From jpezaris at gmail.com Thu Mar 1 17:49:27 2012 From: jpezaris at gmail.com (John Pezaris) Date: Thu, 1 Mar 2012 17:49:27 -0500 Subject: Connectionists: AREADNE 2012 -- 2nd Call for Abstracts Message-ID: AREADNE 2012 Research in Encoding and Decoding of Neural Ensembles Nomikos Conference Center, Santorini, Greece 21-24 June 2012 http://www.areadne.org info at areadne.org >>> SECOND CALL FOR ABSTRACTS <<< We are please to announce solicitation of abstracts for poster presentation at AREADNE 2012, 21-24 June 2012, our fourth meeting to be held at the Nomikos Conference Centre in Santorini, Greece. Continuing with the same highly successful format, AREADNE 2012 will bring scientific leaders from around the world to present their theoretical and experimental work on the functioning of neuronal ensembles. The meeting will provide an informal yet spectacular setting in which attendees can discuss their recent ideas and discoveries, with a relaxed pace that emphasizes interaction. Please see the Call for Abstracts for additional details, including links for templates, at http://areadne.org/call-for-abstracts.html Submissions are due by 14 March 2012; notifications will be provided by 11 April 2012. We strongly encourage potential attendees to submit an abstract as poster presenters have registration priority. For information about the conference, please refer to the main web page http://areadne.org or send email to us at info at areadne.org. We hope to see you in Santorini! -- Dr. J. S. Pezaris AREADNE 2012 Co-Chair Massachusetts General Hospital 55 Fruit Street Boston, MA 02114, USA john at areadne.org From remi.munos at inria.fr Thu Mar 1 07:32:17 2012 From: remi.munos at inria.fr (=?iso-8859-1?q?R=E9mi_Munos?=) Date: Thu, 1 Mar 2012 13:32:17 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: Open postdoc position on Reinforcement Learning and bandits for BCI Message-ID: <201203011332.18099.remi.munos@inria.fr> *** Subject *** Reinforcement Learning and multi-armed bandits for improved Brain Computer Interfaces *** Description of the research *** Brain Computer Interfaces (BCI) provide a direct communication channel from the brain to a computer, bypassing traditional interfaces such as keyboard or mouse, and also providing a feedback to the user, through a sensory modality (visual, auditory or haptic). A target application of BCI is to restore mobility or autonomy to severely disabled patients, but more generally BCI opens up many new opportunities for better understanding the brain at work, for enhancing Human Computer Interaction, and for developing new therapies for mental illnesses. In BCI, new modes of perception and interaction come into play, and a new user must learn to operate a BCI, as infants learn to explore their sensorimotor system: central to BCI operation are the notions of feedback and reward. The goal of the research is to study the co-adaptation between a user and a BCI system in the course of training and operation. BCI will be considered under a joint perspective: the user's and the system's. From the user's brain activity, features must be extracted, and translated into commands to drive the BCI system. >From the point of view of the system, it is important to devise adaptive learning strategies, because the brain activity is user dependent and not stable in time. How to adapt the features in the course of BCI operation is a difficult and important topic of research. Reinforcement Learning (RL) and multi-armed bandit theory will be considered in order to address this question. The postdoc will be funded by the french ANR CoAdapt project. The aim of CoAdapt is to propose new directions for BCI design, by modeling explicitly the co-adaptation taking place between the user and the system. See the description of the project and the consortium there: https://twiki-sop.inria.fr/twiki/bin/view/Projets/Athena/CoAdapt/WebHome *** Supervision *** The research will be conducted under the supervision of Remi Munos and Emmanuel Dauce: - R?mi Munos (http://chercheurs.lille.inria.fr/~munos/) is a senior INRIA researcher in the project team SEQUEL (Sequential Learning) of INRIA Lille (http://sequel.lille.inria.fr/). - Emmanuel Dauc? (http://emmanuel.dauce.free.fr/) is an associate professor at Centrale Marseille. *** Background *** We welcome applicants with a PhD degree in statistics / machine learning, or related fields and with interests in BCI, possibily with background in reinforcement learning or bandit theory. *** Additional informations *** The position is research only and is for one year, with possibility of being extended. The starting date could be from April to December 2012. To apply please send a CV to remi.munos at inria.fr or emmanuel.dauce at ec-marseille.fr From ted.carnevale at yale.edu Thu Mar 1 21:33:51 2012 From: ted.carnevale at yale.edu (Ted Carnevale) Date: Thu, 01 Mar 2012 21:33:51 -0500 Subject: Connectionists: NEURON Summer Courses in Europe and the USA Message-ID: <4F50318F.8040207@yale.edu> Seats are still available in the 2012 NEURON summer courses at IST Austria and UC San Diego. These are both intensive, 5 day courses with a significant hands-on component, and they will cover the same material. IST Austria: Please note that the IST Austria course's registration deadline is April 1, so you should act very soon if that's the course you want. For more information see http://www.ist.ac.at/NeuronCourse2012/ San Diego: The registration deadline for the course at UC San Diego is Friday, May 18, so you have a bit more time--but don't wait until all seats have been taken! For more information see http://www.neuron.yale.edu/neuron/static/courses/nscsd2012/nscsd2012.html --Ted From gtkacik at gmail.com Tue Mar 6 01:26:27 2012 From: gtkacik at gmail.com (Gasper Tkacik) Date: Tue, 6 Mar 2012 07:26:27 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: Postdoctoral position in Computational Neuroscience at IST Austria Message-ID: <4449CFF8-3860-42D1-8048-88C0B1363699@gmail.com> Dear all, The Theoretical Biophysics / Computational Neuroscience group at IST Austria is looking for candidates with a strong quantitative background to work on issues of neural coding, natural scene statistics, as well as application of these ideas to neural recordings (from the retina and other preparations). Willingness to take part in the strong existing (or new) collaborations with the experimental groups is a plus. For more information about the group's research activities, please see http://wp.ist.ac.at/group_tkacik/. The research will take place at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (IST Austria,http://www.ist.ac.at), a new basic research institution located just outside of Vienna. IST Austria is a very dynamic, stimulating, interdisciplinary and international environment (working language is English) that offers interactions with a constantly growing number of research groups and excellent working conditions. If interested, please submit a CV with a list of publications and a very brief description of your research interests to gtkacik at ist.ac.at. Best regards, ----------------------------------------------------------- Gasper Tkacik Institute of Science and Technology Austria E: gtkacik at ist.ac.at W: http://wp.ist.ac.at/group_tkacik/ M: Am Campus 1 A-3400 Klosterneuburg ----------------------------------------------------------- From harel.shouval at uth.tmc.edu Tue Mar 6 13:09:05 2012 From: harel.shouval at uth.tmc.edu (Harel Shouval) Date: Tue, 6 Mar 2012 13:09:05 -0500 Subject: Connectionists: Two postdoc positions at the Shouval lab Message-ID: <52DD3266-321D-45E2-A17D-53F66EF30378@uth.tmc.edu> Two Postdoc Positions in the Shouval lab The Shouval lab has two openings for Postdoc?s in Theoretical/ Computational Neuroscience. One position is at a system-circuit level and the other at the cellular-molecular level. The Shouval lab is located at the Department of Neurobiology and Anatomy and the UT Medical School in Houston. 1. Circuit/System level modeling This Postdoc will be involved in a collaborative project with the lab of Marshall Shuler at Johns Hopkins. This postdoc is funded by an and NIH grant: Learning Temporal Representations In Cortex; Their Behavioral Correlates And Mechanism. The aim of the theoretical component it to explain specific physiological data from the Shuler lab, and specifically to explain how cortical neurons can learn to represent behaviorally relevant cortical intervals. More generally, this is a study of the plasticity of cortical dynamics. We have published several papers related to this work; these include: Shuler and Bear, Science (2006), Gavornik et. al PNAS (2009), Gavornik and Shouval, J Comp. Neurosci (2011). The Postdoc is expected to perform both computational and analytical work. This work includes mean-field analysis of spiking networks, simulations of networks of spiking cortical neurons, and modeling reward dependent synaptic plasticity in such cortical circuits. The work will be based on a close collaboration with the experimental group at Hopkins, and will require travel to the experimental lab several times a year. 2. Cellular/Molecular level modeling This Postdoc Will be involved in a collaborative project with the lab of Todd Sacktor in SUNY Downstate in NY. This Postdoc is funded by NIH grant: CRCNS: PKMzeta-dependent protein synthesis can account for the maintenance of synaptic plasticity. The aim of this project is to explain how memories are maintained despite the molecular turnover and diffusion of their substrates. Work on this project will include detailed modeling at the molecular level of the biochemical networks that ensure the stability of memory. To carry out this project, mass action and stochastic models will be simulated as well as bifurcation analysis and analytical approximate solutions of the fixed points and the dynamics. Additionally more abstract aspects of such a process will be examined, including it?s impact on memory storage and learning at the cellular and circuit level. The Sacktor lab has many publications on PKMzeta and its impact on memory, and our lab has several publications on how the control of protein synthesis can account for the stability of memory (search Aslam and Shouval). This project will be based on a close collaboration with the Sacktor lab and the Postdoc will be expected to travel periodically to the Sacktor lab to facilitate the collaboration. The ideal Postdoc?s for these positions will have a PhD in computational neuroscience, but Postdocs with a strong analytical background in the Physical or Mathematical Sciences will also be considered. For the second position I will also consider applicants with a background in chemical engineering. The positions are for one year, with a possible extension for two more years. The salary will follow the NIH scale. The Shouval lab focuses on modeling synaptic plasticity, and its impact on learning memory and cortical dynamics. The lab is located in the department of Neurobiology and Anatomy at the University of Texas Medical School in Houston. This is an excellent environment for conducting research in Computational Neuroscience as several labs in the department conduct computational work and because of our participation in the Gulf Coast Consortium in Theoretical and Computational Neuroscience, which is a collaboration between several different universities in the Houston area, including Rice University, Baylor College of Medicine and the University of Houston (http://gulfcoastconsortia.org/Research/Gulf_Coast_Consortium_for_Theoretical_and_Computational_Neuroscience.aspx ). More than 20 faculty members from the different Houston area universities belong to the consortium. As part of this collaborative effort we hold a weekly theoretical seminar, an annual conference and several joint graduate courses. If you are interested in one of these positions please contact me directly by email (harel.shouval at uth.tmc.edu), and attach your CV. Harel Shouval -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- http://nba.uth.tmc.edu/resources/faculty/members/shouval.htm http://nba.uth.tmc.edu/homepage/shouval/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/20120306/08d9e263/attachment.html From juergen at idsia.ch Thu Mar 8 14:22:56 2012 From: juergen at idsia.ch (Juergen Schmidhuber) Date: Thu, 8 Mar 2012 20:22:56 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: Ongoing Neural Network ReNNaissance Message-ID: A special breed of fast deep neural networks keeps winning important pattern recognition competitions, lately even with human-competitive results. New greatly improved world records on visual pattern recognition benchmarks: ? 3. MNIST Handwritten Digit Recognition (perhaps the most famous machine learning benchmark). The new record is 0.23% error rate. This is the first human-competitive result on MNIST. The best result by others (brbo) is 0.39%. ? 2. NORB Object Recognition Benchmark. New record on full NORB: 2.7% (brbo 5%) ? 1. CIFAR-10 Object Recognition Benchmark. New record 11.2% (brbo 18.5%) Upcoming paper on this with Dan Cire?an & Ueli Meier at CVPR 2012: Multi-Column Deep Neural Networks for Image Classification (long preprint available) 1st ranks in visual pattern recognition competitions: ? 7. March 2012: ISBI 2012 Segmentation Challenge, won on all three evaluation metrics by a large margin, with superhuman pixel error rate. ? 6. August 2011: IJCNN 2011 on-site Traffic Sign Recognition Competition: 0.56% error rate - nearly three times better than brbo. The only method outperforming humans. ? 5. June 2011: ICDAR 2011 offline Chinese Handwriting Recognition Competition ? 4. January 2011: Online German Traffic Sign Recognition Contest (1st & 2nd rank) ? 3. ICDAR 2009 Arabic Connected Handwriting Competition, like the others below won by LSTM recurrent neural networks (deep by nature). ? 2. ICDAR 2009 Handwritten Farsi/Arabic Character Recognition Competition ? 1. ICDAR 2009 French Connected Handwriting Competition No unsupervised pre-training! Overview web site with more details and Google Tech Talk and contributions to neural net vision applications by authors including Dan Cire?an, Ueli Meier, Jonathan Masci, Alessandro Giusti, Alex Graves, Jawad Nagi, Frederic Ducatelle, Gianni Di Caro, Luca Maria Gambardella: http://www.idsia.ch/~juergen/vision.html J?rgen Schmidhuber Director of the Swiss AI Lab IDSIA, Lugano Professor of Artificial Intelligence, Univ. Lugano Professor SUPSI, Manno-Lugano, Switzerland http://www.idsia.ch/~juergen/whatsnew.html From kpdockendorf at hrl.com Tue Mar 6 12:51:04 2012 From: kpdockendorf at hrl.com (Dockendorf, Karl P) Date: Tue, 6 Mar 2012 09:51:04 -0800 Subject: Connectionists: Graduate Student Intern and Postdoc Positions for Neuro-inspired Learning Models Message-ID: We, at HRL Laboratories, are seeking motivated individuals to fill open positions in neuromorphic and neuro-inspired modeling. The full description is presented below. Interested U.S. citizens or permanent residents are encouraged to apply. Please submit your resumes to Jill Dobrowitsky (jill at hrl.com) and specify your interest in internship or postdoc opportunities. Best, Karl Dockendorf, Ph.D. HRL Laboratories, LLC (310) 317-5622 -------- Job Title/Req: Neuro-based Learning and Prediction - (1021.10) Location: Malibu, CA Business Unit/Branch: HRL Laboratories Department: 302110 Advanced Technology HR Contact: Jill Dobrowitsky, jill at hrl.com, 310 317 5905 EDUCATION DESIRED: M.S or Ph.D. in Computer Science, Biomedical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Applied Math, Computational Neuroscience or related fields. ESSENTIAL JOB FUNCTIONS: Primary job function is to develop neuro-inspired models and algorithms for information learning and prediction. Tasks will include the development, simulation, evaluation, andimplementation of neuromorphic algorithms applied to a variety of applications. Additional job functions include writing invention disclosures and publishing papers. EXPERIENCE DESIRED: Research experience in one or more of the following areas: Neurobiological modeling of learning, sensory processing, motor control; building neuro-inspired learning and prediction systems (software and hybrid software/hardware) with applications to situation assessment and prediction, robotic control, navigation, and visual scene analysis. Preferred: Experience developing innovative solutions based upon the application of relevant research results from a wide variety of sources. KNOWLEDGE DESIRED: Background in one or more of the following areas: network analysis, neurobiological modeling, self-organizing systems, and/or machine learning including neural networks; strong programming skills, particularly proficient with C, C++, Matlab and/or Python. Desired:skills in parallel computing. ESSENTIAL PHYSICAL/MENTAL REQUIREMENTS: SPECIAL REQUIREMENTS (e.g. driver?s license special tools or restrictions): U.S. citizenship or permanent resident status required. Selected candidates will be hired through a temporary agency and subject to the agency's pre-employment substance abusetesting. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/20120306/a308d9b7/attachment-0001.html From longlifelee at gmail.com Wed Mar 7 07:49:43 2012 From: longlifelee at gmail.com (Soo-Young Lee) Date: Wed, 7 Mar 2012 21:49:43 +0900 Subject: Connectionists: Natural Intelligence: the INNS Magazine Message-ID: The second issue of Natural Intelligence: the INNS Magazine is now on the web at www.inns.org and www.ni-inns.info (user-friendly version). Natural Intelligence is the official magazine of INNS (International Neural Network Society). We define ?Natural Intelligence? to include both ?intelligence existing in nature? and ?intelligence based on the state of things in nature?. Therefore, the new INNS magazine ?Natural Intelligence? plans to cover - experiments - computational models - applications of the intelligent functions in our brains. Also, there is an important need for well-written introductory papers targeting both young and established researchers from other academic backgrounds. The interdisciplinary nature of the many new emerging topics makes these introductory papers essential for research on Natural Intelligence. Therefore, the new INNS magazine will mainly publish - review papers - white papers - tutorials. In addition, columns, news, and reports on the communities will also be included. YOUR SUBMISSION IS WELCOME. Please send your submission to inns.ni at gmail.com ------------------------------------------------ TABLE OF CONTENTS: WINTER 2012 PAPERS NI Can Do Better Compressive Sensing by Harold Szu Evolving, Probabilistic Spiking Neural Networks and Neurogenetic Systems for Spatio- and Spectro-Temporal Data Modelling and Pattern Recognition by Nikola Kasabov Biologically Motivated Selective Attention Model by Minho Lee CASA: Biologically Inspired Approaches for Auditory Scene Analysis By Azam Rabiee, Saeed Setayeshi, and Soo-Young Lee COLUMNS A Message from the INNS Vice President for Membership NEWS 2012 INNS Awards 2012 INNS New Members at the Board of Governors CALL FOR PAPERS Call for Abstracts: Neuroscience & Neurocognition, IJCNN2012, 2012 International Joint Conference on Neural Networks, Brisbane, Australia WIRN 2012, 22nd Italian Workshop on Neural Networks, Salerno, Italy -- Soo-Young Lee, Editor-in-Chief, NI Director, Brain Science Research Center, KAIST From retienne at jhu.edu Tue Mar 6 16:20:52 2012 From: retienne at jhu.edu (retienne) Date: Tue, 06 Mar 2012 16:20:52 -0500 Subject: Connectionists: APPLICATION DEADLINE 30th March 2012: Telluride Neuromorphic Cognition Engineering Workshop Message-ID: <4F567FB4.5060507@jhu.edu> CALL FOR APPLICATIONS: Deadline is March 30th, 2012 NEUROMORPHIC COGNITION ENGINEERING WORKSHOP www.ine-web.org Sunday July 1st - Saturday July 21st, 2012, Telluride, Colorado We invite applications for a three-week summer workshop that will be held in Telluride, Colorado Sunday July 1st - Saturday July 21st, 2012, 2012. The application deadline is *Friday, March 30th* and application instructions are described at the bottom of this document. The 2012 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, University of Florida - Gainesville and the Salk Institute. Directors: Ralph Etienne-Cummings, Johns Hopkins University Timothy Horiuchi, University of Maryland, College Park Tobi Delbruck, Institute for Neuroinformatics, Zurich Workshop Advisory Board: Andreas ANDREOU (The Johns Hopkins University) Andre van SCHAIK (University Western Sydney) Avis COHEN (University of Maryland) Barbara SHINN-CUNNINGHAM (Boston University) Giacomo INDIVERI (Institute of Neuroinformatics, UNI/ETH Zurich, Switzerland) Jonathan TAPSON (University Western Sydney and University of Cape Town) Jennifer Olsen HASLER (Georgia Institute of Technology) Rodney DOUGLAS (Institute of Neuroinformatics, UNI/ETH Zurich, Switzerland) Shihab SHAMMA (University of Maryland) Malcolm SLANEY (Yahoo Research) Previous year workshop can be found at: ine-web.org/workshops/workshops-overview/index.html and last year's wiki is https://neuromorphs.net/nm/wiki/2011 . GOALS: Neuromorphic engineers design and fabricate artificial neural systems whose organizing principles are based on those of biological nervous systems. Over the past 17 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. 2012 TOPIC AREAS: "Learning and Computational Intelligence in Neuromorphic Cognitive Systems" (Gert Cauwenberghs and Giacomo Indiveri) "Integrating Perception, Cognition, and Action in Neuromorphic Hardware and Software" (Kwabena Boahen and Chris Eliasmith) "Human Attention in the Machine" (Shihab Shamma and Barbara Shinn-Cunningham) "Social Neuroscience and Robotic Pet Project" (Sergi Bermudez and Ulysses Bernardet) In addition, there will be a number of ad-hoc tutorials (featuring Rajit Monahar, Jennifer Hasler and Scott Koziol), demonstrations, and discussion groups that will focus on important issues in the research community. Terry Sejnowski ? Computational Neuroscience (invitational mini-workshop) 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 the April 15th, 2012. The Workshop covers all your accommodations and facilities costs for the 3 weeks duration. 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 $700 per participant, however, due to the difference in travel cost, we offer a discount to participants outside of the US, Canada and Mexico. European registration fees will be reduced to $450; non-US/non-European registration fees will be reduced to $300. 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 February 15th, 2012): ine-web.org/telluride-conference-2012/apply-info Application information needed: * contact email address * 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 30th, 2012. Applicants will be notified by e-mail. 15th February, 2012 - Applications accepted on website 30th March, 2012 - Applications Due 15th April, 2012 - Notification of Acceptance From robbie at bcs.rochester.edu Wed Mar 7 10:25:25 2012 From: robbie at bcs.rochester.edu (Robert Jacobs) Date: Wed, 07 Mar 2012 10:25:25 -0500 Subject: Connectionists: CALL FOR ABSTRACTS - Center for Visual Science Symposium June 1-3, 2012 Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20120307102304.065edc10@bcs.rochester.edu> *************************************** CALL FOR ABSTRACTS - DEADLINE MONDAY, APRIL 2, 2012 *************************************** We are now accepting abstracts for poster presentation at the Center for Visual Science's 28th Symposium Computational Foundations of Perception and Action June 1-3, 2012 University of Rochester Rochester, New York Please go to the abstract submission page: http://www.cvs.rochester.edu/symp_abstracts.html if you need more information, you may visit the Conference Website at: Http://www.cvs.rochester.edu/symposium.html Overview ************** The 28th Symposium of the Center for Visual Science will bring computational, neurophysiological and psychophysical researchers together who study the computational foundations of problems in sensory and perceptual processing ranging from low-level sensory coding to higher-level aspects of perception and action such as cue integration, decision-making and sensorimotor control. Much of the research discussed at the meeting focuses on the visual system; however, included in the symposium will be speakers who study other sensory and motor systems, and multisensory processing involving vision and other modalities. The goal is to provide a forum for investigating the common foundational computational principles that underlay the many seemingly different functions of sensory systems (as well as how they differ) and to discuss how to link computational theories to underlying mechanisms to gain a deeper understanding of perceptual behavior. With this in mind, we have invited speakers who bring together computational and experimental approaches - whether that be by developing computational theories of human / animal performance, by conceptualizing and designing experimental studies to test computational theories or both. Confirmed Speakers ************************* Sensory coding Sheila Nirenberg (Cornell University) Mate Lengyel (University of Cambridge) Adam Kohn - (Albert Einstein) Adrienne Fairhall (University of Washington) Integration and prediction in perception Dora Angelaki (Washington University) Ladan Shams (UCLA) Anne Churchland (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories) Paul Schrater (University of Minnesota) Sensorimotor control Flip Sabes (UC-San Francisco) Daniel Wolpert (University of Cambridge) Joern Diedrichsen (University College London Mark Churchland (Columbia University) Decision-making and cognition Ben Hayden (University of Rochester) Antonio Rangel (Cal. Tech.) Daeyeol Lee (Yale University) Christopher Harvey (Princeton) Memory and learning Chris Sims (University of Rochester) Josh Gold (University of Pennsylvania Aaron Seitz (Univ. Cal. Riverside) Jeff Beck (University College London) Key Dates o Poster abstract submission: Monday, April 2 o Travel fellowship application deadline: Monday, April 16 o Notification of poster abstract acceptance: Monday, April 9 o Notification of travel fellowship funding: Monday, April 30 o Registration closes: Friday, May 4 Registration Fees Graduate students and postdocs: $100 All others: $200 Program Committee David Knill Robert Jacobs Alex Pouget Greg DeAngelis For queries about the meeting, contact Debbie Shannon at 585-275-2459 or Debbie at cvs.rochester.edu ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Robert Jacobs Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences University of Rochester Rochester, NY 14627-0268 phone: 585-275-0753 fax: 585-442-9216 email: robbie at bcs.rochester.edu web: http://www.bcs.rochester.edu/people/robbie/jacobslab/people.html -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/20120307/8109e3de/attachment.html From fchang at liverpool.ac.uk Sun Mar 11 07:28:36 2012 From: fchang at liverpool.ac.uk (Franklin Chang) Date: Sun, 11 Mar 2012 11:28:36 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: Postdoctoral Research Associate - Connectionist Modelling of Language Acquisition Message-ID: Please find below an advert for a Postdoctoral Research position at the University of Liverpool. Applications from outside the EU are welcome, but we are obliged to appoint from within the EU if a suitably qualified candidate can be found. Postdoctoral Research Associate (Computational Modelling: Child Language Acquisition) 31,020 pounds per year Faculty of Health and Life Sciences Institute of Psychology, Health and Society University of Liverpool Ref: R-577723/WWW Closing date for receipt of applications: 1 August 2012 You will join a child language modeling project, led by Dr Franklin Chang. The project will involve the development of a connectionist model of syntax acquisition that will be fit to range of acquisition phenomena (e.g., grammaticality judgments, preferential looking, elicited production). You will be responsible for programming and analyzing a neural network of syntax acquisition. You should have a PhD in psychology, computer science or a closely related field and have experience in programming (C++, Java, statistical packages such as R) and an interest in connectionist models and syntactic development. The post is available for 2 years, commencing 1 October 2012. Further information can be found at https://sites.google.com/site/sentenceproductionmodel/news Please direct any informal enquiries regarding the modelling to Franklin Chang - ?franklin.chang [at]?liverpool.ac.uk?