From sunny at sunnybains.com Sun Nov 11 09:44:14 2007 From: sunny at sunnybains.com (Sunny Bains) Date: Sun, 11 Nov 2007 14:44:14 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: The Neuromorphic Engineer news website Message-ID: <5574953A-2B9E-4CF4-9782-EC8068F4641C@sunnybains.com> The Institute of Neuromorphic Engineering has set up a news website where articles on the subject will be posted. The site, at: http://www.ine-news.org already contains all back articles of the old Neuromorphic Engineer newsletter, plus some new material. We hope you find it interesting. Note that this is not intended to be a journal, but a site where researchers briefly explain the concepts behind their work, provide some limited results, and then refer to papers for further information. Please contact the me if you: a) Have suggestions for future articles (either by you or by others). Make sure to suggest a specific author and (if you have it) supply an e-mail address. b) Know of people writing blogs related to neuromorphic engineering: we can contact them and arrange to feed relevant articles into our site when appropriate. c) Have any suggestions on how to improve the site. Many thanks, Dr Sunny Bains Editor, The Neuromorphic Engineer EEE Department Imperial College London http://www.sunnybains.com From dayan at gatsby.ucl.ac.uk Tue Nov 13 09:18:16 2007 From: dayan at gatsby.ucl.ac.uk (Peter Dayan) Date: Tue, 13 Nov 2007 14:18:16 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: Gatsby PhD Programme In-Reply-To: <20061013122857.GA10331@flies.gatsby.ucl.ac.uk> References: <20061013122857.GA10331@flies.gatsby.ucl.ac.uk> Message-ID: <20071113141816.GA24562@flies.gatsby.ucl.ac.uk> Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit, UCL 4 year PhD Programme The Gatsby Unit is a centre for theoretical neuroscience and machine learning, focusing on unsupervised, semi-supervised and reinforcement learning, neural dynamics, population coding, Bayesian and nonparametric statistics and applications of these to the analysis of perceptual processing, neural data, natural language processing, machine vision and bioinformatics. It provides a unique opportunity for a critical mass of theoreticians to interact closely with each other, and with other world-class research groups in related departments at University College London (UCL), including Anatomy, Computer Science, Functional Imaging, Physics, Physiology, Psychology, Neurology, Ophthalmology and Statistics, with the cross-faculty Centre for Computational Statistics and Machine Learning, and also with other UK and overseas universities notably, at the present time, with Cambridge in the UK, Columbia, New York and ENS, Paris. The Unit always has openings for exceptional PhD candidates. Applicants should have a strong analytical background, a keen interest in neuroscience and/or machine learning and a relevant first degree, for example in Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, Neuroscience, Physics, Psychology or Statistics. The PhD programme lasts four years, including a first year of intensive instruction in techniques and research in theoretical neuroscience and machine learning. A number of competitive fully-funded studentships are available each year (to students of any nationality) and the Unit also welcomes students with pre-secured funding or with other scholarship/studentship applications in progress. Full details of our programme, and how to apply, are available at: http://www.gatsby.ucl.ac.uk/teaching/phd/ For further details of research interests please see: http://www.gatsby.ucl.ac.uk/research.html Applications for 2008 entry (commencing late September 2008) should be received no later than 6 January 2008. Shortlisted applicants will be invited to attend interview in the week commencing 18 February 2008. From dmodha at gmail.com Thu Nov 15 02:14:56 2007 From: dmodha at gmail.com (Dharmendra Modha) Date: Wed, 14 Nov 2007 23:14:56 -0800 Subject: Connectionists: New Paper: "Anatomy of a Cortical Simulator" at Supercomputing 2007 Message-ID: <001a01c82757$3ad2a320$b077e960$@com> TITLE: Anatomy of a Cortical Simulator AUTHORS: Rajagopal Ananthanarayanan and Dharmendra S. Modha, IBM Almaden Research Center CONFERENCE: Supercomputing 2007, Reno, NV, Nov 10-16 ABSTRACT: Insights into brain's high-level computational principles will lead to novel cognitive systems, computing architectures, programming paradigms, and numerous practical applications. An important step towards this end is the study of large networks of cortical spiking neurons. We have built a cortical simulator, C2, incorporating several algorithmic enhancements to optimize the simulation scale and time, through: computationally efficient simulation of neurons in a clock-driven and synapses in an event-driven fashion; memory efficient representation of simulation state; and communication efficient message exchanges. Using phenomenological, single-compartment models of spiking neurons and synapses with spike-timing dependent plasticity, we represented a rat-scale cortical model (55 million neurons, 442 billion synapses) in 8TB memory of a 32,768-processor BlueGene/L. With 1 millisecond resolution for neuronal dynamics and 1-20 milliseconds axonal delays, C2 can simulate 1 second of model time in 9 seconds per Hertz of average neuronal firing rate. In summary, by combining state-of-the-art hardware with innovative algorithms and software design, we simultaneously achieved unprecedented time-to-solution on an unprecedented problem size. LINK TO PDF FILE: http://sc07.supercomp.org/schedule/event_detail.php?evid=11063 From esann at dice.ucl.ac.be Sun Nov 18 06:58:40 2007 From: esann at dice.ucl.ac.be (esann) Date: Sun, 18 Nov 2007 12:58:40 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: extended deadline: ESANN'2008 Message-ID: <003301c829da$5cf30960$43ed6882@maxwell.local> Due to numerous requests, the deadline to submit papers to the ESANN'2008 conference has been extended to November 30, 2007. Note that this extended deadline is strict: no further extension will be allowed. The message below is a reminder of the call for papers. Looking forward to seeing you at ESANN'2008, The organizing committee. =============================================== ESANN'2008 16th European Symposium on Artificial Neural Networks Advances in Computational Intelligence and Learning Bruges (Belgium) - April 23-24-25, 2008 Announcement and call for papers =============================================== The call for papers for the ESANN'2008 conference is now available on the Web: http://www.dice.ucl.ac.be/esann For those of you who maintain WWW pages including lists of related ANN sites: we would appreciate if you could add the above URL to your list; thank you very much! We make all possible efforts to avoid sending multiple copies of this call for papers; however we apologize if you receive this e-mail twice, despite our precautions. ***** Deadline for submission of papers: November 30, 2007 ***** You will find below a short version of this call for papers, without the instructions to authors (available on the Web). ESANN'2008 is organized in collaboration with the UCL (Universite catholique de Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve) and the KULeuven (Katholiek Universiteit Leuven). The conference is technically co-sponsored by the International Neural Networks Society, the European Neural Networks Society, the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society, the IEEE Region 8, the IEEE Benelux Section (sponsors to be confirmed). Scope and topics ---------------- Since its first happening in 1993, the European Symposium on Artificial Neural Networks has become the reference for researchers on fundamentals and theoretical aspects of artificial neural networks, computational intelligence, learning and related topics. Each year, around 100 specialists attend ESANN, in order to present their latest results and comprehensive surveys, and to discuss the future developments in this field. The ESANN'2008 conference will follow this tradition, while adapting its scope to the new developments in the field. Artificial neural networks are viewed as a branch, or subdomain, of machine learning, statistical information processing and computational intelligence. Mathematical foundations, algorithms and tools, and applications are covered. The following is a non-exhaustive list of machine learning, computational intelligence and artificial neural networks topics covered during the ESANN conferences: THEORY and MODELS Statistical and mathematical aspects of learning Feedforward models Kernel machines Graphical models, EM and Bayesian learning Vector quantization and self-organizing maps Recurrent networks and dynamical systems Blind signal processing Ensemble learning Nonlinear projection and data visualization Fuzzy neural networks Evolutionary computation Bio-inspired systems INFORMATION PROCESSING and APPLICATIONS Data mining Signal processing and modeling Approximation and identification Classification and clustering Feature extraction and dimension reduction Time series forecasting Multimodal interfaces and multichannel processing Adaptive control Vision and sensory systems Biometry Bioinformatics Brain-computer interfaces Neuroinformatics Papers will be presented orally (single track) and in poster sessions; all posters will be complemented by a short oral presentation during a plenary session. It is important to mention that the topics of a paper decide if it better fits into an oral or a poster session, not its quality. The selection of posters will be identical to oral presentations, and both will be printed in the same way in the proceedings. Nevertheless, authors must indicate their preference for oral or poster presentation when submitting their paper. Special sessions ---------------- Special sessions will be organized by renowned scientists in their respective fields. Papers submitted to these sessions are reviewed according to the same rules as submissions to regular sessions. They must also follow the same format, instructions, deadlines and submission procedure. The special sessions organized during ESANN'2008 are: 1) Computational Intelligence in Computer Games Colin Fyfe (University of Paisley, United Kingdom) 2) Methodology and standards for data analysis with machine learning tools Damien Fran?ois (Universit? catholique de Louvain, Belgium) 3) Neural Networks for Computational Neuroscience David Meunier, H?l?ne Paugam-Moisy (LIRIS-CNRS, France) 4) Machine learning methods in cancer research Alfredo Vellido (Pol. Univ. Catalonia, Spain), Paulo J.G.Lisboa (Liverpool John Moores University, United Kingdom) 5) Machine Learning Approches and Pattern Recognition for Spectral Data Thomas Villmann (Univ. Leipzig, Germany), Erzs?bet Mer?nyi (Rice University, USA), Udo Seiffert (IPK Gatersleben, Germany) Location -------- The conference will be held in Bruges (also called "Venice of the North"), one of the most beautiful medieval towns in Europe. Bruges can be reached by train from Brussels in less than one hour (frequent trains). The town of Bruges is world-wide known, and famous for its architectural style, its canals, and its pleasant atmosphere. The conference will be organized in a hotel located near the centre (walking distance) of the town. There is no obligation for the participants to stay in this hotel. Hotels of all levels of comfort and price are available in Bruges; there is a possibility to book a room in the hotel of the conference at a preferential rate through the conference secretariat. A list of other smaller hotels is also available. The conference will be held at the Novotel hotel, Katelijnestraat 65B, 8000 Brugge, Belgium. Proceedings and journal special issue ------------------------------------- The proceedings will include all communications presented to the conference (tutorials, oral and posters), and will be available on-site. Extended versions of selected papers will be published in the Neurocomputing journal (Elsevier). Call for contributions ---------------------- Prospective authors are invited to submit their contributions before November 30, 2007. The electronic submission procedure is described on the ESANN portal http://www.dice.ucl.ac.be/esann/. Authors must also commit themselves that they will register to the conference and present the paper in case of acceptation of their submission (one paper per registrant). Authors of accepted papers will have to register before February 28, 2008; they will benefit from the advance registration fee. The ESANN conference applies a strict policy about the presentation of accepted papers during the conference: authors of accepted papers who do not show up at the conference will be blacklisted for future ESANN conferences, and the lists will be communicated to other conference organizers. Deadlines --------- Submission of papers *** 30 November 2007 Notification of acceptance 18 January 2008 ESANN conference 23 - 25 April 2008 Conference secretariat ---------------------- ESANN'2008 d-side conference services phone: + 32 2 730 06 11 24 av. L. Mommaerts Fax: + 32 2 730 06 00 B - 1140 Evere (Belgium) E-mail: esann at dice.ucl.ac.be http://www.dice.ucl.ac.be/esann Steering and local committee ---------------------------- Fran?ois Blayo Ipseite (CH) Gianluca Bontempi Univ. Libre Bruxelles (B) Marie Cottrell Univ. Paris I (F) Jeanny H?rault INPG Grenoble (F) Mia Loccufier Univ. Gent (B) Bernard Manderick Vrije Univ. Brussel (B) Jean-Pierre Peters FUNDP Namur (B) Joos Vandewalle KUL Leuven (B) Michel Verleysen UCL Louvain-la-Neuve (B) Scientific committee (to be confirmed) -------------------- Cecilio Angulo Univ. Polit. de Catalunya (E) Miguel Atencia Univ. Malaga (E) Martin Bogdan Univ. T?bingen (D) Herv? Bourlard IDIAP Martigny (CH) Antonio Braga Federal University of Minas Gerais (Brazil) Joan Cabestany Univ. Polit. de Catalunya (E) Colin Campbell Bristol University (UK) St?phane Canu Inst. Nat. Sciences App. (F) Valentina Colla Scuola Sup. Sant'Anna Pisa (I) Nigel Crook Oxford Brookes University (UK) Holk Cruse Universit?t Bielefeld (D) Eric de Bodt Univ. Lille II (F) & UCL Louvain-la-Neuve (B) Dante Del Corso Politecnico di Torino (I) Wlodek Duch Nicholas Copernicus Univ. (PL) Marc Duranton NXP Semiconductors (USA) Richard Duro Univ. Coruna (E) Andr? Elisseef IBM Research (CH) Deniz Erdogmus Oregon Health & Science University (USA) Anibal Figueiras-Vidal Univ. Carlos III Madrid (E) Jean-Claude Fort Universit? Paul Sabatier Toulouse (F) Leonardo Franco Univ. Malaga (E) Colin Fyfe Univ. Paisley (UK) Stan Gielen Univ. of Nijmegen (NL) Mirta Gordon IMAG Grenoble (F) Marco Gori Univ. Siena (I) Bernard Gosselin Fac. Polytech. Mons (B) Manuel Grana UPV San Sebastian (E) Anne Gu?rin-Dugu? IMAG Grenoble (F) Barbara Hammer Clausthal Univ. of Technology (D) Martin Hasler EPFL Lausanne (CH) Verena Heidrich-Meisner Ruhr-Univ. Bochum (D) Tom Heskes Univ. Nijmegen (NL) Katerina Hlavackova-Schindler Austrian Acad. of Sciences (A) Christian Igel Ruhr-Univ. Bochum (D) Jose Jerez Univ. Malaga (E) Christian Jutten INPG Grenoble (F) Juha Karhunen Helsinki Univ. of Technology (FIN) Samuel Kaski Helsinki Univ. Tech. (FIN) Stefanos Kollias National Tech. Univ. Athens (GR) Jouko Lampinen Helsinki Univ. of Tech. (FIN) Petr Lansky Acad. of Science of the Czech Rep. (CZ) Beatrice Lazzerini Univ. Pisa (I) Erzsebet Merenyi Rice Univ. (USA) Anke Meyer-B?se Florida State university (USA) Jean-Pierre Nadal Ecole Normale Sup?rieure Paris (F) Erkki Oja Helsinki Univ. of Technology (FIN) Tjeerd olde Scheper Oxford Brookes University (UK) Arlindo Oliveira INESC-ID (P) Gilles Pag?s Univ. Paris 6 (F) Thomas Parisini Univ. Trieste (I) H?l?ne Paugam-Moisy Universit? Lumi?re Lyon 2 (F) Kristiaan Pelckmans K. U. Leuven (B) Alberto Prieto Universitad de Granada (E) Didier Puzenat Univ. Antilles-Guyane (F) Leonardo Reyneri Politecnico di Torino (I) Jean-Pierre Rospars INRA Versailles (F) Fabrice Rossi INRIA (F) Francisco Sandoval Univ.Malaga (E) Jose Santos Reyes Univ. Coruna (E) Craig Saunders Univ.Southampton (UK) Benjamin Schrauwen Univ. Gent (B) Udo Seiffert IPK Gatersleben (D) Bernard Sendhoff Honda Research Institute Europe (D) Alessandro Sperduti Universit? degli Studi di Padova (I) Jochen Steil Univ. Bielefeld (D) John Stonham Brunel University (UK) Johan Suykens K. U. Leuven (B) John Taylor King?s College London (UK) Peter Tino University of Birmingham (UK) Claude Touzet Univ. Provence (F) Marc Van Hulle KUL Leuven (B) Pablo Verdes Novartis Phrama (CH) David Verstraeten Univ. Gent (B) Thomas Villmann Univ. Leipzig (D) Heiko Wersing Honda Research Institute Europe (D) Axel Wism?ller Ludwig-Maximilians-Univ. M?nchen (D) Bart Wyns Ghent University (B) Michalis Zervakis Technical