From horacio at njit.edu  Wed Oct  1 02:07:22 2014
From: horacio at njit.edu (Horacio G. Rotstein)
Date: Wed, 1 Oct 2014 02:07:22 -0400
Subject: Connectionists: Postdoctoral Position in Neurophysiology at NJIT /
	Rutgers
Message-ID: <CAFzvGFSCVShKm2Hkt4eqqtzH7zn9+ADjdfFBPCJU=sbmVYyU1w@mail.gmail.com>

An NIH-funded postdoctoral position in Neurophysiology is available in the
Federated Department of Biological Sciences at the New Jersey Institute of
Technology (NJIT) and Rutgers University in the laboratory of Jorge
Golowasch.

The postdoctoral fellow will join a recently funded project whose goal is
to study the functional role of ionic current co-expression on the tuning
of activity of a rhythm-generating network to its inputs. The crustacean
pyloric network used in this research is ideal to address these questions
because of their well-defined temporal patterns of activity and anatomical
properties. The project has a theoretical component in collaboration with
Horacio G. Rotstein.

The successful applicant should have a PhD in Biology, Mathematics, Physics
or related areas, as well as proven experience in electrophysiology and a
genuine interest to interact with other experimentalists and theoreticians.
The chosen applicant will have the opportunity to join a young and very
dynamic department with substantial expertise in the study of neuronal
excitability, circuit function, and behavior. Funding is available for 1
year initially, with the possibility of extension. The position is
available immediately. The salary will be based on experience and is
competitive with all international standards.

NJIT and Rutgers are located in Newark, NJ, in the New York City
metropolitan area, 20 min train/subway ride from Penn Station and the World
train Center in Manhattan.

Required documents: CV, cover letter, names and emails of three references.
Please contact Jorge Golowasch (Golowasch at njit.edu) with any questions.

-- 
                                        Horacio, NY/NJ area.


"Az di bobe volt gehat beytsim volt zi geven mayn zeide" (Yiddish
expression)

Horacio G. Rotstein
Associate Professor
Department of Mathematical Sciences
New Jersey Institute of Technology
Newark, NJ, 07102, USA.

Graduate Faculty
Behavioral Neuroscience Program
Rutgers University (NWK) and
Federated Department of Biological Sciences
Rutgers / NJIT

tel: (1-973) 596-5306


e-mail: horacio at njit.edu
            horacior at andromeda.rutgers.edu <horacio at njit.edu>
http://web.njit.edu/~horacio
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From ccchow at pitt.edu  Thu Oct  2 10:49:17 2014
From: ccchow at pitt.edu (Carson C. Chow)
Date: Thu, 2 Oct 2014 10:49:17 -0400
Subject: Connectionists: Postdoctoral Position at NIH
Message-ID: <CD341CA0-1B54-49F5-9BBF-23B50218BD6B@pitt.edu>

NIH Postdoctoral Fellowship: Mathematical Modeling of Food Intake, Food Reward and Habit Formation
 
Position Type: Postdoctoral Position at the NIH
 
Position Title: Mathematical Modeling of Food Intake, Food Reward and Habit Formation
 
Position Description: The successful candidate will develop mathematical models of the neurobiology underlying the regulation of food intake, food reward and habit formation in collaboration with Dr. Kevin Hall and Dr. Carson Chow in the Laboratory of Biological Modeling, NIDDK, NIH.

Applicants should possess a Ph.D. degree in Computational Neuroscience, Applied Mathematics, Engineering, Physics, or a related field. The successful candidate will have strong quantitative and mathematical abilities and an interest in studying the regulation of food intake, with a specific emphasis on food reward and habit formation. Salary will be commensurate with experience according to NIH guidelines.
 
Please send your CV and a list of 3 references to:
 
Kevin Hall, Ph. D.
Laboratory of Biological Modeling
National Institute of Diabetes & Digestive & Kidney Diseases
National Institutes of Health
12A South Drive, Room 4007
Bethesda, MD 20892-5621
Email: kevinh at niddk.nih.gov
 
Employer Name: Laboratory of Biological Modeling at the National Institute of Diabetes & Digestive & Kidney Diseases
 
Position Location: Bethesda, Maryland.
 
The NIH is dedicated to building a diverse community in its training and employment programs.

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From talleye at ninds.nih.gov  Wed Oct  1 18:49:34 2014
From: talleye at ninds.nih.gov (Talley, Edmund (NIH/NINDS) [E])
Date: Wed, 1 Oct 2014 22:49:34 +0000
Subject: Connectionists: Seizure Prediction - $20K Prize
Message-ID: <7696BB550BE92C498C35E85AC64A42220E59B58A@MLBXv04.nih.gov>

American Epilepsy Society Seizure Prediction Challenge
http://www.kaggle.com/c/seizure-prediction
$20,000 Prize
Contest closes Nov 17

The challenge: 
Accurately predict seizure activity from intracranial EEG data from dogs with naturally occurring epilepsy, and from patients with medication-resistant seizures recorded during evaluation for epilepsy surgery.  

This is an international competition sponsored by the American Epilepsy Society (AES), National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS, part of NIH) and the Epilepsy Foundation.  

#####################
Edmund (Ned) Talley, Ph.D.
Program Director, Channels Synapses and Circuits Cluster
National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke





From gluck at pavlov.rutgers.edu  Thu Oct  2 09:18:48 2014
From: gluck at pavlov.rutgers.edu (Mark Gluck)
Date: Thu, 2 Oct 2014 09:18:48 -0400
Subject: Connectionists: Apply to the Behavioral & Neural Sciences Ph.D.
	Program at Rutgers University-Newark (Deadline: December 15th, 2014)
Message-ID: <50689B3B-C604-4EA4-A8B6-609A79813568@pavlov.rutgers.edu>


Re: 	Apply to the Behavioral & Neural Sciences Ph.D. Program at Rutgers University-Newark 
	(Deadline: December 15th, 2014)

Dear Colleagues:
	If you know of bright and highly motivated graduating seniors or research assistants at your institution who are interested in pursuing a Ph.D. in neuroscience, we would be obliged if you would pass this email on to them.
	The Graduate Program in Behavioral and Neural Sciences (BNS) at Rutgers University-Newark prepares students for neuroscience careers in academia, industry, public administration, and scientific publishing by providing both general instruction across all areas of neuroscience as well as focused training within one area of specialization. BNS Students are supported financially by the graduate program (not by individual faculty) for five years; they receive full tuition remission and benefit from a comprehensive health insurance. A NIH Minority Biomedical Research Support (MBRS) training grant provides additional support services for students from under-represented minority groups or from disadvantaged backgrounds.
	The BNS curriculum offers a wide range of courses that provide a broad and in depth knowledge in neuroscience, including an intensive neuroscience ?Bootcamp? in the fall of their first year, and a comprehensive series of four core courses taught by all our faculty. Students in our graduate program are trained primarily to conduct independent research and to present and discuss their results orally and in written form. Students also gain experience in undergraduate and graduate teaching and mentoring. The recent integration into Rutgers University of the former University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey (UMDNJ) provides our students with additional clinically-relevant training and research opportunities.
	The research interests of BNS faculty are diverse and span all levels of analysis in the neurosciences, from genes and molecules to microcircuits and complex systems.  Their research methods are similarly varied as they combine electrophysiological, neurochemical, anatomical, imaging, behavioral, and neuropsychological methods to analyze how the brain works, develops, interacts with the environment, and is modified by experience in health and disease.
	The campus of the BNS program is located in Newark, New Jersey, 13 miles from Manhattan, New York City, with extensive public transportation links between the two (many faculty, postdoctoral fellows, and students live in New York City). Key web links are:

Faculty profiles and Rutgers-Newark info: http://www.neuroscience.newark.rutgers.edu
Rutgers University Brain Imaging Center: http://rubic.rutgers.edu
BNS Admissions (to apply online): http://www.bns.rutgers.edu
	The deadline for applications is December 15, 2014.  Interviews and visits by the top US candidates will take place at Rutgers-Newark from February 5 to 7th, 2015 (international candidates may be interviewed via Skype or phone). Late applications may be considered on a case-by-case basis.
Regards,
Mark Gluck & Pierre-Olivier Polack, BNS Admissions Committee
Joan Morrell, Director, Behavioral and Neural Sciences Ph.D Program
Denis Pare, Director, Center for Molecular and Behavioral Neuroscience
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From sethu.vijayakumar at ed.ac.uk  Thu Oct  2 10:19:59 2014
From: sethu.vijayakumar at ed.ac.uk (Sethu Vijayakumar)
Date: Thu, 02 Oct 2014 15:19:59 +0100
Subject: Connectionists: [meetings] First CFP: Robotics Science and Systems
 (RSS) 2015, Rome, Italy
Message-ID: <542D5F0F.1070307@ed.ac.uk>

========================================
Robotics Science and Systems (RSS) 2015
http://www.roboticsconference.org

Sapieza University of Rome, Rome, Italy
July 13-17, 2015

CALL FOR PAPERS AND WORKSHOP PROPOSALS
========================================

Robotics Science and Systems (RSS) brings together researchers working 
on algorithmic and mathematical foundations of robotics, robotics 
applications, and analysis of robotic systems. The conference is 
single-track, and the final program will be the result of a thorough 
review process, to give attendees an opportunity to see the best 
research in all areas of robotics.  The program includes invited talks, 
as well as oral and poster presentations of refereed papers. The main 
conference sessions are followed by two days of workshops and tutorials. 
Every effort is being made to keep conference expenses affordable, 
particularly for student attendees.  All papers presented at the 
conference will be made freely available for download on the Internet.


Important Dates
========================================
Papers:
- Final Paper Submission Deadline: January 22, 2015
- Acceptance Notification: April 30, 2015

Workshops:
- Preliminary Submission Deadline: December 12, 2014
- Final Submission Deadline: February 6, 2015
- Acceptance Notification: March 6, 2015

RSS 2015 Conference: July 13-15, 2015
RSS 2015 Workshops:  July 16-17, 2015


Topic Areas
========================================
Papers containing original and unpublished work are solicited in all 
areas of robotics, including (but not limited to) the following: 
kinematics, dynamics, control, planning, manipulation, human-robot 
interaction, human-centered systems, field robotics, distributed 
systems, medical robotics, biological robotics, mechanisms, robot 
perception, mobile systems, mobility, estimation, and learning.


Paper Format
========================================
Submissions may be up to 8 pages in length, excluding references. 
Reviewing for RSS 2015 is double-blind. So authors should not be listed 
on the title page, and reasonable anonymity should be maintained in the 
paper. Submissions are refereed on the basis of technical quality, 
novelty, significance, and clarity.

More details are available at on the conference web site

http://www.roboticsconference.org

We look forward to seeing you in Rome!


Lydia E. Kavraki, RSS 2015 General Chair
David Hsu, RSS 2015 Program Chair
Sethu Vijayakumar, RSS 2015 Publicity Chair


-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------
Professor Sethu Vijayakumar FRSE        Personal Chair in Robotics
Director, Edinburgh Centre for Robotics   [edinburgh-robotics.org]
Director, IPAB, School of Informatics, The University of Edinburgh

1.28 Informatics Forum, 10 Crichton Street, Edinburgh EH8 9AB,  UK
URL: http://homepages.inf.ed.ac.uk/svijayak Ph: +44(0)131 651 3444
SLMC Research Group URL: http://www.ipab.informatics.ed.ac.uk/slmc
------------------------------------------------------------------
Adjunct Faculty, Department of Computer Science
University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA 90089-0781
------------------------------------------------------------------
Microsoft Research & Royal Academy of Engg. Senior Research Fellow
------------------------------------------------------------------

The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in
Scotland, with registration number SC005336.


From doya at oist.jp  Thu Oct  2 13:08:01 2014
From: doya at oist.jp (Kenji Doya)
Date: Thu, 2 Oct 2014 17:08:01 +0000
Subject: Connectionists: Postdoctoral Researcher and Engineer Positions in
 Multi-scale Neural Modeling, OIST
Message-ID: <DC82B186-21CD-442F-B92F-CB406C55FEDA@oist.jp>

Postdoctoral Researcher and Engineer Positions in Multi-scale Neural Modeling
Neural Computation Unit
Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology

The Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology started a new project ?Brain/MINDS? that aims to create structural and anatomical maps of the marmoset brain using innovative technologies.

Within this project, the group lead by Prof. Kenji Doya at Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST) will develop computational frameworks for constructing multi-scale neural models that link cellular and network dynamics to behavioral and cognitive functions by utilizing large-scale anatomical and physiological data sets.

Positions are available for postdoctoral researchers and engineers to work on one or more of the following subtopics:
1) Estimation of cellular and synaptic parameters from connectome, imaging, and electrode recording data.
2) Automated reduction of conductance-based models to integrate-and-fire models, and spiking neural network models to population firing rate models.
3) Application and validation of the above methods with the data being produced by the project.

Candidates should have Ph.D. or masters degree in mathematics, computer science or relevant areas and must have strong skills in programming, data analysis, and simulation. Experience in statistical machine learning and/or computational neuroscience is desired.

OIST offers an excellent interdisciplinary research environment, including high-performance computing, in its campus overlooking beautiful coastline and coral reefs. Researchers will have opportunities to closely collaborate with leading neuroscientists participating in the project.

Initial appointment will be from October 2014 to March 2015, with a possibility of renewal till March 2017. Competitive salary is offered based on the candidate?s experience. OIST is an equal opportunity, affirmative action employer and provides strong support for its staff and family members coming from abroad.

Applicants should send a CV, publication list, statement of research, and contact information of three referees to Prof. Kenji Doya <doya at oist.jp>.

----
Kenji Doya <doya at oist.jp>
Neural Computation Unit, Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology
1919-1 Tancha, Onna, Okinawa 904-0495, Japan
Phone: +81-98-966-8594; Fax: +81-98-966-2891
https://groups.oist.jp/ncu





From ahu at cs.stir.ac.uk  Thu Oct  2 16:43:44 2014
From: ahu at cs.stir.ac.uk (Dr Amir Hussain)
Date: Thu, 2 Oct 2014 21:43:44 +0100
Subject: Connectionists: =?utf-8?q?CFP=3A_IEEE_Computational_Intelligence_?=
	=?utf-8?q?Magazine_=28CIM=29_Special_Issue=3A_=E2=80=9CComputation?=
	=?utf-8?q?al_Intelligence_for_Changing_Environments=22?=
Message-ID: <CACV-HEAs1TQDhNbN0hMCGB+_DRqasm2qWjKEk5pt5Q5Xrxxohg@mail.gmail.com>

CALL FOR PAPERS

IEEE COMPUTATIONAL INTELLIGENCE MAGAZINE

SPECIAL ISSUE ON "Computational Intelligence for Changing Environments"


AIMS AND SCOPE:

Over the past decade or so, computational intelligence techniques have
been highly successful for solving big data challenges in changing
environments. In particular, there has been growing interest in so
called biologically inspired learning (BIL), which refers to a wide
range of learning techniques, motivated by biology, that try to mimic
specific biological functions or behaviors. Examples include the
hierarchy of the brain neocortex and neural circuits, which have
resulted in biologically-inspired features for encoding, deep neural
networks for classification, and spiking neural networks for general
modelling.

To ensure that these models are generalizable to unseen data, it is
common to assume that the training and test data are independently
sampled from an identical distribution, known as the sample i.i.d.
assumption. In dynamic and non- stationary environments, the
distribution of data changes over time, resulting in the phenomenon of
?concept drift? (also known as population drift or concept shift),
which is a generalization of covariance shift in statistics. Over the
last five years, transfer learning and multitask learning have been
used to tackle this problem. Fundamental analyses using probably
approximately correct (PAC) and Rademacher complexity frameworks have
explained why appropriate incorporation of context and concept drift
can improve generalizability in changing environments. It is possible
to use human-level processing power to tackle concept drift in
changing environments. Concept drift is a real-world problem, usually
associated with online and concept learning, where the relationships
between input data and target variables dynamically change over time.

Traditional learning schemes do not adequately address this issue,
either because they are offline or because they avoid dynamic
learning. However, BIL seems to possess properties that would be
helpful for solving concept drift problems in changing environments.
Intuitively, the human capacity to deal with concept drift is innate
to cognitive processes, and the learning problems susceptible to
concept drift seem to share some of the dynamic demands placed on
plastic neural areas in the brain. Using improved biological models in
neural networks can provide insight into cognitive computational
phenomena. However, a main outstanding issue in using computational
intelligence for changing environments and domain adaptation is how to
build complex networks, or how networks should be connected to the
features, samples, and distribution drifts. Manual design and building
of these networks are beyond current human capabilities. Recently,
computational intelligence methods has been used to address concept
drift in changing environments, with promising results. A Hebbian
learning model has been used to handle random, as well as correlated,
concept drift. Neural networks have been used for concept drift
detection, and the influence of latent variables on concept drift in a
neural network has been studied. In another study, a timing-dependent
synapse model has been applied to concept drift. These works mainly
apply biologically-plausible computational models to concept drift
problems. Although these results are still in their infancy, they open
up new possibilities to achieve brain-like intelligence for solving
concept drift problems in changing environments.

Taking the current state of research in computational intelligence for
changing environments into account, the objective of this special
issue is to collate this research to help unify the concepts and
terminology of computational intelligence in changing environments,
and to survey state-of-the-art computational intelligence
methodologies and the key techniques investigated to date. Therefore,
this special issue invites submissions on the most recent developments
in computational intelligence for changing environments, algorithms
and architectures, theoretical foundations, and representations, &
their application to real-world problems. We also welcome timely
surveys & review papers.

TOPICS OF INTEREST include (but are not limited to):

? Computational intelligence methodologies and implementation for
changing environments
?Transfer learning, Multitask learning, Domain adaption
?Incremental Learning architectures, Unsupervised and semi-supervised
learning architectures
?Incremental Knowledge augmentation, Representation learning and disentangling
?Incremental Adaptive Neuro-fuzzy systems
?Incremental and single-pass data mining
?Incremental Neural Clustering & Regression
?Incremental Adaptive decision systems
?Incremental Feature selection and reduction
?Incremental Constructive Learning
?Novelty detection in Incremental learning

SUBMISSION PROCESS

The maximum length for the manuscript is typically 25 pages in single
column format with double-spacing, including figures and references.
Authors should specify in the first page of their manuscripts the
corresponding author?s contact and up to 5 keywords. Submission should
be made via: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=ieee-cim-cice2015

IMPORTANT DATES (for August 2015 Issue)

15th November, 2014: Submission of Manuscripts

15th January, 2015: Notification of Review Results

15th February, 2015: Submission of Revised Manuscripts

15th March, 2015: Submission of Final Manuscripts


GUEST EDITORS

Professor Amir Hussain,
University of Stirling, Stirling FK9 4LA, Scotland, UK
Email: ahu at cs.stir.ac.uk
http://cs.stir.ac.uk/~ahu/

Professor Dacheng Tao,
University of Technology, Sydney, 235 Jones Street, Ultimo, NSW 2007, Australia
Email: dacheng.tao at uts.edu.au

Professor Jonathan Wu
University of Windsor, 401 Sunset Avenue, Windsor, ON, Canada
Email: jwu at uwindsor.ca

Professor Dongbin Zhao
Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China
E-mail: dongbin.zhao at gmail.com

-----
A PDF copy of the CFP is attached with this email for forwarding to
interested colleagues. It is also available for download from:
http://www.cs.stir.ac.uk/~ahu/IEEE-CIM-CICE2015.pdf

For more information on the IEEE CIM, see:
http://cis.ieee.org/ieee-computational-intelligence-magazine.html

-- 
The University of Stirling has been ranked in the top 12 of UK universities for graduate employment*.
94% of our 2012 graduates were in work and/or further study within six months of graduation.
*The Telegraph
The University of Stirling is a charity registered in Scotland, number SC 011159.

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From Vittorio.Murino at iit.it  Fri Oct  3 08:15:52 2014
From: Vittorio.Murino at iit.it (Vittorio Murino)
Date: Fri, 3 Oct 2014 14:15:52 +0200
Subject: Connectionists: 5th PAVIS School on CVPR: Scene Understanding &
 Object Recognition in Context - A. Torralba, A. Lapedriza
Message-ID: <542E9378.1020109@iit.it>

Due to a very unfortunate series of problems of the speakers it has not been possible to hold the school in the selected date.
It has been postponed to 28-30 October 2014.
Subscriptions have been re-opened, find info below

====================================================================
   Call for Participation - RE-OPEN REGISTRATIONS!!!

