[ACT-R-users] CogModeling Notes: ICCM07/Cogsci07/SoarW07/ICM book/Survey/Jobs

[ritter]

[Please forward as/what is appropriate, such as to students' mailing
lists, and for calanders of events.]

This is based on the International Cognitive Modeling Conference
mailing list, which I maintain.  I forward messages about twice a
year, more around the ICCM conference.

The first announcement is the one that is driving this email, the 
announcement of the tutorials program at ICCM 2007. 

cheers,

Frank Ritter (frank.ritter at psu.edu, http://acs.ist.psu.edu)

1. Tutorials program announced, 2007 Int. Conference on Cognitive Modeling
    26 July 2007, in Ann Arbor, MI, early registration deadline 16 June 2007
    http://acs.ist.psu.edu/iccm2007/tutorials.html

2. ICCM 2007 Conference Announcement
    27-29 July 2007, in Ann Arbor, MI.  Paper submission deadline 20 April 2007.
    http://sitemaker.umich.edu/iccm2007.org/home

3. CogSci 2007 Tutorials program, 1 Aug 07
    http://csep.psyc.memphis.edu/cogsci07/tutorials.htm

4. ICCM 2007 Doctoral Consortium Call
    http://sitemaker.umich.edu/iccm2007.org/doctorial_consortium

5. Soar May 2007 Workshop Announcement
    http://winter.eecs.umich.edu/workshop27/

6. Integrated Models of Cognitive Systems book, Gray (ed.), published
    http://www.rpi.edu/~grayw/pubs/papers/2007/Gray-IMoCS/Gray-IMoCS.htm

7. Online survey for MSc on cognitive modeling
    http://survey.bican.net/announcement/ 
  
8. Job in cognitive modeling in WV
    mike.fotta at imts.us

9. Job in cognitive modeling in RI 
    kirschenbaumss at npt.nuwc.navy.mil


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1. Tutorials program announced, 2007 Int'l Conference on Cognitive Modeling
   26 July 2007, Ann Arbor, Michigan, early registration deadline 16 Jun 07
   http://acs.ist.psu.edu/iccm2007/tutorials.html

The Tutorials program at ICCM 2007 will be held on Wednesday 26 July
2007 at the Rackham building at the University of Michigan. The format
of this year's program is modelled on previously successful ICCM
tutorials, and is similar to the series held at the annual Cognitive
Science Society Conferences.

Registration: Tutorials cost $50 for each half-day tutorial and $30
for students (the web site pdf form is more correct than the
table). You are encouraged to register through the conference site,
or, if space is available, paid for on the day.  Attendance at the
tutorials does not require conference registration; tutorial
registration does not provide conference entrance.

  Advanced Tutorial on ACT-R 6.0
  Anderson et al., Full-day (0915-1700)

  An introduction to the COGENT Cognitive Modelling Environment 
  Cooper, Half-day (1345-1700)

  Soar
  Laird et al., Full-day (0915-1700)

  Computational Cognitive Neuroscience Modeling Using Leabra In PDP++
  Noelle , Full-day (0915-1700)


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2. ICCM 2007 Conference Announcement
   27-29 July 2007, in Ann Arbor, Michigan. 
   http://sitemaker.umich.edu/iccm2007.org/home

   Paper submission deadline 20 April 2007.
   http://sitemaker.umich.edu/iccm2007.org/submissions

ICCM is the premier international conference for research on
computational models and computation-based theories of human
behavior. ICCM is a forum for presenting, discussing, and evaluating
the complete spectrum of cognitive models, including connectionism,
symbolic modeling, dynamical systems, Bayesian modeling, and cognitive
architectures. ICCM includes basic and applied research, across a wide
variety of domains, ranging from low-level perception and attention to
higher-level problem-solving and learning.