Univ. Crete (GR) ======================================================== ESANN - European Symposium on Artificial Neural Networks http://www.dice.ucl.ac.be/esann * For submissions of papers, reviews,... Michel Verleysen Univ. Cath. de Louvain - Machine Learning Group 3, pl. du Levant - B-1348 Louvain-la-Neuve - Belgium tel: +32 10 47 25 51 - fax: + 32 10 47 25 98 mailto:esann at dice.ucl.ac.be * Conference secretariat d-side conference services 24 av. L. Mommaerts - B-1140 Evere - Belgium tel: + 32 2 730 06 11 - fax: + 32 2 730 06 00 mailto:esann at dice.ucl.ac.be ======================================================== From alexwade at gmail.com Mon Nov 5 13:08:28 2007 From: alexwade at gmail.com (Alex Wade) Date: Mon, 05 Nov 2007 18:08:28 -0000 Subject: Connectionists: Cosyne 2008 Registration and Abstract Submission Open Message-ID: <76eaaa9a0711050940q488a0b5fi7bffde68c3aae0b3@mail.gmail.com> ============================== Annual Meeting Computational and Systems Neuroscience (Cosyne) MAIN MEETING WORKSHOPS 28 Feb - 2 Mar, 2008 3 - 4 Mar, 2008 Salt Lake City, Utah Snow Bird Ski Resort, Utah http://cosyne.org ============================== Cosyne 2008 Announcements: MAIN MEETING: the cosyne web site will be open for abstract submission on 1 November, and the SUBMISSION DEADLINE IS 30 NOVEMBER. The program committee is listed below. WORKSHOPS: the finalized list of workshops (further information available on the web site) is as follows: 1. Linking Auditory Neurophysiology to Perception (Schnupp) 2. The cortical microcircuit and cognitive function (Reynolds, Sommer) 3. Neurophysiology in awake, behaving rodents (Laubach, Shuler) 4. Solving systems neuroscience problems with molecular tools (Boyden) 5. Reactivation and memory consolidation (Diba, Harris) 6. Data sharing and modeling challenges in neuroscience - a first step towards predictive neuron models? (Roth, Gerstner, Sommer) 7. Top down or bottom up? Measuring, modeling, and understanding cross-scale neural interactions (Blanche, Koepsell) 8. Dynamic faces: From experiments to novel computational neural theories (Curio, Buelthoff, Giese) 9. Recent advances in activity-dependent plasticity (Munro) 10. Spiking Networks and Reinforcement Learning (Szatmary, Izhikevich) 11. Real-time processing and the processing of time (Deneve, Buonomano) 12. Characterizing and decoding distributed brain representations (Kriegeskorte, Walther, Kreiman, Kiani, Aguirre) 13. What can functional imaging tell us about population coding in sensory systems? (Gardner, Huk, Schluppeck) =================================================== PROGRAM COMMITTEE (main meeting): Matteo Carandini (chair) Dora Angelaki Mathew Diamond Allison Doupe Adrienne Fairhall Michael Hasselmo Adam Kepecs Peter Latham Klaus Obermayer Bijan Pesaran John Reynolds Daniel Wolpert EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE: Tony Zador (CSHL) Alex Pouget (U Rochester) Zach Mainen (CSHL) Eero Simoncelli (NYU) ORGANIZING COMMITTEE: General Chair: Eero Simoncelli (NYU) Program Chair: Matteo Carandini (Smith-Kettlewell) Workshop Chair(s): Fritz Sommer, Jascha Sohl-Dickstein (UC Berkeley) Publicity Chair: Alex Wade (Smith-Kettlewell) From Igor.Aizenberg at tamut.edu Tue Nov 6 22:21:52 2007 From: Igor.Aizenberg at tamut.edu (Igor Aizenberg) Date: Tue, 6 Nov 2007 21:21:52 -0600 Subject: Connectionists: Special Session on Complex-Valued Neural Networks at IEEE WCCI-IJCNN-2008 Message-ID: Dear colleagues, We are pleased no announce a Special session on Complex-Valued Neural Networks, which will be organized at IEEE World Congress on Computational Intelligence - 2008 International Joint Conference on Neural Networks (IJCNN-2008) Hong Kong, June 1-6, 2008 http://www.wcci2008.org/index.htm Organizers/Chairs: Akira Hirose University of Tokyo, Japan e-mail: ahirose at ee.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp URL: http://www.eis.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp/ Jacek M. Zurada University of Louisville, USA e-mail: jacek.zurada at louisville.edu URL: http://ci.louisville.edu/zurada Igor Aizenberg Texas A&M University-Texarkana, USA e-mail: igor.aizenberg at tamut.edu URL: http://www.freewebs.com/igora Please, take a look at the Detailed Scope of the Session http://www.eagle.tamut.edu/faculty/igor/IJCNN_CVNN_Special_Session_Scope .htm All guidelines and instructions for authors are given here http://www.wcci2008.org/submission.htm Important Dates: December 1, 2007 Deadline for the paper submission February 1, 2008 Notification of acceptance March 1, 2008 Deadline for final paper submission June 1-6, 2008 Conference, Technical and social programs The complex-valued neural networks (CVNNs) is a quickly growing area that attracts more and more researchers. There is a line of the CVNN Special Sessions organized during last years, for example, at ICONIP 2002, Singapore, ICANN/ICONIP 2003, Istanbul, ICONIP 2004, Calcutta, WCCI-IJCNN 2006, Vancouver, "Fuzzy Days 2006", Dortmund, ICANN 2007, Porto. Everywhere these sessions had large audience, which is growing continuously. There were many interesting presentations and very productive discussions. There are several new directions in CVNNs development: from formal generalization of the commonly used algorithms to the complex-valued case that are mathematically beautiful to the use of original complex-valued activation functions that can increase significantly the neuron and network functionality. There are also many interesting applications of CVNNs in pattern recognition and classification, image processing, time series prediction, bioinformatics, robotics, etc. One of the most important characteristics of the CVNNs is the proper treatment of amplitude and phase information, e.g., the treatment of wave-related rotation-related phenomena such as electromagnetism, light waves, quantum waves and oscillatory phenomena. Very interesting among other CVNNs are those networks that are based on neurons with the phase-dependent activation functions. This specific phenomenon makes it possible to increase the single neuron's functionality and to design more flexible and more effective networks. It is also very interesting to study how these phenomena can be used in modeling of the biological neural networks. IEEE WCCI 2008 in Hong Kong will be a very attractive forum, where it will be possible to organize a systematic and comprehensive exchange of ideas in the area, to present the recent research results and to discuss the future trends. We hope that the proposed session will attract not only the potential speakers, but many researches who can join the CVNNs community. We expect also that this session would be very beneficial for all CI researchers and other specialties that are in need of the sophisticated neural networks tools. Papers that are, or might be, related to all aspects of the CVNNs are invited. We welcome contributions, where a fundamental theory is developed, as well as contributions, where different applied problems are considered. We also welcome potential contributions form other areas that are on the boarders of the proposed scope. Topics include, but are not limited to: * Theoretical Aspects of CVNNs and Complex-Valued Activation Functions * Complex-Valued Associative Memories * Dynamics of Complex-Valued Neurons * Learning Algorithms for CVCNNs * Chaos in Complex Domain * Feedforward CVCNNs * Pattern Recognition, Classification and Time Series Prediction using CVCNNs * Spatiotemporal CVNNs Processing * Frequency Domain CVNNs Processing * Phase-Sensitive Signal Processing * Applications of CVNNs in Image Processing, Speech Processing and Bioinformatics * Quantum Computation and Quantum Neural Networks * CVNNs in Robotics * Quaternion and Clifford Networks ________________ Dr. Igor Aizenberg Texas A&M University-Texarkana Department of Computer and Information Sciences P.O. Box 5518, 2600 N. Robison Rd. Texarkana, Texas 75505 USA Phone: (1 903) 223-3183; Fax: (1 903) 223-3189; Skype: igor_aizenberg e-mail: igor.aizenberg at tamut.edu or igor.aizenberg at gmail.com URL: http://www.freewebs.com/igora From ckiw at inf.ed.ac.uk Thu Nov 8 07:42:59 2007 From: ckiw at inf.ed.ac.uk (Chris Williams) Date: Thu, 8 Nov 2007 12:42:59 +0000 (GMT) Subject: Connectionists: Compstat08: Computation for Graphical Models and Bayes Nets Message-ID: [posted on behalf of Joe Whittaker] Compstat08: Computation for Graphical Models and Bayes Nets Dear Graphical Modellers, We are organising a session at the Compstat08 meeting in Porto entitled Computation for Graphical Models and Bayes Nets. The invited session will consist of talks from Giovanni Marchetti, Soren Hoesgaard, and Mathias Drton. Steffen Lauritzen will be among the participants. We hope to organise a second session from contributed papers on the same theme, concentrating on developments in R. The deadline for submission of full papers (invited and contributed papers) is January 20th, 2008. Compstat08: International Conference on Computational Statistics Porto - Portugal, August 24-29, 2008 http://www.fep.up.pt/compstat08/ Please contact joe.whittaker at lancaster.ac.uk for any more information, especially if you wish to contribute a talk. Best wishes, Joe From auke.ijspeert at epfl.ch Thu Nov 8 11:59:27 2007 From: auke.ijspeert at epfl.ch (Auke Ijspeert) Date: Thu, 08 Nov 2007 17:59:27 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: CFP: Adaptive Motion in Animals and Machines, AMAM08, June 1-6, 2008, Cleveland, USA Message-ID: <4733406F.2080503@epfl.ch> Call for Abstracts and Participation: AMAM08 AMAM: Adaptive Motion in Animals and Machines June 1-6, 2008, Cleveland, OH, USA http://amam.case.edu AMAM08 is the fourth international symposium dedicated to the neuromechanics, sensory perception, and intelligence behind adaptive movement in animals, and the modeling, analysis, and technical development of adaptive movement in animals and machines. Previous symposia were held in Montreal, Canada (2000); Kyoto, Japan (2003); and Ilmenau, Germany (2005). The symposium will include a single track of keynote (evening), plenary, and invited seminar speakers, plus poster sessions. We will also continue the tradition of a "Robot Zoo," where researchers may demonstrate their latest machines. Poster abstracts are invited in all areas pertaining to adaptive motion in animals and machines. We especially encourage submission in the three main focus areas for AMAM08: * Robotics * Neurobiology of Movement Behavior * Functional Electrical Stimulation Confirmed keynote and plenary speakers include + Hunter Peckham + Hirosi Kimura + Ansgar B?schges + Paolo Dario + Mike Dickinson + Kiisa Nishikawa + Kier Pearson + Marc Raibert + Barry Trimmer + Barbara Webb A distinguished list of seminar speakers is also being invited. Poster abstracts (350 words) and Robot Zoo submissions are due by January 21, 2008. Notification of final acceptance will occur by March 17, 2008. Detailed submission instructions will be available at the meeting website, http://amam.case.edu From terry at salk.edu Sun Nov 11 03:34:46 2007 From: terry at salk.edu (Terry Sejnowski) Date: Sun, 11 Nov 2007 00:34:46 -0800 Subject: Connectionists: Neuro Thursday at NIPS In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Neural Information Processing Systems - NIPS 2007: http://nips.cc/Conferences/2007/ Conference December 3-6, 2007, Vancouver Workshop December 7-8, 2007, Whistler NEURO-THURSDAY at NIPS: Thursday, December 6 - 8:30 AM - Noon - Vancouver Thursday, December 6 (the final day of the Conference), will be devoted to Neuroscience, and will consist of a fascinating invited talk by Professor Manabu Tanifuji (Riken) on the monkey visual cortex, plus six outstanding plenary talks. In addition, all of the Neuroscience posters will take place on Wednesday night, allowing early arrivals to interact with researchers. The Wednesday night poster program will also contain many posters on Machine Learning and Computer Vision, focused on topics that are also relevant to Neuroscience. All of the morning events (including the Wednesday night Poster Session and the Spotlights that precede it) will be available for the special "Neuro-Thursday" registration rate of $50. For those attending the entire Conference, "Neuro-Thursday" is included in the registration price. 8:30 - 8:50am Misha Ahrens, Maneesh Sahani Inferring Elapsed Time from Stochastic Neural Processes 8:50 - 9:10am Omer Bobrowski, Ron Meir, Shy Shoham, Yonina Eldar A neural network implementing optimal state estimation based on dynamic spike train decoding 9:10 - 9:30am Sebastian Gerwinn, Jakob Macke, Matthias Seeger, Matthias Bethge Bayesian Inference for Spiking Neuron Models with a Sparsity Prior 9:30 - 9:50am Jonathan Pillow, Peter Latham Neural characterization in partially observed populations of spiking neurons 9:50 - 10:10am Srinjoy Mitra, Giacomo Indiveri, Stefano Fusi Learning to classify complex patterns using a VLSI network of spiking neurons 10:10 - 10:40am Break 10:40 - 11:00am Mate Lengyel, Peter Dayan Hippocampal Contributions to Control: The Third Way 11:00am - 12:00pm Invited Speaker: Manabu Tanifuji Population coding of object images based on visual features and its relevance to view invariant representation -------- Deep Learning Satellite Meeting: Foundations and Future Directions Thursday, December 6 - 2:00 to 5:30 PM - Vancouver Theoretical results strongly suggest that in order to learn the kind of complicated functions that can represent high-level abstractions (e.g. in vision, language, and other AI-level tasks), one may need "deep architectures", which are composed of multiple levels of non-linear operations (such as in neural nets with many hidden layers). Searching the parameter space of deep architectures is a difficult optimization task, but learning algorithms (e.g. Deep Belief Networks) have recently been proposed to tackle this problem with notable success, beating the state-of-the-art in certain areas. This Workshop is intended to bring together researchers interested in the question of deep learning in order to review the current algorithms' principles and successes, but also to identify the challenges, and to formulate promising directions of investigation. Besides the algorithms themselves, there are many fundamental questions that need to be addressed: What would be a good formalization of deep learning? What new ideas could be exploited to make further inroads to that difficult optimization problem? What makes a good high-level representation or abstraction? What type of problem is deep learning appropriate for? There is no charge for this Workshop or for the bus to Whistler that will leave after the Workshop; however, a separate registration is required. To register: http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~lisa/twiki/bin/view.cgi/Public/DeepLearningWorkshopNIPS2007 2:00pm - 2:25pm Yee-Whye Teh, Gatsby Unit : Deep Belief Networks 2:25pm - 2:45pm John Langford, Yahoo Research: Theoretical Results on Deep Architectures 2:45pm - 3:05pm Yoshua Bengio, University of Montreal: Optimizing Deep Architectures 3:05pm - 3:25pm Yann Le Cun, New York University: Learning deep hierarchies of invariant feature 3:25pm - 3:45pm Martin Szummer, Microsoft Research: Deep networks for information retrieval 3:45pm - 4:00pm Coffee break 4:00pm - 4:20pm Max Welling, University of California: Hierarchical Representations from networks of HDPs 4:20pm - 4:40pm Andrew Ng, Stanford University: Self-taught learning: Transfer learning from unlabeled data 4:40pm - 5:00pm Geoff Hinton, University of Toronto: How the brain works 5:00pm - 5:30pm Discussion --------- NIPS Whistler Workshops Friday December 7 - Saturday December 8, 2007 - Whistler The post-Conference Workshops will be held at the Westin Resort and Spa and the Westin Hilton in Whistler, British Columbia, Canada on December 7 and 8, 2007. The Workshops provide multi-track intensive sessions on a wide range of topics. The venue and schedule facilitate informality and depth. Partial List of Workshop Topics and Organizers: Beyond Simple Cells: Probabilistic Models for Visual Cortical Processing Richard Turner, Pietro Berkes, Maneesh Sahani Hierarchical Organization of Behavior: Computational, Psychological and Neural Perspectives Yael Niv, Matthew Botvinick, Andrew Barto Large Scale Brain Dynamics Ryan Canolty, Kai Miller, Joaquin Quinonero Candela, Thore Graepel, Ralf Herbrich Mechanisms of Visual Attention Jillian Fecteau, Dirk Walther, Vidhya Navalpakkam, John Tsotsos Music, Brain and Cognition. Part 1: Learning the Structure of Music and Its Effects On the Brain David Hardoon, Eduardo Reck-Miranda, John Shawe-Taylor Music, Brain and Cognition. Part 2: Models of Sound and Cognition Hendrik Purwins, Xavier