   5th PAVIS School on Computer Vision, Pattern Recognition, and Image
   Processing

   October 28 - October 30, 2014
   Sestri Levante (GE), Italy

   -------------------------------------------------------------------
       SCENE UNDERSTANDING AND OBJECT RECOGNITION IN CONTEXT
   -------------------------------------------------------------------

   Invited speakers

   * Antonio TORRALBA, MIT (USA)
   * Agata LAPEDRIZA, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (Spain) & MIT (USA)

   --------------------------------------
   REGISTRATION DEADLINE
         October 15, 2014 <<<<<
         (see below)
   --------------------------------------

The goal of this school will be to introduce recent advances in scene recognition, multiclass object detection and object recognition in context. The class will cover global features for scene recognition (gist, deep features, etc), databases for scene understanding (e.g., crowdsourcing, image annotation), methods for multiclass object detection (short summary of object detectionapproaches with emphasis on multiclass techniques) and current approaches for object recognition in context and scene understanding. The theoretical sessions will be complemented with guided experiments in MATLAB.

The PROGRAM of the school is published on the school website.

   *********************************************************************
   *
   * REGISTRATION DEADLINE: October 15, 2014
   *
   * Interested applicants are invited to send an expression of interest
   * atpavisschool2014 at iit.it  asking for participation.
   *
   * Accepted candidates will receive an email containing the
   * instructions for the actual registration and payment.
   *
   *********************************************************************


---------------------------------------------------------------
   Registration Fees
   - 150 euro for Ph.D. and undergraduate students.
   - 250 euro for post docs, researchers, and other people working
     in a university or a research institute.
   - 300 euro for everybody else.
   ---------------------------------------------------------------

   School webpage:
   http://www.iit.it/en/pavis-schools/schoolpavis2014.html

=====================================================================

-- 

Vittorio Murino

*******************************************
Prof. Vittorio Murino, Ph.D.
PAVIS - Pattern Analysis & Computer Vision

IIT Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia
Via Morego 30
16163 Genova, Italy

Phone:	+39 010 71781 504
Mobile: +39 329 6508554
Fax: +39 010 71781 236
E-mail: vittorio.murino at iit.it

Secretary: Sara Curreli
email:	sara.curreli at iit.it
Phone: 	+39 010 71781 917

http://www.iit.it/pavis
********************************************


From grlmc at urv.cat  Sat Oct  4 11:23:30 2014
From: grlmc at urv.cat (GRLMC)
Date: Sat, 4 Oct 2014 17:23:30 +0200
Subject: Connectionists: LATA 2015: extended submission deadline 16 October
Message-ID: <63B224BB5E1A4669AF36C35888B46C84@Carlos1>

*To be removed from our mailing list, please respond to this message with UNSUBSCRIBE in the subject line*

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
***** SUBMISSION DEADLINE EXTENDED: October 16 *****
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

****************************************************************************************

9th INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON LANGUAGE AND AUTOMATA THEORY AND APPLICATIONS

LATA 2015

Nice, France

March 2-6, 2015

Organized by:
	
CNRS, I3S, UMR 7271
Nice Sophia Antipolis University

Research Group on Mathematical Linguistics (GRLMC)
Rovira i Virgili University

http://grammars.grlmc.com/lata2015/

****************************************************************************************

AIMS:

LATA is a conference series on theoretical computer science and its applications. Following the tradition of the diverse PhD training events in the field developed at Rovira i Virgili University in Tarragona since 2002, LATA 2015 will reserve significant room for young scholars at the beginning of their career. It will aim at attracting contributions from classical theory fields as well as application areas.

VENUE:

LATA 2015 will take place in Nice, the second largest French city on the Mediterranean coast. The venue will be the University Castle at Parc Valrose.

SCOPE:

Topics of either theoretical or applied interest include, but are not limited to:

algebraic language theory
algorithms for semi-structured data mining
algorithms on automata and words
automata and logic
automata for system analysis and programme verification
automata networks
automata, concurrency and Petri nets
automatic structures
cellular automata
codes
combinatorics on words
computational complexity
data and image compression
descriptional complexity
digital libraries and document engineering
foundations of finite state technology
foundations of XML
fuzzy and rough languages
grammars (Chomsky hierarchy, contextual, unification, categorial, etc.)
grammatical inference and algorithmic learning
graphs and graph transformation
language varieties and semigroups
language-based cryptography
parallel and regulated rewriting
parsing
patterns
power series
string and combinatorial issues in bioinformatics
string processing algorithms
symbolic dynamics
term rewriting
transducers
trees, tree languages and tree automata
unconventional models of computation
weighted automata

STRUCTURE:

LATA 2015 will consist of:

invited talks
peer-reviewed contributions

INVITED SPEAKERS:

Paola Inverardi (L?Aquila), Synthesis of Protocol Adapters
Johann A. Makowsky (Technion, Haifa), Hankel Matrices for Graph Parameters and Graph Grammars
Giancarlo Mauri (Milano Bicocca), Complexity Classes for Membrane Systems
Andreas Podelski (Freiburg), Automated Program Verification
Antonio Restivo (Palermo), The Shuffle Product: New Research Directions

PROGRAMME COMMITTEE:

Andrew Adamatzky (West of England, Bristol, UK)
Andris Ambainis (Latvia, Riga, LV)
Franz Baader (Dresden Tech, DE)
Rajesh Bhatt (Massachusetts, Amherst, US)
Jos?-Manuel Colom (Zaragoza, ES)
Bruno Courcelle (Bordeaux, FR)
Erzs?bet Csuhaj-Varj? (E?tv?s Lor?nd, Budapest, HU)
Aldo de Luca (Naples Federico II, IT)
Susanna Donatelli (Turin, IT)
Paola Flocchini (Ottawa, CA)
Enrico Formenti (Nice, FR)
Tero Harju (Turku, FI)
Monika Heiner (Brandenburg Tech, Cottbus, DE)
Yiguang Hong (Chinese Academy, Beijing, CN)
Kazuo Iwama (Kyoto, JP)
Sanjay Jain (National Singapore, SG)
Maciej Koutny (Newcastle, UK)
Anton?n Ku?era (Masaryk, Brno, CZ)
Thierry Lecroq (Rouen, FR)
Salvador Lucas (Valencia Tech, ES)
Veli M?kinen (Helsinki, FI)
Carlos Mart?n-Vide (Rovira i Virgili, Tarragona, ES, chair)
Filippo Mignosi (L?Aquila, IT)
Victor Mitrana (Madrid Tech, ES)
Ilan Newman (Haifa, IL)
Joachim Niehren (INRIA, Lille, FR)
Enno Ohlebusch (Ulm, DE)
Arlindo Oliveira (Lisbon, PT)
Jo?l Ouaknine (Oxford, UK)
Wojciech Penczek (Polish Academy, Warsaw, PL)
Dominique Perrin (ESIEE, Paris, FR)
Alberto Policriti (Udine, IT)
Sanguthevar Rajasekaran (Connecticut, Storrs, US)
J?rg Rothe (D?sseldorf, DE)
Frank Ruskey (Victoria, CA)
Helmut Seidl (Munich Tech, DE)
Ayumi Shinohara (Tohoku, Sendai, JP)
Bernhard Steffen (Dortmund, DE)
Frank Stephan (National Singapore, SG)
Paul Tarau (North Texas, Denton, US)
Andrzej Tarlecki (Warsaw, PL)
Jacobo Tor?n (Ulm, DE)
Frits Vaandrager (Nijmegen, NL)
Jaco van de Pol (Twente, Enschede, NL)
Pierre Wolper (Li?ge, BE)
Zhilin Wu (Chinese Academy, Beijing, CN)
Slawomir Zadrozny (Polish Academy, Warsaw, PL)
Hans Zantema (Eindhoven Tech, NL)

ORGANIZING COMMITTEE:

S?bastien Autran (Nice)
Adrian Horia Dediu (Tarragona)
Enrico Formenti (Nice, co-chair)
Sandrine Julia (Nice)
Carlos Mart?n-Vide (Tarragona, co-chair)
Christophe Papazian (Nice)
Julien Provillard (Nice)
Pierre-Alain Scribot (Nice)
Bianca Truthe (Giessen)
Florentina Lilica Voicu (Tarragona)

SUBMISSIONS:

Authors are invited to submit non-anonymized papers in English presenting original and unpublished research. Papers should not exceed 12 single-spaced pages (including eventual appendices, references, etc.) and should be prepared according to the standard format for Springer Verlag's LNCS series (see http://www.springer.com/computer/lncs?SGWID=0-164-6-793341-0).

Submissions have to be uploaded to:

https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=lata2015

PUBLICATIONS:

A volume of proceedings published by Springer in the LNCS series will be available by the time of the conference.

A special issue of the Journal of Computer and System Sciences (Elsevier, 2013 JCR impact factor: 1.0) will be later published containing peer-reviewed substantially extended versions of some of the papers contributed to the conference. Submissions to it will be by invitation.

REGISTRATION:

The period for registration is open from July 21, 2014 to March 2, 2015. The registration form can be found at:

http://grammars.grlmc.com/lata2015/Registration.php

DEADLINES:

Paper submission: October 16, 2014 (23:59 CET) ? EXTENDED ?
Notification of paper acceptance or rejection: November 18, 2014
Final version of the paper for the LNCS proceedings: November 25, 2014
Early registration: November 25, 2014
Late registration: February 16, 2015
Submission to the journal special issue: June 6, 2015

QUESTIONS AND FURTHER INFORMATION:

florentinalilica.voicu at urv.cat

POSTAL ADDRESS:

LATA 2015
Research Group on Mathematical Linguistics (GRLMC)
Rovira i Virgili University
Av. Catalunya, 35
43002 Tarragona, Spain

Phone: +34 977 559 543
Fax: +34 977 558 386

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:

Nice Sophia Antipolis University
Rovira i Virgili University


---
Este mensaje no contiene virus ni malware porque la protecci?n de avast! Antivirus est? activa.
http://www.avast.com



From p.gleeson at ucl.ac.uk  Mon Oct  6 10:20:42 2014
From: p.gleeson at ucl.ac.uk (Padraig Gleeson)
Date: Mon, 6 Oct 2014 15:20:42 +0100
Subject: Connectionists: New release of NeuroML 2 and LEMS and two recent
	publications
Message-ID: <5432A53A.4050502@ucl.ac.uk>

Dear colleagues,

We are happy to announce a new stable release (version 2, beta 3) of the 
NeuroML language for model specification in computational neuroscience.

http://www.neuroml.org/getneuroml

NeuroML allows specification of models of systems from integrate and 
fire cells up to complex 3D networks of multicompartmental neurons. 
NeuroML version 2 has been extensively redesigned to be built on a new 
language, LEMS, which allows machine readable definitions of model 
structure and dynamics. This facilitates model transparency, portability 
and code generation. LEMS and NeuroML 2 are described in detail in:

Robert C. Cannon, Padraig Gleeson, Sharon Crook, Gautham Ganapathy, 
Boris Marin, Eugenio Piasini and R. Angus Silver, *LEMS: A language for 
expressing complex biological models in concise and hierarchical form 
and its use in underpinning NeuroML 2*, Frontiers in Neuroinformatics 
2014, doi: 10.3389/fninf.2014.00079

There are libraries for reading, writing and simulating NeuroML models 
in Java (https://github.com/NeuroML/jNeuroML) and Python. The Python 
APIs for NeuroML and LEMS have recently been described in:

Michael Vella, Robert C. Cannon, Sharon Crook, Andrew P. Davison, 
Gautham Ganapathy, Hugh P. C. Robinson, R. Angus Silver and Padraig 
Gleeson, *libNeuroML and PyLEMS: using Python to combine procedural and 
declarative modeling approaches in computational neuroscience*, 
Frontiers in Neuroinformatics 2014, doi: 10.3389/fninf.2014.00038

The growing number (30+) of tools, libraries and databases supporting 
NeuroML v1 and/or NeuroML v2 are listed here:

http://www.neuroml.org/tool_support

Open Source Brain is a repository of models in computational 
neuroscience which actively supports open, collaborative development of 
models, as well as conversion to simulator independent formats including 
NeuroML (over 500 valid NeuroML 2 cells/channels/synapses on OSB at last 
count). An overview of the models currently present and the 
formats/simulators supported can be found here:

http://www.opensourcebrain.org/status

Regards,
The NeuroML development community

-----------------------------------------------------
Padraig Gleeson
Room 321, Anatomy Building
Department of Neuroscience, Physiology&  Pharmacology
University College London
Gower Street
London WC1E 6BT
United Kingdom

+44 207 679 3214
p.gleeson at ucl.ac.uk
-----------------------------------------------------

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From callforvideos at aaaivideos.org  Tue Oct  7 03:56:10 2014
From: callforvideos at aaaivideos.org (AAAI Video Competition Call for Videos)
Date: Tue, 7 Oct 2014 09:56:10 +0200
Subject: Connectionists: AAAI-15 AI Video Competition - Call for videos
Message-ID: <CAD5d8Tt=TtKqUnbdXqBvnq2UpyGSAOBN2dyFAHk7tsRz6zaMNA@mail.gmail.com>

AAAI-15 AI Video Competition

Date: January 25-29, 2015

Place: Austin Texas, USA

Website: http://www.aaaivideos.org

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZtfzV_YwXE

Submission Deadline: October 15, 2014


-------


Dear Colleagues,

AAAI is pleased to announce the continuation of the AAAI Video Competition,
now entering its ninth year. The video competition will be held in
conjunction with the AAAI-15 conference in Austin Texas, USA, January
25-29, 2015. At the main AAAI-15 awards ceremony, authors of award-winning
videos will be presented with "Shakeys", trophies named in honour of SRI's
Shakey robot and its pioneering video. Top videos will be screened during
the award ceremony and during a dedicated session. All videos will also be
visible throughout the conference.

The goal of the competition is to show the world how much fun AI is by
documenting exciting artificial intelligence advances in research,
education, and application. View previous entries and award winners at
http://www.aaaivideos.org/past_competitions or watch last year?s videos on
youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/aaaivideocompetition.

The rules are simple: Compose a short video about an exciting AI project,
and narrate it so that it is accessible to a broad online audience. We
strongly encourage student participation.

To increase reach, select videos will be uploaded to YouTube and promoted
through social media (twitter, facebook, g+) and major blogs in AI and
robotics. Last year?s videos were viewed over 10 000 times.

This year, we will also be running a People?s Choice Award on Robohub (
http://robohub.org) where viewers on internet can vote for their favorite
AI video.

The AAAI Video Competition is also an ideal opportunity to give further
visibility to contributions presented at AAAI-15. We therefore welcome
videos associated with manuscripts submitted to AAAI-15 or with entries
submitted to the Demo Track and to the Robotics Exhibitions. We will make
sure to publicize your paper/demo/exhibit in the video proceedings and
during the award ceremony. More information on these events can be found
here: http://www.aaai.org/Conferences/AAAI/2015/


SOCIAL MEDIA

For timely updates, please follow us on social media.

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/aaaivideocompetition

Facebook: http://facebook.com/aaaivideocompetition

Twitter: https://twitter.com/AAAIVideoComp

Google+: https://plus.google.com/b/114475734676393336983


VIDEO FORMAT AND CONTENT

Either a 1 minute (max) short video or a 5 minute (max) long video, with
English narration (or English subtitles). Consider combining screenshots,
interviews, and videos of a system in action. Make the video
self-contained, so that newcomers to AI can understand and learn from it.
We encourage a good sense of humor, but will only accept submissions with
serious AI content. For example, we welcome submissions of videos that:


* Highlight a research topic - contemporary or historic, your own or from
another group

* Introduce viewers to an exciting new AI-related technology

* Provide a window into the research activities of a laboratory and/or
senior researcher

* Attract prospective students to the field of AI

* Explain AI concepts - your video could be used in the classroom

Please note that this list is not exhaustive. Novel ideas for AI-based
videos, including those not necessarily based on a "system in action", are
encouraged.  No matter what your choice is, creativity is encouraged!
(Please note: The authors of previous, award-winning videos typically used
humor, background music, and carefully selected movie clips to make their
contributions come alive.)

Please also note that videos should only contain material for which the
authors own copyright. Clips from films or television and music for the
soundtrack should only be used if copyright permission has been granted by
the copyright holders, and this written permission accompanies the video
submission.


SUBMISSION INSTRUCTIONS

Submit your video by making it available for download on a (preferably
password-protected) dropbox, ftp or website. Once you have done so, please
fill out the submission form (http://www.aaaivideos.org/submission_form.txt)
and send it to us by email (submission at aaaivideos.org). All submissions are
due no later than October 15, 2014.


REVIEW AND AWARD PROCESS

Submitted videos will be peer-reviewed by members of the programme
committee according to the criteria below. Videos that receive positive
reviews will be accepted for publication in the AAAI Video Competition
proceedings. Select videos will also be uploaded to Youtube, promoted
through social media, and featured on the dedicated website (
http://www.aaaivideos.org). The best videos will be nominated for awards.
Winners will be revealed at the award ceremony during AAAI-15.

All authors of accepted videos will be asked to sign a distribution license
form.


Review criteria:

1. Relevance to AI (research or application)

2. Excitement generated by the technology presented

3. Educational content

4. Entertainment value

5. Presentation (cinematography, narration, soundtrack, production values)


AWARD CATEGORIES

Best Video, Best Short Video, Best Student Video, Best Robot Video, and
Most Entertaining Video. (Categories may be changed at the discretion of
the chairs.)


AWARDS

Trophies ("Shakeys").


KEY DATES

* Submission Deadline: October 15, 2014

* Reviewing Decision Notifications & Award Nominations: November 15, 2014

* Final Version Due: December 15, 2014

* Screening and Award Presentations: January 25-29, 2015


FOR MORE INFORMATION


Please contact us at info at aaaivideos.org

We look forward to your participation in this exciting event!


Sabine Hauert and Mauro Birattari

AAAI Video Competition 2015
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From boracchi at elet.polimi.it  Mon Oct  6 18:28:24 2014
From: boracchi at elet.polimi.it (Giacomo Boracchi)
Date: Tue, 7 Oct 2014 00:28:24 +0200
Subject: Connectionists: IJCNN 2015, call for papers, special session,
	workshop and tutorials
Message-ID: <CADySCGKa2wee9nqKQO00-owfa2TR0TpUSCh+f1UckVoMyGxSXQ@mail.gmail.com>

IJCNN 2015 - International Joint Conference on Neural Networks
July 12-17, 2015, Killarney Convention Center, Killarney, Ireland
http://www.ijcnn.org

IJCNN is the premier international conference in the area of neural network
theory, analysis, and applications. Co-sponsored by the International
Neural Network Society and the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society,
over the last three decades this conference and its predecessors has hosted
[past, present, and future] leaders of neural network research. In an era
when neural networks are widely used and reported in many areas,
scientists, engineers, educators, and students from all over the world can
get the best overall view of neural networks, from neuroscience to advanced
control systems to cognition, at the IJCNN.


We're working hard on the conference program and events. Keep working on
your paper submissions, and submit your proposals for Special Sessions,
Tutorials or Workshops on the IJCNN 2015 website. Email your Competition
proposal to Chair Abir Hussain as noted above. Email any of these Chairs if
you wish to discuss your ideas for proposals.

* Important Dates *
Special session and Competition proposals: November 10, 2014
Tutorial & Workshop proposals: December 15, 2014
Paper submission deadline: January 15, 2015
Paper Decision notification: March 15, 2015
Camera-ready submission: April 15, 2015

* PLENARY SPEAKERS *
We are happy to present a great slate of plenary speakers for IJCNN 2015 :
- Lee Giles, The David Reese Professor at the College of Information
Sciences and Technology at the Pennsylvania State University
- Marios M. Polycarpou, Professor, Department of Electrical and Computer
Engineering, University of Cyprus, Cyprus
- Vincenzo Piuri, Professor in Computer Engineering at the University of
Milan, Italy
- Barak Pearlmutter, Professor, Department of Computer Science, National
University of Ireland, Ireland
- Steve Furber, The ICL Professor of Computer Engineering at the School of
Computer Science at the University of Manchester
- Giacomo Rizzolati, Professor of Human Physiology at the University of
Parma, Italy

* Call for Papers *
See our Call for Papers for a much more detailed lists of the topics.
http://www.ijcnn.org/call-for-papers


*Call for Special Sessions*
http://www.ijcnn.org/call-for-special-sessions
The IJCNN 2015 Program Committee solicits proposals for special sessions
within the technical scopes of the Congress. Special sessions, to be
organized by internationally recognized experts, aim to bring together
researchers focused in special, novel and challenging topics.
Fast-developing themes such as Deep Learning, Big Data, or applications to
challenging fields like chemistry, biology, computer games, robotics, etc.
are examples. Papers submitted for special sessions are to be peer-reviewed
with the same criteria used for the contributed papers. Researchers
interested in organizing special sessions are invited to submit a formal
proposal using the on-line form of the Special Sessions webpage.
For further details please contact the Special Session Co-chairs:
- Mike Gashler. University of Arkansas. USA, and
- Jose Garcia-Rodriguez. University of Alicante. Spain
Deadline: November 10th, 2014.