- and regarding the research project more generally to Ben Ambridge - ben.ambridge [at]?liverpool.ac.uk Thanks, Franklin From gaute.einevoll at umb.no Sun Mar 11 08:09:43 2012 From: gaute.einevoll at umb.no (Gaute Einevoll) Date: Sun, 11 Mar 2012 12:09:43 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: Postdoctoral position in Computational Neuroscience in Norway Message-ID: <50AADEA29903F5469B8A51DA48B9D4961FAEBC@A-EXCH-MBX2.ans.umb.no> POSTDOCTORAL RESARCHER IN COMPUTATIONAL NEUROSCIENCE IN NORWAY Would you like to pursue exciting research in computational neuroscience as a participant in a lively international collaborative research project? Then you should consider applying for a full-time limited-term position as postdoctoral researcher (code 1352) in the Computational Neuroscience Group at the Department of Mathematical Sciences and Technology of the Norwegian University of Life Sciences (UMB). The position is a part of, and financed by, the EU BrainScaleS project (brainscales.kip.uni-heidelberg.de/) as well as the eNEURO project in the eScience program of the Research Council of Norway. The position is limited to two years. In the research project, which will be pursued in close collaboration with the group of Prof. Markus Diesmann (a BrainScaleS partner) at the Research Center J?lich (www.csn.fz-juelich.de/cnpsn/), you will develop and use modeling schemes for the simultaneous calculation of spikes and local field potentials (LFPs) in network models mimicking signal processing in sensory cortices. The project combines simulations of large networks of spiking neurons, mainly implemented using the NEST simulator (www.nest-initiative.org), with simulations of LFPs and detailed neuron models with anatomically reconstructed dendritic morphologies using the NEURON simulator (www.neuron.yale.edu) within our LFPy Python package (compneuro.umb.no/LFPy). For an example of such modeling, see Linden et al., Neuron 72, 859-872 (2011). While the position will be at UMB, frequent visits to J?lich, as well as other BrainScaleS partners, will be encouraged. The computational neuroscience group at UMB presently consists of four permanent faculty members (Einevoll, Indahl, Plesser, Wyller), four post-docs, five doctoral students and a scientific software developer. We are co-localized and closely interacting with other computational biologists on campus focusing on modeling of heart function and the genotype-phenotype link, and we are also host of the Research School in Systems Biology. As a member of the NEST Initiative, we are strongly involved in developing leading-edge simulation software. We enjoy prioritized access to the Norwegian national scientific high-performance computing resources (www.notur.no). For information on our group, see compneuro.umb.no. UMB is located at Aas, about 30 km south of Oslo, the capital of Norway. To qualify for the position, you must have a PhD in computational science, preferably computational neuroscience. Documented success in independent implementation of reliable scientific software, preferably in C++ or Python, is essential for the position. Experience in neuroscience is considered a significant asset. Women are currently underrepresented in our group and are especially encouraged to apply. The position is financed through the BrainScaleS grant of EU FP7 and the eNeuro grant of the Research Council of Norway and limited to two years. Start date is as early as possible. The contract period will be extended in case of parental leave. Starting salary is at state salary level 57 (currently NOK 456.100/EUR 58.700/USD 76.600). A higher starting salary is negotiable for applicants with significant relevant job experience, up to state salary level 60 (currently NOK 480.900/EUR 62.200/USD 80.800). Please submit your application via the web page http://www.jobbnorge.no/job.aspx?jobid=81826 (use link "Apply for this job" on top of web page) no later than April 9th, 2012 including up to five key publications. If it is difficult to identify your contribution to multiple-author publications, please explain your role briefly. Printed material which cannot be sent electronically should be sent by surface mail to the Norwegian University of Life Sciences, Dept. of Mathematical Sciences and Technology, IMT, P.O. Box 5003, 1432 ?s, within April 9th 2012. Please quote reference number 2012/179. Applicants invited for an interview will be asked to present originals of diplomas and certificates. Please contact Professor Gaute T. Einevoll (gaute.einevoll at umb.no) and/or Head of Section, Dr. Hans E. Plesser (hans.ekkehard.plesser at umb.no) for further information. %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% Professor Gaute T. Einevoll Department of Mathematical Sciences and Technology Norwegian University of Life Sciences, 1432 Aas, Norway ph. +47-64965433, mobile: +47-95124536 email: Gaute.Einevoll at umb.no web: compneuro.umb.no, arken.umb.no/~gautei From gtkacik at gmail.com Wed Mar 7 11:14:59 2012 From: gtkacik at gmail.com (Gasper Tkacik) Date: Wed, 7 Mar 2012 17:14:59 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: "Sensory Coding & Natural Environment 2012" meeting is now open for application (Austria, Sept. 2012) Message-ID: <73A5E204-A320-4D01-BA6B-D55DDE392611@gmail.com> "Sensory Coding & Natural Environment 2012" meeting is now open for application (Austria, Sept. 2012) Time: Sunday, Sept. 9 (afternoon) -- Wednesday, Sept. 12 (departure morning next day) Place: Institute of Science and Technology Austria, Klosterneuburg near Vienna. Application deadline: May 1, 2012 Information: http://ist.ac.at/scne2012/ Invited speakers: Dora ANGELAKI, William BIALEK, Michael BLACK, Axel BORST, David BRAINARD, Iain COUZIN, David KLEINFELD, Gilles LAURENT, Michael LEWICKI, Daniel LEE, Daniel MARGOLIASH, Bruno OLSHAUSEN, Nachum ULANOVSKY, and Jonathan VICTOR. Sensory Coding & Natural Environment is a continuation of a successful Gordon Research conference series of the same name, focused on the fields of perception, neural coding, natural scene statistics, and interaction with natural environments. This meeting has traditionally drawn together scientists at the interface of neuroscience, physics, engineering, psychology and machine learning. In addition to the interdisciplinary emphasis and the focus on searching for principles that extend across a range of sensory modalities and organisms, one of the strong points of the meeting has been to allow ample time for informal discussions. Participants are invited to present their research in poster sessions and contributed talks. See http://ist.ac.at/scne2012/ for details. *** Due to a limited number of possible participants, priority will be given to early applications. *** Note: ?Neural Coding 2012? (http://nc2012.biomed.cas.cz/) is to be held in Prague just PRIOR to this meeting, while the annual ?Bernstein Conference 2012? (http://www.bccn2012.de/) is to be held in Munich just AFTER the meeting, allowing the participants to plan a combined visit. Please circulate this email to students, postdocs and colleagues who might be interested. Gasper TKACIK, IST Austria Matthias BETHGE, CIN & MPI Tuebingen Elad SCHNEIDMAN, Weizmann Institute From ichi at sys.i.kyoto-u.ac.jp Sun Mar 11 19:12:20 2012 From: ichi at sys.i.kyoto-u.ac.jp (Shin-ichi Maeda) Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2012 08:12:20 +0900 Subject: Connectionists: Post-doc Researcher Position in image analysis or bioinformatics for neuroscience Message-ID: <4F5D3154.4080305@sys.i.kyoto-u.ac.jp> Integrated Systems Biology Lab at Kyoto University invites applications for research position in the field of image analysis, or bioinformatics for neuroscience. Applicants should have a strong background in one or more of these areas: -Image processing -Bioinformatics -Systems biology -Statistical science -Machine learning We look forward to your applications and recommendations. The full advertisement is available below. Shin Ishii Integrated Systems Biology Laboratory, Department of Systems Science, Graduate School of Informatics, Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan ==================================== We are conducting a new research project which aims to reveal the neural control of the reward system by constructing a computational model that integrates transdisciplinary studies over molecular-cellular-circuit level with our tenure track and post-doc researchers of various backgrounds including systems biology, bioinformatics, computational biology, mathematical engineering, and machine learning. Our laboratory also has a strong collaboration with other laboratories in Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International (ATR), RIKEN, Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST) and NYU, Langone Medical Center. The successful candidates will work on analysis for microscopic images of neurons and neural circuits or bioinformatics for neural proteomic data with our collaborators. Candidates should have a strong background in one or more of these areas: -Image processing: image super-resolution, segmentation, object identification -Bioinformatics: omics analysis, proteomics analysis, pathway analysis -Systems biology: molecular, cellular, circuit level modeling -Statistical learning: large-scale data-driven learning, data mining = Requirements = Applicants must: - have a Ph.D. (or be near completion). - have strong motivations and ambitions to take part in the research above. = Employment conditions = Position: Full-time Researcher / Full-time Research Engineer The position is open after April 1st 2012 (negotiable) Tenure: Single year based contract, renewable based on evaluation Treatment: Based on individual performance Work Location: Gokasho, Uji, Kyoto 611-0011, Japan = Number of openings = One = Application materials = Please submit the following five materials to the contact address below, either in printed or electronic form: 1. CV 2. List of publications 3. Reprints of 1 to 3 major publications 4. Document (one or two pages in A4 or letter size) describing: - Summary of your previous research - Interests and proposal for research 5. Recommendation letters from two researchers * Original documents you submit will not be returned. = Deadline for application = March 24 (will remain open if positions are not filled) = Contact = Shin Ishii Integrated Systems Biology Laboratory, Graduate School of Informatics, Kyoto University Gokasho, Uji, Kyoto 611-0011, Japan Email: Shin Ishii http://hawaii.sys.i.kyoto-u.ac.jp/home/index_html?set_language=en From metzner at rob.uni-luebeck.de Mon Mar 12 07:24:53 2012 From: metzner at rob.uni-luebeck.de (Christoph Metzner) Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2012 12:24:53 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: APPLICATION DEADLINE April 10th 2012: "Multi-scale Modeling in Computational Neuroscience" Workshop Message-ID: CALL FOR APPLICATIONS: * * *Multi-scale Modeling in Computational Neuroscience* To be held *April** **30** **-** **May** **5*, 2012, University of L?beck, L?beck Germany As the field of computational neuroscience continues to mature, it is clear that understanding the nervous system from a computational point of view will require modeling at multiple levels of scale from sub-cellular to systems and behavior. This hands-on workshop will consider both issues and techniques involved in modeling nervous systems at single levels of scale such as intracellular, single neuron and network models, as well as the opportunities for scientific discovery when models at these scales are linked. With a strong emphasis on hands on experience, the workshop will also include lectures focused on multi-scale modeling. The workshop is designed for advanced graduate students, postdoctoral fellows or faculty interesting in the practical application and development of multi-scale modeling techniques. Through simulation projects, participants will have the opportunity to create realistic neural models from sub-cellular to network levels. This will provide an excellent opportunity for those with previous experience in neural simulation to learn new techniques and strategies for multi-scale modeling. Although participants can use the simulator of their choosing, this workshop will also introduce GENESIS 3 (G-3), a modular reimplementation of the GENESIS neural simulator that has capabilities uniquely suited for multi-scale modeling. The international faculty includes: *Dr.** **James** **M.** **Bower* (University of Texas System) who has been involved in the development of software tools for multi-scale modeling for 30 years. *Dr.** **David** **Beeman** *(University of Colorado) who has supported multi-scale modeling both as an instructor in numerous international courses in computational biology as well as in his role as director of the GENESIS users group. *Dr.** **Avrama** **Blackwell* (George Mason University) who?s modeling and experimental expertise involves the investigation of molecular synaptic mechanisms. *Dr.** **Hugo** **Cornelis* (Lead GENESIS developer) with expertise both in the design and construction of multi-scale simulation systems as well as modeling at single cell and network levels. *Dr.** **Volker** **Steuber* (University of Hertfordshire) with expertise in biochemical, single cell, network and systems level modeling and analysis. *Mr.** **Armando** **Rodriguez** *(University of Texas San Antonio) an expert in interface design and interoperability in simulations systems. *Application** **deadline** **is** **April** **10.** * Applications and inquiries should be sent to: * gen3 at gradschool.uni-luebeck.de * Please see the website at: *https://www.gradschool.uni-luebeck.de/index.php?id=366* for the latest detailed information. The workshop is limited to 20 total participants and therefore, those interested should register as soon as possible. In addition to the scientific activities, several social activities have also been planned including a day spent on the shore of the Baltic Sea. Given the relatively short time before the workshop, we would greatly appreciate it if you would pass this announcement on to other colleagues and students who may find it of interest. -- ========================================================================================================= Institute for Robotics and Cognitive Systems -- University of Luebeck Graduate School for Computing in Medicine and Life Sciences -- University of Luebeck -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dipl. Math. Christoph Metzner tel: +49 451 317 931 12 University of Luebeck secretary: +49 451 500 5201 Institute for Robotics fax: +49 451 500 5202 Ratzeburger Allee 160 mail: metzner at rob.uni-luebeck.de D-23538 Luebeck, Germany www: http://www.rob.uni-luebeck.de // http://www.gradschool.uni-luebeck.de/ ========================================================================================================== -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/20120312/2d1216ef/attachment-0001.html From michel.verleysen at uclouvain.be Mon Mar 12 03:33:16 2012 From: michel.verleysen at uclouvain.be (Michel Verleysen) Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2012 08:33:16 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: ESANN 2012 program Message-ID: <004a01cd0022$63a04bb0$2ae0e310$@uclouvain.be> This message is sent from a ?send-only? mailing address. We apologize for possible duplicates of this message sent to distribution lists. ESANN 2012: European Symposium on Artificial Neural Networks, Computational Intelligence and Machine Learning Bruges, Belgium, 25 to 27 April 2012 - 20th anniversary ! - http://www.esann.org/ Preliminary program The preliminary program of the ESANN 2012 conference is now available on the Web: http://www.esann.org/ For those of you who maintain WWW pages including lists of related machine learning and artificial neural networks sites: we would appreciate if you could add the above URL to your list; thank you very much! For 20 years the ESANN conference has become a major event in the field of neural computation and machine learning. ESANN is a selective conference focusing on fundamental aspects of artificial neural networks, machine learning, statistical information processing and computational intelligence. Mathematical foundations, algorithms and tools, and applications are covered. The titles of the sessions are: - Theory and practice of adaptive input driven dynamical systems - Interpretable models in machine learning - Machine ensembles: theory and applications - Regression - Brain-computer interfaces - Image and time series analysis - Bayesian and graphical models, optimization - Unsupervised learning - Statistical methods and kernel-based algorithms - Classification and model selection - Clustering - Feature selection and information-based learning - Nonlinear dimensionality reduction and topological learning - Recurrent and neural networks, reinforcement learning, control - Parallel hardware architectures for acceleration of neural network computation The program of the conference can be found at http://www.esann.org/, together with practical information about the conference venue, registration, etc. Other information can be obtained by sending an e-mail to esann at uclouvain.be. Venue ------ 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). Designated as the "Venice of the North", the city has preserved all the charms of the medieval heritage. Its centre, which is inscribed on the Unesco World Heritage list, is in itself a real open air museum. 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. Conference secretariat ---------------------- ESANN 2012 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) Louis Wehenkel Univ. Li?ge (B) Scientific committee (to be confirmed) -------------------- Fabio Aiolli Univ. degli Studi di Padov (I) Cecilio Angulo Univ. Polit. de Catalunya (E) Miguel Atencia Univ. Malaga (E) Michael Aupetit CEA (F) Michael Biehl University of Groningen (NL) Martin Bogdan Univ. T?bingen (D) Herv? Bourlard IDIAP Martigny (CH) Antonio Braga Federal Univ. of Minas Gerais (Brazil) Joan Cabestany Univ. Polit. de Catalunya (E) St?phane Canu Inst. Nat. Sciences App. (F) Sylvain Chevallier INRIA Saclay (F) Andrzej Cichocki RIKEN (Japan) Valentina Colla Scuola Sup. Sant'Anna Pisa (I) Nigel Crook Oxford Brookes University (UK) Holk Cruse Universit?t Bielefeld (D) Giovanni Da San Martino Univ. of Padua (I) Tijl De Bie University of Bristol (UK) Massimo De Gregorio Istituto di Cibernetica-CNR (I) Dante Del Corso Politecnico di Torino (I) Wlodek Duch Nicholas Copernicus Univ. (PL) Pierre Dupont UCL Louvain-la-Neuve (B) Marc Duranton CEA LIST (F) Richard Duro Univ. Coruna (E) Deniz Erdogmus Oregon Health & Science University (USA) Anibal Figueiras-Vidal Univ. Carlos III Madrid (E) Jean-Claude Fort Universit? Paul Sabatier Toulouse (F) Felipe M. G. Fran?a Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) Leonardo Franco Univ. Malaga (E) Damien Fran?ois Universit? catholique de Louvain (B) Colin Fyfe Univ. Paisley (UK) Marco Gori Univ. Siena (I) Bernard Gosselin Univ. Mons (B) Manuel Grana UPV San Sebastian (E) Anne Gu?rin-Dugu? IMAG Grenoble (F) Barbara Hammer Bielefeld Univ. (D) Martin Hasler EPFL Lausanne (CH) Verena Heidrich-Meisner Univ. Paris-Sud (F) Tom Heskes Univ. Nijmegen (NL) Katerina Hlavackova-Schindler Austrian Acad. of Sciences (A) Christian Igel Univ. Copenhagen (DK) Jose Jerez Univ. Malaga (E) Gonzalo Joya Univ. Malaga (E) Christian Jutten INPG Grenoble (F) Juha Karhunen Aalto Univ. (FIN) Samuel Kaski Aalto Univ. (FIN) Stefanos Kollias National Tech. Univ. Athens (GR) Jouko Lampinen Aalto Univ. (FIN) Petr Lansky Acad. of Science of the Czech Rep. (CZ) John Lee Univ. cat Louvain (B) Amaury Lendasse Aalto Univ. (FIN) Priscila M. V. Lima Univ. Federal Rural do Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) Paulo Lisboa Liverpool John Moores University (UK) Jos? D. Mart?n Univ. of Valencia (E) Erzsebet Merenyi Rice Univ. (USA) David Meunier University of Cambridge (UK) Anke Meyer-B?se Florida State university (USA) Yoan Miche Aalto Univ. (FIN) Erkki Oja Aalto Univ. (FIN) Tjeerd olde Scheper Oxford Brookes University (UK) Gilles Pag?s Univ. Pierre et Marie Curie (Paris 6) (F) H?l?ne Paugam-Moisy INRIA Saclay (F) Kristiaan Pelckmans K. U. Leuven (B) Gadi Pinkas The Center for Academic Studies (Israel) Alberto Prieto Universitad de Granada (E) Didier Puzenat Univ. Antilles-Guyane (F) John Quinn Makerere Univ., Kampala (Uganda) S?bastien Rebecchi INRIA Saclay (F) Leonardo Reyneri Politecnico di Torino (I) Jean-Pierre Rospars INRA Versailles (F) Fabrice Rossi Univ. Paris 1 Panth?on-Sorbonne (F) David Saad Aston Univ. (UK) Francisco Sandoval Univ.Malaga (E) Jose Santos Reyes Univ. Coruna (E) Frank-Michael Schleif Univ. Bielefeld (D) Benjamin Schrauwen Univ. Gent (B) Udo Seiffert Fraunhofer-Institute IFF Magdeburg (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) Peter Tino University of Birmingham (UK) Claude Touzet Univ. Provence (F) Thiago Turchetti Maia Vetta Group (Brazil) Marc Van Hulle KUL Leuven (B) Alfredo Vellido Polytechnic University of Catalonia (E) Pablo Verdes Novartis Phrama (CH) David Verstraeten Univ. Gent (B) Thomas Villmann Univ. Apllied Sciences Mittweida (D) Heiko Wersing Honda Research Institute Europe (D) Axel Wism?ller University of Rochester, New York (USA) Dietlind Z?hlke Fraunhofer Inst. for App. Information (D) ======================================================== ESANN - European Symposium on Artificial Neural Networks, Computational Intelligence and Machine Learning http://www.esann.org * For submissions of papers, reviews, registrations: Michel Verleysen Univefsit? cat. de Louvain - Machine Learning Group SST/ICTM/ELEN - Maxwell - Place du Levant 3, bte L5.03.02 B-1348 Louvain-la-Neuve - Belgium tel: +32 10 47 25 51 - fax: + 32 10 47 25 98 mailto:esann at uclouvain.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 uclouvain.be ======================================================== -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/20120312/256f6971/attachment-0001.html From minaiaa at gmail.com Sat Mar 10 11:39:27 2012 From: minaiaa at gmail.com (Ali Minai) Date: Sat, 10 Mar 2012 11:39:27 -0500 Subject: Connectionists: CALL FOR ABSTRACTS: 2012 International Joint Conference on Neural Networks, Brisbane, Australia Message-ID: CALL FOR ABSTRACTS Neuroscience & Neurocognition 2012 International Joint Conference on Neural Networks (IJCNN 2012) Brisbane, Australia June 10-15, 2012 Following the successful experience of IJCNN11, abstract submissions are invited for a special Neuroscience and Neurocognition Track at IJCNN 2012. Abstracts must focus on areas broadly related to neurobiology, cognitive science and systems biology, including - but not limited to - the following: ? Theory & models of biological neural networks. ? Computational neuroscience. ? Computational models of perception, cognition and behavior. ? Models of learning and memory in the brain. ? Brain-machine interfaces and neural prostheses. ? Brain-inspired cognitive models. ? Neuroinformatics. ? Neuroevolution and development. ? Models of neurological diseases and treatments. ? Systems and computational biology Recognizing that some of the most exciting current research in neural networks is being done by researchers in neuroscience, psychology, cognitive science, and systems biology, the abstracts program seeks participation from the broader community of scientists in these areas by offering an accessible forum for the interdisciplinary exchange of ideas. It will also provide researchers - especially doctoral students and postdocs - with an opportunity to showcase ongoing research in advance of its publication in journals. Abstracts can be submitted through the IJCNN 2012 online submission system at: http://ieee-cis.org/conferences/ijcnn2012/upload.php?abstract=1 They must be no longer than 500 words plus as many as 4 bibliographic citations. No figures or tables can be included. Unlike full papers, abstracts will receive only limited review to ensure their appropriateness for IJCNN and consistency with the focus areas of the abstracts program. Authors of accepted abstracts will be guaranteed a poster presentation at the conference after regular registration. Abstracts will not be included in the conference proceedings, but will be published in the IJCNN 2012 program (including the printed conference book) and on-line at the IJCNN 2012 web site along with abstracts of all presentations. Important Dates Abstract Submission : February 1, 2012 - March 15, 2012 Decision Notification : March 20, 2012 Final Submission : April 2, 2012 IJCNN 2012 is part of the 2012 World Congress on Computational Intelligence. For more information on the conference, please visit the conference website: http://www.ieee-wcci2012.org/ For IJCNN inquiries please contact Conference Chair: Cesare Alippi at cesare.alippi at polimi.it For Neuroscience-track inquiries please contact The Neuroscience Liaison: Ali Minai at minaiaa at gmail.com -- Ali A. Minai, Ph.D. Professor Complex Adaptive Systems Lab School of Electronic & Computing Systems University of Cincinnati Cincinnati, OH 45221-0030 Phone: (513) 556-4783 Fax: (513) 556-7326 Email: Ali.Minai at uc.edu minaiaa at gmail.com WWW: http://www.ece.uc.edu/~aminai/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/20120310/fe1f0550/attachment.html From r.jolivet at ucl.ac.uk Sat Mar 10 15:19:01 2012 From: r.jolivet at ucl.ac.uk (Dr Renaud Jolivet) Date: Sat, 10 Mar 2012 21:19:01 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: Multidisciplinary approaches to quantify astrocyte-neuron signaling Message-ID: <72525F91-0072-4724-B516-0AF197517DC4@ucl.ac.uk> Dear colleagues, We are pleased to announce the workshop ?Multidisciplinary approaches to quantify astrocyte-neuron signaling? set to take place in Barcelona, Spain, July 13-14, 2012. The event is a satellite conference under the auspices of the 8th FENS Forum of European Neuroscience (http://fens2012.neurosciences.asso.fr/). This conference will bring together experts, both experimentalists and theorists in the field of astrocyte?neuron interactions. The meeting comes at a time when glial biology is taking its place as a compelling frontier of research with rapidly growing interest in several departments. We hope to provide an informal environment that will spur future collaborations within this diverse community of researchers. A complete list of invited speakers and other information is available at the conference website http://anw2012.ucsd.edu. Our program is designed to encourage interdisciplinary interactions and includes extensive discussion sessions, a poster session to encourage participation from students and postdocs and a dinner banquet for all participants. The registration fee for this event is 100 ? for students and postdocs and 150 ? for principal investigators. Registration begins February 10th 2012. Since our purpose is to create an intimate environment conducive to potential collaborations, we plan on limiting participation to a small group. We also have funding for a few travel grants for students and postdocs, subject to the guidelines set by our funding agency. More information is available here http://anw2012.ucsd.edu/Travel_Grants_Info.html. Please do not hesitate to contact us if you need more information. We look forward to seeing you there! Best regards, Herbert Levine (hlevine at ucsd.edu) Renaud Jolivet (r.jolivet at ucl.ac.uk) Suhita Nadkarni (suhita at salk.edu) Terence Sejnowski (terry at salk.edu) (apologies for cross posting) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/20120310/68620051/attachment.html From sylee at kaist.ac.kr Sat Mar 3 05:52:29 2012 From: sylee at kaist.ac.kr (Lee,Soo-Young) Date: Sat, 3 Mar 2012 19:52:29 +0900 (KST) Subject: Connectionists: The second issue of Natural Intelligence: the INNS Magazine Message-ID: <24366179.1330771949495.JavaMail.root@webmail.kaist.ac.kr> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/20120303/814ab5c8/attachment.html From weng at cse.msu.edu Mon Mar 12 13:27:40 2012 From: weng at cse.msu.edu (Juyang Weng) Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2012 13:27:40 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: BMI 871 Computational Brain-Mind, a summer distance-learning course Message-ID: <4F5E320C.7040101@cse.msu.edu> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/20120312/347b68d9/attachment-0001.html From michael.vendetti at ucla.edu Mon Mar 12 22:52:37 2012 From: michael.vendetti at ucla.edu (Michael Vendetti) Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2012 18:52:37 -0800 Subject: Connectionists: Postdoctoral Research Position for Modeling of Analogical Reasoning Message-ID: Computational Cognitive Neuroscience Postdoctoral Positions Keith Holyoak and Barbara Knowlton at UCLA, in collaboration with John Hummel at the University of Illinois, are seeking 1 or possibly 2 post-doctoral fellows to help advance a joint research project. The project involves development of a neural-network model of analogical reasoning and learning closely tied to functions of prefrontal cortex and related circuitry. This training opportunity involves a variety of methods, close collaboration with the PIs, and is geared toward producing high impact theoretical contributions. The ideal candidates would have backgrounds in cognitive neuroscience and/or computational modeling of neural systems, including neural algorithms for Bayesian inference. One position will place greater emphasis on knowledge of neuroscience and higher cognition, the other on computational skills (including languages such as Python and Matlab). For the latter position, individuals from applied math, math, computer science, and related backgrounds with cognitive neuroscience interests will receive serious consideration. The project is funded by a multi-site contract involving computer scientists and cognitive neuroscientists at multiple institutions. Interaction with this highly collaborative community will provide unique opportunities for education and training to those interested in using computational methods to advance development of neurally-realistic models of human cognition. Salary and benefits will conform to NIH postdoctoral rates. The position is for one year with the possibility of extension for a second year. To apply, please email a statement of research interests, CV, sample publications, and a list of references to holyoak at lifesci.ucla.edu Review of applications will continue until the position is filled. Appointments are subject to a final determination of the availability of funds. UCLA is an Equal-Opportunity/Affirmative-Action Employer. Women and minorities are encouraged to apply. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/20120312/1fb006e8/attachment.html From helinden at kth.se Tue Mar 13 06:44:21 2012 From: helinden at kth.se (=?utf-8?B?SGVucmlrIExpbmTDqW4=?=) Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2012 10:44:21 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: Software for simulation of extracellular field potentials Message-ID: <81B7E6A4-EA7C-4FC3-A725-C695F9A89094@kth.se> LFPy: SOFTWARE FOR SIMULATION OF EXTRACELLULAR FIELD POTENTIALS We would like to draw your attention to LFPy, a Python package for simulation of extracellular potentials that runs on top of the NEURON simulator [1,2]. LFPy is now available for download at: http://compneuro.umb.no/LFPy/ where also installation instructions, documentation and example scripts can be found. BACKGROUND: One important challenge for both experimentalists and modelers is to relate measurements at different spatial and temporal scales to the underlying neural activity. For extracellular potentials, one of the most commonly measured signal in neural recordings, the biophysical relation between activity at the cellular level and the recorded signal is in principle known and a framework for numerical simulations exists: the extracellular potential can be calculated as a weighted sum of transmembrane currents in the vicinity of the recording electrode [3]. Interpreting experimentally recorded signals is, however, often difficult as the potentials are dependent on the complicated morphologies of nearby neurons. The good news is that we can extend our knowledge about the link between measurement and activity by using numerical simulations of multi-compartment neuron models. In the Computational Neuroscience Group at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences this approach has in recent years been used to study e.g. extracellular signatures of action potentials [4] and synaptic input currents [5], and for studying features of multi-unit activity and LFP signals from populations of neurons [6,7]. During this work we have developed a set of Python tools to use with the NEURON simulator [2] that we are now making publically available under the name LFPy, with the hope that it might benefit other modeling efforts in the computational neuroscience community. FEATURES: - Simple-to-use object classes for defining cells, synapses and recording electrodes - Functionality to define detailed models of single neurons, and for running simulations with simultaneous calculation of extracellular potentials - Use of standard formats for neuronal morphologies, allowing for use of morphological reconstructions available in online databases (e.g., http://neuromorpho.org/) - Flexible and extendable thanks to the NEURON and Python programming environments. DEVELOPERS: Henrik Lind?n, Espen Hagen, Szymon ??ski, Eivind Norheim, Klas H. Pettersen, Gaute T. Einevoll LFPy has been developed in the Computational Neuroscience Group (http://compneuro.umb.no/) at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences in collaboration with the Laboratory of Neuroinformatics, Nencki Institute of Experimental Biology, Warsaw, Poland, with support from the International Neuroinformatics Coordinating Facility (INCF) and the Research Council of Norway (eScience, NevroNor). REFERENCES: [1] Hines & Carnevale, Neural Comput 9:1179 (1997) [2] Hines et al., Front Neuroinformatics 3:1-12 (2009) [3] Holt & Koch, J Comp Neurosci 6:169 (1999) [4] Pettersen & Einevoll , Biophys J 94:784 (2008) [5] Lind?n et al , J Comp Neurosci 29:423 (2010) [6] Pettersen et al, J Comp Neurosci 24(3), 291?313 (2008) [7] Lind?n et al, Neuron 72:859-872 (2011) - Henrik Lind?n, PhD Department of Computational Biology, Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) Stockholm, Sweden http://www.csc.kth.se/~helinden/ From eletankc at nus.edu.sg Tue Mar 13 09:54:25 2012 From: eletankc at nus.edu.sg (Tan Kay Chen) Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2012 21:54:25 +0800 Subject: Connectionists: IEEE Computational Intelligence Magazine, Vol. 7, No. 1, February 2012 Message-ID: TABLE OF CONTENT: 1. CIS Publication Spotlight [Publication Spotlight] Derong Liu Chin-Teng Lin Greenwood, G. Lucas, S. Zhengyou Zhang Page(s): 6 - 7 Digital Object Identifier : 10.1109/MCI.2011.2177000 http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=6132223 2. A Unified Framework for Symbiosis of Evolutionary Mechanisms with Application to Water Clusters Potential Model Design Le, M. N. Ong, Y. S. Jin, Y. Sendhoff, B. Page(s): 20 - 35 Digital Object Identifier : 10.1109/MCI.2011.2176995 http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/freeabs_all.jsp?arnumber=6132209 3. Multiobjective Synthesis of Six-Bar Mechanisms Under Manufacturing and Collision-Free Constraints Chen, C.-H. Liu, T.-K. Huang, I.-M. Chou, J.-H. Page(s): 36 - 48 Digital Object Identifier : 10.1109/MCI.2011.2176996 http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/freeabs_all.jsp?arnumber=6132203 4. The Degree of Consideration-Based Mechanism of Thought and Its Application to Artificial Creatures for Behavior Selection Kim, J.-H. Ko, W.-R. Han, J.