Serra, Klaus Obermayer Principles of Learning Problem Design John Langford, Alina Beygelzimer Representations and Inference on Probability Distributions Kenji Fukumizu, Arthur Gretton, Alex Smola The Grammar of Vision: Probabilistic Grammar-Based Models for Visual Scene Understanding and Object Categorization Jan Peters, Marc Toussaint A complete list of all 25 workshop and links for more information: http://nips.cc/Conferences/2007/Program/schedule.php?Session=Workshops --------- NIPS POSTERS - Wednesday, December 5, 7:30pm - 12:00am B. Fischer - Optimal models of sound localization by barn owls S. Ghebreab, A. Smeulders, P. Adriaans - Predicting Brain States from fMRI Data: Incremental Functional Principal Component Regression M. Cerf, J. Harel, W. Einhaeuser, C. Koch - Predicting human gaze using low-level saliency combined with face detection J. Macke, G. Zeck, M. Bethge - Receptive Fields without Spike-Triggering V. Rao, M. Howard - Retrieved context and the discovery of semantic structure C. Christoforou, P. Sajda, L. Parra - Second Order Bilinear Discriminant Analysis for single trial EEG analysis P. Frazier, A. Yu - Sequential Hypothesis Testing under Stochastic Deadlines L. Buesing, W. Maass - Simplified Rules and Theoretical Analysis for Information Bottleneck Optimization and PCA with Spiking Neurons H. Lee, E. Chaitanya, A. Ng - Sparse deep belief net model for visual area V2 M. Figueroa, G. Carvajal, W. Valenzuela - Subspace-Based Face Recognition in Analog VLSI D. Gao, V. Mahadevan, N. Vasconcelos - The discriminant center-surround hypothesis for bottom-up saliency D. Mochihashi, E. Sumita - The Infinite Markov Model N. Daw, A. Courville - The rat as particle filter R. Legenstein, D. Pecevski, W. Maass - Theoretical Analysis of Learning with Reward-Modulated Spike-Timing-Dependent Plasticity M. Mahmud, S. Ray - Transfer Learning using Kolmogorov Complexity: Basic Theory and Empirical Evaluations A. Graves, S. Fernandez, M. Liwicki, H. Bunke, J. Schmidhuber - Unconstrained On-line Handwriting Recognition with Recurrent Neural Networks M. Mozer, D. Baldwin - Experience-Guided Search: A Theory of Attentional Control A. Yuille, H. Lu - The Noisy-Logical Distribution and its Application to Causal Inference M. Frank, N. Goodman, J. Tenenbaum - A Bayesian Framework for Cross-Situational Word-Learning A. Stocker, E. Simoncelli - A Bayesian Model of Conditioned Perception C. Kemp, N. Goodman, J. Tenenbaum - A complexity measure for intuitive theories M. Giulioni, M. pannunzi, D. Badoni, V. Dante, P. del Giudice - A configurable analog VLSI neural network with spiking neurons and self-regulating plastic synapses S. Siddiqi, B. Boots, G. Gordon - A Constraint Generation Approach to Learning Stable Linear Dynamical Systems O. Bobrowski, R. Meir, S. Shoham, Y. Eldar - A neural network implementing optimal state estimation based on dynamic spike train decoding G. Englebienne, T. Cootes, M. Rattray - A probabilistic model for generating realistic lip movements from speech A. Argyriou, C. Micchelli, M. Pontil, Y. Ying - A Spectral Regularization Framework for Multi-Task Structure Learning P. Liang, D. Klein, M. Jordan - Agreement-Based Learning F. Sinz, O. Chapelle, A. Agarwal, B. Schölkopf - An Analysis of Inference with the Universum D. Sridharan, B. Percival, J. Arthur, K. Boahen - An in-silico Neural Model of Dynamic Routing through Neuronal Coherence C. Clopath, A. Longtin, W. Gerstner - An online Hebbian learning rule that performs Independent Component Analysis N. Chapados, Y. Bengio - Augmented Functional Time Series Representation and Forecasting with Gaussian Processes Y. Teh, H. Daume III, D. Roy - Bayesian Agglomerative Clustering with Coalescents D. Endres, M. Oram, J. Schindelin, P. Foldiak - Bayesian binning beats approximate alternatives: estimating peri-stimulus time histograms S. Gerwinn, J. Macke, M. Seeger, M. Bethge - Bayesian Inference for Spiking Neuron Models with a Sparsity Prior S. Yu, B. Krishnapuram, R. Rosales, H. Steck, R. Rao - Bayesian Multi-View Learning T. Sharpee - Better than least squares: comparison of objective functions for estimating linear-nonlinear models Y. Lin, J. Chen, Y. Kim, D. Lee - Blind channel identification for speech dereverberation using l1-norm sparse learning L. Sigal, A. Balan, M. Black - Combined discriminative and generative articulated pose and non-rigid shape estimation U. Beierholm, K. Kording, L. Shams, W. Ma - Comparing Bayesian models for multisensory cue combination without mandatory integration R. Peters, L. Itti - Congruence between model and human attention reveals unique signatures of critical visual events L. Murray, A. Storkey - Continuous Time Particle Filtering for fMRI E. Neftci, E. Chicca, G. Indiveri, J. Slotine, R. Douglas - Contraction Properties of VLSI Cooperative Competitive Neural Networks of Spiking Neurons H. Chieu, W. Lee, Y. Teh - Cooled and Relaxed Survey Propagation for MRFs P. Ferrez, J. Millan - EEG-Based Brain-Computer Interaction: Improved Accuracy by Automatic Single-Trial Error Detection O. Sumer, U. Acar, A. Ihler, R. Mettu - Efficient Bayesian Inference for Dynamically Changing Graphs J. Huang, C. Guestrin, L. Guibas - Efficient Inference forDistributions on Permutations V. Singh, L. Mukherjee, J. Peng, J. Xu - Ensemble Clustering using Semidefinite Programming E. Tsang, B. Shi - Estimating disparity with confidence from energy neurons K. Ganchev, J. Graca, B. Taskar - Expectation Maximization, Posterior Constraints, and Statistical Alignment D. Wingate, S. Singh - Exponential Family Predictive Representations of State S. LAM, B. Shi - Extending position/phase-shift tuning to motion energy neurons improves velocity discrimination M. Ross, A. Cohen - GRIFT: A graphical model for inferring visual classification features from human data M. Lengyel, P. Dayan - Hippocampal Contributions to Control: The Third Way A. Christmann, I. Steinwart - How SVMs can estimate quantiles and the median M. Ahrens, M. Sahani - Inferring Elapsed Time from Stochastic Neural Processes J. Cunningham, B. Yu, K. Shenoy, M. Sahani - Inferring Neural Firing Rates from Spike Trains Using Gaussian Processes B. Blankertz, M. Kawanabe, R. Tomioka, F. Hohlefeld, V. Nikulin, K. Mueller - Invariant Common Spatial Patterns: Alleviating Nonstationarities in Brain-Computer Interfacing K. Fukumizu, A. Gretton, X. Sun, B. Schoelkopf - Kernel Measures of Conditional Dependence M. Parsana, S. Bhattacharya, C. Bhattacharyya, K. Ramakrishnan - Kernels on Attributed Pointsets with Applications P. Garrigues, B. Olshausen - Learning Horizontal Connections in a Sparse Coding Model of Natural Images N. Le Roux, Y. Bengio, P. Lamblin, M. Joliveau, B. Kegl - Learning the 2-D Topology of Images S. Mitra, G. Indiveri, S. Fusi - Learning to classify complex patterns using a VLSI network of spiking neurons V. Ferrari, A. Zisserman - Learning Visual Attributes S. Kirshner - Learning with Tree-Averaged Densities and Distributions F. Meyer, G. Stephens - Locality and low-dimensions in the prediction of natural experience from fMRI A. Sanborn, T. Griffiths - Markov Chain Monte Carlo with People J. Dauwels, F. Vialatte, T. Rutkowski, A. Cichocki - Measuring Neural Synchrony by Message Passing R. Turner, M. Sahani - Modeling Natural Sounds with Modulation Cascade Processes B. Williams, M. Toussaint, A. Storkey - Modelling motion primitives and their timing in biologically executed movements E. Bonilla, K. Chai, C. Williams - Multi-task Gaussian Process Prediction M. Bethge, P. Berens - Near-Maximum Entropy Models for Binary Neural Representations of Natural Images J. He, J. Carbonell - Nearest-Neighbor-Based Active Learning for Rare Category Detection J. Pillow, P. Latham - Neural characterization in partially observed populations of spiking neurons G. Lebanon, Y. Mao - Non-parametric Modeling of Partially Ranked Data B. Russell, A. Torralba, C. Liu, R. Fergus, W. Freeman - Object Recognition by Scene Alignment P. Berkes, R. Turner, M. Sahani - On Sparsity and Overcompleteness in Image Models Z. Barutcuoglu, P. Long, R. Servedio - One-Pass Boosting A complete schedule and abstracts of all NIPS talks and posters can be found at: http://nips.cc/Conferences/2007/Program/schedule.php?Session=Conference%20Sessions ----- From turner at gatsby.ucl.ac.uk Mon Nov 12 06:46:06 2007 From: turner at gatsby.ucl.ac.uk (Richard Turner) Date: Mon, 12 Nov 2007 11:46:06 +0000 (GMT) Subject: Connectionists: NIPS 2007 workshop, 'Beyond Simple Cells: Probabilistic models for visual cortical processing' Message-ID: ---------- FINAL PROGRAM ---------- Beyond Simple Cells: Probabilistic models for visual cortical processing NIPS 2007 workshop, December 7 Organizers: Richard Turner, Pietro Berkes, and Maneesh Sahani (Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit, UCL) Web page: http://www.gatsby.ucl.ac.uk/~berkes/docs/NIPS07 ** Poster submissions are still being accepted - see the web page ** -------------------------------------- This one day workshop comprises a series of provocative talks from world-leading computational modelers of cortical processing. A panel of expert experimentalists will critique the talks with the goal of inspiring new research directions of greater general neuroscientific interest. -------------------------------------- SPEAKERS E. Simoncelli - Building and testing multi-stage models for cortical processing O. Schwartz - Natural image statistics and contextual visual processing M. Lewicki - Learning to generalize over regions of natural images M. Black - Can Markov random fields tell us anything about visual receptive fields? A. Ng - Self-taught learning via unsupervised discovery of structure B. Olshausen - What the other 85% of V1 is doing PANEL MEMBERS: Dario Ringach, Jozsef Fiser, Andreas Tolias From jpineau at cs.mcgill.ca Mon Nov 12 21:21:20 2007 From: jpineau at cs.mcgill.ca (Joelle Pineau) Date: Mon, 12 Nov 2007 21:21:20 -0500 (EST) Subject: Connectionists: Postdoctoral Fellowship in Statistical Reinforcement Learning References: In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <54281.209.146.136.180.1194920480.squirrel@mail.cs.mcgill.ca> =============================================== Postdoctoral Fellowship in Statistical Reinforcement Learning at the University of Michigan =============================================== This position involves research on methods for constructing and evaluating sequential, clinical, decision making polices (dynamic treatment regimes) using experimental trial data. In this position you will have the opportunity to collaborate with statisticians, computer scientists and clinical scientists on the development of clinical trials, statistical methods and computational algorithms and in the analysis of data. To be considered for this position you must have a recent Ph.D. in Statistics, Computer Science, Operations Research or Electrical Engineering. This appointment will be for up to three years, with an annual renewal subject to satisfactory performance. The University of Michigan is a non-discriminatory, affirmative action employer. To apply for this position please send your CV and a statement of your interests to Susan Murphy stat-posting at umich.edu Department of Statistics University of Michigan Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1107 http://www.stat.lsa.umich.edu/~samurphy/ From alexwade at gmail.com Fri Nov 16 11:56:14 2007 From: alexwade at gmail.com (Alex Wade) Date: Fri, 16 Nov 2007 08:56:14 -0800 Subject: Connectionists: Cosyne 2008 abstract deadline reminder Message-ID: <76eaaa9a0711160856l7ac3eaees7ed79f52b67f40d4@mail.gmail.com> ===================================================================== Annual Meeting Computational and Systems Neuroscience (Cosyne) MAIN MEETING WORKSHOPS 28 Feb - 2 Mar, 2008 3 - 4 Mar, 2008 Salt Lake City, Utah Snow Bird Ski Resort, Utah http://cosyne.org ===================================================================== ABSTRACT SUBMISSION DEADLINE for the main meeting is November 30! See http://cosyne.org/wiki/Abstract_Submission08 for further information. ===================================================================== INVITED SPEAKERS: John Assad (Harvard U.) Gyuri Buzsaki (Rutgers U.) Dimitri Chklovskii (Janelia Farm, HHMI) Karl Deisseroth (Stanford U.) Mitra Hartmann (Northestern U.) Michael Hausser (UCL) David Heeger (NYU) Sabine Kastner (Princeton U.) Mitsuo Kawato (ATR) David McAlpine (UCL) Tomaso Poggio (MIT) Krishna Shenoy (Stanford U.) Wendy Suzuki (NYU) Rachel Wilson (Harvard U.) ===================================================================== PROGRAM COMMITTEE (main meeting): Matteo Carandini (chair) Dora Angelaki Mathew Diamond Allison Doupe Adrienne Fairhall Michael Hasselmo Adam Kepecs Peter Latham Klaus Obermayer Bijan Pesaran John Reynolds Bijan Pesaran John Reynolds Daniel Wolpert ORGANIZING COMMITTEE: General Chair: Eero Simoncelli (NYU) Program Chair: Matteo Carandini (Smith-Kettlewell) Workshop Chair(s): Fritz Sommer, Jascha Sohl-Dickstein (UC Berkeley) Publicity Chair: Alex Wade (Smith-Kettlewell) EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE: Tony Zador (CSHL) Alex Pouget (U Rochester) Zach Mainen (CSHL) Eero Simoncelli (NYU) -- A.R. Wade Ph.D. Associate Scientist The Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute 2318 Fillmore Street San Francisco, CA 94115 tel. 415 345 2083 fax. 309 416 6533 From m.montemurro at manchester.ac.uk Mon Nov 19 11:25:52 2007 From: m.montemurro at manchester.ac.uk (Marcelo Montemurro) Date: Mon, 19 Nov 2007 16:25:52 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: MSc programme in Computational Neuroscience, The University of Manchester, UK Message-ID: MSc programme in Computational Neuroscience at the University of Manchester Computational Neuroscience represents a new and exciting interdisciplinary field where ideas and methods from Physics, Engineering, Computer Science, Mathematics, and Biology are synergistically applied to understand brain function. The MSc in Computational Neuroscience at Manchester is designed to enable top students from numerate and biological sciences to gain the necessary tools and training to advance our knowledge about the brain. About the programme Quantitative methods are becoming increasingly important at the cutting edge of research in biology, in general, and neuroscience, in particular. Complex experimental data sets demand new mathematical methods for their analysis. Mathematical and computer modelling are powerful tools for bridging levels of investigation from molecules, cells, and tissues, through to the whole brain. You will be based in the top-rated faculty of Life Sciences at the University of Manchester, working as part of the Computational Neuroscience and Neuroinfomatics Group. The teaching staff is highly interdisciplinary with backgrounds spanning Neuroscience, Physics, Mathematics, Psychology, Biology, and Computer Science. A few fully funded studentships are available due to financial support from the UK Medical Research Council. The duration of the course is 12 months, and starts September 2008. Entry Requirements Applicants should hold (or be about to obtain) a first or upper second class honours degree, or the overseas equivalent. In certain circumstances, a lower second class honours degree supplemented with appropriate relevant work experience may be acceptable. For overseas applicants whose first language is not English the minimum English language requirement is IELTS 6.5, TOEFL 577 (paperbased), 233 (computer-based) or 90 (internet-based). Please, for further information visit, www.manchester.ac.uk/lifesciences/computationalneuroscienceandneuroinformaticsmsc or write to s.panzeri at manchester.ac.uk For matters relating the application process you can contact directly the graduate office at pg.lifesciences at manchester.ac.uk, or call +44 (0)161 275 5608. Best regards, -- Dr. Marcelo A. Montemurro Faculty of Life Sciences University of Manchester Jackson's Mill, G7 PO Box 88 Sackville St Manchester M60 1QD United Kingdom phone : +44(0)161 306 3883 fax : +44(0)161 306 3887 e-mail: m.montemurro at manchester.ac.uk From rsun at rpi.edu Fri Nov 9 14:39:16 2007 From: rsun at rpi.edu (Professor Ron Sun) Date: Fri, 9 Nov 2007 14:39:16 -0500 Subject: Connectionists: Cognitive Systems Research --- Vol.8, No.3 & 4 Message-ID: Cognitive Systems Research --- New Issues are now available: Vol.8, No.3 & 4 ===================================== * Cognitive Systems Research Volume 8, Issue 3, Pages 135-248 (September 2007) Special issues on Cognitive Modeling Edited by Danilo Fum, Fabio Del Missier and Andrea Stocco http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/issue/ 6595-2007-999919996-669004 The cognitive modeling of human behavior: Why a model