant subject (e.g., neuroscience, cognitive science, computer science, physics, mathematics, etc.) and have the required advanced mathematical background. Candidates selected in the first application step will be invited for lab visits and an interview, expected to take place in June 2015. The *fellowships of 1468 ?/month* - with additional children allowances if applicable---will be granted for up to three years. _Master's Program_ The tuition-free Master program in Computational Neuroscience offers *15 places* per year, has a duration of 2 years and is fully taught in English. The *curriculum* is subdivided into ten modules, whose content includes theoretical neuroscience, programming, machine learning, cognitive neuroscience, acquisition, modelling, and computational analysis of neural data, with a strong focus on a complementary theoretical and experimental training. Three lab rotations and a Master's thesis are accomplished in the second year. The aim of the program is to provide the students with an interdisciplinary education and an early contact to the neurocomputational research environment. *Requirements* BSc or equivalent degree in a relevant subject (typically in the natural sciences, in an engineering discipline, in cognitive science, or in mathematics), certificate of English proficiency, proof of sufficient mathematical knowledge (at least 24 ECTS credit points). ~~~ _For more information_ ... ... come and visit us at the BCCN Berlin: https://www.bccn-berlin.de/Home/Contact/How_to_reach/ ... or browse: www.computational-neuroscience-berlin.de ... or e-mail: graduateprograms at bccn-berlin.de . Best regards, Robert Martin -- Robert Martin, PhD Teaching Coordinator Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience Humboldt-Universitaet zu Berlin Philippstr. 13 House 6; 10115 Berlin; Germany Phone/Fax +49 (0)30 2093 6773/6771 http://www.computational-neuroscience-berlin.de GRK 1589/1, Sensory Computation in Neural Systems Technische Universitaet Berlin Sekretariat MAR 5-6; Marchstr. 23; 10587 Berlin Phone/Fax +49 (0)30 314 72006/73121 http://www.eecs.tu-berlin.de/grk_15891/ From bazhenov at salk.edu Fri Mar 4 13:06:35 2016 From: bazhenov at salk.edu (Maxim Bazhenov) Date: Fri, 4 Mar 2016 10:06:35 -0800 Subject: Connectionists: Postdoctoral position in computational neuroscience Message-ID: <56D9CEAB.6040605@salk.edu> Applications are invited for post-doctoral research position in the laboratories of Drs. Nikolai Rulkov and Maxim Bazhenov at the University of California, San Diego to develop novel computational models of large-scale brain dynamics. This project involves close collaboration with experimental and theoretical groups. The ultimate goal of this research is understanding how the large-scale brain dynamics arises from individual dynamics of spiking neurons and synaptic interactions. The successful candidate will be responsible for the design of new classes of thalamic, cortical and hippocampal neuron models based on the discrete time (difference) equations. These models will be used to model brain network dynamics during sleep and wakefulness, as well as guide data analysis and produce novel experimental predictions. Qualified applicants are expected to have experience in dynamical systems, conductance-based neuronal modeling and theory of digital signal processing. Programming experience with C/C++ is required. Knowledge of PYTHON or MATLAB is a plus. The University of California offers excellent benefits. Salary is based on research experience. The initial appointment is for 1 year with a possibility of extension. Applicants should send a brief statement of research interests, a CV and the names of three references to Maxim Bazhenov (bazhenov at salk.edu) and Nikolai Rulkov (nrulkov at ucsd.edu). -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From ricardo.chavarriaga at epfl.ch Sat Mar 5 12:50:07 2016 From: ricardo.chavarriaga at epfl.ch (Chavarriaga Lozano Ricardo) Date: Sat, 5 Mar 2016 17:50:07 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: CfP 6th Workshop on Brain-Machine Interfaces Systems - SMC 2016 Message-ID: <37FDE5F8-AD35-4890-BF1E-AAE8EC44DCAA@epfl.ch> ?Apologies for multiple postings-- Call for papers and special sessions - 6th Workshop on Brain-Machine Interfaces Systems New Research Opportunities and Industrial Applications in BMI Systems Arising from the IEEE Brain Initiative http://go.epfl.ch/smc2016_bmi 2016 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics October 9-12, 2016, Budapest. http://www.smc2016.org Technically co-sponsored by the IEEE Brain Initiative and 10 IEEE societies, it will feature keynotes given by founders behind innovative companies worth over USD 5 Billion, a SMC2016 keynote on BMI, invited speakers from academia, panels, tutorials, and contributed papers. Furthermore, the second annual meeting of the IEEE brain initiative will be held during the workshop. Call for papers and special sessions Brain-Machine Interfaces (BMI) systems offer the possibility of a new generation of multidisciplinary technologies that allow users to directly control devices via the nervous system. Successful realisation of such approaches encompass several challenges including seamless interaction of the human and the machine, robust systems to chronically measure brain activity, reliable decoding of the (neural) control signals, and efficient means to provide information back to the user. This workshop aims at facilitating interaction and intellectual exchange between all researchers, developers and consumers of this technology. If you are interested in organising a special session within this workshops please contact us Keynotes: Moving Research Out of the Lab Into the Real World: How Science and Technology Become Commercialised This session will focus on commercialisation of technology featuring keynotes from founders behind innovative companies worth over USD 5 Billion. The list of speakers include Reese Jones (Founder Farallon, Netopia, BMUG); Jack McCauley (Co-founder Oculus); Joel Libove (Founder Furaxa, Ultraview); Stephen Pieraldi (Founder Fail Pro, 2BClear); Stuart M. Dambrot (Founder Critical Thought|TV); and Bernt R. Wahl (Founder Factle, Datahunt, Dynamic Software). Invited speakers SMC2016 Keynote on BMI: ? Jose Carmena, Vice Chair, IEEE Brain Initiative, University of California Berkeley, USA Workshop invited talks ? Andrew Laine, President, EMB Society; Columbia University, USA ? Jos? del R. Mill?n, Ecole Polytechnique F?d?rale de Lausanne, Switzerland ? Paul Sajda, Chair, IEEE Brain Initiative; Columbia University, USA Submissions Manuscripts should be submitted through the SMC submission system. You can consult the list of special sessions in our website (http://go.epfl.ch/smc2016_bmi). We would appreciate if you contact the organisers for arrangement of submission in the first instance and ease organisational issues. All submitted papers will undergo the same review process (three completed reviews per paper). Accepted papers will be published in the proceedings of the SMC 2015 conference and indexed in IEEExplore. The IEEE Brain Initiative Best Paper Award will be given to the best paper at this workshop, and 5 IEEE Brain Initiative student travel grants will be awarded. Besides this, all papers in the workshop will be eligible for SMC's Franklin V. Taylor Memorial Award and Best Student Paper Award. Important dates April 15, 2016: Deadline for submission of full-length papers to special sessions. May 25, 2016: Acceptance/Rejection Notification. July 9, 2016: Camera-ready submission deadline. Early registration deadline. Organizer IEEE SMC TC on Brain-Machine Interface Systems ? Michael H. Smith, Chair, University of California, Berkeley, USA > ? Ricardo Chavarriaga, Co-chair, EPFL, Switzerland > ? Seong-Whan Lee, Co-chair, Korea University > ? Vinod A Prasad, Co-chair, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore > ? Ljiljana Trajkovic, Technical Program Chair, Simon Fraser University, Canada > Technical sponsors IEEE Brain Initiative, IEEE Computational Intelligence Society, IEEE Consumer Electronic Society, IEEE Council on Electronic Design Automation, IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, IEEE Magnetics Society, IEEE Signal processing society, IEEE Society on Social Implications of Technology, IEEE Solid-State Circuits Society, and the IEEE Standards Association. ------ Looking forward to see you all in Budapest. More information: BMI workshop CFP: http://go.epfl.ch/smc2016_bmi SMC Conference: http://www.smc2016.org -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mvanross at inf.ed.ac.uk Sat Mar 5 06:35:15 2016 From: mvanross at inf.ed.ac.uk (Mark van Rossum) Date: Sat, 5 Mar 2016 11:35:15 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: PhD positions in computational neuroscience Message-ID: <56DAC473.3040500@inf.ed.ac.uk> 3 YEAR PhD IN COMPUTATIONAL NEUROSCIENCE, UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH. We invite applications for our PhD programme in COMPUTATIONAL NEUROSCIENCE at the University of Edinburgh. Applicants need to have UK citizenship, or have been in the UK for the last 3 years. The studentships are ideal for students who want to apply their computational and analytical skills to problems in neuroscience and related fields. The following supervisor have openings: Peggy Seri?s: Bayesian approaches to cognition and perception; computational psychiatry. Mark van Rossum: Synaptic plasticity; coding in the visual system; noise in the nervous system. Matthias Hennig: Models of neural networks; homeostasis and development; visual and auditory neuroscience; analysis of large-scale electrophysiological recordings The PhD project can be done in collaboration with one of the many affiliated departments and institutes. Edinburgh has been voted as 'best place to live in Britain', and has many exciting cultural and student activities. Students with a strong background in either computer science, mathematics, physics or engineering are particularly welcome to apply. Motivated students with other backgrounds will also be considered. Application procedure: For more info see http://www.anc.ed.ac.uk/neuroscience and contact one of the supervisors listed above. Next, apply at http://www.ed.ac.uk/studying/postgraduate/degrees/index.php?r=site/view&id=489 -- Mark van Rossum, Reader, School of Informatics, U Edinburgh Forum Rm 2.52, 44-131-6511211 The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in Scotland, with registration number SC005336. From J.Spencer at uea.ac.uk Wed Mar 2 08:05:33 2016 From: J.Spencer at uea.ac.uk (John Spencer (PSY)) Date: Wed, 2 Mar 2016 13:05:33 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: Summer School on Dynamic Field Theory... In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Greetings Colleagues, I will be teaching a Summer School on Dynamic Field Theory from June 6-17, 2016 at the University of East Anglia. A flyer announcing details is attached. Please feel free to circulate this to folks who might be interested. Dynamic field theory is a framework for understanding how the brain gives rise to thinking in real time, and how cognitive decisions leave memory traces that are the basis for learning and development. The Summer School will provide an overview of DFT, using a new text: Dynamic Thinking-A Primer on Dynamic Field Theory. To apply, send a 2-page CV and brief cover letter describing why you want to attend the school to: ssf.advancedtraining at uea.ac.uk Additional details including information on fees can be found at http://www.dynamicfieldtheory.org/engage/ Cheers, John Spencer John P. Spencer, PhD Professor School of Psychology, Room 0.09 Lawrence Stenhouse Building, University of East Anglia, Norwich Research Park, Norwich NR4 7TJ United Kingdom Email: j.spencer at uea.ac.uk School website: http://www.uea.ac.uk/psy Telephone 01603 593968 [cid:image001.png at 01D09851.EF67E200] UK Top 20 (16th Complete University Guide 2015, 18th Times and Sunday Times Good University Guide 2015-16) UK 2nd for Student Satisfaction (National Student Survey 2015) World Top 1% (Times Higher Education World Rankings 2015-16) World Top 100 (Leiden Ranking 2015) [facebook] [twitter-old] [tumblr] [flickr] [linkedin] [youtube] [cid:image008.png at 01CF8BB5.50024060] -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... 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Name: SummerSchoolFlyer2016[5].pdf Type: application/pdf Size: 3136015 bytes Desc: SummerSchoolFlyer2016[5].pdf URL: From ilpincy+ants at gmail.com Wed Mar 2 13:20:23 2016 From: ilpincy+ants at gmail.com (Carlo Pinciroli) Date: Wed, 2 Mar 2016 13:20:23 -0500 Subject: Connectionists: ANTS 2016 - New submission deadline: March 14, 2016 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 March 2, 2016 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 14, 2016 (extended) 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 From erdi.peter at wigner.mta.hu Mon Mar 7 10:04:39 2016 From: erdi.peter at wigner.mta.hu (=?ISO-8859-2?Q?=C9rdi_P=E9ter?=) Date: Mon, 7 Mar 2016 16:04:39 +0100 (CET) Subject: Connectionists: Fellowships (fee reduction): Summer Systems Neuroscience study abroad in Budapest Message-ID: Dear Community: Due to the generous support of an anonymous donor, we are now able to offer Fellowships for the Summer study abroad program: http://sysneuro-semester.org/; June 12 - Aug 5 2016, Budapest, leading to a strong fee reduction $3500 (tuition + accommodation). The original fee was $7000. Acceptance on rolling basis, conditional by the closing date of March 21st, 2016. Act rapidly! Systems Neuroscience is a study abroad summer program for undergraduates. Applications and inquiry: bscs at bscs-us.org (cc to negyessy.laszlo at wigner.mta.hu) P?ter ?rdi Program Director From demian.battaglia at univ-amu.fr Sat Mar 5 06:06:25 2016 From: demian.battaglia at univ-amu.fr (Demian Battaglia) Date: Sat, 5 Mar 2016 12:06:25 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: Brain Connectivity Workshop 2016 - REGISTRATION NOW OPEN Message-ID: <8EC6435D-A5BD-485A-BC9D-FD07B8B49252@univ-amu.fr> Brain Connectivity Workshop 2016, Marseille (France) Registration is open now! (reduced rates until March 30th) When: 22nd to 24th June, 2016 Link to official website: http://bcw2016.org We are happy to announce the 15th edition of the Brain Connectivity Workshop (BCW) to take place in Marseille from the 22nd to the 24th of June 2016. The Brain Connectivity Workshop (BCW) is a well-established workshop series, which has been held annually in Europe, USA, Australia and Asia for the last 14 years. BCW is an official satellite of the annual meeting of OHBM, which is held in Geneva, Switzerland in 2016. BCW attracts every year a public of 100-200 participants working in cognitive, computational and clinical neurosciences. The discussions are centered on all themes around brain connectivity including structural and functional imaging, modeling, brain function and clinics. BCW is highly influential in the field due to the traditionally high quality of speakers and a long track record of innovation. For instance, both, the Connectome and The Virtual Brain have been born within the BCW community. The typical BCW format ?a first educational day of lectures held by international authorities in their fields, followed by two days of shorter talks with ample time for discussion provides a unique forum for creativity, controversy and brainstorming. BCW 2016, introduced by a first day of tutorials by experts in their field, will feature focused sessions on themes such as perturbing the brain, mapping the brain, and brain dynamics in function (cognition) and dysfunction (epilepsy). NB: Please note that European Cup of Football will be held in France during this period and hotels are going to be booked fast! Confirmed educational lecturers (day 1) and workshop speakers (days 2-3) include: Fabrice Bartolomei (Aix-Marseille University, Marseille, France) Michael Breakspear (QIMR, Brisbane, Australia) Vince Calhoun (University Of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM) Karl Friston (UCL, London, UK) Jorge Gonzalez-Martinez (Cleveland Clinic, Cleveland, OH) Marc Goodfellow (University of Exeter, Exeter, UK) Charles Gray (Montana State University, Bozeman, MT) Claudius Gros (Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main, Germany) Martin Hoffman-Apitius (Fraunhofer Institute SCAI, St Augustin, Germany) Esther Krook-Magnuson (University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN) Pierre Luppi (Lyon Neuroscience Research Center, Lyon, France) Randy McIntosh (Baycrest Research Center, Toronto, ON) Lionel Naccache (ICM, Paris, France) Ivan Soltesz (UC Irvine, CA) Olaf Sporns (Indiana University, Bloomington, IN) William Stacey (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI) Gregor Thut (University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK) Stephan Van Gils (University of Twente, Ae Enschede, The Netherlands) Michael Wibral (Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main, Germany) A special evening lecture will be delivered by Patrick Chauvel (Aix-Marseille University, Marseille, France). A detailed program is coming soon. Organizing committee Viktor Jirsa, Chair (INS, Aix-Marseille University, UMR 1106 INSERM) Demian Battaglia, Christian B?nar, Mireille Bonnard, Monique Esclapez (INS, Aix-Marseille University) Andrea Brovelli (INT, Aix-Marseille University), Maxime Guye (CRMBM, Aix-Marseille University, UMR 7339 CNRS & APHM) Ingo Bojak (University of Reading, UK). An event sponsored by: University Aix-Marseille, Ville de Marseille, Brain Products, Bionics, Springer EPJ Nonlinear Biomedical Physics Journal, Codebox, Institute of System Neuroscience Inserm, Institute of Neuroscience Timone, Center for Magnetic Resonance in Biology and Medicine, Mediterranean Society of Neuroscience (IBRO member) From arnaud.blanchard at ensea.fr Mon Mar 7 08:27:10 2016 From: arnaud.blanchard at ensea.fr (Arnaud Blanchard) Date: Mon, 7 Mar 2016 14:27:10 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: ICDL-EPIROB 2016: approaching deadline ( April 1st ) for papers and workshops submission Message-ID: <53EE894C-0BEB-4BE6-AA64-5C9BC9EBDA2C@ensea.fr> Approaching deadline ( April 1st ) for papers and workshops submission Call for Papers & Call for Workshops IEEE ICDL-EPIROB 2016 The Sixth Joint IEEE International Conference on Development and Learning and on Epigenetic Robotics Cergy-Pontoise / Paris, France September 19-22th, 2016 http://www.icdl-epirob.org == Conference description IEEE ICDL-Epirob is the premier forum for advances in epigenetic robotics and developmental psychology with the focus on learning and development in biological and artificial systems. This single-track conference brings together researchers from cognitive sciences, computer sciences, and robotics to explore their shared interests in autonomous learning and development. The design and study of both robotic and simulated embodied and situated computational models that are inspired by the principles of human development will be presented at the conference. A special event -- the ?Babybot challenge? ? will see renowned psychologists challenging engineers and modelers in how to use the tools of developmental robotics to replicate and extend the key findings. This year, thanks to special funding from Paris-Seine University, six renowned invited speakers will cover the different facets of the conference. We invite you to participate in IEEE ICDL-Epirob by sharing your research, insights, experience, and enthusiasm. A social event ?on the paths of the impressionists? will allow you to discover the old city of Pontoise and Auvers sur Oise where Vincent Van Gogh painted some of his most famous masterpieces. Excursions to Paris, Versailles and Giverny will be proposed for spouses. == Keynote speakers * Tamim Asfour (http://h2t.anthropomatik.kit.edu/english/21_66.php ) * Karl Friston (http://www.fil.ion.ucl.ac.uk/~karl ) * Julie Grezes (http://iec-lnc.ens.fr/social-cognition-group/membres-100/faculty-177/grezes-julie-dr2/?lang=en ) * Tony Prescott (https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/psychology/staff/academic/tony-prescott ) * One more to be confirmed == Call for submissions of workshops and papers We invite submissions for this exciting window into the future of developmental sciences. Submissions which establish novel links between brain, behavior and computation are particularly encouraged. == Topics of interest include (but are not limited to): * the development of perceptual, motor, cognitive, emotional, social, and communication skills in biological systems and robots; * embodiment; * general principles of development and learning; * interaction of nature and nurture; * sensitive/critical periods; * developmental psychology; * developmental stages; * grounding of knowledge and development of representations; * architectures for cognitive development and open-ended learning; * neural plasticity; * statistical learning; * reward and value systems; * intrinsic motivations, exploration and play; * interaction of development and evolution; * use of robots in applied settings such as autism therapy; * epistemological foundations and philosophical issues. Any of the topics above can be simultaneously studied from the neuroscience, psychology or modeling/robotic point of view. == Submissions will be accepted in several formats: 1. Full six-page paper submissions: Accepted papers will be included in the conference proceedings and will be selected for either an oral presentation or a featured poster presentation. Featured posters will have a 1 minute "teaser" presentation as part of the main conference session and will be showcased in the poster sessions. 2. Two-page poster abstract submissions: To encourage discussion of late-breaking results or for work that is not sufficiently mature for a full paper, we will accept 2-page abstracts. These submissions will NOT be included in the conference proceedings. Accepted abstracts will be presented during poster sessions. 3. Tutorials and workshops: We invite experts in different areas to organize either a tutorial or a workshop to be held on the first day of the conference. Tutorials are meant to provide insights into specific topics as well as overviews that will inform the interdisciplinary audience about the state-of-the-art in child development, neuroscience, robotics, or any of the other disciplines represented at the conference. A workshop is an opportunity to present a topic cumulatively. Workshop can be half- or full-day in duration including oral presentations as well as posters. Submission format: two pages. == Call for Tutorials and Workshops We invite experts in different areas to organize a tutorial or workshop, which will be held on the first day of the conference. Participants in tutorials and workshops are asked to register for the main conference. Tutorials are meant to provide insights into specific topics as well as overviews that will inform the interdisciplinary audience about the state-of-the-art in child development, neuroscience, robotics, or any of the other disciplines represented at the conference. A workshop is an opportunity to present a topic cumulatively. Workshops can be half- or full-day in duration including oral presentations as well as posters. We would like to receive applications in pdf format for organizing a workshop with the following informations: * title / workshop or tutorial * organiser's name, research structure and coordinate (email) * how many invited presentations/ and 'open' presentations * is there a call for posters? * what is the timetable * website address ? Proposals should be sent to Sofiane Boucenna sofiane.boucenna at u-cergy.fr , Verena Hafner hafner at informatik.hu-berlin.de & Alex Pitti alexandre.pitti at u-cergy.fr == Important dates * April 1st, 2016, paper and workshops submission deadline * June 1st, 2016, author notification * July 1st, 2014, final version (camera ready) due * September 19th-22nd, 2014, conference == Program committee General chairs: * Minoru Asada Osaka (Japan). * Philippe Gaussier, Cergy-Pontoise (France). Program chairs: * Verena Hafner, Berlin (Germany) * Alexandre Pitti, Cergy-Pontoise (France) Bridge chairs: ? David Cohen, Paris (France) ? Mathew Schlesinger, Southern Illinois (USA) Publication chairs: * Sofiane Boucenna, Cergy-Pontoise (France) Publicity chairs: * Arnaud Blanchard, Cergy-Pontoise (France) * Manuel Lopes, Bordeaux (France) * Yulia Sandamirskaya, Z?rich (Switzerland) Local chairs: * Pierre Andry, Cergy-Pontoise (France) * Nicolas Cuperlier, Cergy-Pontoise (France) Finance chairs: * Ghil?s Mostafaoui, Cergy-Pontoise (France) Research Engineer ? ETIS lab. http://arnaudblanchard.pensoir.fr ICDL-EpiRob2016 http://www.icdl-epirob .org -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From egidio.falotico at sssup.it Mon Mar 7 14:06:52 2016 From: egidio.falotico at sssup.it (Falotico Egidio) Date: Mon, 07 Mar 2016 20:06:52 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: PostDoc position in bio-inspired neural networks for robot control Message-ID: A postdoc position is available at The BioRobotics Insititute, Scuola Superiore Sant?Anna, Pisa, Italy. http://www.santannapisa.it/en/istituto/biorobotica/biorobotics-institute The position is part of the Human Brain Project ? SP10 Neurorobotics. The work will be carried out under the supervision of Prof. Cecilia Laschi. The initial appointment is for one year, funding is available for up to 2 years. Start date is 1st April 2016, or as soon as possible thereafter. Position description Goal: ?Design and development of a sensory-motor coordination control system based on bio-inspired neural network for robots acting in simulated environment.? Description: The main research activity concerns the development of brain-inspired computational algorithms for robot control. In particular, the objective of this research is the modelling and implementation in a neural simulator of bio-inspired neural networks for the control of robots performing sensory-motor tasks in simulated environment. The research activity requires in-depth knowledge, proven by previous research or professional activity, of neural computational models. The ideal candidate has also programming experience with C,C++, python, languages. Preference will be given to knowledge of spiking neural networks for robot control. Context The postdoc will be enrolled in the Human Brain Project and in particular in the SP10-Neurorobotics For more information please refer to: http://www.neurorobotics.net/ https://www.humanbrainproject.eu/it/neurorobotics-platform To apply For any question and for application instructions please send an email to Egidio Falotico (egidio.falotico at sssup.it) by March 12th. -- Egidio Falotico Computer Scientist PhD in BioRobotics PhD in Cognitive Science The BioRobotics Institute Polo Sant'Anna Valdera - Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna Viale Rinaldo Piaggio, 34 - 56025 - Pontedera (PI) - Italy Phone: +39 050 883 457 e-mail: e.falotico at sssup.it From taro.toyoizumi at brain.riken.jp Tue Mar 8 04:45:40 2016 From: taro.toyoizumi at brain.riken.jp (Taro Toyoizumi) Date: Tue, 8 Mar 2016 18:45:40 +0900 Subject: Connectionists: Postdoctoral Position in Computational Neuroscience, RIKEN Brain Science Institute Message-ID: [Laboratory] Postdoctoral position in computational neuroscience at RIKEN Brain Science Institute Lab for Neural Computation and Adaptation (Lab head: Taro Toyoizumi) webpage: http://toyoizumilab.brain.riken.jp/ [Job description] Our lab is interested in dynamic information processing by neural circuits and the modeling of activity-dependent plasticity in the brain. We seek a highly motivated postdoctoral researcher with a strong analytical background