-H. Zaheer, S.A.S. Page(s): 49 - 63 Digital Object Identifier : 10.1109/MCI.2011.2176999 http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/freeabs_all.jsp?arnumber=6132208 5. Gesture Recognition Based on Localist Attractor Networks with Application to Robot Control [Application Notes] Yan, R. Tee, K.P. Chua, Y. Li, H. Tang, H. Page(s): 64 - 74 Digital Object Identifier : 10.1109/MCI.2011.2176767 http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/freeabs_all.jsp?arnumber=6132215 6. Fuzzy Networks for Complex Systems: A Modular Rule Base Approach (Gegov, A.; 2010) [Book Review] John, R.R. Page(s): 76 - 77 Digital Object Identifier : 10.1109/MCI.2011.2176777 http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=6132216 KC Tan, Editor-in-Chief, IEEE Computational Intelligence Magazine From Thomas_Wiecki at brown.edu Tue Mar 13 15:29:05 2012 From: Thomas_Wiecki at brown.edu (Thomas Wiecki) Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2012 15:29:05 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: Announcement: HDDM 0.2 -- a Python toolbox for hierarchical Bayesian parameter estimation of the Drift Diffusion Model. In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Announcing HDDM release 0.2 ======================== HDDM is a python toolbox for hierarchical Bayesian parameter estimation of the Drift Diffusion Model (via PyMC). Drift Diffusion Models are used widely in psychology and cognitive neuroscience to study decision making. Version 0.2 is our first public stable release and comes equipped with many essential features and tests. At this point, consider the software to still be under development; quantitative tests and comparison to other software tools (i.e. DMAT and fast-dm) and a scientific publication are forthcoming. However, the software has been used by us and selected other labs with great success. Documentation and installation instructions: http://ski.cog.brown.edu/hddm_docs/ Source code repository: https://github.com/hddm-devs/hddm Regards, the HDDM developers From jpezaris at gmail.com Tue Mar 13 21:52:11 2012 From: jpezaris at gmail.com (John Pezaris) Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2012 21:52:11 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: AREADNE 2012 -- Deadline Extended! Message-ID: AREADNE 2012 Research in Encoding and Decoding of Neural Ensembles Nomikos Conference Center, Santorini, Greece 21-24 June 2012 http://www.areadne.org info at areadne.org *** DEADLINE EXTENDED *** The submission deadline for poster abstracts at AREADNE 2012 has been extended to 28 March 2012 ! AREADNE 2012 will be our fourth meeting at the Nomikos Conference Centre in Santorini, Greece. Continuing with the same highly successful format, the conference will bring scientific leaders from around the world to present their theoretical and experimental work on the functioning of neuronal ensembles. The meeting will provide an informal yet spectacular and inspirational setting in which attendees can discuss their recent discoveries and ideas, with a relaxed pace that emphasizes interaction. Please see the Call for Abstracts for additional details, including templates, at http://areadne.org/call-for-abstracts.html Submissions are now due by 28 March 2012; notifications will be provided by 11 April 2012. We strongly encourage potential attendees to submit an abstract as poster presenters have registration priority. For information about the conference, refer to the main web page http://areadne.org or send email to us at info at areadne.org. Please forward this message to any interested colleagues. We hope to see you in Santorini! -- John Pezaris, Co-Chair Nicholas Hatsopoulos, Co-Chair AREADNE 2012 info at areadne.org From terry at salk.edu Wed Mar 14 14:49:19 2012 From: terry at salk.edu (Terry Sejnowski) Date: Wed, 14 Mar 2012 11:49:19 -0700 Subject: Connectionists: NEURAL COMPUTATION - April, 2012 In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Neural Computation - Contents -- Volume 24, Number 4 - April 1, 2012 Article Learning Intermediate-Level Representations of Form and Motion from Natural Movies Charles F. Cadieu and Bruno A. Olshausen Letters Decorrelation of Spiking Variability and Improved Information Transfer through Feedforward Divisive Normalization Bryan P. Tripp Optimal Sequential Detection of Stimuli from Multi-Unit Recordings Taken in Densely Populated Brain Regions Nir Nossenson and Hagit Messer Generalization and Multi-Rate Models of Motor Adaptation Hirokazu Tanaka, John W. Krakauer and Terrence J. Sejnowski Regularized Variational Bayesian Learning of Echo State Networks with Delay and Sum Readout Dmitriy Shutin, Christoph Zechner , Sanjeev R. Kulkarni and H. Vincent Poor The Computational Power of Interactive Recurrent Neural Networks Jeremie Cabessa and Hava T. Siegelmann Rewiring-induced Chaos in Pulse-coupled Neural Networks Takashi Kanamaru and Kazuyuki Aihara Nondegenerate Piecewise Linear Systems: A Finite Newton Algorithm and Applications in Machine Learning Xiao-Tong Yuan and Shuicheng Yan Accelerated Multiplicative Updates and Hierarchical ALS Algorithms for Nonnegative Matrix Factorization Nicolas Gillis and Francois Glineur ----- ON-LINE - http://www.mitpressjournals.org/loi/neco SUBSCRIPTIONS - 2012 - VOLUME 24 - 12 ISSUES USA Others Electronic only Student/Retired $70 $193 $65 Individual $124 $187 $115 Institution $1,035 $1,098 $926 Canada: Add 5% 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 ----- From juergen at idsia.ch Thu Mar 15 08:15:28 2012 From: juergen at idsia.ch (Juergen Schmidhuber) Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2012 13:15:28 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: Master Program Intelligent Systems - Swiss AI Lab IDSIA & University of Lugano, Switzerland Message-ID: <8720B95D-6815-42A2-8703-E896B749DF7A@idsia.ch> Starting Fall 2012: Master's Degree in Informatics with a Major in Intelligent Systems (IS) A master's in computer science, with a specialization in Artificial Intelligence (machine learning, neural networks, optimization, probabilistic reasoning, robotics, etc) Taught by award-winning experts of the Swiss AI Lab, IDSIA, and USI, Switzerland. Instructions, deadlines and more: http://www.idsia.ch/~juergen/aimaster.html From jlam at bccn-tuebingen.de Thu Mar 15 10:22:37 2012 From: jlam at bccn-tuebingen.de (Judith Lam) Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2012 15:22:37 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: Computational Vision Summer School, June 28th - July 5, 2012 Message-ID: <4F61FB2D.1060608@bccn-tuebingen.de> The Bernstein Center Tuebingen invites advanced PhD students and postdocs to apply for the... * ************************************************************************** Computational Vision **Summer **School, **June 28th - July 5, 2012* *Freudenstadt-Lauterbad, Black Forest* *Application deadline: April 15th, 2012 http://www.bccn-tuebingen.de/events/cvss2012/ ***************************************************************************** The Computational Vision Summer School offers a broad perspective on biological vision with a thorough understanding of the theoretical and computational challenges involved. The faculty consists of renowned senior researchers in the field teaching lectures and providing hands-on tutorials on topics ranging from early vision to image understanding. *Confirmed Speakers: *Ted Adelson, Bruce Cumming, Alexei Efros, James Elder, Ralf Engbert, Thomas Euler, Michael Felsberg, Jan Koenderink, Michael Land, Stephane Mallat, Larry Maloney, Tony Movshon, Ken Nakayama, Ruth Rosenholtz, Frank Schaeffel, Eero Simoncelli, Chris Tyler, Brian Wandell *Program Chairs:* Matthias Bethge, Michael Black, Roland Fleming, Felix Wichmann -- -- Judith Lam Executive Coordinator Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience T?bingen Eberhard Karls University of T?bingen Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics http://www.bccn-tuebingen.de/about-bccn/contact.html Spemannstr. 41, 72076 T?bingen Tel: +49 7071 601 1766 Fax: +49 7071 601 1794 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/20120315/34bf3084/attachment.html From v.steuber at herts.ac.uk Thu Mar 15 18:05:42 2012 From: v.steuber at herts.ac.uk (Steuber, Volker) Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2012 22:05:42 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: =?windows-1252?q?CfP_EvoNet2012=40Alife13=2C_19?= =?windows-1252?q?=9622_July_2012=2C_East_Lansing=2C_Michigan=2C_USA?= In-Reply-To: References: , Message-ID: <18EF08266D889C41A14D1099C7102CE2BDDC7AC360@UH-MAILSTOR.herts.ac.uk> ==================================================== 2nd CALL FOR PAPERS [Apologies if you receive multiple postings] EvoNet2012: Evolving Networks, from Systems/Synthetic Biology to Computational Neuroscience A workshop at Alife13, 19?22 July 2012, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan, USA ==================================================== We encourage you once more to submit for EvoNet2012, and extend the deadline for submission to avoid collision with SAB2012. New submission deadline: 1 April 2012 More details: http://www.evosys.org/evonet.html EvoNet2012 is a workshop organized in conjunction with Alife13, 13th International Conference on the Simulation & Synthesis of Living Systems. The workshop aims to bring together researchers interested in investigating computational properties of networks that: (i) have evolved in real life (Systems Biology, Systems Neuroscience) or (ii) were evolved artificially, (iii) could be implemented in hardware, software or "wet-ware", (iv) are of interest as a general approach to understand how biological networks work, or (v) as an approach towards biologically-inspired computation. We encourage presentations that link the Artificial Life, Systems Biology and Computational Neuroscience communities, either from the point of view of common theoretical approaches, computational tools, or interfacing platforms (for example, Systems Biology Markup Language and other XML-based formats). We invite papers in the form of extended abstracts (2-4 pages). We are especially interested in papers which have tutorial value, that synthesize existing results, or present a research portfolio. Papers describing new work are, of course, also welcome. Programme Committee: Wolfgang Banzhaf, Stephane Doncieux, Rodney Douglas, Rene Doursat, Taras Kowaliw, Nikola Markov, Arjen van Ooyen, Maria Schilstra, Volker Steuber, Yaochu Jin, Borys Wrobel Organizing Committee: Taras Kowaliw Maria Schilstra Volker Steuber Borys Wrobel From fsommer at berkeley.edu Thu Mar 15 18:45:58 2012 From: fsommer at berkeley.edu (Fritz Sommer) Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2012 15:45:58 -0700 Subject: Connectionists: Berkeley course in mining and modeling of neuroscience data, July 9-20, 2012 Message-ID: Call for applications: We invite applicants to the 2012 summer course in "Mining and modeling of neuroscience data" to be held July 9-20 at UC Berkeley. A description of the course is below and also at: http://crcns.org/course Application deadline is April 11. Berkeley summer course in mining and modeling of neuroscience data. July 9-20, 2012 Redwood Center for Theoretical Neuroscience, UC Berkeley Organizers: Fritz Sommer, Jeff Teeters Scope This course addresses students and researchers with backgrounds in mathematics and computational sciences who are interested in applying their skills toward problems in neuroscience. It will introduce the major open questions of neuroscience and teach the state-of?the-art techniques for analyzing and modeling neuroscience data sets. The course is designed for students at the graduate level and researchers with background in a quantitative field such as engineering, mathematics, physics or computer science who may or may not have a specific neuroscience background. The goal of this summer course is to help researchers find new exciting research areas and at the same time to strengthen quantitative expertise in the field of neuroscience. The course is partially sponsored by the National Science Foundation from a grant supporting activities at CRCNS.org, which hosts a public repository of experimental neuroscience data. Format The course is "hands on" in that it will include exercises in how to use and modify existing software tools and apply them to data sets, such as those available in the CRCNS.org repository. Course Instructors Robert Kass, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh Jonathan Pillow, University of Texas, Austin Maneesh Sahani, Gatsby Unit, University College London Odelia Schwartz, Albert Einstein College of Medicine Frederic Theunissen, University of California, Berkeley Speakers To complement the main course instruction there will be lectures by neuroscientists from the San Francisco Bay Area presenting their research using quantitative approaches. Requirements Applicants should be familiar with linear algebra, probability, differential and integral calculus and have some experience using MatLab or other software for performing interactive mathematical computations (for example: Python or Mathematica). MatLab is recommended because most exercises will be geared for MatLab. Each student should bring a laptop with the software installed. Cost $200 for tuition. Room and board not included. Because of the low tuition cost, no financial assistance is available. Housing Dorm housing is available. The lowest rate is $384 for the entire two weeks per person in a shared double occupancy room (about $27.50 per night). To get this lowest rate, you must find someone to share the room with. We will help coordinate sharing of rooms for those who wish to do that. Private rooms are also available at twice the price. Full information about the dorm rooms is at: http://conferenceservices.berkeley.edu/summervis_index.html Food Meals are not included with the course, although some breakfast items and snacks will likely be supplied. Food can be purchased at the dorm cafeteria and local restaurants. How to apply Apply at: http://crcns.org/course/apply.php. A curriculum vitae and a letter of recommendation is required. The course is limited to 20 students. Deadlines Applications must be received by April 11. Notifications of acceptance will be given by the end of April. If admitted, payment of $200 must be sent (postmarked by) by May 8. If using dorm housing, to guarantee a room, reservations must be made by June 8. After that, reservations may be made on space available basis. Payment for housing is made directly to the housing office when checking in (on July 8). Questions Questions about the course can be sent to course [at] crcns.org. Email is preferred. But you can also call Jeff Teeters at 510-642-7252. Topics covered Basic approaches: - The problem of neural coding - Spike trains, point processes, and firing rate - Statistical thinking in neuroscience - Theory of model fitting / regularization / hypothesis testing - Bayesian methods - Spike sorting - Estimation of stimulus-response functionals: regression methods, spike-triggered covariance, - Variance analysis of neural response - Estimation of SNR. Coherence Information theoretic approaches: - Information transmission rates and maximally informative dimensions - Scene statistics approaches and neural modeling Techniques for analyzing multiple-unit recordings: - Cross-correlation and JPSTH - Sparse coding/ICA methods, vanilla and methods including statistical models of nonlinear dependencies - Unitary event analysis - Proper surrogates for spike synchrony analysis - Methods for assessing functional connectivity - Advanced topics in generalized linear models - Low-dimensional latent dynamical structure in network activity ? Gaussian process factor analysis and newer approaches --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Friedrich T. Sommer, Ph.D. Redwood Center for Theoretical Neuroscience & Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute UC Berkeley 575A Evans Hall, MC# 3198 Berkeley, CA 94720-3198 http://redwood.berkeley.edu/wiki/Fritz_Sommer -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/20120315/220b4ddd/attachment-0001.html From weng at cse.msu.edu Thu Mar 15 23:24:39 2012 From: weng at cse.msu.edu (Juyang Weng) Date: Thu, 15 Mar 2012 23:24:39 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: BMI course applications are due this Sunday, May 18, 2012 Message-ID: <4F62B277.4020402@cse.msu.edu> Dear all, The deadline for the Brain-Mind Institute (BMI) course applications is this Sunday, March 18. You need to get admitted first to reserve your seat in the courses. Tell your advisees and collaborators also, since the number of seats in each course is limited. BMI does not plan to offer more than one class for each course in 2012. Whether BMI offers a course in 2012 also depends on the number of applications for the course. The supporters of BMI believe that for anyone to understand how the brain-mind works he must acquire 6-discipline knowledge. The BMI Program is designed for this need. One who starts this summer could receive the 6-Discipline Certificate (6DC) in two years, while many others might still not convinced. Please contact us if you have questions. Your sincerely, George Stockman and John Weng From a.storkey at ed.ac.uk Fri Mar 16 06:32:04 2012 From: a.storkey at ed.ac.uk (Amos Storkey) Date: Fri, 16 Mar 2012 10:32:04 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: ICML Workshop on Markets, Mechanisms, and Multi-Agent Models Message-ID: <4F6316A4.9020704@ed.ac.uk> Dear Connectionists Please see below for a call for contributions for an ICML workshop on Markets, Mechanisms, and Multi-Agent Models The remit for this call is broad, and one particular interest is work looking at connections between organisational mechanisms for neural systems and organisational mechanisms (such as markets) for economic systems. At face value, both have much in common - both involve or facilitate some levels of self-organisation, specialisation of function, adaptability, distributed computation etc. Recent work has developed on the parallels between standard approaches for learning/inference and market mechanisms in information markets. We would be very interested in contributions which make substantive comment relating economic organisation and neural processing and organisational principles. regards Amos Storkey ******************************************************************** CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS ICML Workshop on Markets, Mechanisms, and Multi-Agent Models: Examining the Interaction of Machine Learning and Economics Edinburgh: June 30 or July 1, 2012 (to be determined) http://icml2012marketswkshop.pbworks.com/ ******************************************************************** Important Dates: ---------------- Deadline for submissions: 20 April 2012 Notification of Acceptance: 18 May 2012 Organisers: ---------- Amos Storkey (a.storkey at ed.ac.uk) Jacob Abernethy (jaber at seas.upenn.edu) Jenn Wortman Vaughan (jenn at cs.ucla.edu) Overview: --------- Many of society?s greatest accomplishments are in large part due to the facility of markets. Markets and other allocation mechanisms have become necessary tools of the modern age, and they have been key to facilitating the development of complex structures, advanced engineering, and a range of other improvements to our collective capabilities. Much work in economics has been done to demonstrate that markets can, in aggregate, function very well even when the individual participants are noisy, irrational or myopic. In terms of aims and benefits, the design of machine learning techniques has much in common with the development of market mechanisms: information aggregation, maximal efficiency, scalability, and, more recently, decentralization. Current machine learning algorithms are often single goal methods, built from simple homogeneous units by one person or individual groups. Perhaps looking to the organisations of economies may help in moving beyond the current centralised design of most machine learning methods. Allowing agents with different opinions, approaches or methods to enter and leave the market, to interact, and to adapt to changes can have many benefits. For example it may enable us to develop methods that provide continuous improvement on complex problems, reuse results by improving on previous outcomes rather than building bigger models from scratch, and adapting to changes. There are many relationships between machine learning methods, Bayesian decision theory, risk minimisation, economics, statistical physics and information theory that have been known for some time. There are also many open questions regarding the full nature and impact of these connections. This workshop will explore these connections from many different directions. Various Topics: --------------- More detailed descriptions of each of these topics can be found on the website. 1) Prediction markets as a tool for learning and aggregation. 2) Learning in problems of mechanism design. 3) Prediction and learning in ad auctions. 4) Online trading, portfolio selection, etc. in financial engineering. 5) Relating Market Mechanisms and Machine Learning/Neural Methods. 6) Transactional Communication in Multi-agent Systems. Feel free to email the organizers regarding additional topics. Submission Instructions: ----------------------- We are soliciting contributions for talks and for posters. Submissions should take the form of a abstract limited to 4 pages plus references. At least one page of this should be dedicated to describing the relationship of this work to other work in both Economics/Finance and in this area of Machine Learning. In addition if you wish to be considered for a talk, you should submit a further description of what the motivation and content of your talk will be (in one page or less). Please see the website for full submission instructions. -- The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in Scotland, with registration number SC005336. From fjaekel at uos.de Fri Mar 16 07:01:31 2012 From: fjaekel at uos.de (=?iso-8859-1?Q?Frank_J=E4kel?=) Date: Fri, 16 Mar 2012 12:01:31 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: OCCAM 2012 Workshop Message-ID: <2FCA80E1-B237-4F98-93CB-77530DBC4CBB@uos.de> Workshop announcement (1st call): (Apologies for duplicate postings) Dear Colleague, we would like to invite you to register for the 2nd +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Osnabrueck Computational Cognition Alliance Meeting (OCCAM 2012) on "The Brain as an Information Processing System" June 4-6 2012. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ The workshop will take place in Osnabrueck, Germany, and will be hosted by the Institute of Cognitive Science (University of Osnabrueck). Details can be found below and on the following webpage: http://www.occam-os.de Registration is open until April 9th, 2012 (first come first served). The registration fee is 100,- Euros. This fee covers the workshop attendance incl. coffee, buffet on the first day, and the conference dinner. The goal of the OCCAM workshop series is to foster our understanding of mechanisms and principles of information processing in self-organized hierarchical and recurrent systems. Our knowledge of such systems is still very limited despite being a focus of research for many years. The OCCAM workshop series aims at understanding the principles of information processing with a particular focus on 3 major topics: 1. Neural coding and representation in hierarchical systems 2. Self-organisation in dynamic systems 3. Mechanisms for probabilistic inference The OCCAM 2012 theme is: "The Brain as an Information Processing System" List of invited speakers: Matthias Bethge, Tuebingen* Andreas Engel, Hamburg* Marc Ernst, Bielefeld* Rainer Goebel, Maastricht* Judith Hirsch, Los Angeles Siegrid Loewel, Goettingen* Klaus Obermayer, Berlin* Gordon Pipa, Osnabrueck* Stefano Panzeri, Genova* Natasha Sigala, Brighton* Gasper Tkacik, Klosterneuburg* Catherine Tallon-Baudry, Paris* Julia Trommershaeuser, New York* Eilon Vaadia, Jerusalem* Felix Wichmann, Tuebingen* (* confirmed) There will also be a poster session where conference participants will have the opportunity to present their work. Best regards, Frank Jaekel, Peter K?nig, Gordon Pipa (Organizing committee) -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: smime.p7s Type: application/pkcs7-signature Size: 4771 bytes Desc: not available Url : https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/20120316/2a5ca9b5/smime.bin From frank.ritter at psu.edu Fri Mar 16 17:54:54 2012 From: frank.ritter at psu.edu (Frank Ritter) Date: Fri, 16 Mar 2012 17:54:54 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: CogModel notes: ICCM12/BRIMS12/SI/confs/apps/Jobs Message-ID: This is based on the International Cognitive Modeling Conference mailing list that I maintain. I forward messages about twice a year. (however, this is the fourth one for ICCM 2012.) The first announcement is driving this email -- the program and registration information for ICCM 2012 in Berlin. If you would like to be removed, please just let me know. I maintain it by hand to keep it small. cheers, Frank Ritter frank.e.ritter at gmail.com http://acs.ist.psu.edu http://www.frankritter.com **************************************************************** 1. ICCM 2012, Berlin, 12-15 April 2012, early reg. deadline: 24 Mar 12 http://www.iccm2012.com 2. ICCM 2012 tutorials program available, Berlin, 12 April 2012 http://www.iccm2012.com/tutorials/ 3. ACM TiiS special issue on Human Decision Making and Recommender Systems http://tiis.acm.org/special-issues.html 4. Cognitive Systems AAAI 2012 http://www.aaai.org/Conferences/AAAI/2012/aaai12cognitivecall.php 5. Caffine Zone 2, predicts caffeine level app for iOS devices http://caffeinezone.net 6. MindModeling at Home: HPC resource for modeling http://MindModeling.org/beta. 7. Workshop Proposals, KI 2012, Due: March 15 2012 http://www.dfki.de/ki2012/ 8. Special issue of Cog Sys Red on Mindreading at ONR, Deadline: 1 Jun 12 http://www.pbello.com/CFP%20Special%20Issue%20of%20CogSysRes%20on%20Mindreading.pdf 9. Augmented Cognition Technical Group Meeting, Proposals due March 17, 2012 https://www.hfes.org/Web/Register.aspx?Code=TG 10. Modeling Social Behavior program at NIH in simulation http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/rfa-files/RFA-GM-13-006.html 11. International Summit on Human Simulation (ISHS) 2012, due: 10 apr 12 http://www.societyhumansimulation.org/content/international-summit-human-simulation-2012 12. European Conf. on Cog. Ergonomics (ECCE) 2012, papes due: 2 apr 12 http://www.napier.ac.uk/ECCE12 13. International Neural Network Society Conference, papers due: 31 mar 12 http://inns.sit.kmutt.ac.th/wc2012/ 14. BRIMS 2012 schedule available on line http://brimsconference.org/schedule/ 15. New Journal: Biologically inspired cognitive architectures http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/727718/description 16. Post-Doc position at the Naval Sub. Med. Res. Lab. (NSMRL) in Groton, CT. 17. Frymoyer Endowed Chair Professor Position in IST at PSU http://ist.psu.edu/research/frymoyer-chair 18. post-doc at DTRA managing grants http://www.usajobs.gov/GetJob/ViewDetails/311151100?share=email 19. Two prof. positions in HF/cogpsy (modeling), Wright State U., from 1mar12 https://jobs.wright.edu/postings/4956 20. PhD position, HrTeam http://www.cs.gc.cuny.edu/applications 21. 2 Lectureships at King's College London http://www.kcl.ac.uk/depsta/pertra/vacancy/external/pers_detail.php?jobindex=11121 22. PhD Position, University of Osnabrueck Germany 23. PhD Scholarship at TU Berlin http://www.prometei.de/en/vacancies/scholarship.html 24. Professor Position at Technische Universitaet Berlin http://www.personalabteilung.tu-berlin.de/menue/jobs/ 25. Three 1-year Post PhD positions with DTRA (deadline: 1apr12) Jan Mahar Sturdevant 26. ACT-R Internship at PARC 27. Jobs at NSF, starting to eval from 1 mar 2012 http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2012/sbe12003/sbe12003.jsp?org=SBE **************************************************************** 1. ICCM 2012, Berlin, 12-15 April 2012, early reg. deadline: 24 Mar 12 http://www.iccm2012.com The conference will be held from 13 to 15 April 2012 in Berlin at the Technische Universitat Berlin (TU/Berlin). The tutorials will be held April 12, 2012. We hope to see you in Berlin! The program and the registration (early registration: E200 for faculty and E100 for students) are now available. The International Conference on Cognitive Modeling (ICCM) is the premier conference for research on computational models and computation-based theories of human behavior. ICCM is a forum for presenting, discussing, and evaluating the complete spectrum of cognitive modeling approaches, including connectionism, symbolic modeling, dynamical systems, Bayesian modeling, and cognitive architectures. ICCM includes basic and applied research, across a wide variety of domains, ranging from low-level perception and attention to higher-level problem-solving and learning. The chairs are: "Nele Russwinkel" , "Uwe Drewitz" , "Hedderik van Rijn" , "Jeronimo Dzaak" **************************************************************** 2. ICCM 2012 tutorials program available, Berlin, 12 April 2012 http://www.iccm2012.com/tutorials/ The Tutorials program at the International Conference on Cognitive Modeling (ICCM) 2012 will be held on 12 April 2012. It will provide conference participants with the opportunity to gain new insights, knowledge, and skills from a broad range of areas in the field of cognitive modeling. Tutorial topics will be presented in a taught format and are likely to range from practical guidelines to theoretical issues or software. Tutorials at ICCM have been held many times before, and this year's program will be modelled after them and after the series held at the Cognitive Science Conference. Tutorials are E10/half-day, or E20 for a whole day. Developing CLARION-based Agents Using the New CLARION Library Lynch, Full day (0900-1700) Heuristic models of judgment and decision-making: Implementations and applications Schooler & Neth, Half-day (afternoon: 1345-1700) Understanding cognitive processes through language use Tenbrink, Half-day (afternoon: 1345-1700) Cog. Robotics: The Symbolic and Sub-symbolic Robotics Intelligence Control System Kelley, Half-day (morning: 0900-1215) Scaling models of cog. to the world: Complexity-theo. tools for dealing with intractability van Rooij & Kwisthout, full day (0900-1700) **************************************************************** 3. ACM TiiS special issue on Human Decision Making and Recommender Systems http://tiis.acm.org/special-issues.html ACM Transactions on Interactive Intelligent Systems on HUMAN DECISION MAKING AND RECOMMENDER SYSTEMS Main submission deadline: February 29th, 2012 http://tiis.acm.org/special-issues.html AIMS AND SCOPE A primary function of recommender systems is to help people make good choices and decisions. But in research on recommender systems, surprisingly little attention has been devoted to the decision making processes of users. Instead, it has focused mainly on (a) ways of eliciting and modeling users' preferences and (b) algorithms for identifying items that a user is likely to evaluate positively. Even systems that do explicitly aim to support the decision making process could benefit from greater use of knowledge about human decision making. And the growing amount of research on users' interaction with recommender systems, which aims to enhance their usability and acceptance, can be expanded to consider support for specific aspects of decision making. This special issue will highlight research that explicitly considers ways in which an understanding of human choice and decision making can benefit research and practice on recommender systems. The dimensions listed below indicate the range of work that is relevant to the special issue. In case of doubt about the relevance of your topic, please contact the special issue associate editors. TOPIC DIMENSIONS Types of Decision Made by Users of Recommender Systems - Decisions about items in some domain (e.g., products, documents, ...) - Decisions about actions performed as part of the domain-level decision making process (e.g., what information to divulge or to acquire) Aspects of the Recommendation Process - Acquiring information about users' preferences - Modeling users' preferences - Provision of decision-relevant information - Presentation and explanation of recommendations - Adaptation to the interaction context - Special characteristics of recommendation to groups Aspects of Human Choice and Decision Making - What people desire in a decision making process - Roles of justification and argumentation in decision making - Descriptive