is (sometimes) better than 10,000 words Pages 135-142 Danilo Fum, Fabio Del Missier and Andrea Stocco http://www.sciencedirect.com/science? _ob=GatewayURL&_method=citationSearch&_urlVersion=4&_origin=SDVIALERTASC II&_version=1&_uoikey=B6W6C-4P9SNK8-1&md5=1dc962ce3b783327ba8ca4b5eca549 4d A computational model of action resonance and its modulation by emotional stimulation Pages 143-160 Alessandro Grecucci, Richard P. Cooper and Raffaella I. Rumiati http://www.sciencedirect.com/science? _ob=GatewayURL&_method=citationSearch&_urlVersion=4&_origin=SDVIALERTASC II&_version=1&_uoikey=B6W6C-4P3DY6C-1&md5=b6dcce9323e47f8c104a80dea290f6 38 Computational modeling of individual differences in short term memory search Pages 161-173 Adam Chuderski, Zbigniew Stettner and Jaroslaw Orzechowski http://www.sciencedirect.com/science? _ob=GatewayURL&_method=citationSearch&_urlVersion=4&_origin=SDVIALERTASC II&_version=1&_uoikey=B6W6C-4P3DY6C-2&md5=f8017baa42cff6b4a49a9b7ba3ce13 93 An accumulator model of semantic interference Pages 174-181 Leendert van Maanen and Hedderik van Rijn http://www.sciencedirect.com/science? _ob=GatewayURL&_method=citationSearch&_urlVersion=4&_origin=SDVIALERTASC II&_version=1&_uoikey=B6W6C-4P3DY6C-3&md5=f726ac3bed46ac12a2f565ad37d748 77 Adaptive but non-optimal visual search behavior with highlighted displays Pages 182-191 Franklin P. Tamborello II and Michael D. Byrne http://www.sciencedirect.com/science? _ob=GatewayURL&_method=citationSearch&_urlVersion=4&_origin=SDVIALERTASC II&_version=1&_uoikey=B6W6C-4P40KV4-2&md5=458b6f713963cb574c145046badf38 63 Global vs. local information processing in visual/spatial problem solving: The case of traveling salesman problem Pages 192-207 Xiaohui Kong and Christian D. Schunn http://www.sciencedirect.com/science? _ob=GatewayURL&_method=citationSearch&_urlVersion=4&_origin=SDVIALERTASC II&_version=1&_uoikey=B6W6C-4P40KV4-1&md5=d14405e8802bbb71e89c40e4ce948a 15 A computational model of retrospective time estimation Pages 208-215 Jeronimo Dzaack, Sandra Tr?sterer, Nele Pape and Leon Urbas http://www.sciencedirect.com/science? _ob=GatewayURL&_method=citationSearch&_urlVersion=4&_origin=SDVIALERTASC II&_version=1&_uoikey=B6W6C-4P3DY6C-4&md5=fdb1a31166d39e87acc46d46c65009 91 Inhibition and young children?s performance on the Tower of London task Pages 216-226 Frank D. Baughman and Richard P. Cooper http://www.sciencedirect.com/science? _ob=GatewayURL&_method=citationSearch&_urlVersion=4&_origin=SDVIALERTASC II&_version=1&_uoikey=B6W6C-4P40KV4-3&md5=430bc6a5a1d251a5c2b20867a7366d 10 Deconstructing and reconstructing ACT-R: Exploring the architectural space Pages 227-236 Terrence C. Stewart and Robert L. West http://www.sciencedirect.com/science? _ob=GatewayURL&_method=citationSearch&_urlVersion=4&_origin=SDVIALERTASC II&_version=1&_uoikey=B6W6C-4P3DY6C-5&md5=e5481358fb91306cc88f829cbd4f84 2d Long-term symbolic learning Pages 237-247 William G. Kennedy and J. Gregory Trafton http://www.sciencedirect.com/science? _ob=GatewayURL&_method=citationSearch&_urlVersion=4&_origin=SDVIALERTASC II&_version=1&_uoikey=B6W6C-4P3DY6C-6&md5=23aa79a2bffb936c0f5a31a3958d0f 42 ==================================== * Cognitive Systems Research Volume 8, Issue 4, Pages 249-304 (December 2007) http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/issue/ 6595-2007-999919995-671850 Keeping the patient asleep and alive: Towards a computational cognitive model of disturbance management in anaesthesia Pages 249-261 K. Keogh and E.A. Sonenberg http://www.sciencedirect.com/science? _ob=GatewayURL&_method=citationSearch&_urlVersion=4&_origin=SDVIALERTASC II&_version=1&_uoikey=B6W6C-4N3GHPD-1&md5=07ecefab6e9b0114b6812792543540 61 Using TD learning to simulate working memory performance in a model of the prefrontal cortex and basal ganglia Pages 262-281 Ahmed A. Moustafa and Anthony S. Maida http://www.sciencedirect.com/science? _ob=GatewayURL&_method=citationSearch&_urlVersion=4&_origin=SDVIALERTASC II&_version=1&_uoikey=B6W6C-4N4J34D-1&md5=055113fd18a9b7c6b474f1c54b2e12 12 Computational models of inductive reasoning using a statistical analysis of a Japanese corpus Pages 282-299 Kayo Sakamoto, Asuka Terai and Masanori Nakagawa http://www.sciencedirect.com/science? _ob=GatewayURL&_method=citationSearch&_urlVersion=4&_origin=SDVIALERTASC II&_version=1&_uoikey=B6W6C-4N2KTNP-1&md5=e3c1b4722d713e6757f5261f7347da fb Review of An Interaction: Creativity, Cognition and Knowledge, Terry Dartnall (Ed.); Praeger, London, 2002, 337 pages. Pages 300-303 Richa Yadav http://www.sciencedirect.com/science? _ob=GatewayURL&_method=citationSearch&_urlVersion=4&_origin=SDVIALERTASC II&_version=1&_uoikey=B6W6C-4NJWP0R-1&md5=f46b5b994528fe1b88107ef377abb6 8d ======================================================== Professor Ron Sun Cognitive Science Department Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute 110 Eighth Street, Carnegie 302A Troy, NY 12180, USA phone: 518-276-3409 fax: 518-276-3017 email: rsun at rpi.edu web: http://www.cogsci.rpi.edu/~rsun ======================================================= From jimmy at thepublicgrid.org Sat Nov 3 11:48:58 2007 From: jimmy at thepublicgrid.org (Jimmy Secretan) Date: Sat, 03 Nov 2007 15:48:58 -0000 Subject: Connectionists: New Experiment for Neural-Inspired Evolution of Artwork Message-ID: <472C9859.6020903@thepublicgrid.org> I would like to post the following announcement to the list about a neural-inspired interactive evolution experiment we would like to announce the Connectionist community: [BEGIN ANNOUNCEMENT] Dear Colleagues, The Evolutionary Complexity Group (E-plex) (http://eplex.cs.ucf.edu) at the University of Central Florida is pleased to announce a new interactive website called Picbreeder (http://www.picbreeder.org), which is a large-scale on-line experiment in Collaborative Interactive Evolution (CIE) of artwork through neural networks. We invite the Connectionists community to visit and participate. Images on Picbreeder are rendered by kinds of neural networks called Compositional Pattern Producing Networks (CPPNs), which are in turn evolved by the NeuroEvolution of Augmenting Topologies (NEAT) algorithm. Users can select and breed the CPPNs that render the most appealing images, and publish them to the community. Most importantly, users can continue evolving others' CPPNs, encouraging a continual increase in image complexity. As a result, users have been able to evolve genuinely recognizable objects such as faces, cars, and animals, all without any a priori knowledge in the system, a novel achievement for neural-inspired methods. Please see our recent short publication on Picbreeder for more information: http://eplex.cs.ucf.edu/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=14&Itemid=28#secretan.leonardotrans07 Picbreeder: Collaborative Interactive Evolution of Images Jimmy Secretan, Nicholas Beato, David B. D'Ambrosio, Adelein Rodriguez, Adam Campbell and Kenneth O. Stanley In: Leonardo (Transactions Section) Vol. 41, No. 1 (2007) [END ANNOUNCEMENT] Thank you. Sincerely, Jimmy Secretan From marcus at idsia.ch Sun Nov 4 21:03:49 2007 From: marcus at idsia.ch (Marcus Hutter) Date: Mon, 05 Nov 2007 02:03:49 -0000 Subject: Connectionists: Machine Learning Summer School, Kioloa, Australia, 2008 Message-ID: <2baf01c81f50$191f1010$6601a8c0@crl174ml1s> Invitation to the ======================================================= MACHINE LEARNING SUMMER SCHOOL, KIOLOA, AUSTRALIA, 2008 ======================================================= Registration is now open for MLSS 2008, the 10th Machine Learning Summer School in a series beginning in 2002. It is intended for students and researchers alike, who are interested in machine learning. Its goal is to present some of the topics at the core of modern machine learning, from fundamentals to state-of-the-art practice. We would be grateful if you could distribute this email or hang out the MLSS poster at your institute. Key Information --------------- URL: http://mlss08.rsise.anu.edu.au/ Dates: Monday March 3 - Friday March 14, 2008 (2 weeks) Location: Kioloa Coastal Campus, Australian National University Deadline: February 1st 2008 Past Schools: http://www.mlss.cc Poster: http://mlss08.rsise.anu.edu.au/files/poster.pdf Email contact: mlss08 at rsise.anu.edu.au Overview -------- Machine Learning is a foundational discipline of the Information Sciences, concerned with the design and development of algorithms and techniques that allow computers to "learn". Topics will be covered in 9-10 lectures a 6 hours taught by world experts in their fields. The aim of the summer school is to cover the entire spectrum from theoretical foundations to practical applications. In addition, there will be practical "lab" sessions, where students will have the chance to implement methods for themselves. This school is suitable for all levels, both for people without previous knowledge in Machine Learning, and those wishing to broaden their expertise in this area. It will allow the participants to get in touch with international experts in this field. Exchange of students, joint publications and joint projects will result because of this collaboration. Material is directed both at outstanding participants without previous knowledge in machine learning, and at those wishing to broaden their expertise in the area; this includes PhD, Masters, and advanced undergraduate students, postdocs, academics, and IT professionals. The MLSS also provides an excellent opportunity for interaction with top researchers in a broad cross-section of machine learning disciplines. Lecture courses --------------- - Avrim Blum: Online Learning in Games - Wray Buntine: Models for Document Analysis - Tiberio Caetano: Introduction to Graphical Models - Nando De Freitas: Sampling Methods - Marcus Hutter: Foundations and Bayesian Inference - Rao Kotagiri: Data Mining - Dale Schuurmans: (Un)Supervised Learning - Alex Smola: Introduction to Kernel Methods - Scott Sanner: Reinforcement Learning - TBA: Information Retrieval and Web Search - TBA: Others (Model Selection, Neural Nets, Information Theory) Practical courses ----------------- Vishy Vishwanathan: Machine Learning Laboratory Kishor Gawande: Hands on training, the SML Toolkit TBA: Implementation of basic ML algorithms Scholarships ------------ PhD, Masters, and undergraduate students are eligible for scholarships that cover part of the registration and accommodation. Recipients will be chosen based on academic merit and financial need. Due to space constraints, we expect only to admit a fraction of all applicants. Venue ----- The summer school will be held on Kioloa Coastal Campus, 200km south of Sydney and 200km east of Canberra on the NSW south coast. The unique blend of living history and modern technology underlies the atmosphere of the Campus. Kioloa Coastal Campus has become the premier research field station on the South Coast. With a mild climate and unspoiled beach frontage, the Campus provides an ideal break from normal campus and work environments. From B.Kappen at science.ru.nl Tue Nov 6 07:48:25 2007 From: B.Kappen at science.ru.nl (Bert Kappen) Date: Tue, 6 Nov 2007 13:48:25 +0100 (CET) Subject: Connectionists: PhD positions available at Radboud University Nijmegen Message-ID: Dear all, I would like to announce two PhD positions at the Radboud University Nijmegen. Bert Kappen --------------- PhD position for "Control of Animats" (vacancy number 62.58.07) -------------- Intelligent behavior in animals and robots, such as planning, motor control and exploration of unknown territory can be modelled as delayed reward tasks, where the choice of the right actions will only be rewarded at a later time. The formal mathematical description of this problem is known as control theory or reinforcement learning. The project aims to develop efficient methods for such control problems and to apply these methods in the context of the control of animats, ie. robots (in software or hardware) that learn to execute elementary biological behaviour. ---------------- PhD student position for "Mutually adaptive Brain Computer Interface". (vacancy number 62.60.07) --------------- Research on Brain Computer Interfacing aims to use signals from the brain to control computers. Training of persons for the BCI task is complex and requires significant adaptation of the subject to the task. In the context of the Braingain project (www.nici.ru.nl/braingain/), a PhD position is available for the development of a mutually adaptive BCI system, where both subject and computer adapt simultaneously. The goal is to speed up the training process, to achieve a stronger BCI signal and to be able to control more complex tasks. The PhD student will use machine learning methods from the group of Bert Kappen and will validate the system in collaboration with the group of Peter Desain. The research group of Bert Kappen is part of the department of Biophysics of the faculty of Physics, Mathematics and Computer Science of the Radboud University Nijmegen. The department is engaged in both experimental and theoretical research in the area of neuroscience and machine learning. For more information about the research of the group see www.snn.ru.nl/nijmegen or www.snn.ru.nl/~bertk. For both positions, the candidate has a Master in physics, mathematics or computer science. The candidate has interest in machine learning methods and algorithms. The position if full-time for a period of 4 jears. Estimated maximum salary per month: eur 2500 - 3000 For more information about the position and application send an email to b.kappen at science.ru.nl. Application: You can apply for these jobs before 30-11-2007 by sending your application to: Faculteit der Natuurwetenschappen, Wiskunde en Informatica Ms. van Tiem-lagarde PO Box 9010, 6500GL NIJMEGEN,NL E-mail address: PZ at science.ru.nl When applying for this job always mention the vacancy number. -- Prof. dr. H.J. Kappen SNN Radboud University Nijmegen URL: www.snn.ru.nl/~bertk The Netherlands tel: +31 24 3614241 fax: +31 24 3541435 B.Kappen at science.ru.nl mobile: +31 6 520 78 210 From timo.honkela at hut.fi Wed Nov 7 08:37:34 2007 From: timo.honkela at hut.fi (timo.honkela@hut.fi) Date: Wed, 7 Nov 2007 15:37:34 +0200 (EET) Subject: Connectionists: AKRR'08 CFP: Adaptive Knowledge Representation and Reasoning Message-ID: FIRST CALL FOR PAPERS AKRR'08 - ADAPTIVE KNOWLEDGE REPRESENTATION AND REASONING Following the successful 2005 conference, AKRR 2008 will be organized in Finland in 17-19 September 2008 at Haikko Manor, Porvoo, 30-40 minutes from Helsinki. The conference site was elected in 2007 by Mercury International to be the best one in Finland. More information will be available at http://www.cis.hut.fi/AKRR08/ Conference site: http://www.haikko.fi/kokoukset/en_GB/presentation/ The conference is co-organized with the ESTSP'08, European Symposium on Time Series Prediction. BACKGROUND In the modern society, knowledge representation and reasoning are underlying building blocks in various kinds of information systems and networks. Knowledge representation and reasoning are also central themes in cognitive science and epistemology. Relevant questions include how do humans know, understand, anticipate, make decisions and collaborate, and, on the other hand, how to analyze, model and simulate complex phenomena in general. Relevant modeling methods include statistical machine learning, artificial neural networks, signal processing, pattern recognition and dynamical systems. AUDIENCE The aim of the AKRR'08 conference is to bring together scientists who study complex phenomena in empirical sciences and scientists who develop computational methods for dealing with complexity. From the empirical sciences, we especially welcome researchers in cognitive science, sociology, educational psychology, economics and medicine. From the methodological sciences, we welcome researchers who develop, for instance, statistical machine learning, dynamical systems theory and adaptive systems. The conference also aims to be relevant for practitioners who encounter complex phenomena continuously and who are looking for new ways to deal with challenges related to management and strategic decision making. SPECIAL THEMES * Adaptive systems in organizational theory and economic sciences * Computational wisdom, modeling emotions and decision making * New generation of semantic web: social and multimodal grounding of knowledge and understanding * Adaptive systems in medical education, research and practice * Adaptive machine translation: towards global connection TOPICS We invite novel high-quality papers that are related to the conference themes including but not limited to: Themes related to empirical sciences * Adaptive, dynamical and probabilistic