and interest in neuroscience. Applicants should have a PhD in physics, neuroscience, mathematics, computer science, or a related area. Candidates who want to bridge theory and experiment in close collaboration with an experimental lab are also encouraged to apply. Current interest of the lab includes: - Elucidating how complex activity dynamics are generated by neural circuits and how the network dynamics influence information processing (PLoS Comput. Biol. 2015; Phys. Rev. E 2011) - Modeling Hebbian and homeostatic synaptic plasticity across developmental stages (Neuron 2014; Neuron 2013) - A statistical mechanics approach to characterize neural codewords and its engineering application (Sci. Rep. 2015; Phys. Rev. E 2015) A high-performance computer cluster is accessible for simulations and data analyses. [Required documents] 1. Complete CV 2. List of publications 3. Contact information for three references [Conditions] 2-year postdoc position with possibility of extension (Full-time position with an annual contract up to 5 years based on the evaluation) RIKEN Brain Science is an international research institute. We use English as the common language for research and for administration. The institute is located in greater Tokyo area, about 30 min from the center of the city by train. webpage: http://www.brain.riken.jp/en/ [Start of Employment] April 1st, 2016 or later (negotiable) [Send application to] toyoizumilab at brain.riken.jp [Contract information] Taro Toyoizumi, Ph.D. 2-1 Hirosawa, Wako, Saitama 351-0198, Japan RIKEN Brain Science Institute Email: toyoizumilab at brain.rikne.jp From terry at salk.edu Mon Mar 7 19:52:54 2016 From: terry at salk.edu (Terry Sejnowski) Date: Mon, 07 Mar 2016 16:52:54 -0800 Subject: Connectionists: State of the Brain Symposium In-Reply-To: Message-ID: State of the Brain - Keystone Symposium Scientific Organizers: Terrence J. Sejnowski and Sten Grillner May 22-26, 2016 Alpbach Congress Centrum, Alpbach, Austria Recent years have seen rapid advances in our understanding of brain biology, driven in part by the development of novel technologies for studying neural networks. Consequently, major national research programs in the EU and US have been launched that will bring together teams of neuroscientists and engineers with the aim of achieving a major advance in understanding brain function and dysfunction. The challenge is to map the circuits of the brain, measure the fluctuating patterns of electrical and chemical activity flowing within those circuits and understand how they give rise to cognitive and behavioral capabilities. This Keystone Symposia conference brings together investigators from around the world to share their discoveries and to plan future projects in this exciting new era for brain research. Conference Program http://www.keystonesymposia.org/index.cfm?e=Web.Meeting.Program&meetingid=1425&subTab=program Registration http://www.keystonesymposia.org/index.cfm?e=Web.Meeting.Registration&meetingid=1425&siteid=51&meetingyear=2016&subTab=reg Early Registration discount deadline: March 22, 2016 MONDAY, MAY 23 08:30 Welcome and Keynote Address Cori Bargmann, Rockefeller University, USA Understanding Brain Function and Dysfunction 09:30 International Brain Programs Henry Markram, EPFL SV BMI LNMC, Switzerland The EU Human Brain Project Walter J. Koroshetz, National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, NIH, USA The US BRAIN Initiative Mu-ming Poo, Institute of Neuroscience, CAS, China China Brain Project and Non-human Primate Research Christof Koch, Allen Institute for Brain Science, USA Project MindScope - Big Science, Team Science, Open Science to Understand Mouse Cortex 15:30 Panel 1: Coordinating International Programs Chair: Terrence J. Sejnowski, The Salk Institute, USA Cornelia (Cori) Bargmann, Rockefeller University, USA Henry Markram, EPFL SV BMI LNMC, Switzerland Walter J. Koroshetz, National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, NIH, USA Mu-ming Poo, Institute of Neuroscience, CAS, China Christof Koch, Allen Institute for Brain Science, USA Thomas Skordas, European Commission, Belgium 17:00 Discovering Diversity: Identifying Cell Types in the Brain Botond Roska, Friedrich Miescher Institute, Switzerland Cell Types and Circuits in the Visual System Hongkui Zeng, Allen Institute for Brain Science, USA Genetic Approaches to Brain Circuit Mapping and Cell Type Characterization TUESDAY, MAY 24 08:30 The Brain in Action: Large-Scale Monitoring and Manipulating Neurons Karl Deisseroth, Stanford University, USA Optogenetic Approaches to Neural Circuits David W. Tank, Princeton University, USA Recording Activity from Internal Brain States Mark J. Schnitzer, Stanford University, USA Reading Neural Codes from a Thousand Neurons in Freely Behaving Mice Susumu Tonegawa, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and RIKEN Brain Science Institute, USA Monitoring and Engineering Memory Engram Cells and their Circuits 15:30 Panel 2: Bridging the Gap between Circuits and Behavior Chair: David W. Tank, Princeton University, USA Karl Deisseroth, Stanford University, USA Mark J. Schnitzer, Stanford University, USA Susumu Tonegawa, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and RIKEN Brain Science Institute, USA Winfried Denk, Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology, Germany R. Clay Reid, Allen Institute for Brain Science, USA 17:00 Maps in the Brain: Generating Multi-Scale Neural Circuits Winfried Denk, Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology, Germany Revealing the Core Circuitry in Brains R. Clay Reid, Allen Institute for Brain Science, USA Integrating Circuits, Recordings and Behavior Terrence J. Sejnowski, The Salk Institute, USA Global Traveling Waves in Human Cortex WEDNESDAY, MAY 25 08:30 Advancing Human Neuroscience: Understanding Brain Function and Dysfunction John Donoghue, Wyss Center for Bio- and Neuro-Engineering, Switzerland Brain Computer Interfaces Helen S. Mayberg, Emory University, USA Iterative Strategies to Refine and Optimize DBS for Depression Patricia K. Kuhl, University of Washington, USA What Can Babies' Brains Tell Us About What it Means to be Human? 15:30 Panel 3: What are the Prospects for Helping Humans with Brain Disorders? Chair: John Donoghue, Wyss Center for Bio- and Neuro-Engineering, Switzerland Helen S. Mayberg, Emory University, USA Patricia K. Kuhl, University of Washington, USA Emery N. Brown, MIT-Harvard Division of Health Sciences and Technology, USA Botond Roska, Friedrich Miescher Institute, Switzerland 17:00 Discovering Principles: Theory, Models, Computation and Statistics Emery N. Brown, MIT-Harvard Division of Health Sciences and Technology, USA Deciphering the Dynamics of the Unconscious Brain under General Anesthesia Sten Grillner, Karolinska Institutet, Sweden Multi-Scale Modeling of Neuronal Networks - From Ion Channels to Selection of Behavior THURSDAY, MAY 26 08:30 Model Systems: Using Genetics to Deconstruct Neural Circuits Gerald M. Rubin, Janelia Research Campus, USA A Comprehensive Approach to Understanding the Fly Brain Florian Engert, Harvard University, USA >From Whole-Brain Data to Functional Circuit Models: The Zebrafish Optomotor Response Hideyuki Okano, Keio University School of Medicine, Japan Disease Modeling and Brain Mapping Using Transgenic Marmosets 15:30 Panel 4: Evolutionary Perspectives in Understanding the Brain Chair: Sten Grillner, Karolinska Institutet, Sweden Gerald M. Rubin, Janelia Research Campus, USA Florian Engert, Harvard University, USA Hideyuki Okano, Keio University School of Medicine, Japan Hongkui Zeng, Allen Institute for Brain Science, USA 17:00 Big Data: Analyzing High-Dimensional Brain Datasets Joshua T. Vogelstein, Johns Hopkins University, USA NeuroData: Enabling Petascale Neuroscience Sean Hill, Ecole Polytechnique Fedrerale de Lausanne, Switzerland Neuroinformatics: From Big Data to Knowledge Discovery Kamil Ugurbil, University of Minnesota Medical School, USA Human Connectomics ----- From tomas.hromadka at gmail.com Tue Mar 8 22:14:34 2016 From: tomas.hromadka at gmail.com (Tomas Hromadka) Date: Tue, 8 Mar 2016 22:14:34 -0500 Subject: Connectionists: TENSS 2016 Call for Applications Message-ID: <56DF951A.6010507@gmail.com> Dear colleagues, Please find below an announcement about the fifth edition of the Transylvanian Experimental Neuroscience Summer School (TENSS). We would be very grateful if you could forward this announcement to potentially interested people. Also, if you want to support TENSS, please check our crowdfunding campaign: http://igg.me/at/tenss-ed/x. Transylvanian Experimental Neuroscience Summer School (TENSS) June 1-19, 2016. The Pike Lake, Transylvania, Romania www.tenss.ro TENSS will concentrate top-level international expertise to teach a dozen students techniques and concepts in experimental systems neuroscience. We will focus on modern optical and electrophysiological methods to study the connectivity and function of neuronal circuits. The course is designed to be intensive and highly interactive, including both lab sessions and theoretical lectures. Coursework will take place in a land of myth and legend, beyond large forests (Transylvania), on the shores of a picturesque natural reserve called Pike Lake. Applications are welcome from interested (and interesting) graduate students and postdocs. Please note that there is a significant number of fee waivers and travel support grants available for supporting our applicants. Application deadline ? March 20th, 2016 Notification of acceptance ? April 7th, 2016 Summer School ? June 1-19th, 2016 Confirmed lecturers: Albeanu, Florin ? Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, NY, USA Bhalla, Upinder ? National Centre for Biological Sciences, Bangalore, India Burrone, Juan ? King?s College, London, UK Dickinson, Michael ? Caltech, USA Engert, Florian ? Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA Freund, Tam?s ? Institute of Experimental Medicine, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Hungary Hangya, Bal?zs ? Institute of Experimental Medicine, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Hungary Hrom?dka, Tom?? ? Slovak Academy of Sciences, Slovakia H?bener, Mark ? Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology, Martinsried, Germany Ji, Na ? HHMI, Janelia Research Campus, VA, USA Kampff, Adam ? Sainsbury Wellcome Centre, University College London, UK Keller, Georg ? Friedrich Miescher Institute, Basel, Switzerland Kodandaramaiah, Suhasa ? University of Minnesota, MN, USA Monyer, Hannah - University of Heidelberg, Germany Mrsic-Fl?gel, Tom ? Biozentrum, University of Basel, Switzerland Mure?an, Raul ? Romanian Institute of Science and Technology, Cluj-Napoca, Romania Murthy, Venkatesh ? Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA Portugues, Ruben - Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology, Martinsried, Germany Singer, Wolf ? Max Planck Institute for Brain Research, Frankfurt, Germany Svoboda, Karel ? HHMI, Janelia Research Campus, VA, USA Watson, James ? Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, NY, USA Zador, Tony - Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, NY, USA Organizers: Mure?an, Raul ? Romanian Institute of Science and Technology, Cluj-Napoca, Romania Kampff, Adam ? Sainsbury Wellcome Centre, University College London, UK Albeanu, Florin ? Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, NY, USA Information about how to apply can be found here: http://tenss.ro/apply/. Best regards, TENSS Organizing Committee contact at tenss.ro -- Center for Cognitive and Neural Studies (Coneural) Romanian Institute of Science and Technology Str. Ciresilor 29 400487 Cluj-Napoca, Romania Tel: +40-364-800171; Fax: +40-364-800172 tenss.ro -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From farzad.farkhooi at fu-berlin.de Wed Mar 9 08:35:42 2016 From: farzad.farkhooi at fu-berlin.de (farzad) Date: Wed, 9 Mar 2016 14:35:42 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: Recent advances in recurrent network theory workshop at MPI-DS (May 25 - 27) Message-ID: <56E026AE.3050708@fu-berlin.de> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From francisco.pereira at gmail.com Thu Mar 10 11:15:24 2016 From: francisco.pereira at gmail.com (Francisco Pereira) Date: Thu, 10 Mar 2016 11:15:24 -0500 Subject: Connectionists: summer internship at Siemens Healthcare (Princeton, NJ) Message-ID: Our team at Medical Imaging Technologies, Siemens Healthcare, in Princeton NJ, has a summer intern position, working in a project investigating the representation of semantic information in the brain and how it is used in language. Our goal is to build a computational model of the process of sentence comprehension in a text passage, using text corpora and other linguistic resources, and validate it using behavioral and brain imaging data. The main role of the intern will be to help in developing and implementing methods to extract information from text corpora, as well as models for emulating human performance on a variety of benchmark psychological tests. Examples of tasks you might be asked to do: - generate distributed semantic representations for words/concepts, sentences and passages - extract and combine structured information from text corpora or resources such as WordNet, FrameNet and various knowledge bases - prepare and process text corpora (parse, convert to other formats, etc) - implement evaluation tasks to benchmark the models developed It is an unusual position in that you would be doing machine learning tasks to further cognitive neuroscience goals, gaining experience in both areas. In addition to the core research, we will also be delivering a system to the funding agency; hence, this is a fast-paced project with multiple opportunities for publication. This work is being carried out in collaboration with researchers at MIT, MGH and Princeton University and funded by the IARPA Knowledge Representation in Neural Systems program ( http://www.iarpa.gov/index.php/research-programs/krns ). Requirements: - current student in a graduate program in Computer Science/Electrical Engineering/Machine Learning - experience developing software in MATLAB, Python or Perl - experience in Computational Linguistics and NLP tasks (e.g. using frameworks such as CoreNLP or NLTK) - availability for at least 3 months (a longer period is possible, and the timeline is flexible) If interested, please send your resume to francisco-pereira at siemens.com (your email can serve as a cover letter, if there is anything you would like to elaborate on). thank you! Francisco -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Johan.Suykens at esat.kuleuven.be Wed Mar 9 04:34:40 2016 From: Johan.Suykens at esat.kuleuven.be (Johan Suykens) Date: Wed, 9 Mar 2016 10:34:40 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: new theory Deep Learning and Kernel Machines Message-ID: <56DFEE30.5030106@esat.kuleuven.be> Dear all, I would like to announce the following new work on Deep Learning and Kernel Machines. A preprint can be downloaded from: http://www.esat.kuleuven.be/stadius/ADB/publications.php -> [preprints] 16-50 Suykens J.A.K., ``Deep Restricted Kernel Machines using Conjugate Feature Duality'', Internal Report 16-50, ESAT-SISTA, KU Leuven (Leuven, Belgium), 2016 Best regards, Johan Suykens ---------------------- Prof. Dr.ir. Johan Suykens Katholieke Universiteit Leuven Departement Elektrotechniek - ESAT-STADIUS Kasteelpark Arenberg 10 B-3001 Leuven (Heverlee) Belgium http://www.esat.kuleuven.be/stadius/members/suykens.html From edward.large at uconn.edu Fri Mar 11 09:48:35 2016 From: edward.large at uconn.edu (Edward Large) Date: Fri, 11 Mar 2016 09:48:35 -0500 Subject: Connectionists: Announcing the GrFNN Toolbox, Version 1.2.1 Message-ID: <167A708C-5BDC-4BD8-878C-778839AE321E@uconn.edu> Dear Colleagues, We are pleased to announce the release of the Gradient Frequency Neural Network (GrFNN ? pronounced ?Griffin?) Toolbox. GrFNNs are being used to simulate active cochlear responses, auditory brainstem physiology, auditory cortical physiology, pitch perception, tonality perception, dynamic attending, and rhythm perception. Three models are currently available: 1) a canonical nonlinear cochlear model, 2) a dynamical auditory brainstem model, and 3) a cortical model of pulse and meter perception in complex rhythms. The GrFNN Toolbox is a suite of Matlab programs for simulating and analyzing signal processing, plasticity, and pattern formation in the auditory system. GrFNNs model auditory processing using networks of tonotopically tuned oscillatory dynamical systems [1], [2], and are capable of supervised and unsupervised learning via Hebbian plasticity. This approach provides a new framework for nonlinear time-frequency analysis based on a realistic account of auditory processes. The GrFNN Toolbox is available at: http://musicdynamicslab.uconn.edu/home/multimedia/grfnn-toolbox/ Development was supported in part by funding from the National Science Foundation (BCS-1027761) and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (FA9550-12-10388). References: [1] E. W. Large, F. V. Almonte, and M. J. Velasco, ?A canonical model for gradient frequency neural networks,? Phys. Nonlinear Phenom., vol. 239, pp. 905?911, 2010. [2] J. C. Kim and E. W. Large, ?Signal processing in periodically forced gradient frequency neural networks,? Front. Comput. Neurosci., vol. 9, no. 152, 2015. Edward Large Director, Music Dynamics Laboratory Professor of Psychological Sciences University of Connecticut edward.large at uconn.edu http://musicdynamicslab.uconn.edu From jlmcc at stanford.edu Thu Mar 10 15:38:51 2016 From: jlmcc at stanford.edu (Jay McClelland) Date: Thu, 10 Mar 2016 20:38:51 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: Updated Announcement: Contemporary Neural Network Models Workshop Message-ID: Updated March 10, 2016: New Submission Date, Speaker Titles, Submission + Publication Details NCPW15 - August 8-9, 2016 - Philadelphia, PA, USA 15th Neural Computation and Psychology Workshop Contemporary Neural Network Models: Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, and Cognition Funded by the W. K. & K. W. Estes Fund, Google DeepMind and the Rumelhart Emergent Cognitive Functions Fund Organized by: Jay McClelland, Stefan Frank & Daniel Mirman 500-Word Abstracts and Applications to Attend Due: April 15 Notification of Acceptance and Travel Awards: May 15 We are pleased to announce a workshop on Contemporary Neural Network Models, bringing the latest developments in Deep Neural Networks, Deep Reinforcement Learning Networks, and Recurrent Neural Networks with Long-Short-Term Memory Units into contact with contemporary cognitive science and cognitive neuroscience research. Plenary speakers are established and emerging experts in the development of deep neural network models of perception, action and cognition, and include authors of Google DeepMind's projects achieving human-level performance in Atari games and Go and in creating innovative Cognitive architectures such as the Neural Turing Machine. The workshop will take place on Aug 8-9, 2016 in Philadelphia - in North America for the first time after 14 previous meetings in Europe. The Workshop has both a research dissemination and tutorial purpose. Research submissions are welcome based on a 500-word abstract for spoken and poster presentations in any area of computational research that applies neural network models or related approaches to understanding human cognition. To foster exchange of ideas, presentation of recently published work or work also submitted elsewhere is welcome, and there will be a publication option for new work. Both junior and senior scientists interested in learning more about the latest developments are encouraged to attend (space is limited and application is required) with or without making a presentation. Thanks to generous support, costs will be low and travel awards will encourage participation by a diverse population of participants with relevant goals. The conference website provides full details and instructions for those interested in participating. Abstracts and applications to attend are due April 15 and notification of acceptance and travel awards will be made by May 15. Keynote Presentations Nikolaus Kriegeskorte, MRC-CBU Cambridge, UK. Deep Convolutional Nets and Biological Object Vision. Marco Zorzi, University of Padova. Unsupervised Deep Learning Models of Perception and Cognition: Space, Numbers, Words Andrew Saxe, Harvard University. A Theory of the Dynamics of Deep Learning: Consequences for Perceptual Learning and Semantic Development Greg Wayne, Google DeepMind. Integrating Neural and Symbolic Computation: The Neural Turing Machine and Beyond Timothy Lillicrap, Google DeepMind. Deep Reinforcement Learning: Algorithms and Applications from Reaching and Grasping to Winning at Go Linda Smith, Indiana University. What's Deep about Deep Learning? What Can it Tell us About the Mind? Workshop Structure Each of the two days of the NCPW workshop will include three 75 minute sessions led by invited speakers. The first five of these sessions will each focus on a different aspect or topic in contemporary neural network research, and each will be led by a different expert. The final session will begin with a commentary by a senior Cognitive Scientist (Linda Smith) followed by a panel discussion with the other five speakers. During lunch each day, the day's speakers will each hold a smaller discussion session with a subset of the workshop participants, and materials will be circulated in advance. Two 1.5-hour sessions each day will be devoted to submitted presentations selected for their scientific value and the extent to which they advance the use of neural network architectures, tools, and concepts in both computational and cognitive (neuro)science domains. A poster session at the end of the first day will allow all of the participants an opportunity to present and obtain feedback from the invited speakers, and to learn from and network with each other. A conference dinner on the first evening and a reception on the second evening will allow for informal interactions. NCPW15 will be complemented by a separate day-long tutorial on Wednesday, August 10, as part of the Cognitive Science Society meeting also in Philadelphia (pending acceptance by the Program Committee). This day-long event will provide additional tutorial presentations, followed by in depth how-to sessions associated with the actual implementation and effective practical mastery of deep learning networks for cognitive science research. Participants, Publication, Travel Awards, Costs, and Logistics The target population is PhD students, post-doctoral fellows, and more advanced researchers at any level. Both contributing researchers and non-presenting attendees are welcome to apply. Contributing researchers will be selected based on a 500-word submitted research abstract, according to past policies of NCPW. As noted above, presentation of recently published work or work also submitted elsewhere are welcome. Participants will be invited to contribute otherwise unpublished work to a planned Frontiers in Cognitive Science Research Topic on contemporary neural network models. Selection of non-presenting attendees will be based on the relevance of the workshop to the attendee's goals as described in a short essay as well as a CV and, for junior scientist, a mentor's letter of support. Both trainees and contributing researchers not selected for oral presentations have the option to present a poster in the poster session. A total of 25 travel support awards ($250 domestic/$750 international) are available both for trainees and for contributing researchers to partially defray costs of attendance; support will be awarded based on the criteria above as well as need with attention to encouraging diversity. There is no registration fee for accepted participants. A low-price accommodation option ($50/night) will be available. Application Process and Venue: More detailed information on the application process and the venue are available at the conference website. The deadline for presentation abstract submissions and for applications to attend will be April 15, 2016, and notification of acceptance and travel awards for trainees and participating researchers will be on May 15, 2016. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From guifranca at gmail.com Wed Mar 9 17:24:06 2016 From: guifranca at gmail.com (=?UTF-8?Q?Guilherme_Fran=C3=A7a?