***************************************************

3.  CogSci 2007 Tutorials program
    http://csep.psyc.memphis.edu/cogsci07/tutorials.htm 

Tutorial presenters and attendees are required to register for their
tutorial through the on-line conference registration system (available
beginning in April, 2007), but there is no additional fee for the
tutorial. Tutorial attendance is FREE of charge!  Space is limited, so
admittance into the tutorials will be on a first come, first served
basis.

The tutorial program will be held on Wednesday, August 1, 2007. The
full-day tutorial sessions will run from 8:30AM to 5:00PM, with a
break for lunch at noon. The half-day tutorial will run from 1:30 to
5:00.

  Tutorial 1 (Full-day): Comp. Cog. Neuroscience Modeling Using Leabra In PDP++
  David C. Noelle

  Tutorial 2 (Full-day): Quantum Information Processing Theory
  Jerome R. Busemeyer and Zheng Wang

  Tutorial 3 (Full-day): Soar
  John Laird

  Tutorial 4 (Half-day): ACT-R 
  Niels Taatgen and Hedderik van Rijn

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4.  ICCM 2007 Doctoral Consortium Call

Doctoral Consortium July 26, 2007
Submission Deadline: April 20, 2007
http://sitemaker.umich.edu/iccm2007.org/doctorial_consortium

The ICCM 2007 Doctoral Consortium provides an opportunity for doctoral
students to explore their research interests in a multi-approach
workshop, under the guidance of a panel of research faculty,
consisting of Anthony Hornof (University of Oregon) and two other
distinguished faculty to be determined. The Consortium has the
following objectives:

  * Provide a setting for mutual feedback on participants' current research 
    and guidance on future research directions.

  * Develop a supportive community of scholars and a spirit of 
    collaborative research.

  * Contribute to the conference goals through interaction with other 
    researchers and conference events.

Review Criteria

The Doctoral Consortium review committee will select participants
based on their anticipated contribution to the Consortium
objectives. Participants typically have settled on thesis directions
but have not necessarily had their research proposals accepted by
their thesis committees. The Doctoral Consortium encourages
participation of students from a wide variety of modeling
approaches. Students from under-represented groups or institutions,
including students from institutions where modeling is not a strength,
are especially encouraged to apply.


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5.  Soar May 2007 Workshop Announcement

The 27th Soar Workshop will be held Monday, May 21 through Friday, May 25,
2007, in Ann Arbor, MI, hosted by the Center for Cognitive Architecture at
the University of Michigan, and Soar Technology, Inc.

Soar Tutorials will be offered on May 21 & 22. The main workshop with
presented talks will be May 23-25.  

The official web page for the 27th Soar Workshop is:
http://winter.eecs.umich.edu/workshop27/

All workshop, hotel, tutorial and additional information are available on
the web page.  A registration form is available as well. 

This year we are having a TankSoar competition!!! Similar in spirit to the
DARPA grand challenge, just not so grand. It will be a round robin
competition and the overall winner gets $100. The top three tanks will then
compete against John Laird's tank (which won't be part of the competition),
and any of those tanks that beat his tank will split an additional $100.
Bring 'em on!

Periodic updates may be announced to soar-group, but please check the web
page for the most up-to-date information.

Each year members of the Soar community -- faculty, scientists, graduate
students, technical staff and developers -- gather together for a weekend of
intensive interaction and exchange on Soar. The Soar community is widely
distributed geographically. These workshops provide the opportunity for
having face-to-face conversations, for hearing about the current status of
everyone's research, and for looking forward to what will be happening in
the future. We will try to give as many members of the community as possible
the opportunity to describe their research or to discuss whatever Soar
issues are of concern to them. This means the time available per talk is
quite short (typically either 5 or 15 minutes). Since workshop attendees are
already well-entrenched in the Soar world, however, brief talks that
concentrate on only the essentials work very well.

The Soar Workshop is announced on the soar-group mailing list, but we do
want to ensure that everyone actively working with Soar does get invited, so
if you know of anyone who really should have been invited, but did not
receive an announcement, please let us know.