*Call for Competition Proposals*
http://www.ijcnn.org/call-for-competition
Competitions compare cutting edge neural network technologies, and test
them along with alternative, more traditional methods for solving difficult
practical problems. As examples, past competitions have included time
series prediction, microarray classification, neural connectomics, computer
games, pedestrian trajectories avoidance, computer vision and pattern
recognition. Competition organisers are kindly invited to submit their
proposals to Abir Hussain, Competitions Chair, Liverpool John MooresU, UK
by November 15th, 2014. The notifications of acceptance of the competition
proposals will be provided by November 30, 2014. Please note that each
accepted competition will be posted in a separate web page of the IJCNN
2015 website.

A winning certificate and free registration will be provided to the winner
of each competition who attends IJCNN 2015.

*Please note that your proposals for Special Sessions and Competitions are
due in one month!!! *

*Call for Tutorials*
http://www.ijcnn.org/call-for-tutorials
IJCNN 2015 will feature pre-conference tutorials addressing fundamental and
advanced topics in computational intelligence. Further questions should be
addressed to : Martin McGinnity, Tutorials Chair, Nottingham Trent
University, UK.

*Call for Workshops*
http://www.ijcnn.org/call-for-workshops
- Post-conference workshops offer a unique opportunity for in-depth
discussions of specific topics in neural networks and computational
intelligence. A form for submitting proposals is provided on the web-page
http://www.ijcnn.org/call-for-workshops Any questions regarding this
proposal may be asked of the Workshop Chair: Pierre-Yves Oudeyer, Workshop
Chair, INRIA, France.


More details about the charming Killarney siting for the conference can be
found on our website www.ijcnn.org.
We are looking forward to seeing you in Ireland!!

* Gold Sponsor "Failte Ireland" Tourism Board *
http://www.failteireland.ie/


-- 
Giacomo Boracchi, PhD
DEIB - Dipartimento di Elettronica,  Informazione e Bioingegneria
Politecnico di Milano
Via Ponzio, 34/5 20133 Milano, Italy.
Tel. +39 02 2399 3467

http://home.dei.polimi.it/boracchi/
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From francois.fleuret at idiap.ch  Tue Oct  7 03:56:21 2014
From: francois.fleuret at idiap.ch (Francois Fleuret)
Date: Tue, 7 Oct 2014 09:56:21 +0200
Subject: Connectionists: [SMLD2014] Third Swiss Machine-Learning Day. Fri
	Oct 24th, 10:00, EPFL
Message-ID: <21555.40101.349593.930278@gargle.gargle.HOWL>

Dear all,

We are organizing the 3rd installment of the Swiss Machine Learning
Day, on October 24th, 2014.

There will be talks given by research students from EPFL, IDIAP, ETHZ,
and the University of Geneva. The event will take place at EPFL, room
SG0213, talks start at 10:00. The program is online at

  http://www.idiap.ch/workshop/smld2014/

Attendance is free to everybody, but please do register if you plan to
attend (numbers will allow us to plan the coffee breaks).

Best regards,

-- 
Francois Fleuret                         http://www.idiap.ch/~fleuret/

From huajin.tang at gmail.com  Tue Oct  7 04:57:47 2014
From: huajin.tang at gmail.com (Huajin Tang)
Date: Tue, 7 Oct 2014 16:57:47 +0800
Subject: Connectionists: Call for Papers: IEEE TNNLS Special Issue on
 "Learning in Neuromorphic Systems and Cyborg Intelligence"
Message-ID: <CAFdYMyzLb4EA0rQA3Fd10Q7hFV6YykB0PC8UKMOp_uutKjTDmw@mail.gmail.com>

Call For Papers

*IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems*

Special Issue on

*Learning in Neuromorphic Systems and Cyborg Intelligence*


Emulating brain-like learning performance has been a key challenge for
research in neural networks and learning systems, including recognition,
memory and perception. In the last few decades, a variety of approaches for
brain-like learning and information processing have been proposed,
including approaches based on sparse representations or  hierarchical/deep
architectures. While capable of achieving impressive performance, these
methods still perform poorly compared to biological systems under a wide
variety of conditions. With the availability of neuromorphic hardware
providing a fundamentally different technique for data representation,
neuromorphic systems, using neural spikes to represent the outputs of
sensors and for communication between computing blocks, and using spike
timing based learning algorithms, have shown appealing computing
characteristics.  However, current neuromorphic learning systems cannot yet
achieve the performance figures comparable to what machine learning
approaches can offer. Neuromorphic systems are also compatible with another
framework called cyborg intelligence. Cyborg intelligence aims to deeply
integrate machine intelligence with biological intelligence by connecting
machines and living beings via brain-machine interfaces, enhancing
strengths and compensating for weaknesses by combining the biological
cognition capability with the machine computational capability. In cyborg
intelligence, the real-time interaction and exchange of information between
biological and artificial neural systems is still an important open
challenge, and existing learning approaches would not be able to meet such
a challenge. The goal of the special issue is to consolidate the efforts
for developing a suitable learning framework for neuromorphic systems and
cyborg intelligence and promote research activities in this area.



*SCOPE OF THE SPECIAL ISSUE*

We invite original contributions related to learning in neuromorphic
systems and cyborg intelligence, from theories, algorithms, modelling and
experiment studies to applications. Topics include but are not limited to:

   - Cognitive computing and cyborg intelligence
   - Neuromorphic information/signal processing
   - Brain-inspired data representation models
   - Neuromorphic learning and cognitive systems
   - Co-learning in bio-machine systems
   - Spike-based sensing and learning
   - Neuromorphic sensors and hardware systems
   - Intelligence for embedded systems
   - Cognition mechanisms for big data
   - Embodied cognition and neuro-robotics.


*Important Dates*

15 Nov 2014 ? Deadline for manuscript submission

15 Feb 2015 ? Notification of authors

15 Apr 2015?  Deadline for submission of revised manuscripts

15 May 2015 ? Final decision



*Guest Editors*

Zhaohui Wu          Zhejiang University, China (wzh at zju.edu.cn)

Ryad Benosman     University of Pierre and Marie Curie, France (
ryad.benosman at upmc.fr)

Huajin Tang          Institute for Infocomm Research, Singapore and Sichuan
University  (huajin.tang at ieee.org)

Shih-Chii Liu         Institute of Neuroinformatics, University of Zurich
and ETH Zurich (shih at ini.phys.ethz.ch)



*Submission Instructions*

1. Read the information for Authors at http://cis.ieee.org/tnnls

2. Submit the manuscript by 15th Nov 2014 at the TNNLS webpage (
http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/tnnls) and follow the submission procedure.
Please, clearly indicate on the first page of the manuscript and in the
cover letter that the manuscript has been submitted to the special
issue on *Learning
in Neuromorphic Systems and Cyborg Intelligence. *Send also an email to the
guest editors with subject ?TNNLS special issue submission? to notify about
your submission.
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From gluck at pavlov.rutgers.edu  Tue Oct  7 17:03:43 2014
From: gluck at pavlov.rutgers.edu (Mark Gluck)
Date: Tue, 7 Oct 2014 17:03:43 -0400
Subject: Connectionists: Postdoctoral position available: Cognitive and
	Clinical Neuroscience of Learning and Decision Making (at
	Rutgers-Newark, New Jersey)
Message-ID: <5BF4B345-F12F-4850-B6B4-B543C74DE391@pavlov.rutgers.edu>

Postdoctoral position available at Rutgers University-Newark:

<< Note: Candidates who will be at the Society for Neuroscience in Washington, DC, 
between Nov. 16 and 19 should contact me ASAP to set up an interview there >>
Cognitive and Clinical Neuroscience of Learning and Decision Making

We seek a postdoctoral fellow to work in our lab on the cognitive neuroscience of learning, memory, and decision making. The primary research would involved developing, implementing, and running cognitive studies in patients with Parkinson's Disease,  Clinical Depression (Major Depressive Disorder) and Post-Trauma Stress Disorder (PTSD). Our primary interest is in understanding the interplay between the basal ganglia and hippocampal-region in learning, how this changes across the lifespan, and how these brain systems are disrupted in neurological and psychiatric disorders. In addition to working on these neuropsychological studies, we would be especially interested in a candidate who has additional training and experience that would allow them to contribute to our related programs in functional brain imaging at the Rutgers University Brain Imaging Center (RUBIC): http://rubic.rutgers.edu

The position is at Rutgers University-Newark (13 miles outside New York City, NY) and involves overseeing many collaborative neuropsychological projects in neurological and psychiatric disorders disease, both locally at Rutgers University Medical School, NYU Medical Center, the North Shore-LIJ Feinstein Institute's Udall Center of Excellence in Parkinson's Disease, as well as our international collaborations with clinics around the world.
Attributes we seek in a candidate: 

(1) A strong command of the relevant cognitive neuroscience and neuropsychology literature, and Ph.D in a relevant field.

(2) Prior experience designing and/or conducting cognitive studies of learning and/or decision making, preferably in clinical populations.

(3) Strong statistical data analysis skills and/or programming skills (e.g., MATLAB).

(4) Excellent speaking and professional writing skills in English, 

(5) Additional skills and experience in one or more of: (i) functional brain imaging, (ii) neurocomputational modeling, or (iii) behavioral neurogenetics. 

For more information on our laboratory, see http://www.gluck.edu.  Additional information on neuroscience resources, facilities, and training programs at Rutgers-Newark can be found at http://www.neuroscience.newark.rutgers.edu

Interested candidates should contact me by email at gluck at pavlov.rutgers.edu with a cover letter describing their background, career goals, and directly addressing how they fit the 5 attributes listed above, along with a CV and a PDF of a representative first-authored published or in press paper. Applications should be sent ASAP but no later than November 15th, 2014. 

Viable candidates will be initially pre-interviewed either at SFN in DC in mid-November or via Skype. The start date is negotiable and could be anytime during 2015 (Winter, Summer, or Fall). Please be sure to indicate your desired or likely start-date availability.
Regards, Mark Gluck

___________________________________

Dr. Mark A. Gluck,  Professor  
  Director, Rutgers Memory Disorders Project  
Center for Molecular  and Behavioral Neuroscience
Rutgers University                                
197 University Ave.                                   
Newark, New Jersey  07102                  
 	 Web:  http://www.gluck.edu
	 Email:  gluck at pavlov.rutgers.edu
    	Ph:  (973) 353-3298
 
     

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From terry at salk.edu  Tue Oct  7 18:00:05 2014
From: terry at salk.edu (Terry Sejnowski)
Date: Tue, 07 Oct 2014 15:00:05 -0700
Subject: Connectionists: NEURAL COMPUTATION - November 1, 2014
In-Reply-To: <E1XPVxD-00067O-PT@dale.snl.salk.edu>
Message-ID: <E1Xbcnd-0005Nz-3I@dale.snl.salk.edu>

Neural Computation - Contents -- Volume 26, Number 11 - November 1, 2014

Available online for download:
http://www.mitpressjournals.org/toc/neco/26/11

-----

Article

High-dimensional Cluster Analysis With the Masked EM Algorithm
Shabnam N. Kadir, Dan F.M. Goodman, and Kenneth D. Harris

Letters

Changes of Firing Rate Induced by Changes of Phase Response Curve 
in Bifurcation Transitions
Yasuomi D. Sato., Kazuyuki Aihara

Approximate Emergent Synchrony in Spatially Coupled Spiking Neurons 
With Discrete Interaction
Hans Super, August Romeo

Facilitation of Neuronal Responses by Intrinsic Default Mode Network Activity
Hiroakira Matsui, Meihong Zheng, and Osamu Hoshino

A Hierarchical Adaptive Approach to Optimal Experimental Design
Woojae Kim, Mark A. Pitt, Zhong-Lin Lu, Mark Steyvers, and Jay I. Myung

Noise Facilitation in Associative Memories of Exponential Capacity
Amin Karbasi, Amir Hesam Salavati, Amin Shokrollahi, and Lav R. Varshney

A No-go Theorem for One-layer Feedforward Networks
Chad D Giusti, Vladimir Itskov

Extended Robust Support Vector Machine Based on Financial Risk Minimization
Akiko Takeda, Shuhei Fujiwara, and Takafumi Kanamori

Nonparametric Estimation of Kullback-Leibler Divergence
Zhiyi Zhang, Michael Grabchak

Coenzyme Q10 Benefits Symptoms in Gulf War Veterans: 
Results of a Randomized Double-Blind Pilot Study
Beatrice Golomb, Matthew Allison, Sabrina Koperski, 
Hayley J. Koslik, Sridevi Devaraj, and Janis B Ritchie

Visual Motion Priors Differ for Infants and Mothers
Florian Raudies., Rick O Gilmore

------------

ON-LINE -- http://www.mitpressjournals.org/neuralcomp

SUBSCRIPTIONS - 2014 - VOLUME 26 - 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

------------


From dwang at cse.ohio-state.edu  Wed Oct  8 10:00:18 2014
From: dwang at cse.ohio-state.edu (DeLiang Wang)
Date: Wed, 8 Oct 2014 10:00:18 -0400
Subject: Connectionists: NEURAL NETWORKS, October 2014
Message-ID: <54354372.1040705@cse.ohio-state.edu>

Neural Networks - Volume 58,  October 2014
http://www.journals.elsevier.com/neural-networks


SPECIAL ISSUE: "Affective neural networks and cognitive learning systems 
for big data analysis"

Guest editorial
Amir Hussain, Erik Cambria, Bj?rn Schuller, Newton Howard

Discrete particle swarm optimization for identifying community 
structures in signed social networks
Qing Cai, Maoguo Gong, Bo Shen, Lijia Ma, Licheng Jiao

An incremental community detection method for social tagging systems 
using locality-sensitive hashing
Zhenyu Wu, Ming Zou

Affective topic model for social emotion detection
Yanghui Rao, Qing Li, Liu Wenyin, Qingyuan Wu, Xiaojun Quan

Modeling virtual organizations with Latent Dirichlet Allocation: A case 
for natural language processing
Alexander Gross, Dhiraj Murthy

Semi-supervised word polarity identification in resource-lean languages
Iman Dehdarbehbahani, Azadeh Shakery, Heshaam Faili

Incorporating conditional random fields and active learning to improve 
sentiment identification
Kunpeng Zhang, Yusheng Xie, Yi Yang, Aaron Sun, Hengchang Liu, Alok 
Choudhary

A classification of user-generated content into consumer decision 
journey stages
Silvia V?zquez, ?scar Mu?oz-Garc?a, In?s Campanella, Marc Poch, Beatriz 
Fisas, Nuria Bel, Gloria Andreu

Sentiments analysis at conceptual level making use of the Narrative 
Knowledge Representation Language
Gian Piero Zarri

Exploring personalized searches using tag-based user profiles and 
resource profiles in folksonomy
Yi Cai, Qing Li, Haoran Xie, Huaqin Min

Community-aware user profile enrichment in folksonomy
Haoran Xie, Qing Li, Xudong Mao, Xiaodong Li, Yi Cai, Yanghui Rao

A multi-label, semi-supervised classification approach applied to 
personality prediction in social media
Ana Carolina E.S. Lima, Leandro Nunes de Castro

Semantically-based priors and nuanced knowledge core for Big Data, 
Social AI, and language understanding
Daniel Olsher


From john.lee at uclouvain.be  Wed Oct  8 06:29:18 2014
From: john.lee at uclouvain.be (John Lee)
Date: Wed, 08 Oct 2014 12:29:18 +0200
Subject: Connectionists: ESANN 2015 special session and contest about
 "Unsupervised Nonlinear Dimensionality Reduction"
Message-ID: <543511FE.9030207@uclouvain.be>

Apologies for cross-posting

ESANN 2015 special session and contest

"Unsupervised Nonlinear Dimensionality Reduction"

Call for papers and contest participation

---

About ESANN 2015 (April 22-24, Bruges, Belgium):

http://www.esann.org/
https://www.elen.ucl.ac.be/esann/index.php?pg=specsess

More info about the contest and special session:

https://sites.google.com/site/nldrcontest/

---

Organizers:

John A. Lee (Universit? catholique de Louvain, Belgium)
Kerstin Bunte (Aalto University, Finland)

---

Summary:

Nonlinear dimensionality reduction (NLDR) is a long-standing problem
that has motivated the development of many different techniques,
starting from early nonlinear variants of multidimensional scaling.
These techniques have to face major difficulties related to the curse of 
dimensionality,
like norm concentration and hubness. In order to tackle the NLDR challenge,
several paradigms have been investigated, such as linear algebra, graph 
theory,
reproducing kernel Hilbert spaces, neural networks, etc.

This special session of ESANN 2015 welcomes contributions to the field 
of NLDR,
in the form of novel techniques and methods, new quality assessment tools,
or variants of existing methods with specific applications,
like big data and/or mixed data (quantitative, categorical, etc.).
Among possible topics:

     Unsupervised/semi-supervised/supervised NLDR
     Manifold learning
     Parametric/non-parametric NLDR models
     Out-of-sample extensions
     Specific data structures for accelerated NLDR
     Real-life applications of NLDR in industry, environment science, etc.

The submitted papers will follow the usual reviewing process of ESANN,
with an evaluation of originality, technical soundness, and presentation 
style.

In addition, the session organizers also warmly invite authors to 
participate
in an unsupervised NLDR contest. It consists of several data sets with 
various properties
(size, dimensionality, intrinsic dimensionality, manifold or clusters, 
etc.).
Participants are then asked to provide a regular ESANN paper, which 
describes
the method they use, as well as the embeddings for all these data sets.
The quality of each embedding will be assessed by measuring how well
it preserves the K-ary neighborhoods of the data set.
More info and material on https://sites.google.com/site/nldrcontest/

-- 
--

John A. Lee, PhD, FNRS Research Associate
Universit? catholique de Louvain
Molecular Imaging, Radiotherapy, and Oncology
Avenue Hippocrate 55 box B1.54.07
B-1200 Bruxelles, Belgium
Tel.  +32 2 7649528
Email john.lee at uclouvain.be


From Julien.Mayor at unige.ch  Wed Oct  8 07:13:58 2014
From: Julien.Mayor at unige.ch (Julien Mayor)
Date: Wed, 8 Oct 2014 11:13:58 +0000
Subject: Connectionists: Assistant/Associate Professorship in Psychology at
 the University of Nottingham, Malaysia Campus
Message-ID: <60C2A638-1A88-461F-BDF8-37F403A07F1A@unige.ch>

* Apologies for cross-posting *

Dear colleagues,

please find the following advertisement for a position of Assistant/Associate Professor in Psychology at the University of Nottingham - Malaysia Campus.
Modellers are welcome to apply!

Kind regards,

Julien Mayor

---
University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus
School of Psychology

Assistant/Associate Professor in Psychology



An Assistant/Associate Professor post is available in our School of Psychology at the Malaysia Campus. The successful candidate will have access to labs equipped with high quality research facilities, including eye tracking and EEG.
We seek a talented individual with a proven record of research and teaching with expertise in any area of experimental psychology or cognitive neuroscience. Candidates who are qualified to use our laboratory facilities are especially welcome. To be successful, candidates should have a PhD in Psychology or a related discipline, along with evidence of student-centred tertiary teaching in Psychology. Duties will include research, administration and teaching through lectures, practical classes, tutorials and project supervision as directed by the Head of School.
The School covers the specialisms of cognitive psychology, cognitive neuroscience, including vision research and biological psychology; social and health psychology, including evolutionary and clinical psychology; and developmental psychology.  Further information about the School?s profile is available on our website: http://www.nottingham.edu.my/Psychology/index.aspx
Informal enquiries about these positions may be addressed to Dr Elizabeth Sheppard, Head of School (UNMC) at elizabeth.sheppard at nottingham.edu.my<mailto:elizabeth.sheppard at nottingham.edu.my>.
Applications, specifying the job being applied for, with current curriculum vitae, should be sent to the Faculty Manager at salma.abdkadir at nottingham.edu.my<mailto:salma.abdkadir at nottingham.edu.my>.
Application deadline:  5th November 2014

---
Associate Professor
School of Psychology, Faculty of Science
The University of Nottingham - Malaysia Campus
Jalan Broga, 43500 Semenyih
Selangor Darul Ehsan
Malaysia
Tel: +6(0) 389248238

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From ilya.nemenman at emory.edu  Wed Oct  8 08:59:09 2014
From: ilya.nemenman at emory.edu (Ilya Nemenman)
Date: Wed, 8 Oct 2014 08:59:09 -0400
Subject: Connectionists: Physics of Neural Systems focus topic at the 2015
	American Physical Society March Meeting, March 2-6, San Antonio, TX
Message-ID: <725FF89F-D847-4302-AA7F-D0F780BF9FF8@emory.edu>

Dear Colleagues:

The 2015 American Physical Society (APS) March meeting (March 2-6, 2015; San Antonio, TX) will emphasize ?Physics of Neural Systems? as one of the focus topics supported by the Division of Biological Physics. We expect multiple sessions resulting from this focus topic, addressing recent advances in understanding of the structure and the dynamics of neural circuits responsible for sensing, memory, and motor output. Arguably, in the last few years, we have found out more about the dynamics of neural circuits than we have in all of the previous decades combined. Thus we solicit submissions of contributed presentations to the March meeting, focusing on a broad range of topics on the intersection of physics and neuroscience, such as quantitative experimental protocols, modeling of neural dynamics, analysis of collective computation in neural circuits, and others. The neural focus at the meting will be anchored by talks by Tatyana Sharpee (Salk Institute) and Christopher Fang-Yen (University of Pennsylvania), among others.