=) Date: Wed, 9 Mar 2016 17:24:06 -0500 Subject: Connectionists: PhD Summer Visiting Research Position in Optimization and Machine Learning Message-ID: Bento's lab in the computer science department at Boston College is seeking excellent PhD students to work on a paid internship during this summer, May-Sep 2016. The project will involve research on Distributed Optimization Algorithms and Machine Learning. To apply, please check http://www.jbento.info/visiting20162017.pdf -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From feisha at cs.ucla.edu Wed Mar 9 23:38:34 2016 From: feisha at cs.ucla.edu (Fei Sha) Date: Wed, 9 Mar 2016 20:38:34 -0800 Subject: Connectionists: Postdoc Position in Machine Learning at UCLA Computer Science Department Message-ID: Dear colleagues and friends, The machine learning group at UCLA, led by Fei Sha ( http://web.cs.ucla.edu/~feisha/) and Ameet Talwalkar ( http://web.cs.ucla.edu/~ameet/) , has 1-2 open postdoctoral positions. We seek applicants from all areas of machine learning. Candidates must hold a PhD in computer science, statistics or a closely related discipline, and have a strong publication record in top conferences and journals (NIPS, ICML, JMLR, etc.). The expected start date is late Spring and can be flexible. The postdoctoral researcher is to interact and collaborate closely with both faculty and graduate students in the research group. While the research group has a rich set of ongoing research projects, the postdoctoral researcher is also encouraged to be independent and develop his/her own research agenda that complements existing research endeavors. Quality of research is the ultimate criterion. The UCLA CS department is rapidly growing with core strengths in machine learning, artificial intelligence, bioinformatics, data science, computer vision and robotics. UCLA provides a thriving research environment with interdisciplinary activities between these areas and others, and with cross-cutting collaborations among various departments and schools on campus. The campus is located on the west side of Los Angeles, with convenient access to beaches / mountains / national parks and a fantastic assortment of cultural diversity and activities throughout the metropolitan LA area. UCLA is also in close proximity to many other renowned academic institutions such as Caltech, USC, and other UC campuses. Interested candidates should email Fei Sha (feisha at cs.ucla.edu) and Ameet Talwalkar (ameet at cs.ucla.edu) with their CVs, research statements and a list of reference letter writers. Cheers, *(&fei) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From torbjorn.dahl at plymouth.ac.uk Fri Mar 11 12:23:06 2016 From: torbjorn.dahl at plymouth.ac.uk (Torbjorn Dahl) Date: Fri, 11 Mar 2016 17:23:06 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: Interdisciplinary Robotics Research Methods Summer School - Call for Participation Message-ID: Interdisciplinary Robotics Research Methods Summer School - Call for Participation The Interdisciplinary Robotics Research Methods Summer School welcomes PhD students and young researchers to an intensive four days of lectures and laboratory sessions covering a wide range of topics in interdisciplinary robotics research. * The summer school will be held in Cefal?, Sicily, Italy from Sunday 10th July to Wednesday 13th July 2016. * The application deadline is Tuesday 5th April 2016. Late submission will only be considered if places are still available. We will have a wide-ranging programme of lectures and hands-on laboratory work on topics including Nao/Pepper/ROS, NaoQi/QiChat, iCub/YARP, MoveIt, Reinforcement Learning, Artificial Neural Networks, Deep Learning, Sensorimotor Contingencies, Human-Robot Interaction, Experiment Design and Statistical Analysis, R, Robot System Deployment, Robot Law. The school is for participants who seek a background and hands-on experience in the interdisciplinary science and technology supporting robotics. Student work will be presented in a poster session on the final day. A detailed tentative schedule of activities is available through the APRIL project's web site (http://www.april-robots.org/). Invited speakers (confirmed): * Professor Minoru Asada, Osaka University, Japan * Professor Giorgio Metta, Italian Institute of Technology, Italy * Professor Katharina Rohlfing, Paderborn University, Germany * Professor Antonio Chella, University of Palermo, Italy * Professor Verena Hafner, Humbodlt University of Berlin, Germany * Professor Paolo Dario, Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies, Italy * Dr Frank Foester, University of Hertfordshire, UK Interested students/researchers need to apply to the summer school. The number of external participants will be limited to a maximum of 20. If more applications are received, participants will be selected based on the background and motivation detailed in their application. A participation fee of EUR100 will be charged for coffee and lunch throughout the event. In addition, participants will have to cover accommodation, breakfast and dinner. A number of EUR200 travel grants and additional fee waiver will be available to support selected applicants who explicitly request this. Applicants will be notified of acceptance/rejection after the selection process in mid-April. The summer school receives support from the H2020 APRIL (Applications of Personal Robotics for Interaction and Learning) Marie Sklodowska-Curie Innovative Training Network for European Industrial Doctorates. Organisers: * Professor Angelo Cangelosi (Plymouth University, UK) * Dr Torbjorn Dahl (Plymouth University, UK) Contact: For questions, please contact the organizers torbjorn.dahl at plymouth.ac.uk. Application: Applicants should send their CV + cover letter to torbjorn.dahl at plymouth.ac.uk before the deadline given above, explaining how the participation in the summer school will benefit their PhD/research. ____________________________________________________ Torbj?rn S. DAHL, MEng, ACGI, PhD Lecturer in Software Engineering Centre for Robotics and Neural Systems School of Computing and Mathematics, Plymouth University Drake Circus, Plymouth PL4 8AA, UK phone: +44 (0)1752 586323 e-mail: torbjorn.dahl at plymouth.ac.uk web-site: http://www.tech.plym.ac.uk/SoCCE/crns/staff/dahl/ skype id: torbjorn.s.dahl ____________________________________________________ ________________________________ [http://www.plymouth.ac.uk/images/email_footer.gif] This email and any files with it are confidential and intended solely for the use of the recipient to whom it is addressed. If you are not the intended recipient then copying, distribution or other use of the information contained is strictly prohibited and you should not rely on it. If you have received this email in error please let the sender know immediately and delete it from your system(s). Internet emails are not necessarily secure. While we take every care, Plymouth University accepts no responsibility for viruses and it is your responsibility to scan emails and their attachments. Plymouth University does not accept responsibility for any changes made after it was sent. Nothing in this email or its attachments constitutes an order for goods or services unless accompanied by an official order form. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gunnar.blohm at gmail.com Thu Mar 10 11:58:39 2016 From: gunnar.blohm at gmail.com (Gunnar Blohm) Date: Thu, 10 Mar 2016 11:58:39 -0500 Subject: Connectionists: CoSMo 2016 - FREE participation! Message-ID: <56E1A7BF.1070507@queensu.ca> It is our pleasure to announce that thanks to external funding from NIH and Brain Canada, *CoSMo 2016 attendance will be free of charge*! In addition, a limited number of travel scholarships will be available. *Application deadline: Apr 11, 2016* For more information and to apply, please go to http://www.compneurosci.com/CoSMo/ Scholarship information and the application form can be found here: http://www.compneurosci.com/CoSMo/application.html Best, Gunnar Blohm, Paul Schrater, and Konrad K?rding -- ------------------------------------------------------- Dr. Gunnar BLOHM Associate Professor in Computational Neuroscience Association for Canadian Neuroinformatics and Computational Neuroscience (CNCN) Centre for Neuroscience Studies, Departments of Biomedical and Molecular Sciences, Mathematics & Statistics, and Psychology, School of Computing, and Canadian Action and Perception Network (CAPnet) Queen?s University 18, Stuart Street Kingston, Ontario, Canada, K7L 3N6 Tel: (613) 533-3385 Fax: (613) 533-6840 Email: Gunnar.Blohm at QueensU.ca Web: http://www.compneurosci.com/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From elio.tuci at gmail.com Fri Mar 11 12:21:25 2016 From: elio.tuci at gmail.com (Elio Tuci) Date: Fri, 11 Mar 2016 17:21:25 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: CFP: SAB2016 - international Conference on the Simulation of Adaptive Behavior Message-ID: FROM ANIMALS TO ANIMATS 14 The 14th International Conference on the Simulation of Adaptive Behavior (SAB2016) 23-26 August 2016, Aberystwyth, UK http://www.sab2016.org *Organising Committee* Conference Chairs: Myra S. Wilson, John Hallam Program Chairs: Elio Tuci, Alexandros Giagkos Tutorial Chair: Fred Labrosse *Important Dates* Paper Submission Deadline: 21st Mar., 2016 Notification of Acceptance: 16th May., 2016 Camera Ready Submission: 6th Jun., 2016 Tutorial Proposal Deadline: 21st May, 2016 Tutorial Notification of Acceptance: 31th May, 2016 Tutorials: 23rd Aug., 2016 Conference: 24-26th Aug., 2016 *Scope of the Conference* The objective of this interdisciplinary conference is to bring together researchers in computer science, artificial intelligence, artificial life, control, robotics, neurosciences, ethology, evolutionary biology and related fields in order to further our understanding of the behaviours and underlying mechanisms that allow natural and artificial animals to adapt and survive in uncertain environments. The conference will focus on experiments with well-defined models including robot models, computer simulation models and mathematical models designed to help characterise and compare various organisational principles or architectures underlying adaptive behaviour in real animals and in synthetic agents, the animats. *Relevant Research Areas* SAB2016 solicits contributions dealing with any aspect of adaptive behaviour in natural and artificial systems. Typical, but not exclusive, topics of interest are: The animat approach Motor control Body and brain co-evolution Self-assembling and self-replication Sensory-motor coordination Action selection and behavioural sequencing Navigation and mapping Internal models and representation Evolution, development and learning Collective and social behaviour Applied adaptive behaviour Motivation and emotion Communication and language Emergent structures and behaviours Neural correlates of behaviour Evolutionary and co-evolutionary approaches Bio-inspired and hybrid robotics Autonomous robotics Humanoid robotics Cognitive and developmental robotics Software agents and virtual creatures Philosophical and psychological issues Animats in education *Conference Format* Following the tradition of SAB conferences, the conference will be single track with additional poster sessions. There will also be a day of tutorials (23rd of August). *Paper Submission Instruction and Publication Details* Submitted papers must not exceed 12 pages. Detailed submission instructions are available from the conference website (http://www.sab2016.org). All accepted papers with oral or poster presentation will be published in Springer Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence series conference proceedings. Selected authors may additionally be invited to submit extended versions for a conference Special Issue of the Journal of Adaptive Behavior. *Tutorials* The SAB2016 organising committee invites proposals for tutorials, which will be held on the 23rd of August, 2016. Instructions for preparing the tutorial proposal and further details on the tutorials can be found at http://www.sab2016.org. *Exhibition Section* During SAB2016 there will be an exhibition section, where latest developments in hardware and software technologies will be displayed to the conference attendees and the Press. *Best Paper Award* Two best paper prizes will be awarded at the end of the conference to honour the authors of papers of exceptional merit. The prizes will be sponsored by Springer and Webots. For more information please refer to the official SAB2016 website. *Student Bursaries* ISAB sponsored student bursaries are available to cover conference fees, meals and accomodation. Preference will be given to students who are first authors on accepted papers. Information on how to apply can be found on http://www.sab2016.org. *Further Information* Up-to-date information will be published on the website http://www.sab2016.org. For information about local arrangements, registration forms, etc., please refer to the website or contact the local organisers at the address below. *Conference Address* Computer Science Department Llandinam Building Aberystwyth University Tel: +44-1970-622928 Aberystwyth Fax: +44-1970-628536 SY23 3DB UK sab2016-conference at isab.org -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From burcu.urgen at gmail.com Tue Mar 8 11:20:33 2016 From: burcu.urgen at gmail.com (=?UTF-8?Q?Burcu_Ay=C5=9Fen_=C3=9Crgen?=) Date: Tue, 8 Mar 2016 17:20:33 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: CfP: IEEE RO-MAN Workshop on Neuroscience Methods in Human-Robot Interaction Message-ID: IEEE RO-MAN 2016 Workshop on Neuroscience Methods in Human-Robot Interaction (New York City, 26-31st August, 2016) Neuroscience methods such as brain imaging are increasingly used to address research questions in robotics, robot-human communication and interaction. This workshop will provide an overview of state-of-the-art work at the intersection of human-robot interaction and human neuroscience, to show how cross-disciplinary collaboration can be a win-win, and to help increase communication between researchers from different yet complementary disciplines, with the hope of catalysing new ideas and collaborations. Neuroscientists with expertise in several topics of interest for RO-MAN 2016 (e.g., embodiment, empathy, social cognition, body movements, gestures, facial expressions, anthropomorphism, learning and imitation, social presence, inference of human states, machine learning and brain-machine interfaces) will introduce the methods used, and present empirical work exemplifying their application to robotics, highlighting not only how such studies have led to insights on neural mechanisms of interaction, communication, and collaboration, but also how the findings inform the design and development of new robots, robot-human collaborative systems, interaction modalities and interfaces. We will solicit papers from the broader community that address these themes. Robotics and neuroscience both being active, rapidly developing, and high priority research areas, and the combination of expertise across disciplines holding great promise for advances in both theory and applications, the workshop will serve an important role by bringing together researchers coming from different backgrounds. Panel sessions will address challenges for interdisciplinary and novel research and discuss ideas for increasing synergy and impact future work. *SPEAKERS* Ayse P. Saygin, PhD (UC San Diego, USA) Emily S. Cross, PhD (Bangor University, UK) Thierry Chaminade, PhD (Institut de Neurosciences de la Timone, FRANCE) Susanne Quadflieg, PhD (University of Bristol, UK) James Thompson, PhD (George Mason University, USA) *WORKSHOP ORGANIZERS* Burcu A. Urgen, PhD (University of Parma, ITALY) Ayse P. Saygin, PhD (UC San Diego, USA) Emily S. Cross, PhD (Bangor University, UK) Workshop website: http://neurorobotics.ucsd.edu/ *CALL FOR PAPERS* We solicit full paper submissions from cognitive and social neuroscientists and human-robot interaction researchers with expertise in several topics of interest for RO-MAN 2016 including but not limited to embodiment, empathy, social cognition, nonverbal communication via body movements, gestures, facial expressions, anthropomorphism, learning and imitation, social presence, social knowledge, inference of human states, machine learning and brain-machine interfaces. The submitted papers are intended to include applications of various neuroimaging methods such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), electroencephalography (EEG), magnetoencephalography (MEG), and transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to topics of relevance to RO-MAN 2016. Observational and behavioural studies may be suitable as long as they are highly cross-disciplinary. Theoretical papers that address the theme of the workshop and RO-MAN 2016 may also be included. The expectation from submissions is to highlight not only how neuroscience studies involving robotics have led to insights on the human cognitive and neural mechanisms of interaction, communication, and collaboration, but also how the findings inform the design and development of new robots, robot-human collaborative systems, interaction modalities and interfaces. *EVALUATION* All submissions will be evaluated by a minimum of two reviewers. The reviewers will evaluate each submission based on how informative the study has been both to human neuroscience AND human-robot interaction as well as the quality of the research methodology. All accepted papers will be published in workshop proceedings. Each paper accepted for an oral or poster presentation has to be presented by one of the authors. *IMPORTANT DEADLINES* Full paper submissions due 05/15/2016. Notifications will be sent by 05/18/2016. Final versions will be submitted by 05/20/2016. *PAPER GUIDELINES* All full paper submissions should follow the guidelines specified in the main conference website, check here . *HOW TO SUBMIT* The papers should be emailed to neuroscience.robotics.workshop at gmail.com by the deadline: 05/15/2016. -- Burcu Aysen Urgen, PhD Email: burcu.urgen at gmail.com Website: http://www.burcuaysenurgen.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From p.andras at keele.ac.uk Mon Mar 14 18:57:12 2016 From: p.andras at keele.ac.uk (Peter Andras) Date: Mon, 14 Mar 2016 22:57:12 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: PhD studentships at Keele University Message-ID: *Fully Funded Computer Science PhD Studentships at Keele University* The Faculty of Natural Sciences at Keele University is pleased to announce up to 7 fully-funded PhD studentships for UK/EU students for start in September/October 2016, as well as opportunities for part-funded PhD studentships for suitable candidates. Applications are invited from high quality prospective doctoral candidates in Computer Science and other disciplines. We welcome candidates with a good fit to our research specialisms and the expertise of our academic staff. Candidates are expected to have a 1st class or 2.1 class undergraduate degree or a Distinction level MSc degree in a relevant subject (or equivalent in the case of candidates from other EU countries). One of our focus areas in Computer Science is *Computational Neuroscience and Biomedical Engineering*. A selection of topics of interests in this area is provided below. *Computational Neuroscience and Biomedical Engineering*: computational modelling of the stomatogastric nervous system; bio-inspired robot control; computational modelling of cognitive behaviour in bees; neuro-control of evolving artificial creatures; neuro-control of robotic swarms; computational analysis of neuroimaging and multi-electrode array data; human and animal behaviour analysis using accelerometer data; virtual reality and robotics for rehabilitation engineering; analysis and modelling of the impact of neuromodulators in biological neural systems; big data analytics and neuro-degenerative disorders. *Funding* Each fully-funded studentship includes an annual tax-free stipend at RCUK rate plus tuition fees (currently ?14,296 for stipend and ?4,121 for fees). The funding is available for 3 years. Each studentship has an associated research expense budget (?2,000 ? ?3,000 per year, depending on the nature of the project, to cover project related consumables and conference travel). Opportunities are also available for candidates from the UK/EU and overseas who can demonstrate that they can fully or partially self-fund. If you are interested in this route, please contact Professor Peter Andras at p.andras at keele.ac.uk for a discussion. *Closing Date* The *closing date* for applications is Friday *15 April 2016* Full details and application procedures can be found on the website: http://www.keele.ac.uk/pgresearch/howtoapply/ For the purpose of research proposal applicants should submit an outline of their research interests or of a particular research project that the applicant would like to work on (max. 2 pages). Please send any questions by email to Lisa Cartlidge ( l.j.cartlidge at keele.ac.uk) or Ann Billington (a.billington at keele.ac.uk). -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gabbiani at bcm.edu Mon Mar 14 15:59:01 2016 From: gabbiani at bcm.edu (Gabbiani, Fabrizio) Date: Mon, 14 Mar 2016 19:59:01 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: Postdoctoral Position in Computational Neuroscience/Biophysical Modeling Message-ID: <56E717FC.5010802@bcm.edu> Postdoctoral Position in Computational Neuroscience/Biophysical Modeling Computational and Applied Mathematics Rice University and Department of Neuroscience Baylor College of Medicine Houston, Texas ----- A postdoctoral position in computational neuroscience is available at Rice University and Baylor College of Medicine, in the laboratories of Steven Cox (Rice University) and Fabrizio Gabbiani (Baylor College of Medicine). Our research focuses on understanding the biophysical mechanisms underlying the implementation of non-linear operations by neurons and neuronal circuits. The postdoctoral research associate will model the cellular and network mechanisms underlying collision avoidance behaviors using advanced mathematical techniques and computer simulations. Modeling will be supported by a large data set of experimental data gathered using electrophysiology, pharmacology, calcium imaging, high-speed video imaging and telemetry. We are looking for a highly motivated candidate with a strong background in computational modeling of single neurons and neuronal circuits. Experience with Matlab and NEURON is required. The position is available for one year, with possibility of renewal for a second year, contingent of performance and funding availability. Salary will be commensurate with level of experience, based on an NIH scale. Applications will be accepted until April 15, 2016. Our labs are located at Rice University and in the adjacent Texas Medical Center, close to many of Houston's cultural and outdoor amenities. For further information about Rice University, the Texas Medical Center and Houston please visit http://www.explore.rice.edu/explore/General_Information.asp or https://www.bcm.edu/about-us/life-in-houston For further informal inquiries and to apply, please send CV, the names and full contact information of two to three references, as well as one to two representative publications to cox at rice.edu and gabbiani at bcm.edu. Equal Opportunity Employer: Females / Minorities / Veterans/ Disabled / Sexual Orientation / Gender Identity. From beierh at gmail.com Thu Mar 17 10:49:20 2016 From: beierh at gmail.com (Ulrik Beierholm) Date: Thu, 17 Mar 2016 14:49:20 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: PhD studentship in computational/cognitive neuroscience Message-ID: We have a PhD studentship available with full funding (tuition + stipend) for a project doing computational modeling of human perception, using parametric and non-parametric Bayesian statistical inference methods (PI Dr. Ulrik Beierholm). The funding is only available for EU citizens (sorry!), with starting date October 2016. The studentship will be in the Department of Psychology at Durham University, UK, but with potential for interactions with colleagues in Computer Science, Economics etc. The applicant should have a Master's degree (or similar) in a related topic (neuroscience, psychology, computer science, statistics etc.) with a minimum of a UK upper second (2:1) or an average grade of B for international students. The applicant should also have some programming experience (preferably Matlab or Python), but while the project will involve some experimental work (mainly psychophysics) the applicant does not need any previous experimental experience. The Department offers an exciting and friendly multidisciplinary research environment. The department has excellent technical facilities, including a 3T MRI scanner, EEG labs, laboratories for brain stimulation (TMS, tdCS), motion analysis systems (Vicon, Optitrack), Psychophysiological Research (Biopac), and behavioural experiments, including multiple eye trackers and an acoustically controlled testing chamber. There is also access to the Durham HPC cluster (Hamilton) for numerical simulations. Durham is a beautiful city in the Northeast of England, home to Durham Cathedral, which is part of UNESCO Durham World Heritage Site. Durham University is consistently ranked among the top 100 Universities worldwide (QS World Rankings 2014). If interested email the PI (ulrik.beierholm at durham.ac.uk) with any questions. Applications are made through: https://www.dur.ac.uk/psychology/postgraduate/how_to_apply/ Further information about doing a PhD at Durham can be found here: https://www.dur.ac.uk/psychology/postgraduate/phd/ Applications will be processed as they arrive, but we expect to reach a decision before end of April. ------------------------------------------- Ulrik Beierholm, PhD Lecturer (Assistant Professor) Department of Psychology, Durham University http://beierholm.net -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From alberto at cs.rhul.ac.uk Tue Mar 15 12:21:21 2016 From: alberto at cs.rhul.ac.uk (Alberto Paccanaro) Date: Tue, 15 Mar 2016 16:21:21 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: Fully funded postdoctoral position in Machine Learning and Computational Biology at Royal Holloway University of London Message-ID: <56E83681.7090301@cs.rhul.ac.uk> [Apologies for cross-posting] Application deadline: 10th April 2016 ==================================================== Applications are invited for a postdoctoral position at the Department of Computer Science of Royal Holloway, University of London. The successful candidate will work with Prof Alberto Paccanaro on different projects in the area of Systems Biology and Network Medicine -- please see http://www.paccanarolab.org/ for a description of the research carried out in the lab. Candidates should have a PhD degree in a relevant quantitative field (e.g. Computer Science, Statistics, Engineering), a strong background in machine learning and a keen interest in computational biology. Previous experience in the area of graphical models would be an asset for this position. The successful candidate will have the opportunity to collaborate with members of the interdisciplinary Centre for Systems and Synthetic Biology (Computer Science and Biological Sciences) at Royal Holloway and collaborators at Imperial College, University of Tennessee and Yale University. The post is therefore ideal for someone with a computer science or maths background who is looking to move into computational biology. This post is based in the Department of Computer Science in Egham, Surrey where the College is situated in a beautiful, leafy campus near to Windsor Great Park and within commuting distance from London (see http://www.royalholloway.ac.uk/). This is a full time post, available immediately, or as soon as possible thereafter for a fixed term period of 30 months. The salary is in the range ?33,789 to ?39,902 per annum inclusive of London Allowance. The position is funded by a joint BBSRC/NSF grant. To apply go to: https://jobs.royalholloway.ac.uk/vacancy.aspx?ref=0316-094 For an informal discussion about the post, please contact Prof Alberto Paccanaro, alberto at cs.rhul.ac.uk. The Human Resources Department can be contacted with queries by email at: recruitment at rhul.ac.uk. Please quote the reference: 0316-094. Closing Date: Midnight, 10th April 2016. Interview Date: To be confirmed. The College is committed to equality and diversity, and encourages applications from all sections of the community. -- ===================================== Prof. Alberto Paccanaro Department of Computer Science Royal Holloway, University of London Phone: +44 1784 414239 Homepage: http://www.cs.rhul.ac.uk/home/alberto/ Lab page: http://www.paccanarolab.org From mail at mkaiser.de Sun Mar 13 18:39:38 2016 From: mail at mkaiser.de (Marcus Kaiser) Date: Sun, 13 Mar 2016 22:39:38 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: PostDoc position: developing computational models of optogenetic stimulation in epilepsy patients Message-ID: Dear all, a 3-year PostDoc position for developing computational models of optogenetic stimulation in epilepsy patients is available within my lab as part of the CANDO project at Newcastle University. *** About CANDO *** CANDO (Controlling Abnormal Network Dynamics using Optogenetics, http://www.cando.ac.uk/) is a world-class, multi-site, cross-disciplinary project to develop a cortical implant for optogenetic neural control. The goal is to create a first-in-human trial in patients with focal epilepsy. This seven year, ?10M Innovative Engineering for Health Award, funded by the Wellcome Trust and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) involves a team of over 30 neuroscientists, engineers and clinicians based at Newcastle University , Imperial College London , University College London and The Newcastle Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust . *** Available RA position *** As part of this project, the lab of Prof. Marcus Kaiser ( http://www.dynamic-connectome.org/ ) is seeking a talented and enthusiastic research fellow with a PhD awarded, or a PhD thesis about to be submitted, in computational biology or related subjects. Objectives of this position are, first, to develop a detailed simulation of human brain activity at the local and global level of epilepsy patients. Second, the effect of stimulation on ongoing activity will be studied. Third, dynamical systems theory and extensive simulations will be used to find optimal stimulation approaches that can reach desired oscillation patterns with minimal stimulation. Simulations will be informed by invasive recordings and non-invasive brain connectivity measurements in human epilepsy patients. Good communication skills, very strong dynamics modelling skills, and a track record of previous peer-reviewed journal publications. You will have experience with modelling brain rhythms and dynamical systems. The position will include brief visits