models of choice - Heuristics and biases - The nature of preferences - Temporal aspects of decision making - Forms of social influence - Roles of emotion and mood - Effects of learning from experience - Negotiation in decision making - Factors that influence decision making (e.g., culture, mood, time pressure ...) Evaluation Criteria for Recommender Systems - Decision quality - Minimization of effort and stress - Trust and confidence Nature of the Research Contribution - Novel functionality inspired by an understanding of human decision making - Empirical results concerning decision making with recommender systems - Innovation in research methodology (e.g., concerning ways of evaluating recommender systems or observing users' decision making processes) SPECIAL ISSUE ASSOCIATE EDITORS - Alexander Felfernig, Graz University of Technology, Austria (afelfern[at]ist[dot]tugraz[dot]at) - Francesco Ricci, Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Italy (francesco[dot]ricci[at]unibz[dot]it) - Li Chen, Hong Kong Baptist University, China - Giovanni Semeraro, Marco de Gemmis, and Pasquale Lops, University of Bari Aldo Moro, Italy IMPORTANT DATES - By February 29th, 2012: Submission of manuscripts [late, but query them if interested-fer] - By May 29th, 2012: Notification about decisions on initial submissions - By August 27th, 2012: Submission of revised manuscripts - By October 26th, 2012: Notification about decisions on revised manuscripts - By November 26th, 2012: Submission of manuscripts with final minor changes - Starting December, 2012: Publication of the special issue on the TiiS website, in the ACM Digital Library, and (shortly afterward) as a printed issue HOW TO SUBMIT Please see the instructions for authors on the TiiS website (tiis.acm.org). ABOUT ACM TiiS TiiS (pronounced "T double-eye S") is a recently founded ACM journal for research about intelligent systems that people interact with. The journal's procedures and infrastructure have been designed to combine the traditional quality and depth of ACM journals with the efficiency and predictability of the best-run conferences. **************************************************************** 4. Cognitive Systems AAAI 2012 http://www.aaai.org/Conferences/AAAI/2012/aaai12cognitivecall.php [again, late for submission, but they hope to make this an ongoing program.] As you might already know, there will be a new special track on Cognitive Systems at AAAI 2012 following the footsteps of the previous AAAI Integrated Intelligence track, but with a wider scope and a particular focus on integrated cognitive systems. This track also follows the direction of the recent 2011 AAAI Fall Symposium on Advances in Cognitive Systems. The CFP for the track can be viewed here: http://www.aaai.org/Conferences/AAAI/2012/aaai12cognitivecall.php The program committee for this special track consists of experts in cognitive systems to ensure that all papers receive a thorough, fair expert review. Thus, we hope that you will find this track a unique opportunity to disseminate your work in cognitive systems and look forward to receiving your papers. Sincerely, James Allen and Matthias Scheutz Special track co-chairs **************************************************************** 5. Caffine Zone 2, predicts caffeine level app for iOS devices http://caffeinezone.net I'd like to tell you about an iPhone/iPod/iPad app that we created, Caffeine Zone 2. Based on entering your caffeine consumption, Caffeine Zone 2 displays your caffeine level over time. You can set the display and alarms for levels of caffeine for optimal cognitive work, and also caffeine levels too much for optimum cognition and too much for sleep (these levels come with defaults). With use you might adjust your caffeine consumption, and for example, drink more decaf coffee. The lite version is free and includes ads, and the paid version ($0.99) has no ads. It would be particularly useful for people who have varying sleep patterns (e.g., shift work), people have trouble falling asleep because they consume caffeine too close to sleeping, and people who are interested in the pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics of caffeine. This work was initially created with support from ONR. It has since been released by ONR and PSU to a small company to develop it that is run by Dr. Frank Ritter. Dr. Kuo-Chuan Yeh (computer science, Penn State) helped create it. More information is available at http://caffeinezone.net/ . The software can be downloaded from the iTunes store. A number of free copies of the software are available for media and for government evaluators. Dr. Frank Ritter at ist.psu.edu College of Information Sciences and Technology The Pennsylvania State University University Park, PA 16802-3857 ph. (814) 865-4453 http://ritter.ist.psu.edu http://www.frankritter.com **************************************************************** 6. MindModeling at Home: HPC resource for modeling http://MindModeling.org/beta. A Volunteer Computing Resource for Cognitive Science MindModeling at Home (Beta) is a research project that uses volunteer computing for the advancement of cognitive science. The research focuses on utilizing computational cognitive process modeling to better understand the human mind. Mindmodeling at Home is most effective for computing pleasingly parallel, high-throughput computational problems. Why use MindModeling? MindModeling at Home provides an infrastructure for executing cognitive models in parallel resources for quickly evaluating a model under many different contexts. The parallelism can be used for speeding up: 1. Model Optimization 2. Parameter Interaction or Performance Space Exploration 3. Model Comparison 1. Contact the MindModeling team at support at mindmodeling.org and request an account. Please provide a short, succinct description of your research, any affiliations, and reasons for wanting to use MindModeling at Home. MindModeling.org has been designed to make it easy to submit Lisp/ACT-??R models [but I think they will work to support others -fer] To participate in the MindModeling at Home project as a volunteer and donate your local desktop/laptop CPU cycles to the project, 1. visit: http://boinc.berkeley.edu/. 2. After downloading the BOINC software, you can attach to the MindModeling project using the following URL: http://MindModeling.org/beta. Online Documentation & Additional Help https://mindmodeling.org/docs/wiki/index.php?page=User_Intro Note: Online documentation requires an account with MindModeling at Home Or contact the MindModeling team at support at mindmodeling.org. Suggestions, collaborations, and contributions highly appreciated. **************************************************************** 7. Workshop Proposals, KI 2012, Due: March 15 2012 http://www.dfki.de/ki2012/ KI 2012, Saarbrucken, 24-27 September KI 2012, the 35th German Conference on Artificial Intelligence, invites original research papers, as well as workshop and tutorial proposals from all areas of AI, its fundamentals, its algorithms, and its applications. Together with the main conference, we aim at organizing a small number of high-quality workshops suitable for a large percentage of conference participants, including graduate students as well as experienced researchers and practitioners. General Information Workshops will be free of charge for conference participants and will be held at the first day of the conference. Both full-day (6 hours) and half-day (3 hours) workshops are of interest. They should preferably be given in English. The KI 2012 conference organizers will provide logistic support and meeting places for the workshops as well as determine the dates and times of the workshops. Working and teaching material will be printed by the conference organization. Volumes are limited to a total of 200 pages. How to Propose a Workshop Proposals should be prepared in PDF, or plain ASCII (two pages) and sent by email to the KI 2012 Workshop Chair. Each workshop proposal should provide the following information: * Description of workshop topic and goal. This description should discuss the relevance of the suggested topic and its interest to the general AI community and the KI 2012 audience. * Names and full addresses (including email and web address) of the workshop organizer(s). This can be a single person or a group of persons. Please indicate the primary contact person for the workshop to KI 2012. Strong proposals include organizers who bring differing perspectives to the workshop topic and who are actively connected to the communities of potential participants. * Names and affiliation of the members of the proposed Program Committee. * For which areas of AI do you expect to draw participants for your workshop and how many participants do you expect? How do you plan to invite participants for the workshop? * A brief description of the workshop format regarding the mix of events such as paper presentations, invited talks, panels, demonstrations, and general discussions. * Do you expect the workshop to be a full-day workshop or a half-day workshop? * A list of important dates (submission deadline etc) for the workshop. Workshop organizers will be responsible for: * Producing a call for participation. This call will be posted on the KI 2012 website. * Organizers are responsible for additional publicity such as distributing the call to relevant newsgroups and electronic mailing lists, and especially to potential audiences from outside the KI conference community. * Submissions of the workshop papers will be handled by the workshop organizers. Please make sure that you have a proper review process. * Organizers are encouraged to maintain their own web site with updated information about the workshop. This site will be linked from the KI 2012 conference site. * Coordinating the production of the workshop notes. The workshop organizers coordinate the paper collection, production, and distribution of the working notes for the workshops. Important Dates and Information Proposal deadline: March 15, 2012 Notification of acceptance: April 1, 2012 CFP for the workshops due: April 15, 2012 Workshop proceedings ready: September 1, 2012 Workshop date: September 24, 2012, Saarbrucken Workshop Chair: Gabriele Kern-Isberner, TU Dortmund, gabriele.kern-isberner at cs.tu-dortmund.de KI 2012, Saarbrucken, 24-27 September, http://www.dfki.de/ki2012/ **************************************************************** 8. Special issue of Cog Sys Red on Mindreading at ONR, Deadline: 1 Jun 12 http://www.pbello.com/CFP%20Special%20Issue%20of%20CogSysRes%20on%20Mindreading.pdf Mindreading, or the ability to represent and reason about the mental states of other agents and oneself, is a pervasive part of cognition that has yet to be deeply explored from a computational perspective. As a fundamental enabler for language understanding, plan recognition, cooperation, competition and moral cognition, it follows that detailed models of mental state attributions are a prerequisite for the development of a more complete theory of the human mind. Current cognitive theories of mindreading are predominantly philosophical in nature, with empirical work seemingly unable to provide definitive answers as to which framework might be the most defensible. Now that researchers have started to build cognitive models of mental-state reasoning, it is hoped that computational considerations may weigh in on the matter of how best to understand mindreading. This special issue seeks to promote interdisciplinary dialogue between computational cognitive modelers, philosophers, and psychologists studying the nature and operation of the human capacity to mindread. The emphasis of the issue will be placed on computational models and how they both inform and are informed by work in other disciplines. Submissions should be sent to either paul.bello at navy.mil or mguarini at uwindsor.ca by June 1st 2012. Links to information for authors are contained in the PDF version of the call, which can be found at: http://www.pbello.com/CFP%20Special%20Issue%20of%20CogSysRes%20on%20Mindreading.pdf Paul Bello, Ph.D. Program Officer, Cognitive Science, Code 341 - Warfighter Performance Office of Naval Research 875 N. Randolph St. Suite 1425 Arlington, VA 22203 (Ph): 703-696-4318, (Cell): 703-742-9862 Email: paul.bello at navy.mil **************************************************************** 9. Augmented Cognition Technical Group Meeting, Proposals due March 17, 2012 https://www.hfes.org/Web/Register.aspx?Code=TG Please plan to participate with the Augmented Cognition Technical Group (ACTG) at the 56th Annual Meeting of HFES (October 22-26, 2012) at the Westin Boston Waterfront: https://www.hfes.org//Web/HFESMeetings/meetings.html. I am sure that it will be another exciting opportunity to exchange knowledge, catch up with colleagues, and make new connections! ACTG will be accepting proposals for lectures, posters, panels, symposia and/or tutorials. For submission instructions, please go to: https://www.hfes.org//Web/HFESMeetings/2012annualmeeting.html. Please keep in mind that Proposals are due March 17, 2012! The submission site is set to open on January 19th and can be found by following the link above. Also, keep your eyes open for student best paper and student grant opportunities. Sincerely, ACTG Program Chair LT Lee Sciarini Lee.Sciarini at navy.mil P.S. Don't forget to Renew/Join the Augmented Cognition Technical Group (ACTG)! Please go to the following web site if you are not a member of HFES: https://www.hfes.org/Web/Register.aspx?Code=TG or, if you are already member, click on the member link https://www.hfes.org/Web/Login.aspx, login, and select the technical group(s) you wish to join. The AUGMENTED COGNITION Technical Group is concerned with fostering the development and application of real-time physiological and neurophysiological sensing technologies that can ascertain a human's cognitive state while interacting with computing-based systems; data classification and integration architectures that enable closed-loop system applications; mitigation (adaptive) strategies that enable efficient and effective system adaptation based on a user's dynamically changing cognitive state; individually tailored training systems; and roadmaps for future directions concerning augmented cognition science and technology and guidelines of use for the technology and the user information that may be garnered from it. Similar to other TGs, such as the Cognitive Engineering and Decision Making (CETG) and the Training TGs, the AC-TG does not focus on anyone application area. The AC-TG aims to discover, develop, and apply neuroscience-based methodologies and tools that can enhance the human-centered approaches and ultimate capabilities of scientists and practitioners working in most any application area-where the focus may be general human-system integration issues, specific human-computer interaction techniques, or a combination of both. Examples of AC-TG application areas include: human-system interface design for complex and information-intensive systems (e.g., command and control, air traffic control, stock market), adaptive training systems for military and industry, brain-machine interfaces for cognitive therapy and enhancement, usability engineering, operator selection, market research, and interactive gaming. **************************************************************** 10. Modeling Social Behavior program at NIH in simulation http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/rfa-files/RFA-GM-13-006.html [past the date for letter of intent, but shows movement into this area by NIH-fer] This FOA, issued by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) and the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), solicits applications for developing and testing innovative theories and computational, mathematical, or engineering approaches to deepen our understanding of complex social behavior. This research will examine phenomena at multiple scales to address the emergence of collective behaviors that arise from individual elements or parts of a system working together. This FOA will support research that explores the often complex and dynamical relationships among the parts of a system and between the system and its environment in order to understand the system as a whole. To accomplish the goals of this FOA we encourage applications that build transdisciplinary teams of scientists spanning a broad range of expertise. Minimally this team should include senior investigators with expertise in the behavioral or social sciences as well as in computational and systems thinking (computer science, mathematics, engineering, systems-level methodology). Research can involve model organisms or humans. The FOA will support small research projects focusing on theory building and testing, development and testing of innovative methods or methodological approaches, as well as small infrastructure projects focusing on development and testing of shared resources (in the context of a driving biological, basic behavioral or social, or human health issue). The FOA also will fund larger and more integrative research projects focusing on the modeling of complex social behavior. Stephen E. Marcus, Ph.D. Epidemiologist and Program Director Social and Behavioral Modeling Research Program Division of Biomedical Technology, Bioinformatics, and Computational Biology National Institute of General Medical Sciences National Institutes of Health Chairperson Department of Public Health and Certificate of Public Health Program FAES Graduate School at NIH Foundation for Advanced Education in the Sciences **************************************************************** 11. International Summit on Human Simulation (ISHS) 2012, due: 10 apr 12 http://www.societyhumansimulation.org/content/international-summit-human-simulation-2012 The International Summit on Human Simulation (ISHS) 2012 will be held at the TradeWinds Island Resort in St. Pete Beach, Florida, May 23-25, 2012. This annual event is intended to provide a forum for discussion and collaboration in the use of human simulation technology between corporations, academia, and government. Keynote speaker for this year is: Mr. George Solhan, Deputy Chief of Naval Research, Expeditionary Maneuver Warfare & Combating Terrorism Science & Technology. Call for Papers This is part of the International Society for Human Simulation. http://www.SocietyHumanSimulation.org/ The field of human simulation has entered every walk of life, from design and manufacturing to movie making and sports studies. It is a rich field with depth and breadth and continues to expand into new areas as industries find more uses for human simulations to reduce costs, time to market, and the need for costly physical prototypes; to study human performance; and to optimize product design for optimal human system integration. As part of this ISHS Society, the annual summit is aimed at sharing results, developments, and practices in the field. Proceedings of ISHS are published. Paper submission deadline Target dates Deadline for Submission: April 10, 2012 Response to authors: April 24, 2012 Papers, Abstracts, and Posters are welcome. Submit papers (in PDF) to: Melanie Laverman laverman at engineering.uiowa.edu Tel. 319.335.5722 Conference website is: http://www.societyhumansimulation.org/content/international-summit-human-simulation-2012 Proposed areas include but not limited to: - Agent-based modeling and training - Anatomical modeling - Avatar creation - Anthropometry - Applications of human models - Assembly line analysis - Biomechanical modeling - Cognition and perception modeling - Cognition and perception simulation - Computational biomechanics - Egress and ingress modeling - Ergonomics simulations - Human dynamics - Human modeling - Human motion - Human performance modeling - Human shape modeling - Human simulation - Human systems integration - Human vibration modeling - Kinetics and health applications - Man-in-the-loop simulators - Motion prediction - Occupant packaging - Physics-based human analysis - Physics-based human simulation - Posture and comfort - Practices in human simulation - Product interface - Safety simulations - Soft tissue modeling - Task simulation - Warfighter simulation Karim Abdel-Malek, PhD Director, Virtual Soldier Research (VSR) program Director, Center for Computer Aided Design Professor, Department of Biomedical Engineering The University of Iowa Iowa City, IA 52242 amalek at engineering.uiowa.edu Tel. (319) 335-5676 http://www.ccad.uiowa.edu **************************************************************** 12. European Conf. on Cog. Ergonomics (ECCE) 2012, papes due: 2 apr 12 http://www.napier.ac.uk/ECCE12 Second call: ECCE 2012 - European Conference on Cognitive Ergonomics August 28 - 31, Edinburgh Napier University, Edinburgh, UK http://www.napier.ac.uk/ECCE12 Deadline for workshop and tutorial proposals: 2 March 2012! ECCE 2012 is the 30th conference of the European Association of Cognitive Ergonomics. We invite long or short papers, posters, demonstrations, doctoral work-in-progress and proposals for workshops and tutorials in the areas of cognitive ergonomics, human technology interaction and cognitive engineering. This year's theme is Re-thinking cognition. Cognition is no longer viewed as being merely "rules and representations" but is now seen to be situated, distributed, shared, embodied and embedded. We invite researchers to consider how these new treatments have shaped and perhaps, even, overturned their thinking and practice. Accepted submissions in all categories will be published in the proceedings, which will also be available in the ACM digital library. Authors of the best quality papers will be invited to submit to a special issue of the journal Behaviour and Information Technology. Keynote speakers Professor Yvonne Rogers, Director of University College London Interaction Centre; Professor Philippe Palanque, IRIT (Institut de Recherche en Informatique de Toulouse) Professor Mike Wheeler, Dept. of Philosophy, University of Stirling Submission instructions are at http://www.napier.ac.uk/ECCE12 Key dates Submission of workshop and tutorial proposals: 2 March 2012 Submission of long and short papers, posters/demos and doctoral work-in-progress: 2 April 2012 (notification of acceptance 21 May) Camera-ready copy for all categories: 29 June 2012 Workshops/tutorials/doctoral consortium: 28 August 2012 Main conference sessions: 29 - 31 August 2012 Edinburgh in late August sees the annual Festivals draw to a close. Delegates arriving early may be able to catch the final events of the Fringe, while the International Festival ends with fireworks on 2 September. We have reserved a reasonable quota of hotel rooms, but you are advised to book early! Queries to ecce2012 at napier.ac.uk **************************************************************** 13. International Neural Network Society Conference, papers due: 31 mar 12 http://inns.sit.kmutt.ac.th/wc2012/ INNS-WC 2012 - Call for Symposium Proposals INNS-WC2012 : 3rd Winter Conference of the International Neural Network Society Bangkok, Thailand, October 3-5, 2012 http://inns.sit.kmutt.ac.th/wc2012/ Proposals are solicited for INNS-WC2012 Symposia under the broad theme of Natural and Machine Intelligence. Each symposium will consist of both invited and contributed papers. All accepted papers will appear in the INNS-WC2012 conference proceedings in Elsevier's Procedia Computer Science. Each proposal for symposium should include the following information: * Name/Title of the Symposium * Symposium organizer and affiliation * Subject areas to be covered by the symposium * Potential authors Important Dates: Deadline for symposium proposal submission: March 31, 2012 Notification of proposal acceptance: April 15, 2012 Deadline for symposium session papers submission: May 15, 2012 Notification of paper acceptance: June 15, 2012 Camera-ready paper: July 15, 2012 Proposal for symposium should be submitted in electronic form (Word or pdf) to inns at sit.kmutt.ac.th by March 31, 2012 ORGANIZERS - International Neural Network Society (INNS) - National Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (BIOTEC), National Science and Technology Development Agency (NSTDA) - King Mongkut University of Technology Thonburi (KMUTT) Collocated Conferences - The 11th International Conference on Bioinformatics (InCoB 2012 - www.incob2012.org) - The 3rd International Conference on Computational Systems-Biology and Bioinformatics (CSBio2012 - www.csbio.org) Professor Ron Sun President, International Neural Network Society Cognitive Science Department Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute 110 Eighth Street, Carnegie 302A Troy, NY 12180, USA phone: 518-276-3409 fax: 518-276-3017 email: dr.ron.sun [AT] gmail.com web: http://sites.google.com/site/drronsun **************************************************************** 14. BRIMS 2012 schedule available on line, 12-15 Mar 12 http://brimsconference.org/schedule/ BRIMS 2012 conference schedule available on line. The Behavior Representation in Modeling and Simulation conference (BRIMS) has papers on cognitive modeling. You are invited to participate in the 21st Conference on Behavior Representation in Modeling and Simulation (BRIMS), to be held at the Amelia Island Plantation, Amelia Island, Florida (near the Georgia / Florida border). BRIMS enables modeling and simulation research scientists, engineers, and technical communities across disciplines to meet, share ideas, identify capability gaps, discuss cutting-edge research directions, highlight promising technologies, and showcase the state-of-the-art in Department of Defense related applications. The BRIMS Conference will consist of many exciting elements in 2012, including special topic areas, technical paper sessions, special symposia/panel discussions, and government laboratory sponsor sessions. Highlights of BRIMS 2012 will include a fantastic lineup of keynote speakers spanning cognitive modeling, sociocultural modeling, and network science. The BRIMS Executive Committee invites papers, posters, demos, symposia, panel discussions, and tutorials on topics related to the representation of individuals, groups, teams and organizations in models and simulations. All submissions are peer-reviewed (see www.brimsconference.org for additional details on submission types). KEY DATES for 2013: [estimated] All submissions due: 14 Dec 2012 Tutorial Acceptance: 31 Jan 2013 Authors Notification 31 Jan 2013 Tutorials: late March 2013 BRIMS 2013: 13 March 2013 BRIMS PROGAM COMMITTEE: William Kennedy (George Mason University) Bradley Best (Adaptive Cognitive Systems) Robert St. Amant (North Carolina State University) If you have any questions or concerns, please contact the BRIMS 2012 Conference Chair, Dr. Tiffany Jastrzembski (tiffany.jastrzembski at wpafb.af.mil). **************************************************************** 15. New Journal: Biologically inspired cognitive architectures http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/727718/description The focus of the journal is on the integration of many research efforts in addressing the challenge of creating a real-life computational equivalent of the human mind. Therefore, the journal publishes on the multidisciplinary study of cognitive architectures found in vivo and in silico. To help foster a wider understanding, at a computational level, of how natural intelligent systems develop their cognitive, metacognitive, and learning functions, the journal will promote the overarching goal of creating one unifying widespread framework for the computational modeling of biologically inspired cognitive architectures. The scope includes (but is not limited to): Cognitive science, with a focus on higher cognitive functions and their cognitive architecture models: including autonomous cognition and metacognition, imagery, sensemaking, meta-learning, self-regulated learning, life-long learning and cognitive growth, "critical mass" of a learner, models of creativity, affects, emotions and feelings, emotional competence, social cognition, the self, human-like episodic memory, language perception, processing, production, acquisition, and development; Computer science and engineering, with a focus on human-like artificial intelligence: cognitive architectures, virtual and physical cognitive robotics, synthetic characters, bootstrapped and human-like learning, human-computer interface, vision, computational linguistics, intelligent tutoring systems; Neuroscience, with a focus on higher cognition and learning: system-level computational neuroscience, cognitive neuroscience, models of the neural substrates of semantic and episodic memory and awareness, agency, emotions and feelings, theory of mind and social cognition, language, imagery, voluntary control, goal and value systems, spatial cognition, etc. Contributions to the journal should include a cognitive architecture element and an element of biological inspiration, the latter understood broadly (e.g., inspiration by the human cognition). Both mature and new cutting edge research are welcomed, provided they have a strong emphasis on concrete empirical or theoretical studies. Submissions of a purely philosophical nature are discouraged and will be redirected elsewhere. Editor in Chief: Alexei Samsonovich **************************************************************** 16. Post-Doc position at the Naval Sub. Med. Res. Lab. (NSMRL) in Groton, CT Post-Doctoral position is available (starting as soon as Jan 2012) for a candidate with the necessary multi-disciplinary training in psychology, physiology, and/or human factors engineering. The candidate will have the opportunity to participate in one or more of our on-going projects (e.g., "Enhance Underwater Sound Localization by Electro-mechanical Means", "Developing Methods for Measuring and Monitoring the Bioeffects of Underwater Tool Noise", "An Examination of Audiovisual Integration for Periscope Operations", and/or "Impact of Stress/fatigue/inattention on Decision-making in Submarine Scenarios"). In the first two years, the candidate will be expected to learn the nuances of our specialized field, as well as how to conduct research inside of a military lab. Toward the end of the second year, the candidate will take what he/she has learned and generate a research proposal worthy of financial support. By the end of the third year, the candidate is expected to be fully engaged and supported in independent research, either at NSMRL or at one of our many collaborating academic/industrial partners. QUALIFICATIONS: - Ph.D. or Sc.D. required - U.S. citizenship required. - Degree in biomedical engineering, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, acoustics, audiology, psychoacoustics, experimental psychology, physics, or related field. - Superb analytical, writing and presentation skills required. - Ability to travel 10-20% of the time. POINT-OF-CONTACT: Dr. Michael Qin michael.qin at med.navy.mil 860.694.3295 **************************************************************** 17. Frymoyer Endowed Chair Professor Position in IST at PSU http://ist.psu.edu/research/frymoyer-chair The Pennsylvania State University College of Information Sciences and Technology (IST) is seeking candidates for the position of Frymoyer Chair. The Frymoyer Chair is a tenured, full professor in the College of Information Sciences and Technology. The anticipated start date is Fall 2012 or Spring 2013. The endowed chair was established in 1999 through a gift of $1.5 million from the Edward J. Frymoyer Foundation. The holder of the Frymoyer Chair is expected to have a significant impact not only in the College, but also across multiple disciplines at the University and in the public and private sectors. Funds from the endowment will support the chair holder's contributions to instruction, research, and public service with the overall intent to foster the use, benefits, and effectiveness of the information sciences around the globe. The College was founded in 1998 to develop information science and technology leaders for the digital, global society, and enrolled its first class of students in the 1999-2000 academic year. The College at University Park, which includes 50 full-time faculty, currently serves approximately 1100 undergraduate students, 110 resident graduate students, primarily in the Ph.D. program, and 100 non-resident