	March meeting abstract submission website: http://www.aps.org/meetings/march/scientific/index.cfm
	Abstract submission deadline: November 14, 2014, 5:00pm EST
	
While the actual timing of the neuro sessions at the meeting will not be known until December and will depend on the number of qualified submissions, the sessions will be scheduled not to conflict with other computational neuroscience meetings, such as COSYNE. 

APS March meeting is the largest physics meeting in the world, attracting about 10,000 physicist. At the meeting, the APS Division of Biological Physics supports one of the largest and scientifically diverse programs on the interface of physics and biology, from molecular and cellular biophysics, to computational neuroscience and population dynamics, featuring typically more than 500 talks every year. 

We are looking forward to receiving your abstracts. If you have any questions about neuroscience at the March Meeting, please don?t hesitate to contact Ilya Nemenman (ilya.nemenman at emory.edu).

Sincerely,
 
Ilya Nemenman

Associate Professor of Physics and Biology
Emory University, Atlanta, GA
and
Vice-Chair, Division of Biological Physics (DBIO)
American Physical Society (APS)
http://nemenmanlab.org

Biophysicist? Join APS/DBIO and come to the March Meeting!






From mail at jan-peters.net  Wed Oct  8 11:07:50 2014
From: mail at jan-peters.net (Jan Peters)
Date: Wed, 8 Oct 2014 17:07:50 +0200
Subject: Connectionists: [jobs] Robotics & Machine Learning Positions @
	Darmstadt
Message-ID: <E12FB6B4-0E38-4297-B86F-D97A242E3878@jan-peters.net>

*** PROSPECTIVE APPLICANTS: PLEASE MEET GERHARD NEUMANN 
AT NIPS OR GUILHERME MAEDA AND ELMAR RUECKERT AT 
HUMANOIDS (IF YOU ATTEND) ***

Robotics & Machine Learning Positions
===============================

The Autonomous Systems Labs (CLAS and IAS) at the Technical University
of Darmstadt (TU Darmstadt) is seeking for several highly qualified
postdoctoral researchers as well as talented Ph.D. students with strong
interests in one or more of the following research topics:

* Machine Learning for Robotics (especially Reinforcement Learning, 
  Imitation, and Model Learning)
* Robot Grasping and Manipulation
* Robot Control, Learning for Control
* Robot Table Tennis 

Please relate clearly to these topic in your Research Statement. 

Outstanding students and researchers from the areas of robotics and
robotics-related areas including machine learning, control engineering
or computer vision are welcome to apply. The candidates are expected
to conduct independent research and at the same time contribute to
ongoing projects in the areas listed above. Successful candidates can 
furthermore be given the opportunity to work with undergraduate, M.Sc. 
and Ph.D. students.

Due to our strong ties to the Max Planck Institutes for Intelligent
Systems and Biological Cybernetics, the University of Southern
California, as well as to the Honda Research Institute, there will be
ample opportunities of collaboration with these institutes.


ABOUT THE APPLICANT
Ph.D. position applicants need to have a Master's degree in a
relevant field (e.g., Robotics, Computer Science, Engineering, 
Statistics & Optimization,  Math and Physics) and have exhibited 
their ability to perform research in either robotics or machine 
learning.

A successful Post-doc applicant should have a strong robotics and/or
machine learning background with a track record of top-tier research
publications, including relevant conferences (e.g., RSS, ICRA, IROS or
ICML, IJCAI, AAAI, NIPS, AISTATS) and journals (e.g., AURO, TRo, 
IJRR or JMLR, MLJ, Neural Computation) . A Ph.D. in Computer Science, 
Electrical or Mechanical Engineering (or another field clearly related 
to robotics and/or machine learning) as well as strong organizational 
and coordination skills are a must.

Expertise in working with real robot systems is a big plus for all
applicants.


THE POSITIONS
The positions are started with a 24 months contract and may be
extendable up to 48 months. Payment will be according to the German
TVL E-13 or E-14 payment scheme, depending on the candidates
experience and qualifications.


HOW TO APPLY?
All complete applications submitted through our online application
system found at

http://www.ias.tu-darmstadt.de/Jobs/Application

will be considered. There is no fixed deadline: the positions will be
filled as soon as possible. Ph.D. applicants should provide at least a
research statement, a PDF with their CV, degrees, and grade-sheets,
and two references who are willing to write a recommendation letter.
PostDoc applicants require three references and, in addition,  should
provide their top three publications. Please ensure to include a link 
to your research web-site as well as your date of availability.

Applicants are encouraged to contact Gerhard Neumann, Jan Peters, 
Guilherme Maeda, Elmar Rueckert, Tucker Hermans or Serena Ivaldi
during the upcoming Humanoids, NIPS or other conferences. 
Candidates giving a presentation at one of these conferences are 
invited to send a corresponding note to us.


ABOUT CLAS AND IAS
The Autonomous Systems Labs CLAS and IAS aim at endowing robots with
the ability to learn new tasks and adapt their behavior to their
environment. To accomplish this goal, IAS focuses on the intersection
between Machine Learning, Robotics and Biomimetic Systems. Resulting
research topics range from algorithm development in machine learning
over robot grasping/manipulation and robot table tennis to biomimetic
motor control/learning and brain-robot interfaces. Members of CLAS and IAS 
have been highly successful, as exhibited by recent awards, which include a
Daimler Benz Fellowship, several Best Cognitive Robotics Paper Awards, the 
Georges Giralt Best 2013 Robotics PhD Thesis Award, an IEEE RAS Early 
Career Award, etc. The lab collaborates with numerous universities in
Germany, Europe, the USA and Japan. CLAS and IAS are partners in 
several European projects with many top institutes in ML and Robotics..

The CLAS and IAS lab is located in the Robert Piloty Building in the beautiful
Herrngarten park. It is less than fifty meters from a beer garden
frequently used for lab meetings and after successful paper submissions.


ABOUT TU DARMSTADT
The TU Darmstadt is one of the top technical universities in
Germany, and is well known for its research and teaching. It was 
one of the first universities in the world to introduce programs in
electrical engineering. our chemical elements were discovered at
Darmstadt, most prominently, the element darmstadtium, and it is 
Germany's first fully autonomous university. More information can be 
found on: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darmstadt_University_of_Technology


ABOUT DARMSTADT
Darmstadt is well known high-tech center with important activities in
space craft operations (e.g., through the European Space Operations
Centre, the European Organization for Exploitation of Meteorological
Satellites), chemistry, pharmacy, information technology,
biotechnology, telecommunications and mechatronics, and consistently
ranked among the top high-tech regions in Germany. Darmstadt's
important centers for arts, music and theatre allow for versatile
cultural activities, while the proximity of the Odenwald forest and
the Rhine valley allows for many outdoor sports.

The 33,547 students of Darmstadt's three universities constitute a
major part of Darmstadt's 140,000 inhabitants. Darmstadt's immigrant
population is among the most diverse in Germany, such that the
knowledge of German language is rarely ever needed (and many IAS
members do not speak any German).
Darmstadt is located close to the center of Europe. With just 17
Minutes driving distance to the Frankfurt airport (closer than
Frankfurt itself), it is one of best connected cities in Europe. Most
major European cities can be reached within less than 2.5h from
Darmstadt.

From juergen at idsia.ch  Thu Oct  9 05:31:56 2014
From: juergen at idsia.ch (Juergen Schmidhuber)
Date: Thu, 9 Oct 2014 11:31:56 +0200
Subject: Connectionists: Recent benchmark records through LSTM RNNs
In-Reply-To: <DDD074FD-95F5-4BAC-9B6E-496D9A4396FD@idsia.ch>
References: <79C47A71-AB60-4816-96AE-2BC8FDE6BE57@idsia.ch>
 <DDD074FD-95F5-4BAC-9B6E-496D9A4396FD@idsia.ch>
Message-ID: <DB87B8D4-9B68-46F2-85B9-72EDD9D8C30B@idsia.ch>

Some recent (2014) benchmark records achieved with the help of 
Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs),
often at big IT companies:

1. Large vocabulary speech recognition (Sak et al., Google, Interspeech 2014)
2. English to French translation (Sutskever et al., Google, NIPS 2014)
3. Text-to-speech synthesis (Fan et al., Microsoft, Interspeech 2014)
4. Prosody contour prediction (Fernandez et al., IBM, Interspeech 2014)
5. Language identification (Gonzalez-Dominguez et al., Google, Interspeech 2014)
6. Medium vocabulary speech recognition (Geiger et al., Interspeech 2014)
7. Audio onset detection (Marchi et al., ICASSP 2014)
8. Social signal classification (Brueckner & Schulter, ICASSP 2014)
9. Arabic handwriting recognition (Bluche et al., DAS 2014)

Some earlier benchmark records of 2013:
TIMIT phoneme recognition (Graves et al., ICASSP 2013)
Optical character recognition (Breuel et al., ICDAR 2013)

Precise references and a summary of previous work on LSTM RNNs in Sec. 5.13 of:

Deep Learning in Neural Networks: An Overview (88 pages, 888 references)
PDF & LATEX source & complete public BIBTEX file (888 kB) under
http://www.idsia.ch/~juergen/deep-learning-overview.html

Original papers on LSTM and its various topologies and learning algorithms since 1995:
http://www.idsia.ch/~juergen/rnn.html

Juergen Schmidhuber

From murphyk at cs.ubc.ca  Thu Oct  9 01:56:51 2014
From: murphyk at cs.ubc.ca (Kevin Murphy)
Date: Wed, 8 Oct 2014 22:56:51 -0700
Subject: Connectionists: CFP AAAI Spring Symposium on Knowledge
 Representation & Reasoning: Combining Statistical and Symbolic approaches
In-Reply-To: <CAAjX2aXPeqXZAU2F0Q6u5hBaK2zxY4Z=7hKpLoLLnOXK7TsWuw@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAAjX2aXPeqXZAU2F0Q6u5hBaK2zxY4Z=7hKpLoLLnOXK7TsWuw@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <CAAjX2aWrTvVtfqiH9OpoZhZ5yvkzVZAWhc1Rs0Sb=pCgAS+3HQ@mail.gmail.com>

UPDATE: deadline extended to October 20, 2014.


On Thu, Sep 11, 2014 at 12:50 AM, Kevin Murphy <murphyk at cs.ubc.ca> wrote:

> We invite submissions to the AAAI Spring Symposium on "Knowledge
> Representation and Reasoning: Integrating Symbolic and Distributional
> Approaches", to be held at Stanford University, CA, March 23-25, 2015.
> This will be a 2.5 day workshop in which we discuss methods for KR&R that
> can combine the strengths of symbolic approaches (e.g., knowledge bases,
> first order logic) with distributed approaches (e.g., deep learning,
> spectral embeddings), as well as hybrid variants thereof (e.g.,
> hierarchical Bayesian models, probabilistic logic). We are interested in
> systems that can go beyond classifying inputs into one of a smallish set of
> labels, but instead can produce responses from an exponentially large set
> of possible answers (e.g., think of an open-domain question answering
> system, or a system that can predict the future behavior of a person given
> various sensory inputs).
>
> Our preliminary list of invited speakers
> <https://www.hds.utc.fr/~bordesan/dokuwiki/doku.php>includes Antoines
> Borde <http://leon.bottou.org/>s, Leon Bottou, William Coh
> <http://web.mit.edu/cocosci/josh.html>en, Noah Goodman, P
> <http://www.stanford.edu/~ngoodman/>ercy Liang, David McAllester, Josh
> Tenenbaum, Micha <http://www.cyc.com/about/team/michael-witbrock>el Wittbrock,
> Luke Z <http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~./wcohen/>ettlemoyer.
> <http://homes.cs.washington.edu/~lsz/>
>
> Submission <http://homes.cs.washington.edu/~lsz/>s should be up to 4
> pages in PDF format, and <http://ttic.uchicago.edu/~dmcallester/>are due
> by October 10, 2014. Please upload via
> https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=krr2015 ; no email submissions
> will be accepted. Author names and affiliations should be displayed on the
> first page.
>
> The organizers are Andrew McCallum (UMass), Ramanathan Guha (Google),
> Evgeniy Gabrilovich (Google), Kevin Murphy (Google).
>
> Further details can be found at https://sites.google.com/site/krr2015/.
>
>
>
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From gal.chechik at gmail.com  Wed Oct  8 17:58:20 2014
From: gal.chechik at gmail.com (Gal Chechik)
Date: Thu, 9 Oct 2014 00:58:20 +0300
Subject: Connectionists: Call for contributions: Brain-Omics NIPS workshop
Message-ID: <CAPZ_vRQ8nBQJrcBxaHdq_wKNsKXzcFi69HmKqc_0kwxMrZdaWw@mail.gmail.com>

Call for contributions

     Workshop on analyzing the 'omics of the brain

                    http://chechiklab.biu.ac.il/~gal/BrainOmics2014/


    A workshop at the Twenty-Seventh Annual Conference on
     Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS 2014)
       Montreal, QC, Canada, December 12, 2014.


Important dates:
Oct 31, 2014 : Deadline for submission of extended abstracts
Nov 10, 2014: Acceptance notification
Dec 12, 2014: Workshop date

WORKSHOP DESCRIPTION

In the past few years, the field of molecular biology of the brain has
been transformed from hypothesis-based experiments to high-throughput
experiments. The massive growth of data, including measures of the
brain transcriptome, methylome and proteome, now raises new questions
in neurobiology and new challenges in analysis of these complex and
vast datasets. While many of these challenges are shared with other
computational biology studies, the complexity of the brain poses
special challenges. Brain genomics data includes high-resolution
molecular imagery, developmental time courses and most importantly,
underlies complex behavioral phenotypes and psychiatric diseases. New
methods are needed to address questions about the brain-wide,
genome-wide and life-long genomic patterns in the brain and their
relation to brain functions like plasticity and information
processing.

The goal of the workshop is to bring together people from the
neuroscience, cognitive science and the machine learning community. It
aims to ease the path for scientists to connect the wealth of genomic
data to the issues of cognition and learning that are central to NIPS,
with an eye to the emerging high-throughput behavioral data which many
are gathering. We invite contributed talks on novel methods of
analysis to brain genomics, as well as techniques to make meaningful
statistical relationships to phenotypes. The target audience includes
two main groups: people interested in developing machine learning
approaches to neuroscience, and people from neuroscience and cognitive
science interested in connecting their work to brain genomics.

SUBMISSION INSTRUCTIONS

Researchers interested in contributing should upload an extended
abstract of 4 pages in PDF format to the Brain-omics submission web site
https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=brainomics2014
by Oct 31st,  2014, 11:59pm (time zone of your choice).

No special style is required. Authors may use the NIPS style file, but
are also free to use other styles as long as they use standard font
size (11 pt) and margins (1 in). Relevant works that have been
recently published or presented elsewhere are allowed,
provided that previous publications are explicitly acknowledged.

CONFIRMED INVITED SPEAKERS

Nenad Sestan (Yale)
Eran Mukamel (UCSD)


ORGANIZERS

Gal Chechik  (BIU)
Mark Reimers (VCU)
Michael Hawrylycz (Allen institute)
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From m.lengyel at eng.cam.ac.uk  Thu Oct  9 18:23:53 2014
From: m.lengyel at eng.cam.ac.uk (=?windows-1252?Q?M=E1t=E9_Lengyel?=)
Date: Thu, 9 Oct 2014 23:23:53 +0100
Subject: Connectionists: Faculty position in Computational Neuroscience /
	Cognitive Science, Cambridge
Message-ID: <6EE1D171-1F76-4602-A83B-0DE9211183C5@eng.cam.ac.uk>

Faculty position in 
Computational Neuroscience / Cognitive Science
Department  of Engineering, University of Cambridge, UK

Applications are invited for a University Lectureship / Senior Lectureship (~ US Assistant / Associate Professor equivalent) in the broad area of Computational Neuroscience, including Computational Cognitive Science in the Computational and Biological Learning Lab (cbl.eng.cam.ac.uk). CBL combines expertise in computational neuroscience and cognitive science (Daniel Wolpert, Mate Lengyel, Rich Turner) and machine learning (Zoubin Ghahramani, Carl Rasmussen). We particularly encourage applicants who would complement our current research activities. The successful applicant?s research should use computational or theoretical approaches, and may combine these approaches with behavioural experiments.

Informal enquiries are welcome to:

Daniel Wolpert (wolpert at eng.cam.ac.uk)
Mate Lengyel (m.lengyel at eng.cam.ac.uk)
Richard Turner (ret26 at cam.ac.uk).

Timeline:
- Closing date of applications: Friday November 28th
- Interviews: February, 2015

Further information and details of the application process can be found at http://cbl.eng.cam.ac.uk/Public/VacancyFaculty2014



From tomas.hromadka at gmail.com  Fri Oct 10 08:42:03 2014
From: tomas.hromadka at gmail.com (Tomas Hromadka)
Date: Fri, 10 Oct 2014 14:42:03 +0200
Subject: Connectionists: [COSYNE2015] Abstract submission is open,
 Workshop pre-proposals deadline on Oct 31
Message-ID: <5437D41B.2010202@gmail.com>

=================================================

 Computational and Systems Neuroscience (Cosyne)

 MAIN MEETING
 Mar 5 - Mar 8, 2015
 Salt Lake City, Utah

 WORKSHOPS
 Mar 9 - Mar 10, 2015
 Snowbird Ski Resort, Utah

 http://www.cosyne.org

=================================================

IMPORTANT DATES:

 Abstract submission is now open!
 Abstract submission deadline: 26 Nov 2014

 Workshop pre-proposal deadline: 31 Oct 2014
 Workshop proposal deadline: 21 Nov 2014


The annual Cosyne meeting provides an inclusive forum for the exchange
of empirical and theoretical approaches to problems in systems
neuroscience, in order to understand how neural systems function.


MAIN MEETING

The main meeting is single-track. A set of invited talks are selected by
the Executive Committee, and additional talks and posters are selected
by the Program Committee, based on submitted abstracts.

Cosyne topics include but are not limited to: neural coding, natural
scene statistics, dendritic computation, neural basis of persistent
activity, nonlinear receptive field mapping, representations of time and
sequence, reward systems, decision-making, synaptic plasticity, map
formation and plasticity, population coding, attention, and computation
with spiking networks.

This year we would like to foster increased participation from
experimental groups as well as computational ones. Please circulate
widely and encourage your students and postdocs to apply.
Please note that the main Cosyne 2015 meeting will take place in a
different venue (Hilton Salt Lake City Center) one week later than
usual, see www.cosyne.org for details.


WORKSHOPS

The workshops feature in-depth discussion of current topics of interest,
in a small group setting. The goal is to provide an informal forum for
the discussion of important research questions and challenges.
Controversial issues, open problems, comparisons of competing
approaches, and alternative viewpoints are encouraged.

PRE-PROPOSALS: In an effort to coordinate submissions, the organizers
are encouraged to submit a pre-proposal by 31 Oct 2014. Pre-proposals
will be shared among submitters. Pre-proposals are requested but not
required. The organizers may submit the full proposal by its deadline
(21 Nov 2014).

The overarching goal of all workshops should be the integration of
empirical and theoretical approaches, in an environment that fosters
collegial discussion and debate. Preference will be given to proposals
that differ substantially in content, scope, and/or approach from
workshops of recent years (examples available at www.cosyne.org).

Relevant topics include, but are not limited to: sensory processing;
motor planning and control; functional neural circuits; motivation,
reward and decision making; learning and memory; adaptation and
plasticity; neural coding; neural circuitry and network models; and
methods in computational or systems neuroscience.

For details on submitting (pre-)proposals please visit www.cosyne.org
(Workshops).