to our partners in the UK and abroad. *** Research Environment *** Neuroinformatics at Newcastle University in the UK covers a range of topics from electrophysiology to neuroimaging. We are among the pioneers in connectome analysis and the establishment of large-scale neuroscience data management and analysis platforms, e.g. through the ?4m EPSRC-funded CARMEN project. Our strength is a close collaboration between computational, experimental, and clinical researchers. We currently have a team of 12 faculty members in the areas of Neuroinformatics and Neurotechnology which is growing to 15 members by the end of this year: http://neuroinformatics.ncl.ac.uk/ *** How to Apply *** To apply, follow the information at http://www.jobs.ac.uk/job/AUD320/research-assistant-associate-computational-models-of-epileptic-brain-tissue-d34374r/ The deadline is Thursday 7 April. For further information, contact Prof. Marcus Kaiser, Marcus.Kaiser at ncl.ac.uk Best, Marcus -- Marcus Kaiser, Ph.D. @ConnectomeLab Professor of Neuroinformatics Interdisciplinary Computing and Complex Biosystems (ICOS) Research Group School of Computing Science Newcastle University Claremont Tower Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 7RU, UK Lab website: http://www.dynamic-connectome.org/ Neuroinformatics at Newcastle: http://neuroinformatics.ncl.ac.uk/ -- Best, Marcus -- Marcus Kaiser, Ph.D. @ConnectomeLab Professor of Neuroinformatics Interdisciplinary Computing and Complex Biosystems (ICOS) Research Group School of Computing Science Newcastle University Claremont Tower Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 7RU, UK Lab website: http://www.dynamic-connectome.org/ Neuroinformatics at Newcastle: http://neuroinformatics.ncl.ac.uk -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Roman.Bauer at newcastle.ac.uk Mon Mar 14 06:58:46 2016 From: Roman.Bauer at newcastle.ac.uk (Roman Bauer) Date: Mon, 14 Mar 2016 10:58:46 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: PhD student position available at Newcastle University Message-ID: Dear all, I invite applications for a fully-funded three-year PhD student position at the Institute of Neuroscience at Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne (UK). The successful candidate will work under the supervision of Dr Roman Bauer and Dr Evelyne Sernagor, and do computational modeling as well as wet-lab work on neuronal development in the retina. There is also the possibility for the student to be involved in a collaborative project with CERN openlab and Intel as a project partner. Applicants should be highly motivated and should have a strong background in physics, computer science, neuroscience or a related disciplince. Good computational skills and experience in a major programing language such as C++ or Java are required. The Institute of Neuroscience (IoN) is a well-established research institute integrating over 75 principal investigators, and was ranked in UK top 10 for overall quality of research. The university's Faculty of Medical Sciences, of which IoN is part of, is ranked in the top 50 worldwide for biomedical and health sciences in the Leiden Ranking. More details on this job posting can be found here: http://www.ncl.ac.uk/postgraduate/funding/sources/allstudents/12mrea.html Best regards, Roman Bauer -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From D.G.HEINKE at bham.ac.uk Wed Mar 16 12:38:32 2016 From: D.G.HEINKE at bham.ac.uk (Dietmar Heinke) Date: Wed, 16 Mar 2016 16:38:32 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: Computational Neuroscience and Cognitive Robotics MSc Message-ID: <06D3DF7C411486418BEF3DCBF554BFAF01BBFFF6D1@EX13.adf.bham.ac.uk> We invite applications for our MSc program in Computational Neuroscience and Cognitive Robotics at the University of Birmingham, United Kingdom. The CNCR MSc course is highly interdisciplinary encompassing psychology, cognitive science, neuroscience, computational modelling, neuroimaging, robotics, and patient rehabilitation. The course is designed for those who are interested in applying knowledge of neural systems, brain function, and modelling to research in human cognition, perception, sensory and motor systems as well as the design of bio-inspired and biologically plausible robotic systems. It has a strong research focus with hands-on modules and practical applications. The course is aimed both at students from psychology/neuroscience with a strong quantitative background and at students from computer science and physics who want to apply their knowledge to psychology/neuroscience. The course is organised jointly through the Schools of Psychology and Computer Science. Details about the MSc can be found on this web-page: http://www.birmingham.ac.uk/postgraduate/courses/taught/psych/computation-neuro-cognitive-robotics.aspx Further enquires can be made via email: pg-psychology-admissions at contacts.bham.ac.uk Application deadline: 30.June. Applications made after this deadline may be considered. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tbesold at uni-osnabrueck.de Thu Mar 17 10:51:57 2016 From: tbesold at uni-osnabrueck.de (Tarek R. Besold) Date: Thu, 17 Mar 2016 15:51:57 +0100 (CET) Subject: Connectionists: Call for Papers: 11th International Workshop on Neural-Symbolic Learning and Reasoning (NeSy'16) Message-ID: <46988.46.18.27.5.1458226317.squirrel@webmail.uni-osnabrueck.de> == 11th INTERNATIONAL WORKSHOP ON NEURAL-SYMBOLIC LEARNING AND REASONING (NeSy?16) == Location: New York City, USA Date: July 16 & 17, 2016 Website: http://www.neural-symbolic.org/NeSy16/ --------------- NeSy?16 is part of HLAI 2016, the Joint Multi-Conference on Human-Level Artificial Intelligence (http://www.hlai2016.org) --------------- == CALL FOR PAPERS == Artificial Intelligence researchers continue to face huge challenges in their quest to develop truly intelligent systems. The recent developments in the field of neural-symbolic integration bring an opportunity to integrate well-founded symbolic artificial intelligence with robust neural computing machinery to help tackle some of these challenges. The Workshop on Neural-Symbolic Learning and Reasoning is intended to create an atmosphere of exchange of ideas, providing a forum for the presentation and discussion of the key topics related to neural-symbolic integration. Topics of interest include: ? The representation of symbolic knowledge by connectionist systems; ? Neural Learning theory. ? Integration of logic and probabilities, e.g., in neural networks, but also more generally; ? Structured learning and relational learning in neural networks; ? Logical reasoning carried out by neural networks; ? Integrated neural-symbolic learning approaches; ? Extraction of symbolic knowledge from trained neural networks; ? Integrated neural-symbolic reasoning; ? Neural-symbolic cognitive models; ? Biologically-inspired neural-symbolic integration; ? Applications in robotics, simulation, fraud prevention, natural language processing, semantic web, software engineering, fault diagnosis, bioinformatics, visual intelligence, etc. == Submission == Researchers and practitioners are invited to submit original papers that have not been submitted for review or published elsewhere. Submitted papers must be written in English, must be formatted according to the Springer LNCS style, and should not exceed 10 pages (excluding references/bibliography) in the case of research and experience papers, and 6 pages (excluding references/bibliography) in the case of position papers or technical notes. All submitted papers will be judged based on their quality, relevance, originality, significance, and soundness. Papers must be submitted through EasyChair (please see http://www.neural-symbolic.org/NeSy16/ for details). Additionally, for the first time presentations based on extended abstracts will be considered. These shall allow to report on latest results which had not been available at the time of paper submission. Therefore, the abstract deadline is significantly closer to the workshop date. Extended abstracts may not exceed 2 pages (including references/bibliography) and should aim to give a good impression of the type of work conducted, the achieved results and their importance for the field. == Presentation == Selected papers will be presented during the workshop. The workshop will include extra time for audience discussion of the presentation allowing the group to have a better understanding of the issues, challenges, and ideas being presented. == Publication == Accepted papers will be published in official workshop proceedings within the CEUR-WS.org series. Authors of the best papers will be invited to submit a revised and extended version of their papers to the newly-established corresponding track of the Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research (JAIR). Accepted abstracts will also be included in the official workshop proceedings. If judged appropriate after presentation and discussion during the workshop, full papers based on the abstracts may also be invited to the JAIR track. == Important Dates == Deadline for paper submission: May 25, 2016 Notification of paper acceptance/rejection: June 15, 2016 Deadline for abstract submission: June 20, 2016 Notification of abstract acceptance/rejection: June 24, 2016 Camera-ready paper due: July 1, 2016 Workshop day: July 16 & 17, 2016 HLAI 2016 conference: July16-19, 2016 == Workshop Organisers == Tarek R. Besold (Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Italy) Whitney Tabor (University of Connecticut, U.S.A.) Luciano Serafini (Fondazione Bruno Kessler, Italy) Luis Lamb (Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil) == Programme Committee == Antoine Bordes (Facebook AI Research, U.S.A.) Artur d?Avila Garcez (City University London, UK) James Davidson (Google Inc., U.S.A.) Ross Gayler (Melbourne, Australia) Steffen H?lldobler (TU Dresden, Germany) Thomas Icard (Stanford University, U.S.A.) Kai-Uwe K?hnberger (Universit?t Osnabr?ck, Germany) Simon Levy (Washington and Lee University, U.S.A.) Isaac Noble (Google Inc., U.S.A.) Andrea Passerini (University of Trento, Italy) Christopher Potts (Stanford University, USA) Daniel L. Silver (Acadia University, Canada) Ron Sun (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, USA) Jakub Szymanik (University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands) Serge Thill (University of Skovde, Sweden) Frank van der Velde (University of Twente, The Netherlands) == Keynote speaker(s) == Leon Bottou (Facebook AI Research, U.S.A.) Gary Marcus (New York University & Geometric Intelligence Inc., U.S.A.) == Additional Information == General questions concerning the workshop should be addressed to TarekRichard.Besold at unibz.it. For additional information, please see the workshop website at http://www.neural-symbolic.org/NeSy16/ The neural-symbolic integration mailing list will be used for announcements and discussions. --- Tarek R. Besold, PhD The KRDB Research Centre Faculty of Computer Science Free University of Bozen-Bolzano (Italy) E-Mail: tarekrichard.besold at unibz.it Web: http://sites.google.com/site/tarekbesold/ From Hugo.Larochelle at USherbrooke.ca Tue Mar 15 10:04:48 2016 From: Hugo.Larochelle at USherbrooke.ca (Hugo Larochelle) Date: Tue, 15 Mar 2016 14:04:48 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: ICLR 2016 Registration Open Message-ID: 4th International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR 2016) Website: http://www.iclr.cc/ Location: Caribe Hilton, San Juan, Puerto Rico, May 2-4, 2016 Registration to ICLR 2016 is now open: http://www.iclr.cc/doku.php?id=iclr2016:registration The lower early registration fees and hotel rates are available until April 1st. For more information on ICLR 2016, please visit http://www.iclr.cc/doku.php?id=iclr2016:main. We look forward to seeing you in Puerto Rico! 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 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From erdi.peter at wigner.mta.hu Mon Mar 14 13:42:04 2016 From: erdi.peter at wigner.mta.hu (=?ISO-8859-2?Q?=C9rdi_P=E9ter?=) Date: Mon, 14 Mar 2016 18:42:04 +0100 (CET) Subject: Connectionists: Cognitive Systems Research: Special Issue on Human-Human Stigmergy Message-ID: Cognitive Systems Research: Volume 38, Pages 1-60 (June 2016) http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/13890417/38 Human stigmergy: Theoretical developments and new applications Pages 1-3 Ted G. Lewis, Leslie Marsh Stigmergy as a universal coordination mechanism I: Definition and components Pages 4-13 Francis Heylighen Stigmergic coordination in FLOSS development teams: Integrating explicit and implicit mechanisms Pages 14-22 Francesco Bolici, James Howison, Kevin Crowston Imitation and novelty in product development Pages 23-30 Ted G. Lewis, Richard Bergin Stigmergy at the edge: Adversarial stigmergy in the war on drugs Pages 31-40 Rodrigo Nieto-Gomez Social cognition, artefacts, and stigmergy revisited: Concepts of coordination Pages 41-49 Tarja Susi Stigmergy as a universal coordination mechanism II: Varieties and evolution Pages 50-59 Francis Heylighen From cgf at isep.ipp.pt Wed Mar 16 13:31:15 2016 From: cgf at isep.ipp.pt (Carlos Ferreira) Date: Wed, 16 Mar 2016 17:31:15 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: CFP [Springer LNCS]: Workshop on Big Data & Deep Learning in HPC Message-ID: <56E99863.9030405@isep.ipp.pt> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Porto, Portugal June 30, 2016 First Workshop on Big Data & Deep Learning in High Performance Computing (http://bigdatadeeplearning2016.inesctec.pt/) in conjunction with VECPAR 2016 - High Performance Computing for Computational Science (http://vecpar.fe.up.pt/2016/) Paper Submission Deadline: 27 March 2016 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------ WORKSHOP ON BIG DATA & DEEP LEARNING IN HIGH PERFORMANCE COMPUTING ------------------------------------ The number of very large data repositories (big data) is increasing in a rapid pace. Analysis of such repositories using the "traditional" sequential implementations of ML and emerging techniques, like deep learning, that model high-level abstractions in data by using multiple processing layers, requires expensive computational resources and long running times. Parallel or distributed computing are possible approaches that can make analysis of very large repositories and exploration of high-level representations feasible. Taking advantage of a parallel or a distributed execution of a ML/statistical system may: i) increase its speed; ii) learn hidden representations; iii) search a larger space and reach a better solution or; iv) increase the range of applications where it can be used (because it can process more data, for example). Parallel and distributed computing is therefore of high importance to extract knowledge from massive amounts of data and learn hidden representations. The workshop will be concerned with the exchange of experience among academics, researchers and the industry whose work in big data and deep learning require high performance computing to achieve goals. Participants will present recently developed algorithms/systems, on going work and applications taking advantage of such parallel or distributed environments. ------------------------------------ LIST OF TOPICS ------------------------------------ All novel data-intensive computing techniques, data storage and integration schemes, and algorithms for cutting-edge high performance computing architectures which targets Big Data and Deep Learning are of interest to the workshop. Examples of topics include but not limited to: - parallel algorithms for data-intensive applications; - scalable data and text mining and information retrieval; - using Hadoop, MapReduce, Spark, Storm, Streaming to analyze Big Data; - energy-efficient data-intensive computing; - deep-learning with massive-scale datasets; - querying and visualization of large network datasets; - processing large-scale datasets on clusters of multicore and manycore processors, and accelerators; - heterogeneous computing for Big Data architectures; - Big Data in the Cloud; - processing and analyzing high-resolution images using high-performance computing; - using hybrid infrastructures for Big Data analysis. - New algorithms for parallel/distributed execution of ML systems; - applications of big data and deep learning to real-life problems. ------------------------------------ SUBMISSION ------------------------------------ Papers submitted to this workshop should not exceed 12 pages in length. The papers should be formatted according to the rules of the Springer Series Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS). All accepted papers will be published by Springer in the series entitled Lecture Notes in Computer Science. The proceedings will be distributed in electronic format to participants of VECPAR 2016. You should make your submissions through the EasyChair system: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=bdl2016 ------------------------------------ REGISTRATION ------------------------------------ All participants must attend the VECPAR 2016 conference. http://vecpar.fe.up.pt/2016/registration.html ------------------------------------ ORGANIZATION ------------------------------------ Carlos Ferreira (LIAAD - INESC TEC LA and Polytechnic Institute of Porto) Jo?o Gama (LIAAD - INESC TEC LA and University of Porto) Albert Bifet (Telecom ParisTech) V?tor Santos Costa (CRACS - INESC TEC LA and University of Porto) Rui Camacho (LIAAD -INESC TEC LA and University of Porto) Carlos Ferreira ISEP | Instituto Superior de Engenharia do Porto Rua Dr. Ant?nio Bernardino de Almeida, 431 4249-015 Porto - PORTUGAL tel. +351 228 340 500 | fax +351 228 321 159 mail at isep.ipp.pt | www.isep.ipp.pt From bhammer at techfak.uni-bielefeld.de Mon Mar 14 11:26:04 2016 From: bhammer at techfak.uni-bielefeld.de (Barbara Hammer) Date: Mon, 14 Mar 2016 16:26:04 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: workshop NC^2 at GCPR'16 Message-ID: <56E6D80C.4080205@techfak.uni-bielefeld.de> CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS The Workshop New Challenges in Neurocomputing and Machine Learning (NC^2) will be held in conjunction to GCPR'16 (http://www.kcmweb.de/conferences/gcpr2016/) at September, 12th, 2016, in Hanover, Germany. See: http://www.techfak.uni-bielefeld.de/~bhammer/GINN/NC2/ We are happy to announce two renowned invited speakers: Marc Toussaint (University of Stuttgart) and Joerg Luecke (University of Oldenbourg) who will present their recent results in autonomous learning and deep learning, respectively. Submissions are welcome connected to the following non-exhaustive list of topics: * nonlinear dimensionality reduction, blind source separation, and visualization * models for very large or streaming data sets * parallelization and hardware implementations * models for non-euclidean data * recursive models and dynamic systems * adaptive data representation * bio-inspired models * deep learning * challenges in machine learning * challenges in applications Submission deadline is June, 30th, 2016. ORGANIZERS: Barbara Hammer, Thomas Martinetz, Thomas Villmann PROGRAMM COMMITTEE: Michael Biehl, Kerstin Bunte, Benoit Frenay, Andrej Gisbrecht, Fred Hamker, Gunther Heidemann, Sven Hellbach, Christian Igel, Oliver Kramer, Paulo Lisboa, Alessio Micheli, Madalena Olteanu, Jaakko Peltonen, Felix Reinhart, Franco Scarselli, Frank-Michael Schleif, Friedhelm Schwenker, Udo Seiffert, Peter Tino, Heiko Wersing, Rolf W?rtz -- Prof. Dr. Barbara Hammer CITEC centre of excellence Bielefeld University D-33594 Bielefeld Phone: +49 521 / 106 12115 Fax: +49 521 / 106 12181 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From bengioy at iro.umontreal.ca Mon Mar 14 20:40:36 2016 From: bengioy at iro.umontreal.ca (Yoshua Bengio) Date: Mon, 14 Mar 2016 20:40:36 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: CIFAR Deep Learning summer school 2016 - Montreal Aug. 1-7 Message-ID: <751C2922-9D5D-4690-BB0C-FCD24C24430E@iro.umontreal.ca> Announcing the 2016 edition of the CIFAR Deep Learning Summer School, August 1st-7th! Organized by Aaron Courville and I. We have a very exciting line-up of speakers. Important dates: - Application process opening: March 22nd, 2016 (approximately). - Deadline for receiving applications: April 11th, 2016. - Application acceptance/rejection decisions: May 7th, 2016.? https://sites.google.com/site/deeplearningsummerschool2016/ https://sites.google.com/site/deeplearningsummerschool2016/ -- Yoshua Bengio -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From asdm at fi.upm.es Mon Mar 14 12:05:42 2016 From: asdm at fi.upm.es (asdm at fi.upm.es) Date: Mon, 14 Mar 2016 17:05:42 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: Eleventh Advanced Statistics and Data Mining Summer School (Madrid, June 27th - July 8th, 2016) Message-ID: <20160314170542.Horde.tdtXajKFRDbntboZNSiS33a@www.fi.upm.es> Dear colleagues, The Technical University of Madrid (UPM) will once more organize the 'Madrid UPM Advanced Statistics and Data Mining' summer school. The summer school will be held in Boadilla del Monte, near Madrid, from June 27th to July 8th. This year's edition comprises 12 week-long courses (15 lecture hours each), given during two weeks (six courses each week). Attendees may register in each course independently. No restrictions, besides those imposed by timetables, apply on the number or choice of courses. Early registration is now *OPEN*. Extended information on course programmes, price, venue, accommodation and transport is available at the school's website: http://www.dia.fi.upm.es/ASDM There is a 25% discount for members of Spanish AEPIA and SEIO societies. Please, forward this information to your colleagues, students, and whoever you think may find it interesting. Best regards, Pedro Larranaga, Concha Bielza, Bojan Mihaljevic and Laura Anton-Sanchez. -- School coordinators. *** List of courses and brief description *** * Week 1 (June 27th - July 1st, 2016) * 1st session: 9:45-12:45 Course 1: Bayesian Networks (15 h) Basics of Bayesian networks. Inference in Bayesian networks. Learning Bayesian networks from data. Real applications. Practical demonstration: GeNIe, Weka, Bayesia, R. Course 2: Time Series(15 h) Basic concepts in time series. Descriptive methods for time series. Linear models for time series. Extensions. Practical demonstration: R. 2nd session: 13:45-16:45 Course 3: Supervised Pattern Recognition (15 h) Introduction. Assessing the performance of supervised classification algorithms. Preprocessing. Classification techniques. Combining multiple classifiers. Comparing supervised classification algorithms. Practical demonstration: Weka. Course 4: Bayesian Inference (15 h) Introduction: Bayesian basics. Conjugate models. MCMC and other simulation methods. Regression and Hierarchical models. Model selection. Practical demonstration: R and WinBugs. 3rd session: 17:00 - 20:00 Course 5: Neural Networks and Deep Learning (15 h) Introduction. Training algorithms. Learning and Optimization. MLPs in practice. Deep Networks. Course 6: Unsupervised Pattern Recognition (15 h) Introduction to clustering. Data exploration and preparation. Prototype-based clustering. Density-based clustering. Graph-based clustering. Cluster evaluation. Miscellanea. Conclusions and final advise. Practical session: R. * Week 2 (July 4th - July 8th, 2016) * 1st session: 9:45-12:45 Course 7: Statistical Inference (15 h) Introduction. Some basic statistical test. Multiple testing. Introduction to bootstrap methods. Introduction to Robust Statistics. Practical demonstration: R. Course 8: Big Data with Apache Spark (15 h) Introduction. Spark framework and APIs. Data processing with Spark. Spark streaming. Machine learning with Spark MLlib. 