Proceedings from the previous Soar workshops are available online:
http://sitemaker.umich.edu/soar/soar_workshops


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6.  Integrated Models of Cognitive Systems book, Gray (ed.) 

The first book in the Oxford Series on Cognitive Models and
Architectures is now published:

Gray, W. D.(Ed.) (2007). Integrated models of cognitive systems. New York: 
Oxford University Press.
ISBN13: 9780195189193
http://www.rpi.edu/~grayw/pubs/papers/2007/Gray-IMoCS/Gray-IMoCS.htm
http://www.oup.com/us/catalog/general/subject/Psychology/Cognitive/?view=usa&ci=9780195189193

Integrated Models of Cognitive Systems

[FROM THE EDITOR'S PREFACE] It is with pleasure that I introduce
researchers, teachers, and students to this volume on Integrated
Models of Cognitive Systems. All such volumes present a snapshot of
the time in which they are created; it is the intent of the
contributors that this snapshot will grace a postcard to the future.
The history of cognitive studies is a history of trying to understand
the mind by slicing and dicing it into functional components and
trying to thoroughly understand each component. Throughout time the
size of the components has gotten smaller and their shape has varied
considerably with the result that what was a whole, the human mind,
has now become a jigsaw puzzle of oddly shaped parts. The emphasis on
cognitive systems is an emphasis on how these pieces fit together to
achieve "complete processing models" (Newell, 1973) or "activity
producing subsystems" (Brooks, 1991). An emphasis on integrated models
is an emphasis that recognizes that the cognitive system is too large
and complex for a single researcher or laboratory to model and that
progress can only be made by developing our various parts so that they
can fit together with the parts developed by other researchers in
other laboratories.  As Editor it is my duty and pleasure to write a
preface to this volume. I view my task as providing a succinct summary
of how this volume came to be, an equally succinct overview of the
volume, and thanks to the many people whose efforts contributed to its
production and to the success of the workshop on which the volume is
based. I will, however, avoid in this Preface a more detailed
discussion of integrated models of cognitive systems. That discussion
is provided by Chapter 1 of this volume and continues throughout the
collective work.

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7.  Online survey for MSc on cognitive modeling

A questionnaire is being conducted as a part of an MSc Thesis work
supervised by Dr. Bilge Say from the Cognitive Science Program at Middle
East Technical University. The questionnaire addresses the attitudes
of users of cognitive modeling tools, with a particular emphasis
on the suitability of the tools for the cognitive modeling task from
the perspectives of general usability and cognitive modeling
specifics. Please read the announcement and instructions for
participation here: http://survey.bican.net/announcement/ .

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8.  Job in cognitive modeling in WV

Software Engineer/Research Associate for Human Error Modeling for
Error Tolerant Systems (HEMETS) Small Business Innovative Research
project. Innovative Management & Technology Services (IMTS).

IMTS has an opening for a software engineer who can apply ACT-R and
LISP experience to modeling human error. The specific project and job
description follows. IMTS will consider full time, part time or intern
level employment for this position.

HEMETS

The interaction of humans with computers in environments which are
increasingly information rich and demand fast decision time yields
errors when human capabilities and limitations are not designed into a
system. These ge is the development of software which can both
simulate human performance given a system design and predict the
errors likely to occur from this design.

In order to develop such a tool, IMTS is undertaking the development
of a computational Human Error Modeling tool for Error Tolerant
Systems (HEMETS). This is an extension of previous work in which we
successfully designed the Human Error Modeling Architecture (HEMA)
which provides the core component of HEMETS. HEMA is built upon ACT-R
and, utilizing an analysis of research in human errors, proposed a
cognitive architecture for human error modeling.

There are a number of challenges to develop a functional HEMETS. Some
of these are:

1.  Extending ACT-R to incorporate the error modeling aspects needed
    to implement HEMA.

2.  Developing an easily-used, reusable method to interface HEMETS to
    a systeming the activities of HEMA to determine the causes of
    error resulting from a user interface design.