CONFIRMED SPEAKERS:

 Amy Bastian (Johns Hopkins)
 Matteo Carandini (UCL)
 Sophie Deneve (ENS)
 Florian Engert (Harvard)
 Marla Feller (UC Berkeley)
 Wulfram Gerstner (EPFL)
 Shawn Lockery (U Oregon)
 Liam Paninski (Columbia)
 Nicole Rust (U Penn)
 Tatyana Sharpee (Salk)
 Mariano Sigman (UBA)
 Emo Todorov (U Washington)

When preparing an abstract, authors should be aware that not all
abstracts can be accepted for the meeting, due to space constraints.
Abstracts will be selected based on the clarity with which they convey
the substance, significance, and originality of the work to be presented.

ORGANIZING COMMITTEE:
 General Chairs: Michael Long (NYU) and Stephanie Palmer (U Chicago)
 Program Chairs: Maria Geffen (U Penn) and Konrad Kording (Northwestern)
 Workshop Chairs: Robert Froemke (NYU) and Claudia Clopath (Imperial
College)
 Publicity Chair: Xaq Pitkow (Rice)

EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE:
 Anne Churchland (CSHL)
 Zachary Mainen (Champalimaud)
 Alexandre Pouget (U Geneva)
 Anthony Zador (CSHL)

CONTACT
 cosyne.meeting [at] gmail.com

From etienne.roesch at gmail.com  Fri Oct 10 13:29:39 2014
From: etienne.roesch at gmail.com (Etienne B. Roesch)
Date: Fri, 10 Oct 2014 18:29:39 +0100
Subject: Connectionists: Method development for coupled EEG-fMRI (1x Full
	EPSRC studentship)
Message-ID: <54381783.3090802@gmail.com>

Method development for coupled EEG-fMRI (1x Full EPSRC studentship)

The goal of the project is to develop novel methods for the joint 
analysis of signals from electroencephalography (EEG) and functional 
magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), when they are obtained concurrently. 
Technological advances of the last 10 years make it possible for 
scientists to record both modalities concurrently, in what is now known 
as coupled EEG-fMRI. By simultaneously recording these two modalities, 
scientists can potentially say where and when neural activity is 
occurring, whereas previously researchers had to settle for one or the 
other. This engineering feat, however, has not yet been met with the 
ability to make use of the combination of these signals to infer more 
knowledge than would otherwise be gathered in separate experiments. 
Filling this gap is the ambition of the present project.

This is a method project, which requires skills and knowledge in applied 
mathematics/statistics/physics and programming. One studentship is 
available, to join a research group in the remit of this project. Prior 
exposure to either/or EEG and fMRI is preferred, but training on both 
modalities will be provided. The emphasis of the studentship is on the 
development of novel analysis methods, but the successful candidate will 
have opportunities to join empirical work using EEG-fMRI.

The student will be supervised by Dr. Etienne Roesch and receive support 
from Dr. Michael Lindner and Prof. Tom Johnstone, with R&D support from 
Brain Products. The CINN is host to a research-dedicated 3T Siemens 
TRIO, with a full license for sequence development, and a full suite of 
MR-compatible systems. Additionally, the student will be granted access 
to the cluster of NVIDIA Tesla GPUs and other facilities at CINN, as 
well as at the School of Systems Engineering.

The University of Reading is ranked as one of the UK?s 20 most 
research-intensive universities and as one of the top 200 universities 
in the world (Times Higher Education 2013). Our campus was voted first 
in the Times Higher Education Student Experience survey and has a Green 
Flag Award. It is situated 25 minutes West of London. Reading University 
Students? Union was voted the 6th best in the UK (National Student 
Survey 2012).

Essentials: Commitment to academic research and personal development; 
Ability to work collaboratively; Effective interpersonal and 
communication skills, including writing to a high standard, document 
preparation for technical notes and journal papers; Experience of work 
in interdisciplinary settings; Attention to details.

Desirables: Self-guided work in developing statistical designs and 
approaches in research; Creative approach to problem solving; Ability to 
work independently; Experience in giving presentations and conveying 
complex ideas clearly.


Eligibility:  Applicants should hold a minimum of a UK Honours Degree at 
2:1 level or equivalent in a relevant subject.   Please note that due to 
restrictions on the funding this studentship is for UK/EU applicants only.

Funding Details:  Studentship will cover Home/EU Fees, pay the Research 
Council minimum stipend (?13,863 in 2014/15) for up to 3 years and 
include funding for international conferences.

How to apply:    To apply for this studentship please submit an 
application for a PhD in Cybernetics (full time) to the University ? see 
http://www.reading.ac.uk/Study/apply/pg-applicationform.aspx . In the 
section ?Research proposal?, please upload or copy-paste your covering 
letter. When prompted as part of your online application, you should 
provide details of the funding you are applying for, quoting the 
reference GS14-68.

Once you have submitted your application, you should receive an email to 
confirm receipt of your online application.  Please forward this email, 
along with your covering letter and CV (as pdf), to Dr. Etienne B. 
Roesch, e.b.roesch at reading.ac.uk, by the application deadline.

Application Deadline: Monday November 10th, 2014 (interviews on November 
21st, 2014, Skype or in Reading)

Further Enquiries:  Please contact Dr. Etienne B. Roesch, 
e.b.roesch at reading.ac.uk.


Kind regards,

Etienne
Save the world from email! http://emailcharter.org

???
Dr. Etienne B. Roesch
Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Cognitive Science
University of Reading, UK

http://doodle.com/MeetWithEtienne


From jens.lindemann at uni-bielefeld.de  Fri Oct 10 05:48:06 2014
From: jens.lindemann at uni-bielefeld.de (Jens Peter Lindemann)
Date: Fri, 10 Oct 2014 11:48:06 +0200
Subject: Connectionists: Doctoral position or Postdoctoral position in
 Insect Visually Guided Behaviour
Message-ID: <5437AB56.2030104@Uni-Bielefeld.DE>

Doctoral position or Postdoctoral position in
Insect Visually Guided Behaviour
Neurobiology & CITEC, Bielefeld University, Germany

Project
=======
Learning strategies and visual information used for localising a goal in 
bumblebee navigation: A combined behavioural, neural and modelling 
analysis. Funded by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) and Bielefeld 
University.

What do we expect?
==================
We are seeking a highly-motivated candidate who strives for 
understanding the mechanisms underlying the processing of spatial 
information by bumblebees in the context visual navigation. Quantitative 
behavioural analysis targeting the neural basis of the behaviour defines 
the field of activity. Particular emphasis will be laid on the 
coordination of head and body movements while the animal performs 
learning and search flights in the vicinity of its goal.

You are expected to work together with other researchers focusing on 
behavioural and modelling approaches and to actively contribute own 
ideas. You are an ideal candidate, if you are experienced in doing 
experimental analyses on insects, in data analysis and in programming 
(preferably Matlab) and have excellent writing skills. However, even if 
you match this profile only in parts, you are encouraged to apply - 
given you are prepared to develop new skills, learn new techniques and 
are eager to contribute interesting research results to the field of 
navigation of bees.

What do we offer?
=================
We offer a position in a research team working in a stimulating 
environment with excellent facilities for laboratory work as well as 
computational analyses (e.g. high-speed video techniques, virtual 
reality arenas for behavioural and neurophysiological experiments, and 
innovative approaches to data analysis). The Neurobiology group is 
cooperating with other groups at CITEC in Bielefeld, but also 
internationally.

What is the project background?
===============================
Bumblebees use visual memories to locate their nests and/or food sites. 
Although it is known that visual information plays a dominant role for 
locating a virtually invisible goal during local navigation and that 
this information is acquired by active learning strategies, it is still 
controversial which environmental features are stored during learning 
and later used for finding the goal. This issue can only be resolved if 
the precise coordination of the complex movements of the head (which 
carries the eyes) and of the body (which carries the flight machinery) 
is understood. Only then can we reconstruct what the animals have seen 
during their flight manoeuvres.

Where to apply?
===============
For further inquiries about the project, please contact:

	Prof. Dr. Martin Egelhaaf
	Neurobiology & CITEC
	Bielefeld University
	D-33501 Bielefeld, Germany

	martin.egelhaaf at uni-bielefeld.de

	Website: http://web.biologie.uni-bielefeld.de/neurobiology/

Please send your application including a letter outlining your academic 
education and past research, your motivation for this position and your 
specific experience (max. 2 pages), CV, list of publications (if 
available) and contact details of 2-3 referees in a single (!) PDF file 
to Prof. Dr. Martin Egelhaaf, Neurobiology & CITEC, Bielefeld 
University; martin.egelhaaf at uni-bielefeld.de.

Applications will be considered until the position is filled.


-- 
Dr.-Ing. Jens Peter Lindemann <Jens.Lindemann at Uni-Bielefeld.DE>
Department of Neurobiology, Bielefeld University
D-33501 Bielefeld, Germany

From fred.hamker at informatik.tu-chemnitz.de  Sat Oct 11 06:41:13 2014
From: fred.hamker at informatik.tu-chemnitz.de (Fred Hamker)
Date: Sat, 11 Oct 2014 12:41:13 +0200
Subject: Connectionists: PhD position in neuro-computational research of
	modeling emotions
Message-ID: <3CAE15AC-61CB-437D-B556-16B9C0CC7F59@informatik.tu-chemnitz.de>

Several PhD (E 13 TV-L, 100%) positions are available at the Technical University of Chemnitz (Germany) in the Department of Computer Science. The positions are funded for three years. 

Among other fields of human-machine interactions, we are particularly interested in neuro-computational research of modeling emotions, particularly brain-inspired or brain-like solutions of the emotional system involving vision and audition.

Please see http://crossworlds.info/jobposting/


--------------------
Prof. Dr. Fred H Hamker
Artificial Intelligence & Neuro Cognitive Systems
Department of Computer Science
Chemnitz University of Technology
Strasse der Nationen 62 
D - 09107 Chemnitz
Germany

Tel: +49 (0)371 531-37875
Fax: +49 (0)371 531-25739
email: fred.hamker at informatik.tu-chemnitz.de
www: http://www.tu-chemnitz.de/informatik/KI/

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From marcus.pearce at qmul.ac.uk  Sat Oct 11 08:44:56 2014
From: marcus.pearce at qmul.ac.uk (Marcus Pearce)
Date: Sat, 11 Oct 2014 13:44:56 +0100
Subject: Connectionists: Post-doctoral research fellowship: modelling
	musical preference decisions
Message-ID: <54392648.5050401@qmul.ac.uk>

Dear All (with apologies for cross-posting),

We seek to appoint a Post-doctoral Research Fellow at Queen Mary, 
University of London as part of an EPSRC-funded project 
<http://gow.epsrc.ac.uk/NGBOViewGrant.aspx?GrantRef=EP/M000702/1>on 
predicting musical choices using computational models of cognitive and 
neural processing. The goal of the project is to understand the 
cognitive and neural processes involved in musical preference decisions 
using computational modelling that incorporates the structure of the 
music, the psychological state and traits of the listener and the 
listening context.

The successful candidate will be involved in the design and 
implementation of the models, data collection from human listeners in 
behavioural and EEG experiments, analysing the data to test the model 
predictions, and writing up the results for publication in peer-reviewed 
journals.

Start date: 5 January 2015. Duration: 14 months (until March 5 2016). 
Salary: ?34,283.

For further information and to apply see: 
http://music-cognition.eecs.qmul.ac.uk/postdoc.html

Marcus

-- 
Lecturer in Sound and Music Processing
Queen Mary, University of London
Mile End Road, London E1 4NS, UK
Tel: +44 (0)20 7882 6207
Web: http://webprojects.eecs.qmul.ac.uk/marcusp
Lab: http://music-cognition.eecs.qmul.ac.uk/

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From nicosia at dmi.unict.it  Sat Oct 11 11:42:40 2014
From: nicosia at dmi.unict.it (Giuseppe Nicosia)
Date: Sat, 11 Oct 2014 17:42:40 +0200
Subject: Connectionists: 1st announcement: Synthetic and Systems Biology
	Summer School: Biology meets Engineering and Computer Science,
	Taormina - Sicily, Italy July 5-9, 2015
Message-ID: <D402591F-92A6-40B5-8287-6BAD77BDFD50@dmi.unict.it>

______________________________________________________
Call for Participation (apologies for multiple copies) 
______________________________________________________

Synthetic and Systems Biology Summer School: Biology meets Engineering and Computer Science - 2nd Edition
Taormina - Sicily, Italy, July 5-9, 2015

http://www.taosciences.it/ssbss2015/
ssbss.school at gmail.com


** Deadlines **
Student Application: February 15, 2015
Oral/Poster Submission: February 15, 2015

The Synthetic and Systems Biology Summer School (SSBSS) is a full-immersion course on cutting-edge advances in systems and synthetic biology with lectures delivered by world-renowned experts. The school provides a stimulating environment for doctoral students, early career researches and industry leaders. Participants will also have the chance to present their results (Oral presentations or Posters) and to interact with their peers.

** Topics **
Genetic Engineering
Metabolic Engineering
Genome Design
Reading and Writing Genomes
Pathway Design
Synthetic Circuits and Cells
Biological CAD
Industrial Applications
Artificial Tissues and Organs
Genomically recoded Organisms
Biological Design Automation

** List of Speakers ** 
* Adam Arkin, University of California Berkeley, USA
* Jef Boeke, New York University, USA
* Angela DePace, Harvard University, USA
* Forbes Dewey, MIT, USA
* Paul Freemont, Imperial College London, UK
* Karmella Haynes, Arizona State University, USA
* Richard Kitney, Imperial College London, UK
* Timothy Lu, MIT, USA
* Philip Maini, Oxford University, UK
* Steve Oliver, Cambridge University, UK
* Greg Stephanopoulos, MIT, USA - TBC
* Nicola Zamboni, ETH, Switzerland
 		
Other speakers will be announced soon.


** Industrial Panel **
* Zach Serber, Zymergen, Inc. USA

More speakers will be announced soon!


School Directors
Jef D. Boeke, New York University, USA
Giuseppe Nicosia, University of Catania, Italy
Mario Pavone, University of Catania, Italy
Giovanni Stracquadanio, University of Oxford, UK


** Short Talk and Poster Submission **
Students may submit a research abstract for presentation. School directors will review the abstracts and will recommend for poster or short-oral presentation. Abstract should be submitted by February 15, 2015. The abstracts will be published on the electronic hands-out material of the summer school.

http://www.taosciences.it/ssbss2015/index.html#applicationForm

http://www.taosciences.it/ssbss2015/
ssbss.school at gmail.com


Apologies for multiple copies. Please forward to anybody who might be interested.


To unsubscribe from this list, send a mail message (leaving the subject line blank) to cfp.ssbss at dmi.unict.it. The body of your message should contain the following one line:
     unsubscribe your-email



-- 
Giuseppe Nicosia, Ph.D.
Associate Professor 
Dept of Mathematics & Computer Science  
University of Catania                                        
Viale A. Doria, 6  - 95125 Catania, Italy  
P +39 095 7383048
E nicosia at dmi.unict.it                 
W http://www.dmi.unict.it/nicosia
-----------------------------------------------------------



From alessandro.torcini at cnr.it  Sat Oct 11 12:18:28 2014
From: alessandro.torcini at cnr.it (Alessandro Torcini)
Date: Sat, 11 Oct 2014 18:18:28 +0200
Subject: Connectionists: Petition for European Researchers "They have chosen
	ignorance"
Message-ID: <CANoq9uRCm1TQ+oz_GyCsfZWcgmtBcu08Kb-HfN7ae-m_Ju_24Q@mail.gmail.com>

Petition for European Researchers  "They have chosen ignorance"

Scientists from different European countries describe in this letter
that, despite marked heterogeneity in the situation of scientific
research in their respective countries, there are strong similarities
in the destructive policies being followed. This critical analysis,
highlighted in Nature and simultaneously published in a number of
newspapers across Europe, is a wake-up call to policy makers to
correct their course, and to researchers and citizens to defend the
essential role of science in society. This letter can be signed here.

The national policymakers of an increasing number of Member States,
along with European leaders, have completely lost touch with the
reality of research.

http://openletter.euroscience.org/


In the media

Italy
Repubblica http://www.repubblica.it/economia/2014/10/08/news/scienziati_europei_contro_i_tagli_alla_ricerca_di_base_scelta_l_ignoranza-97673431/

Ansa http://www.ansa.it/scienza/notizie/rubriche/ricerca/2014/10/09/ricercatori-europei-in-marcia-contro-i-tagli_c6e713fc-de61-4459-b4cb-0ad31cf657fb.html

Micromega http://temi.repubblica.it/micromega-online/%E2%80%9Csenza-ricerca-non-si-esce-dalla-crisi%E2%80%9D-l%E2%80%99appello-degli-scienziati-europei/

Il Fatto Quotidiano
http://www.ilfattoquotidiano.it/2014/10/09/tagli-alla-ricerca-la-lettera-degli-scienziati-i-politici-europei-hanno-scelto-lignoranza/1148889/

Roars http://www.roars.it/online/hanno-scelto-lignoranza/

Uninews24 http://www.uninews24.it/mondo/5301-la-lettera-dei-ricercatori-contro-i-vertici-ue-hanno-scelto-l-ignoranza.html


France
http://www.lemonde.fr/idees/article/2014/10/09/la-recherche-est-en-peril-il-faut-la-soutenir-et-vite_4503694_3232.html

Spain
http://www.elmundo.es/ciencia/2014/10/08/54356cc2e2704e1d3e8b4597.html?cid=SMBOSO25301&s_kw=facebook

http://elpais.com/elpais/2014/10/08/ciencia/1412764866_249154.html

http://www.elperiodico.com/es/noticias/opinion/han-elegido-ignorancia-3586110

http://www.elperiodico.cat/ca/noticias/opinio/han-elegit-ignorancia-3586110

Portugal
http://www.publico.pt/n1672264

Greece
http://www.tovima.gr/science/article/?aid=639347

http://www.tanea.gr/news/science-technology/article/5167615/nature-oi-politikes-litothtas-plhttoyn-thn-episthmonikh-ereyna/

Poland
http://www.rp.pl/artykul/9129,1147605-Apel-europejskich-naukowcow.html

UK
http://www.theguardian.com/science/occams-corner/2014/oct/09/they-have-chosen-ignorance-open-letter


Belgium
http://www.lesoir.be/674747/article/debats/cartes-blanches/2014-10-08/victime-l-ignorance-des-decideurs-recherche-est-en-danger


See also

http://www.euroscientist.com/blog/2014/10/09/pan-european-coordindated-group-publish-open-letter/

http://www.euroscientist.com/blog/2014/10/06/special-issue-research-activism-print-edition/

From grlmc at urv.cat  Sat Oct 11 15:42:50 2014
From: grlmc at urv.cat (GRLMC)
Date: Sat, 11 Oct 2014 21:42:50 +0200
Subject: Connectionists: BigDat 2015: registration deadline 23 October
Message-ID: <9B4C02C54F4244B395DC8FA731081570@Carlos1>

*To be removed from our mailing list, please respond to this message with
UNSUBSCRIBE in the subject line*

*****************************************************

INTERNATIONAL WINTER SCHOOL ON BIG DATA

BigDat 2015

Tarragona, Spain

January 26-30, 2015

Organized by
Rovira i Virgili University

http://grammars.grlmc.com/bigdat2015/

*****************************************************

--- 5th registration deadline: October 23, 2014 ---

*****************************************************

AIM:

BigDat 2015 is a research training event for graduates and postgraduates in
the first steps of their academic career. It aims at updating them about the
most recent developments in the fast developing area of big data, which
covers a large spectrum of current exciting research, development and
innovation with an extraordinary potential for a huge impact on scientific
discoveries, medicine, engineering, business models, and society itself.
Renowned academics and industry pioneers will lecture and share their views
with the audience.

All big data subareas will be displayed, namely: foundations,
infrastructure, management, search and mining, security and privacy, and
applications. Main challenges of analytics, management and storage of big
data will be identified through 4 keynote lectures and 24 six-hour courses,
which will tackle the most lively and promising topics. The organizers
believe outstanding speakers will attract the brightest and most motivated
students. Interaction will be a main component of the event.

ADDRESSED TO:

Graduate and postgraduates from around the world. There are no formal
pre-requisites in terms of academic degrees. However, since there will be
differences in the course levels, specific knowledge background may be
required for some of them.

BigDat 2015 is also appropriate for more senior people who want to keep
themselves updated on recent developments and future trends. They will
surely find it fruitful to listen and discuss with major researchers,
industry leaders and innovators.

REGIME:

In addition to keynotes, 3 courses will run in parallel during the whole
event. Participants will be able to freely choose the courses they will be
willing to attend as well as to move from one to another.