graduate students in a professional master's degree program. In addition, the IST undergraduate curriculum is offered at 19 other Penn State campuses. In January 2004, the College moved into a new 190,000 square foot building on the University Park campus. The building houses both the College of IST and the Department of Computer Science and Engineering. To learn more about our structure, vision, mission, goals, faculty and students, please see http://ist.psu.edu. We seek a candidate who will provide research leadership as our College moves forward in its second decade of existence. We have faculty strengths in: (1) computational informatics and artificial intelligence; (2) human computer interaction and cognitive studies; (3) information systems development/enterprise architecture; (4) security and informatics; and (5) social policy, economics and informatics. As an interdisciplinary faculty we collaborate on problems of national significance. We are particularly interested in candidates with demonstrated research leadership in cutting edge problem areas such as infrastructure and internet security and privacy, innovation in web search, health informatics, network science, social media, and educational technology. The successful candidate will have a well defined and sustained record of funded research and accomplishments. However, we will not limit our search to specific research areas or problems. Applications from those who seek to be a part of a vibrant, civil and diverse academic community and who do research and teaching in any of the information and technology sciences are welcome. Qualified candidates are invited to send a cover letter with their research vision, their curriculum vita, as well as names and email addresses of four persons who will write letters of recommendation to chairsearch at ist.psu.edu. Review of applications will continue until the position is filled. Penn State is committed to affirmative action, equal opportunity and the diversity of its workforce. **************************************************************** 18. post-doc at DTRA managing grants http://www.usajobs.gov/GetJob/ViewDetails/311151100?share=email [DTRA is supporting several interesting network science/cognitive science projects. I am also happy to answer questions about this -fer] Would you please help distribute the following link for a DTRA job opening in my division? It is for a physical scientist, but I am looking for a young-in-career PhD with a cognitive science or neuroscience degree to manage Counter WMD basic research grants. It is a GS-13 position Here is the link to the announcement http://www.usajobs.gov/GetJob/ViewDetails/311151100?share=email Submit by 04/12/2012 Yours, Rob Robert.Kehlet at dtra.mil **************************************************************** 19. Two prof. positions in HF/cogpsy (modeling), Wright State U., from 1mar12 https://jobs.wright.edu/postings/4956 Wright State University (WSU): The Department of Psychology seeks applicants for two tenure- track positions in human factors or cognitive psychology to begin on August 16, 2012 or as soon as possible thereafter. Appointment at the Assistant Professor level is anticipated, but applications from highly qualified individuals at the Associate Professor level will be considered. This search is conducted in collaboration with the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory's Human Effectiveness Directorate, which is part of the 711 Human Performance Wing at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. The successful candidates will have responsibilities at both institutions and will have the potential for initial research funding from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research. Depending on rank of successful candidates and funding availability, we anticipate filling up to two tenure track positions. Candidates must have earned a Doctorate in Psychology or a related discipline (completion of requirements anticipated by August 16, 2012). Post doctoral, applied, or prior academic experience is preferred. Candidates should: 1) have a demonstrated program of research in an area that aligns with interests at both WSU and the Air Force Research Laboratory, 2) be capable of independent research that will meet the Psychology Department's requirements for promotion and tenure, 3) be capable of productive collaborations with Air Force researchers on topics of interest to the Air Force, 4) show promise of, or demonstrated success in, establishing an externally funded research program, and 5) be capable of teaching courses in human factors, cognitive science, and related topics, advising graduate students, and supporting the undergraduate and graduate programs. The Department of Psychology is located in the College of Science and Mathematics, and its 20 full-time tenured or tenure-track faculty offer both Ph. D. and M. S. graduate programs and B. S. and B. A. undergraduate programs. Our unique Graduate Program provides students a solid grounding in both Human Factors and Industrial/Organizational psychology. Students major in one area such as human factors and minor in the other area. Our graduate degree programs place a heavy emphasis on research, and faculty have been successful in obtaining external research funding. Currently, 10 of the faculty specialize in areas related to human factors. The state of Ohio has designated WSU as a Center of Excellence in the multi-disciplinary areas of Human-Centered Innovation, Knowledge-Enabled Computing, and the Neuroscience Institute, and our faculty participate in these centers. The department's undergraduate programs are one of the most popular undergraduate majors at WSU. For more information on our graduate program and faculty research interests, go to www.wright.edu/cosm/departments/psychology/. Wright State University, an institution of 19,700 students, is located in a growing high-tech suburban community and is surrounded by commercial and government research and development facilities. The university is proactively committed to industrial and government partnerships for research and development ventures. The Psychology Department has a strong history of productive collaborations with local industry and government research labs. The successful government collaborations of our faculty and students have been primarily with scientists and engineers in the 711 Human Performance Wing of the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. The nearby Wright-Patterson Air Force Base is a major center of government research activity. The 711 Human Performance Wing consists of the Human Effectiveness Directorate, the Human Performance Integration Directorate and the School of Aerospace Medicine. This Wing has recently expanded operations in the Dayton region due to the base realignment and closure process. The Human Effectiveness Directorate engages in multidisciplinary research spanning the gamut from molecular neuroscience to socio-cultural dynamics. For purposes of this announcement and consistent with ongoing internal initiatives, two areas where the Human Effectiveness Directorate is expanding its existing research base are in areas related to cognitive modeling and in areas related to effective collaboration with autonomous systems (e.g., robots, air vehicles, agents). The cognitive modeling research area emphasizes formal (computational and mathematical) methods for modeling and simulation that explains and predicts how people adapt to information-rich environments that are uncertain, dynamically changing, and often adversarial in nature, in order to make decisions efficiently and perform effectively. The collaboration with autonomous systems research area seeks to identify the contextual, dispositional, social, and technological influences on coordination among human and autonomous components in distributed organizations. Applicants should submit a letter of application, CV, statements of research and teaching interests, and the names and contact information for three letters of reference via the web-portal at: https://jobs.wright.edu/postings/4956 by March 1, 2012 for first consideration , and have three letters of reference sent to Dr. Kevin B. Bennett, Chair, Human Factors Search Committee, 335 Fawcett Hall, Department of Psychology, Wright State University, Dayton, OH 45435. Review of applicants will begin March 1, 2012. (also see: http//www.wright.edu/leader/). **************************************************************** 20. PhD position, HrTeam http://www.cs.gc.cuny.edu/applications [this may be out of date, but probably represents an ongoing possibility] The HRTeam project at The City University of New York is recruiting a Ph.D. candidate in computer science. We take a multiagent systems approach to challenging human-robot interaction problems. We deploy a team consisting of multiple heterogeneous physical robots, collaborating with humans. Their combined abilities provide diverse functionality and employ innovative coordination and decision-making techniques. The team's world is dynamic, as is the team's composition, and there is a substantial machine learning component based on the FORR cognitive architecture. We seek an exceptional computer science Ph.D. candidate with good communication skills, strong programming skills, and preferably with an interest in cognitive science and/or robotics. The appointment includes a stipend and tuition support, starting in Fall 2012. A master's degree or the equivalent in computer science is preferred but not required. The applicant should be an experienced programmer, a strong researcher, and a good collaborator. Please send a preliminary application, including your CV and a motivation letter (PDF format preferred), to susan.epstein at hunter.cuny.edu. Preliminary applications will be reviewed beginning December 15, 2011. Note that a formal application to the Graduate Center at the City University of New York will also be required. See http://www.cs.gc.cuny.edu/applications for details. Decisions can be expected in March 2012. The HRTeam project is funded by the National Science Foundation and is co-directed by Professors Elizabeth Sklar, Susan L. Epstein and Simon Parsons. **************************************************************** 21. 2 Lectureships at King's College London http://www.kcl.ac.uk/depsta/pertra/vacancy/external/pers_detail.php?jobindex=11121 King's College London is advertising two Lectureships (assistant professorships) in Robotics. I have no involvement in the hiring process, but am keen to encourage applications from people with research interests related to my own, in areas such as machine learning, pattern recognition, computer vision, neural computation, cognitive or developmental robotics, and intelligent systems. The official job advert is below. Lectureships in Informatics (Robotics) x2 The Department of Informatics is seeking applications from candidates with an excellent research track record for up to two lectureship positions. It is anticipated that the successful applicants will contribute to research and teaching in the area of Robotics. Current areas of focus in the Centre for Robotics Research (CRR) include biomedical robotics, bio-inspired robotics, soft robotics, robot topology and algorithms, autonomous grasping and manipulations, and multi-modal sensing for robotic perception and haptics. CRR also has close collaborations with King's-affiliated hospitals and various EU partners through a number of FP7 funded projects. An ability to help build links to other groups, for example to Agents & Intelligent Systems, or to contribute to the broader teaching needs of the Department, may be deemed to be an advantage. Applications from outstanding researchers in other areas of Informatics will also be considered, if they can contribute significantly to the development of the Department. The Department of Informatics was formed in August 2010 from the previous Department of Computer Science, incorporating the Centre for Robotics Research and the Centre for Telecommunications Research, as part of the new School of Natural and Mathematical Sciences. These appointments are part of a strategic growth of the Department, and provide an opportunity for outstanding researchers to contribute to, and help shape the direction of, the Department in its new form. Applicants for the lectureships must have a PhD, an excellent publication record, and the ability to attract research funding. Appointment at the level of Senior Lecturer may be possible for suitably qualified candidates. All applicants must have the enthusiasm and commitment required to enhance the research standing of the new department, and to make a full contribution to teaching and administrative activities. The appointment will be made, dependent on relevant qualifications and experience, within the Grade 6/7 scale, currently ?33,193 to ?47,659, per annum, inclusive of ?2,323 London Allowance, per annum. This is a full-time, permanent position. For an informal e-mail discussion, please contact the Head of Department, Professor Michael Luck: michael.luck at kcl.ac.uk For an application pack please click on the 'Further details' link below. Alternatively, please email strand-recruitment at kcl.ac.uk. All correspondence MUST clearly state the job title and reference number G6-7/CEE/959/11-JT. Further Details: http://www.kcl.ac.uk/depsta/pertra/vacancy/external/pers_detail.php?jobindex=11121 http://www.kcl.ac.uk/nms/depts/informatics/index.aspx Dr Michael Spratling Senior Lecturer Department of Informatics and Division of Engineering King's College London, Strand, London. WC2R 2LS. UK. **************************************************************** 22 . PhD Position, University of Osnabrueck Germany Doctoral / Postdoctoral Position Artificial Intelligence Group of the Institute of Cognitive Science (IKW) University of Osnabrueck (Germany) The Artificial Intelligence Group of the Institute of Cognitive Science (IKW) at the University of Osnabrueck (Germany) seeks applicants for a doctoral / postdoctoral position (salary level E 13 TV-L, 50%) The position is limited until September 30th, 2014 and provides the possibility of further scientific qualification (PhD / Habilitation). The main research areas of the AI group are non-classical forms of reasoning, ontologies and text technology, neural-symbolic integration, and cognitive architectures. The duties of the successful applicant include 2 hours teaching load (teaching language is English) as well as participation in the research activities of the AI group. Applicants should have an excellent academic degree (Master/Diploma) in computer science or a related discipline, and potentially a PhD degree. In the ideal case, the successful candidate has experience in interdisciplinary research and fulfils at least two of the following requirements: - Thorough knowledge in formal logic and knowledge representation formalisms, in particular with respect to ontology design and inference procedures - Thorough knowledge in the theory of artificial neural networks - Thorough knowledge in cognitive modeling - Thorough knowledge in the development of algorithms - Practical knowledge in at least one of the following programming languages: Prolog, Java, ML/Scheme, or a similar language The University of Osnabrueck strives for an increase in the number of women in academic employment. Women are therefore especially encouraged to submit their applications and will be preferentially considered provided they are equally qualified. Disabled candidates with equal qualifications will be given preference. There is an option for part-time employment. Letters of application with the usual documents (CV, list of publications, and the names of two referees) should be sent to the Director of the Institute of Cognitive Science, University of Osnabrueck, Albrechtstrasse 28, 49076 Osnabrueck. The deadline for applications is 21.02.2012. Further information can be provided by Prof. Dr. Kai-Uwe Kuehnberger (kkuehnbe at uni-osnabrueck.de). **************************************************************** 23. PhD Scholarship at TU Berlin http://www.prometei.de/en/vacancies/scholarship.html *3 Year Scholarship of 1468.00 ? taxfree* *Topic: Modeling the Perception of Causal Relationships in Human-Computer Interaction* *Description:* Under which conditions do we perceive two events as causally related and classify them as cause and effect? Early works by Michotte (1962) and experiments by Einhorn and Hogarth (1986) provide answers to this question from a psychological perspective. Both lines of research indicate that the perception of a causal relationship depends on a number of cues, such as temporal order and spatial contiguity. Starting from these classical works, the PhD project will build a computational model for the perception of causality. The model will be developed in the cognitive architecture ACT-R (Anderson et al., 2004). Events during human computer interaction will serve as cases for the modeling and experiments will be run to validate the models. The PhD project will be conducted in close cooperation with the other scholarship-holders of the research cluster 6 "Usability Workbench". It will be part of a research program of the Chair of "Cognitive Psychology and Cognitive Ergonomics" at TU Berlin. Applicants for this projects must have a master degree or diploma in psychology, human factors, computer science or cognitive science. In particular, experience in modelling with ACT-R is required. Expertise in empirical methods and statistics as well as good skills in German and English are also expected. More Information: http://www.prometei.de/en/vacancies/scholarship.html Contact: Ms. Sandra Widera Technische Universitat Berlin Zentrum Mensch-Maschine-Systeme, GRK 1013/2 prometei Sekr. FR 2-6 Franklinstrasse 28-29 D-10587 Berlin phone: +49 30 314-24671 **************************************************************** 24. Professor Position at Technische Universitaet Berlin http://www.personalabteilung.tu-berlin.de/menue/jobs/ Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience & School for Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (Fakultaet IV) Technische Universitaet Berlin Applications are solicited for the post of a Professor for "Modeling of Cognitive Processes" (tenured) salary grade W2 / W3 corresponding to an associate (W2) or a full (W3) professor position. The department encourages both senior scientists and scientists, who are still earlier in their career, to apply. The successful candidate will join the faculty of the Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience Berlin (cf. http://www.bccn-berlin.de/) as well as the School for Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (Fakultaet IV, cf. http://www.eecs.tu-berlin.de/) of the Berlin University of Technology. She/he is expected to conduct collaborative research in the area of "Modeling of Cognitive Processes". She/he will join the teaching efforts within the Master/PhD program in Computational Neuroscience of the Bernstein Center as well as within the departmental graduate programs in electrical engineering and computer science in abovementioned area. The successful candidate is expected to contribute to the department's undergraduate teaching programs. She/he shall also be open for scientific collaborations with the department's engineering-oriented research groups, for example in the areas machine learning, computer vision, intelligent agents, or robotics. Candidates must meet the requirements of the Berlin Higher Education Act (Par. 100 BerlHG). These requirements include a completed university degree or PhD, the Habilitation or equivalent achievements, educational and didactic competences. More detailed information are available on request; strong research experience in the field of "Modeling of Cognitive Processes". Additional experience in one application domain (intelligent agents, cognitive robotics, human-machine systems, etc.) and a solid track record in the acquisition of research grants are desirable. Contact person for more information: Prof. Dr. Klaus Obermayer, E-Mail: oby at cs.tu-berlin.de, Tel. +49 (0) 30 314-73120 or -73442. To ensure equal opportunities between men and women, applications from women with the respective qualifications are explicitly encouraged. Handicapped applicants with the same qualifications are preferred. Please send your written application (including CV, publication list, teaching experience, research statement) inside by four weeks with the job reference number IV-55 to: Praesident der Technischen Universitaet Berlin Dean of School IV, Sekr. FR 5-1 Franklinstrasse 28/29 10587 Berlin, Germany Please send only copies and not original documents, as they will not be returned. This description is also available at http://www.personalabteilung.tu-berlin.de/menue/jobs/. **************************************************************** 25. Three 1-year Post PhD positions with DTRA (deadline: 1apr12) Jan Mahar Sturdevant Usually, we are looking for three people with specific technical expertise to place them at Defense Threat Reduction Agency, or DTRA, down in Washington DC. Specifically, we place recent or fairly recent graduates with doctoral or terminal degrees in to post-doctoral fellowships with the Basic and Applied Sciences Directorate at DTRA. The areas of expertise we are seeking is as follows: TA2 = Cognitive and Information Science: The basic science of cognitive and information science results from the convergence of computer, information, mathematical, network, cognitive, and social science. This research thrust expands our understanding of physical and social networks and advances knowledge of adversarial intent with respect to the acquisition, proliferation, and potential use of WMD. The methods may include analytical, computational or numerical, or experimental means to integrate knowledge across disciplines and improve rapid processing of intelligence and dissemination of information. TA6 = Cooperative Counter WMD Research with Global Partners: Cooperative fundamental research to reduce the global threat of WMD in collaboration with a broad range of global research partners. This thrust area involves exploratory applied research that may have a basic research component to address opportunities to reduce, eliminate, and counter WMD across the Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear, and High Explosive (CBRNE) spectrum. Strong international relationships will foster smooth transition of C-WMD program ownership to the partnering country. The foci are to improve international collaboration to detect, characterize, and report WMD, and to advance host nation sustainment through a culture of long-term cooperation and scientific responsibility for C-WMD programs. Multidisciplinary research in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics promotes transparency through quality research publications and continual dialogue between scientist/engineers and young researchers. (BAP) Technical Writer for Research and Development Enterprise, Basic and Applied Sciences Directorate (RD-BA): technical writer/graphic designer will plan, analyze, and create solutions to communications problems in collaboration with team members representing a number of disciplines. The technical writer/designer will work with subject matter experts (SMEs) to determine specific content and identify goals for successful communication product development. Strategic communication tools are expected to present complex information in both print and electronic formats such that technical and non-technical end users are considered. Communications products will include, but are not limited to, technical newsletters, specialized brochures, annual reports, and web pages. Application deadline is 4/1/12... email jbm18 at psu.edu to get the application form [it's too big to include here-fer] Further Detail For qualified candidate, this opportunity would provide the following to a US citizen, capable of obtaining a security clearance at the Secret level, to spend one year working at DTRA (Fort Belvior): ? $71,663 annual salary ? $ 1,000 monthly living allowance ? Domestic Travel allowance ? Potential funding for additional academic degrees Post-Doctoral Research Fellowship Program The objective of this fellowship program is to establish and sustain a long-term process through which the University Strategic Partners (USP) will develop and execute a Post- Doctoral Research Fellowship Program to address critical scientific, technology and engineering needs for reducing the threat from Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD). This project will enable DTRA to utilize mission-critical expertise possessed by highly qualified faculty and graduate students (nearing completion of their degree) who hold doctoral or terminal professional degrees in relevant scientific, technical and engineering disciplines. Post-Doctoral / Masters Fellows will be selected based upon their responsive ability to enhance the joint DTRA-Strategic Partnership mission requirements. Key science and technology skills include: nuclear and radiation physics; weapons engineering; structural, electrical and mechanical engineering; broad-based nano-technological engineering and applications; weapons effects and system response technologies; physics, chemistry and biological sciences related to detection, characterization and destruction of WMD materials; medical and pharmaceutical sciences; information technology, modeling, data visualization and advanced computational sciences; social, adversarial and behavioral modeling, science and analysis. Post-Doctoral / Masters Research Fellows will be assigned to DTRA's Research and Development and subsequently detailed to perform such duties as may be required among the various agency Enterprises, Directorates and Offices which are typically reviewing research proposals and white papers. **************************************************************** 26. ACT-R Internship at PARC The Augmented Social Cognition area (ASC) at PARC has an opening for a summer internship in computational cognitive modeling under the direction of Peter Pirolli. The overall goal of the project is to develop integrated cognitive-neuroscience architectures for understanding sensemaking. More specifically we are developing ACT-R models to simulate how people solve tasks that involve interacting with muli-layered map interfaces that contain various kinds of information and forming and evaluating hypotheses about what is going on. Experience with ACT-R models and/or spatial cognition will be a major advantage. If interested, please send an email and CV to Peter Pirolli, pirolli at parc.com **************************************************************** 27. Jobs at NSF, starting to eval from 1 mar 2012 http://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2012/sbe12003/sbe12003.jsp?org=SBE Dear Colleague Letter - Directorate for Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences (SBE) Employment Opportunity DATE: February 28, 2012 The Directorate for Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences (SBE) announces a nationwide search for senior researchers to serve as Program Directors. Formal consideration of interested applications will begin March 1 and will continue until selections are made. While we are interested in a variety of experts that span the Directorate's multidisciplinary scope, we currently anticipate one specific area of need, with the following target start date: Science of Science and Innovation Policy (SciSIP) (Summer 2012) seeks a scholar with broad expertise in areas of science and innovation policy, developing, improving and expanding models, analytical tools, data and metrics that can applied in the science policy decision making process. Successful candidates will have training in social or economic science, including economics, science and technology studies, organizational science, or other related fields and demonstrated expertise in research methods that advance science and innovation policy. This expertise may encompass a wide variety of scientific approaches, for example: qualitative case studies to help describe complex processes and formulate hypotheses; quantitative and statistical methods that build new linked datasets on researchers, grants, patents, publications, citations and firms and workers; or analytical models that develop new tools for describing complex outcomes or to identify the marginal impact of Federal funding on scientific progress and outcomes. Applicants must have a Ph.D. or equivalent experience and at least six years of successful research, research administration, and/or managerial experience pertinent to the position. For additional information about the above program, please see http://www.nsf.gov/div/index.jsp?org=SMA The position requires effective oral and written communication skills, and familiarity with NSF programs and activities is highly desirable. The incumbent is expected to work effectively both individually within the specific NSF program and as a member of crosscutting and interactive teams. The incumbent must also demonstrate a capability to work across government agencies to promote NSF activities and to leverage program funds through interagency collaborations. For additional information on NSF's rotational programs, please see "Programs for Scientists, Engineers, and Educators" on the NSF website at: http://www.nsf.gov/about/career_opps/. How to Apply: Applicants should indicate within their cover letter and subject line of the email that they are applying for a position in the SciSIP program. Please submit a cover letter and curriculum vitae to khenders at nsf.gov. **************************************************************** -30- From kkuehnbe at uos.de Fri Mar 16 10:53:46 2012 From: kkuehnbe at uos.de (Kai-Uwe Kuehnberger) Date: Fri, 16 Mar 2012 15:53:46 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: CFP: Computational Creativity, Concept Invention, and General Intelligence 2012 (C3GI) Message-ID: <4F6353FA.7090700@uos.de> **************************************************** * Call for Papers: C3GI 2012 * * Workshop on Computational Creativity, * * Concept Invention, and General Intelligence 2012 * * 27th or 28th of August, 2012, Montpellier/France * **************************************************** In conjunction with the 20th European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (ECAI) 2012 ******************** * Workshop Webpage * ******************** http://www.cogsci.uos.de/~c3gi ****************************** * Workshop Topics& Audience * ****************************** The targeted audience for the workshop are researchers associated with the fields working in the development of computational models for creativity, concept formation, concept discovery, idea generation, and their overall relation and role to general intelligence. Furthermore, researchers coming from application areas, like computer-aided innovation (CAI) are welcome to submit papers for this workshop. We invite papers that make a scientific contribution to the fields of computational creativity, idea generation and/or artificial general intelligence, with possible topics ranging from theoretical studies of human creativity, inventive capacities and intelligence (that in some way propose a computational model for the respective capability), through more practical contributions reporting on creative, inventive or generally intelligent computer systems (we particularly welcome implementations offering general or at least multiple sorts of results) and studies of systems and software supporting and/or guiding humans in the creative or inventive act, to application-based reports from fields like design, architecture or arts. Submissions connecting to several of the aforementioned topics are highly encouraged and welcome. Due to the open nature of the targeted topics, we hope for contributions from a broad variety of subdisciplines within AI. Relevant keywords include but are not limited to following high-level areas: - Computational Creativity& Creativity-Support Tools - Analogical Reasoning - Artificial General Intelligence - Automated Story Generation - Computer-Aided& Automated Mathematics - Computer-Aided Innovation - Computational Models for Conceptual Blending - Automated Poetry Generation - Automated Music Generation/Automated Composition - Automated Art Generation - Creativity in Problem Solving ******************* * Call for Papers * ******************* Anybody with an interest in the questions raised above is invited to submit a research or position paper as basis for discussions during the workshop. Submissions should be sent to Tarek R. Besold (c3gi at cogsci.uos.de). Accepted papers will be published online in the ''Publication Series of the Institute of Cognitive Science`` (PICS, ISSN 1610-5389), a scientific series from the Institute of Cognitive Science, University of Osnabrueck, unless the authors instruct us otherwise. Authors are invited to submit an expanded full paper version of their workshop submission to a post-workshop review process, leading to a journal special issue on future directions for creativity, idea generation, and general intelligence. ****************** * Important Dates* ****************** 1st call for papers sent: 19th of February, 2012 Paper submission deadline: 28th of May, 2012 Notification of acceptance: 28th of June, 2012 Camera ready versions: 15th of July, 2012 Workshop: 27th or 28th of August, 2012 ************************ * Format of Submission * ************************ All papers should be submitted in accordance to the ECAI formatting style. Submitted papers should not be longer than 5 pages. ********************* * Program Committee * ********************* Program Committee Co-Chairs: - T. R. Besold, University of Osnabrueck - K.