models and simulations of social and societal structures and processes * Probabilistic and pattern-based reasoning on financial and economical phenomena * Non-symbolic ontologies and adaptive knowledge representation for the web * Emergent and evolutionary representations for creative and design processes * Models of natural language understanding and translation * Learning schemas and language games * Cognitive models of perceptually grounded reasoning processes * Multimodality in cognitive and artificial systems * Analysis and modeling of emotions and decision making * Relationship between individual, social and cultural development * Natural and artificial general intelligence * Analysis and development of conceptual spaces * Emerging representations in active agents * Empirical and theoretical study of practices and activities Methodological themes * Contextuality in statistical analysis and reasoning * Models of temporal processes and reasoning * Knowledge representation and reasoning in non-stationary environments * Spatial representations of knowledge * Analyses of the limitations of logic-based representations and reasoning * Hybrid systems and emergence of symbolic representations * Continuous formal systems * Dynamical systems models of knowledge * Pattern-based reasoning * Unsupervised and reinforcement learning models for knowledge acquisition and representation * Bayesian models of learning and reasoning * Emergent representations based on independent component analysis and self-organizing maps * Biologically inspired computing including artificial immune systems IMPORTANT DATES * Paper submission due: 15 February 2008 * Acceptance notification: 11 April 2008 * Deadline for early registration: 24 June 2008 * Camera-ready paper due: 23 May 2008 * Symposia and conference: 17-19 September 2008 ORGANIZERS Programme committee and conference chair Timo Honkela Helsinki University of Technology Adaptive Informatics Research Centre timo.honkela at tkk.fi Organizing committee chair Olli Simula Helsinki University of Technology Adaptive Informatics Research Centre olli.simula at tkk.fi From rsun at rpi.edu Fri Nov 9 14:33:45 2007 From: rsun at rpi.edu (Professor Ron Sun) Date: Fri, 9 Nov 2007 14:33:45 -0500 Subject: Connectionists: Cognitive Systems Research --- Vol.8, No.1 & 2 Message-ID: <3F45C6C8-D46F-4965-9BBF-F6CC5E9775E4@rpi.edu> Cognitive Systems Research --- New Issues are now available on ScienceDirect: Vol.8, No.1 & 2 * Cognitive Systems Research Volume 8, Issue 1, Pages 1-56 (March 2007) http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/issue/ 6595-2007-999919998-643419 Multi-agent models of social dynamics in children Pages 1-14 Terrence C. Stewart, Robert L. West and Robert Coplan http://www.sciencedirect.com/science? _ob=GatewayURL&_method=citationSearch&_urlVersion=4&_origin=SDVIALERTASC II&_version=1&_uoikey=B6W6C-4MD9KJS-1&md5=d9f546a628a10380e23271343c96de 21 Teleonomic functions and intrinsic intentionality: Dretske?s theory as a test case Pages 15-27 Itay Shani http://www.sciencedirect.com/science? _ob=GatewayURL&_method=citationSearch&_urlVersion=4&_origin=SDVIALERTASC II&_version=1&_uoikey=B6W6C-4KR3JNV-1&md5=8b2a8f598b0b0974333e237bf13414 b3 Glial cells for information routing? Pages 28-35 Caroline M?ller, J?rg L?cke, Junmei Zhu, Pedro M. Faustmann and Christoph von der Malsburg http://www.sciencedirect.com/science? _ob=GatewayURL&_method=citationSearch&_urlVersion=4&_origin=SDVIALERTASC II&_version=1&_uoikey=B6W6C-4KPPCNH-1&md5=bcd5ffcad53b098ebdc70c454298e0 f9 Formal analysis of trace conditioning Pages 36-47 Tibor Bosse, Catholijn M. Jonker, Sander A. Los, Leendert van der Torre and Jan Treur http://www.sciencedirect.com/science? _ob=GatewayURL&_method=citationSearch&_urlVersion=4&_origin=SDVIALERTASC II&_version=1&_uoikey=B6W6C-4MRND41-1&md5=45d052e15e5a476dfa7e1049f73a11 43 Louise Cummings, Review of Pragmatics: A Multidisciplinary Perspective, Edinburgh University Press (2005) ISBN 0-7486-1682-9 336 pp. Pages 48-52 James A. Mason http://www.sciencedirect.com/science? _ob=GatewayURL&_method=citationSearch&_urlVersion=4&_origin=SDVIALERTASC II&_version=1&_uoikey=B6W6C-4KCHD9Y-1&md5=a3675c538db56de9e6bdfab584a176 7b Ewa Dabrowska, Review of Language, Mind and Brain: Some Psychological and Neurological Constraints on Theories of Grammar, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh (2004) ISBN 0-7486-1475-3. Pages 53-56 Pritha Chandra http://www.sciencedirect.com/science? _ob=GatewayURL&_method=citationSearch&_urlVersion=4&_origin=SDVIALERTASC II&_version=1&_uoikey=B6W6C-4KCRSRJ-1&md5=afcd04ff65e1b9e2e2753fa8d73aee ad ============================= * Cognitive Systems Research Volume 8, Issue 2, Pages 57-134 (June 2007) http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/issue/ 6595-2007-999919997-649974 Temporal factorisation: A unifying principle for dynamics of the world and of mental states Pages 57-74 Jan Treur http://www.sciencedirect.com/science? _ob=GatewayURL&_method=citationSearch&_urlVersion=4&_origin=SDVIALERTASC II&_version=1&_uoikey=B6W6C-4M5WJ6X-1&md5=64c5b9b86d09e32609c2dab0eb2ac2 f9 Temporal factorisation: Realisation of mediating state properties for dynamics Pages 75-88 Jan Treur http://www.sciencedirect.com/science? _ob=GatewayURL&_method=citationSearch&_urlVersion=4&_origin=SDVIALERTASC II&_version=1&_uoikey=B6W6C-4M51FR8-1&md5=af841c2951434ac7c44fe7bfa81e2a fd Employing emotions to drive plot generation in a computer-based storyteller Pages 89-109 Rafael P?rez y P?rez http://www.sciencedirect.com/science? _ob=GatewayURL&_method=citationSearch&_urlVersion=4&_origin=SDVIALERTASC II&_version=1&_uoikey=B6W6C-4MS9R9N-1&md5=4f69f9109c674341dd5d8282c1c2c9 40 Children construct novel word meaning ad-hoc based on known words: Computational model of shape and material biases Pages 110-130 Kosuke Kurosaki and Takashi Omori http://www.sciencedirect.com/science? _ob=GatewayURL&_method=citationSearch&_urlVersion=4&_origin=SDVIALERTASC II&_version=1&_uoikey=B6W6C-4MSHY4G-1&md5=ceefc9ce78400078d773dda46da0f7 d2 Review of Symmetry, Causality, Mind, Michael Leyton; Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1992, 630 pages. Pages 131-133 Monika Krishan http://www.sciencedirect.com/science? _ob=GatewayURL&_method=citationSearch&_urlVersion=4&_origin=SDVIALERTASC II&_version=1&_uoikey=B6W6C-4MJBTXP-1&md5=e27061be7721733911e5d25c9bfe7c c1 ======================================================== Professor Ron Sun Cognitive Science Department Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute 110 Eighth Street, Carnegie 302A Troy, NY 12180, USA phone: 518-276-3409 fax: 518-276-3017 email: rsun at rpi.edu web: http://www.cogsci.rpi.edu/~rsun ======================================================= From k.gurney at sheffield.ac.uk Fri Nov 16 08:21:52 2007 From: k.gurney at sheffield.ac.uk (Kevin Gurney) Date: Fri, 16 Nov 2007 13:21:52 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: Research Associate position at The University of Sheffield, UK Message-ID: <473D9970.4070401@shef.ac.uk> This is a Research Associate post in mathematical optimization and is part of the CARMEN (Code Analysis, Repository, and Modelling for e-Neuroscience) project - www.carmen.org.uk. This is an e-Science pilot project which started in October 2006, and is funded by the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC). The post at Sheffield will focus on developing tools for automated parameter search within the context of building conductance-based neuronal models. This project links to the wider programme of computational neuroscience conducted within the Adaptive Behaviour Research Group (ABRG - www.shef.ac.uk/~abrg) and the appointee will become part of a vibrant and successful research team. While a knowledge of neuroscience is not a necessary prerequisite, the successful applicant has the opportunity to engage with a vibrant research culture within the Adaptive Behaviour Research Group (ABRG). Applicants should have an honours degree (or equivalent experience) in Mathematics, Computer Science, Engineering or related field, and should have, or be working towards, a PhD preferably in which optimization or parameter search is a key technique. The post is tenable from 1 January 2008, or as soon as possible thereafter, for two years. Ref: R05775 Closing Date: 14/12/07 Grade: 7 Salary: ?25,134 per annum -- Kevin Gurney, PhD Professor of Computational Neuroscience Adaptive Behaviour Research Group Department of Psychology, University of Sheffield, S10 2TP, UK http://www.abrg.group.shef.ac.uk/ ------------- From timmer at umd.edu Mon Nov 19 08:45:48 2007 From: timmer at umd.edu (Timmer Horiuchi) Date: Mon, 19 Nov 2007 08:45:48 -0500 Subject: Connectionists: Position Announcement - Univ. Maryland, College Park Message-ID: <4741938C.9080409@isr.umd.edu> Title: Computational Neuroscience - Tenure Track Faculty The Neuroscience and Cognitive Science program (NACS) at the University of Maryland is seeking a new tenure-track faculty member, at the assistant professor level. Computational neuroscientists working in any areas including sensory and motor physiology, analysis of control systems, and cognitive neuroscience will be considered. The successful candidate will hold a joint appointment in both the NACS Program and an academic department. The department of tenure will depend on the research interests of the faculty member and may be in Biology, Computer Science, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Hearing and Speech Sciences, Kinesiology, Linguistics, or Psychology. NACS is a tightly integrated community of scholars focused on aspects of neuroscience and cognitive science. Many faculty also enjoy highly productive research collaborations with scientists at federal agencies in the Washington DC area such as the NIH. Qualifications: An earned doctorate in a discipline relevant to the candidate?s field of teaching and research is required. Candidates who integrate theoretical with experimental research are preferred. We seek candidates with demonstrated teaching and research excellence capable of maintaining an extramurally-funded research program. NACS details at www.nacs.umd.edu. Applications: For best consideration send, by December 15, 2007, a CV, names and addresses (including emails) of three possible references, and statements of both research interests (documenting any previous extramural funding) and teaching interests to NACS Search, Neuroscience and Cognitive Science Program, 2131 Biol/Psyc Building, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742. WOMEN AND MEMBERS OF UNDER REPRESENTED MINORITIES ARE ENCOURAGED TO APPLY. THE UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND IS AN EQUAL OPPORTUNITY AFFIRMATIVE ACTION EMPLOYER. Please visit our NACS webpage at: www.nacs.umd.edu From bowlby at bu.edu Mon Nov 19 10:26:31 2007 From: bowlby at bu.edu (Brian Bowlby) Date: Mon, 19 Nov 2007 10:26:31 -0500 Subject: Connectionists: 12th ICCNS: Call for Abstracts and Confirmed Invited Speakers Message-ID: <0C34B631-A0CE-4676-B396-1F4A2D9E80F6@bu.edu> Apologies if you receive multiple copies of this email. TWELFTH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON COGNITIVE AND NEURAL SYSTEMS May 14 ? 17, 2008 Boston University 677 Beacon Street Boston, Massachusetts 02215 USA http://www.cns.bu.edu/meetings/ Sponsored by the Boston University Center for Adaptive Systems, Department of Cognitive and Neural Systems (http://www.cns.bu.edu/), and the Center of Excellence for Learning in Education, Science, and Technology (http://cns.bu.edu/CELEST) with financial support from the National Science Foundation This interdisciplinary conference is attended each year by approximately 300 people from 30 countries around the world. As in previous years, the conference will focus on solutions to the questions: HOW DOES THE BRAIN CONTROL BEHAVIOR? HOW CAN TECHNOLOGY EMULATE BIOLOGICAL INTELLIGENCE? The conference is aimed at researchers and students of computational neuroscience, cognitive science, neural networks, neuromorphic engineering, and artificial intelligence. It includes invited lectures and contributed lectures and posters by experts on the biology and technology of how the brain and other intelligent systems adapt to a changing world. The conference is particularly interested in exploring how the brain and biologically-inspired algorithms and systems in engineering and technology can learn. Single-track oral and poster sessions enable all presented work to be highly visible. Three-hour poster sessions with no conflicting events will be held on two of the conference days. Posters will be up all day, and can also be viewed during breaks in the talk schedule. CONFIRMED INVITED SPEAKERS Cynthia Breazeal (MIT Media Lab) Computational models of embodied cognition to support human-robot teamwork Gyorgy Buzsaki (Rutgers University) (Plenary Lecture) Segregation of cell assembly sequences by oscillatory synchrony Gail Carpenter (Boston University) (Plenary Lecture) Large-scale neural systems for vision and cognition Peter Dayan (University College London) The misbehaviour of value Greg DeAngelis (University of Rochester) Roles of visual area MT in depth perception Stephen Grossberg (Boston University) Cortical dynamics of attentive object recognition, scene understanding, and decision making Joy Hirsch (Columbia University) Functional specificity and cortical mechanisms that regulate emotion and cognition: What the human face tells the human brain Ranu Jung (Arizona State University) Neurotechnology for making neural circuits functional Gordon Logan (Vanderbilt University) The mysterious story of cognitive control Javier Movellan (University of California at San Diego) Developing social robots: A paradigm for the scientific study of human behavior Charan Ranganath (University of California at Davis) Relational binding in human memory John Reynolds (Salk Institute) Mapping the microcircuitry of attention: Attentional modulation varies across cell classes in visual area V4 Daniel Salzman (Columbia University) Learning about rewards and punishments in the amygdala and orbitofrontal cortex WORKSHOP ON DYNAMICS OF CORTICAL-HIPPOCAMPAL INTERACTIONS FOR MEMORY GUIDED BEHAVIOR Neil Burgess (University College London) Predictions of an interference model of grid cell firing Howard Eichenbaum (Boston University) Grid cells and place cells: Different roles in memory? Michael Hasselmo (Boston University) Oscillations, grid cells and episodic memory David Redish (University of Minnesota) Transiently prospective neural firing in CA3 at decision points Trygve Solstad (Norwegian University of Science and Technology) Spatial representations in hippocampus and entorhinal cortex David Touretzky (Carnegie-Mellon University) A spin-glass model of path integration in grid cells WORKSHOP ON COMPUTING WITH NEURAL INTERFACES Theodore Berger (University of Southern California) Bi-directional communication with the brain through biomimetic microelectronics John Donoghue (Brown University) Neural ensemble activity as a direct control signal in humans Donald Eddington (Harvard University) Cochlear implants Phil Kennedy (Neural Signals) Speech prosthesis: An analysis of single unit recordings from human cortex Krishna Shenoy (Stanford University) Title TBD John Wyatt (Boston Retinal Implant Project) Steps in the development of a retinal Implant CALL FOR ABSTRACTS Session Topics: * vision * object recognition * image understanding * neural circuit models * audition * neural system models * speech and language * mathematics of neural systems * unsupervised learning * robotics * supervised learning * hybrid systems (fuzzy, evolutionary, digital) * reinforcement and emotion * neuromorphic VLSI * sensory-motor control * industrial applications * cognition, planning, and attention * other * spatial mapping and navigation Contributed abstracts must be received, in English, by January 31, 2008. Email notification of acceptance will be provided by February 29, 2008. A meeting registration fee must accompany each Abstract. The fee will be returned if the Abstract is not accepted for presentation. Fees of accepted Abstracts will be returned on request only until April 11, 2008. Each Abstract must fit on one side of an 8.5" x 11" page with 1" margins on all sides in a single-spaced, single-column format with a font of 10 points or larger. The title, authors, affiliations, and surface and email addresses should begin each Abstract. A cover letter should include the abstract title; corresponding author and presenting author name, address, telephone, fax, and email address; requested preference for oral or poster presentation; and a first and second choice from the topics above, including whether it is