VENUE:

BigDat 2015 will take place in Tarragona, located 90 kms. to the south of
Barcelona. The venue will be:

Campus Catalunya
Universitat Rovira i Virgili
Av. Catalunya, 35
43002 Tarragona

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS:

Ian Foster (Argonne National Laboratory), Taming Big Data: Accelerating
Discovery via Outsourcing and Automation

Geoffrey C. Fox (Indiana University, Bloomington), Mapping Big Data
Applications to Clouds and HPC

C. Lee Giles (Pennsylvania State University, University Park), Scholarly Big
Data: Information Extraction and Data Mining

William D. Gropp (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign), tba

COURSES AND PROFESSORS:

Hendrik Blockeel (KU Leuven), [intermediate] Decision Trees for Big Data
Analytics

Diego Calvanese (Free University of Bozen-Bolzano),
[introductory/intermediate] End-User Access to Big Data Using Ontologies

Jiannong Cao (Hong Kong Polytechnic University), [introductory/intermediate]
Programming with Big Data

Edward Y. Chang (HTC Corporation, New Taipei City), [introductory/advanced]
Big Data Analytics: Architectures, Algorithms, and Applications

Ernesto Damiani (University of Milan), [introductory/intermediate] Process
Discovery and Predictive Decision Making from Big Data Sets and Streams

Gautam Das (University of Texas, Arlington), [intermediate/advanced] Mining
Deep Web Repositories

Maarten de Rijke (University of Amsterdam), tba

Geoffrey C. Fox (Indiana University, Bloomington), [intermediate] Using
Software Defined Systems to Address Big Data Problems

Minos Garofalakis (Technical University of Crete, Chania)
[intermediate/advanced], Querying Continuous Data Streams

Vasant G. Honavar (Pennsylvania State University, University Park)
[introductory/intermediate], Learning Predictive Models from Big Data

Mounia Lalmas (Yahoo! Research Labs, London), [introductory] Measuring User
Engagement

Tao Li (Florida International University, Miami),
[introductory/intermediate] Data Mining Techniques to Understand Textual
Data

Kwan-Liu Ma (University of California, Davis), [intermediate] Big Data
Visualization

Christoph Meinel (Hasso Plattner Institute, Potsdam),
[introductory/intermediate] New Computing Power by In-Memory and Multicore
to Tackle Big Data

David Padua (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign), [intermediate] Data
Parallel Programming

Manish Parashar (Rutgers University, Piscataway), [intermediate] Big Data in
Simulation-based Science

Srinivasan Parthasarathy (Ohio State University, Columbus), [intermediate]
Scalable Data Analysis

Evaggelia Pitoura (University of Ioannina), [intermediate] Online Social
Networks

Vijay V. Raghavan (University of Louisiana, Lafayette),
[introductory/intermediate] Visual Analytics of Time-evolving Large-scale
Graphs

Pierangela Samarati (University of Milan), [intermediate], Data Security and
Privacy in the Cloud

Peter Sanders (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology),
[introductory/intermediate] Algorithm Engineering for Large Data Sets

Johan Suykens (KU Leuven), [introductory/intermediate] Fixed-size Kernel
Models for Big Data

Domenico Talia (University of Calabria, Rende), [intermediate] Scalable Data
Mining on Parallel, Distributed and Cloud Computing Systems

Jieping Ye (Arizona State University, Tempe), [introductory/advanced]
Large-Scale Sparse Learning and Low Rank Modeling

ORGANIZING COMMITTEE:

Adrian Horia Dediu (Tarragona)
Carlos Mart?n-Vide (Tarragona, chair)
Florentina Lilica Voicu (Tarragona)

REGISTRATION:

It has to be done at

http://grammars.grlmc.com/bigdat2015/registration.php 

The selection of up to 8 courses requested in the registration template is
only tentative and non-binding. For the sake of organization, it will be
helpful to have an approximation of the respective demand for each course.

Since the capacity of the venue is limited, registration requests will be
processed on a first come first served basis. The registration period will
be closed and the on-line registration facility disabled when the capacity
of the venue will be complete. It is much recommended to register prior to
the event.

FEES:

As far as possible, participants are expected to stay full-time. Fees are a
flat rate covering the attendance to all courses during the week. There are
several early registration deadlines. Fees depend on the registration
deadline.

ACCOMMODATION:

Suggestions of accommodation will be provided in due time.

CERTIFICATE:

Participants will be delivered a certificate of attendance.

QUESTIONS AND FURTHER INFORMATION:

florentinalilica.voicu at urv.cat 

POSTAL ADDRESS:

BigDat 2015
Lilica Voicu
Rovira i Virgili University
Av. Catalunya, 35
43002 Tarragona, Spain

Phone: +34 977 559 543
Fax: +34 977 558 386

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:

Universitat Rovira i Virgili



From gary.marcus at nyu.edu  Sun Oct 12 18:36:27 2014
From: gary.marcus at nyu.edu (Gary Marcus)
Date: Sun, 12 Oct 2014 18:36:27 -0400
Subject: Connectionists: Beyond the Turing Test: CFP AAAI Austin January,
	2015  [with corrected links]
Message-ID: <91751D03-4E18-45FC-8660-61AD148EF574@nyu.edu>

*apologies for multiple postings*

Beyond The Turing Test
Date: January 25th or 26th (exact date determined soon), 2015
Place: Austin Texas, USA
Website: http://www.math.unipd.it/~frossi/BeyondTuring2015/
Submission Deadline: October 23, 2014


Dear Colleagues,

We are excited to announce a workshop devoted to developing a successor to the Turing Test. That test, now over 60 years old, has long served as a highly visible, public signpost for research in artificial intelligence. But is also highly game-able, and arguably in desperate need for a refresh.

The purpose of this workshop, a mixture of invited lectures, panels, posters, and group discussion, is to craft a replacement, an annual or bi-annual Turing Championship, that might consist of 3-5 different challenging tasks, with bragging rights given to the first programs to achieve human-level performance in each task.

Tentative list of invited speakers includes Peter Clark (AI2), Ken Forbus (Northwestern), Barbara Grosz (Harvard), Hiroaki Kitano (Sony CSL), Doug Lenat (Cycorp), Gary Marcus (NYU), Leora Morgenstern (Leidos), Charles Ortiz (Nuance), Tomaso Poggio (MIT),  Manuela Veloso (CMU), and Patrick Winston (MIT).

We seek submissions (2 page extended abstracts) that concretely address points of relevance to the creation of new Turing-inspired challenges. Submissions might address issues such as (1) choice of test materials, perhaps of incremental complexity; (2) evaluation metrics; (3) logistics of the competition (for example, in terms of the availability of sample scenarios, duration, diversity and level of human participation, and others). Furthermore, we also welcome submissions of experienced researchers on what can be learned from existing Turing-test related competitions, in terms of science or implementation. We envision that all submissions will include a connection between the concrete points proposed and the expected underlying advancement of AI science and development.

For more information, and to submit, visit http://www.math.unipd.it/~frossi/BeyondTuring2015/

Gary Marcus, Francesca Rossi, Manuela Veloso
Workshop Organizers
Beyond The Turing Test, a AAAI 2015 Workshop



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From gary.marcus at nyu.edu  Sun Oct 12 18:14:33 2014
From: gary.marcus at nyu.edu (Gary Marcus)
Date: Sun, 12 Oct 2014 18:14:33 -0400
Subject: Connectionists: Beyond the Turing Test: CFP AAAI Austin January,
	2015
Message-ID: <851377B6-DF4B-4781-92B9-C909F28D21CB@nyu.edu>

*apologies for multiple postings*

Beyond The Turing Test
Date: January 25th or 26th (exact date determined soon), 2015
Place: Austin Texas, USA
Website: http://www.math.unipd.it/~frossi/BeyondTuring2015/
Submission Deadline: October 23, 2014


Dear Colleagues,

We are excited to announce a workshop devoted to developing a successor to the Turing Test. That test, now over 60 years old, has long served as a highly visible, public signpost for research in artificial intelligence. But is also highly game-able, and arguably in desperate need for a refresh.

The purpose of this workshop, a mixture of invited lectures, panels, posters, and group discussion, is to craft a replacement, an annual or bi-annual Turing Championship, that might consist of 3-5 different challenging tasks, with bragging rights given to the first programs to achieve human-level performance in each task.

Tentative list of invited speakers includes Peter Clark (AI2), Ken Forbus (Northwestern), Barbara Grosz (Harvard), Hiroaki Kitano (Sony CSL), Doug Lenat (Cycorp), Gary Marcus (NYU), Leora Morgenstern (Leidos), Charles Ortiz (Nuance), Tomaso Poggio (MIT),  Manuela Veloso (CMU), and Patrick Winston (MIT).

We seek submissions (2 page extended abstracts) that concretely address points of relevance to the creation of new Turing-inspired challenges. Submissions might address issues such as (1) choice of test materials, perhaps of incremental complexity; (2) evaluation metrics; (3) logistics of the competition (for example, in terms of the availability of sample scenarios, duration, diversity and level of human participation, and others). Furthermore, we also welcome submissions of experienced researchers on what can be learned from existing Turing-test related competitions, in terms of science or implementation. We envision that all submissions will include a connection between the concrete points proposed and the expected underlying advancement of AI science and development.

For more information, and to submit, visit http://www.math.unipd.it/~frossi/BeyondTuring2015/

Gary Marcus, Francesca Rossi, Manuela Veloso
Workshop Organizers
Beyond The Turing Test, a AAAI 2015 Workshop



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From janla at dtu.dk  Mon Oct 13 08:31:18 2014
From: janla at dtu.dk (Jan Larsen)
Date: Mon, 13 Oct 2014 12:31:18 +0000
Subject: Connectionists: PhD Scholarship in Cognitive Audio Systems at DTU
	Denmark
Message-ID: <C6DF9FB390A4934A9EBDC396E9EFE18B6C00B0@ait-pex02mbx05.win.dtu.dk>

Dear connectionists

Please forward this email to relevant candidates.

I am searching a qualified candidate for a PhD scholarship in Cognitive Audio Systems at the Cognitive Systems Section, Department of Applied Mathematics and Computer Science at the Technical University of Denmark, Copenhagen, Denmark.

PhD students are formal employees at the university during a three-year period, and the monthly salary (before tax) is around 3,600 EUR (pension plan included). The actual salary is regulated by an agreement between DTU and the relevant professional union.

Qualified candidates should have obtained, or is about to finish, a Masters' degree in relevant areas such as computer science and electrical engineering with specialization in machine learning, signal processing, audio processing, or similar.

Send an email by October 24, 2014 to janla at dtu.dk<mailto:janla at dtu.dk?subject=PhD%20Scholarship%20in%20Cognitive%20Audio%20Systems> using subject field "PhD Scholarship in Cognitive Audio Systems" and include the following documents:

*       Short CV including telephone number and/or Skype name, description of relevant courses, projects, and potential publications;

*       Potential relevant references from university professors or private sector managers;

*       English language proficiency documentation (if not Danish);

*       Copy of MSc and BSc diplomas (if MSc diploma has not been issued then send grade list);

*       Weighted average grade of MSc and BSc studies according to step 6 at the general call web page http://www.dtu.dk/english/career/job?id=89c92a0e-1811-4be6-99c0-604edab1da2a. Use the excel sheet http://www.dtu.dk/english/Education/phd/Applicant/Pre_acceptance(1)

As the funds are very limited I expect that weighted average grade above 10.5 is necessary to enter the short list of candidates, which could be granted a scholarship by the study board. If this criterion is not fulfilled, please do not send an application.

Based on qualifications I will promote one candidate.

The candidate and I will collaborate on preparing the final application to be send by the deadline November 3, 2014 (according to the general call web page mentioned above). The study board is then going to grant a limited number of scholarships.

Background:

The PhD will be associated with ongoing activities in audio including:



*       The strategic research project CoSound (www.cosound.dk<http://www.cosound.dk>) with 10+ partners. The aim of CoSound is integration of audio and other modalities with interactive user data to improve music experience/navigation and search & retrieval in large audio archives. The project has developed a modular computational platform, which enables large-scale analysis and conduction of experiments.

*       The Danish Sound Innovation Network (http://www.danishsound.org<http://www.danishsound.org/>). A university/industry network that facilitates knowledge dissemination and cross-sector collaboration.

Research themes can include:

*       Multimodal integration of audio content, context, and interactive user information with the purpose of providing novel music navigation interfaces and/or semi-automated enrichment and navigation in large sound and media archives.

*       Interactive user information models for efficient elicitation of cognitive aspects such as affection, perception, intention, goal in order to adapt and align sound processing systems to users' needs.

Best regards, Jan Larsen

[Picture1]
Jan Larsen
Director of Danish Sound Innovation Network
Associate Professor, Ph.D.

Danish Sound Innovation Network
Section for Cognitive Systems
Department Applied Mathematics and Computer Science
Richard Petersens Plads, Building 324
Technical University of Denmark
DK-2800 Kongens Lyngby, Denmark

Office: Room 015, Building 321
Direct: (+45) 45 25 39 23
Mobile: (+45) 22 43 00 25
Danish Sound Technology Secretariat: (+45) 45 25 34 11
Fax: (+45) 45 88 26 73
Email: janla at dtu.dk<mailto:jl at imm.dtu.dk>
Skype: janflynut
Personal web: www.imm.dtu.dk/~<http://www.imm.dtu.dk/~jl>jl
Sound Technology web: www.danishsound.org<http://www.danishsound.org/>
Social networks:
[t_small-a]<http://twitter.com/janflynut>   [btn_profile_greytxt_80x15] <http://dk.linkedin.com/in/janlarsendtu>

[danishsound_logotype_white_100x147]



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From evomusart at gmail.com  Thu Oct  9 12:40:41 2014
From: evomusart at gmail.com (Colin Jonhson)
Date: Thu, 9 Oct 2014 17:40:41 +0100
Subject: Connectionists: 3rd CfP - EvoMUSART2015 - 4th International
 Conference on Evolutionary and Biologically Inspired Music, Sound,
 Art and Design
Message-ID: <CALsnibuXLpXTVnETSzhkLfBQ+87AHNrWk99XhiYUPL+96HwB1w@mail.gmail.com>

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Please distribute
(Apologies for cross posting)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

3rd CALL FOR PAPERS
EvoMUSART 2015
http://www.evostar.org/2015/cfp_evomusart.php

4th International Conference on Evolutionary and Biologically Inspired
Music, Sound, Art and Design

April 2015, Copenhagen, Denmark
Part of evo* 2015
evo*: http://www.evostar.org

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
NEW THIS YEAR: LEONARDO Galery
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
The journal LEONARDO will be publishing a Gallery Section (online and in the
print edition) associated with the conference. This will consist of a number
of visual artworks based on ideas and techniques presented at the conference.
A separate call for this will be issued after papers have been selected for
the conference.

http://www.leonardo.info/gallery/

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Following the success of previous events and the importance of the field of
evolutionary and biologically inspired (artificial neural network, swarm,
alife) music, sound, art and design, evomusart has become an evo* conference
with independent proceedings since 2012. Thus, evomusart 2015 is the
fourth International Conference on Evolutionary and Biologically Inspired
Music, Sound, Art and Design.

The use of biologically inspired techniques for the development of artistic
systems is a recent, exciting and significant area of research. There is a
growing interest in the application of these techniques in fields such
as: visual art and music generation, analysis, and interpretation; sound
synthesis; architecture; video; poetry; design; and other creative tasks.

The main goal of evomusart 2015 is to bring together researchers who are
using biologically inspired computer techniques for artistic tasks, providing
the opportunity to promote, present and discuss ongoing work in the area.

The event will be held in April, 2015 in Copenhagen, Denmark,
as part of the Evo* event.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Publication Details
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Submissions will be rigorously reviewed for scientific and artistic merit.
Accepted papers will be presented orally or as posters at the event and
included in the evomusart proceedings, published by Springer Verlag in a
dedicated volume of the Lecture Notes in Computer Science series.
The acceptance rate at evomusart 2014 was 26.7% for papers accepted for oral
presentation, or 36.7% for oral and poster presentation combined.

Submitters are strongly encouraged to provide in all papers a link for
download of media demonstrating their results, whether music, images, video,
or other media types. Links should be anonymised for double-blind review,
e.g. using a URL shortening service.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Topics of interest
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Submissions should concern the use of biologically inspired computer
techniques -- e.g. Evolutionary Computation, Artificial Life,
Artificial Neural Networks, Swarm Intelligence, other artificial
intelligence techniques -- in the generation, analysis and
interpretation of art, music, design, architecture and other artistic
fields. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

-- Generation
- Biologically Inspired Design and Art -- Systems that create
drawings, images, animations, sculptures, poetry, text, designs,
webpages, buildings, etc.;
- Biologically Inspired Sound and Music -- Systems that create
musical pieces, sounds, instruments, voices, sound effects, sound
analysis, etc.;
- Robotic-Based Evolutionary Art and Music;
- Other related artificial intelligence or generative techniques in
the fields of Computer Music, Computer Art, etc.;

-- Theory
- Computational Aesthetics, Experimental Aesthetics; Emotional
Response, Surprise, Novelty;
- Representation techniques;
- Surveys of the current state-of-the-art in the area; identification
of weaknesses and strengths; comparative analysis and classification;
- Validation methodologies;
- Studies on the applicability of these techniques to related areas;
- New models designed to promote the creative potential of
biologically inspired computation;

-- Computer Aided Creativity and computational creativity
- Systems in which biologically inspired computation is used to
promote the creativity of a human user;
- New ways of integrating the user in the evolutionary cycle;
- Analysis and evaluation of: the artistic potential of biologically
inspired art and music; the artistic processes inherent to these
approaches; the resulting artefacts;
- Collaborative distributed artificial art environments;

-- Automation
- Techniques for automatic fitness assignment;
- Systems in which an analysis or interpretation of the artworks is
used in conjunction with biologically inspired techniques to produce
novel objects;
- Systems that resort to biologically inspired computation to perform
the analysis of image, music, sound, sculpture, or some other types of
artistic object.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Important Dates (to be confirmed)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Submission: 15 November 2014
Notification to authors: 07 January 2015
Camera-ready deadline: 21 January 2015
Evo*: 8-10 April 2015

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Additional information and submission details
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Submit your manuscript, at most 12 A4 pages long, in Springer LNCS format
(instructions downloadable from
http://www.springer.com/computer/lncs?SGWID=0-164-6-793341-0) no later than
November 15th, 2014.

Page limit: 12 pages

The reviewing process will be double-blind; please omit information about
the authors in the submitted paper.

