Telluride Workshop

[Terry Sejnowski]

              "NEUROMORPHIC ENGINEERING WORKSHOP"

                     JUNE 23 - JULY 13, 1997

                       TELLURIDE, COLORADO

             Deadline for application is April 1, 1997.

Christof Koch (Caltech) Terry Sejnowski (Salk Institute/UCSD) and 
Rodney Douglas (Zurich, Switzerland) invite applications for a 
three-week summer workshop that will be held in Telluride, Colorado in 1997.

The 1996 summer workshop on "Neuromorphic Engineering", sponsored by the
National Science Foundation, the Gatsby Foundation and by the the
"Center for Neuromorphic Systems Engineering" at Caltech, was an
exciting event and a great success.  A detailed report on the workshop 
is available at http://www.klab.caltech.edu/~timmer/telluride.html

GOALS:

Carver Mead introduced the term "Neuromorphic Engineering" for a new
field based on the design and fabrication of artificial neural
systems, such as vision systems, head-eye systems, and roving robots,
whose architecture and design principles are based on those of
biological nervous systems. The goal of this workshop is to bring
together young investigators and more established researchers from
academia with their counterparts in industry and national
laboratories, working on both neurobiological as well as engineering
aspects of sensory systems and sensory-motor integration. The focus of
the workshop will be on "active" participation, with demonstration
systems and hands-on-experience for all participants.

Neuromorphic engineering has a wide range of applications from
nonlinear adaptive control of complex systems to the design of smart
sensors. Many of the fundamental principles in this field, such as the
use of learning methods and the design of parallel hardware, are
inspired by biological systems. However, existing applications are
modest and the challenge of scaling up from small artificial neural
networks and designing completely autonomous systems at the levels
achieved by biological systems lies ahead. The assumption underlying
this three week workshop is that the next generation of neuromorphic
systems would benefit from closer attention to the principles found
through experimental and theoretical studies of brain systems.

FORMAT:

The three week summer workshop will include background lectures, 
practical tutorials on aVLSI design, hands-on projects, and special 
interest groups. Participants are encouraged to get involved in
as many of these activities as interest and time allow.

There will be two lectures in the morning that cover issues that are
important to the community in general. Because of the diverse range
of backgrounds among the participants, the majority of these lectures
will be tutorials, rather than detailed reports of current research.
These lectures will be given by invited speakers. Participants will be
free to explore and play with whatever they choose in the afternoon.
Projects and interest groups meet in the late afternoons, and after
dinner.

The aVLSI practical tutorials will cover all aspects of aVLSI design,
simulation, layout, and testing over the workshop of the three weeks.
The first week covers basics of transistors, simple circuit design and
simulation. This material is intended for participants who have no
experience with aVLSI. The second week will focus on design frames for
silicon retinas, from the silicon compilation and layout of on-chip
video scanners, to building the peripheral boards necessary for
interfacing aVLSI retinas to video output monitors. Retina chips will
be provided. The third week will feature a session on floating gates,
including lectures on the physics of tunneling and injection, and
experimentation with test chips.

Projects that are carried out during the workshop will be centered in
a number of groups, including active vision, audition, olfaction,
motor control, central pattern generator, robotics, multichip
communication, analog VLSI and learning.

The "active perception" project group will emphasize vision and human
sensory-motor coordination. Issues to be covered will include spatial
localization and constancy, attention, motor planning, eye movements,
and the use of visual motion information for motor control.
Demonstrations will include a robot head active vision system
consisting of a three degree-of-freedom binocular camera system that
is fully programmable. 

The "central pattern generator" group will focus on small walking
robots. It will look at characteristics and sources of parts for
building robots, play with working examples of legged robots, and
discuss CPG's and theories of nonlinear oscillators for locomotion.
It will also explore the use of simple aVLSI sensors for autonomous
robots.

The "robotics" group will use robot arms and working digital vision
boards to investigate issues of sensory motor integration, passive
compliance of the limb, and learning of inverse kinematics and inverse
dynamics.

The "multichip communication" project group will use existing
interchip communication interfaces to program small networks of
artificial neurons to exhibit particular behaviors such as
amplification, oscillation, and associative memory. Issues in
multichip communication will be discussed.


PARTIAL LIST OF INVITED LECTURERS:

Andreas Andreou, Johns Hopkins.
Richard Andersen, Caltech.
Dana Ballard, Rochester.
Avis Cohen, Maryland.
Tobi Delbruck, Arithmos.
Steve DeWeerth, Georgia Tech
Rodney Douglas, Zurich.
Christof Koch, Caltech.
John Kauer, Tufts.
Shih-Chii Liu, Caltech and Rockwell.
Stefan Schaal, Georgia Tech
Terrence Sejnowski, UCSD and Salk.
Shihab Shamma, Maryland.
Mark Tilden, Los Alamos.
Paul Viola, MIT.


LOCATION AND ARRANGEMENTS:

The workshop will take place at the "Telluride Summer Research
Center," located in the small town of Telluride, 9000 feet high in
Southwest Colorado, about 6 hours away from Denver (350 miles) and 5
hours from Aspen. Continental and United Airlines provide many daily
flights directly into Telluride. Participants will be housed in shared
condominiums, within walking distance of the Center. Bring hiking
boots and a backpack, since Telluride is surrounded by beautiful
mountains (several mountains are in the 14,000 range).

The workshop is intended to be very informal and hands-on. 
Participants are not required to have had previous
experience in analog VLSI circuit design, computational or machine
vision, systems level neurophysiology or modeling the brain at the
systems level. However, we strongly encourage active researchers with
relevant backgrounds from academia, industry and national laboratories
to apply, in particular if they are prepared to talk about their work
or to bring demonstrations to Telluride (e.g. robots, chips,
software).

Internet access will be provided. Technical staff present throughout
the workshops will assist with software and hardware issues. We will
have a network of SUN workstations running UNIX, MACs and PCs running
LINUX (and windows).

We have funds to reimburse some participants for up to $500 of
domestic travel and for all housing expenses. Please specify on the
application whether such financial help is needed.

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

HOW TO APPLY:

The deadline for receipt of applications is April 1, 1997.

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

Application should include:

1. Name, address, telephone, e-mail, FAX, and minority status (optional).
2. Curriculum Vitae.
3. One page summary of background and interests relevant to the workshop.
4. Description of special equipment needed for demonstrations that could be 
brought to the workshop. 
5. Two letters of recommendation

Complete applications should be sent to:

Prof. Terrence Sejnowski
The Salk Institute
10010 North Torrey Pines Road
San Diego, CA 92037

email: terry at salk.edu

FAX: (619) 587 0417

Applicants will be notified around May 1, 1997.