-U. Kuehnberger, University of Osnabrueck - M. Schorlemmer, IIIA-CSIC, Barcelona - A. Smaill, School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh Program Committee: - J.-L. Arcos, IIIA-CSIC, Barcelona - J. Barnden, University of Birmingham - G. Cascini, University of Milano - J. Cassens, University of Luebeck - H. Ekbia, Indiana University Bloomington - M. Guhe, School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh - H. Gust, University of Osnabrueck - I. Havel, Charles University Prague - A. Kofod-Petersen, NTNU Trondheim - U. Krumnack, University of Osnabrueck - M. Martinez Baldares, University of the Andes, Bogota - A. Pease, School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh - F. Pereira, University of Coimbra - E. Plaza, IIIA-CSIC, Barcelona - T. Roth-Berghofer, University of West London - U. Schmid, University of Bamberg - P. Stefaneas, NTU Athens - T. Veale, University College, Dublin - P. Wang, Temple University Philadelphia ************************ * Organizing Committee * ************************ Tarek R. Besold, University of Osnabrueck Kai-Uwe Kuehnberger, University of Osnabrueck Alan Smaill, University of Edinburgh Marco Schorlemmer, IIIA-CSIC From morgado at uma.pt Sat Mar 17 18:34:20 2012 From: morgado at uma.pt (Morgado Dias) Date: Sat, 17 Mar 2012 22:34:20 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: CONTROLO'12 - Special Sessions and Submission deadline extended In-Reply-To: <001a01cd0393$bd471300$37d53900$@uma.pt> References: <001a01cd0393$bd471300$37d53900$@uma.pt> Message-ID: <4F65116C.9040604@uma.pt> The following conference has one strong area of Artificial Neural Networks. A special issue of Neural Computing and Applications will be issued containing the best papers in the Neural Networks and one of the invited speakes is Professor Jos? Carlos Pr?ncipe of University of Florida, so it should be interesting to the connectionist members. Best regards, Morgado -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dear colleagues, I am sending this call for papers for the Portuguese Controlo Conference. We are opening Special Sessions and there are several Special Issues of journals that will be issued with papers from this conference. Namely in Neural Networks and Automation. There are also prizes for the best papers. The deadline has been extended before so this is the final one. Hope to receive you here in the beautiful island of Madeira, Morgado Dias -------- Original Message -------- Subject: CONTROLO'12 - Special Sessions and Submission deadline extended Date: Fri, 16 Mar 2012 16:42:11 -0000 From: Controlo 2012 To: Controlo 2012 ================================================================ 10th Portuguese Conference on Automatic Control -- CONTROLO'12 Funchal, Portugal 16 -- 18 July 2012 Web site: http://www.uma.pt/controlo2012 Submission: https://cmt.research.microsoft.com/CONTROLO2012/ *NEW* Submission deadline: *April 2, 2012* Also, new special sessions available: -Wireless Communications and Applications in Embedded Systems and Machine-to-Machine -Marine Robotics -Control Using Wireless Sensors and Actuator Networks -Ambient Intelligence and Smart Environments *Special Sessions* Submission deadline: *April 9, 2012* More info at: http://www4.uma.pt/controlo2012/specials.html ================================================================ Dear colleagues and Friends, At the request of the authors, the paper submission deadline for the 10th Portuguese Conference on Automatic Control -- CONTROLO'12 will be extended to April 2, 2012. We look forward to receiving your submissions and many thanks for your support to the CONTROLO'12 Best Regards from CONTROLO'12 Conference Committee PS: We apologize if you received multiple copies of this announcement -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/20120317/de99c039/attachment-0001.html From zhaoping at gatsby.ucl.ac.uk Sat Mar 17 18:42:28 2012 From: zhaoping at gatsby.ucl.ac.uk (Dr Zhaoping Li) Date: Sat, 17 Mar 2012 22:42:28 +0000 (GMT) Subject: Connectionists: Summer semester short course on "Understanding biological vision" in Beijing, July 2-13 2012 Message-ID: There will be a 2-week summer semester short course on "Understanding biological vision, theory, data, and models" July 2-13, in Tsinghua University, Beijing. This course will be mainly taught by Li Zhaoping (see www.cs.ucl.ac.uk/staff/Zhaoping.Li/), additional invited lecturers will be announced during the course. See http://cns.med.tsinghua.edu.cn/summercourse2012/ for more details. This course introduces neural mechanisms and cognitive behaviors in biological vision (particularly human or primate vision). It emphasizes understanding the principles behind biological vision, and introduces computational models. The predictions of the theories and models are compared with or tested by experimental (physiological/psychological) data. The topics includes visual encoding (neural mechanisms, principles, and their modeling), visual attentional selection (neural mechanisms, cognitive phenomena, models/theories and their experimental tests), and (more briefly) visual perception/recognition (mechanism, phenomena, models, and perspectives). This course is suitable for students with physical science background (physics/engineering/math/computer science) interested in learning biological visual mechanisms, principles, and phenomena (e.g., those with computer vision background are suitable). It is also suitable for those with biological vision science background (e.g., vision neuroscientists, vision psychophysicists) to learn computational approaches. Although this is a Tsinghua University Course, a limited number of spare seats in the lecture room will be available for interested students outside Tsinghua University to audit the course. Lectures will be in English (Chinese explanations/answers to questions will be available when requested). For organization purpose, auditing students from outside Tsinghua University must register (see the course website), and be admitted on the basis of first-come-first-serve and the match between the skills/background of the students and the pre-requisite/content of the course. From mehdi.khamassi at isir.upmc.fr Mon Mar 19 11:12:37 2012 From: mehdi.khamassi at isir.upmc.fr (Mehdi Khamassi) Date: Mon, 19 Mar 2012 16:12:37 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: Second call for posters/registration: Symposium on Biology of Decision Making, Paris, France, 10-11 May 2012 Message-ID: <4F674CE5.5010603@isir.upmc.fr> [Please accept our apologies if you get multiple copies of this message] Dear colleagues, It is our great pleasure to invite you to the Second Symposium on Biology of Decision Making which will take place in Paris on May, 10-11th 2012. The deadline for registration and poster submission is on March, 31st. Registration to the symposium is free, but we ask that you fill out the form on our website so we know how many people to expect. Only registered people will be able to attend the symposium. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- SECOND SYMPOSIUM ON THE BIOLOGY OF DECISION MAKING (SBDM) May 10-11 2012, Paris, France Institut du Cerveau et de la Moelle, H?pital La Piti? Salp?tri?re, 47 Bd de l'H?pital, 75013 Paris Universit? Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris, France. http://sbdm2012.isir.upmc.fr -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ABSTRACT: The Second Symposium on Biology of Decision Making will take place on May 10-11, 2012 at the Institut du Cerveau et de la Moelle, H?pital La Piti? Salp?tri?re, 47 boulevard de l'H?pital, 75013 Paris, France. The objective of this two day symposium is to gather people from different research fields with different approaches (economical, behavioral, neural and computational approaches) to decision making. The symposium will last for 2 days and will include 4 sessions: Neuro-Economics, Neuro-Physiology, Neuro-Systems and Neuro-Computations. As an invited professor at Universit? Pierre et Marie Curie in 2012, Kenji Doya will give a plenary talk at the symposium. INVITED SPEAKERS: Itzhak Aharon (IDC Herzliya, Israel) Thomas Boraud (CNRS Universit? Victor Segalen ? Bordeaux 2, France) Sacha Bourgeois-Gironde (Aix-Marseille School of Economics / Institut Jean Nicod, France) Kenji Doya (Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology, Japan) Beno?t Girard (CNRS Universit? Pierre et Marie Curie ? Paris 6, France) Kevin Gurney (University of Sheffield, UK) Boris Gutkin (CNRS Ecole Normale Sup?rieure, France) David Hansel (CNRS Universit? Paris Descartes ? Paris 5, France) Todd Hare (University of Zurich, Switzerland) Guillaume Hollard (CNRS, Economics Paris School, France) Etienne Koechlin (CNRS Ecole Normale Sup?rieure, France) Brian Lau (CRICM Paris / Columbia University, USA) Arthur Leblois (Universit? Paris Descartes ? Paris 5, France) Mathias Pessiglione (INSERM Institut du Cerveau et de la Moelle, France) A. David Redish (University of Minnesota, USA) Francesca Sargolini (Universit? de Provence ? Aix-Marseille 1, France) Tali Sharot (Department of Cognitive, Perceptual and Brain Sciences, University College London, UK) Philippe Tobler (University of Zurich, Switzerland) Marie-Claire Villeval (CNRS Universit? Claude Bernard ? Lyon 1, France) Eyal Winter (Hebrew University of Jerusalem / Centre for the Study of Rationality, Israel) IMPORTANT DATES: January 25, 2012 Early Bird Registration March 31, 2012 Deadline for Registration and Poster Submission May 10-11, 2012 Symposium Venue For organizational issues, participants should register and/or submit posters before March 31th 2012. In order to encourage scientific exchanges in the field of decision making and in connected areas, the registration is FREE OF CHARGE. ORGANIZING COMMITTEE: Thomas Boraud (CNRS / Institut des Neurosciences de Bordeaux, Universit? Victor Segalen Bordeaux 2) Sacha Bourgeois-Gironde (Aix-Marseille School of Economics, Universit? d?Aix-Marseille / Institut Jean Nicod) Mehdi Khamassi (CNRS / Institut des Syst?mes Intelligents et de Robotique, UPMC) Mathias Pessiglione (INSERM / Centre de Recherche de l'Institut du Cerveau et de la Moelle ICM) CONTACT INFORMATION : Website, registration, poster submission and detailed program: http://sbdm2012.isir.upmc.fr Contact: sbdm2012 [ at ] isir.upmc.fr -- Mehdi Khamassi, PhD Researcher (CNRS) Institut des Syst?mes Intelligents et de Robotique (UMR7222) CNRS - Universit? Pierre et Marie Curie Pyramide, Tour 55 - Bo?te courrier 173 4 place Jussieu, 75252 Paris Cedex 05, France tel: + 33 1 44 27 28 85 fax: +33 1 44 27 51 45 cell: +33 6 50 76 44 92 http://people.isir.upmc.fr/khamassi From kp at it.uu.se Tue Mar 20 07:30:58 2012 From: kp at it.uu.se (Kristiaan Pelckmans) Date: Tue, 20 Mar 2012 12:30:58 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: Research Position in UU on DBS Message-ID: <4F686A72.1060204@it.uu.se> We look for experienced and motivated candidates for electromagnetic and neuronal modeling in the context of Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) therapies. The research program is funded by an ERC Advanced Grant. 1. (Electromagnetic Model) This research track aims at implementing an electromagnetic fields simulator for use in DBS applications. Given geometry and qualitative properties of the neuronal tissue at hand, the aim is to simulate the fields induced by steering charges delivered through the DBS-electrodes. In essence, this application goes along the lines of a electromagnetic field which operates in a fluid, making use of standard tools in Finite Element Modeling. This project is intended to be tested in real clinical environments, validating the principles of the designed model. 2. (Incorporating Imaging Information) One of the prominent ways used to extract information about anatomy and qualitative properties of brain tissue is to fuse the images obtained in MRI or/and CET scans. The estimated values can be utilized to individualize the calculations in the elctromagnetic model. This research track will develop tools and apply them to real images originating from clinical settings. Both positions are mainly intended for experienced researchers, but convincing track records for beginning researchers may also be considered. In order to apply, please email your CV, sample publications and a list of references to am at it.uu.se, kp at it.uu.se. A statement of interest should reach us by 4 April 2011. UU is an Equal-Opportunity employer. From stefan.harmeling at tuebingen.mpg.de Tue Mar 20 05:03:14 2012 From: stefan.harmeling at tuebingen.mpg.de (Stefan Harmeling) Date: Tue, 20 Mar 2012 10:03:14 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: PhD-Student position in Computational Photography and Vision at Max-Planck Institut for Intelligent Systems, Germany. Message-ID: <276BB594-4052-44BB-AC62-CDBA8CB751FE@tuebingen.mpg.de> In a collaboration with the recently established Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience T?bingen (http://www.bccn-tuebingen.de) we have an opening for a PhD-Student in the field of computational photography and vision, at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, Empirical Inference Department (http://is.mpg.de/13163/de). The PhD project is concerned with the size and shape of pupils in the animal kingdom and how they influence image quality and image deconvolution as well as image statistics in relation to biologically relevant behaviour. The work includes human psychophysics done in collaboration with Prof. Felix Wichmann (http://www.nip.uni-tuebingen.de). We are looking for someone who is either mathematically strong --- preferably with prior exposure to either machine learning, image processing, or computational photography --- or has a strong background in vision science and an interest in formal methods. The position is for 3 years and pay is in accordance with TV-L E13 50%, approx. EUR 1350 per month after tax. The Bernstein Center T?bingen and the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems entertain close links to the Werner Reichardt Centre for Integrative Neuroscience (CIN) in T?bingen (http://www.cin.uni-tuebingen.de), the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, and the Eberhard Karls University of T?bingen. The thriving local research community is composed of around sixty labs with more than 150 postdocs and 300 PhD students. Possibilities exist for multiple interactions between neurobiological, psychophysical, and theoretical researchers. T?bingen itself is a beautiful medieval town and home to one of the oldest European universities. It boasts a rich cultural community and is situated close to the Black Forest within 2h train or driving distance to France, Switzerland and Austria. The deadline for applications is April, 15, 2012. Please send your application as a PDF to Sabrina Rehbaum (sabrina.rehbaum at tuebingen.mpg.de). Informal enquiries can be addressed to Stefan Harmeling (image processing, machine learning, computational photography;stefan.harmeling at tuebingen.mpg.de) or Felix Wichmann (psychophysics;felix.wichmann at uni-tuebingen.de). -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: smime.p7s Type: application/pkcs7-signature Size: 4426 bytes Desc: not available Url : https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/20120320/4817d64a/smime.bin From pascal.hitzler at wright.edu Tue Mar 20 22:07:41 2012 From: pascal.hitzler at wright.edu (Pascal Hitzler) Date: Tue, 20 Mar 2012 22:07:41 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: CALL FOR PAPERS: 8th International Workshop on Neural-Symbolic Learning and Reasoning (NeSy'12) In-Reply-To: <3A9DCBE6325C3D41B65DAEBDB7AB173303E7C3ED01@NSQ161EX.enterprise.internal.city.ac.uk> References: <3A9DCBE6325C3D41B65DAEBDB7AB173303E7C3ED01@NSQ161EX.enterprise.internal.city.ac.uk> Message-ID: <4F6937ED.6020905@wright.edu> CALL FOR PAPERS 8th International Workshop on Neural-Symbolic Learning and Reasoning (NeSy'12) In conjunction with AAAI-12, Toronto, Canada July 22nd or 23rd 2012. Keynote Speaker: Prof. Jude W. Shavlik University of Wisconsin-Madison Submission deadline: March 30th, 2012 Artificial Intelligence (AI) researchers continue to face huge challenges in their quest to develop truly intelligent systems. The recent developments in the area of neural-symbolic integration offer an opportunity to combine symbolic AI and robust neural computation to help tackle some of these challenges. The Workshop on Neural-Symbolic Learning and Reasoning attracts researchers and practitioners in the areas of Neural Computation, Artificial Intelligence, Logic, Complex Networks and Cognitive Science. It is intended to create an atmosphere of exchange of ideas, providing a forum for the presentation and discussion of the key multidisciplinary topics related to neural-symbolic integration. Topics of interest include: 1. The representation of symbolic knowledge by sub-symbolic systems; 2. Integrated neural-symbolic approaches to machine learning; 3. Extraction of symbolic knowledge from trained neural networks; 4. Integrated neural-symbolic approaches to human and logical reasoning; 5. Cognitive and biologically-inspired neural-symbolic agents; 6. Integration of logic and probabilities in neural networks; 7. Structured learning and relational learning in neural networks; 8. Applications in robotics, simulation, fraud prevention, semantic web, software engineering, fault diagnosis, verification and validation, bioinformatics, visual intelligence, etc. Submission You are invited to submit papers through easychair at http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=nesy12. Submitted papers must not have been published elsewhere, must be written in English and should not exceed 6 pages in the case of research and experience papers or 3 pages in the case of position papers (including figures, bibliography and appendices). All submitted papers will be refereed based on their quality, relevance, originality, significance and soundness. Presentation and Participation Accepted papers must be presented during the workshop. The workshop will also include extra time for discussion, allowing the audience to get a better understanding of the issues, challenges and ideas being presented. The workshop is open to all members of the AI community, but the number of attendees may have to be limited. Publication Accepted papers will be published in the AAAI Technical Report series and will be included in the official workshop proceedings. Authors of the best papers will be invited to submit a revised and extended version of their papers to the Journal of Logic and Computation, reasoning and learning corner, Oxford University Press. Important Dates Deadline for paper submission: March 30th, 2012 Notification of acceptance: April 20th, 2012 Camera-ready paper due: May 7th, 2012 Workshop date: July 22nd or 23rd, 2012 AAAI-12 dates: July 22nd to 26th, 2012 Workshop Organisers Artur d'Avila Garcez (City University London, UK) Pascal Hitzler (Wright State University, USA) Luis C. Lamb (Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil) Additional Information General questions concerning the workshop should be addressed to Artur d'Avila Garcez at aag at soi.city.ac.uk. The workshop webpage (and information about all previous meetings) is available at http://www.neural-symbolic.org/ -- Prof. Dr. Pascal Hitzler Dept. of Computer Science, Wright State University, Dayton, OH pascal at pascal-hitzler.de http://www.knoesis.org/pascal/ Semantic Web Textbook: http://www.semantic-web-book.org Semantic Web Journal: http://www.semantic-web-journal.net From ole.jensen at donders.ru.nl Wed Mar 21 02:26:41 2012 From: ole.jensen at donders.ru.nl (Ole Jensen) Date: Wed, 21 Mar 2012 07:26:41 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: data analysis competition / Biomag2012 Message-ID: <4F6974A1.8050709@donders.ru.nl> Dear colleagues, We would like to announce (2nd announcement) the data analysis competition at the Biomag2012 meeting (Paris, Aug 26-30). Please encourage students and postdocs to participate. There were some technical glitches in the data after the 1st announcement. They are now corrected. With best wishes, Ole Jensen and Ali Bahramisharif ---------------------- *Biomag2012 analysis competition - distributed representations * http://www.biomag2012.org/content/data-analysis-competition The decoding of mental states and neuronal representations from brain imaging data is a research field in rapid development (Spiers HJ, Maguire EA. Decoding human brain activity during real-world experiences. Trends Cogn Sci. 2007 ; Haynes JD, Rees G. Decoding mental states from brain activity in humans. Nat Rev Neurosci. 2006). These decoding approaches have a great potential in MEG research where data are recorded from hundreds of sensors with a millisecond time resolution. In particular cognitive neuroscience could benefit from further development of decoding approaches in order to identify representational specific brain activity. The aim of the competition is to: * Promote the development and application of new multivariate analysis techniques for decoding of brain activity * Make the audience aware of novel approaches * Elucidate the pros and cons of the different techniques o Which assumptions are behind a given approach? o What are the limitations? * Attract signal-processing experts from outside the MEG field * Encourage a discussion on the cognitive insight the techniques can bring about The deadline for submitting results is Aug 17, 2012. -- Ole Jensen http://www.neuosc.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/20120321/5ed3a145/attachment.html From john.hajda at sagecenter.ucsb.edu Wed Mar 21 14:26:00 2012 From: john.hajda at sagecenter.ucsb.edu (John Hajda) Date: Wed, 21 Mar 2012 11:26:00 -0700 Subject: Connectionists: Postdoc job announcement at UC Santa Barbara Message-ID: <4F6A1D38.2070001@sagecenter.ucsb.edu> *SAGE JUNIOR FELLOW PROGRAM, SAGE CENTER FOR THE STUDY OF MIND, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SANTA BARBARA. *Available July 1, 2012. Initial appointment for 1 year; can be extended to 2 years. The SAGE Center Junior Fellowship will foster interdisciplinary research in the study of mind at the postgraduate level. Fellows will be given the opportunity to develop independent research programs in close collaboration with faculty. We are seeking exceptional post-doctoral scholars to engage in research and participate in teaching through graduate level courses in a variety of departments at UCSB. The Junior Fellows will enjoy special privileges including access to faculty, Visiting SAGE Scholars, and attendance at regular group meetings to collaborate and share information about the role of psychology, cognitive neuroscience, economics, political science, anthropology, biology, and philosophy on the study of mind. To be eligible for the Junior Fellows program, a candidate must be at an early stage of his or her scholarly career. The Center is especially interested in candidates who can contribute to the diversity and excellence of the academic community through research, teaching and service. The University of California is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer. To apply, please send: 1. Complete CV. 2. Published article. 3. Three letters of recommendation. You may send them or have your recommenders send them directly to our address below. 4. A statement of your research interests and description of how those interests complement the goals of the SAGE Center. We will fill the position on a rolling basis and encourage you to submit your materials as soon as possible. The latest date to submit materials is April 15, 2012.Email submissions or recommendations to rosenblatt at psych.ucsb.edu. Alternatively, you may send hard copies to this address: Michael S. Gazzaniga, Ph.D. Director, Sage Center for the Study of Mind University of California, Santa Barbara Santa Barbara, California 93106-9660 http://www.sagecenter.ucsb.edu/index.htm http://www.psych.ucsb.edu/~gazzanig/ -- John Hajda, Ph.D. Associate Director Sage Center for the Study of the Mind Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences University of California, Santa Barbara Santa Barbara, CA 93106-9660 Phone 805-893-4460 Fax 805-893-3228 hajda at sagecenter.ucsb.edu http://www.sagecenter.ucsb.edu/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/20120321/2d7de109/attachment-0001.html From murphyk at cs.ubc.ca Fri Mar 23 21:02:36 2012 From: murphyk at cs.ubc.ca (Kevin Murphy) Date: Fri, 23 Mar 2012 18:02:36 -0700 Subject: Connectionists: UAI 2012 last Call For Papers - deadline March 30th Message-ID: Reminder: the UAI paper submission deadline is March 30th. Details on paper submission can be found here: http://auai.org/uai2012/cfp.shtml Kevin Murphy and Nando de Freitas On Sun, Nov 27, 2011 at 5:41 PM, Kevin Murphy wrote: > UAI (the Conference on Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence) is the > premier conference on issues relating to representation, > inference, learning and decision making in the presence of uncertainty. > > The 28th UAI conference will be located in Catalina Island (near Los > Angeles), United States, on August 15-17, 2012. On August 14, before > the main conference, there will be tutorials. On August 18, after the > main conference, there will be workshops. > > We are currently soliciting papers which describe novel methodology, > or non-trivial applications of existing methodology, related to > modeling, inference, learning and decision making under > uncertainty. The best way to get a sense for what kinds of papers are > appropriate is to look at past UAIs (available online here: > ? http://uai.sis.pitt.edu/home.jsp?mmnu=0&smnu=0). > Authors of papers > that win best paper awards will be invited to submit their papers to > the Artificial Intelligence Journal, with special "fast track" status. > > Papers are due on 30 March, 2011. ?The reviewing process is > double-blind. ?Authors will be notified of acceptance on June 1st. > For detailed formatting instructions, please refer to > > ? http://auai.org/uai2012/cfp.shtml > > All accepted papers will be presented at the Conference either as > contributed talks or as posters, and will be published in the > Conference Proceedings (although authors may choose to designate their > paper as "not for publication" if they wish to avoid conflicts with > future journal publications). ?We hope that this mechanism will > encourage authors from fields outside of computer science to submit > relevant work to UAI. > > Papers that have already been published in a refereed venue, including > conferences and journals, may not be submitted. Papers that are > currently under review may be submitted, but only if you choose the > "not for publication" option. Submissions should be significant > extensions of prior published work. Papers that are deemed too similar > to past work will be rejected on grounds of lack of sufficient > novelty. > > Programme Chairs: > Nando de Freitas, University of British Columbia > Kevin Murphy, University of British Columbia / Google Research > > General Chair: Fabio Cozman, Universidade de Sao Paulo > > Local Arrangements Chair: David Heckerman, Microsoft Research > > Senior Program Committee: TBD From gluck at pavlov.rutgers.edu Thu Mar 22 09:54:43 2012 From: gluck at pavlov.rutgers.edu (Mark A. Gluck) Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2012 09:54:43 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: Seeking Recent Research Advances to cite for new "Teaching Learning & Memory" E-Newsletter Message-ID: Dear Learning & Memory Colleagues: With the 2nd edition of our undergraduate textbook, Learning and Memory: From Brain to Behavior scheduled to appear this summer in time for Fall 2012 adoptions, Worth Publishers and I will soon be launching a new and free e-Newsletter entitled, "Teaching Learning and Memory". This will be emailed out twice-a-year by Worth Publishers to anyone who teaches in this field (regardless of what textbook they use). The e-newsletter will have several short features with material designed to assist teachers in identifying and presenting new and exciting material in their undergraduate courses. These will include * Learning and Memory in Everyday Life * Memory and Brain Health * Teaching Tips for Classroom Activities (with guest contributions each issue, the first to be from Bob Calin-Jageman of Dominican University) * Recent Advances in Learning and Memory Research The latter section will include citations (and pubmed links) for 4 to 6 papers published in the past year which are both (a) important advances in the field and (b) compelling and comprehensible to undergraduate students. It is for this section that I turn to you colleagues for suggestions of appropriate articles. If you can think of any articles published in 2011 or 2012 that you think would fit the bill (including your own papers; false modesty not required), could you email me the full citation and a short 2 or 3 sentence jargon-free precis of what it showed and why this is important and interesting for undergraduates to know about. Naturally, suggestions/nominations for articles for future issues will be welcome and appreciated in the months and years to come. Thanks, Mark PS. To be sent a complimentary instructor's review copy of the new edition as soon as it is ready in late June, please email our editor, Daniel DeBonis with your name, address, and key information about your course (title, enrollment, etc.). Dan can also add you to the mailing list for the e-newsletter as well if you wish. -- ___________________________________________ Dr. Mark A. Gluck, Professor Director, Rutgers Memory Disorders Project Center for Molecular and Behavioral Neuroscience Rutgers University Phone: (973) 353-3668/3298 197 University Ave. Newark, New Jersey 07102 Email: gluck at pavlov.rutgers.edu Lab: http://www.gluck.edu Memory Loss & Brain Newsletter: http://www.memorylossonline.