3.  Tracking the activities of HEMA to determine the causes of error
    resulting from a user interface design.

4.  Developing an automated output which communicates the likely
    operator errors resulting from a system design and offers
    recommendations to improving the design.

This work is funded under an Office of Naval Research (ONR) Small
Business Innovative Research (SBIR) grant.

Candidate Capabilities

1.  Experience with LISP programming: either a minimum of 1 year on
    the job experience or graduate school experience which used LISP
    programming, preferably in modeling some aspect of human cognition
    or behavior.  

2.  B.S. Computer Science with experience, or M.S./PhD. Computer or
    Cognitive Science.

3.  Experience with ACT-R cognitive architecture; experience with
    other cognitive architectures will be considered.

4.  Self-starter, independent worker capable of creative approaches.

5.  Good communication skills, especially technical writing.

Job Duties:

1.  Develop detailed design of Human Error Modeling Architecture
    (HEMA) and HEMETS components.

2.  Implement HEMA as extensions and additions to ACT-R. 

3.  Work with consultants and PI to insure HEMA integrates with
    interface to system simulations.

4.  Design an automated subsystem which both explains error cause due
    to a proposed system design and offers recommendations to
    eliminate or reduce those errors.

5.  Develop technical papers and presentations for customer (ONR) and
    cognitive modeling community.

This position gives an individual the opportunity to do post-doctoral
type work with the pay and benefits of a thriving small company.

Application

Applicants should email a resume to mike.fotta at imts.us and
mike.painter at imts.us

We will consider full time, part time or intern level employment.

IMTS is a small but growing business with working relationships to
major corporations, government agencies, academic and research
institutions. For further information visit
http://www.imts-wv.com/Welcome.asp

Michael E. Fotta, Ph.D.
Principal Investigator
mike.fotta at imts.us
(304)-363-6757 Office
(304)-363-6767 Fax
http://www.imts.us

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9.  Job in cognitive modeling in RI 
     kirschenbaumss at npt.nuwc.navy.mil

Position Available Immediately:
    Applied Experimental Psychologist/Human Factors Engineer
    Naval Undersea Warfare Center Division (NUWC)
    Newport, RI
Website: http://www.npt.nuwc.navy.mil

Job Description:
The Combat Systems Department is seeking a researcher to collaborate in
studies of expertise, decision making, and design of decision support
systems for submariners.  Research methods include traditional and
non-traditional techniques such as process tracing, eye tracking,
exploratory sequential data analysis, and cognitive modeling.

Initial responsibilities include designing, running and analyzing
experiments under currently funded projects.  Results may be published in
journals and presented at professional conferences.  Additional duties
include developing own research program and fundable proposals for future
work.  There are numerous opportunities for professional growth.

Details:
Naval Undersea Warfare Center Division is located on Narragansett Bay in
Newport, R.I.  NUWC is the principal Navy Laboratory for undersea research
in the US.  Recent attention to Human Systems Integration has increased the
opportunities and visibility of researchers in human performance, cognition,
and human-computer interactions.

Pay:  Commiserate with experience

Qualifications:
Ph.D. in Experimental Psychology or Cognitive Science desired, but degree in
related field or equivalent research experience is acceptable. Familiar with
traditional research methods and willingness to learn new ones. Experience
in protocol analysis, cognitive modeling (ACT-R or EPIC), and/or eye
tracking desired. Interest in learning these techniques required. Good
communication skills and ability to work with computers and people required.

Must be US citizen and able to qualify for a security clearance

Send resume by email to:
    Dr. Susan S. Kirschenbaum
    kirschenbaumss at npt.nuwc.navy.mil
or by post to:
    Code 25011, Building 1171/3
    Naval Undersea Warfare Center Division
    Newport, R.I.  02841
The U.S. Navy is an equal opportunity employer

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