Proposed Center for Science of Learning

[Tom Mitchell]

         A Proposed National Center for the Science of Learning

Are you interested in helping create a new national center on the
science of learning? Would you like to raise the priority of research in
this area at the national level? Would you be interested in visiting such a
Center to interact with researchers around the world studying learning?

We (a few dozen faculty from Carnegie Mellon and University of Pittsburgh)
seek your participation in an international center to accelerate research
on all forms of learning. At present we are writing one of 44 final
proposals that will compete for approximately 10 NSF Science and Technology
Centers. To our knowledge, ours is the only proposed center with an
emphasis on learning. The center mission is to work toward a general
science of learning that spans multiple paradigms including

 Automated learning: computer learning algorithms, data mining, robot
                     learning, ...

 Theoretical foundations: computational learning theory, statistics,
                     information theory ... 

 Biological learning: neurobiology, cognitive models, education, automated
                     tutors,.. 

The Center, while based in Pittsburgh, intends to involve researchers
and educators from around the nation and the world in a variety of
ways.  Therefore, we seek your advice and your participation. Please
take a moment to indicate which of the following you would like to see
as Center activities:

1. Sponsor several workshops each year on specific learning issues?

 Are you likely to propose a workshop / attend / send someone? (circle
 any that apply) Suggestions (including possible topics):

2. Sponsor visits by undergrads / grad students / postdocs / faculty for a
few days / summer / a year to participate in Center courses / research /
other ?

 Are you potentially interested in a sponsored visit / sending someone to
 visit? Suggestions?

3. Sponsor a community-wide web repository of relevant research papers /
commentary / standard data sets / software / online demos / course
materials / other (working with current services such as the UCI
repository, STATLIB, etc.)?

 Are you potentially interested in contributing to / using / helping manage
 the repository? Suggestions?

4. Sponsor a summer school taught by instructors from multiple
institutions? Or courses accessible via the web to students worldwide, and
taught by instructors worldwide via video network?

 Are you potentially interested in helping teach a course / taking a course?
 Suggestions?

5. Support our research community in other ways? Please suggest how:

6. Please classify yourself as:

   faculty / student / researcher / practitioner / manager / other

   academia / industry / government / other


If you would like to be on the mailing list for Center discussions, please
include your email address:


You may return responses by email to learn at cs.cmu.edu.

For more information on the center, including excerpts from our
pre-proposal to NSF, see http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~tom/stc.html, or
contact one of the co-PI's Stephen.Fienberg at cmu.edu, Kevin Ashley
(ashley+pitt.edu), Jay.McClelland at cmu.edu, and Tom.Mitchell at cmu.edu.