Connectionists: Telluride Neuromorphic Cognition Workshop 2015: Call for Topics Proposals

[Ralph Etienne-Cummings]

Call for Topic Area Proposals2015 Neuromorphic Cognition Engineering
Workshop

Telluride, Colorado, June 28 -July 18, 2015

We are now accepting proposals for Topic Areas in the 2015 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 <http://ine-web.org> will be chosen from proposals submitted to
the organizers.  We will have 4 topic areas and 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, auditory scene analysis, human
robot interaction, mobile electronic implementations of neuromorphic
sensing, real time deep network implementations) 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) who has stayed
at the Workshop for at least one week. The second organizer should be a
person who comes ideally from a field outside traditional neuromorphic
engineering.

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 Google+, 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).
Commitments from your invitees should already be in place such that these
invitees can come to the workshop if your proposal is accepted.

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
organizers14 at neuromorphs.net with subject line containing "topic area
proposal".

Proposals must be received by December 20th, 2014; proposals received after
the deadline may still be considered if space is available.

Resources limit the workshop to 4 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
<http://www.neuromorphs.net/nm/wiki/2014> for the 2014 workshop wiki.

We look forward to your topic proposals!

Deadline: December 20th, 2014

The Workshop Directors:

Cornelia Fermuller <fer at umiacs.umd.edu> (University of Maryland), Ralph
Etienne-Cummings <http://etienne.ece.jhu.edu/people/ralph/index.html>
(Johns Hopkins Univ.) Shih-Chii Liu <shih at ini.phys.ethz.ch> (University of
Zurich and ETH Zurich), Timmer Horiuchi <http://www.isr.umd.edu/~timmer>
(University of Maryland)

Former 2007-2012 Workshop Director:
Tobi Delbruck <tobi at ini.phys.ethz.ch> (University of Zurich and ETH Zurich)
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