2nd session: 13:45-16:45 Course 9: Text Mining (15 h) Introduction. Language Modeling. Text Similarity. Text Classification. Information Extraction. Practical session: Python, with Jupyter notebooks. Course 10: Feature Subset Selection (15 h) Introduction. Filter approaches. Embedded methods. Wrapper methods. Advanced topics. Practical session: R and Weka. 3rd session: 17:00-20:00 Course 11: Support Vector Machines and Regularized Learning (15 h) Introduction. SVM models. SVM learning algorithms. Convex non differentiable optimization. Course 12: Hidden Markov Models (15 h) Introduction. Discrete Hidden Markov Models. Basic algorithms for Hidden Markov Models. Semicontinuous Hidden Markov Models. Continuous Hidden Markov Models. Unit selection and clustering. Speaker and Environment Adaptation for HMMs. Other applications of HMMs. Practical session: HTK. From Alan.Wagner at gtri.gatech.edu Wed Mar 16 18:23:35 2016 From: Alan.Wagner at gtri.gatech.edu (Wagner, Alan) Date: Wed, 16 Mar 2016 22:23:35 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: IJCAI-2016 Workshop on Deep Learning for Artificial Intelligence Message-ID: <7e4cce412c8743d6814cb7bda1acf828@apatlisdmail01.core.gtri.org> -Apologies for multiple postings-- ========================================================================= Call for Papers: IJCAI-2016 Workshop on Deep Learning for Artificial Intelligence July 10, 2016 in New York City, NY, USA Workshop website: http://home.earthlink.net/~dwaha/research/meetings/ijcai16-dlai-ws/ Paper Submissions Due: April 18, 2016 ========================================================================= Description Deep Learning (DL) techniques have ignited a firestorm of attention from academia and industry due to their success on many benchmarks and applications, such as those pertaining to image recognition, automated caption generation, speech recognition, natural language processing, and game AI. To date, most DL efforts have focused on analysis tasks (e.g., classification, regression), and have not involved the use of symbolic representations and inference methods commonly used in AI. For example, few DL efforts have focused on synthesis tasks (e.g., planning, scheduling, and design), involved the use of logical or graphical models, or made other tight connections with AI. Much could be gained by investigating how best to integrate AI and DL techniques; this would interest researchers studying a variety of topics. The Deep Learning for AI (DLAI) workshop will provide a forum for describing and learning about promising methods that use DL techniques in AI processes, highlighting initial contributions/benefits, and encouraging further work, thereby fostering connections among two somewhat disparate groups of researchers. We intend it to interest AI researchers who investigate the use of DL techniques in their studies and DL researchers who seek to understand/explore the roles that DL techniques can perform in, for example, systems that can reason with interpreted sensor data. This workshop will include three primary components. The first is invited talks by senior researchers who have investigated DLAI, can provide visions for what these types of integrations can accomplish, and can identify important open research issues. Second, we will host presentations of accepted papers (please see paper submissions for details). Finally, we will include a panel of active DLAI researchers who will be asked to discuss key issues that require attention, and speakers from industry (or government) who have interest in solving problems using DLAI techniques. We are soliciting regular papers (6 pages text + up to 1 page references) in IJCAI style. The topics of interest include, but are not limited to the following: *Robotics (e.g., control of autonomous vehicles) *Caption generation *Cognitive architectures *Commonsense reasoning *Episodic reasoning *Intelligent agents (e.g., planning and acting, goal reasoning) *Machine learning (e.g., deep, reinforcement, statistical relational, transfer) *Model-based reasoning *Narrative intelligence *Temporal reasoning *Visual reasoning Applications: *Human-robot Interaction *Ambient intelligence *Autonomic computing *Biomedical systems *Computer games, *Image processing (e.g., security/surveillance tasks), *Information retrieval and reuse *Intelligent tutoring systems *Language translation *Plan replay *Question-Answering *Reasoning from experiences mined from text, multimedia, or human interactions *Recommender systems *Text reuse *User modeling IMPORTANT DATES 18 April 2016: Paper submissions due 6 May 2016: Reviewing responses to submissions 20 May 2016: Camera-ready deadline 10 July 2016: DLAI Workshop (full-day) Paper Submissions We welcome contributions that, for example, describe prior or ongoing work on DLAI, describe key issues that require further research, or highlight relevant challenges of interest to AI and DL researchers and practitioners, and plans for addressing them. In particular, we welcome four types of submissions: 1. Theoretical and/or empirical analyses 2. System demonstrations 3. Planned research or application 4. Position papers Self-contained submissions must be no longer than seven pages (i.e., six pages for the main text of the paper, and one additional page for (only) references) in PDF format for letter-size (8.5 x 11) paper. Please use IJCAI-16's templates, and include author names, affiliations, and email addresses on the first page. Submissions will be made through EasyChair (https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=dlai2016) Papers will be subject to peer review by the workshop program committee. Selection criteria include originality of ideas, correctness, clarity and significance of results, and quality of presentation. Organizers - David Aha, Naval Research Laboratory - Yiannis Aloimonos, University of Maryland, College Park - Andrew S. Gordon, University of Southern California - Alan R. Wagner, Georgia Institute of Technology -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From torsello at dsi.unive.it Sat Mar 19 10:40:42 2016 From: torsello at dsi.unive.it (Andrea Torsello) Date: Sat, 19 Mar 2016 15:40:42 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: Call for Participation ISSCN 2nd International Summer School on Complex Networks Message-ID: <1641292.io6criuUOz@patsy> Call for Participation ISSCN 2nd International Summer School on Complex Networks ISSCN 2nd International Summer School on Complex Networks Bertinoro, Italy July 11-15 2016 http://www.dsi.unive.it/isscn/ Complex networks are an emerging and powerful computational tool in the physical, biological and social sciences. They aim is to capture the structural properties of data represented as graphs or networks, providing ways of characterising both the static and dynamic facets of network structure. The topic draws on ideas from graph theory, statistical physics and dynamic systems theory. Applications include communication networks, epidemiology, transportation, social networks and ecology. The aim in the Summer School is to provide an overview of both the foundations and state of the art in the field. Lectures will be presented by intellectual leaders in the field, and there will be an opportunity to interact closely with them during the school. The school will be held in the Bertinoro Residential Centre of the University of Bologna, which is situated in beautiful hills between Ravenna and Bologna. The summer school is aimed at PhD students, and younger postdocs or RA's working in the complex networks area. It will run for 5 days with lectures in the mornings and afternoons, and the school fee includes residential accommodation and meals at the residential centre. List of Lecturers Nuno Ara?jo, Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal Alex Arenas, Universidad Rovira i Virgili, Spain Michele Benzi, Emory University, USA Ernesto Estrada, University of Strathclyde, UK Jesus Gomez Gardenes, University of Zaragoza, Spain Edwin Hancock, University of York, UK Simone Severini, University College London, UK Richard Wilson, University of York, UK Organizers Andrea Torsello, Universit? Ca' Foscari Venezia, Italy Edwin Hancock, University of York, UK Richard Wilson, University of York, UK Ernesto Estrada, University of Strathclyde, UK Registration Fee: ?750 Registration includes Accommodation in single rooms for 5 nights (10/7/2016 to 14/7/2016), meals and coffee breaks. Application is now open through the schools's website. Deadline for application is March 31st 2016. All applicants will receive results by 15/4/2016. Applicants must send an expression of interest along with their Curriculum vitae. PhD students can send also a letter from the supervisor in support of their application. Contact: Andrea Torsello -- Andrea Torsello PhD Dipartimento di Scienze Ambientali, Informatica, Statistica Universita' Ca' Foscari Venezia via Torino 155, 30172 Venezia Mestre, Italy Tel: +39 0412348468 Fax: +39 0412348419 http://www.dsi.unive.it/~atorsell From elio.tuci at gmail.com Mon Mar 21 16:12:47 2016 From: elio.tuci at gmail.com (Elio Tuci) Date: Mon, 21 Mar 2016 21:12:47 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: CFP: SAB2016 - international Conference on the Simulation of Adaptive Behavior Message-ID: *SAB2016 ? CALL FOR PAPERS* FROM ANIMALS TO ANIMATS 14 The 14th International Conference on the Simulation of Adaptive Behavior (SAB2016) 23-26 August 2016, Aberystwyth, UK http://www.sab2016.org *Organising Committee* Conference Chairs: Myra S. Wilson, John Hallam Program Chairs: Elio Tuci, Alexandros Giagkos Tutorial Chair: Fred Labrosse *Important Dates* Paper Submission Deadline: 8th April, 2016 (extended) Notification of Acceptance: 16th May, 2016 Camera Ready Submission: 6th Jun., 2016 Tutorial Proposal Deadline: 21st May, 2016 Tutorial Notification of Acceptance: 31th May, 2016 Tutorials: 23rd Aug., 2016 Conference: 24-26th Aug., 2016 *Scope of the Conference* The objective of this interdisciplinary conference is to bring together researchers in computer science, artificial intelligence, artificial life, control, robotics, neurosciences, ethology, evolutionary biology and related fields in order to further our understanding of the behaviours and underlying mechanisms that allow natural and artificial animals to adapt and survive in uncertain environments. The conference will focus on experiments with well-defined models including robot models, computer simulation models and mathematical models designed to help characterise and compare various organisational principles or architectures underlying adaptive behaviour in real animals and in synthetic agents, the animats. *Relevant Research Areas* SAB2016 solicits contributions dealing with any aspect of adaptive behaviour in natural and artificial systems. Typical, but not exclusive, topics of interest are: The animat approach Motor control Body and brain co-evolution Self-assembling and self-replication Sensory-motor coordination Action selection and behavioural sequencing Navigation and mapping Internal models and representation Evolution, development and learning Collective and social behaviour Applied adaptive behaviour Motivation and emotion Communication and language Emergent structures and behaviours Neural correlates of behaviour Evolutionary and co-evolutionary approaches Bio-inspired and hybrid robotics Autonomous robotics Humanoid robotics Cognitive and developmental robotics Software agents and virtual creatures Philosophical and psychological issues Animats in education *Conference Format* Following the tradition of SAB conferences, the conference will be single track with additional poster sessions. There will also be a day of tutorials (23rd of August). *Paper Submission Instruction and Publication Details* Submitted papers must not exceed 12 pages. Detailed submission instructions are available from the conference website (http://www.sab2016.org). All accepted papers with oral or poster presentation will be published in Springer Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence series conference proceedings. Selected authors may additionally be invited to submit extended versions for a conference Special Issue of the Journal of Adaptive Behavior. *Tutorials* The SAB2016 organising committee invites proposals for tutorials, which will be held on the 23rd of August, 2016. Instructions for preparing the tutorial proposal and further details on the tutorials can be found at http://www.sab2016.org. *Exhibition Section* During SAB2016 there will be an exhibition section, where latest developments in hardware and software technologies will be displayed to the conference attendees and the Press. *Best Paper Award* Two best paper prizes will be awarded at the end of the conference to honour the authors of papers of exceptional merit. The prizes will be sponsored by Springer and Webots. For more information please refer to the official SAB2016 website. *Student Bursaries* ISAB sponsored student bursaries are available to cover conference fees, meals and accomodation. Preference will be given to students who are first authors on accepted papers. Information on how to apply can be found on http://www.sab2016.org. *Further Information* Up-to-date information will be published on the website http://www.sab2016.org. For information about local arrangements, registration forms, etc., please refer to the website or contact the local organisers at the address below. *Conference Address* Computer Science Department Llandinam Building Aberystwyth University Tel: +44-1970-622928 Aberystwyth Fax: +44-1970-628536 SY23 3DB UK sab2016-conference at isab.org -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From felix.putze at uni-bremen.de Mon Mar 21 19:39:02 2016 From: felix.putze at uni-bremen.de (Felix Putze) Date: Tue, 22 Mar 2016 00:39:02 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: PhD student position at University of Bremen in machine learning and signal processing Message-ID: <56F08616.7030504@uni-bremen.de> At the Cognitive Systems Lab (headed by Prof. Dr. Tanja Schultz) at the University of Bremen, Germany, we currently have an open position for a research assistant/PhD student (36 months, fully funded at 100% on the German employee scale TV-L 13). The project in the area of medical engineering aims at the development of an intelligent, sensor-based knee bandage. The successful applicant will work on machine learning and signal processing techniques for the classification of postures, activities and physical strain from IMU and EMG data, with application to human-computer interfaces. The project involves collaboration with partners from academia and industry. The Cognitive Systems Lab offers a vibrant and friendly research environment, a fully-equipped data recording laboratory, and ample experience in machine learning, signal processing and human-computer interaction. For more details, see the full description in English at: http://csl.uni-bremen.de/cms/en/8-news/136-promotionsstelle-zu-vergeben-2.html Best regards, Felix Putze -- Dr.-Ing. Felix Putze E-Mail: felix.putze at uni-bremen.de Phone: +49 421 218 64272 University of Bremen Cognitive Systems Lab (CSL) Enrique-Schmidt-Stra?e 5 (Cartesium) 28359 Bremen From gabbiani at bcm.edu Mon Mar 21 08:58:49 2016 From: gabbiani at bcm.edu (Gabbiani, Fabrizio) Date: Mon, 21 Mar 2016 12:58:49 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: Postdoctoral Position in Computational Neuroscience/Biophysical Modeling Message-ID: <56EFF008.1000401@bcm.edu> Postdoctoral Position in Computational Neuroscience/Biophysical Modeling Computational and Applied Mathematics Rice University and Department of Neuroscience Baylor College of Medicine Houston, Texas ----- A postdoctoral position in computational neuroscience is available at Rice University and Baylor College of Medicine, in the laboratories of Steven Cox (Rice University) and Fabrizio Gabbiani (Baylor College of Medicine). Our research focuses on understanding the biophysical mechanisms underlying the implementation of non-linear operations by neurons and neuronal circuits. The postdoctoral research associate will model the cellular and network mechanisms underlying collision avoidance behaviors using advanced mathematical techniques and computer simulations. Modeling will be supported by a large data set of experimental data gathered using electrophysiology, pharmacology, calcium imaging, high-speed video imaging and telemetry. We are looking for a highly motivated candidate with a strong background in computational modeling of single neurons and neuronal circuits. Experience with Matlab and NEURON is required. The position is available for one year, with possibility of renewal for a second year, contingent of performance and funding availability. Salary will be commensurate with level of experience, based on an NIH scale. Applications will be accepted until April 22, 2016. Our labs are located at Rice University and in the adjacent Texas Medical Center, close to many of Houston's cultural and outdoor amenities. For further information about Rice University, the Texas Medical Center and Houston please visit http://www.explore.rice.edu/explore/General_Information.asp or https://www.bcm.edu/about-us/life-in-houston For further informal inquiries and to apply, please send CV, the names and full contact information of two to three references, as well as one to two representative publications to cox at rice.edu and gabbiani at bcm.edu. Equal Opportunity Employer: Females / Minorities / Veterans/ Disabled / Sexual Orientation / Gender Identity. From lignpu at gmail.com Mon Mar 21 15:51:58 2016 From: lignpu at gmail.com (gangli) Date: Mon, 21 Mar 2016 15:51:58 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: Postdoctoral Positions in Infant Brain Mapping Message-ID: Postdoctoral research associate positions are available at the Infant Brain Mapping Lab in the Department of Radiology and Biomedical Research Imaging Center (BRIC) at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Our current focuses are to better understand the dynamic and critical early brain development in health and disease, via multimodal neuroimaging analysis. The successful candidate will support our efforts either in advancing neuroimaging analysis technologies or in neuroscience applications. We are seeking highly motivated individuals who have extensive research experience in neuroimaging analysis (e.g., structural, diffusion or functional MRI) and demonstrated academic excellence, including publications in first-class journals and conferences. The candidate for Postdoctoral Research Associate should have a Ph.D. (or equivalent) in Neuroscience, Computer Science, Applied Mathematics/Statistics, Electrical Engineering, Biomedical Engineering, or related fields. Good command of programming tools including Matlab, C/C++, Linux, and scripting are necessary to carry out the research work in this group. The successful candidate will be part of a diverse group including neuroscientists, radiologists, psychologists, physicists, biostatistician, and computer scientists, and will build upon the group's extensive foundation on neuroimaging analysis. If interested, please email resume to Dr. Gang Li (gang_li at med.unc.edu). -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Johan.Suykens at esat.kuleuven.be Fri Mar 18 11:27:29 2016 From: Johan.Suykens at esat.kuleuven.be (Johan Suykens) Date: Fri, 18 Mar 2016 16:27:29 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: matrix SVD and kernel methods Message-ID: <56EC1E61.8080309@esat.kuleuven.be> Dear all, I would like to announce the following publication: Suykens J.A.K., "SVD revisited: a new variational principle, compatible feature maps and nonlinear extensions", Applied and Computational Harmonic Analysis, 40 (2016), pp. 600-609. doi:10.1016/j.acha.2015.09.004 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1063520315001360 http://www.esat.kuleuven.be/stadius/ADB/publications.php - it proposes a new variational principle for the matrix singular value decomposition, in a kernel-based learning setting; - it goes beyond Mercer kernels (which are commonly used in the kernel trick); - nonlinear extensions are shown to the matrix SVD - kernel PCA corresponds to a special case of the formulations, related to the case of a square symmetric matrix. Best regards, Johan Suykens ---------------------- Prof. Johan Suykens Katholieke Universiteit Leuven Departement Elektrotechniek - ESAT-STADIUS Kasteelpark Arenberg 10 B-3001 Leuven (Heverlee) Belgium http://www.esat.kuleuven.be/stadius/members/suykens.html http://www.esat.kuleuven.be/stadius/ADB From marcus.hutter at gmx.net Mon Mar 21 18:14:59 2016 From: marcus.hutter at gmx.net (Marcus Hutter) Date: Tue, 22 Mar 2016 09:14:59 +1100 Subject: Connectionists: Last call for papers: AGI-16 (jointly with BICA, NeSy, AIC). Deadline 1.April Message-ID: <56F07263.7010901@gmx.net> We are excited to remind you about an historic event that is coming up soon -- The Ninth Annual Conference on Artificial General Intelligence (AGI-16) http://agi-conf.org/2016 which will be held in New York City (July 16-19, 2016), as part of a larger event ? HLAI-16 ? HUMAN-LEVEL AI 2016: http://agi-conf.org/hlai2016/ This will be the first-ever Multi-conference focused on the creation of thinking machines with capability at the human level and beyond. Gary Marcus and Stephen Grossberg are lined up as keynote speakers, and will be joined by 2-3 additional keynotes to be announced shortly. HLAI-16 will include AGI-16, and also BICA-16 (Biologically Inspired Cognitive Architectures), and the 2016 ?Neural-Symbolic Learning and Reasoning? and ?AI and Cognition? Workshops. These four conferences are normally held separately each year, at different times and locations. But this year they are coming together in time and space as a unique and unprecedented Multi-conference. Furthermore, the HLAI-16 Multi-conference will occur immediately after the IJCAI-16 (the largest international AI conference), which is also in New York City. AGI-16 will be organized just like previous AGI conferences, with the same focus and structure. Registration for each of the conferences within the multi-conference will be done separately. However, there will be numerous common events: common keynotes, a common poster and demo session, and a common multi-conference banquet. Most importantly, all 4 events will be held together at the New School in lower Manhattan, allowing free and wide-ranging HLAI and AGI discussions among attendees and presenters at all 4 conferences. Why a Human-Level AI Multi-conference in 2016? Looking backward, 2016 is the 60th anniversary of the Dartmouth Conferences, which effectively inaugurated the history of AI and cognitive systems research. Looking forward, 2016 is an unprecedentedly exciting time for AI R&D in general. It is a time when we are seeing a constant stream of practical and theoretical successes in various parts of the AI field. And it is a time when the quest to create AI systems with general intelligence at the human level and beyond is taken more seriously by a broader community than ever before. So 2016 is a perfect year to gather together an unprecedentedly large number of serious researchers and developers in the areas of AGI and Human-Level AI, for sharing ideas and results and planning collaborative R&D. And to top it all off, New York City in the summer is a fantastic place to be. The paper submission deadline will be April 1, 2016; please see http://agi-conf.org/2016/call-for-papers/ for further relevant dates. We hope to see you in New York! Yours, AGI-16 Conference Chair: Ben Goertzel, OpenCog Foundation Program Committee Chairs: Pei Wang, Temple University Bas Steunebrink, IDSIA Organizing Committee: Matthew Ikle, Adams State College, OpenCog Foundation Jose Hernandez-Orallo, Universitat Polit?cnica de Val?ncia (Tutorials and Workshops Chair) Brandon Rohrer, Microsoft (Poster and Demo Sessions Chair) Ed Keller, New School (Local Co-chair) AGI Conference Series Chairs: Ben Goertzel, OpenCog Foundation Marcus Hutter, ANU ****************************** From ted.carnevale at yale.edu Mon Mar 21 15:14:11 2016 From: ted.carnevale at yale.edu (Ted Carnevale) Date: Mon, 21 Mar 2016 15:14:11 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: 2016 NEURON Summer Course Message-ID: <56F04803.2010302@yale.edu> This year the NEURON Summer Course will be held at the HHMI|Janelia Research Campus in Ashburn, Virginia. Only a few seats remain open, so you'll have to act quickly if you are interested in taking "NEURON Fundamentals" or "Parallel Simulation with NEURON." The NEURON Fundamentals component, which runs from June 20-24, is suitable for individuals at all levels of expertise. It presents a thorough introduction to computational modeling of neurons and networks of neurons with NEURON, and introduces parallel simulation. Parallel Simulation with NEURON runs from June 25-27 and focuses on the needs of experienced NEURON users who want to create models that will run on parallel hardware. Knowledge of how to write hoc or Python code for NEURON is presumed. You may apply for one or both components, but registration is subject to approval by the course's faculty. Space is limited, and applications are considered in the order received. The application deadline is Friday, May 20, 2016. No applications will be accepted after that date, and there will be no on-site registration. For more information and the on-line application form, see http://www.neuron.yale.edu/neuron/static/courses/summer2016/summer2016.html --Ted From navlakha at salk.edu Mon Mar 21 02:41:23 2016 From: navlakha at salk.edu (Saket Navlakha) Date: Mon, 21 Mar 2016 06:41:23 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: Biological Distributed Algorithms 2016 -- CFP, student/post-doc awards available Message-ID: <5F199A3E-34E8-4A5D-A31B-B7CFB2CFFA98@salk.edu> We have several NSF-sponsored student and post-doc travel awards for those interested in the workshop. Full details below: ======================================================= The 4th Workshop on Biological Distributed Algorithms (BDA 2016) Co-located with PODC 2016. July 25, 2016 in Chicago, IL USA http://www.snl.salk.edu/~navlakha/BDA2016/ ======================================================= We are excited to announce the 4th workshop on Biological Distributed Algorithms (BDA). The aim of the workshop is to foster collaborative research between biologists and distributed computing theory researchers, with the hope of producing better understanding of the behavior of distributed biological systems, as well as new ideas for design of algorithms for engineered or computational networks. BDA 2016 will include presentations on distributed algorithms related to a variety of biological systems, with special attention to communication and coordination in insect colonies (e.g. foraging, navigation, task allocation, construction) and networks in the brain (e.g. learning, decision-making, attention). This is a one-day workshop. =========== SUBMISSIONS =========== We solicit submissions of extended abstracts describing recent results relevant to biological distributed computing. We especially welcome extended abstracts describing new insights and / or case studies regarding the relationship between distributed computing and biological systems even if these are not fully formed. Since a major goal of the workshop is to explore new directions and approaches, we especially encourage the submission of ongoing work. Selected contributors would be asked to present, discuss and defend their work at the workshop. By default, the submissions will be evaluated for either oral or poster presentation, though authors may indicate in their submission if it should be only considered for one of the presentation types. Submissions should be in PDF and include title, author information, and a 4-page extended abstract. Shorter submissions are also welcome, particularly for poster presentation. Please use the following EasyChair submission link: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=bda20160 Note: The workshop will not include published proceedings. In particular, we welcome submissions of extended abstracts describing work that has appeared or is expected to appear in other venues. ================================= Support for students and postdocs ================================= To encourage the participation of researchers at the early stages of their career, the NSF has generously granted us with the means to provide financial support for student and postdoc participants. Specifically, for each accepted (oral or poster) presentation, we will reimburse the registration fee and at least $350 of additional travel expanses (the exact amount will be determined later on but it is expected to be higher) of one student/postdoc author. =============== IMPORTANT DATES =============== April 25, 2016 ? Extended abstract submission deadline May 25, 2016 ? Decision notifications July 25, 2016 ? Workshop ================ INVITED SPEAKERS ================ Bernard Chazelle - Princeton Melanie Moses - UNM Konrad Kording - Northwestern ================= PROGRAM COMMITTEE ================= Ziv Bar-Joseph - CMU Anna Dornhaus - University of Arizona Yuval Emek - Technion (co-chair) Amos Korman - CNRS and University of Paris Diderot Nancy Lynch - MIT Saket Navlakha - Salk Institute (co-chair) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pascualm at key.uzh.ch Fri Mar 18 05:44:51 2016 From: pascualm at key.uzh.ch (Roberto D. Pascual-Marqui) Date: Fri, 18 Mar 2016 18:44:51 +0900 Subject: Connectionists: dual-frequency coupling coefficient for connectivity analysis Message-ID: Dear Colleagues, For those of you interested in this topic, I would like to point your attention to a recently developed method for connectivity analysis based on time series of brain activity: "The dual frequency RV-coupling coefficient: a novel measure for quantifying cross-frequency information transactions in the brain" http://arxiv.org/abs/1603.05343 (abstract below) Cordially, Roberto ... Roberto D. Pascual-Marqui, PhD, PD The KEY Institute for Brain-Mind Research, University of Zurich Visiting Professor at Neuropsychiatry, Kansai Medical University, Osaka [www.keyinst.uzh.ch/loreta] [www.researcherid.com/rid/A-2012-2008] [scholar.google.com/citations?user=pascualmarqui] ////////////// ABSTRACT Identifying dynamic transactions between brain regions has become increasingly important. Measurements within and across brain structures, demonstrating the occurrence of bursts of beta/gamma oscillations only during one specific phase of each theta/alpha cycle, have motivated the need to advance beyond linear and stationary time series models. Here we offer a novel measure, namely, the "dual frequency RV-coupling coefficient", for assessing different types of frequency-frequency interactions that subserve information flow in the brain. This is a measure of coherence between two complex-valued vectors, consisting of the set of Fourier coefficients for two different frequency bands, within or across two brain regions. RV-coupling is expressed in terms of instantaneous and lagged components. Furthermore, by using normalized Fourier coefficients (unit modulus), phase-type couplings can also be measured. The dual frequency RV-coupling coefficient is based on previous work: the second order bispectrum, i.e. the dual-frequency coherence (Thomson 1982; Haykin & Thomson 1998); the RV-coefficient (Escoufier 1973); Gorrostieta et al (2012); and Pascual-Marqui et al (2011). This paper presents the new measure, and outlines relevant statistical tests. The novel aspects of the "dual frequency RV-coupling coefficient" are: (1) it can be applied to two multivariate time series; (2) the method is not limited to single discrete frequencies, and in addition, the frequency bands are treated by means of appropriate multivariate statistical methodology; (3) the method makes use of a novel generalization of the RV-coefficient for complex-valued multivariate data; (4) real and imaginary covariance contributions to the RV-coherence are obtained, allowing the definition of a "lagged-coupling" measure that is minimally affected by the low spatial resolution of estimated cortical electric neuronal activity. \\ From francisco.pereira at gmail.com Thu Mar 24 13:43:59 2016 From: francisco.pereira at gmail.com (Francisco Pereira) Date: Thu, 24 Mar 2016 13:43:59 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: neuroimaging analysis internship at Siemens Healthcare Message-ID: Our team at Medical Imaging Technologies, Siemens Healthcare, in Princeton NJ, has a summer intern position, working in a project investigating the representation of semantic information in the brain and how it is used in language. Our goal is to build a computational model of the process of sentence comprehension in a text passage, using text corpora and other linguistic resources, and validate it using behavioral and brain imaging data (primarily, functional MRI). The main role of the intern will be to help in building forward models of language processing (from stimuli to mental representations to imaging data). Examples of tasks you might be asked to do: - run various types of multivariate pattern analyses (e.g. classification, regression, representational similarity), as well as GLMs - implement and benchmark new methods for decoding complex information (e.g. distributed semantic representations) from fMRI data - process fMRI data and help extend our existing processing pipeline (e.g. to do hyper-alignment of subjects) It is an unusual position in that you would be doing all of these tasks in close cooperation with other team members who are developing the language models and decoding approaches, and with colleagues who are designing and running complex multi-session imaging experiments. This would provide you with an opportunity to learn about all of these aspects of the work. We will also be delivering a system to the funding agency, so this is a fast-paced project with multiple opportunities for publication. This work is being carried out in collaboration with researchers at MIT, MGH and Princeton University and funded by the IARPA Knowledge Representation in Neural Systems program ( http://www.iarpa.gov/index.php/research-programs/krns ). Requirements: - current student in a graduate program in Psychology/Cognitive Neuroscience/Computer Science/Machine Learning - experience developing software in MATLAB or Python - experience in processing fMRI data and running GLMs (with any of FSL, AFNI, SPM, FreeSurfer, etc) - experience with PyMVPA and/or scikit-learn is highly desirable, though not strictly necessary - availability for at least 3 months (a longer period is possible, and the timeline is flexible) If interested, please send your resume to francisco-pereira at siemens.com (your email can serve as a cover letter, if there is anything you would like to elaborate on). -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From newsletter at saso-conference.org Thu Mar 24 06:25:23 2016 From: newsletter at saso-conference.org (=?utf-8?b?SmFuLVBoaWxpcHAgU3RlZ2jDtmZlcg==?