Connectionists: NSF Workshop Report on the Science and Engineering of Learning

[Terry Sejnowski]

http://www.cnl.salk.edu/Media/NSFWorkshopReport.v4.pdf

Final Workshop Report:
Future Challenges for the Science and Engineering of Learning

July 23-25, 2007
National Science Foundation

Organizers:
Rodney Douglas - E. T. H. and University of Zurich
Terry Sejnowski - Salk Institute and University of California at San Diego

Executive Summary:
This document reports on the workshop "Future Challenges for the Science and Engineering of
Learning" held at the National Science Foundation Headquarters in Arlington Virginia on July
23-25, 2007. The goal of the workshop was to explore research opportunities in the broad
domain of the Science and Engineering of Learning, and to provide NSF with this Report
identifying important open questions. It is anticipated that this Report will to be used to
encourage new research directions, particularly in the context of the NSF Science of Learning
Centers (SLCs), and also to spur new technological developments. The workshop was attended
by 20 leading international researchers. Half of the researchers at the workshops were from SLCs
and the other half were experts in neuromorphic engineering and machine learning. The format
of the meeting was designed to encourage open discussion. There were only relatively brief
formal presentations. The most important outcome was a detailed set of open questions in the
domains of both biological learning and machine learning. We also identified a set of common
issues indicating that there is a growing convergence between these two previously separate
domains so that work invested there will benefit our understanding of learning in both man and
machine. In this summary we outline a few of these important questions.

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