Connectionists: Turing Centenary Research Competition - Call for Proposals

[S Barry Cooper]

                THE TURING CENTENARY RESEARCH PROJECT:
                   MIND, MECHANISM AND MATHEMATICS

             Research Fellowship and Scholar Competition
     http://www.mathcomp.leeds.ac.uk/turing2012/give-page.php?408
               Submission deadline - December 16, 2011

More than any other figure, Turing has left a coherent scientific agenda
related to many of the 'Big Questions' concerning the relationship between
the human mind, mechanism in nature, and the mathematics required to
clarify and answer these questions. The very breadth and fundamental
nature of Turing's impact makes the centenary celebration a hugely
opportune period in which to reassert the role of basic thinking in
relation to deep and intractable problems facing science.

'The Turing Centenary Research Project - Mind, Mechanism and Mathematics',
supported by a major grant from the John Templeton Foundation, arises from
the above-mentioned scientific agenda, and is aimed at researchers still
within ten years of receiving their Ph.D. The participants in the research
project will be the winners of the 'Mind, Mechanism and Mathematics'
competition, designed to provide significant funding support for eight
young researchers. Five of the winners will become JTF 'Turing Research
Fellows' with an award of £75,000 each; and awards of £45,000 will be for
JTF 'Turing Research Scholars' in the 16 to 25 age-group.

The competition is organised in conjunction with the Turing Centenary
Celebration, to be held June 22-25, 2012, at the Manchester City Hall and
the University of Manchester. The award winners will be duly honoured on
the June 23, 2012 centenary of Turing's birth.

Further details:

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Honorary Chairs: Rodney Brooks and Sir Roger Penrose

Submission deadline - December 16, 2011
Award Notification - March 31, 2012
Award Ceremony - Turing Centenary Day, June 23, 2012
Commencement of the research project - July 1, 2012

Proposals will be judged relative to four research themes:

Chair of the Judges: S Barry Cooper (Leeds)

The Judges for Research Theme 1 (The Mathematics of Emergence: The
Mysteries of Morphogenesis):

Luca Cardelli (Microsoft Research, Cambridge)
Stuart Kauffman (Vermont/Santa Fe)
Cris Moore (New Mexico/Santa Fe)

The Judges for Research Theme 2 (Possibility of Building a Brain:
Intelligent Machines, Practice and Theory):

Luciano Floridi (Oxford/Hertfordshire)
Barbara Grosz (Harvard)
Aaron Sloman (Birmingham)

The Judges for Research Theme 3 (Nature of Information: Complexity,
Randomness, Hiddenness of Information):

Eric Allender (Rutgers)
Rodney Downey (Wellington)
Manindra Agrawal (Kanpur)

The Judges for Research Theme 4 (How should we compute? New Models of
Logic and Computation):

Samson Abramsky (Oxford)
Gordon Plotkin (Edinburgh)
Robert I. Soare (Chicago)

Proposals should be made via the EasyChair submission page at:

http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=turingresearch2012

For further details, see:

http://www.mathcomp.leeds.ac.uk/turing2012/give-page.php?408

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 ALAN TURING YEAR                           http://www.turingcentenary.eu
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 Prof S Barry Cooper      Tel: UK: (0113) 343 5165, Int: +44 113 343 5165
 School of Mathematics    Fax: UK: (0113) 343 5090,  Int: +44 113 3435090
 University of Leeds      Email: pmt6sbc at leeds.ac.uk, Mobile: 07590602104
 Leeds LS2 9JT            Home tel: (0113) 278 2586, Int: +44 113 2782586
 U.K.                     WWW: http://www.amsta.leeds.ac.uk/~pmt6sbc
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