=) Date: Thu, 24 Mar 2016 11:25:23 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: =?utf-8?q?Call_for_Contributions=3A_SASO_2016_--_?= =?utf-8?q?10th_IEEE_International_Conference_on_Self-Adaptive_and_?= =?utf-8?q?Self-Organizing_Systems?= Message-ID: ************************************************************************* CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS Tenth IEEE International Conference on Self-Adaptive and Self-Organizing Systems (SASO 2016) and co-located events Augsburg, Germany; 12-16 September 2016 http://uni-augsburg.de/saso2016 @SASO2016Conf ************************************************************************* Part of FAS* - Foundation and Applications of Self* Computing Conferences Co-located with: The International Conference on Cloud and Autonomic Computing (ICCAC 2016) http://iccac2016.se.rit.edu Call for Papers: https://saso2016.informatik.uni-augsburg.de/call_for_papers.html Call for Workshops: https://saso2016.informatik.uni-augsburg.de/call_for_workshops.html Call for Posters and Demos: https://saso2016.informatik.uni-augsburg.de/call_for_posters_and_demos.html Call for Doctoral Symposium: https://saso2016.informatik.uni-augsburg.de/call_for_ds.html Call for Tutorials: https://saso2016.informatik.uni-augsburg.de/call_for_tutorials.html -------------------- Important Dates -------------------- Workshop proposal submission deadline: April 4, 2016 Workshop acceptance notification: April 11, 2016 Main Conference Abstract submission: May 2, 2016 Main Conference Paper submission: May 9, 2016 Main Conference Notification: June 23, 2016 Poster and Demo Submission deadline: June 10, 2016 Poster and Demo Notification: July 8, 2016 Doctoral Symposium Abstract Submission due: May 29, 2016 Doctoral Symposium Paper Submission due: June 12, 2016 Doctoral Symposium Notifications due: July 10, 2016 Tutorial Proposal submission: April 4, 2016 Tutorial Acceptance Notification: April 25, 2016 Conference: September 12-16, 2016 ------------------- Call for Papers ------------------- https://saso2016.informatik.uni-augsburg.de/call_for_papers.html The aim of the Self-Adaptive and Self-Organizing systems conference series (SASO) is to provide a forum for the foundations of a principled approach to engineering systems, networks, and services based on self-adaptation and self-organization. The complexity of current and emerging networks, software, and services, especially when dealing with dynamics in the environment and problem domain, has led the software engineering, distributed systems, and management communities to look for inspiration in diverse fields (e.g., complex systems, control theory, artificial intelligence, sociology, and biology) to find new ways of designing and managing such computing systems. In this endeavor, self-organization and self-adaptation have emerged as two promising interrelated approaches. They form the basis for many other self-* properties, such as self-configuration, self-healing, or self-optimization. Systems exhibiting such properties are often referred to as self-* systems. The topics of interest include, but are not limited to: - Systems theory: theoretical frameworks and models; biologically- and socially-inspired paradigms; inter-operation of self-* mechanisms; - Systems techniques: techniques to specify and analyze self-* systems, like statistical physics, machine learning, multi-agent systems, or other novel techniques; - Systems engineering: reusable mechanisms, design patterns, architectures, methodologies; software and middleware development frameworks and methods, platforms and toolkits; hardware; self-* materials; governance of self-* systems, emergent behavior in self-* systems; - System properties: robustness, resilience, and stability; emergence; computational awareness and self-awareness; reflection; anti-fragility; - Cyber-physical and socio-technical systems: human factors and visualization; self-* social computers; crowdsourcing and collective awareness; human-in-the-loop; - Data-driven approaches: data mining; machine learning; data science and other statistical techniques to analyze, understand, and manage behavior of complex systems; - Education: experience reports; curricula; innovative course concepts; methodological aspects of self-* systems education; - Ethics and Humanities in self-* systems; - Applications and experiences with self-* systems in any of the following domains: + Smart-*: application of self-* principles to smart-grids, smart-cities, smart-environments, smart-vehicles + Industrial automation: embedded self-* systems, adaptive industrial plants, smart industries (Industry 4.0) + Transportation: autonomous vehicles, coordination between vehicles, pedestrians, and infrastructure, and traffic optimization + Unmanned systems: aerial vehicles, undersea vehicles, other robotic platforms + Internet of Things: challenges, applications, and benefits; self-* for network management, self-* applied to Cybersecurity ----------------------- Call for Workshops ----------------------- https://saso2016.informatik.uni-augsburg.de/call_for_workshops.html The FAS* 2016 Steering Committee invites proposals for the Workshop Program to be held along with the technical conferences SASO 2016 and ICCAC 2016. FAS*W workshops will provide a meeting for presenting novel ideas in a less formal and possibly more focused way than the conferences themselves. Their aim is to stimulate and facilitate active exchange, interaction, and comparison of approaches, methods, and ideas related to specific topics, both theoretical and applied, in the general area of Self-Adaptive and Self-Organizing Systems as well as Cloud and Autonomic Computing. To motivate the discussion and participation of all the workshop attendants, we encourage organizers to get away of the typical "mini-conference" format of a workshop, and include more discussion sessions, panels, etc. Members from all areas of the SASO and ICCAC communities are invited to submit workshop proposals for review. Workshops on global challenges, applications or on new and emerging topics are particularly encouraged. Workshops can vary in length, but most will be one full day in duration. Optionally, if desired by the organizers, workshop proceedings can be published through IEEE. Attendance of workshops will be included in the registration fee for the main SASO/ICCAC conference. --------------------------------- Call for Posters and Demos --------------------------------- https://saso2016.informatik.uni-augsburg.de/call_for_posters_and_demos.html The tenth SASO conference continues its tradition of offering poster and demo sessions, which are a great opportunity for an interactive presentation of emerging ideas, late-breaking results, experiences, and challenges on SASO topics. These sessions are informal and highly interactive, and allow authors and participants to engage in in-depth discussions about the presented work from which new collaborations, ideas, and solutions can emerge. Posters should cover the same key areas as Research Papers and present original, cutting-edge ideas inclusive of speculative/provocative ones. Proposals of new research directions and innovative interdisciplinary approaches are also welcome. Demos may target virtual systems (e.g., software applications), physical systems (e.g., robots or sensor networks), or cyber-physical systems combining the two. Physical systems might be presented either with real equipment, by simulation, or hybrid solutions using both simulations and real platforms. Submissions which highlight the utility and general applicability of the contribution - whether short, medium or long term -- are particularly solicited, and interactivity of a demo is considered a further asset. ---------------------------------- Call for Doctoral Symposium ---------------------------------- https://saso2016.informatik.uni-augsburg.de/call_for_ds.html The FAS* Doctoral Symposium provides an international forum for PhD Students working in research areas addressed by FAS*. In this forum, PhD students will get unique opportunities to subject their research to the scrutiny of external experts, gain experience in the presentation of research, connect to peers and experts addressing similar problems, and get advice from a panel of internationally leading researchers. Different from the technical tracks of the conference, the FAS* Doctoral Symposium focuses on the specific needs of young researchers at the beginning of their career. As such, particular emphasis will be placed on a critical and constructive feedback that shall help participants to successfully conclude their PhD studies. PhD students working in any area addressed by the FAS* conferences are invited to submit a Doctoral Symposium paper in which they describe the key motivation and objectives of their research project, and reflect on the methodology as well as the current status of their PhD studies. ------------------------ Call for Tutorials ------------------------ https://saso2016.informatik.uni-augsburg.de/call_for_tutorials.html Autonomic computing and self-organizing systems require an interdisciplinary approach, pulling in expertise from a wide range of scientific and computational communities. One of the most difficult challenges in an interdisciplinary community is building up an understanding of the relevant knowledge pulled in from different communities. In 2016, in addition to the tutorials that deepen our understanding of existing work and expand into new frontiers, we especially welcome tutorials that help us bridge our communities to other relevant research and application communities. In 2016, the two FAS* (Foundation and Applications of Self*-Systems) conferences will host a joint tutorial program. We solicit proposals for tutorials for presentation at the 16th International Conference on Cloud and Autonomic Computing (ICCAC) and the 10th IEEE International Conference on Self-Adaptive and Self-Organizing Systems (SASO 2016). Proposals should clearly state what the goals of the tutorial (e.g., survey, practicum, laboratory, introduction, etc.) and what the participants should expect in terms of experience and materials provided. As noted, the tutorial should communicate to participants from diverse fields of expertise. ------------------------------- Conference General Chair ------------------------------- Wolfgang Reif (SASO) University of Augsburg, DE Naveen Sharma (ICCAC) Rochester Institute of Technology, USA ----------------------- Program Chairs SASO ----------------------- Giacomo Cabri, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, IT Gauthier Picard, ?cole Nationale Sup?rieure des Mines de Saint-?tienne, FR Niranjan Suri, Florida Institute of Human and Machine Cognition, FL, USA ------------------------ Program Chairs ICCAC ------------------------ Indranil Gupta University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, USA Yixin Diao IBM T. J. Watson Research Center, USA From terry at salk.edu Wed Mar 23 14:51:46 2016 From: terry at salk.edu (Terry Sejnowski) Date: Wed, 23 Mar 2016 11:51:46 -0700 Subject: Connectionists: NEURAL COMPUTATION - April 1, 2016 In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Neural Computation - Volume 28, Number 4 - April 1, 2016 Available online for download now: http://www.mitpressjournals.org/toc/neco/28/4 ----- Article Vector Symbolic Spiking Neural Network Model of Hippocampal Sub-area CA1 Novelty Detection Functionality Claus Agerskov Note Feature-based Attention by Lateral Spike Synchronization August Romeo, Hans Super Letters Downstream Effect of Ramping Neuronal Activity Through Synapses With Short-term Plasticity Wei Wei, Xiao-Jing Wang Optimal Schedules in Multi-task Motor Learning Jeong Yoon Lee, Youngmin Oh, Sung Shin Kim, Robert A Scheidt, and Nicolas Schweighofer Theoretical and Experimental Analyses of Tensor-Based Regression and Classification Kishan wimalawarne, Ryota Tomioka, and Masashi Sugiyama Feature Selection for Ridge Regression With Provable Guarantees Saurabh Paul, Petros Drineas Online Pairwise Learning Algorithms Yiming Ying, Ding-Xuan Zhou Sampled-data State Feedback Stabilization of Boolean Control Networks Yang Liu, Jinde Cao, Liangjie Sun, and Jianquan Lu ------------ ON-LINE -- http://www.mitpressjournals.org/neuralcomp SUBSCRIPTIONS - 2016 - VOLUME 28 - 12 ISSUES Student/Retired $78 Individual $138 Institution $1,108 MIT Press Journals, One Rogers Street, Cambridge, MA 02142-1209 Tel: (617) 253-2889 FAX: (617) 577-1545 journals-cs at mit.edu ------------ From m.lengyel at eng.cam.ac.uk Tue Mar 22 08:01:53 2016 From: m.lengyel at eng.cam.ac.uk (=?utf-8?Q?M=C3=A1t=C3=A9_Lengyel?=) Date: Tue, 22 Mar 2016 13:01:53 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: Cajal Course in Computational Neuroscience 2016 Message-ID: <04EBA919-2857-40DE-8758-799F581FC96B@eng.cam.ac.uk> ######### # Reminder: less than a week until the application deadline ######### CAJAL COURSE IN COMPUTATIONAL NEUROSCIENCE 7-27 August 2016, Champalimaud Centre for the Unknown, Lisbon, Portugal + pre-school 2-5 August 2016 http://www.cccn.pt Applications deadline: 28 March 2016 DIRECTORS * Gilles Laurent (Max Plank Institute for Brain Research, Germany) * M?t? Lengyel (University of Cambridge, UK) * Christian Machens (Champalimaud Neuroscience Programme, Portugal) This three-weeks school teaches the central ideas, methods, and practice of modern computational neuroscience through a combination of lectures and hands-on project work. Each morning will be devoted to lectures given by distinguished international faculty on topics across the breadth of experimental and computational neuroscience. During the rest of the day, students will work on research projects in teams of 2-3 people under the close supervision of expert tutors and faculty. Research projects will be proposed by faculty before the course, and will include the modeling of neurons, neural systems, behavior, the analysis of state-of-the-art neural data (behavioral data, multi-electrode recordings, calcium imaging data, connectomics data, etc.), and the development of theories to explain experimental observations. The course is designed for graduate students and postdoctoral fellows from a variety of disciplines, including neuroscience, physics, electrical engineering, computer science, mathematics and psychology. Students are expected to have a keen interest and basic background in neurobiology, a solid foundation in mathematics, as well as some computer experience. An optional four-day pre-school in mathematics and programming is available to students who want to catch up on or fine-tune their math and programming skills. Essential details: * Course size: 24 students maximum * Fee (which covers tuition, lodging, and meals): 2500 EUR (+ 300 EUR for optional pre-school) * Scholarships and travel stipends are available. * Application deadline: 28 March 2015 * Notification of results: April 2015 Information and application http://www.cccn.pt Contact address: T?nia Li Chen FACULTY * Alberto Bernacchia (Cambridge University, UK) * Matthias Bethge (Centre for Integrative Neuroscience, Germany) * Dmitri (Mitya) Chklovskii (Simons Center for Data Analysis, USA) * Claudia Clopath (Imperial College London, UK) * Peter Dayan (Gatsby Computational Neuroscience, UCL, UK) * Sophie Den?ve (Institut d'Etudes de la Cognition (IEC), France) * Alain Destexhe (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), France) * David Fitzpatrick (Max Planck Florida Institute for Neuroscience, USA) * Michael Hausser (Wolfson Institute for Biomedical Research, UCL, UK) * Moritz Helmstaedter (Max Planck Institute for Brain Research, Germany) * Guillaume Hennequin (Cambridge University, UK) * Karel Je?ek (Charles University, Czech Republic) * Matthias Kaschube (Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies, Germany) * Gilles Laurent (MPI Brain Research, Germany) * Peter Latham (Gatsby Computational Neuroscience, UCL, UK) * Simon Laughlin (University of Cambridge, UK) * M?t? Lengyel (University of Cambridge, UK) * Zhaoping Li (University College London, UK) * Jennifer Linden (Ear Institute, UCL, UK) * Christian Machens (Champalimaud Neuroscience Programme, Portugal) * Jakob Macke (Center of Advanced European Studies and Research, Germany) * Tom Mrsic-Flogel (University of Basel, Switzerland) * Yael Niv (Princeton Neuroscience Institute, USA) * Maneesh Sahani (Gatsby Computational Neuroscience, UCL, UK) * Andreas Tolias (Baylor College of Medicine, USA) * Alessandro Treves (International School for Advanced Studies (SISSA), Italy) * Daniel Wolpert (Cambridge University, UK) From guifranca at gmail.com Wed Mar 23 14:21:24 2016 From: guifranca at gmail.com (=?UTF-8?Q?Guilherme_Fran=C3=A7a?=) Date: Wed, 23 Mar 2016 14:21:24 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: Paid Summer Visiting PhD Student Position in Machine Learning in Boston, USA Message-ID: Bento?s lab in the Computer Science Department at Boston College is looking for a talented PhD student for an internship on a multi-institution bioinformatics project involving big data, machine learning and a variety of ?omics? techniques for the summer of 2016. Ideal qualifications (not all required but the greater the overlap the better) ? Programming skills o Python, C/C++, Matlab ? Research area o Machine learning, data mining, AI, statistics o Active learning, optimal experiment design o Bio-mathematics ? Need to be flexible, learn fast, and be creative Job details ? Full time, on site, during the duration of the internship ? Start and end date flexible; preferably early May 2016 to mid September 2016; To apply, send a CV and the contact information for 2 references to Prof. Jos? Bento at learning.visiting at jbento.info Also check the two announcements---optimization/machine learning---at http://www.jbento.info/visiting20162017.pdf -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From c.decampos at qub.ac.uk Thu Mar 24 09:09:39 2016 From: c.decampos at qub.ac.uk (Cassio P. de Campos) Date: Thu, 24 Mar 2016 13:09:39 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: Lecturer/Senior Lecturer/Reader/Professor in Data Science and/or Intelligent Autonomous Systems at Queen's U Belfast Message-ID: Lecturer/Senior Lecturer/Reader/Professor in Data Science and/or Intelligent Autonomous Systems Queen's University Belfast - School of Electronics, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science http://www.jobs.ac.uk/job/ANH172/lecturer-senior-lecturer-reader-professor-in-data-science-and-intelligent-autonomous-systems/ Contract Type: Permanent Anticipated interview date: May/June 2016 Closing date: Monday 18 April 2016 We seek to recruit a highly qualified candidate for an academic post to commence in 2016 or 2017 who can build and grow innovative, mission-led research programmes. The candidate should also demonstrate an ability to inspire students and facilitate motivational learning within core undergraduate and specialist postgraduate curricula. The School is undergoing rapid expansion, as part of major investment from the Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences (EPS). Delivering against Queen's Vision2020 and beyond, EPS focuses on solving Global Challenges by enabling new forms of interdisciplinary research and education. The investment of EPS in EEECS capitalises on the establishment of the Institute of Electronics, Communication and Information Technology (ECIT), one of Queens four Global Research Institutes (GRIs). ECIT was awarded a 2015 Queen's Anniversary Prize for Further and Higher Education and is recognised for world-leading research excellence. Further EPS investment includes the establishment of a Pioneer Research Programme (PRP) on Intelligent Autonomous Manufacturing Systems (i-AMS), to support research with high impact potential in this area. We are seeking a candidate who can enhance ECIT's international reputation in the following key disciplines: Data Science & Intelligent Autonomous Systems. An opportunity is available at Lecturer, Senior Lecturer, Reader or Professor level. The successful candidate will benefit from additional resources such as studentships, engineering and commercial support and will have access to state of the art facilities, including a transformative ?14 million Computer Science building opening in September 2016. Further details on our key disciplines and other candidate information are available at: http://www.ecit.qub.ac.uk/Aboutus/Recruitment/ Informal enquiries may be directed to Professor Dimitrios S. Nikolopoulos, Head of School of EEECS, email: eeecs-hos at qub.ac.uk Anticipated interview date: May/June 2016 Closing date: Monday 18 April 2016 Apply online at www.qub.ac.uk/jobs. For further information or assistance contact the Personnel Department, Queen's University Belfast, BT7 1NN. Telephone (028) 9097 3044 or email on personnel at qub.ac.uk. The University is committed to equality of opportunity and to selection on merit. It therefore welcomes applications from all sections of society and particularly welcomes applications from people with a disability. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From paul.cisek at umontreal.ca Tue Mar 22 16:49:31 2016 From: paul.cisek at umontreal.ca (Paul Cisek) Date: Tue, 22 Mar 2016 16:49:31 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: "The neuroscience of decision-making" ~1 week left to submit abstracts Message-ID: <00e901d1847c$5597fc10$00c7f430$@umontreal.ca> 38th International Symposium of the GRSNC The neuroscience of decision-making May 2-3, 2016 Universit? de Montr?al WEBSITE: http://www.grsnc.umontreal.ca/38s/ PROGRAM: http://www.grsnc.umontreal.ca/38s/prog_e.html REGISTRATION: http://appl.grsnc.umontreal.ca/en/symposium/38s/registration.cfm POSTER: http://www.grsnc.umontreal.ca/38s/38s_poster.pdf We are pleased to announce the 38th symposium of the Groupe de Recherche sur le Syst?me Nerveux Central (GRSNC) which is entitled "The neurosciences of decision-making". This symposium will be held on May 2-3, 2016 at the Universit? de Montr?al, Pavillon 3200 Jean-Brillant, room B-2245 and the organizers are Drs Paul Cisek (UdeM), Alain Dagher (McGill), Lesley Fellows (McGill), John Kalaska (UdeM) et Peter Shizgal (Concordia). Research on the neural bases of decision-making has experienced a rapid growth in the last 20 years. It addresses a great diversity of questions, ranging from how animals weigh the costs and benefits of different actions to what goes wrong when humans exhibit maladaptive behavior, such as in addiction. In this symposium, we will discuss cutting-edge research on this topic, reviewing the progress that has been made and addressing the central open questions facing this rapidly developing field. In planning the sessions, we have paid particular attention to issues that stretch from the most basic neuroscience all the way to clinical applications. We will highlight converging evidence from the full range of neuroscientific methods applied in this field, considered within a diversity of conceptual frameworks. There will be four sessions of presentations by invited speakers from around the world as well as two contributed poster sessions. The presentations are regrouped in for sessions: * Brain representations of value: Common or multiple (Chairperson: Peter Shizgal) * Encoding and learning values: Neural and computational mechanisms (Chairperson: Alain Dagher) * Decision in the wild (Chairperson: John Kalaska) * Diseases and deviances (Chairperson: Lesley Fellows) Lecturers: Joshua D. Berke, Thomas Boraud, Paul Cisek, Alain Dagher, Peter Dayan, Nathaniel Daw, Lesley Fellows, J. Randall Flanagan, Michael J. Frank, Karl Friston, Hugh Garavan, Paul W. Glimcher, Joseph Kable, Elizabeth A. Murray, Michael L. Platt, David Redish, Michael N. Shadlen, Peter Shizgal, Daphna Shohamy and Jonathan D. Wallis. Submissions are invited for poster presentations. The deadline for submission is March 31, 2016 We would appreciate if you could forward this message to colleagues and students. Manon Dumas for the organizing committee Groupe de recherche sur le syst?me nerveux central (GRSNC) Universit? de Montr?al D?partement de neurosciences Pavillon Paul-G.