Submission page: http://myreview.csregistry.org/evomusart15/

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Programme committee
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Adri?n Carballal, University of A Coruna, Spain
Alain Lioret, Paris 8 University, France
Alan Dorin, Monash University, Australia
Alejandro Pazos, University of A Coruna, Spain
Amilcar Cardoso, University of Coimbra, Portugal
Amy K. Hoover, University of Central Florida, USA
Andrew Brown, Griffith University, Australia
Andrew Gildfind, Google, Inc., Australia
Andrew Horner, University of Science & Technology, Hong Kong
Anna Ursyn, University of Northern Colorado, USA
Antonino Santos, University of A Coruna, Spain
Antonios Liapis, IT University of Copenhagen, Denmark
Arne Eigenfeldt, Simon Fraser University, Canada
Benjamin Schroeder, Ohio State University, USA
Benjamin Smith, Indianapolis University, Purdue University,Indianapolis, USA
Bill Manaris, College of Charleston, USA
Brian Ross, Brock University, Canada
Carlos Grilo, Instituto Polit?cnico de Leiria, Portugal
Christian Jacob, University of Calgary, Canada
Colin Johnson, University of Kent, UK
Dan Ashlock, University of Guelph, Canada
Dan Ventura, Brigham Young University, USA
Daniel Jones, Goldsmiths College, University of London, UK
Daniel Silva, University of Coimbra, Portugal
Douglas Repetto, Columbia University, USA
Eduardo Miranda, University of Plymouth, UK
Eelco den Heijer, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Netherlands
Eleonora Bilotta, University of Calabria, Italy
Gary Greenfield, University of Richmond, USA
Hans Dehlinger, Independent Artist, Germany
Jonathan E. Rowe, University of Birmingham, UK
Jane Prophet, City University of Hong Kong, China
Jon McCormack, Monash University, Australia
Jonathan Byrne, University College Dublin, Ireland
Jonathan Eisenmann, Ohio State University, USA
Jos? Fornari, NICS/Unicamp, Brazil
Juan Romero, University of A Coruna, Spain
Kate Reed, Imperial College, UK
Marcelo Freitas Caetano, IRCAM, France
Marcos Nadal, University of Vienna, Austria
Matthew Lewis, Ohio State University, USA
Mauro Annunziato, Plancton Art Studio, Italy
Maximos Kaliakatsos-Papakostas, University of Patras, Greece
Michael O?Neill, University College Dublin, Ireland
Nicolas Monmarch?, University of Tours, France
Pablo Gerv?s, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain
Palle Dahlstedt, G?teborg University, Sweden
Patrick Janssen, National University of Singapure, Singapure
Paulo Urbano, Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal
Pedro Abreu, University of Coimbra, Portugal
Pedro Cruz, University of Coimbra, Portugal
Penousal Machado, University of Coimbra, Portugal
Peter Bentley, University College London, UK
Peter Cariani, University of Binghamton, USA
Philip Galanter, Texas A&M College of Architecture, USA
Philippe Pasquier, Simon Fraser University, Canada
Rafael Ramirez, Pompeu Fabra University, Spain
Roger Malina, International Society for the Arts, Sciences and Technology, USA
Roisin Loughran, University College Dublin, Ireland
Ruli Manurung, University of Indonesia, Indonesia
Scott Draves, Independent Artist, USA
Somnuk Phon-Amnuaisuk, Brunei Institute of Technology, Malaysia
Stephen Todd, IBM, UK
Takashi Ikegami, Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan
Tim Blackwell, Goldsmiths College, University of London, UK
Vic Ciesielski, RMIT, Australia
Yang Li, University of Science and Technology Beijing, China


----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Conference chairs
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Colin Johnson
University of Kent, UK
c.g.johnson(at)kent.ac.uk

Adri?n Carballal
University of A Coru?a, Spain
adriancarballal(at)gmail.com

Publication chair
Jo?o Correia, University of Coimbra
jncor(at)dei.uc.pt


From ASIM.ROY at asu.edu  Mon Oct 13 14:32:05 2014
From: ASIM.ROY at asu.edu (Asim Roy)
Date: Mon, 13 Oct 2014 18:32:05 +0000
Subject: Connectionists: On Findings of Category and Other Concept Cells in
 the Brain: Some Theoretical Perspectives on Mental Representation
Message-ID: <4AD8F84F0AA4E1448BD8131BA7E55EB41E2C1105@exmbw02.asurite.ad.asu.edu>

The following article appears in Cognitive Computation. Based on neurophysiological evidence and theoretical arguments, the brain appears to be a symbolic system at the neuron level. There are good reasons to question the idea of distributed representation or population coding.

Roy, A. (2014). "On Findings of Category and Other Concept Cells in the Brain: Some Theoretical Perspectives on Mental Representation."

Here's the link to the article: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12559-014-9307-7

Abstract.

There is substantial neurophysiological evidence from decades of single-cell studies that category and other concept cells exist in both human and animal brains. This indicates that the brain can generalize and create abstract concepts and encode and represent such abstractions using single cells. These single-cell findings cannot be accounted for and explained by the theory of distributed representation and population coding, the dominant theory in the brain sciences. In light of these findings, this paper reexamines the two contending mental representational schemes, localist and distributed, on the basis of computational efficiency, the ability to simultaneously process and activate many different concepts, and the structure for semantic cognition. The evidence for category and concept cells favors localist representation in the brain.

From d.polani at herts.ac.uk  Mon Oct 13 16:30:17 2014
From: d.polani at herts.ac.uk (d.polani at herts.ac.uk)
Date: Mon, 13 Oct 2014 21:30:17 +0100
Subject: Connectionists: PhD Studentships in Information Processing and
 Self-Organization in Adaptive Biological and Artificial Systems at the
 University of Hertfordshire
Message-ID: <E1XdmG1-0001v1-00@hestia.herts.ac.uk>

/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

		      PhD Studentships Available on

	     INFORMATION PROCESSING AND SELF-ORGANIZATION
	    IN ADAPTIVE BIOLOGICAL AND ARTIFICIAL SYSTEMS

		   Adaptive Systems Research Group
		      School of Computer Science
		   University of Hertfordshire, UK

/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

PhD studentships are available in the Adaptive Systems Research Group
at the University of Hertfordshire in the topics of Artificial Life,
especially for the study of principles behind information processing
in adaptive, complex and self-organizing systems and the emergence and
growth of complexity, a research area which has witnessed a dramatic
increase of interest in the last years.

We use mathematical methods, with particular emphasis on an arsenal of
recently developed techniques based on Shannon's information theory,
to describe, understand or construct such systems in the context of
AI/robotics and biology. Questions of interest and possible research
directions include, but are not limited to:

  - information-theoretic approaches towards a mathematically founded
    understanding of information processing and the perception-action
    loop in agents; fundamental quantitative constraints governing the
    interaction between an agent and its environment

  - theoretically grounded pathways towards a systematic way to
    generate self-organization in complex systems and autonomous
    increase in complexity

  - biologically plausible methods based on information theory for
    creating Artificial Intelligence systems from first principles

  - generic models for intrinsic motivation generation and artificial
    creativity based on such principles

  - fundamental principles underlying biological (e.g. neural)
    computation (with opportunities to collaborate with the
    Biocomputation Research Group)

The prospective candidates should have a strong first degree, a keen
interest in contributing to a new, highly dynamic and quickly
expanding research area and a very strong background in Computer
Science, Physics, Mathematics, Statistics or another relevant
computational/quantitative discipline. In particular, they should
demonstrate excellent programming skills in one or more major computer
languages. A mathematical/numerical background would be desirable,
knowledge in at least one of the following fields would be a plus:
probability theory, information theory, differential geometry,
control, data modelling/neural network techniques.

The envisaged research will take place in the vibrant and enthusiastic
research environment of the Adaptive Systems Research Group in the
School of Computer Science at the University of Hertfordshire which
offers a large number of specialized and interdisciplinary seminars as
well as general training opportunities. Research in Computer Science
at the University of Hertfordshire has been recognized as excellent by
the latest Research Assessment Exercise, with 55% of the research
submitted being rated as world leading or internationally excellent.

The University of Hertfordshire is located in Hatfield, Hertfordshire
UK which is considered the "northern green belt" of London. Hatfield
is close to London (less than 25 minutes by train to Kings Cross), has
convenient access to Stansted, Luton and Heathrow airports, and is not
far from the historic town of St. Albans.

Successful candidates are eligible for a research studentship award
from the University (which includes approximately GBP 13,800 per annum
bursary and the payment of the standard UK/EU student fees).
Applicants from outside the UK or EU are eligible, but will have to
pay half of the overseas fees out of their bursary. Information about
the current tuition fees can be found at

  http://www.herts.ac.uk/apply/fees-and-funding

As start of the studentships we aim for 1. February 2015.

For informal inquiries on the research topic please contact: Dr.
Daniel Polani (E-mail: d.polani at herts.ac.uk)

Application forms are available from 

  http://homepages.stca.herts.ac.uk/~comqvs/ApplicationFormUHStudentship.doc

and should be returned to: 

  Mrs Lorraine Nicholls
  Research Student Administrator, STRI 
  University of Hertfordshire
  College Lane
  Hatfield, AL10 9AB Herts  
  Hertfordshire 
  UK
  
  Tel: +44 1707 286083
  Email: l.nicholls at herts.ac.uk

Applications should also include two references and transcripts of
previous academic degrees. 

The shortlisting process for the applications will begin on 10.
November 2014.


From christos.dimitrakakis at gmail.com  Tue Oct 14 01:41:30 2014
From: christos.dimitrakakis at gmail.com (Christos Dimitrakakis)
Date: Tue, 14 Oct 2014 07:41:30 +0200
Subject: Connectionists: PhD position in Private and Secure Machine
Message-ID: <1413265290.3820.7.camel@olethros-desktop>

PhD position in Secure and Private Machine Learning and Decision Making

We are looking for an excellent, motivated, self-driven doctoral student
to work in the area of machine learning and decision theory with a focus
on security and privacy. The position is for five years at the
Department of Computer Science and Engineering, within the division of
Computing Science and the group of Algorithms, Learning and
Computational Biology (http://www.cse.chalmers.se/research/lab/), who
are doing research on fields ranging from machine learning, statistics,
algorithms, optimisation, reinforcement learning to computational
biology, text and massive data analysis.

The student will be employed in the scope of the Swiss Sense Synergy
project, whose aim is to develop intelligent location-based networking
protocols and crowdsourcing applications. The student will be expected
to develop and analyse state-of-the-art algorithms for distributed
machine learning and decision making that provide users with strong
privacy guarantees.  In particular, the research will be focused on
machine learning and differential privacy for distributed systems, but
some aspects of the work will involve recent advances in cryptography.
The student will be supervised by Dr. Christos Dimitrakakis (Machine
learning, decision theory and differential privacy - see
http://www.cse.chalmers.se/~chrdimi/ ) and co-supervised by Dr. Katerina
Mitrokotsa (Cryptography and security - see
http://www.cse.chalmers.se/~aikmitr/ ). Further info about the
SwissSenseSynergy project can be found here http://goo.gl/tmQ9NJ 

The application deadline is November 21, 2014. Apply here:

http://www.chalmers.se/en/about-chalmers/vacancies/Pages/default.aspx?rmpage=job&rmjob=2438







From p.roelfsema at nin.knaw.nl  Tue Oct 14 05:02:26 2014
From: p.roelfsema at nin.knaw.nl (Pieter Roelfsema)
Date: Tue, 14 Oct 2014 09:02:26 +0000
Subject: Connectionists: Postdoc (or PhD student) Roelfsema & Bohte labs in
 computational and cognitive neuroscience
Message-ID: <D062B2D9.28824%p.roelfsema@nin.knaw.nl>

Post-doc (or PhD student) in Computational and Cognitive Neuroscience
- How is reinforcement learning implemented in the brain?

A post-doc (or PhD student) position is available to develop new biologically plausible reinforcement learning theories. This project is a collaboration between in the Vision & Cognition group (Dr. Pieter Roelfsema) at the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience in Amsterdam and the NeuroInformatics Lab at the Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica in Amsterdam (Dr. Sander Bohte).

Our recent theoretical insights have allowed a preliminary understanding of how animals learn to represent and memorize the key features of sensory stimuli for the guidance of action, and how this learning can proceed by trial-and-error (Rombouts et al. NIPS 2012, Roelfsema et al., TiCS, 2010). The present project focuses on the learning of subroutines, which can be incorporated into larger routines, during trial-and-error learning. We aim to develop a biologically plausible learning rules that endow neural networks with the possibility to learn hierarchical task structures.

The project is funded by an NWO grant from the Natural Artificial Intelligence program.

The successful applicant will have a solid computational background, an interest in cognitive neuroscience and good programming skills.

Appointment:
The position involves a temporary appointment for 2-4 years. We offer a competitive salary with excellent secondary benefits and friendly taxes, and also an extremely friendly, interactive and international working environment. Amsterdam is one of Europe's most beautiful and lively cities where almost everybody speaks and understands English, so that candidates need not be afraid of the language barrier.

To apply, please send application letter, CV and two letters of recommendation to:

Tini Eikelboom
The Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience
Meibergdreef 47
1105 BA Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Telephone: +31-20-5664587
E-mail: t.eikelboom at nin.knaw.nl<mailto:t.eikelboom at nin.knaw.nl>


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From zoltan.szabo.list at gmail.com  Tue Oct 14 09:58:01 2014
From: zoltan.szabo.list at gmail.com (Zoltan Szabo)
Date: Tue, 14 Oct 2014 14:58:01 +0100
Subject: Connectionists: CFP: Deadline extension (Oct. 31): Modern
	Nonparametrics 3 @ NIPS
Message-ID: <543D2BE9.1090106@gmail.com>

==================DEADLINE EXTENSION============
==                            Submission open until Oct. 31              ==
==                              [Apology for 
cross-postings]                   ==
=================================================


=============================================================================
Call for Papers: /Modern Nonparametrics 3: Automating the Learning 
Pipeline///
held in conjunction with Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS 2014)

December 13, 2014, Montreal, Canada

https://sites.google.com/site/nips2014modernnonparametric/

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Overview:
-------------

Nonparametric methods (kernel methods, kNN, classification trees, etc) are
designed to handle complex pattern recognition problems.  Such complex
problems arise in modern applications such as genomic experiments, climate
analysis, robotic control, social network analysis, and so forth.
There is a growing need for statistical procedures that can be used
?off-the-shelf?, i.e. procedures with as few parameters as possible, or
better yet, procedures which can ?self-tune? to a particular application
at hand.

In traditional statistics, much effort has gone into so called
?adaptive? procedures which can attain optimal risks over large sets of
models of increasing complexity. Examples are model selection approaches
based on penalized empirical risk minimization, approaches based on
stability of estimates (e.g. Lepski?s methods), thresholding approaches
under sparsity assumptions, and model averaging approaches. Most of these
approaches rely on having tight bounds on the risk of learning procedures
(under any parameter setting), hence other approaches concentrate on tight
estimations of the actual risks, e.g., Stein?s risk estimators,
bootstrapping methods, data dependent learning bounds.

In theoretical machine learning, much of the work has focused on proper
tuning of the actual optimization procedures used to minimize (penalized)
empirical risks. In particular, great effort has gone into the automatic
setting of important tuning parameters such as ?learning rates? and ?step
sizes?.

Another approach out of machine learning arises in the kernel literature
under the name of ?automatic representation learning?. The aim of the
approach, similar to theoretical work on model selection, is to
automatically learn an appropriate (kernel) transformation of the data for
use with kernel methods such as SVMs or Gaussian processes.

A main aim of this workshop is to cover the various approaches proposed so
far towards automating the learning pipeline, and the practicality of these
approaches in light of modern constraints. We are particularly interested
in understanding whether large datasizes and dimensionality might
help the automation effort since such datasets in fact provide more
information on the patterns being learned.

This workshop is third in a series of NIPS workshops on modern
nonparametric methods in machine learning, which several of the present
organizers were involved in running during NIPS 2013 and NIPS 2012 (see
organizer biographies). These previous workshops focused on the challenges
posed by large data sizes (e.g. time/accuracy tradeoffs) and large
dimensionality (e.g. dimension reduction strategies). The main focus of the
present workshop, automating the learning pipeline, builds on these
previous workshops.


Submission:
----------------

Papers submitted to the workshop should be up to four pages long (including
references), extended abstracts in camera-ready format using the NIPS 
style.
They should be sent by email to ''nonparametric.nips2014 at gmail.com 
<mailto:nonparametric.nips2014 at gmail.com>''.
Accepted submissions will be presented as talks or posters.

Important Dates:
-----------------------

submission deadline: Oct. 31, 2014 (23:59 UTC)
notification of acceptance: Nov. 10, 2014 (23:59 UTC)
workshop: Dec. 13, 2014

Registration:
-----------------

Participants should refer to the NIPS-2014 website for information on 
how to
register for the workshop.

-- 
Zoltan Szabo
Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit
University College London
http://www.gatsby.ucl.ac.uk/~szabo/

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From xose.pardo at usc.es  Tue Oct 14 07:32:49 2014
From: xose.pardo at usc.es (Xose M. Pardo)
Date: Tue, 14 Oct 2014 13:32:49 +0200
Subject: Connectionists: (Final CFP and NEW DATES: 17-19 June) IbPRIA 2015-
 Santiago de Compostela (Spain)
Message-ID: <543D09E1.8050100@usc.es>

Dear colleague,

We would like to draw your attention to the Final CFP of 7th Iberian 
Conference on Pattern Recognition and Image Analysis (IbPRIA 2015)
and the Conference NEW DATES: 17-19 June 2015. To avoid overlapping with 
other important events, we have decided do shift the dates one week.
Soon, deadlines shall be extended accordingly.

http://www.ibpria.org/2015/?page=cfp


Remember that IbPRIA will be held in Santiago de Compostela, Spain, and 
all accepted papers will be  published
in Springer Lecture Notes in Computer Science Series,  Springer LNCS. 
Moreover, a short list of presented papers
will be selected so that revised and extended versions of these papers 
will be published in a special
issue of the Neural Computing and Applications journal.

We look forward to your contributions!

Regards

-- 

Xose M. Pardo, Local Chair

http://persoal.citius.usc.es/xose.pardo
voice: +34 8818 16438
Centro de Investigaci?n en Tenoloxas da Informacion (CITIUS)
Univ. Santiago de Compostela
15782 Santiago de Compostela
GALIZA (Spain)

From S.M.Bohte at cwi.nl  Tue Oct 14 05:36:12 2014
From: S.M.Bohte at cwi.nl (Sander Bohte)
Date: Tue, 14 Oct 2014 11:36:12 +0200
Subject: Connectionists: Postdoc or PhD student in Computational and
	Cognitive Neuroscience
Message-ID: <CAGU9Tt3mvHMYaiiSEvs=pmWOfroB2T3KOcHT5dJuVzJrpkfDZw@mail.gmail.com>

Apologies for cross posting


Post-doc (or PhD student) in Computational and Cognitive Neuroscience

? How is reinforcement learning implemented in the brain?



A post-doc (or PhD student) position is available to develop new
biologically plausible reinforcement learning theories. This project is a
collaboration between in the Vision & Cognition group (Dr. Pieter
Roelfsema) at the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience in Amsterdam and
the NeuroInformatics Lab at the *Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica in
Amsterdam* (Dr. Sander Bohte).



Our recent theoretical insights have allowed a preliminary understanding of
how animals learn to represent and memorize the key features of sensory
stimuli for the guidance of action, and how this learning can proceed by
trial-and-error (Rombouts et al. NIPS 2012, Roelfsema et al., TiCS, 2010).
The present project focuses on the learning of subroutines, which can be
incorporated into larger routines, during trial-and-error learning. We aim
to develop a biologically plausible learning rules that endow neural
networks with the possibility to learn hierarchical task structures.



The project is funded by the NWO ?Natural Artificial Intelligence? program.



The successful applicant will have a solid computational background, an
interest in cognitive neuroscience and good programming skills.



Appointment:

The position involves a temporary appointment for 2-4 years. We offer a
competitive salary with excellent secondary benefits and friendly taxes,
and also an extremely friendly, interactive and international working
environment. Amsterdam is one of Europe's most beautiful and lively cities
where almost everybody speaks and understands English, so that candidates
need not be afraid of the language barrier.



To apply, please send application letter, CV and two letters of
recommendation to:



Tini Eikelboom

The Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience

Meibergdreef 47

1105 BA Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Telephone: +31-20-5664587

E-mail: t.eikelboom at nin.knaw.nl




-- 
=============================
Dr Sander M. Bohte
CWI Life Sciences
NeuroInformatics Lab
http://www.cwi.nl/~sbohte
tel +31-205924074
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From risto at cs.utexas.edu  Tue Oct 14 14:04:49 2014
From: risto at cs.utexas.edu (Risto Miikkulainen)
Date: Tue, 14 Oct 2014 11:04:49 -0700
Subject: Connectionists: Research/teaching postdoc in neuroevolution,
	UT Austin
Message-ID: <m0k342le7y.fsf@localhost.i-did-not-set--mail-host-address--so-tickle-me>

A research/teaching postdoc position is available in the group of Risto
Miikkulainen at the University of Texas at Austin, starting Jan 1st,
2015. The focus is on constructing intelligent agents in virtual
environments through the evolution of neural networks. In addition to
research, the position involves teaching an established undergraduate
research projects class in this area. Please contact risto at cs.utexas.edu
for more details.

From jkrichma at uci.edu  Wed Oct 15 00:45:56 2014
From: jkrichma at uci.edu (Jeff Krichmar)
Date: Tue, 14 Oct 2014 21:45:56 -0700
Subject: Connectionists: Faculty Position in Computational Neuroscience at
	the University of California, Irvine
Message-ID: <C9DB0407-6D5F-4502-8E7F-43C8FAEED88A@uci.edu>



Dear Connectionists,

The following job position may be of interest to many of you.

**************************

University of California, Irvine
Faculty Position in Computational Neuroscience

The Department of Cognitive Sciences (www.cogsci.uci.edu) at the University of California, Irvine (UCI) invites applications for a faculty position at the Associate or Full Professor level. We are especially interested in candidates who use mathematical, computational, or robotics approaches to study the neural basis of cognition in any of these areas: (1) vision, hearing, and attention; (2) memory and decision-making; (3) learning and development; (4) language. Applicants whose research relates to human behavior are preferred.

A strong record of publications and extramural funding is essential. Exceptional candidates at the Assistant Professor level will also be considered.

The online application includes: A cover letter, CV, research and teaching statements, 3 recent publications, and contact information for 3-5 referees. Interested candidates can apply for the position at: https://recruit.ap.uci.edu/apply/JPF02452. To ensure full consideration, please complete the application by November 15, 2014.

The University of California, Irvine is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer committed to excellence through diversity. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, disability, age, protected veteran status, or other protected categories covered by the UC nondiscrimination policy.

