Neuromorphic Engineering Workshop 2005: Deadline March 25th
retienne
retienne at jhu.edu
Fri Mar 4 17:31:04 EST 2005
FYI: Second Announcement (Sorry for multiple copies. This email goes
out to many lists)
Neuromorphic Engineering Workshop
call for applications
Sunday, JUNE 26 - Saturday, JULY 16, 2005
TELLURIDE, COLORADO
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Avis COHEN (University of Maryland)
Rodney DOUGLAS (Institute of Neuroinformatics, UNI/ETH Zurich,
Switzerland)
Ralph ETIENNE-CUMMINGS (Johns Hopkins University)
Paul HASLER (Georgia Institute of Technology)
Timmer HORIUCHI (University of Maryland)
Giacomo INDIVERI (Institute of Neuroinformatics, UNI/ETH Zurich,
Switzerland)
Christof KOCH (California Institute of Technology)
Terrence SEJNOWSKI (Salk Institute and UCSD)
Shihab SHAMMA (University of Maryland)
Andre van SCHAIK (University of Sydney)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
We invite applications for a three week summer workshop that will be
held in Telluride, Colorado from Sunday, June 26 to Saturday, July 16,
2005. The application deadline is Friday, March 25 and application
instructions are described at the bottom of this document. We must
have your completed application, including letters of recommendation,
by March 25 for your application to be considered.
Last year's 2004 Workshop and Summer School on Neuromorphic
Engineering, sponsored by the National Science Foundation, the
Institute of Neuromorphic Engineering, the Office of Naval Research,
Airforce Research Office, Institute for NeuroInfomatics - ETHZ, Geogia
Institute of Technology, University of Maryland - College Park, Johns
Hopkins University, The Salk Institute, and by the Center for
Neuromorphic Systems Engineering at the California Institute of
Technology, was an exciting event and a great success. We strongly
encourage interested parties to browse through the:
http://www.ini.unizh.ch/telluride/
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 (with an emphasis on
analog and asynchronous digital VLSI), 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 real biological nervous systems as whole systems.
FORMAT:
The three week summer workshop will include background lectures on
systems neuroscience (in particular learning, oculo-motor and other
motor systems and attention), practical tutorials on analog VLSI
design, small mobile robots (Koalas, Kheperas, LEGO robots), hands-on
projects, and special interest groups. Participants are required to
take part and possibly complete at least one of the projects proposed.
They are furthermore encouraged to become involved in as many of the
other activities proposed 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. In the early afternoon there will be tutorial on a wide
spectrum of topics, including analog VLSI, mobile robotics, auditory
systems, central-pattern-generators, selective attention mechanisms, etc.
Projects that are carried out during the workshop will be centered in
a number of working groups, including:
* active vision
* audition
* motor control
* central pattern generator
* robotics
* multichip communication
* analog VLSI
* learning
* neuroprosthethic decives and systems
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.
The central pattern generator group will focus on small walking and
undulating robots. It will look at characteristics and sources of
parts for building robots, play with working examples of legged and
segmented robots, and discuss CPG's and theories of nonlinear
oscillators for locomotion. It will also explore the use of simple
analog VLSI sensors for autonomous robots.
The robotics group will use rovers and working digital vision boards
as well as other possible sensors to investigate issues of
sensorimotor integration, navigation and learning.
The audition group aims to develop biologically plausible algorithms
and aVLSI implementations of specific auditory tasks such as source
localization and tracking, and sound pattern recognition. Projects
will be integrated with visual and motor tasks in the context of a
robot platform.
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
communicationwill be discussed.
This year we will also have some new robots kindly donated by the
WowWee Toys division of Hasbro in Hong Kong. This will permit us to
carry out experiments with WooWee/Hasboro hardware through Mark Tilden.
LOCATION AND ARRANGEMENTS:
The summer school will take place in the small town of Telluride, 9000
feet high in Southwest Colorado, about 6 hours drive away from Denver
(350miles). Great Lakes Aviation and America West Express airlines
provide daily flights directly into Telluride. All facilities within
the beautifully renovated public school building are fully accessible
to participants with disabilities. Participants will be housed in ski
condominiums, within walking distance of the school. Participants are
expected to share condominiums.
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 work on specific
projects, talk about their own work or 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 PCs
running LINUX and Microsoft Windows for the workshop projects. We also
plan to provide wireless internet access and encourage participants to
bring along their personal laptop.
No cars are required. Given the small size of the town, we recommend
that you do not rent a car. Bring hiking boots, warm clothes, rain
gear, and a backpack, since Telluride is surrounded by beautiful
mountains. Unless otherwise arranged with one of the organizers, we
expect participants to stay for the entire duration of this three week
workshop.
FINANCIAL ARRANGEMENT:
Notification of acceptances will be mailed out around mid April 2005.
Participants are expected to pay a $295.00 workshop fee at that time
in order to reserve a place in the workshop. The cost of a shared
condominium will be covered for all academic participants but upgrades
to a private room will cost extra. Participants from National
Laboratories and Industry are expected to pay for these condominiums.
Travel reimbursement of up to $500 for US domestic travel and up to
$800 for overseas travel will be possible if financial help is needed
(please specify on the application).
HOW TO APPLY:
Applicants should be at the level of graduate students or above
(i.e.postdoctoral 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:
* Cover sheet with:
o First name, Last name
o Institution and department
o Complete mailing address
o Valid e-mail address
* Curriculum Vitae
* One-page summary of background and interests relevant to workshop
* Two letters of recommendation
Please send your application to:
Terrence Sejnowski
The Salk Institute -- CNL
10010 N. Torrey Pines Road
La Jolla, California 92037
Electronic applications will not be accepted. Questions regarding the
application process may be addressed to: telluride at salk.edu
<mailto:telluride at salk.edu>
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ralph Etienne-Cummings
Associate Professor
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
105 Barton Hall/3400 N. Charles St. 2213 AV Williams Bldg
Johns Hopkins University University of Maryland
Baltimore, MD 21218 College Park, MD 20742
Tel: 410 - 516 - 3494 Tel: 301 - 405 - 0470
Fax: 410 - 516 - 5566 Fax: 301 - 314 - 9281
Email: retienne at jhu.edu Email: retienne at isr.umd.edu
URL: http://bach.ece.jhu.edu/~etienne URL: http://www.isr.umd.edu/~retienne
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