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/20120322/4de70b89/attachment.html From haline.schendan at plymouth.ac.uk Thu Mar 22 18:36:13 2012 From: haline.schendan at plymouth.ac.uk (Haline Schendan) Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2012 22:36:13 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: 4 Fully-Funded PhD Studentships Message-ID: <92129CEDFB679043810C974BC1D6962C447BBD3133@ILS133.uopnet.plymouth.ac.uk> I would like to invite applicants for my PhD Studentship and others, which are part of the new Cognition Institute at the University of Plymouth, UK. Applicants with a strong computational or cognitive neuroscience background are especially encouraged to apply for this position. Project Title Human Brain Basis of Mental Simulation for Decisions about Memory Project Description Mental simulation is a type of mental imagery that grounds cognition in perception, action, and mental states. Simulation has a central role in reasoning, language, and memory. However, the brain basis remains almost entirely unknown. In this project, electroencephalography, neuroimaging, and transcranial magnetic stimulation will reveal critical timing, anatomical, and causal evidence. Neurocomputational modeling of this evidence will explain how mental simulation in the human brain supports making decisions based on semantic and episodic memory. Director of Studies Haline E. Schendan __________________________________________________________________________________ 4 Fully-Funded PhD Studentships in Cognitive Science & Psychology Applications are invited for four, 3-year PhD studentships, funded by the School of Psychology. The studentships will commence 1st October 2012. Projects Available One studentship will be on Human Associative Learning, supervised by Professor Chris Mitchell. Three further studentships will be available in any specialist areas of research supported by the School. Indicative PhD topics include visual perception, decision-making in medical and social contexts, mental imagery, embodied cognition and language, memory in children and adults, road safety, mechanisms of psychotherapy, and cultural differences in cognition. For a full list of proposed PhD topics and supervisors, please visit: http://psychology.plymouth.ac.uk/research/funded-phd-studentships/ School of Psychology Successful applicants will be part of a large, vibrant, highly collaborative, interdisciplinary community. In the 2008 RAE 34.5 members of staff from the School were submitted, making Plymouth the 12th largest research School of Psychology in the UK. 85% of our research was rated at international standard. Our PhD students are members of the Plymouth University Doctoral Training Centre in Social Sciences, which provides interdisciplinary training and networking opportunities for around 160 doctoral students. Research in the School of Psychology is organised around the University Research Centre encompassing research excellence in Cognitive Neuroscience, Vision and Action, Social Psychology, Language Development, Thinking and Reasoning, Memory and Imagery, Health and Well Being, and Human Factors. State-of-the art facilities include high-density, 64- and 128-channels of active EEG electrodes (passive amplification also available), TMS with stereotactic guidance, eye- and motor-tracking, neuro-computational modelling, and fMRI with multi-channel head coil. For details of the School's research activity, please visit http://www.plymouth.ac.uk/research/cbcb Plymouth has often been voted 'best place to live in Britain', and has many exciting cultural and student activities, with beautiful surrounding countryside and coastline. Eligibility Applicants should be highly motivated and have (at least) a first or upper second class honours degree in psychology, neuroscience, cognitive science, or related discipline. A relevant MSc or MRes qualification is desirable. Applicants must have excellent research skills and excellent communication skills. The studentships have a duration of 3 years and include full Home/EU tuition fees plus a research training support grant of ?750 and stipend of ?13,590 per annum. The studentships will only fully fund applicants who are eligible for Home/EU fees. Applicants normally required to cover overseas fees will have to cover the difference between the Home/EU and the overseas tuition fee rates (approximately ?9,500 per annum). If you wish to discuss this project further informally, please contact potential supervisors directly. For general enquiries about doctoral study in the School of Psychology, please contact Professor Jackie Andrade (pgcoordinator at psy.plymouth.ac.uk). However, applications must be made in accordance with the details shown below. For an application form and full details on how to apply, please visit www.plymouth.ac.uk/postgraduate. Applicants should send a completed application form along with a covering letter detailing their suitability for the studentship to Catherine Johnson, Faculty of Science and Technology Research Office, A108 Portland Square, Plymouth PL4 8AA or e-mail catherine.johnson at plymouth.ac.uk. The closing date for applications is 12 noon on Friday 13th April 2012. Shortlisted candidates will be invited for interview. We regret that we may not be able to respond to all applications. Applicants who have not received an offer of a place by the end of May should consider their application has been unsuccessful on this occasion. PROJECT TOPICS AND SUPERVISORS The psychology of human associative learning: Prof Chris Mitchell Visual perception and the detection of cancer in mammograms: Dr William Simpson Remembering the Past and Imagining the Future: Dr Catherine Deeprose Children's false memories: Dr Marina Wimmer Medical decision-making in children and adolescents: Dr Michaela Gummerum Neuropsychological study of embodied language: Dr Jeremy Goslin Embodied cognition: affordance and the mirror neurone system: Prof Rob Ellis Is Theory of Mind based on imagery of another person's visual perspective? Dr Patric Bach Human Brain Basis of Mental Simulation for Decisions about Memory: Dr Haline Schendan Mental Imagery and Motivation: Prof Jon May Understanding the relationship between driver characteristics and road safety: Dr Liz Hellier Modulating visual mental imagery with neurostimulation: Dr Giorgio Ganis The neuropsychology of reasoning: Dr Matt Roser Memory, Forgetting, Inhibition: Prof Tim Perfect Attributing Causation and Blame: Dr Clare Walsh Infants' strategies for locating the boundaries between spoken words: Dr Laurence White Cultural and Situational Influences on Processing Style: Dr Natalie Wyer An examination of the social organisation of problem-solving meetings in the Plymouth Community Justice Court: Dr Timothy Auburn What makes all psychotherapies so effective? Dr Ben Whalley ............................................. Haline E. Schendan, Ph.D. School of Psychology Faculty of Science & Technology Plymouth University Drake Circus Plymouth, Devon PL4 8AA United Kingdom Office: Portland Square A208 Office Hours: W 11-12:00, F 12-13:00 011 +44 (0)1752 584804 Haline.Schendan at plymouth.ac.uk Lecturer, Centre for Brain, Cognition, & Behaviour Visiting Scientist, MGH Martinos Center http://www.psy.plymouth.ac.uk/research/HESchendan/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/20120322/6357bbaa/attachment-0001.html From cl at cmu.edu Thu Mar 22 08:38:47 2012 From: cl at cmu.edu (Christian Lebiere) Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2012 07:38:47 -0500 Subject: Connectionists: 2012 ACT-R Summer School Message-ID: Applications for the 2012 ACT-R Summer School are due by April 1st. 2012 ACT-R Summer School Carnegie Mellon University July 21-26, 2012 ACT-R is a cognitive theory and simulation system for developing cognitive models. It has been used for tasks that range from experimental tasks, like simple reaction time or list learning, to real world tasks like driving a car or air traffic control. Recent advances of the ACT-R theory are detailed in the following paper: Anderson, J. R., Bothell, D., Byrne, M. D., Douglass, S., Lebiere, C., and Qin, Y . (2004). An integrated theory of the mind. Psychological Review 111, (4). 1036-1060, available online: http://act-r.psy.cmu.edu/publications/pubinfo.php?id=526 and in the following book: Anderson, J. R. (2007) How Can the Human Mind Occur in the Physical Universe? New York: Oxford University Press. The 2012 ACT-R summer school will take place from Saturday July 21 to Thursday July 26 at Carnegie Mellon University. This intensive 6-day course is designed to train researchers in the use of ACT-R for cognitive modeling. It is structured as a set of six units, with each unit lasting one day and involving a morning theory lecture, an afternoon discussion session, and an assignment which participants are expected to complete during the day and evening. Computing facilities will be provided, but attendees are also welcome to bring their own computers for working with the ACT-R software during the summer school. Following the ACT-R summer school, there will be an ACT-R workshop from Friday July 27 through Sunday July 29, and it is recommended that summer school attendees also stay for the workshop. Details on the workshop will be announced through the ACT-R mailing list and on the ACT-R web site as they become available. To provide an optimal learning environment, admission is limited to a dozen participants, who must submit by April 1 an application consisting of a curriculum vitae and a statement of purpose. Demonstrated experience with a modeling formalism similar to ACT-R will strengthen the application. Applicants will be notified of admission by April 30. Admission to the summer school is free. Housing will be available in the CMU dormitories for approximately $70/day (single) or $40/day (shared), and that will be available through the end of the workshop. More information about ACT-R, including papers published by the ACT-R community, can be found on the ACT-R web site: . Please send your application by email or regular mail to: 2012 ACT-R Summer School Psychology Department Dan Bothell Baker Hall 345B Fax: +1 (412) 268-2844 Carnegie Mellon University Tel: +1 (412) 268-3323 Pittsburgh, PA 15213-3890 Email: db30 at andrew.cmu.edu From chiestand at salk.edu Thu Mar 22 18:22:43 2012 From: chiestand at salk.edu (Chris Hiestand) Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2012 15:22:43 -0700 Subject: Connectionists: NIPS 2012 Call for Papers Message-ID: <146FFC32-EE73-4A0F-94E8-5AAE2B21F015@salk.edu> Neural Information Processing Systems Conference and Workshops December 3-8, 2012 Lake Tahoe, Nevada, USA http://nips.cc/Conferences/2012/ Deadline for Paper Submissions: Friday, June 1, 2012, 11 pm Universal Time (4 pm Pacific Daylight Time). Submit at: https://cmt.research.microsoft.com/NIPS2012/ Submissions are solicited for the Twenty-Sixth Annual Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems, an interdisciplinary conference that brings together researchers in all aspects of neural and statistical information processing and computation, and their applications. The conference is a highly selective, single track meeting that includes invited talks as well as oral and poster presentations of refereed papers. Submissions by authors who are new to NIPS are encouraged. The 2012 conference will be held on December 3-6 at Lake Tahoe, Nevada. One day of tutorials (December 3) will precede the main conference, and two days of workshops (December 7-8) will follow it at the same location. Technical Areas: Papers are solicited in all areas of neural information processing and statistical learning, including, but not limited to: * Algorithms and Architectures: statistical learning algorithms, kernel methods, graphical models, Gaussian processes, neural networks, dimensionality reduction and manifold learning, model selection, combinatorial optimization, relational and structured learning. * Applications: innovative applications that use machine learning, including systems for time series prediction, bioinformatics, systems biology, text/web analysis, multimedia processing, and robotics. * Brain Imaging: neuroimaging, cognitive neuroscience, EEG (electroencephalogram), ERP (event related potentials), MEG (magnetoencephalogram), fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging), brain mapping, brain segmentation, brain computer interfaces. * Cognitive Science and Artificial Intelligence: theoretical, computational, or experimental studies of perception, psychophysics, human or animal learning, memory, reasoning, problem solving, natural language processing, and neuropsychology. * Control and Reinforcement Learning: decision and control, exploration, planning, navigation, Markov decision processes, game playing, multi-agent coordination, computational models of classical and operant conditioning. * Hardware Technologies: analog and digital VLSI, neuromorphic engineering, computational sensors and actuators, microrobotics, bioMEMS, neural prostheses, photonics, molecular and quantum computing. * Learning Theory: generalization, regularization and model selection, Bayesian learning, spaces of functions and kernels, statistical physics of learning, online learning and competitive analysis, hardness of learning and approximations, statistical theory, large deviations and asymptotic analysis, information theory. * Neuroscience: theoretical and experimental studies of processing and transmission of information in biological neurons and networks, including spike train generation, synaptic modulation, plasticity and adaptation. * Speech and Signal Processing: recognition, coding, synthesis, denoising, segmentation, source separation, auditory perception, psychoacoustics, dynamical systems, recurrent networks, language models, dynamic and temporal models. * Visual Processing: biological and machine vision, image processing and coding, segmentation, object detection and recognition, motion detection and tracking, visual psychophysics, visual scene analysis and interpretation. Evaluation Criteria: Submissions will be refereed on the basis of technical quality, novelty, potential impact, and clarity. Submission Instructions: All submissions will be made electronically, in PDF format. As in previous years, reviewing will be double-blind: the reviewers will not know the identities of the authors. Papers are limited to eight pages, including figures and tables, in the NIPS style. An additional ninth page containing only cited references is allowed. Complete submission and formatting instructions, including style files, are available from the NIPS website, http://nips.cc. Supplementary Material: Authors can submit up to 10 MB of material, containing proofs, audio, images, video, data or source code. Note that the reviewers and the program committee reserve the right to judge the paper solely on the basis of the 9 pages of the paper; looking at any extra material is up to the discretion of the reviewers and is not required. Submission process: Electronic submissions will be accepted until Friday, June 1, 2012, 11 pm Universal Time (4 pm Pacific Daylight Time). As was the case last year, final papers will be due in advance of the conference. Dual Submissions Policy: Submissions that are identical (or substantially similar) to versions that have been previously published, or accepted for publication, or during the NIPS review period are in submission to another peer-reviewed and published venue are not appropriate for NIPS, with three exceptions listed below. These exceptions, which have been approved by the NIPS Foundation board in the interests of speeding up scientific communication and improving the efficiency of peer review, are as follows: 1.Concurrent submission to other venues is acceptable provided that: (a) The concurrent submission or intention to submit to other venues is declared to all venues, (b) NIPS and the concurrent venues are given permission by the author(s) to coordinate reviewing, and (c) acceptance to one venue imposes withdrawal from all other venues with the exception stated in 2 below. 2.NIPS submissions that summarize a longer journal paper, whether published, accepted, or in submission, are acceptable if the authors inform NIPS and the journal and give them permission to coordinate reviewing. 3.It is acceptable to submit to NIPS 2012 work that has been made available as a technical report (or similar, e.g. in arXiv) as long as the conditions above are satisfied. None of the above should be construed as overriding the requirements of other publishing venues. In addition, keep in mind that author anonymity to NIPS reviewers might be compromised for authors availing themselves of exceptions 2 and 3. Authors must declare submissions to other venues either through the CMT submission form, or via email to the program chairs at program-chairs at nips.cc. Authors' Responsibilities: If there are papers that may appear to violate any of these conditions, it is the authors' responsibility to (1) cite these papers (preserving anonymity), (2) argue in the body of your paper why your NIPS paper is non-trivially different from these concurrent submissions, and (3) include anonymized versions of those papers in the supplemental material. Demonstrations and Workshops: There is a separate Demonstration track at NIPS. Authors wishing to submit to the Demonstration track should consult the Call for Demonstrations. The workshops will be held at Lake Tahoe, Nevada, December 7-8. The upcoming call for workshop proposals will provide details. Web URL: http://nips.cc/Conferences/2012/CallForPapers From cardoso at bcos.uni-freiburg.de Thu Mar 22 05:44:12 2012 From: cardoso at bcos.uni-freiburg.de (Simone Cardoso de Oliveira) Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2012 10:44:12 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: Call for applications: Brains for Brains Young Researchers' Computational Neuroscience Award 2012 Message-ID: <4F6AF46C.2050309@bcos.uni-freiburg.de> Dear colleagues, for the third time, the Bernstein Association for Computational Neuroscience is announcing the "Brains for Brains Young Researchers' Computational Neuroscience Award". The call is open for researchers of any nationality who have contributed to a peer reviewed publication (as coauthor) or peer reviewed conference abstract (as first author) that resulted from research performed before the initiation of doctoral studies, is written in English and was accepted or published in 2011 or 2012. The award comprises 500 ? prize money, plus a travel grant of up to 2.000 ? to cover a trip to Germany, including participation in the Bernstein Conference 2012 in Munich (www.bccn2012.de), and an individually planned visit to up to two German research institutions in Computational Neuroscience. Deadline for application is April 30, 2012. Detailed information about the application procedure can be found under: www.nncn.de/verein-en/brains4brains2012 Best regards, Simone Cardoso -- Dr. Simone Cardoso de Oliveira Bernstein Network Computational Neuroscience Head of the Bernstein Coordination Site (BCOS) Albert Ludwigs University Freiburg Hansastr. 9A 79104 Freiburg, Germany phone: +49-761-203-9583 fax: +49-761-203-9585 cardoso at bcos.uni-freiburg.de www.nncn.de From feisha at usc.edu Sat Mar 24 19:28:19 2012 From: feisha at usc.edu (Fei Sha) Date: Sat, 24 Mar 2012 16:28:19 -0700 Subject: Connectionists: Postdoc Position in Statistical Machine Learning (U. of Southern California) Message-ID: The machine learning research group, headed by Dr. Fei Sha at U. of Southern California (USC), has an opening for a postdoctoral fellow in the field of statistical machine learning. Candidates with strong background in speech and language processing/recognition and computer vision are also encouraged to apply. The initial appointment is for 12 months, renewable for another year, and potentially longer depending on funding. The start date is negotiable though prior to July 1, 2012 is strongly preferred. Working with other members of the group, the postdoctoral fellow will concentrate on developing novel machine learning models and algorithms, with application focus towards research problems in speech and language processing/recognition and computer vision. In particular, research projects include, but not limited to, (unsupervised) domain adaptation for recognition of visual categories and human actions, cross-lingual language processing (for example, robust statistical modeling of low-resource languages for automatic speech recognition), etc. Salary is commensurate with experience and is competitive. Teaching is not required though guest lectures are welcome in courses (graduate and seminar courses in machine learning and graphical models) taught by Dr. Fei Sha. The research group is within the Department of Computer Science, a part of Viterbi School of Engineering at USC. The department has several strong research groups in artificial intelligence, including robotics, natural language processing (Information Science Institute), multi-agent systems/game theory and human behavior, theory and algorithms, etc. The department also has very strong collaboration (including joint appointments) with the Electrical Engineering Department and with the Molecular and Computational Biology program. Information about Dr. Fei Sha and his research group can be found at http://www-bcf.usc.edu/~feisha Requirements: Applicants are expected to have finished, or be about to finish their Ph.D. degrees. They must have an excellent background in statistical machine learning, with a track record of relevant publications at top machine learning or related venues (such as NIPS/ICML, and CVPR/ICCV). Programming skills are required (C/C++/Matlab/R/Python). Application: Please send your applications by email to Fei Sha (feisha at usc.edu). Please include: statement of interests, curriculum vitae, list of publications, contact details for 2-3 letters of reference (or have letters directly forwarded to the above email address). From m.vanotterlo at donders.ru.nl Sun Mar 25 07:37:04 2012 From: m.vanotterlo at donders.ru.nl (Otterlo, M. van (Martijn)) Date: Sun, 25 Mar 2012 13:37:04 +0200 (CEST) Subject: Connectionists: [new book] Reinforcement Learning: State-of-the-Art In-Reply-To: <1935824576.33839.1332675201892.JavaMail.root@draco.zimbra.ru.nl> Message-ID: <1431998778.33867.1332675424602.JavaMail.root@draco.zimbra.ru.nl> Dear Colleagues, We are proud to announce a new book, titled "Reinforcement learning: State-of-the-art", edited by Marco Wiering and Martijn van Otterlo. All chapters are survey chapters on the major contemporary sub-areas of reinforcement learning. The list of contributing authors and reviewers contains many leading experts in reinforcement learning, and the book features a foreword by Rich Sutton. It is now online at Springer, and the hardcover version is about to appear. Topics surveyed in the book include: continuous state/action representation, hierarchical approaches, predictive representations, multi-agent algorithms, structured knowledge representation, POMDPs, DEC-POMDPs, Bayesian approaches, policy gradient, games, robotics, biological foundations, sample complexity, transfer learning, batch learning, model-based algorithms, and evolutionary approaches. Springer, Adaptation, Learning, and Optimization series, Vol. 12 ISBN 978-3-642-27644-6 2012, 2012, XXXIV, 638 p. 87 illus., 39 in color. http://www.springer.com/engineering/computational+intelligence+and+complexity/book/978-3-642-27644-6 http://www.springerlink.com/content/978-3-642-27645-3 Best Regards, Martijn van Otterlo and Marco Wiering. -- Martijn van Otterlo Artificial Intelligence Radboud University Nijmegen The Netherlands http://www.socsci.ru.nl/~martijvo "Don't say it's just your personal opinion; you have no other" (Bomans). From t.heskes at science.ru.nl Sun Mar 25 16:32:09 2012 From: t.heskes at science.ru.nl (Tom Heskes) Date: Sun, 25 Mar 2012 22:32:09 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: Neurocomputing volumes 82-85 Message-ID: <4F6F80C9.2050409@science.ru.nl> Neurocomputing volume 82 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/issue/271597-1-s2.0-S0925231212X0002X ---------------- REGULAR PAPERS Multistability and multiperiodicity of high-order competitive neural networks with a general class of activation functions Xiaobing Nie, Zhenkun Huang Novel synchronization analysis for complex networks with hybrid coupling by handling multitude Kronecker product terms Dawei Gong, Huaguang Zhang, Zhanshan Wang, Bonan Huang Resolution-invariant coding for continuous image super-resolution Jinjun Wang, Shenghuo Zhu Exponential stability of impulsive discrete systems with time delay and applications in stochastic neural networks: A Razumikhin approach Sichao Wu, Chuandong Li, Xiaofeng Liao, Shukai Duan Relative information maximization and its application to the extraction of explicit class structure in SOM Ryotaro Kamimura Stability and periodicity of discrete Hopfield neural networks with column arbitrary-magnitude-dominant weight matrix Jun Li, Jian Yang, Weigen Wu Reversible watermarking via extreme learning machine prediction Guorui Feng, Zhenxing Qian, Ningjie Dai Stability and Hopf bifurcation analysis of a tri-neuron BAM neural network with distributed delay Bo Zhou, Qiankun Song Learning rates of support vector machine classifier for density level detection Feilong Cao, Xing Xing, Jianwei Zhao A direct adaptive controller for EAF electrode regulator system using neural networks Lei Li, Zhizhong Mao A remarkable standard for estimating the performance of 3D facial expression features Xiaoli Li, Qiuqi Ruan, Yue Ming A subject transfer framework for EEG classification Wenting Tu, Shiliang Sun Coupling time decoding and trajectory decoding using a target-included model in the motor cortex Vernon Lawhern, Nicholas G. Hatsopoulos, Wei Wu Neural network-based adaptive tracking control for nonlinearly parameterized systems with unknown input nonlinearities Xueli Wu, Xiaojing Wu, Xiaoyuan Luo, Quanmin Zhu, Xinping Guan Stochastic stability analysis of uncertain genetic regulatory networks with mixed time-varying delays Wenqin Wang, Shouming Zhong Outer synchronization of uncertain general complex delayed networks with adaptive coupling Xiangjun Wu, Hongtao Lu On-line principal component analysis with application to process modeling Jian Tang, Wen Yu, Tianyou Chai, Lijie Zhao Volterra system-based neural network modeling by particle swarm optimization approach Yi-Sung Yang, Wei-Der Chang, Teh-Lu Liao Prediction for noisy nonlinear time series by echo state network based on dual estimation Chunyang Sheng, Jun Zhao, Ying Liu, Wei Wang Mining financial distress trend data using penalty guided support vector machines based on hybrid of particle swarm optimization and artificial bee colony algorithm Tsung-Jung Hsieh, Hsiao-Fen Hsiao, Wei-Chang Yeh Potentialities of the wavelet and multifractal techniques to evaluate changes in the functional state of the human brain O.E. Dick, I.A. Svyatogor The system identification and control of Hammerstein system using non-uniform rational B-spline neural network and particle swarm optimization Xia Hong, Sheng Chen On using permutation tests to estimate the classification significance of functional magnetic resonance imaging data Mohammed S. Al-Rawi, Jo?o P. Silva Cunha ------------- BRIEF PAPERS Dynamics of VLSI analog decoupled neurons Luciana Carota Orthogonal tensor rank one differential graph preserving projections with its application to facial expression recognition Shuai Liu, Qiuqi Ruan, Yi Jin -------------- Neurocomputing volume 83 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/issue/271597-1-s2.0-S0925231212X00031 ---------------- REGULAR PAPERS An ensemble kernel classifier with immune clonal selection algorithm for automatic discriminant of primary open-angle glaucoma Lijun Cheng, Yongsheng Ding, Kuangrong Hao, Yifan Hu Fluctuation prediction of stock market index by Legendre neural network with random time strength function Fajiang Liu, Jun Wang New results on adaptive neural control of a class of nonlinear systems with uncertain input delay Qing Zhu, Tianping Zhang, Yuequan Yang Fast neighborhood component analysis Wei Yang, Kuanquan Wang, Wangmeng Zuo Adaptive fuzzy decentralized output feedback control for stochastic nonlinear large-scale systems Yue Li, Yongming Li, Shaocheng Tong Tracking objects using shape context matching Zhao Liu, Hui Shen, Guiyu Feng, Dewen Hu Incremental multi-linear discriminant analysis using canonical correlations for action recognition Cheng-Cheng Jia, Su-Jing Wang, Xu-Jun Peng, Wei Pang, Can-Yan Zhang, Chun-Guang Zhou, Zhe-Zhou Yu Scale invariant image matching using triplewise constraint and weighted voting Yanwei Pang, Mianyou Shang, Yuan Yuan, Jing Pan Cluster synchronization for delayed Lur'e dynamical networks based on pinning control Ting Wang, Tao Li, Xin Yang, Shumin Fei Control of an uncertain fractional order economic system via adaptive sliding mode Zhen Wang, Xia Huang, Hao Shen Improved Gaussian process classification via feature space rotation Liang Wang, Christopher A. Leckie A novel chaotic particle swarm optimization based fuzzy clustering algorithm Chaoshun Li, Jianzhong Zhou, Pangao Kou, Jian Xiao Similarity learning for object recognition based on derived kernel Hong Li, Yantao Wei, Luoqing Li, Yuan Yuan An energy model approach to people counting for abnormal crowd behavior detection Guogang Xiong, Jun Cheng, Xinyu Wu, Yen-Lun Chen, Yongsheng Ou, Yangsheng Xu A novel text mining approach to financial time series forecasting Baohua Wang, Hejiao Huang, Xiaolong Wang Correlated firing and oscillations in spiking networks with global delayed inhibition Jin-li Xie, Zhi-Jie Wang, Andre Longtin Neural network-based optimal control of a batch crystallizer Woranee Paengjuntuek, Linda Thanasinthana, Amornchai Arpornwichanop Multi-target tracking with occlusions via skeleton points assignment Huan Ding, Wensheng Zhang Sub-pattern bilinear model and its application in pose estimation of work-pieces Zhicai Ou, Peng Wang, Jianhua Su, Hong Qiao Evaluating the generalisation capability of a CMOS based synapse A. Ghani, L. McDaid, A. Belatreche, S. Hall, S. Huang, J. Marsland, T. Dowrick, A. Smith Global exponential stability of impulsive delayed reaction?diffusion neural networks via Hardy?Poincar? inequality Yutian Zhang, Qi Luo Active spike transmission in the neuron model with a winding threshold manifold V.B. Kazantsev, A.S. Tchakoutio Nguetcho, S. Jacquir, S. Binczak, J.M. Bilbault Research on WNN aerodynamic modeling from flight data based on improved PSO algorithm Meng Yue-bo, Zou Jian-hua, Gan Xu-sheng, Zhao Liang Classification-based de-mosaicing for digital cameras Amin Ur Rehman, Ling Shao ------------ BRIEF PAPER Denoising MMW image using the combination method of contourlet and KSC shrinkage Li Shang, Pin-gang Su, Tao Liu ------------ Neurocomputing volume 84 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/issue/271597-1-s2.0-S0925231212X00043 ---------- SPECIAL ISSUE (NBBM2011) From neuron to behavior: Evidence from behavioral measurements (editorial) Emilia I. Barakova, Andrew Spink, Naotaka Fujii Possibilities offered by implantable miniaturized cuff-electrodes for insect neurophysiology Manfred Hartbauer, Thilo B. Kr?ger, Thomas Stieglitz Curbing the attentional blink: Practice keeps the mind?s eye open Chie Nakatani, Shruti Baijal, Cees van Leeuwen Is your phone so smart to affect your state? An exploratory study based on psychophysiological measures Pietro Cipresso, Silvia Serino, Daniela Villani, Claudia Repetto, Luigi Sellitti, Giovanni Albani, Alessandro Mauro, Andrea Gaggioli, Giuseppe Riva Food intake and chewing in women Ioannis Ioakimidis, Modjtaba Zandian, Florian Ulbl, Carina ?lund, Cecilia Bergh, Per S?dersten Automated measurement of spectral sensitivity of motion vision during optokinetic behavior Friedrich Kretschmer, Malte T. Ahlers, Josef Ammerm?ller, Jutta Kretzberg Effects of long term polyarthritis and subsequent NSAID treatment on activity with disassociation of tactile allodynia in the mouse Mohammed S.A. Suhail, Christina Christianson, Fred Koehrn, Shelle A. Malkmus, William Mitchell, Maripat Corr, Tony L. Yaksh Differences in social approach in two inbred strains of mice Michel Pratte, Marc Jamon A new method for evaluating the complexity of animal behavioral patterns based on the notion of Kolmogorov complexity, with ants' hunting behavior as an example Zh. Reznikova, S. Panteleeva, Zh. Danzanov Applying multiple classifiers and non-linear dynamics features for detecting sleepiness from speech Jarek Krajewski, Sebastian Schnieder, David Sommer, Anton Batliner, Bj?rn Schuller ------------ Neurocomputing volume 85 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/issue/271597-1-s2.0-S0925231212X00055 -------------- REGULAR PAPERS Human computer interactions for converting color images to gray Xia Hua Fully affine invariant SURF for image matching Yanwei Pang, Wei Li, Yuan Yuan, Jing Pan Margin distribution based bagging pruning Zongxia Xie, Yong Xu, Qinghua Hu, Pengfei Zhu Global dissipativity of uncertain discrete-time stochastic neural networks with time-varying delays Mengzhuo Luo, Shouming Zhong Feature selection based on sensitivity analysis of fuzzy ISODATA Quanjin Liu, Zhimin Zhao, Ying-Xin Li, Yuanyuan Li Approximate output regulation of spherical inverted pendulum by neural network