connectionists: CFP Interdisciplinary College IK2006

[Herbert Jaeger]

Call for Participation:
=======================

      Interdisciplinary College IK2006
      held at Guenne, Germany, March 10-17, 2006

      An interdisciplinary spring school on neurobiology, neural
      computation, cognitive science/psychology, and artificial
      intelligence.

      Focus Theme: Learning

Quick Link and Registration: http://www.ik2006.de/ 
==================================================

Dates:
      Friday March 10th to Friday March 17th, 2006

Location:
      Heinrich-Luebke-Haus, Guenne am Moehnesee, Germany

Early Registration Deadline:
      January 15th, 2006
Late Registration Deadline:
      February 17th, 2006

Chairs:
      Rainer Malaka (EML Heidelberg),
      Manfred Spitzer (University of Ulm)

Organizations:
      Main: Gesellschaft fuer Informatik (GI)
      supporting Organizations: GK, PASCAL NoE

Details:
========

The Interdisciplinary College (Interdisziplinäres Kolleg, IK) is an 
annual one-week spring school which offers a dense, intensive and 
state-of-the-art course program in neurobiology, neural computation, 
cognitive science/psychology, artificial intelligence, robotics and 
philosophy. It is aimed at students, postgraduates and researchers from 
academia and industry. By combining humanities, science and technology, 
the IK endeavours to intensify dialogue and connectedness across the 
various disciplines. Participants come from various European countries, 
lecturers from all over the world. All courses are taught in English.

The course program starts out with several basic and methodological 
courses providing an up-to-date introduction to the four main fields of 
the IK. In the second part of the week special courses present in depth 
discussions of (state-of-the-art research on) specific topics.
Additionally, the IK is a unique social event. Participants may enjoy 
the very special atmosphere: minds meet, music is played and friends are 
made in long evening and night sessions in the welcoming conference site 
at the Möhne lake.

Focus Theme: Learning

The focus of IK 2006 will be learning. What is learning? - As long as 
nobody asks, we know the answer. Neuroscientists refer to synaptic 
change, educators to insight, developmental psychologists to phases and 
stages, cognitive psychologists to categories and rules, modellers and 
computer scientists to statistics and data-driven inferences. Learning 
is surely one of the most intensely studied subjects in neurobiology, 
cognitive science, artificial intelligence, and neuroinformatics. And 
with life-long learning becoming ever more important, with the 
PISA-study demonstrating mediocre learning practices in schools, and the 
economy depending upon the learning brains of the next generation as its 
only resource, we need to take learning serious. As in previous IK, we 
want to tackle the theme at issue from various viewpoints, from the 
synapse to systems, from animals to algorithms, from organisms to 
automata, and from theory to practical applications.
Developmental aspects (the borderland between maturation and learning), 
modifying factors (age, emotion, motivation), storage systems (memory in 
its various forms) will be discussed as well as computational learning 
theories.

The IK will aim in particular at bridging the gap between disciplines.
Thus we will discuss how computational approaches such as reinforcement 
learning are related to neurobiological and cognitive insights. This 
multidisciplinary approach can help to establish new learning paradigms 
and algorithms for artificial cognitive systems and facilitate our 
understanding of the nature of learning

Courses/lecturers:
==================
Basic Courses
- Artificial Intelligence (Wolfram Burgard, Freiburg)
- Neurobiology (Ansgar Büschges, Cologne)
- Cognitive Science (Hanspeter Mallot, Tübingen)
- Machine Learning and Neural networks (Herbert Jaeger, Bremen)

Methodical Courses
- Introduction to Kernel Methods (Matthias Seeger, Tübingen)
- How to measure learning and memory. Lessons from psychology
      (Thomas Kammer & Markus Kiefer, Ulm)
- Functional imaging (Thomas Wolbers, Hamburg)

Special Courses: Mechanisms of learning
- Neuroplasticity (Hubert Dinse, Bochum)
- Learning und Sleep (Lisa Marshall, Lübeck)
- Encoding of prediction errors and microeconomic reward terms by
    dopamine neurons during Pavlovian conditioning (Philipe Tobler,
      Cambridge, UK)
- Learning as knowledge acquisition (Gerhard Strube, Freiburg)

Special Courses: Computational Models Knowledge and Learning
- Reinforcement Learning (Martin Riedmiller, Osnabrück)
- Ontology Learning and Ontology Mapping (Steffen Staab, Koblenz-Landau)
- Neural-symbolic learning and reasoning (Pascal Hitzler, Karlsruhe &
      Sebastian Bader, Dresden)
- The emergent ontology: knowledge collectives and conceptual design
      patterns (Aldo Gangemi, Rome, Italy)

Special Courses: Learning by Machines and Robots
- A Neural Theory of Language Learning and Use (Srini Narayanan,
       Berkeley, USA)
- From Sensorimotor Sequence to Grammatical Construction: Insights from
      Neurophysiology, Simulation and Robotics (Peter Dominey, Lyon, France)
- The Recruitment theory of Language Origins (Luc Steels, Brüssel/Paris, 
France)
- Cognitive Developmental Robotics (Minoru Asada, Osaka, Japan)

Special Courses: Developmental, Evolution and Neuropsychology
- Developmental psychology: insights from the baby lab (NN)
- Psychopathology in Adolencense (Matthias Weisbrod, Heidelberg)
- Learning and problem solving in monkeys and apes (Josep Call,
Leipzig)
- The evolution of cognition and learning (Peter Gärdenfors, Lund, Sweden)

A limited number of travel and registration support grants are available.

For more information, including registration, see http://www.ik2006.de




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Dr. Herbert Jaeger

Professor for Computational Science
International University Bremen
Campus Ring 12
28759 Bremen, Germany

Phone (+49) 421 200 3215
Fax (+49) 421 200 49 3215
email  h.jaeger at iu-bremen.de

http://www.faculty.iu-bremen.de/hjaeger/
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