biological (B) or technological (T) work [Example: first choice: vision (T); second choice: neural system models (B)]. Talks will be 15 minutes long. Posters will be displayed for a full day. Overhead, slide, and LCD computer projector facilities will be available for talks. Accepted Abstracts will be printed in the conference proceedings volume. No extended paper will be required. Four paper copies of the Abstract should be mailed to Cynthia Bradford, Boston University, CNS Department, 677 Beacon Street, Boston MA 02215 USA. Abstracts may also be submitted electronically as M/S Word files to cindy at bu.edu using the phrase ?12th ICCNS abstract submission? in the subject line. Fax submissions will not be accepted. REGISTRATION INFORMATION: Early registration is recommended using the registration form below. Student registrations must be accompanied by a letter of verification from a department chairperson or faculty/ research advisor. STUDENT TRAVEL FELLOWSHIPS: Fellowships for PhD candidates and postdoctoral fellows who do not live in the Boston area are available to help cover travel costs. The application deadline is January 31, 2008. Email notification will occur by February 29, 2008. Fellowship applications must be submitted as paper hardcopy to the abstract submission address shown above. Each application should include the applicant's CV; faculty or PhD research advisor's name, address, and email address; relevant courses and other educational data; and a list of research articles. A letter from the listed faculty or PhD advisor on institutional stationery must accompany the application and summarize how the candidate may benefit from the meeting. Fellowship applicants who also submit an Abstract need to include the registration fee payment with their Abstract submission. Fellowship checks will be distributed after the meeting. REGISTRATION FORM Twelfth International Conference on Cognitive and Neural Systems May 14?17, 2008 Boston University Department of Cognitive and Neural Systems 677 Beacon Street Boston, Massachusetts 02215 USA Fax: +1 617 353 7755 Mr/Ms/Dr/Prof:_____________________________________________________ Affiliation:_________________________________________________________ Address:__________________________________________________________ City, State, Postal Code:______________________________________________ Phone and Fax:_____________________________________________________ Email:____________________________________________________________ The registration fee includes the conference proceedings volume, a reception on Friday night, and daily coffee breaks. CHECK ONE: ( ) $95 Conference (Regular) ( ) $65 Conference (Student) METHOD OF PAYMENT (please fax or mail): [ ] Enclosed is a check made payable to "Boston University" Checks must be made payable in US dollars and issued by a US correspondent bank. Each registrant is responsible for any and all bank charges. [ ] I wish to pay by credit card (MasterCard, Visa, or Discover Card only) Name as it appears on the card:___________________________________________ Type of card: _____________________________ Expiration date:________________ Account number: _______________________________________________________ Signature:____________________________________________________________ From axel.hutt at loria.fr Wed Nov 21 13:47:25 2007 From: axel.hutt at loria.fr (Axel HUTT) Date: Wed, 21 Nov 2007 19:47:25 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: Internship in Computation Neuroscience Message-ID: <1195670845.10447.236.camel@hydrogen.loria.fr> Internship in Computational Neuroscience ---------------------------------------- in spring/summer 2008 in Nancy / France. The Internships Program is open to foreign students from partner institutions who: - have completed four to five years of university-level coursework and who would like to spend a 2- to 6-month internship with an INRIA team while continuing to prepare their home Engineering School diploma or Master degree. - are doctoral students and wish to acquire specific skills available at INRIA or enrich their curriculum by staying in a foreign research team for a short period. =============================================== Topic : Multiple types of inhibitory synapses in a neural population model =============================================== LORIA-INRIA in Nancy, France is a research unit in computer science. Part of the group activity focuses on computational neuroscience and in particular neural population models for sensory processing. An internship position is offered to study the effects of multiple time scales of synapses on the spatio-temporal activity. The model under study (Hutt et al., Network: Comp.Neur.Syst.14, 351-368 (2003)) assumes a rate-coding mechanism involving the spatial interaction of the axo-dendritic system, the population of different types of inhibitory synapses, e.g. GABAA and GABAB, and delay effects between neurons. An important application is the transition in general anaesthesia. The aim of the project is the extension of a standard neural population model to two populations of synapses, the stability study of the systems activity and the resulting statistical properties, such as the spatio-temporal correlation function and the corresponding power spectrum. The work is both analytical and numerical. A comparison of the theoretical results obtained to experimental findings are the final work step. The working language is English, but knowledge in French is advantageous. The ideal candidate should have skills in applied mathematics,especially in the analytical and numerical treatment of spatially-extended systems. -------------- For more information on the application procedure please send an email to Axel Hutt(axel.hutt at loria.fr) or go to http://www-direction.inria.fr/international/PROGRAMMES/internship/index.en.html -- Axel Hutt Laboratoire lorrain de recherche en informatique et ses applications (LORIA) ?quipe CORTEX B?timent C - C046 615, rue du Jardin Botanique 54602 Villers-l?s-Nancy Cedex France Tel.:+33 (0)3 54 95 85 86 http://www.loria.fr/~huttaxel From j.sitte at qut.edu.au Thu Nov 22 07:17:21 2007 From: j.sitte at qut.edu.au (Joaquin Sitte) Date: Thu, 22 Nov 2007 22:17:21 +1000 Subject: Connectionists: Speciai Issue: Dynamics and learning in Recurrent Neural Networks Message-ID: <01a501c82d01$a9bf1a70$501ab583@FIT10011063> Call for Papers Special issue of Advances in Artificial Neural Systems on http://www.hindawi.com/journals/aans Dynamics and Learning in Recurrent Neural Networks Advances in Artificial Neural Systems welcomes original research papers and authorative reviews for a special issue on Dynamics and Learning in Recurrent Neural Networks scheduled for publication in October 2008. Deadline for submissions: 1 April 2008. First round of review: 1 July 2008 Tentative Publication: 1 October 2008 Feedback connections are ubiquitous in natural neural system, especially within the layers of the neocortex. From mathematical models of networks of simple neural elements with feedback connections we know that these can in principle reproduce the behaviour of almost any dynamical system. These networks can exhibit from limit point to strange attractor dynamics and have been found to be able to perform useful functions such as associative memory, pattern recognition, optimization, central pattern generators and more. While feedforward neural Networks are well understood, our understanding of recurrent neural network is still rather rudimentary. This special issue of Advances in Artificial Neural System will highlight the current state of the knowledge on how to configure the connectivity of the artificial neural networks to produce a desired dynamic behaviour. In this context, the discovery of learning methods, understood as the automatic configuration driven by sensor inputs, is a primordial objective recurrent neural network research. The scope of his special issue includes discrete and continuous state networks in simulation and hardware realization. Specific topics include, but are not limited to, Attractor Networks, Cooperative-Competitive networks, Recurrent Support Vector Machines, Echo-state and Liquid-state networks, Bayesian Inference and Belief Networks, Patchy cortical networks, Spike-based plasticity in recurrent networks and neuromorphic implementations of recurrent networks. Dr. Joaquin Sitte, Associate Professor. School of Software Engineering and Data Communication Faculty of Information Technology Queensland University of Technology GPO Box 2434, Brisbane, Q 4001 Australia Phone +61 7 3138 2755 Fax +61 7 3138 1801 e-mail: j.sitte at qut.edu.au homepage http://www.fit.qut.edu.au/~sitte From wolfgang.einhaeuser at inf.ethz.ch Thu Nov 22 05:07:24 2007 From: wolfgang.einhaeuser at inf.ethz.ch (Wolfgang Einhaeuser Treyer) Date: Thu, 22 Nov 2007 11:07:24 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: 2 PhD positions in Neurophysics at the University of Marburg (Germany) Message-ID: Philipps-Universit?t Marburg The Department of Physics, Neurophysics, Group W. Einh?user is hiring two PhD students, starting on March 1, 2008, for a period of 2 years (with option for a 3rd year). Research focuses on the principles underlying the processing of natural stimuli in the human visual system. Methods include psychophysical investigation of human attention (e.g., by eye- tracking), the analysis of spatio-temporal statistics of natural scenes, theoretical models of mammalian vision and their application to machine vision. Besides a general interest in visual neuroscience and interdisciplinary work, the applicant is required to have a strong background in physics or a related quantitative discipline (CS, EE, etc.). Fundamental programming skills (e.g., Matlab, C++, or Java) are inevitable. The ideal candidate has experience in one or more of the following fields: cognitive science, visual psychophysics, computational or biological vision, and theoretical neuroscience. Formal prerequisites for admission as PhD candidate at the University of Marburg include a M.Sc. degree, Diplom or equivalent. Applicants with a B.Sc. degree can be admitted in exceptional cases, subject to additional requirements. The University of Marburg strives for an increase in the number of women in academic employment. Women are therefore especially encouraged to apply and will be preferentially considered under the condition of equal qualification. Disabled candidates are given a preference under the condition of equal qualification. Send your application documents, preferably as single pdf-file, by email to Wolfgang Einh?user (mailto: thomas at staff.uni-marburg.de) by January 15, 2008, ref.-no. fb13-0021-wmz-2007 (later applications may be considered until all positions are filled). Please include the names of up to 2 possible references. -- The official version of this job offer can be found here: German version: http://www.uni-marburg.de/personal/stellen/ oeffentlich/oeffwisstellen/fb13-0021-wmz-150108 English version: http://www.uni-marburg.de/personal/stellen/ oeffentlich/oeffwisstellen/fb13-0021-wmz-150108-englisch -- ================================================================ Wolfgang Einh?user Treyer Institute of Computational Science Phone: +41-44-63 27460 ETH Zentrum, CAB G 81 Fax: +41-44-63 21562 Universit?tstrasse 6 email: wolfgang.einhaeuser at inf.ethz.ch CH-8092 Zurich, Switzerland url: http:// www.einhaeuser.com ================================================================ From m.montemurro at manchester.ac.uk Tue Nov 27 06:15:34 2007 From: m.montemurro at manchester.ac.uk (Marcelo Montemurro) Date: Tue, 27 Nov 2007 11:15:34 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: PhD in Computational Neuroscience, The University of Manchester, UK Message-ID: Applications are invited for a PhD position at the Faculty of Life Sciences of the University of Manchester, UK, starting September 2008. The student will be based on the Computational Neuroscience and Neuroinformatics group, working on the project "Cortical information processing by Local Field Potentials and spikes". Project outline: Local Field Potentials (LFP) correspond to the lower frequency range of the extracellular signal captured by a low impedance microelectrode located sufficiently away from any individual neuron. It is believed that LFP reflect mostly the summed dendritic activity of neurons that lie within a sphere of radius 50-300?m centred at the tip of the electrode. At variance with spikes, which reflect the output of a given area, LFP are thought to be more correlated with the input to it. In most models of cortical computation it is assumed that information is mainly encoded in the action potentials fired by neurons. However, there is increasing evidence that oscillations in the extracellular electric fields (LFP) may have an important role in the encoding of information about external stimuli. For instance, LFP may encode different information to that carried by spikes, or they may provide a local time frame that can facilitate the decoding of the information carried by spikes. The main goal of this project is to understand the mechanisms of information processing and transmission by action and Local Field Potentials, using models of cortical activity and advanced data analysis. The project will involve the development of novel data analysis methods, their application to real and simulated data, and the design of large computer simulations of networks of neurons with different degrees of biophysical realism. The project is highly interdisciplinary and will draw on methods and techniques from Computational Neuroscience, Neuroinformatics, Information Theory, and Biophysics. In addition to excellent programming skills (C / Fortran and Matlab), the candidate should have basic knowledge of Neuroscience and good Physics / Mathematics background. Entry requirements: Applicants should hold (or be about to obtain) a first or upper second class honours degree, or the overseas equivalent. For applicants whose first language is not English the minimum English language requirement is IELTS 6.5, TOEFL 577 (paper-based), 233 (computer-based) or 90 (internet-based). Studentships: There are studentships available for UK or other EU nationals. All UK students and EU nationals who have studied in the UK for 3 years or more are eligible for fees and stipend. EU students who have not studied in the UK for 3 years are only eligible for fees. For those eligible, the net stipend for 2008-09 will be approximately ?12,900 for the year. Further information: For more information about he application process please contact the Graduate Office: email:pg.lifesiences at manchester.ac.uk pone: (+44) (0)161 275 5608 For matters relating the scientific project contact the project supervisor Dr. Marcelo Montemurro at m.montemurro at manchester.ac.uk Best regards, -- Dr. Marcelo A. Montemurro Faculty of Life Sciences University of Manchester Jackson's Mill, G7 PO Box 88 Sackville St Manchester M60 1QD United Kingdom phone : +44(0)161 306 3883 fax : +44(0)161 306 3887 e-mail: m.montemurro at manchester.ac.uk From D.Hardoon at cs.ucl.ac.uk Mon Nov 26 09:02:31 2007 From: D.Hardoon at cs.ucl.ac.uk (David R. Hardoon) Date: Mon, 26 Nov 2007 14:02:31 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: Connection Science Special Issue on "Music, Brain & Cognition" Message-ID: <5FA538AE-EE83-4A56-99DD-D72B9604E0D7@cs.ucl.ac.uk> Connection Science Special Issue on "Music, Brain & Cognition" Call for Papers CONNECTION SCIENCE Special Issue on MUSIC, BRAIN & COGNITION Music is one of the most widespread of human cultural activities, existing in some form in all cultures throughout the world. The definition of music as organised sound is widely accepted today but a na?ve interpretation of this definition may suggest the notion that music exists widely in the animal kingdom, from the rasping of crickets' legs to the songs of the nightingale. However, only in the case of humans does music appear to be surplus to any obvious biological purpose, while at the same time being a strongly learned phenomenon and involving significant higher order cognitive processing rather than eliciting simple hardwired responses. Until recently, the issue of musical representation had focused primarily on symbolic notation of musical information and structure, and on the representation of musical performance. Research on how we represent musical experience in the brain is emerging as a rich area of investigation thanks to ongoing advances in brain-scanning technology such as EEG and fMRI. In particular music cognition models of three phenomena are of interest: 1) Emergence of categories in music and sound perception, 2) Attention as a top-down mechanism of modulating perception, 3) Goal-directed action in sound and music generation. How can machine learning be used for simulating these processes? Graphical models, recurrent networks, clustering and visualization methods have been suggested so far. In some instances the question arises how modeling approaches from language and vision can be transferred/adapted to music. Submitted articles must not have been previously published and must not be currently submitted for publication elsewhere. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following: -Machine learning based models for learning the structure of music -Models for predicting style of performers -Analysis and models of fMRI/EEG/MEG scans from musical stimuli (as opposed to simplistic auditory stimuli) -Predicting music generated patterns in fMRI/EEG/MEG -Strategies for embedding representations of musical experience into generative music / performance systems -Methods for generative musical performance and composition -Generative music and/or performance systems based on models of brain functioning -Similar and further models for learning and analysing the structure of music -Computational models of cognitively inspired sound processing -Top down control of musical processing of pitch, onset, timbre -Models of musical memory, saliency, attention -Models of music development and learning -Computer aided sound design -Models as above, applied to other domains (e.g. speech and vision) with potential application in music Submission procedure: Manuscript should follow the standard guidelines of the Connection Science journal. Guidelines for formatting papers can be found in the Guide for Authors at http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/authors/ccosauth.asp Manuscripts should be submitted to D.Hardoon at cs.ucl.ac.uk and hpurwins at iua.upf.edu Important dates: Manuscript submission deadline: February 4, 2008 First notification: April 21, 2008 Revised manuscript submission: May 26, 2008 Notification of final decision: July 7, 2008 Final manuscript due: August 4, 2008 Publication of special issue: December, 2008 - Issue 4, Volume 20. Guest Editors: David R. Hardoon Hendrik Purwins Special Editorial Board: Klaus Obermayer Eduardo Reck-Miranda Xavier Serra John Shawe-Taylor Contact: David R. Hardoon University College London London, UK e-mail: D.Hardoon at cs.ucl.ac.uk Hendrik Purwins Universitat Pompeu Fabra Barcelona, Spain e-mail: hpurwins at iua.upf.edu Information on the Special Issue are also available at http://homepage.mac.com/davidrh/MBCworkshop07/Journal.html From gabbiani at bcm.edu Mon Nov 26 10:45:27 2007 From: gabbiani at bcm.edu (Fabrizio Gabbiani) Date: Mon, 26 Nov 2007 09:45:27 -0600 Subject: Connectionists: Training in Theoretical and Computational Neuroscience - Houston Message-ID: <474AEA17.9060107@bcm.edu> Graduate Training Program in Theoretical and Computational Neuroscience in Houston The Houston Neuroscience community has a new program in Theoretical and Computational Neuroscience based on an NIH training grant recently awarded to the Gulf Coast Consortium for Theoretical and Computational Neuroscience (GCC-TCN). This consortium consists of six research institutions, Rice University, Baylor College of Medicine, The University of Houston, The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston and M.D. Anderson Cancer Research Center. We are offering a two-year curriculum of inter-institutional courses on modeling and imaging of neural systems integrated in the Ph.D. programs of each of the participating institutions. Four graduate fellowships will be awarded each year to support trainees in their respective departments. The program seeks to recruit applicants with a strong theoretical/computational background for example, physics, chemistry, engineering, mathematics, or computer science, wishing to transition to a research career in neuroscience. Applicants should consult the GCC-TCN web site (http://cohesion.rice.edu/centersandinst/gcc/neuro.cfm) for information about participating departments and faculty members, and a list of available courses and other educational opportunities. Candidates should first apply to a specific Department/Institution. This is followed during the first year by an application for a GCC-TCN Fellowship through the GCC-TCN web site. For more information, please contact the representatives at the participating institutions listed below. Dr. Peter Saggau, Baylor College of Medicine (psaggau at bcm.edu) Dr. Fabrizio Gabbiani, Baylor College of Medicine (gabbiani at bcm.edu) Dr. Steve Cox, Rice University (cox at caam.rice.edu) Dr. Kresimir Josic, University of Houston (josic at math.uh.edu) Dr. Harel Shouval, University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (Harel.Shouval at uth.tmc.edu) Dr. Prahlad Ram, M.D. Anderson Cancer Research Center (pram at mdanderson.org) Dr. Volker Neugebauer, University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston (voneugeb at utmb.edu) -- Fabrizio Gabbiani phone: (713) 798 1849 Department of Neuroscience fax: (713) 798 3946 Baylor College of Medicine email: gabbiani at bcm.edu One Baylor Plaza, web: glab.bcm.tmc.edu Houston, TX 77030 From ted.carnevale at yale.edu Tue Nov 27 10:05:47 2007 From: ted.carnevale at yale.edu (Ted Carnevale) Date: Tue, 27 Nov 2007 10:05:47 -0500 Subject: Connectionists: NEURON 6.1.1 now available Message-ID: <474C324B.8010606@yale.edu> The latest standard release of NEURON is version 6.1.1, which is now available from http://www.neuron.yale.edu/neuron/install/install.html . This version has bug fixes, improved performance, and new features that will benefit all users. For more information see http://www.neuron.yale.edu/neuron/news/news_11_27_07.html --Ted From terry at salk.edu Tue Nov 27 20:25:36 2007 From: terry at salk.edu (Terry Sejnowski) Date: Tue, 27 Nov 2007 17:25:36 -0800 Subject: Connectionists: NEURAL COMPUTATION - December 2007 In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Neural Computation - Contents - Volume 19, Number 12 - December 1, 2007 Letters Single Neuron Computation: From Dynamical System to Feature Detector Sungho Hong, Blaise, Aguera y Arcas, Adrienne Fairhall Context Learning in the Rodent Hippocampus Marc Fuhs and David Touretzky Solution Methods for a New Class of Simple Model Neurons Mark D. Humphries and Kevin Gurney Event-Driven Simulations of Nonlinear Integrate-and-Fire Neurons Arnaud Tonnelier, Hana Belmabrouk, and Dominique Martinez Temporal Coding of Time-Varying Stimuli Maoz Shamir, Kamal Sen, and Steven H. Colburn Stochastic Dynamics of a Finite-size Spiking Neural Network Carson Chow and Hedi Soula What Is the Optimal Architecture for Visual Information Routing? Philipp Wolfrum and Christoph von der Malsburg Enhanced Sound-Perception by Widespread Onset Neuronal Responses in Auditory Cortex Osamu Hoshino Bayesian Inference Explains Perception of Unity and Ventriloquism Aftereffect: Identification of Common Sources of Audiovisual Stimuli Yoshiyuki Sato, Taro Toyoizuni, and Kazuyuki Aihara Training Pi-Sigma Network by Online Gradient Algorithm with Penalty for Small Weight Update Yan Xiong, Wei Wu, Xidai Kang, and Chao Zhang Multiorder Neurons for Evolutionary Higher-Order Clustering and Growth Kiruthika Ramanathan and Sheng-Uei Guan Multiple Almost Periodic Solutions in Nonautonomous Delayed Neural Networks Kuang-Hui Lin and Chih-Wen Shih ----- SUBSCRIPTIONS - 2008 - VOLUME 20 - 12 ISSUES Electronic only USA Canada* Others USA Canada* Student/Retired $60 $63.60 $123 $54 $57.24 Individual $110 $116.60 $173 $99 $104.94 Institution $849 $899.94 $912 $756 $801.36 * includes 6% GST MIT Press Journals, 238 Main Street, Suite 500, Cambridge, MA 02142-9902. Tel: (617) 253-2889 FAX: (617) 577-1545 journals-orders at mit.edu http://mitpressjournals.org/neuralcomp ON-LINE - http://neco.mitpress.org/ ------ From Dave_Touretzky at cs.cmu.edu Thu Nov 29 02:28:44 2007 From: Dave_Touretzky at cs.cmu.edu (Dave_Touretzky@cs.cmu.edu) Date: Thu, 29 Nov 2007 02:28:44 -0500 Subject: Connectionists: AAAI is looking for good computational neuroscience work Message-ID: <18520.1196321324@ammon.boltz.cs.cmu.edu> Fellow Connectionists: I'm on the program committee for the AAAI (Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence) Nectar track, and the organizers are looking for interesting neural network or computational neuroscience work that can be presented to the AI community. This work can already have appeared in other venues; what they care about is bringing interesting new developments to the attention of the world's best AI researchers. You can read more about the Nectar track in the call for papers below. Contact the co-chairs Regina Barzilay or Sven Koenig if you have questions. -- Dave Touretzky ================================================================ Call for Papers: AAAI-08 Nectar Program AAAI-08 will be held in Chicago from July 13-17, 2008. It will again include the Nectar track (new scientific and technical advances in research). This track aims to make the most significant AI results presented at other conferences in the last two years available to a broad AI audience. One important goal of the track is to offer researchers the opportunity to learn about areas with which they may not already be familiar. Another goal is to encourage the sort of cross-disciplinary AI work that has historically been supported by AAAI. The Nectar track will consist of papers that are based on important results that have already been published in the proceedings of at least one major conference in 2006 and 2007, as either a single paper or a series of papers. Examples of such AI conferences include AAMAS, AIIDE, ALIFE, ACL, CEC, CogSci, CP, FUZZ-IEEE, GECCO, ICAPS, ICCBR, ICML, IEEE CEC, IJCNN, ISWC, IUI, KCAP, KR, NIPS, SAT, UAI and WCCI. Examples of conferences in related fields with relevance to AI include CIKM, COLT, KDD, PODS, ICDTSIGIR, SIGGRAPH, SIGMOD, VLDB, and WWW. Papers that report on the application of AI techniques in other fields, for example bioinformatics, may also serve as the basis for Nectar papers. Authors of application papers, however, are advised that they may find the conference on Innovative Applications of AI (IAAI) a more appropriate venue for reaching the AI community since those papers can be longer and thus provide a clearer application setting in which to describe the work. Papers that have appeared in general AI conferences (such as AAAI, ECAI, IJCAI) or journals (for example, Artificial Intelligence, JAIR) cannot serve as the basis for Nectar papers since they have already been presented to the entire AI community. Submissions and Dates We solicit short submissions of up to four pages. Each submission should focus on a major result that has already been published in one or more venues as described above. A Nectar paper needs to clarify the relationship of the paper to any other AAAI-08 submissions by the authors and cannot overlap with them substantially. The Nectar paper should cite the previous publication(s) and will typically devote no more than one or two pages to summarizing the core results. The remainder of the paper should be devoted to putting the results, as well as the problem they solve, into a context that is meaningful to a wide AI audience. Nectar track papers will be presented as talks or posters at AAAI-08. The papers will also be published in the conference proceedings. Submitted papers will be reviewed according to: (1) significance of the results to the broad goals of AI, (2) potential for the results to influence research beyond their original publication venues, and (3) clarity of the presentation to AI researchers who do not have expertise in the topic described in the paper. Although papers will describe previously published results, the paper itself must be original. Authors of accepted papers will be required to transfer copyright. Papers must be received by February 19, 2008. Decisions on the acceptance of papers will be made by March 20, 2008. Additional information can be found at www.aaai.org/Conferences/AAAI/2008/aaai08nectar.php Regina Barzilay (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), Cochair Sven Koenig (University of Southern California), Cochair From risi at cs.columbia.edu Sun Nov 25 16:29:16 2007 From: risi at cs.columbia.edu (Imre Risi Kondor) Date: Sun, 25 Nov 2007 21:29:16 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: Postdoctoral training fellowship in machine learning at the Gatsby Unit, UCL, UK Message-ID: Postdoctoral Training Fellowship - Machine Learning Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit, UCL, UK The Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit invites applications for a postdoctoral training fellowship in machine learning and related areas. The Unit is especially interested in researchers working at the interface of machine learning with other mathematical sciences, such as combinatorics, optimisation, representation theory, harmonic analysis and algebraic geometry. The Unit is a centre for theoretical neuroscience and machine learning, focusing on the interpretation of neural data, population coding, perceptual processing, neural dynamics, neuromodulation, and learning. The Unit has significant interests across a range of areas in machine learning. Machine learning research is led by Yee Whye Teh and Risi Kondor. For further details of our research please see: http:// www.gatsby.ucl.ac.uk/research.html The Unit provides a unique environment in which a critical mass of theoreticians interact closely with each other and with other world- class research groups in related departments at UCL. A cross-faculty Centre for Computational Statistics and Machine Learning opened at UCL in 2006, spanning the departments of Computer Science, Statistical Science and the Gatsby Unit. The Unit's visitor and seminar programmes enable staff and students to engage with leading researchers from across the world. Candidates must have a strong analytical background and demonstrable interest and expertise in statistical machine learning. Candidates with a strong background in mathematics are preferred. Salary is competitive, based on experience and achievement. Funding for the position is available for an initial period of between one and two years. Applicants should send in pdf, plain text or Word format a CV, a statement of research interests, and the names and full contact details (including e-mail addresses) of three referees to: asstadmin at gatsby.ucl.ac.uk Applicants are directed to further particulars about the position available from: http://www.gatsby.ucl.ac.uk/vacancies/. Academic enquiries can be directed to: risi at gatsby.ucl.ac.uk The closing date for applications is 20 January 2008. From kenji at ieee.org Sun Nov 25 18:51:24 2007 From: kenji at ieee.org (Kenji Suzuki) Date: Mon, 26 Nov 2007 08:51:24 +0900 Subject: Connectionists: Research Assistant Positions (PhD Studentships) Message-ID: <003201c82fbe$16668b90$4333a2b0$@org> * We apologize if you receive multiple copies of this announcement. Research Assistant Positions (PhD Studentships) Cybernics Program, University of Tsukuba Tsukuba, Japan Ref: CYB03/R0711 http://www.cybernics.tsukuba.ac.jp/jobs/CYB03R0711.html Applications are invited for research assistant positions (fully-funded PhD studentships), which cover tuition fees and living costs, who have (or expect to obtain) a Master's degree or equivalent in a relevant subject. We offer a supportive environment for individuals to work towards PhD, DEng or DMedSci qualifications. The successful candidates should be keen on their assignments, attend to their academic duties. These studentships provide students with the opportunity to work on a Cybernics research project as a research assistant. These positions are available for duration of three years. The successful candidates can be formally admitted to the PhD program, if s/he meets the University admission requirements to study for a PhD. Note that the PhD supervisor must be a faculty member related to Cybernics Program, which is listed at the website. (http://www.cybernics.tsukuba.ac.jp/members.html) Students should have research interests in the field of Cybernics Program, which is a new domain of interdisciplinary academic field of human-assistive technology to enhance, strengthen, and support human's cognitive and physical functions, which challenges to integrate and harmonize humans and robots (RT: robotics technology) with the basis of information technology (IT). This challenging program will help you to develop practical and experimental skills in your chosen field. The three primary research areas are: (i) Cybernoid: robot suits, cybernic limb and hand, implanted cybernic system, subjective