control Zhaowu Ping, Jie Huang A region segmentation method for region-oriented image compression Rongchang Zhao, Yide Ma -------------- BRIEF PAPERS Exponential synchronization for delayed chaotic neural networks with nonlinear hybrid coupling Guobao Zhang, Ting Wang, Tao Li, Shumin Fei A hierarchical k-means clustering based fingerprint quality classification Muhammad Umer Munir, Muhammad Younus Javed, Shoab Ahmad Khan ------------ JOURNAL SITE: http://www.journals.elsevier.com/neurocomputing/ From cardoso at bcos.uni-freiburg.de Mon Mar 26 04:08:58 2012 From: cardoso at bcos.uni-freiburg.de (Simone Cardoso de Oliveira) Date: Mon, 26 Mar 2012 10:08:58 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: Bernstein Conference 2012 - Abstract Submission Message-ID: <4F70241A.5000308@bcos.uni-freiburg.de> The Bernstein Conference The Bernstein Conference on Computational Neuroscience started out as the annual meeting of the Bernstein Network (www.nncn.de) and has become the largest European Conference in Computational Neuroscience in recent years. This year, the Conference is organized by the Bernstein Center Munich and will take place September 12-14, 2012, back-to-back with the 5th Neuroinformatics Congress of the International Neuroinformatics Coordinating Facility (www.neuroinformatics2012.org). The Bernstein Conference is a single-track conference, covering all aspects of Computational Neuroscience and Neurotechnology. We invite the submission of abstracts for poster presentations from all relevant areas. Abstracts will be published online in the journal Frontiers in Computational Neuroscience. For registration and abstract submission, please visit the Conference Website:http://www.bccn2012.de IMPORTANT DATES: Abstract submission deadline: May 11, 2012 Early registration deadline: June 1, 2012 CONFERENCE DATE AND VENUE: September 12-14, 2012 Klinikum Rechts der Isar, Munich, Germany PhD STUDENT SYMPOSIUM: September 15, 2012 Biozentrum, LMU Munich, Martinsried, Germany PROGRAM COMMITTEE: Henning Bier, Alexander Borst, Gordon Cheng, Stefan Glasauer, Benedikt Grothe, Andreas Herz, Christian Leibold, Harald Luksch, Thomas Wachtler ORGANIZING COMMITTEE: Andreas Herz (General Chair) Ellen Schmidt, Monika Volk, Thomas Wachtler We look forward to seeing you in Munich in September! From kashipong at gmail.com Sun Mar 25 10:34:01 2012 From: kashipong at gmail.com (Hisashi Kashima) Date: Sun, 25 Mar 2012 23:34:01 +0900 Subject: Connectionists: PRIB 2012 Call For Papers : The 7th IAPR International Conference on Pattern Recognition in Bioinformatics Message-ID: [Call for papers] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ PRIB2012 The 7th IAPR International Conference on Pattern Recognition in Bioinformatics ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ November 8-10 2012 Tokyo, Japan http://prib2012.org/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ =============== Call For Papers =============== In modern biology, high-throughput measurement devices allow scientists to gather data at unprecedented rates. To make sense of this data, computational biologists and system biologists construct quantitative models, many of which depend on pattern recognition techniques. Their application is challenging due to the large volumes of data and background information, noisy measurements and target outputs, highly diverse data types etc. The Pattern Recognition in Bioinformatics conference series aims to bring together researchers, practitioners, and students from around the world to present and discuss recent developments and applications of pattern recognition methods in current bioinformatics, computational biology, and systems biology. Authors are invited to submit full papers in relevant research areas, which include but are not limited to: - Bio-sequence analysis - Gene and protein expression analysis - Biomarker discovery - Protein structure and interaction prediction - Motifs and signal detection - Metabolic modeling and analysis - Systems and synthetic biology - Pathway and network analysis - Immuno- and chemo-informatics - Evolution and phylogeny - Bio-imaging - Biological databases, integration, and visualization Pattern recognition techniques of interest include: - Statistical, syntactic, and structural pattern recognition - Data mining and machine learning - Evolutionary computation - Bayesian networks and graphical models - Neural networks and fuzzy systems =========== Publication =========== Papers should be submitted electronically through the conference website (http://prib2012.org/). Accepted papers will be published in Springer's Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics (LNBI). =============== Important dates =============== Full paper submission deadline: May 28, 2012 Author notification of acceptance: June 31, 2012 Camera-ready paper deadline: August 23, 2012 Poster abstract submission : October 2, 2012 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ From gchadder3 at gmail.com Tue Mar 27 22:29:25 2012 From: gchadder3 at gmail.com (George Chadderdon) Date: Tue, 27 Mar 2012 22:29:25 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: Postdoc Jobs Announcement at SUNY Downstate in Neuronal Network Modeling Message-ID: Two postdoctoral fellowships are available immediately as part of an ongoing project to develop a next-generation neuroprosthesis (brain-machine interface). The project involves the development of a multiscale brain model for bidirectional communication with the real cortex and thalamus during sensorimotor tasks. This offers a unique opportunity to link theoretical modeling work with experimental data. The candidate will receive training in a wide range of interdisciplinary skills, from machine-learning algorithms and realistic neuronal network modeling to electrophysiological data analysis. The position is based at SUNY Downstate?s Neurosimulation Laboratory (http://it.neurosim.downstate.edu), in collaboration with teams across 12 universities, as part of DARPA?s Reorganization and Plasticity to Accelerate Injury Recovery (REPAIR) project. For more information, see: http://it.neurosim.downstate.edu/repair.pdf Candidates should have a strong background in a brain-related field (computational neuroscience, neuroengineering, neurorobotics, or neurophysiology) and should be fluent in at least one programming language (C or Python preferred). Familiarity with Linux and version control systems is also desirable. Applicants should contact George Chadderdon (georgec at neurosim.downstate.edu) with a CV and cover letter. SUNY is an equal opportunity employer. From terry at salk.edu Fri Mar 30 15:20:53 2012 From: terry at salk.edu (Terry Sejnowski) Date: Fri, 30 Mar 2012 12:20:53 -0700 Subject: Connectionists: NEURAL COMPUTATION - May, 2012 In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Neural Computation - Contents -- Volume 24, Number 5 - May 1, 2012 Article Stochastic Perturbation Methods for Spike-Timing-Dependent Plasticity Todd Leen and Robert Friel Letters Dynamical Synapses Enhance Neural Information Processing: Gracefulness, Accuracy and Mobility Si Wu, C. C. Alan Fung , K. Y. Michael Wong and He Wang Reinforcement-based decision making in corticostriatal circuits: mutual constraints by neurocomputational and diffusion models. Roger Ratcliff and Michael Frank Statistical Mechanics of Reward-Modulated Learning in Decision-making Networks Kentaro Katahira, Kazuo Okanoya and Masato Okada Learning invariance from natural images inspired by observations in the primary visual cortex Fred Hamker, Michael Teichmann and Jan Wiltschut Meta-cognitive Learning in a Fully Complex-valued Radial Basis Function Neural Network Suresh Sundaram, Savitha Ramasamy and Sundararajan Narasimhan Reduction from Cost-sensitive Ordinal Ranking to Weighted Binary Classification Hsuan-Tien Lin and Ling Li Entropy Estimation in Turing's Perspective Zhiyi Zhang ----- ON-LINE - http://www.mitpressjournals.org/loi/neco SUBSCRIPTIONS - 2012 - VOLUME 24 - 12 ISSUES USA Others Electronic only Student/Retired $70 $193 $65 Individual $124 $187 $115 Institution $1,035 $1,098 $926 Canada: Add 5% 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 ----- From rob.haslinger at gmail.com Fri Mar 30 10:12:43 2012 From: rob.haslinger at gmail.com (Rob Haslinger) Date: Fri, 30 Mar 2012 10:12:43 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: 2012 INCF training course on Advanced Statistical Modeling of Neuronal Data (July 22-28, 2012) Message-ID: Training course announcement (1st call) (Apologies for duplicate postings) Dear Colleague, We invite you to apply for the ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 2012 INCF training course on Advanced Statistical Modeling of Neuronal Data (July 22-28, 2012) ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ This course will take place in Osnabrueck, Germany, and will be hosted by the Institute of Cognitive Science (University of Osnabrueck). Details can be found at: http://www.incf.ni.uos.de/ Applications will be accepted until May 15, 2012. Those accepted will be notified by May 31st at which point a registration fee of 200 ? will be required. This fee covers attendance of the training course, coffee breaks, two dinners and team-building events. Accommodation costs are not included. The goal of the course is for attendees to gain a working knowledge of statistical techniques that have proven useful for neuroscientific data analysis. Broadly speaking, the course is composed of 5 main themes, one for each day: Statistical Analysis Basics, Encoding Models, Decoding Models, Neuronal Population Models and Large-Scale Imaging Models. As the emphasis is on practical applications, each analysis technique will first be motivated by introducing its usage with showcase applications from different neuroscientific fields. This will give participants without experience in a given field an understanding of what one wants to achieve with an analysis technique. After having established this common ground of applications, the methods themselves will be presented in lecture format. Students will then, in Matlab laboratory sessions, learn to apply the methods to real neuroscientific data sets. A detailed syllabus may be found on the course website. Organizers and Speakers ? Prof. Emery N. Brown, MIT, Cambridge, and Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston MA, USA ? Prof. Gordon Pipa, Institute of Cognitive Science, Osnabruck, Germany ? Dr. Stefan Kiebel, Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, Germany ? Dr. Robert Haslinger, Harvard Medical School, Boston and MIT, Cambridge USA. Best regards, Robert Haslinger (Organizing committee) -- Robert Haslinger, PhD Instructor, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA Assistant in Neuroscience, Massachusetts General Hospital, Charlestown, MA Research Affiliate, Dept. of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, MIT, Cambridge, MA -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/20120330/cb690071/attachment.html From romain.brette at ens.fr Fri Mar 30 11:44:24 2012 From: romain.brette at ens.fr (Romain Brette) Date: Fri, 30 Mar 2012 17:44:24 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: Call for Papers - Special issue on neural network simulation in Network: Computation in Neural Systems Message-ID: <4F75D4D8.8030000@ens.fr> Call for Papers - Special issue on neural network simulation in Network: Computation in Neural Systems Special issue on neural network simulation in Network: Computation in Neural Systems Editors: Romain Brette (romain.brette at ens.fr) Christian Leibold (leibold at bio.lmu.de) Simulation of neural models is increasingly used in neuroscience. It raises a number of issues, such as: how to efficiently simulate large networks, how to describe and share models that are based on different simulators, how to constrain and handle large parameter spaces, and how to cope with the complexity and variety of biological models. In this special issue of Network: Computation in Neural Systems (http://informahealthcare.com/loi/net), we are inviting original research contributions, reviews, and perspectives on all topics relevant to the simulation of biological neural networks. Topics of interest include but are not limited to: * Simulation algorithms * Data structures * Parallel processing, for example on graphics cards * Standardization, interfacing, model sharing * Analysis and interpretation of simulated data Contributions of reviews or perspectives should be proposed to Romain Brette (romain.brette at ens.fr) prior to submission. Manuscripts should be submitted online via http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/ncns, mentioning the special issue in the cover letter. Manuscript submission due: 17.06.2012 First review completed: 31.07.2012 Revised manuscript due: 07.09.2012 Second review completed, final decisions to authors: 05.10.2012 Final manuscript due: 12.10.2012 Publication date: 07.12.2012 For further information, please contact the editors. From pascal.hitzler at wright.edu Fri Mar 30 20:49:48 2012 From: pascal.hitzler at wright.edu (Pascal Hitzler) Date: Fri, 30 Mar 2012 20:49:48 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: *deadline extension* CALL FOR PAPERS: NeSy'12 In-Reply-To: <3A9DCBE6325C3D41B65DAEBDB7AB173303E7C3ED01@NSQ161EX.enterprise.internal.city.ac.uk> References: <3A9DCBE6325C3D41B65DAEBDB7AB173303E7C3ED01@NSQ161EX.enterprise.internal.city.ac.uk> Message-ID: <4F7654AC.50902@wright.edu> EXTENDED SUBMISSION DEADLINE: April 4, 2012 CALL FOR PAPERS 8th International Workshop on Neural-Symbolic Learning and Reasoning (NeSy'12) In conjunction with AAAI-12, Toronto, Canada July 22nd or 23rd 2012. Keynote Speaker: Prof. Jude W. Shavlik University of Wisconsin-Madison EXTENDED Submission deadline: April 4th, 2012 Artificial Intelligence (AI) researchers continue to face huge challenges in their quest to develop truly intelligent systems. The recent developments in the area of neural-symbolic integration offer an opportunity to combine symbolic AI and robust neural computation to help tackle some of these challenges. The Workshop on Neural-Symbolic Learning and Reasoning attracts researchers and practitioners in the areas of Neural Computation, Artificial Intelligence, Logic, Complex Networks and Cognitive Science. It is intended to create an atmosphere of exchange of ideas, providing a forum for the presentation and discussion of the key multidisciplinary topics related to neural-symbolic integration. Topics of interest include: 1. The representation of symbolic knowledge by sub-symbolic systems; 2. Integrated neural-symbolic approaches to machine learning; 3. Extraction of symbolic knowledge from trained neural networks; 4. Integrated neural-symbolic approaches to human and logical reasoning; 5. Cognitive and biologically-inspired neural-symbolic agents; 6. Integration of logic and probabilities in neural networks; 7. Structured learning and relational learning in neural networks; 8. Applications in robotics, simulation, fraud prevention, semantic web, software engineering, fault diagnosis, verification and validation, bioinformatics, visual intelligence, etc. Submission You are invited to submit papers through easychair at http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=nesy12. Submitted papers must not have been published elsewhere, must be written in English and should not exceed 6 pages in the case of research and experience papers or 3 pages in the case of position papers (including figures, bibliography and appendices). All submitted papers will be refereed based on their quality, relevance, originality, significance and soundness. Presentation and Participation Accepted papers must be presented during the workshop. The workshop will also include extra time for discussion, allowing the audience to get a better understanding of the issues, challenges and ideas being presented. The workshop is open to all members of the AI community, but the number of attendees may have to be limited. Publication Accepted papers will be published in the AAAI Technical Report series and will be included in the official workshop proceedings. Authors of the best papers will be invited to submit a revised and extended version of their papers to the Journal of Logic and Computation, reasoning and learning corner, Oxford University Press. Important Dates Deadline for paper submission: April 4th, 2012 Notification of acceptance: April 20th, 2012 Camera-ready paper due: May 7th, 2012 Workshop date: July 22nd or 23rd, 2012 AAAI-12 dates: July 22nd to 26th, 2012 Workshop Organisers Artur d'Avila Garcez (City University London, UK) Pascal Hitzler (Wright State University, USA) Luis C. Lamb (Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil) Additional Information General questions concerning the workshop should be addressed to Artur d'Avila Garcez at aag at soi.city.ac.uk. The workshop webpage (and information about all previous meetings) is available at http://www.neural-symbolic.org/ -- Prof. Dr. Pascal Hitzler Dept. of Computer Science, Wright State University, Dayton, OH pascal at pascal-hitzler.de http://www.knoesis.org/pascal/ Semantic Web Textbook: http://www.semantic-web-book.org Semantic Web Journal: http://www.semantic-web-journal.net From etienne.roesch at gmail.com Wed Mar 28 08:56:10 2012 From: etienne.roesch at gmail.com (Etienne B. Roesch) Date: Wed, 28 Mar 2012 13:56:10 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: CFP: Cognitive Computation Journal: Celebrating the legacy of the late Professor John G Taylor In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <70851049-C782-4CC6-98BD-15A791AAAA57@gmail.com> Dear all, Like many of you, I was shocked to learn that John passed away. I will be writing an obituary for the next issue of AISB Quaterly, the newsletter for the UK-based AI-related community. Feel free to contact me if you would like to share a remembrance note, a memory, picture and the like. He will be missed. Our affection goes to his family. Kind regards, Etienne On 28 Mar 2012, at 09:25, Vassilis Cutsuridis wrote: > //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// > > Call for Papers: Cognitive Computation - Celebrating > the legacy of the late Professor John G Taylor > > ////////////////////////////// ////////////////////////////////////////// > > * DESCRIPTION > > The scope of the special issue is to celebrate the work of the late Professor John G Taylor. Professor Taylor began his career in 1956 as a theoretical physicist and has contributed many seminal papers and books to high energy physics, black holes, quantum gravity and string theory. He held positions in leading Universities in the UK, USA and Europe in > > physics and mathematics. He created the Centre for Neural Networks at King?s College, London, in 1990, and is still its Director. He was appointed Emeritus Professor of Mathematics of London University in 1996. He was Guest Scientist at the Research Centre in Juelich, Germany, 1996-8, working on brain imaging and data analysis. He has acted as consultant in Neural Networks to several companies. He is the Director of Research on Global Bond products and Tactical Asset Allocation for a financial investment company involved in time series prediction. He is presently European Editor-in-Chief of the journal Neural Networks and was President of the International Neural Network Society (1995) and the European Neural Network Society (1993/4). Since 2009, he is founding Chair of the Advisory Editorial Board for the journal Cognitive Computation. > > > Prof. Taylor worked in the field of Neural Networks since 1969. He has contributed ever since to all aspects of neural > networks and cognitive computation including their applications to finance and robotics. > > > Specifically, research topics Prof. Taylor contributed to include but are not limited to: > > > > -- Noisy nets, synapses and the pRAM chip > > -- Dynamics of learning processes > > -- Mathematical analysis of neural networks and their hardware implementations > > -- Neural network models of perception, attention, learning and memory, decision making, motor control, cognitive control, observational learning, emotions, thinking, reasoning, conceptualization, knowledge representation, language and consciousness > > -- Neural network applications to finance, robotics and brain imaging > > > The issue will consider original research articles, review articles, letters and commentaries from former and current students, junior and senior colleagues of Professor Taylor. All submitted articles should clearly state in what way their work is based on Prof. Taylor?s previous research and how it extends it. > > > > * EDITORS > > The reviewing process will be supervised by guest Editors (Vassilis Cutsuridis and Amir Hussain), together with the editorial Board of the Cognitive Computation journal. > > > * DEADLINES > > Deadlines are as follows: > > -- Submission deadline: September 1, 2012 > > -- Review deadline: December 1, 2012 > > -- Author notification: December 2, 2012 > > -- Author?s response: February 1, 2013 > > -- Publication by journal: ~April, 2013 > > Electronic submissions for the Cognitive Computation journal can be found under http://www.springer.com/biomed/neuroscience/journal/12559 > > Please indicate in your cover letter that your article is for the special issue "Celebrating the work of the late Prof. John G Taylor". > > > Kind regards, > Vassilis Cutsuridis and Amir Hussain > > > _______________________________________________ > Comp-neuro mailing list > Comp-neuro at neuroinf.org > http://www.neuroinf.org/mailman/listinfo/comp-neuro -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/20120328/3f7ec363/attachment-0001.html From marco.baroni at unitn.it Fri Mar 30 03:08:56 2012 From: marco.baroni at unitn.it (Marco Baroni) Date: Fri, 30 Mar 2012 09:08:56 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: phd positions in data-driven compositional distributional semantics Message-ID: <4F755C08.9030203@unitn.it> PHD POSITIONS IN DATA-DRIVEN COMPOSITIONAL DISTRIBUTIONAL SEMANTICS Three PhD positions/studentships to study compositionality in distributional semantics are available in the Language, Interaction and Computation track of the 3-year PhD program offered by the Center for Mind/Brain Sciences at the University of Trento (Italy) (www.unitn.it/en/cimec). The PhD program (start date: November 2012) is taught in English by an international faculty. The Language, Interaction & Computation track is organized by the CIMeC-CLIC laboratory, an interdisciplinary group of researchers studying language and conceptualization using both computational and cognitive methods (clic.cimec.unitn.it). The studentships are funded by a 5-year European Research Council Starting Grant awarded to the COMPOSES (COMPositional Operations in SEmantic SPACE) project (clic.cimec.unitn.it/composes), that aims at modeling composition in distributional semantics. The project is expected to have strong impact on both theoretical and computational semantics, as well as their cognitive underpinnings. * Desired Profiles * Given the interdisciplinary nature of the project, we seek brilliant students with any of the following backgrounds: - Machine learning (areas of special interest: regression, regularization methods, hierarchical regression, autoencoders, curriculum learning, scaling machine learning to large multivariate and multi-level problems, dealing with very sparse data); - Psycholinguistics, experimental linguistics or cognitive science (areas of special interest: systematic judgment elicitation methods such as Likert scales or magnitude estimation, crowdsourcing, semantic processing); - Formal and/or computational semantics (areas of special interest: Montague Grammar and its derivatives, distributional semantics) Advanced programming and mathematical skills are required of candidates from machine learning. For linguists and cognitive scientists, programming skills and knowledge of statistics are a big plus. If you think that your background is relevant to the research program outlined on the project website (clic.cimec.unitn.it/composes) and you have good programming and quantitative skills, please do get in touch even if you do not fit any of the profiles above. All prospective students are expected to have an interest in working in an interdisciplinary environment. * The Research Environment * The CLIC lab (clic.cimec.unitn.it) is a unit of the University of Trento's Center for Mind/Brain Sciences (CIMeC, www.unitn.it/en/cimec), an English-speaking, interdisciplinary center for research on brain and cognition whose staff includes neuroscientists, psychologists, (computational) linguists, computer scientists and physicists. CLIC consists of researchers from the Departments of Computer Science (DISI) and Cognitive Science (DISCoF) carrying out research on a range of topics including concept acquisition, corpus-based computational semantics, combining NLP and computer vision, combining brain and corpus data to study cognition, formal semantics and theoretical linguistics. Modeling composition in distributional semantics is increasingly a focus point of CLIC, and activity in this area is growing considerably thanks to COMPOSES funds. CLIC is part of the larger network of research labs focusing on Natural Language Processing and related domains in the Trento region, that is quickly becoming one of the areas with the highest concentration of researchers in NLP and related fields anywhere in Europe. The CLIC/CIMeC laboratories are located in beautiful Rovereto, a lively town in the middle of the Alps, famous for its contemporary art museum, the quality of its wine, and the range of outdoors sport and relax opportunities it offers: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rovereto * Application Information * The official call of the Doctoral School in Cognitive and Brain Sciences will be announced shortly, and application details will be available on the page: http://www.unitn.it/en/drcimec/10140/admission-doctoral-school-cognitive-and-brain-sciences We strongly encourage a preliminary expression of interest in the project. Please contact Marco Baroni (marco.baroni at unitn.it), attaching a CV in pdf or txt format, or a link to an online CV. For information about the application process, please contact the school administrator (phd.cimec at unitn.it). -- Marco Baroni Center for Mind/Brain Sciences (CIMeC) University of Trento http://clic.cimec.unitn.it/marco From David_Sheinberg at brown.edu Thu Mar 29 15:42:08 2012 From: David_Sheinberg at brown.edu (David Sheinberg) Date: Thu, 29 Mar 2012 15:42:08 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: Brown University - Tenure Track Position in Computational Neuroscience Message-ID: <02768b7e9b231c4db18d2011ff7cca7d@yoshi.neuro.brown.edu> Brown University - Tenure Track Position in Computational Neuroscience The Brown University Department of Neuroscience invites applications for a tenure-track position as Assistant Professor in the area of computational neuroscience. This appointment will be made in conjunction with the interdepartmental Brown Institute for Brain Science as part of an expansion that includes seven new faculty positions. Candidates should have a Ph.D., M.D., or equivalent degree, postdoctoral research experience, and a record of research excellence. We strongly encourage applications from women and minorities. Applicants should be developing and using computational approaches to address fundamental issues of neural information processing. We encourage applications from candidates whose research can yield insight into neurologic or psychiatric disorders. The successful applicant will bridge areas of research strength within the Brown Brain Science community and work collaboratively with engineers, clinicians, mathematicians, computer scientists, and neuroscientists. The applicant is expected to establish an independent research program supported by external funds and will teach undergraduate, graduate, and/or medical students. The appointment will be in the Department of Neuroscience, with the possibility of a secondary appointment in another Institute-affiliated department. The search committee will give first consideration to applications received by April 27, 2012. Applicants should submit a pdf version of their curriculum vitae, research and teaching statements, and three representative publications. They should also request that three letters of recommendations be sent electronically to compneurosearch at brown.edu. David Sheinberg, PhD Search Committee Chair Department of Neuroscience Brown University Providence, RI Brown University is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity employer. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/20120329/628c68ae/attachment.html From vcutsuridis at gmail.com Wed Mar 28 04:25:38 2012 From: vcutsuridis at gmail.com (Vassilis Cutsuridis) Date: Wed, 28 Mar 2012 11:25:38 +0300 Subject: Connectionists: CFP: Cognitive Computation Journal: Celebrating the legacy of the late Professor John G Taylor In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// Call for Papers: Cognitive Computation - Celebrating the legacy of the late Professor John G Taylor ////////////////////////////// ////////////////////////////////////////// * DESCRIPTION The scope of the special issue is to celebrate the work of the late Professor John G Taylor. Professor Taylor began his career in 1956 as a theoretical physicist and has contributed many seminal papers and books to high energy physics, black holes, quantum gravity and string theory. He held positions in leading Universities in the UK, USA and Europe in physics and mathematics. He created the Centre for Neural Networks at King?s College, London, in 1990, and is still its Director. He was appointed Emeritus Professor of Mathematics of London University in 1996. He was Guest Scientist at the Research Centre in Juelich, Germany, 1996-8, working on brain imaging and data analysis. He has acted as consultant in Neural Networks to several companies. He is the Director of Research on Global Bond products and Tactical Asset Allocation for a financial investment company involved in time series prediction. He is presently European Editor-in-Chief of the journal *Neural Networks *and was President of the International Neural Network Society (1995) and the European Neural Network Society (1993/4). Since 2009, he is founding Chair of the Advisory Editorial Board for the journal *Cognitive Computation*. Prof. Taylor worked in the field of Neural Networks since 1969. He has contributed ever since to all aspects of neural networks and cognitive computation including their applications to finance and robotics. Specifically, research topics Prof. Taylor contributed to include but are not limited to: -- Noisy nets, synapses and the pRAM chip -- Dynamics of learning processes -- Mathematical analysis of neural networks and their hardware implementations -- Neural network models of perception, attention, learning and memory, decision making, motor control, cognitive control, observational learning, emotions, thinking, reasoning, conceptualization, knowledge representation, language and consciousness -- Neural network applications to finance, robotics and brain imaging The issue will consider original research articles, review articles, letters and commentaries from former and current students, junior and senior colleagues of Professor Taylor. All submitted articles should clearly state in what way their work is based on Prof. Taylor?s previous research and how it extends it. * EDITORS The reviewing process will be supervised by guest Editors (VassilisCutsuridis and Amir Hussain), together with theeditorial Board of the Cognitive Computation journal. * DEADLINES Deadlines are as follows: -- Submission deadline: September 1, 2012 -- Review deadline: December 1, 2012 -- Author notification: December 2, 2012 -- Author?s response: February 1, 2013 -- Publication by journal: ~April, 2013 Electronic submissions for the Cognitive Computation journal can be found under http://www.springer.com/biomed/neuroscience/journal/12559 Please indicate in your cover letter that your article is for the special issue "Celebrating the work of the late Prof. John G Taylor". Kind regards, Vassilis Cutsuridis and Amir Hussain -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... 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