Connectionists: Deadline Extended to March 7th: 2010 Telluride Neuromorphic Cognition Engineering Workshop Announcement

Mon Mar 1 00:03:25 EST 2010

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NEUROMORPHIC COGNITION ENGINEERING WORKSHOP
www.ine-web.org

Sunday June 27th - Saturday July 17th, 2010, Telluride, Colorado

Directors:
Ralph Etienne-Cummings, Johns Hopkins University
Timothy Horiuchi, University of Maryland, College Park
Tobi Delbruck, Institute for Neuroinformatics, Zurich

2010 Topic Area Leaders:
Ernst Niebur & Malcolm Slaney - Attention and Selection
Jorg Conradt & Matt Cook – Spike-based Robotics/Navigation in Spikes
Bert Shi & Patrick Kanold – Multimodal Sensory Fusion/Self 0rganization
John Harris & Shih-Chii Liu– Spike-based Computation
Chuck Higgins & Justin Sanchez – Brain-Machine Interfacing
Ralph Etienne-Cummings & Paul Hasler – Education/Tutorials/Methods
Terry Sejnowski – Computational Neuroscience (mini-workshop)

Workshop Advisory Board:
Andreas ANDREOU (The Johns Hopkins University)
Andre van SCHAIK (University of Sydney)
Avis COHEN (University of Maryland)
Barbara SHINN-CUNNINGHAM (Boston University)
Giacomo INDIVERI (Institute of Neuroinformatics, UNI/ETH Zurich,
Switzerland)
Jonathan TAPSON (University of Cape Town)
Rodney DOUGLAS (Institute of Neuroinformatics, UNI/ETH Zurich, Switzerland)
Shihab SHAMMA (University of Maryland)

We invite applications for a three-week summer workshop that will be
held in Telluride, Colorado from Sunday June 27th - Saturday July 17th,
2010. The application deadline is *Monday, March 1st, but extended to 
Sunday March 7th, 2010* and application instructions are described at 
the bottom of this document.

The 2010 Workshop and Summer School on Neuromorphic Engineering is
sponsored by the National Science Foundation, Institute of Neuromorphic
Engineering, Air Force Office of Scientific Research, Institute for
Neuroinformatics - University and ETH Zurich, Georgia Institute of
Technology, University of Maryland - College Park, Johns Hopkins
University, Boston University, University of Sydney, and the Salk
Institute.

Previous year workshop can be found at:
http://ine-web.org/workshops/workshops-overview/index.html and last
year's wiki is https://neuromorphs.net/ws2009/ .

GOALS:

Neuromorphic engineers design and fabricate artificial neural systems
whose organizing principles are based on those of biological nervous
systems. Over the past 13 years, this research community has focused on
the understanding of low-level sensory processing and systems
infrastructure; efforts are now expanding to apply this knowledge and
infrastructure to addressing higher-level problems in perception,
cognition, and learning. In this 3-week intensive workshop and through
the Institute for Neuromorphic Engineering (INE), the mission is to
promote interaction between senior and junior researchers; to educate new
members of the community; to introduce new enabling fields and
applications to the community; to promote on-going collaborative
activities emerging from the Workshop, and to promote a self-sustaining
research field.

FORMAT:

The three week summer workshop will include background lectures on
systems and cognitive neuroscience (in particular sensory processing,
learning and memory, motor systems and attention), practical tutorials
on analog VLSI design, mobile robots, hands-on projects, and special
interest groups. Participants are required to take part and possibly
complete at least one of the projects proposed. They are furthermore
encouraged to become involved in as many of the other activities
proposed as interest and time allow. There will be two lectures in the
morning that cover issues that are important to the community in
general. Because of the diverse range of backgrounds among the
participants, some of these lectures will be tutorials, rather than
detailed reports of current research. These lectures will be given by
invited speakers. Projects and interest groups meet in the late
afternoons, and after dinner. In the early afternoon there will be
tutorials on a wide spectrum of topics, including analog VLSI, mobile
robotics, auditory systems, central-pattern-generators, selective
attention mechanisms, cognitive systems, etc.

LOCATION AND ARRANGEMENTS:

The summer school will take place in the small town of Telluride, 9000
feet high in Southwest Colorado, about 6 hours drive away from Denver
(350 miles). Great Lakes Aviation and America West Express airlines
provide daily flights directly into Telluride. All facilities within the
beautifully renovated public school building are fully accessible to
participants with disabilities. Participants will be housed in ski
condominiums, within walking distance of the school. Participants are
expected to share condominiums.

The workshop is intended to be very informal and hands-on. Participants
are not required to have had previous experience in analog VLSI circuit
design, computational or machine vision, systems level neurophysiology
or modeling the brain at the systems level. However, we strongly
encourage active researchers with relevant backgrounds from academia,
industry and national laboratories to apply, in particular if they are
prepared to work on specific projects, talk about their own work or
bring demonstrations to Telluride (e.g. robots, chips, software).
Wireless internet access will be provided. Technical staff present
throughout the workshops will assist with software and hardware issues.
We will have a network of PCs running LINUX and Microsoft Windows for
the workshop projects. We encourage participants to bring along their
personal laptop.

No cars are required. Given the small size of the town, we recommend
that you do not rent a car. Bring hiking boots, warm clothes, rain gear,
and a backpack, since Telluride is surrounded by beautiful mountains.

Unless otherwise arranged with one of the organizers, we expect
participants to stay for the entire duration of this three week workshop.

------ FINANCIAL ARRANGEMENTS: ------

Notification of acceptances will be mailed out around mid March 2009.
The Workshop covers all your accommodations and facilities costs. You
are responsible for your own travel to the Workshop. For expenses not
covered by federal funds, a Workshop registration fee is required. The
fee is $550 per participant, however, due to the difference in travel
cost, we offer a discount to non-US participants. European registration
fees will be reduced to $300; non-US/non-European registration fees will
be reduced to $150. The cost of a shared condominium will be covered for
all academic participants but upgrades to a private room will cost extra.
Participants from National Laboratories and Industry are expected to pay
for these condominiums.

------ HOW TO APPLY: -------

Applicants should be at the level of graduate students or above (i.e.
postdoctoral fellows, faculty, research and engineering staff and the
equivalent positions in industry and national laboratories). We actively
encourage women and minority candidates to apply.

Anyone interested in proposing or discussing specific projects should
contact the
appropriate topic leaders directly.

The application website is (after January 1st, 2010):
http://ine-web.org/telluride-conference-2010/apply-info

Application information needed:

* First name, Last name, Affiliation, valid e-mail address.
* Curriculum Vitae (a short version, please).
* One page summary of background and interests relevant to the workshop,
   including possible ideas for workshop projects.
   Please indicate which topic areas you would most likely join.
* Two letters of recommendation (uploaded directly by references).

The application deadline is March 1, 2010:  Extended to March 7th, 2010
Applicants will be notified by e-mail.

1 January, 2010 - Applications accepted on website
1 March, 2010 - Applications Due:  Extended to March 7th, 2010.
mid-March - Notification of Acceptance

(v8-28.2.2010)

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Ralph Etienne-Cummings
Professor
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

105 Barton Hall/3400 N. Charles St.		
Johns Hopkins University			
Baltimore, MD 21218				
Email:  retienne at jhu.edu			E
URL:  http://etienne.ece.jhu.edu/~etienne		

Tel:  410 - 516 - 3494				
Fax:  410 - 516 - 5566