cognition computing, virtual human-body kernel. (ii) Next-generation interface: brain-computer interface, somato-sensory media, humanoid, medical interface, ubiquitous sensing interface, intelligent robots. (iii) Management technology for next-generation advanced systems: network security, new-generation risk management, cognitive engineering, ethical, sociological, and conceptual readiness. Please note that these studentships are available to all potential applicants and not restricted to nationals. The successful candidate must be able to start the PhD on the 1st April 2008. Interested applicants are encouraged to apply. Please complete an application form which can be downloaded from the following web site. http://www.cybernics.tsukuba.ac.jp/jobs/CYB03R0711.html Please return your application by email, preferably in PDF format, to jobs.ra at cybernics.tsukuba.ac.jp. You should include the ref. number you are applying for in the header of your e-mail, or standard mail envelope. For informal inquiries please contact the above address on email jobs.ra at cybernics.tsukuba.ac.jp. Otherwise, if you have already decided on a research lab, try making direct contact with the faculty member (by e-mail). Tsukuba is a university and science city, located about 60 kilometers, about 45 minutes by train, or 1 hour by car, northeast of central Tokyo. Over 50 national and independently administered research organizations are concentrated in the Tsukuba Science City district, which is centered on the university. Application deadline: December 10th, 2007. --- Kenji Suzuki kenji at ieee.org University of Tsukuba, Japan http://www.iit.tsukuba.ac.jp/~kenji/ From s.klinke at usyd.edu.au Tue Nov 27 00:20:38 2007 From: s.klinke at usyd.edu.au (Sandra Klinke) Date: Tue, 27 Nov 2007 16:20:38 +1100 Subject: Connectionists: Lecturer/Senior Lecturer in Biomedical Physics - The University of Sydney Message-ID: <000f01c830b5$3f0adef0$b60fa8c0@hrx.com.au> Lecturer/Senior Lecturer in Biomedical Physics School of Physics/Faculty of Medicine The School of Physics and Faculty of Medicine wish to make a continuing academic appointment in the area of biomedical physics of the brain at the level of Lecturer (Level B) or Senior Lecturer (Level C). In the last decade, the School of Physics and the Faculty of Medicine have established a strong program in quantitative modeling of brain dynamics and neural activity. The research program involves collaborations with local hospitals, industry, and international teams, and covers brain dynamics ranging from microscopic neural activity to whole-brain phenomena, measurement effects, and imaging. The appointee will contribute to teaching biological and biomedical physics at the undergraduate and postgraduate level, as well as general physics teaching up to Honors level. The appointee will be expected to have a strong involvement in supervising postgraduate students and Honors research projects in brain modeling and related fields in biomedical physics, with an emphasis on joint projects with students and researchers from the Faculty of Medicine. The selection criteria which the successful applicant will satisfy include a PhD or equivalent qualification in physics, biomedical physics, theoretical or computational neuroscience, biomedical engineering, applied mathematics, or a closely related field, biological physics research interests that strengthen current programs, a strong relevant publication record and experience in tertiary level teaching. Other essential requirements include the ability to communicate and liaise effectively and, for the senior level of appointment, ability to attract research support, undertake administrative responsibilities, and provide leadership. The full set of selection criteria can be viewed by clicking on ?position description preview?. This is a full-time permanent position, subject to the completion of a satisfactory probation period for new appointees. Membership of a University approved superannuation scheme is a condition of employment for new appointees. Start-up funds to support the position will be negotiated. The University will support any necessary visa application by the successful candidate. All applications must be completed online by visiting the website http://positions.usyd.edu.au and searching for Reference Number 100968. Applicants should indicate the level of appointment (Lecturer or Senior Lecturer) for which they wish to be considered. The selection criteria may be viewed by clicking on ?position description preview?. To assist the selection process, applicants must address each of the essential and desirable criteria separately, in a cover letter to be uploaded as a separate document (instead of completing responses in the boxes below each selection criteria). Applicants must also attach a CV including a list of publications and the names and contact details of three referees, and must also arrange for their three referees to send their letters of recommendation directly to k.royle at usyd.edu.au by the closing date. For specific information about the position, please contact Professor Peter Robinson on +61 2 9351 3779 or email: robinson at physics.usyd.edu.au or the Head of School, Associate Professor Anne Green on +61 2 9351 2537 or email: hos at physics.usyd.edu.au. General enquiries may be directed to Fabrice No?l on +61 2 9036 7295 or email f.noel at usyd.edu.au Level B Remuneration package: AUD 83,363 - 98,993 p.a. (which includes a base salary Lecturer level AUD 70,443 - 83,651 p.a., leave loading and up to 17% employer?s contribution to superannuation) Level C Remuneration package: AUD 102,118 - 117,642 p.a. (which includes a base salary Senior Lecturer level AUD 86,291 - 99,499 p.a., leave loading and up to 17% employer?s contribution to superannuation) Closing date: 12.December.2007 From ralf.steinberger at jrc.it Wed Nov 28 08:53:19 2007 From: ralf.steinberger at jrc.it (Ralf Steinberger) Date: Wed, 28 Nov 2007 14:53:19 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: DGT-TM - Translation Memory for 231 language pairs available for distribution Message-ID: <00ae01c831c6$08779740$d947bf8b@IPSC.TLD> Apologies for cross-postings. This dataset may be of interest to people and organisations working on Statistical Machine Translation and other multilingual Machine Learning applications. DGT-TM Translation Memory Freely available 22 languages 231 language pairs Format: TMX version 1 http://langtech.jrc.it/DGT-TM.html The European Commission's Directorate General for Translation (DGT) and the Joint Research Centre (JRC) have made available a multilingual Translation Memory (sentences and their translations, in standard TMX format) for the 22 official European Union languages Bulgarian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, German, Greek, Finnish, French, Hungarian, Italian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Slovak, Slovene, Spanish and Swedish. This release follows the public release - in May 2006 - of the JRC-Acquis multilingual parallel corpus with sentence alignment for 231 language pairs and a total size of over 1 Billion words. The data releases of DGT and JRC are in line with the general effort of the European Commission to support multilingualism, language diversity and the re-use of Commission information. The Translation Memory contains most, but not all of the Acquis Communautaire, which is the entire body of European legislation, including all the treaties, regulations and directives adopted by the European Union (EU) and the rulings of the European Court of Justice. Since each new country joining the EU is required to accept the whole Acquis Communautaire, this body of legislation is translated into 22 official EU languages. For the 23rd official EU language, Irish, the Acquis is not translated on a regular basis. A translation memory is a collection of small text segments and their translation. These segments can be sentences or sentence parts. Translation memories are used to support translators by ensuring that pieces of text that have already been translated do not need to be translated again. Both translation memories and parallel texts are an important linguistic resource that can be used for a variety of purposes, including: * training automatic systems for Statistical Machine Translation (SMT); * producing monolingual or multilingual lexical and semantic resources such as dictionaries and ontologies; * training and testing multilingual information extraction software; * checking translation consistency automatically; * testing and benchmarking alignment software (for sentences, words, etc.). * For usage conditions, details regarding the difference between DGT-TM and the JRC-Acquis, size information, downloading instructions, etc. go to http://langtech.jrc.it/DGT-TM.html. Achim Blatt Directorate General for Translation (DGT) Unit DGT.R.3 Informatics ( http://ec.europa.eu/dgs/translation/) Ralf Steinberger European Commission - Joint Research Centre (JRC) IPSC - SeS - Language Technology ( http://langtech.jrc.it) The JRC's Language Technology group specialises in the development of highly multilingual text analysis tools and in cross-lingual applications. Many applications are accessible online, e.g.: . NewsExplorer: multilingual news aggregation and analysis (19 languages); allows to navigate the news over time and across languages; trend analysis; collects information about people from the news; social network detection. . NewsBrief: breaking news detection and display of the very latest thematic news from around the world; email alerting (22+ languages). . MedISys Medical Information System: latest health-related news from around the world according to themes and diseases (22+ languages). From zoubin at eng.cam.ac.uk Thu Nov 29 18:13:20 2007 From: zoubin at eng.cam.ac.uk (Zoubin Ghahramani) Date: Thu, 29 Nov 2007 23:13:20 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: JOB: Two Postdoc Positions in Machine Learning at Cambridge University Message-ID: <914F5B3A-A578-4909-AD07-D0AC2B5C7A18@eng.cam.ac.uk> ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------ UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE DEPARTMENT OF ENGINEERING Two Postdoctoral Research Associate Positions in MACHINE LEARNING We are seeking two highly creative and motivated postdoctoral Research Associates to join the Machine Learning Group (http:// mlg.eng.cam.ac.uk) in the Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge, UK. The research areas for the two positions are: 1. Non-parametric Bayesian methods, approximate inference, and Bioinformatics Working with Prof Zoubin Ghahramani, Prof David Wild (Bioinformatics, Warwick) and Dr Jim Griffin (Statistics, Kent). The successful candidate should have a Ph.D. in a relevant quantitative field (e.g. Computer Science, Statistics, Engineering), a strong publication record in machine learning and Bayesian statistics and a strong interest in Bioinformatics. A background in MCMC methods, inference algorithms and nonparametric Bayesian methods is also desirable. The appointment is for one year initially (renewable) starting March 2008 or as soon as possible thereafter. 2. Graphical Models for Relational Data Working with Prof Zoubin Ghahramani and Dr Ricardo Silva (Statistics, Cambridge). The successful candidate should have a Ph.D. in a relevant quantitative field (e.g. Computer Science, Statistics, Engineering) and a strong publication record in machine learning, graphical models and Bayesian statistics. The appointment is for one year initially (renewable) starting February 2008 or soon thereafter. Both appointments are funded by the EPSRC, UK. Salary is in the range ?25,134 - ?32,796 p.a. Further details and an application form may be obtained from: http://learning.eng.cam.ac.uk/zoubin/ postdocs08.html. Applications must be sent by email to Ms Deborah Wade, dlw39 at cam.ac.uk, and must include a brief letter of application, a CV including a list of publications, and names and email addresses of 2-3 referees. Closing date for applications is ** Jan 15th, 2008. ** If you are attending the NIPS 2007 conference please feel free to contact Zoubin Ghahramani about these positions at the conference. The University is committed to equality of opportunity ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------ Zoubin Ghahramani Professor of Information Engineering University of Cambridge http://learning.eng.cam.ac.uk/zoubin/ From agutierrez at el.ub.es Fri Nov 30 05:17:30 2007 From: agutierrez at el.ub.es (Agustin Gutierrez Galvez) Date: Fri, 30 Nov 2007 11:17:30 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: Post-doctoral position at the University of Barcelona Message-ID: The Intelligent Signal Processing group at the University of Barcelona is looking for a Post-doctoral researcher to work in the area of biologically inspired signal processing for the following 3 years. This position will be funded through the FP7 project NEUROCHEM, which involves 9 European Universities and research centres coordinated by the University of Barcelona. Research The postdoctoral researcher will conduct research in the area of biologically inspired processing mechanisms applied to machine olfaction. The study and modelling of the olfactory system can provide new mechanisms to process the chemical information provided by a matrix of non-specific gas sensors. Requirements Due to the interdisciplinary nature of the research to be conducted, candidates of multiple backgrounds will be considered, including Signal processing, chemometrics, neural networks, neural computation, and computational neuroscience. A perfect candidate for this position would be familiar with all this subjects. Good command of English is required. Funding The position will be funded for 3 years with a salary between 24,000 and 32,000 euros per year. The starting date of the project is 1st of January, 2008. Group The Intelligent Signal Processing (ISP) group at the Universitat de Barcelona is currently composed by 10 members: 2 associate professors, 1 assistant professor, 1 postdoctoral scholar, 6 PhD students. Four additional associate professors cooperate in a regular basis with the ISP group (http://isp.el.ub.es). Application Send a CV and a short list of research interests to Dr. Agust?n Gutierrez (agutierrez at el.ub.es) or Dr. Santiago Marco (santi at el.ub.es). From alberto at cs.rhul.ac.uk Fri Nov 30 18:07:03 2007 From: alberto at cs.rhul.ac.uk (Alberto Paccanaro) Date: Fri, 30 Nov 2007 23:07:03 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: 2 postdoctoral positions in Machine Learning and Computational Biology at Royal Holloway University of London Message-ID: <47509797.3040605@cs.rhul.ac.uk> Applications are invited for two postdoctoral positions at the Department of Computer Science of Royal Holloway, University of London. The postdocs will work with Alberto Paccanaro on developing novel approaches to protein function prediction. Candidates should have a Ph.D. in a relevant quantitative field (e.g. Computer Science, Statistics, Engineering), and a strong background in machine learning. An interest in graph-based semi-supervised learning methods would be an asset for these positions. The successful candidates will have the opportunity to collaborate with several faculty members in the School of Biological Sciences at Royal Holloway, including: Laci Bogre, Alessandra Devoto, Peter Bramley, Paul Fraser, Enrique Lopez and Paul Devlin. The posts are therefore ideal for someone with a computer science or maths background who is looking to move into computational biology. The Department of Computer Science at Royal Holloway has a leading position in the study of theory and practice of machine learning and in particular the development of the Support Vector learning technique and other kernel-based techniques. The Department is located on Royal Holloway's pleasant campus (see http://www.rhul.ac.uk/), in Egham, close to London. The positions are for 3 years, beginning in the Spring or Summer 2008. The starting salary will be of 33,974 GBP p.a. (about 70,330 USD), with annual increments. Both positions are funded by the BBSRC, UK. Applicants should send a CV including a list of publications, a statement of research interests, and names and contact information of 3 referees electronically to alberto at cs.rhul.ac.uk If you wish to discuss details of the position, please contact Alberto Paccanaro at the same address. Alberto will also be available to meet at the NIPS conference next week. -- ===================================== Alberto Paccanaro Department of Computer Science Royal Holloway, University of London EGHAM, TW20 0EX UK Phone: +44 1784 414239 Fax: +44 1784 439786 Homepage: www.cs.rhul.ac.uk/~alberto