Connectionists: 2013 Telluride Neuromorphic Cognition Workshop: Call For Topics

[retienne]

Call for Topic Area Proposals

2013 Neuromorphic Cognition Engineering Workshop
Telluride, Colorado, June 30 -July 20, 2013

We are now accepting proposals for Topic Areas in the 2013 Telluride 
Neuromorphic Cognition Engineering Workshop.  We support topics and 
projects in neuromorphic cognition, particularly those that involve 
solving challenging ‘everyday’ tasks that incorporate domain-specific 
knowledge, exploration, prediction, and problem solving. In particular, 
we are interested in projects that hold promise for addressing Grand 
Challenge types of problems that do not have strong solutions of any 
form, neuromorphic or not.  These Challenge problems should feature 
long-duration sensorimotor problems that involve autonomous cognitive 
decision making.  Examples might include tasks such as learning a new 
language, navigating through an unknown environment to locate an object 
or reach a desired location, adaptively manipulating unknown or complex 
objects in the service of a task, playing a game requiring inference of 
hidden information or long-term planning and learning, etc. Proposals 
related to hardware technologies that aim to bring these capabilities to 
reality are also encouraged. Topic proposals that aim to solve a 
particular problem using the multidisciplinary experience of 
participants will be favored over topics that simply gather a large 
number of people working within a discipline, or using a single 
technology, or approach.

Topic areas for this summer's Telluride Neuromorphic Cognition 
Engineering Workshop will be chosen from proposals submitted to the 
organizers.

Important:  Due to the nature of our NSF grant (primary funding source), 
two topic areas are already established: “Interpreting actions of 
manipulation” and “Human-robot cooperation in the identification of 
speakers and exploration of space”. We will also have a “Future hardware 
technologies” tutorial/projects group.

Topic areas can span a large field; we are looking for leadership in 
planning activities and inviting good people in a field.  Although past 
topic areas have tended to be very broad and discipline-oriented (e.g., 
cognition, audition, vision, robotics, neural interfacing, neuromorphic 
VLSI, etc.), application-oriented topic areas (e.g., sensor fusion, 
game-playing robot, object recognition, sound localization, human robot 
interaction, etc.) are especially desirable.

Topic area leaders will receive housing for themselves and their 
invitees, and limited travel funds. Topic area leaders will help to 
define the field of neuromorphic cognition engineering through the 
projects they pursue and the people they invite.  They shape their topic 
by inviting speakers and project leaders (the invitees) and by 
initiating topic area project discussions prior to the workshop.

Teams of two organizers are required. One of the organizers should be an 
attendee of a previous Telluride Workshop (in any capacity) and has 
stayed at the Workshop for at least one week.

Pre-workshop topic area choices and study assignments.
Before the workshop begins, each topic area will be required to prepare 
and distribute study materials that constitute: 1) an introductory 
presentation (e.g., pptx, video, review paper) of the fundamental 
knowledge associated with the topic area that everyone at the workshop 
should be exposed to, and 2) a few critical papers that the participants 
in the topic area should read before the workshop. The topic area should 
3) begin a serious group discussion of the projects (e.g., via Facebook, 
Skype, email, etc).

  The maximum 2-page proposals should include:

1. Title of topic area.
2. Names of the two topic leaders, their affiliations, and contact 
information (email
     addresses!).
3. A paragraph explaining the focus and goals of the topic area.
4. A list of possible specific topic area projects.
5. A list of example invitees (up to six names and institutions). No 
commitments necessary.
6. Any other material that fits within the two-page limit that will help 
us make a smart
     choice.

Send your topic area proposal in pdf or text format to 
organizers13 at neuromorphs.net with subject line containing "topic area 
proposal".

Proposals must be received by January 7, 2013; proposals received after 
the deadline may still be considered if space is available.

Resources limit the workshop to roughly 2 additional topic areas, each 
with 5 invitees. If your proposal for the topic area is not accepted, we 
will work with you to see if there is a natural way to include your 
ideas (and you) into the accepted topic areas. We hope to have 
significant turn-over each year in the topic areas and leaders to ensure 
fresh new ideas and participants.

See the Institute of Neuromorphic Engineering (www.ine-web.org) for 
background information on the workshop and neuromorphs.net for past 
workshop wikis.

We look forward to your topic proposals!

Deadline: January 7, 2013

The Workshop Directors:
Cornelia Fermüller (University of Maryland), Ralph Etienne-Cummings 
(Johns Hopkins Univ.) Shih-Chii Liu (University of Zurich and ETH 
Zurich), Timmer Horiuchi (University of Maryland)
Former Directors:
Tobi Delbruck (University of Zurich and ETH Zurich)



-- 
-------------------------------------------------
Ralph Etienne-Cummings
Professor
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
The Johns Hopkins University
105 Barton Hall
3400 N. Charles Street
Baltimore, MD 21218
Tel: (410) 516 3494
Fax: (410) 516 2939
Email: retienne at jhu.edu
URL:  http://etienne.ece.jhu.edu/




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