Connectionists: Deadline is April 2nd (but site will be open until April 4th): Call for Applications in 2014 Telluride Neuromorphic Cognition Engineering Workshop

[Ralph Etienne-Cummings]

Telluride Neuromorphic Cognition Engineering Workshop

2014 Neuromorphic Cognition Engineering Workshop: The 20th Anniversary
Edition

Telluride, Colorado, June 29th - July 19th, 2014

CALL FOR APPLICATIONS: Deadline is April 2nd, 2014

NEUROMORPHIC COGNITION ENGINEERING WORKSHOP
www.ine-web.org

Sunday June 29th - Saturday July 19th, 2014, Telluride, Colorado

We invite applications for a three-week summer workshop that will be held
in Telluride, Colorado.Sunday June 29th - Saturday July 19th, 2014. The
application deadline is Wednesday, April 2nd and application instructions
are described at the bottom of this document.

This is the 20th Anniversary of the Workshop, and ~25 years since the
conception of the "Meadian" version of Neuromorphic Engineering. Hence, we
plan a celebratory Workshop, where some of the originators and benefactors
of the field will participate in discussions of the successes and
challenges over the past 25 years and prognosticate the potential
contributions for the next 25 years.
The 2014 Workshop and Summer School on Neuromorphic Engineering is
sponsored by the National Science Foundation, Institute of Neuromorphic
Engineering, Qualcomm Corporation, The EU-Collaborative Convergent Science
Network (CNS-II), University of Maryland - College Park, Institute for
Neuroinformatics - University of Zurich and ETH Zurich, Georgia Institute
of Technology, Johns Hopkins University, Boston University, University of
Western Sydney and the Salk Institute.

Directors:
Cornelia Fermuller, University of Maryland, College Park
Ralph Etienne-Cummings, Johns Hopkins University
Shih-Chii Liu, Institute of Neuroinformatics, UNI/ETH Zurich, Switzerland
Timothy Horiuchi, University of Maryland, College Park

Workshop Advisory Board:
Andreas Andreou, Johns Hopkins University
Andre van Schaik, University Western Sydney, Australia
Avis Cohen, University of Maryland
Barbara Shinn-Cunningham, Boston University
Giacomo Indiveri, Institute of Neuroinformatics, Uni/Eth Zurich,
Switzerland
Jonathan Tapson, University Western Sydney, Australia
Malcolm Slaney, Microsoft Research
Jennifer Hasler, Georgia Institute of Technology
Rodney Douglas, Institute of Neuroinformatics, Uni/Eth Zurich, Switzerland
Shihab Shamma, University of Maryland
Tobi Delbruck, Institute of Neuroinformatics, Uni/Eth Zurich, Switzerland


Previous year workshop can be found at:
ine-web.org/workshops/workshops-overview/index.htmland the workshop wiki is
athttps://neuromorphs.net/

GOALS:
Neuromorphic engineers design and fabricate artificial neural systems whose
organizing principles are based on those of biological nervous systems.
Over the past 18 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 emerging
hardware 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, vision and auditory systems, central-pattern-generators,
selective attention mechanisms, cognitive systems, etc.

2014 TOPIC AREAS:
Human Auditory Cognition: Acoustic Priming, Imagination and Attention.
Project Leaders: Shihab Shamma (UM-College Park), Malcolm Slaney
(Microsoft), Edward Lalor (Trinity College, Dublin), Barbara
Shinn-Cunningham (Boston U)
Motion and Action Processing on Wearable Devices Project Leaders: Michael
Pfeiffer (INI-UZH), Ryad Benosman (UPMC, Paris), Garrick Orchard (NUS,
Singapore), and Cornelia Fermüller (UMCP)
Planning with Dynamic Neural Fields: from Sensorimotor Dynamics to
Large-Scale behavioral Search Project Leaders: Yulia Sandamirskaya (RUB,
Bochum) and Erik Billing (U. Skovde)
Neuromorphic Olympics Project Leaders: Jorg Conradt (TUM, Munich) and Terry
Stewart (U. Waterloo)
Embodied Neuromorphic Real-World Architectures of Perception, Cognition and
Action Project Leaders: Andreas Andreou (JHU) and Paul Verschure (UPF,
Barcelona)
Terry Sejnowski (Salk Institute) - 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, 2014.
The Workshop covers all your accommodations and facilities costs for the 3
weeks duration. You are responsible for your own travel to the Workshop,
however, sponsored fellowships will be available as described below to
further subsidize your cost.

Registration Fees: For expenses not covered by federal funds, a Workshop
registration fee is required. The fee is $1250 per participant for the
3-week Workshop. This is expected from all participants at the time of
acceptance.
Accommodations: The cost of a shared condominium, typically a bedroom in a
shared condo for senior participants or a shared room for students, will be
covered for all academic participants. Upgrades to a private rooms or
condos will cost extra. Participants from National Laboratories and
Industry are expected to pay for these condominiums.

Fellowships: This year we will offer two Fellowships to subsidize your
costs:
Qualcomm Corporation Fellowship: Three non-corporate participants will have
their accommodation and registration fees ($2750) directly covered by
Qualcomm, and will be reimbursed for travel costs up to $500. Additional
generous funding from Qualcomm will provide $5000 to help organize and
stage the Workshop.
EU-CSNII Fellowship (http://csnetwork.eu/) which is funded by the 7th
Research Framework Program FP7-ICT-CSNII-601167: The top 8 EU applicants
will be reimbursed for their registration fees ($1250), subsistence/travel
subsidy (up to Euro 2000) and accommodations cost ($1500). The registration
and accommodation costs will go directly to the INE (the INE will reimburse
the participant's registration fees after receipt from CSNII), while the
subsistence/travel reimbursement will be provided directly to the
participants by the CSNII at the University of Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona,
Spain.
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 7th, 2014):
ine-web.org/telluride-conference-2014/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).
Applicants will be notified by e-mail.
7th February, 2014 - Applications accepted on website
2nd April, 2014 - Applications Due
15th April, 2014 - Notification of Acceptance

-- 
Ralph Etienne-Cummings, PhD, FIEEE
Professor
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Computational Sensor Motor Systems Lab
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