-Desmarais, bureau 4115 Courriel: m.dumas at umontreal.ca T?l?phone: (514) 343-6366 T?l?copieur: (514) 343-6113 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From nay at mis.mpg.de Tue Mar 22 10:54:35 2016 From: nay at mis.mpg.de (Nihat Ay) Date: Tue, 22 Mar 2016 15:54:35 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: IGAIA IV in honor of Shun-ichi Amari Message-ID: <3BF5ACB6-43AC-4051-8CE6-7D5CA11A73DF@mis.mpg.de> Dear colleagues, this is the second announcement of the fourth international conference on "Information Geometry and its Applications" (http://igaia.utia.cz). This event honors the numerous scientific achievements of Shun-ichi Amari on the occasion of his 80th birthday. With his foundation of Information Geometry, Shun-ichi Amari has pioneered the filed of mathematical neuroscience. Information Geometry is a quickly growing field which has attracted many scientists from mathematics, neuroscience, cognitive systems, robotics, and machine learning. The conference will take place on June 13-17, 2016, at the Liblice Castle Hotel in Czech Republic. Its webpage has now been updated, including the preliminary program and information about the transportation to the conference location. Furthermore, all details concerning the registration and poster submission are available at that webpage (http://igaia.utia.cz). In fact, we very much appreciate poster contributions! We hope that you will be able to participate and look forward to meeting you at IGAIA IV! Best wishes, Nihat Ay (Germany) Paolo Gibilisco (Italy) Franti?ek Mat?? (Czech Republic) -- Prof. Dr. Nihat Ay http://www.mis.mpg.de/ay/ - Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences Research Group Leader Information Theory of Cognitive Systems - University of Leipzig, Honorary Professor - Santa Fe Institute, Professor -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: smime.p7s Type: application/pkcs7-signature Size: 1981 bytes Desc: not available URL: From friedhelm.schwenker at uni-ulm.de Thu Mar 24 07:01:32 2016 From: friedhelm.schwenker at uni-ulm.de (Dr. Schwenker) Date: Thu, 24 Mar 2016 12:01:32 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: ANNPR 2nd Call for Papers Message-ID: <56F3C90C.1090400@uni-ulm.de> **** Please apologize cross-postings. 2nd Call for Papers IAPR TC3 International Workshop on Artificial Neural Networks in Pattern Recognition (ANNPR 2016) September 28-30, 2016 Ulm University, Ulm, Germany ANNPR 2016 invites papers that present original work in areas of neural networks, machine learning and pattern recognition, focusing on both theoretical and applied aspects. Topics of interest include, but not limited to: Methodological Issues - Supervised learning - Unsupervised learning - Combination of supervised and unsupervised learning - Feed-forward, recurrent, and competitive neural nets - Kernel machines - Hierarchical modular architectures and hybrid systems - Combination of neural networks and Hidden Markov models - Multiple classifier systems and ensemble methods - Probabilistic graphical models - Kernel methods - Deep architectures Applications in Pattern Recognition - Image processing and segmentation - Handwritten recognition and Document analysis - Sensor-fusion and multi-modal processing - Feature extraction, dimension reduction - Clustering and vector quantization - Speech and speaker recognition - Data, text, and web mining - Bioinformatics/Cheminformatics Important Dates Paper submission: May 4, 2016 Notification of acceptance: June 22, 2016 Camera ready due: July 6, 2016 Workshop: September 28-30, 2016 General Chairs Friedhelm Schwenker, Ulm University, Germany Hazem Abbas, German University of Cairo, Egypt Neamat El Gayar, Cairo University, Egypt Edmondo Trentin, University of Siena, Italy For more information, please visit us: http://neuro.informatik.uni-ulm.de/ANNPR2016/ -- Dr. Friedhelm Schwenker University of Ulm Institute of Neural Information Processing D-89069 Ulm, Germany phone: +49-731-50-24159 fax: +49-731-50-24156 email: friedhelm.schwenker at uni-ulm.de www: http://www.uni-ulm.de/in/neuroinformatik/mitarbeiter/f-schwenker.html From cgf at isep.ipp.pt Thu Mar 24 14:36:46 2016 From: cgf at isep.ipp.pt (Carlos Ferreira) Date: Thu, 24 Mar 2016 18:36:46 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: Final CFP: Big Data & Deep Learning in HPC (Springer LNCS) Message-ID: <56F433BE.6000405@isep.ipp.pt> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Porto, Portugal June 30, 2016 Workshop on Big Data & Deep Learning in High Performance Computing (http://bigdatadeeplearning2016.inesctec.pt/) in conjunction with VECPAR 2016 - High Performance Computing for Computational Science (http://vecpar.fe.up.pt/2016/) Paper Submission Deadline: 27 March 2016 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------ WORKSHOP ON BIG DATA & DEEP LEARNING IN HIGH PERFORMANCE COMPUTING ------------------------------------ The number of very large data repositories (big data) is increasing in a rapid pace. Analysis of such repositories using the "traditional" sequential implementations of ML and emerging techniques, like deep learning, that model high-level abstractions in data by using multiple processing layers, requires expensive computational resources and long running times. Parallel or distributed computing are possible approaches that can make analysis of very large repositories and exploration of high-level representations feasible. Taking advantage of a parallel or a distributed execution of a ML/statistical system may: i) increase its speed; ii) learn hidden representations; iii) search a larger space and reach a better solution or; iv) increase the range of applications where it can be used (because it can process more data, for example). Parallel and distributed computing is therefore of high importance to extract knowledge from massive amounts of data and learn hidden representations. The workshop will be concerned with the exchange of experience among academics, researchers and the industry whose work in big data and deep learning require high performance computing to achieve goals. Participants will present recently developed algorithms/systems, on going work and applications taking advantage of such parallel or distributed environments. ------------------------------------ LIST OF TOPICS ------------------------------------ All novel data-intensive computing techniques, data storage and integration schemes, and algorithms for cutting-edge high performance computing architectures which targets Big Data and Deep Learning are of interest to the workshop. Examples of topics include but not limited to: - parallel algorithms for data-intensive applications; - scalable data and text mining and information retrieval; - using Hadoop, MapReduce, Spark, Storm, Streaming to analyze Big Data; - energy-efficient data-intensive computing; - deep-learning with massive-scale datasets; - querying and visualization of large network datasets; - processing large-scale datasets on clusters of multicore and manycore processors, and accelerators; - heterogeneous computing for Big Data architectures; - Big Data in the Cloud; - processing and analyzing high-resolution images using high-performance computing; - using hybrid infrastructures for Big Data analysis. - New algorithms for parallel/distributed execution of ML systems; - applications of big data and deep learning to real-life problems. ------------------------------------ SUBMISSION ------------------------------------ Papers submitted to this workshop should not exceed 12 pages in length. The papers should be formatted according to the rules of the Springer Series Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS). All accepted papers will be published by Springer in the series entitled Lecture Notes in Computer Science. The proceedings will be distributed in electronic format to participants of VECPAR 2016. You should make your submissions through the EasyChair system: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=bdl2016 ------------------------------------ REGISTRATION ------------------------------------ All participants must attend the VECPAR 2016 conference. http://vecpar.fe.up.pt/2016/registration.html ------------------------------------ ORGANIZATION ------------------------------------ Carlos Ferreira (LIAAD - INESC TEC LA and Polytechnic Institute of Porto) Jo?o Gama (LIAAD - INESC TEC LA and University of Porto) Albert Bifet (Telecom ParisTech) V?tor Santos Costa (CRACS - INESC TEC LA and University of Porto) Rui Camacho (LIAAD -INESC TEC LA and University of Porto) Carlos Ferreira ISEP | Instituto Superior de Engenharia do Porto Rua Dr. Ant?nio Bernardino de Almeida, 431 4249-015 Porto - PORTUGAL tel. +351 228 340 500 | fax +351 228 321 159 mail at isep.ipp.pt | www.isep.ipp.pt From birgit.ahrens at bcf.uni-freiburg.de Tue Mar 22 09:45:29 2016 From: birgit.ahrens at bcf.uni-freiburg.de (Birgit Ahrens) Date: Tue, 22 Mar 2016 14:45:29 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: BCF/NWG Course "Analysis and Models in Neurophysiology", Freiburg, Germany Message-ID: <56F14C79.2090101@bcf.uni-freiburg.de> *BCF/NWG Course*** *"Analysis and Models in Neurophysiology"*** /Sunday, October 9 - Friday, October 14, 2016 / /Bernstein Center Freiburg, Hansastra?e 9a, 79104 Freiburg, Germany/ *Aim of the course:* The course is intended to provide advanced Diploma/Masters and PhD students, as well as young researchers from the neurosciences with approaches for the analysis of electrophysiological data and the theoretical concepts behind them. *The course includes various topics such as*: * Neuron Models and Point Processes (Prof. Stefan Rotter) * Local field potentials (Prof. Ulrich Egert) * Neural Coding (Dr. Robert Schmidt) * Neural Decoding (Prof. Carsten Mehring) The course will consist of lectures in the morning and matching exercises using Matlab and Mathematica in the afternoon. The participants should have a basic understanding of scientific programming. This course is designated especially for advanced diploma/master students and PhD students (preferentially in their first year). *Application:* Please apply by sending one single pdf document containing your CV and a meaningful letter of motivation to nwg-course at bcf.uni-freiburg.de . The letter of motivation should refer to the following points: * Reasons for wanting to take this course * Background in mathematics * Background in scientific programming * Experience in using Matlab and Mathematica * Background in neuroscience The course is limited to 20 participants. *Course fees:*NWG members - free, others - 125? *Application deadline: *June 15, 2016 *More information: *http://www.bcf.uni-freiburg.de/events/conferences-workshops/20161009-nwgcourse -- Dr. Birgit Ahrens Teaching & Training Coordinator Bernstein Center Freiburg University of Freiburg Hansastr. 9a D - 79104 Freiburg Germany Phone: +49 (0) 761 203-9575 Fax: +49 (0) 761 203-9559 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From aranoya at gmail.com Wed Mar 23 12:10:55 2016 From: aranoya at gmail.com (Oya Aran) Date: Wed, 23 Mar 2016 17:10:55 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: ICMI 2016 Doctoral Consortium - Call for Papers Message-ID: <753B8912-EE7B-4FC1-BA47-B4540876B795@gmail.com> ICMI 2016 Doctoral Consortium - Call for Papers Dates: Submission deadline: July 15th, 2016 Notifications: August 15th, 2016 Camera-ready deadline: September 15th, 2016 Consortium Date: November 12th, 2016 Process: - Submission format: Five-page, ACM SIGCHI proceedings format (http://www.sigchi.org/publications/chipubform ). - Submission system: http://precisionconference.com/~icmi - Selection process: Peer-Reviewed - Presentation format: Talk on consortium day and participation in the conference poster session - Proceedings: Included in conference proceedings and ACM Digital Library - Doctoral Consortium Co-chairs: Samer Al Moubayed (KTH & Furhat Robotics) and Dirk Heylen (University of Twente) Overview The goal of the ICMI Doctoral Consortium is to provide PhD students with an opportunity to present their work to a group of mentors and peers from a diverse set of academic and industrial institutions, to receive feedback on their doctoral research plan and progress, and to build a cohort of young researchers interested in designing multimodal interfaces. We invite students from all PhD granting institutions who are in the process of forming or carrying out a plan for their PhD research in the area of designing multimodal interfaces. The Consortium will be held on November 12th, 2016. We expect to provide economic support to most attendees that will cover part of their costs (travel, registration, meals etc.). Who should apply? While we encourage applications from students at any stage of doctoral training, the doctoral consortium will benefit most the students who are in the process of forming or developing their doctoral research. These students will have passed their qualifiers or have completed the majority of their coursework, will be planning or developing their dissertation research, and will not be very close to completing their dissertation research. Students from any PhD granting institution whose research falls within designing multimodal interfaces are encouraged to apply. Submission Guidelines Graduate students pursuing a PhD degree in a field related to designing multimodal interfaces should submit the following materials: - Extended Abstract: A five-page description of your PhD research plan and progress in the ACM SIGCHI proceedings format. Your extended abstract should follow the same outline, details, and format of the ICMI short papers. The submissions will not be anonymous. In particular, it should cover: - The key research questions and motivation of your research, - Background and related work that informs your research, - A statement of hypotheses or a description of the scope of the technical problem, - Your research plan, outlining stages of system development or series of studies, - The research approach and methodology, - Your results to date (if any) and a description of remaining work, - A statement of research contributions to date (if any) and expected contributions of your PhD work. - Advisor Letter: A one-page letter of nomination from the student's PhD advisor. This letter is not a letter of support. Instead, it should focus on the student's PhD plan and how the Doctoral Consortium event might contribute to the student's PhD training and research. - CV: A two-page curriculum vitae of the student. All materials should be prepared in PDF format and submitted through the ICMI submission system (http://precisionconference.com/~icmi ) in the "Doctoral Consortium" track. Review Process The Doctoral Consortium will follow a review process in which submissions will be evaluated by a number of factors including (1) the quality of the submission, (2) the expected benefits of the consortium for the student's PhD research, and (3) the student's contribution to the diversity of topics, backgrounds, and institutions, in order of importance. More particularly, the quality of the submission will be evaluated based on the potential contributions of the research to the field of multimodal interfaces and its impact on the field and beyond. Students who are in the process of forming their PhD research plan or are developing the research they have planned but are not too close to completing their degrees would most benefit from participating in the consortium. Finally, we hope to achieve a diversity of research topics, disciplinary backgrounds, methodological approaches, and home institutions in this year's Doctoral Consortium cohort. We do not expect more than two students to be invited from each institution to represent a diverse sample. Women are especially encouraged to apply. Financial Support We expect to be providing most student attendees with financial support that will cover the majority of the costs of traveling to and attending the Doctoral Consortium and the conference. However, the details on the number of students to be funded and funding coverage is currently unknown, as we are currently working on raising funds. More detail on travel support will be announced on the Doctoral Consortium page of the main conference website (http://icmi.acm.org/2016/ ). Attendance All authors of accepted submissions are expected to attend the Doctoral Consortium and the main conference poster session. The attendees will present their PhD work as a short talk at the Consortium and as a poster at the conference poster session. A detailed program for the Consortium and the participation guidelines for the poster session will be available after the camera-ready deadline. Questions? For more information and updates on the ICMI 2016 Doctoral Consortium, visit the Doctoral Consortium page of the main conference website (http://icmi.acm.org/2016/ ) For further questions, contact the Doctoral Consortium co-chairs: Samer Al Moubayed, KTH & Furhat Robotics, Sweden (sameram at kth.se ) Dirk Heylen, University of Twente, d.k.j.heylen at utwente.nl -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From ak.ak159 at googlemail.com Tue Mar 29 10:01:47 2016 From: ak.ak159 at googlemail.com (Anna Kreshuk) Date: Tue, 29 Mar 2016 16:01:47 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: PhD position in computer vision applications to neural image analysis Message-ID: A PhD student position is available in the Image Analysis and Learning group of the Heidelberg Collaboratory for Image Processing, University of Heidelberg ( http://hciweb.iwr.uni-heidelberg.de/mip). We are looking for highly motivated candidates, interested in developing machine learning methods for reconstructing neural circuits from high resolution image volumes. A strong first degree in a computational science field or mathematics and programming experience are required for this position. More details can be found at http://hciweb.iwr.uni-heidelberg.de/node/5992. Best regards, Anna Kreshuk -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Nicolas.Rougier at inria.fr Fri Mar 25 04:30:04 2016 From: Nicolas.Rougier at inria.fr (Nicolas P. Rougier) Date: Fri, 25 Mar 2016 09:30:04 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: Post-Doc in Bordeaux, application deadline 01/04/2016 (1 week) Message-ID: <777BD4F7-EA90-4802-995B-78BF9B8AFC5A@inria.fr> Actor?critic models of the basal ganglia Postdoc in Bordeaux (12 months), France Application deadline 01/04/2016. Details & application at: http://www.inria.fr/institut/recrutement-metiers/offres/post-doctorat/sejours-post-doctoraux/(view)/details.html?id=PGTFK026203F3VBQB6G68LONZ&LOV5=4508&LG=FR&Resultsperpage=20&nPostingID=10169&nPostingTargetID=16404&option=52&sort=DESC&nDepartmentID=19 Nicolas Rougier --- Actor?critic models of the basal ganglia We developed a model of the basal ganglia (Piron et al., 2016) that introduces an action selection mechanism that is based upon the competition between a positive feedback through the direct pathway and a negative feedback through the hyperdirect pathway. The model also exploits the parallel organization of circuits between the basal ganglia and the cortex using segregated loops: one loop allows to choose the cue and one loop allows to make the actual motor selection. Learning occurs between the cognitive cortex and the cognitive striatum using a simple reinforcement learning where the values of the different cues are updated after each decision. As in most computational models of the basal ganglia, this model relies on an actor-critic architecture where the dopamine signal is used to encode the temporal difference prediction error signal in the critic (Joel et al., 2002; Khamassi et al., 2005). However, this algorithm is not very elaborated and its implementation is not biologically plausible since values are stored outside the model. The objectives of this postdoc is thus to review and to re-implement (Python) main actor-critic models of the literature in order to compare them on a common set of decision tasks (two-arm bandit task for example) in terms of biological plausibility and performances. Special attention will be given to the "Primary Value and Learned Value Pavlovian Learning Algorithm" model (O'Reilly, 2007) and the AGREL model (Roefselma et al. 2005). From these replications (that will be published in ReScience), the most plausible and compatible mechanisms will be implemented in our own model of the basal ganglia in order to replace the current reinforcement learning algorithm (Guthrie et al., 2013, Piron et al. 2016). Profiles PhD in computational neuroscience or computer science (machine learning) with strong experience in Python & the scientific Python stack (numpy, scipy, matplotlib, git/github). References ? Joel, D., Niv, Y., & Ruppin, E. (2002). Actor?critic models of the basal ganglia: New anatomical and computational perspectives. Neural Networks, 15(4-6), 535?547. ? Khamassi, M., Lach?ze, L., Girard, B., Berthoz, A., Guillot, A. (2005). Actor-critic models of reinforcement learning in the basal ganglia: From natural to artificial rats. Adaptive Behavior, 13 (2). ? Guthrie, M., Leblois, A., Garenne, A., & Boraud, T. (2013). Interaction between cognitive and motor cortico-basal ganglia loops during decision making: a computational study. Journal of Neurophysiology, 109(12). ? C. Piron, D. Kase, M. Topalidou, M. Goillandeau, H. Orignac, T. N'Guyen, N.P. Rougier, T. Boraud, The globus pallidus pars interna in goal oriented and habitual behavior. Resolving an old standing paradox, Movement Disorders, (2016), to appear. ? O'Reilly, R. C., Frank, M. J., Hazy, T. E., & Watz, B. (2007). PVLV: The Primary Value and Learned Value Pavlovian Learning Algorithm. Behavioral Neuroscience, 121(1). ? Roelfsema, P.R., van Ooyen A. (2005). Attention-gated reinforcement learning of internal representations for classification. Neural Computation. From jerchen at bu.edu Thu Mar 24 18:27:02 2016 From: jerchen at bu.edu (Chen, Jerry) Date: Thu, 24 Mar 2016 22:27:02 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: Post-Doctoral Positions at Boston University Investigating Long-Range Neocortical Networks Message-ID: <5347D993EA636147B4B0EABF6BEE3F19670265@IST-EX10MBX-3.ad.bu.edu> Post-Doctoral Positions Available --------------------------------- We are a new lab, headed by Jerry Chen, opening our doors in 2016 in the Department of Biology at Boston University SUMMARY: A longstanding goal in neuroscience is to achieve a complete understanding of the central nervous system, from the brain as a whole all the way down to individual neurons and synapses. A fundamental challenge in achieving this goal is bridging knowledge gaps impeded by the difficulty in integrating experimental measurements across different scales. Our lab studies the relationship between local circuits and long-range networks in the mammalian neocortex. We take an integrative approach by combining large-scale in vivo imaging technology with molecular and genetic tools in the awake-behaving animal. RESEARCH PROJECTS: Principles of Long-Range Cortical Communication. We are investigating how behavior-relevant information is processed both locally and globally throughout the neocortex. Using the mouse tactile whisker sensorimotor system as a model for studying long-range cortical communication during sensory processing and decision making, we seek to understand the following questions: - What are the circuits underlying long-range cortical communication? - What are the physiological mechanisms that subserve such operations? - What roles do these processes serve during behavior? Long-Range Cortical Circuits During Development. We are investigating how genes and development define the organization and function of long-range cortical circuits. Gaining a handle on how these circuits form will help us understand the role they serve during behavior. Technologies for Large-Scale Imaging of Neuronal Populations. We recently developed a multi-area two-photon microscope that enables simultaneous functional imaging with cellular resolution across cortical areas. We seek to expand on such methods to enable comprehensive monitoring of neuronal activity across the entire cortex. QUALIFICATIONS: We are seeking highly creative individuals who are interested in pursuing independent projects core to the lab's research interest. A first author publication (submitted or published) is a prerequisite for consideration. While experience with in vivo imaging and rodent behavior and a quantitative background is desired, we are also interested in individuals with a broad range of expertise within and outside of neuroscience. You can even be a mathematician, physicist, engineer, computer scientist, molecular biologist, artist, or musician. Some examples of potential good fits include: - Neurophysiologists with previous experience working with non-human primates interested in addressing similar questions in rodents. - Developmental neurobiologists interested in studying how circuit formation guides circuit function and behavior. - Computational neuroscientists interested in testing theoretical models using experimental data acquired in the lab. - Molecular biologists interested in utilizing molecular and genetic tools for addressing systems-level questions. - Optical engineers interested in developing and applying novel technologies for large-scale recording and stimulation of neuronal populations. For more information, go to www.chen-lab.org. If you are interested in applying, please submit a CV along with 3 references to: jerry at chen-lab.org. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From ASAHTan at ntu.edu.sg Thu Mar 31 00:56:10 2016 From: ASAHTan at ntu.edu.sg (Tan Ah Hwee (Assoc Prof)) Date: Thu, 31 Mar 2016 04:56:10 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: New article on Semantic Memory Modelling available Message-ID: Dear Colleagues We are pleased to inform that the following new article has been recently accepted by IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man and Cybernetics: Systems. Semantic Memory Modelling and Memory Interaction in Learning Agents By Wenwen Wang, Ah-Hwee Tan, and Loo-Nin Teow. A preprint of the article can be downloaded from: http://www3.ntu.edu.sg/home/asahtan/Papers/2016/Semantic%20Memory%20Modelling%20-%20TSMC%20Systems%202016%20Preprint.pdf This article on semantic memory modelling is a follow up to another article on episodic memory modelling published earlier. Neural Modeling of Episodic Memory: Encoding, Retrieval, and Forgetting. by Wenwen Wang, Budhitama Subagdja, Ah-Hwee Tan and Janusz A. Starzyk. IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems, Vol. 23, No. 10 (October 2012), 1574-1586. Preprint available at http://www3.ntu.edu.sg/home/asahtan/Papers/2012/Neural%20Modeling%20of%20Episodic%20Memory%20-%20TNNLS%202012%20Preprint.pdf For those who are interested, more preprints are available at http://www.ntu.edu.sg/home/asahtan/publications-by-year.htm Best regards Ah-Hwee Tan http://www.ntu.edu.sg/home/asahtan/ ________________________________ CONFIDENTIALITY: This email is intended solely for the person(s) named and may be confidential and/or privileged. If you are not the intended recipient, please delete it, notify us and do not copy, use, or disclose its contents. Towards a sustainable earth: Print only when necessary. Thank you. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From neumann at cbs.mpg.de Wed Mar 30 06:09:58 2016 From: neumann at cbs.mpg.de (Jane Neumann) Date: Wed, 30 Mar 2016 12:09:58 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: 3rd Model-based Neuroscience Summer School, Amsterdam Message-ID: <56FBA5F6.5080205@cbs.mpg.de> Dear colleagues, June 27-July 1 2016 will see the third Model-Based Neuroscience Summer School, hosted at the University of Amsterdam. The summer school will provide students with hands-on experience in both cognitive modeling using diffusion and accumulator models and simple neuroscience methods. The program includes a series of lectures on model-based decision neuroscience in both humans and non-human primates from experts including Michael Shadlen, Gordon Logan, Andrew Heathcote, Uta Noppeney, Brandon Turner, Jane Neumann, and Birte Forstmann. *The summer school is aimed at PhD students and early postdocs who wish to combine cognitive modeling with experimental and theoretical neuroscience research. Students should be familiar with general programming concepts and state in their application which programming languages and software packages they typically use. * The summer school will be co-located at the University of Amsterdam with a one-day symposium on model-based neuroscience of mind wandering, to be held on July 2 2016. The symposium will involve a series of lectures from experts in the scientific study of mind wandering with a focus on model-based neuroscience approaches. The symposium will provide a unique opportunity to see how the concepts introduced in the summer school can provide insight on an important research topic. *Application and registration:* The registration fee for the summer school is 500 euro. The registration fee for combined attendance at the summer school and the one-day mind wandering symposium is 600 euro. We ask that students make their own housing arrangements. Space is limited, therefore we ask that you provide a statement of interest. We will select students based on the relevance of the summer school to their research. The application deadline is 22 April 2016. More information about the summer school including teachers, preliminary program and application can be found atwww.modelbasedneuroscience.com We look forward to welcoming you in Amsterdam! Organization: Jane Neumann, University Medical Center Leipzig and MPI for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences Leendert van Maanen, University of Amsterdam Birte Forstmann, University of Amsterdam Guy Hawkins, University of Amsterdam Andrew Heathcote, University of Tasmania -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From smart at neuralcorrelate.com Mon Mar 28 11:55:44 2016 From: smart at neuralcorrelate.com (Susana Martinez-Conde) Date: Mon, 28 Mar 2016 11:55:44 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: FINAL call for illusion submissions: the 12th Best Illusion of the Year Contest In-Reply-To: <017e01d1890a$13467d40$39d377c0$@neuralcorrelate.com> References: <017e01d1890a$13467d40$39d377c0$@neuralcorrelate.com> Message-ID: <01ba01d1890a$4ca31710$e5e94530$@neuralcorrelate.com> ****FINAL CALL FOR ILLUSION SUBMISSIONS: THE WORLD'S 12TH ANNUAL BEST ILLUSION OF THE YEARSM CONTEST**** http://illusionoftheyear.com We are happy to announce the 12th edition of world's Best Illusion of the YearSM Contest!! Submissions are now welcome! In 2015, the Best Illusion of the YearSM Contest became an annual online event, with the goal of bringing the creativity of the illusion creator community all around the world. Anybody with an internet connection can now participate! No matter where you live, you can be a contestant, and/or vote for the Top 3 winners! Contestants are invited to submit 1-minute videos, in mp4 format, featuring novel illusions (unpublished, or published no earlier than 2015) of all sensory modalities (visual, auditory, etc.) and/or cognitive nature. The content of the 1-minute video presenting your illusion is solely up to you, and the only requirement is that it wows all viewers! Some examples include, but are not limited to: * -A slide presentation, or succession of images, with a voice over (and/or written text, if you prefer) * -A video of yourself describing your illusion * -A video animation/enactment of your illusion An international panel of impartial judges will rate all the videos and narrow them down to the Top 10. Then, online voters around the world will choose their favorite illusions from the Top 10 finalists. All Top 10 finalists will receive a commemorative plaque. In addition, the Top 3 winners will receive cash prizes: $3,000 USD for first place; $2,000 USD for second place, and $1,000 USD for third place. The Judge Panel will rate illusions according to: * -Significance to our understanding of the human mind and brain * -Simplicity of the description * -Sheer beauty * -Counterintuitive quality * -Spectacularity Submissions will be held in strict confidence by the Judge Panel. Only the Top 10 illusions will be posted online, to allow worldwide voting. Participation in the Best Illusion of the YearSM Contest does not preclude you from also submitting your work for publication elsewhere. By participating in the Best Illusion of the YearSM Contest you agree to have your illusion posted on the Contest website, if selected among the Top 10, and included in press releases and other promotional materials/fundraising initiatives for the Contest. You (and your co-authors, if appropriate) will retain the full copyright of your illusion, and receive full credit as illusion creator(s). Illusions submitted to previous editions of the contest can be re-submitted to the 2016 Contest, as long as they meet the above requirements and were not among the Top 10 finalists in previous years. You can send your 1-minute video to Susana Martinez-Conde via email ( smart at neuralcorrelate.com) until April 15, 2016. On behalf of the Executive Board of the Neural Correlate Society: Jose-Manuel Alonso, Stephen Macknik, Susana Martinez-Conde, Luis Martinez, Xoana Troncoso, Peter Tse ----------------------------------- Susana Martinez-Conde, PhD Professor of Ophthalmology, Neurology, and Physiology & Pharmacology Empire Innovator Scholar Director, Laboratory of Integrative Neuroscience State University of New York (SUNY) Downstate Medical Center 450 Clarkson Ave, Brooklyn NY 11203, USA Email: smart at neuralcorrelate.com Phone: +1 718-270-4520 http://smc.neuralcorrelate.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From arnaud.blanchard at ensea.fr Mon Mar 28 10:04:49 2016 From: arnaud.blanchard at ensea.fr (Arnaud Blanchard) Date: Mon, 28 Mar 2016 16:04:49 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: IEEE ICDL-EPIROB 2016 - Final Call for Papers and Workshops Submission ( Friday, April 1st ) Message-ID: <8480E82F-3D3C-4E6A-8F77-FCAA0A05EDDB@ensea.fr> Final Call for Papers and Workshops Submission ( Friday, April 1st ) = IEEE ICDL-EPIROB 2016 = The Sixth Joint IEEE International Conference on Development and Learning and on Epigenetic Robotics Cergy-Pontoise / Paris, France September 19-22th, 2016 http://www.icdl-epirob.org Updates about : * final keynote speakers * babybot challenge * registration costs == Conference description IEEE ICDL-Epirob is the premier forum for advances in epigenetic robotics and developmental psychology with the focus on learning and development in biological and artificial systems. This single-track conference brings together researchers from cognitive sciences, computer sciences, and robotics to explore their shared interests in autonomous learning and development. The design and study of both robotic and simulated embodied and situated computational models that are inspired by the principles of human development will be presented at the conference. A special event -- the ?Babybot challenge? ? will see renowned psychologists challenging engineers and modelers in how to use the tools of developmental robotics to replicate and extend the key findings. This year, thanks to special funding from Paris-Seine University, six renowned invited speakers will cover the different facets of the conference. We invite you to participate in IEEE ICDL-Epirob by sharing your research, insights, experience, and enthusiasm. A social event ?on the paths of the impressionists? will allow you to discover the old city of Pontoise and Auvers sur Oise where Vincent Van Gogh painted some of his most famous masterpieces. Excursions to Paris, Versailles and Giverny will be proposed for spouses. == Keynote speakers * Tamim Asfour (http://h2t.anthropomatik.kit.edu/english/21_66.php ) * Karl Friston (http://www.fil.ion.ucl.ac.uk/~karl ) * Julie Grezes (http://iec-lnc.ens.fr/social-cognition-group/membres-100/faculty-177/grezes-julie-dr2/?lang=en ) * Tony Prescott (https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/psychology/staff/academic/tony-prescott ) * Daniela Corbetta (http://web.utk.edu/~infntlab ) == Call for submissions of workshops and papers We invite submissions for this exciting window into the future of developmental sciences. Submissions which establish novel links between brain, behavior and computation are particularly encouraged. == Topics of interest include (but are not limited to): * the development of perceptual, motor, cognitive, emotional, social, and communication skills in biological systems and robots; * embodiment; * general principles of development and learning; * interaction of nature and nurture; * sensitive/critical periods; * developmental psychology; * developmental stages; * grounding of knowledge and development of representations; * architectures for cognitive development and open-ended learning; * neural plasticity; * statistical learning; * reward and value systems; * intrinsic motivations, exploration and play; * interaction of development and evolution; * use of robots in applied settings such as autism therapy; * epistemological foundations and philosophical issues. Any of the topics above can be simultaneously studied from the neuroscience, psychology or modeling/robotic point of view. == Submissions will be accepted in several formats: 1. Full six-page paper submissions: Accepted papers will be included in the conference proceedings and will be selected for either an oral presentation or a featured poster presentation. Featured posters will have a 1 minute "teaser" presentation as part of the main conference session and will be showcased in the poster sessions. 2. Two-page poster abstract submissions: To encourage discussion of late-breaking results or for work that is not sufficiently mature for a full paper, we will accept 2-page abstracts. These submissions will be included in the conference proceedings. Accepted abstracts will be presented during poster sessions. 3. Tutorials and workshops: We invite experts in different areas to organize either a tutorial or a workshop to be held on the first day of the conference. Tutorials are meant to provide insights into specific topics as well as overviews that will inform the interdisciplinary audience about the state-of-the-art in child development, neuroscience, robotics, or any of the other disciplines represented at the conference. A workshop is an opportunity to present a topic cumulatively. Workshop can be half- or full-day in duration including oral presentations as well as posters. Submission format: two pages. == Call for Tutorials and Workshops We invite experts in different areas to organize a tutorial or workshop, which will be held on the first day of the conference ( September 19th 2016 ). Participants in tutorials and workshops are asked to register for the main conference. Tutorials are meant to provide insights into specific topics as well as overviews that will inform the interdisciplinary audience about the state-of-the-art in child development, neuroscience, robotics, or any of the other disciplines represented at the conference. A workshop is an opportunity to present a topic cumulatively. Workshops can be half- or full-day in duration including oral presentations as well as posters. We would like to receive applications in pdf format for organizing a workshop with the following informations: title / workshop or tutorial organiser's name, research structure and coordinate (email) how many invited presentations/ and 'open' presentations is there a call for posters? what is the timetable website address ? Proposals should be sent to Sofiane Boucenna sofiane.boucenna at u-cergy.fr , Verena Hafner hafner at informatik.hu-berlin.de & Alex Pitti alexandre.pitti at u-cergy.fr == Important dates * April 1st, 2016, paper and workshops submission deadline * June 1st, 2016, author notification * July 1st, 2016, final version (camera ready) due * September 19th-22nd, 2016, conference == Program committee General chairs: * Minoru Asada Osaka (Japan). * Philippe Gaussier, Cergy-Pontoise (France). Program chairs: * Verena Hafner, Berlin (Germany) * Alexandre Pitti, Cergy-Pontoise (France) Bridge chairs: ? David Cohen, Paris (France) ? Mathew Schlesinger, Southern Illinois (USA) Publication chairs: * Sofiane Boucenna, Cergy-Pontoise (France) Publicity chairs: * Arnaud Blanchard, Cergy-Pontoise (France) * Manuel Lopes, Bordeaux (France) * Yulia Sandamirskaya, Z?rich (Switzerland) Local chairs: * Pierre Andry, Cergy-Pontoise (France) * Nicolas Cuperlier, Cergy-Pontoise (France) Finance chairs: * Ghil?s Mostafaoui, Cergy-Pontoise (France) == Registration fees* Price for : advanced / late registration IEEE Member 380? / 460? Non-member 480? / 560? IEEE Student member 190? / 240? Student non-member 260? / 280? IEEE Life member 190? / 240? (*) This price includes the social dinner. The registration form and the early registration deadline are coming soon. Research Engineer ? ETIS lab. http://arnaudblanchard.pensoir.fr ICDL-EpiRob2016 http://www.icdl-epirob .org -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Hugo.Larochelle at USherbrooke.ca Wed Mar 30 07:41:34 2016 From: Hugo.Larochelle at USherbrooke.ca (Hugo Larochelle) Date: Wed, 30 Mar 2016 11:41:34 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: Call for Postdocs - MIT Message-ID: %%%%%%%%%%%%%% Call for Postdocs - MIT Machine Learning & Social Media %%%%%%%%%%%%%% Machine learning has recently enabled substantial progress towards AI. These developments have ignited a growth in concerns from the general public about AI and its potential impact in our daily lives. This attention on the role of intelligent machines motivates a research agenda towards more transparent, understandable, and trustworthy machine learning systems. In the long term, for sophisticated machine learning systems to have positive societal impact, it is necessary to develop: - Transparent models that can not only produce predictions, but can also provide an explanation for their predictions. - Understandable models that can converse, maintain a dialogue with humans and answer questions. - Trustworthy models that can provide a meaningful measure of its confidence in the predictions they make. Professors Iyad Rahwan and Deb Roy from the MIT Media Lab are seeking two motivated and talented candidates for postdocs dedicated to these research topics. The candidates will also be interacting directly with Ryan Adams and Hugo Larochelle from Twitter Cortex. The candidates should have or be near the completion of a PhD, with a demonstrable record of strong publications in the field of machine learning and an interest in the human dimension of applied machine learning. The ideal candidate will have expertise in large scale applications of deep learning and/or Bayesian methods. To apply, send your CV, the names and contact details of at least two references, as well as a letter of intent in which you motivate your interest in this position and provide a brief description of research ideas you'd like to explore during your postdoc. Application packages must be submitted to: ml-postdoc at media.mit.edu -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kyunghyun.cho at nyu.edu Wed Mar 30 08:06:06 2016 From: kyunghyun.cho at nyu.edu (Kyunghyun Cho) Date: Wed, 30 Mar 2016 08:06:06 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: RepEval 2016: The 1st Workshop on Evaluating Vector-Space Representations for NLP Message-ID: CALL FOR PAPERS ========================================================================== ===RepEval 2016: The 1st Workshop on Evaluating Vector-Space Representations for NLP=== ========================================================================== Mission Statement: To foster the development of new and improved ways of measuring the quality and understanding the properties of vector space representations in NLP. Time & Location: Berlin, Germany, August 12th 2016 (ACL 2016 workshop). Website: https://sites.google.com/site/repevalacl16 ===Motivation=== Models that learn real-valued vector representations of words, phrases, sentences, and even document are ubiquitous in today's NLP landscape. These representations are usually obtained by training a model on large amounts of unlabeled data, and then employed in NLP tasks and downstream applications. While such representations should ideally be evaluated according to their value in these applications, doing so is laborious, and it can be hard to rigorously isolate the effects of different representations for comparison. There is therefore a need for evaluation via simple and generalizable proxy tasks. To date, these proxy tasks have been mainly focused on lexical similarity and relatedness, and do not capture the full spectrum of interesting linguistic properties that are useful for downstream applications. This workshop challenges its participants to propose methods and/or design benchmarks for evaluating the next generation of vector space representations, for presentation and detailed discussion at the event. Following the workshop, the highest-quality proposals will receive the support of the organizers and participants, and some financial support, to help produce their proposed resource to the highest standard. ===Submissions=== We encourage researchers at all levels of experience to consider contributing to the discussion at RepEval by making a short submission. This can either be as an *analysis* of existing benchmarks or by *proposing* new ones. =Analysis Track= An analysis submission should analyze and discuss the strengths and weaknesses of existing evaluation tasks, providing helpful insights for designers of new tasks. Analysis papers will be reviewed, accepted, and published *before* the proposal track's camera-ready deadline, so that new task proposals could benefit from these findings. As part of their analysis, papers in this track might like to consider the following questions: - What are the pros and cons of existing evaluations? - What are the limitations of task-independent representation or its evaluation? - Given a specific downstream application, which existing evaluation (or family of evaluations) is a good predictor of performance improvement? - Which linguistic/semantic/psychological properties are captured by existing evaluations? Which are not? - What methodological mistakes were made in the creation of existing evaluation datasets? The analysis track is *not* limited to these topics. We believe that any manuscript presenting a sound argument on representation evaluation would be a great addition to the workshop. =Proposal Track= A proposal submission should propose a novel method for evaluating representations. It does not have to construct an actual dataset, but it should describe a way (or several optional ways) of collecting one. Proposals are expected to provide roughly 5-10 examples as a proof of concept. In addition, each proposal should explicitly mention: - Which type of representation it evaluates (e.g. word, sentence, document) - For which downstream application(s) it functions as a proxy - Any linguistic/semantic/psychological properties it captures Among other important points, proposals should take the following into consideration: - If the task captures some linguistic phenomenon via annotators, what evidence is there that it is robustly observed in humans (e.g., inter-annotator agreement)? - How easy would it be for other researchers to accurately reproduce the evaluation (not necessarily the dataset)? - Will the dataset be cost-effective to produce? - Is a specific family of models expected to perform particularly better (or worse) on the task? In other words, which types of models is this evaluation targeted at? - How should the evaluation's results be interpreted? =Submission Format= Submissions to both tracks should be 2-4 pages of content in ACL format, with an unlimited amount of pages for references. For the proposal track, we encourage shorter content (2-3 pages), leaving more room for examples and their visualization. ===Best Proposal Awards *Sponsored by Facebook AI Research*=== Two proposal-track papers will be selected by a special committee, and awarded financial support for turning their idea into a large-scale high-quality dataset via crowdsourcing or other annotation efforts. We hope that the workshop community's endorsement will also promote the use of these new evaluations. ===Important Dates=== Submission: May 8th 2016 Notification: June 5th 2016 Camera-Ready (Analysis Track): June 12th 2016 Camera-Ready (Proposal Track): June 26th 2016* Workshop Date: August 12th 2016 *This will give proposal-track authors enough time to go over any relevant results that may rise from the analysis track, and cite them as motivation. ===Organizers=== Omer Levy, Bar-Ilan University Felix Hill, Cambridge University Roi Reichart, Technion - Israel Institute of Technology Kyunghyun Cho, New York University Anna Korhonen, Cambridge University Yoav Goldberg, Bar-Ilan University Antoine Bordes, Facebook AI Research -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jteeters at berkeley.edu Thu Mar 31 15:19:08 2016 From: jteeters at berkeley.edu (Jeff Teeters) Date: Thu, 31 Mar 2016 12:19:08 -0700 Subject: Connectionists: Berkeley course in mining and modeling neuroscience data, July 11-22, 2016 Message-ID: Call for applications: We invite applicants to the 2016 summer course in "Mining and modeling of neuroscience data" to be held July 11-22 at UC Berkeley. A description of the course is below and also at: http://crcns.org/course Application deadline is April 30. ----- Berkeley summer course in mining and modeling of neuroscience data July 11-22, 2016 Redwood Center for Theoretical Neuroscience, UC Berkeley Organizers: Fritz Sommer, Bruno Olshausen & Jeff Teeters (HWNI, UC Berkeley) Scope This course is for students and researchers with backgrounds in mathematics and computational sciences who are interested in applying their skills toward problems in neuroscience. It will introduce the major open questions of neuroscience and teach state-of?the-art techniques for analyzing and modeling neuroscience data sets. The course is designed for students at the graduate level and researchers with background in a quantitative field such as engineering, mathematics, physics or computer science who may or may not have a specific neuroscience background. The goal of this summer course is to help researchers find new exciting research areas and at the same time to strengthen quantitative expertise in the field of neuroscience. The course is sponsored by the National Institute of Health, the National Science Foundation from a grant supporting activities at the data sharing repository CRCNS.org, and the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute at UC Berkeley. Format The course is ?hands on? in that it will include exercises in how to use and modify existing software tools and apply them to data sets, such as those available in the CRCNS.org repository. Course Instructors Robert Kass, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh Maneesh Sahani, Gatsby Unit, University College London Odelia Schwartz, University of Miami Frederic Theunissen, University of California Berkeley Joshua Vogelstein, Johns Hopkins University Course Moderators Fritz Sommer and Jeff Teeters, Redwood Center for Theoretical Neuroscience. Speakers To complement the main course instruction there will be lectures in the evenings by local Berkeley and UCSF neuroscientists presenting their research using quantitative approaches. Requirements Applicants should be familiar with linear algebra, probability, differential and integral calculus and have some experience using MatLab and Python. Each student should bring a laptop with both MatLab and Python installed. Cost There is no cost to attend. Non-local attendees will be reimbursed for qualifying travel and food expenses if receipts are provided. Housing Rooms in a hotel within walking distance to campus will be provided for those attendees who need accommodations. Food Breakfast and some dinners will be provided to all participants as a group. Non-local attendees can purchase food at local stores or restaurants and be reimbursed. How to apply To apply, submit the online form linked from: http://crcns.org/course. A curriculum vitae and a letter of recommendation are required. The course is limited to 25 students. Deadlines Applications must be received by the end of April. Notifications of acceptance will be given by May 15. Questions Questions about the course can be sent to course [at] crcns.org. Topics covered (subject to change): Basic approaches: - The problem of neural coding - Spike trains, point processes, and firing rate - Statistical thinking in neuroscience - Theory of model fitting / regularization / hypothesis testing - Overview of stimulus-response function models - Theory of model fitting / regularization / hypothesis testing - Bayesian methods - Spike sorting - Estimation of stimulus-response functionals: regression methods, spike-triggered covariance, - Variance analysis of neural response - Estimation of SNR. Coherence Information theoretic approaches: - Information transmission rates - Scene statistics approaches and neural modeling Techniques for analyzing multiple-electrode and optical neural recordings: - Event sorting in electrophysiology and optical imaging - Optophysiology cell detection - Sparse coding/ICA methods, vanilla and methods including statistical models of nonlinear dependencies - Methods for assessing functional connectivity - Statistical issues in network identification - Low-dimensional latent dynamical structure in network activity?Gaussian process factor analysis/newer methods Analyzing structural data: - Histology cell detection - Statistical connectomics Neuroinformatics topics: - Petascale data storage, exploration, parsing and analysis - Introduction into Neurodata Without Borders data format for Neurophysiology -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From ozawasei at kobe-u.ac.jp Thu Mar 31 18:05:17 2016 From: ozawasei at kobe-u.ac.jp (OZAWA, Seiichi) Date: Fri, 1 Apr 2016 07:05:17 +0900 Subject: Connectionists: ICONIP 2016 (Kyoto, Japan) * Call for Papers * In-Reply-To: <56F78E07.2000806@kobe-u.ac.jp> References: <56F78E07.2000806@kobe-u.ac.jp> Message-ID: <56FD9F1D.4030706@kobe-u.ac.jp> # Apologies if you have multiple announcements. Call for Papers The 23rd International Conference on Neural Information Processing (ICONIP 2016) Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan (16-21 Oct 2016) http://www.iconip2016.org/ Important Dates Paper submissions: 24 Apr 2016 (Notification: Jun 2016) Camera-ready due: 8 July 2016 Author registration: 20 July 2016 Early registration: Aug 2016 Instruction for Paper Submissions Please prepare your paper in the format as the sample paper for Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS) include reference format. In the Information for LNCS Authors site, you are able to download the source files including LaTeX2e class file, sample file, word template. Topics of interest include, but not limited to: Theory & Algorithms: Neurodynamics, Machine learning, Deep neural networks, Compulational intelligence, Pattern recognition, Computer vision, Speech processing, Time series analysis, Reinforcement learning, Bayesian networks, Computational & Cognitive Neurosciences: Sensory perception, Motor control, Decision making, Social cognition, Emotion and reward, Neuroeconomics, Computational psychiatry, Brain-machine interface, Neural data analysis Applications: Big data analysis, Robotics and control, Bioinformatics, Biomedical engineering, Neuromorphic hardware, Data mining, Information security, Social networks, Computational finance, Sports and rehabilitation, Special Sessions