**************************

Best regards,

Jeff Krichmar
Department of Cognitive Sciences
2328 Social & Behavioral Sciences Gateway
University of California, Irvine
Irvine, CA 92697-5100
jkrichma at uci.edu
http://www.socsci.uci.edu/~jkrichma

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From Aaron.Clauset at colorado.edu  Wed Oct 15 11:19:55 2014
From: Aaron.Clauset at colorado.edu (Aaron Clauset)
Date: Wed, 15 Oct 2014 09:19:55 -0600
Subject: Connectionists: Assistant Professor position in network science +
 machine learning at University of Colorado Boulder
In-Reply-To: <A8C8897A-9F24-49EE-AB50-C141A09A22B7@colorado.edu>
References: <mailman.43.1413304588.5757.connectionists@mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu>
 <A8C8897A-9F24-49EE-AB50-C141A09A22B7@colorado.edu>
Message-ID: <44B604F2-3A1B-4DA9-B7DC-C9D49FEDC662@colorado.edu>

The Department of Computer Science at University of Colorado Boulder is hiring this year at the Assistant Professor level. We are looking for candidates who work at the intersection of network science and machine learning, among other areas.

Advertisement is below, plus a direct link to the application site.

Application deadline is December 1, 2014.

------

> The Department of Computer Science (CS) at the University of Colorado Boulder seeks outstanding candidates for multiple tenure-track positions. The openings are targeted at the level of Assistant Professor, although exceptional candidates at higher ranks may be considered. Research areas of particular interest include secure and reliable software systems, numerical optimization and high-performance scientific computing, and network science and machine learning.
> 
> The Department?s research and education efforts interact broadly with many interdisciplinary programs and collaborators in the Boulder area, including national labs at NIST, NOAA, NREL, and NCAR, and CU-Boulder research institutes including the BioFrontiers Institute and the Institute for Cognitive Science. The Department also has extensive ties with the thriving local tech community and inhabits a desirable and picturesque location in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains.
> 
> To apply, please go to the following link: 
> https://www.jobsatcu.com/postings/89652

------

Aaron Clauset
Assistant Professor
Computer Science Department,
University of Colorado, Boulder, and
External Faculty, Santa Fe Institute
http://structureandstrangeness.com/
aaron.clauset at colorado.edu
@aaronclauset



From plaut at cmu.edu  Wed Oct 15 13:22:36 2014
From: plaut at cmu.edu (David Plaut)
Date: Wed, 15 Oct 2014 13:22:36 -0400
Subject: Connectionists: Postdoc position: Hemispheric specialization and
	high-level vision
Message-ID: <543EAD5C.9050305@cmu.edu>

*Post-doctoral Fellow: Studies of hemispheric specialization and 
high-level vision**
**Carnegie Mellon University**
*
We are looking for a highly motivated post-doctoral fellow to work on 
multiple projects involving investigations of intermediate and 
high-level vision, including studies of object/face/word recognition. 
The research will adopt psychophysical, computational and fMRI 
investigations in normal and brain-damaged humans.

Candidates should have, or be about to receive, a Ph.D. in Cognitive 
Neuroscience, Psychology, Computer Science or a related field and should 
have a record of publication. The position is funded for 2 years by a 
grant from the National Science Foundation.

The position is located at Carnegie Mellon University, under the joint 
supervision of Drs Marlene Behrmann (http://www.cnbc.cmu.edu/~behrmann/) 
and David Plaut (http://www.cnbc.cmu.edu/~plaut/).

Starting date is flexible, the position is available immediately.

Interested individuals should email a curriculum vitae, a brief 
statement of research interests, the expected date of availability and 
the names of three references to:

Marlene Behrmann (behrmann at cmu.edu) or David Plaut (plaut at cmu.edu)

-- 
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
David Plaut <plaut at cmu.edu> www.cnbc.cmu.edu/~plaut +1-412-268-5145 
-2798 fax
Professor, Dept of Psychology, Carnegie Mellon Univ. Pittsburgh PA 
15213-3890
Doubt is not a pleasant condition but certainty is an absurd 
one.  --Voltaire
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
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From michael.hirsch at tuebingen.mpg.de  Wed Oct 15 13:21:14 2014
From: michael.hirsch at tuebingen.mpg.de (Michael Hirsch)
Date: Wed, 15 Oct 2014 19:21:14 +0200
Subject: Connectionists: Machine Learning Summer School 2015
In-Reply-To: <543E9414.9080505@tuebingen.mpg.de>
References: <543E9414.9080505@tuebingen.mpg.de>
Message-ID: <543EAD0A.1000306@tuebingen.mpg.de>

==========================================================================
Dear Colleagues,

we are happy to announce the upcoming

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
                     MACHINE LEARNING SUMMER SCHOOL
at the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in T?bingen, Germany
                          13 to 24 July 2015
                  http://mlss.tuebingen.mpg.de/2015/
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Overview
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
The machine learning summer school provides graduate students and industry
professionals with an intense learning experience on the theory and
applications of modern machine learning. Over the course of two weeks,
a panel of internationally renowned experts of the field will offer
tutorials covering basic as well as advanced topics.

Confirmed Speakers and Topics
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Michael Black (MPI for Intelligent Systems) will speak on
	Learning Human Body Shape

Olivier Bousquet (Google) will speak on
	Machine Learning in Industry
	
Stephen Boyd (Stanford) will speak on
	Optimization

Tamara Broderick (MIT, ex Berkeley) will speak on
	Bayesian Nonparametrics

Rob Fergus (Facebook / NYU) will speak on
	Neural Networks

Zoubin Ghahramani (Cambridge) will speak on
	Bayesian Inference

Arthur Gretton (UCL) will speak on
	Kernels

Ralf Herbrich (Amazon) will speak on
	Machine Learning in Industry

Neil Lawrence (Sheffield) will speak on
	Gaussian Processes

Ulrike von Luxburg (University of Hamburg) will speak on
	Learning Theory

Jonas Peters (ETH Z?rich, MPI for Intelligent Systems) will speak on
	Causality

Stefan Schaal (MPI for Intelligent Systems) will speak on
	Learning Robots
	
Chris Watkins (Royal Holloway) will speak on
	Reinforcement Learning

Bernhard Sch?lkopf (MPI for Intelligent Systems) will speak on
	Causality

Philipp Hennig (MPI for Intelligent Systems) will speak on
	Probabilistic Numerical Methods

Michael Hirsch (MPI for Intelligent Systems) will speak on
	Computational Imaging


Application process
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Applications are invited from graduate students, postdoctoral researchers
and industry professionals looking to use, or already using machine
learning methods in their work. This includes researchers in applied
fields as well as students of machine learning itself. Prior experience
is not strictly required, but helpful. A small number of travel stipends
will be available.

Applicants will be asked to submit a CV, a cover letter of up to 2000
characters, and a short letter of recommendation from one referee of their
choice. We are also seeking to give participants a chance to discuss their
own work with their peers and the speakers. Each applicant is thus invited
to provide the title of a poster they would like to present at the school.

For more information visit
http://mlss.tuebingen.mpg.de/2015/application.html

Important Dates
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
* Monday 12 Jaunary 2015  	application system opens
* Thursday 12 February 2015	DEADLINE FOR APPLICATIONS
* Thursday 12 March 2015	notification of acceptance

The school takes place from

	Monday 13 July to Friday 24 July 2015

Organizers
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Michael Hirsch              Philipp Hennig              Bernhard Sch?lkopf

inquiries should be directed to michael.hirsch at tuebingen.mpg.de

==========================================================================


From nztglzcch at gmail.com  Wed Oct 15 05:32:15 2014
From: nztglzcch at gmail.com (Enzo Tagliazucchi)
Date: Wed, 15 Oct 2014 11:32:15 +0200
Subject: Connectionists: Job Offer - Computer Vision Engineer for Football
	Analytics
Message-ID: <CACm=Jr=OAf-X9WAyd1QjZoHbscZYk6A7cPcXL1AnnttRbov7Cw@mail.gmail.com>

Dear Connectionists,

I forward a job offer for a position as full-time Computer Vision Engineer
@ Metrica Sports (located in Amsterdam, Netherlands).

You can find the job description attached, and also here:
http://metrica-sports.com/en/computer-vision-engineer-full-time-position-in-amsterdam/

The position involves identification and tracking of objects (i.e. ball,
players, referee) from camera recordings as well as prototyping analytics
and product development.

Thanks,

Enzo
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From geazzo at gmail.com  Wed Oct 15 04:15:12 2014
From: geazzo at gmail.com (George Azzopardi)
Date: Wed, 15 Oct 2014 10:15:12 +0200
Subject: Connectionists: Conference: Computer Analysis of Images and
 Patterns (CAIP) 2015 - Paper submission is now open
Message-ID: <CAAvNAFAx-+AUDABPeKB2gJV1cuN4wu75UJDTc-EMyv76M5XF+w@mail.gmail.com>

Dear all,

The paper submission for the conference Computer Analysis of Images and
Patterns CAIP 2015 (http://caip.eu.org/caip2015/) is open. The submission
deadline is Feb 28, 2015. If you submit earlier we will send you the
reviews and the decision two months after you submit the paper.

Papers should be formatted using the Springer LNCS style (
http://www.springer.com/computer/lncs?SGWID=0-164-6-793341-0), and they
should have no more than 8 pages including all references, tables and
figures.

CAIP 2015 will be held in Valletta (Malta), 2-4 September. It is the
sixteenth in the CAIP series (http://caip.eu.org/archive.html) of biennial
international conferences devoted to all aspects of computer vision, image
analysis and processing, pattern recognition, and related fields.

The conference venue is in a historical place: Sacra Infermeria, the former
hospital of the knights of St. John. The conference includes a rich social
program: a welcome reception, a harbour cruise, guided tour of Mdina, a
conference banquet, a closing rejoin, a ticket for the Knights Hospitallers
Museum, and a guided tour of Valletta.


Sincerely yours,

George Azzopardi
Nicolai Petkov
General co-chairs of CAIP?2015
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From ted.carnevale at yale.edu  Wed Oct 15 16:52:45 2014
From: ted.carnevale at yale.edu (Ted Carnevale)
Date: Wed, 15 Oct 2014 16:52:45 -0400
Subject: Connectionists: 2014 SFN Mtg Workshop: Portal for parallel
	simulations
Message-ID: <543EDE9D.5090105@yale.edu>

Space is still available for the workshop
"Using the Neuroscience Gateway Portal for Parallel Simulations"
which will be held from 9 AM to Noon on Saturday, November 15, 2014,
at a location near the convention center in downtown Washington DC.

The Portal is an NSF-supported resource that provides computational
neuroscientists free and convenient access to parallel supercomputers
for large modeling projects.  Speakers will include
A. Majumdar, S. Sivagnanam, Upi Bhalla, and Ruben Tikidzhi-Khamburyan.

Only a few seats remain available, and the registration deadline
is Friday, October 31, so you'll have to act quickly.  For more
information, see

http://www.neuron.yale.edu/neuron/static/courses/nsg2014/nsg2014.html

--Ted

From subutai at numenta.org  Wed Oct 15 21:07:18 2014
From: subutai at numenta.org (Subutai Ahmad)
Date: Wed, 15 Oct 2014 18:07:18 -0700
Subject: Connectionists: Postdoctoral position in computational neuroscience
	at Numenta
Message-ID: <CA+ZaTijc5er49WkmWFoEETffjU48ZCMz6UwS6T--GMFizRGKDQ@mail.gmail.com>

POSTDOCTORAL POSITION IN THEORETICAL NEUROSCIENCE
AND CORTICAL MODELING
Numenta, Inc.

ABOUT NUMENTA

Numenta  was founded in 2005 to be a catalyst in the emerging field of
machine intelligence. Its biologically inspired technology is based on a
detailed and evolving theory of the neocortex first described in co-founder
Jeff Hawkins? book, On Intelligence. The current technology can be applied
to anomaly detection in servers and applications, human behavior, and
geo-spatial tracking data.  Numenta is focused on understanding the
computational principles behind the cortex in detail, and implementing
practical systems that operate on those principles.   For more details,
please see www.numenta.com

JOB DESCRIPTION

Numenta has an immediate opening for a Postdoctoral Researcher.  This
individual will be a key member of our research group. He or she will work
on significant extensions of Hierarchical Temporal Memory (HTM) theory and
its implementations.  Our current research efforts involve understanding
cortical sensorimotor inference and control, and the role of
thalamocortical pathways.   Our models aim to build stable invariant
representations of complex environments through active exploration, and are
independent of sensory modality.  Our problem domains span the range from
artificial constrained worlds all the way to commercially driven
applications.

We seek researchers who passionately desire to build intelligent machines
and impact the next generation of computing.  The position carries full
benefits and is for a one year term. An extension or a conversion to
permanent employment is possible.  We are located in Silicon Valley
(Redwood City, CA).

RESPONSIBILITIES

- Implement extensions to HTM theory
- Test algorithms on a variety of problems and datasets
- Characterize algorithm performance and suggest improvements
- Write and publish papers in leading conferences and journals
- Attend conferences and stay up to date with the latest relevant research
- Be an active member of the NuPIC community (NuPIC is Numenta's open
source HTM software)
- Provide technical leadership to the rest of the organization

DESIRED QUALIFICATIONS

- Strong background in theoretical or computational neuroscience
- Strong background in machine learning or machine intelligence
- Established track record of leading edge research in computational
neuroscience
- Established track record of publications in leading peer reviewed
conferences and journals
- Excellent programming skills (Python or C++ preferred)
- Hands on experience implementing large-scale learning algorithms or
computational models
- Preference given to candidates who have a deep understanding of HTM
algorithms, cortical principles, and/or a working knowledge of NuPIC
- Excellent verbal and written communication skills
- Applicants should have, or expect to receive soon, a PhD (or have
equivalent research experience) in computational neuroscience, machine
learning, cognitive modeling, or a related discipline

HOW TO APPLY

Qualified applicants should send the following to postdoc at numenta.com:
- Cover letter describing their specific interest in Numenta.  Please
include any relevant experience with HTM algorithms or NuPIC.
- Resume or CV, including list of relevant courses and published papers.

Numenta is an equal opportunity employer supporting workforce diversity.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Numenta is unable to consider postdoc applications from
international researchers unless they are US Citizens, hold a Green Card,
or are currently enrolled in a US University and eligible for OPT.
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From mlblefari at gmail.com  Thu Oct 16 12:34:16 2014
From: mlblefari at gmail.com (Maria Laura Blefari)
Date: Thu, 16 Oct 2014 18:34:16 +0200
Subject: Connectionists: rtFIN Abstract Submission Deadline Extended to Nov
	10th
Message-ID: <8B10AC4E-C2AC-4DCB-85AA-FA5F0BFF2512@gmail.com>

Dear all,

The deadline for abstract submission has been extended to Nov. 10th: http://reg.conferences.dce.ufl.edu/rtFIN

We hope this extra time allows you to perfect those abstracts!

Looking forward to seeing you all in Gainesville in February.

Best regards, your co-organizers,

Ranganatha Sitaram, University of Florida
Maria Laura Blefari, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne
Sven Haller, University of Geneva
Jarrod Lewis-Peacock, University of Texas at Austin
Frank Scharnowski, University of Geneva
Luke Stoeckel, Harvard University / National Institutes of Health
James Sulzer, University of Texas at Austin
Nikolaus Weiskopf, University College London 



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From jeanette at nada.kth.se  Thu Oct 16 13:23:55 2014
From: jeanette at nada.kth.se (jeanette at nada.kth.se)
Date: Thu, 16 Oct 2014 19:23:55 +0200
Subject: Connectionists: Postdoc position - kinetic modeling of receptor
 induced cascades underlying plasticity
Message-ID: <28c58f6e6554ff19760f7fdce055e4bb.squirrel@webmail.csc.kth.se>

Dept. Neurosci, Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, currently has an opening
for a postdoctoral positions in computational neuroscience / systems
biology. This project is integrated in ongoing collaborations between the
Karolinska Institute, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, as well as with
international partners in Europe and USA.

The position is focused on subcellular signaling pathways involved in
synaptic plasticity, and modeling of those using a systems biology
approach. The project aims specifically at understanding the subcellular
mechanisms underlying reward dependent learning and action selection in
the cortex - basal ganglia system. The ideal candidate has a PhD in a
field such as computational biology, neuroscience or systems biology, as
well as has acquired computer science and programming skills.

Contacts:
Prof. Jeanette Hellgren Kotaleski
email: jeanette at csc.kth.se or jeanette.hellgren at ki.se

More info on the position and how to apply at
https://ki.mynetworkglobal.com/en/what:job/jobID:43211/where:/










From a.silver at ucl.ac.uk  Fri Oct 17 11:25:25 2014
From: a.silver at ucl.ac.uk (Silver, Angus)
Date: Fri, 17 Oct 2014 15:25:25 +0000
Subject: Connectionists: Postdoctoral position in computational neuroscience
	at UCL
In-Reply-To: <1413559415202.18592@ucl.ac.uk>
References: <1413559415202.18592@ucl.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <1413559533568.88763@ucl.ac.uk>

A postdoctoral position in computational neuroscience is available in the Silver Lab at UCL.


This research position will involve studying early stage neural coding in the cerebellar cortex in the Research Department of Neuroscience, Physiology and Pharmacology at UCL. The research project will build on our recent work (Billings et al., Neuron 2014) by exploring how synaptic properties, inhibition and heterogeneity contribute to sparse encoding and pattern separation. The candidate will be expected to develop and analyse models of spiking neuronal networks with information theoretic and machine learning approaches.


The successful candidate will have excellent mathematical skills and a PhD in theoretical neuroscience or a related field. They will also have experience of information theory and machine learning as well as the development and management of large scale network simulations. Proficiency in computer programming in at least one of the following languages: Python, Java, C is essential. Appointments will be made on the Research salary scale according to experience.


For further details about the vacancy and how to apply online please go to http://www.ucl.ac.uk/hr/jobs/ and search on Reference Number 1436983


Closing Date: 24th October 2014



If you have any queries regarding the vacancy, please contact me (Angus Silver) at a.silver at ucl.ac.uk


Best wishes


Angus Silver



Professor of Neuroscience and Wellcome Trust Principal Research Fellow
Department of Neuroscience, Physiology and Pharmacology
University College London
Gower Street
London WC1E 6BT
Tel : 020 7679 7830
www.ucl.ac.uk/silverlab/



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From mpavone at dmi.unict.it  Fri Oct 17 06:47:24 2014
From: mpavone at dmi.unict.it (Mario Pavone)
Date: Fri, 17 Oct 2014 12:47:24 +0200
Subject: Connectionists: 1st announcement: Synthetic and Systems Biology
 Summer School: Biology meets Engineering and Computer Science,
 Taormina - Sicily, Italy July 5-9, 2015
Message-ID: <20141017124724.Horde.HFnaV_ph4B9UQPO8KonSyqA@mbox.dmi.unict.it>


______________________________________________________
Call for Participation (apologies for multiple copies)
______________________________________________________

Synthetic and Systems Biology Summer School: Biology meets Engineering  
and Computer Science - 2nd Edition
Taormina - Sicily, Italy, July 5-9, 2015

http://www.taosciences.it/ssbss2015/
ssbss.school at gmail.com


** Deadlines **
Student Application: February 15, 2015
Oral/Poster Submission: February 15, 2015

The Synthetic and Systems Biology Summer School (SSBSS) is a  
full-immersion course on cutting-edge advances in systems and  
synthetic biology with lectures delivered by world-renowned experts.  
The school provides a stimulating environment for doctoral students,  
early career researches and industry leaders. Participants will also  
have the chance to present their results (Oral presentations or  
Posters) and to interact with their peers.

** Topics **
Genetic Engineering
Metabolic Engineering
Genome Design
Reading and Writing Genomes
Pathway Design
Synthetic Circuits and Cells
Biological CAD
Industrial Applications
Artificial Tissues and Organs
Genomically recoded Organisms
Biological Design Automation

** List of Speakers **
* Adam Arkin, University of California Berkeley, USA
* Jef Boeke, New York University, USA
* Angela DePace, Harvard University, USA
* Forbes Dewey, MIT, USA
* Paul Freemont, Imperial College London, UK
* Karmella Haynes, Arizona State University, USA
* Richard Kitney, Imperial College London, UK
* Timothy Lu, MIT, USA
* Philip Maini, Oxford University, UK
* Steve Oliver, Cambridge University, UK
* Greg Stephanopoulos, MIT, USA - TBC
* Nicola Zamboni, ETH, Switzerland

Other speakers will be announced soon.


** Industrial Panel **
* Zach Serber, Zymergen, Inc. USA

More speakers will be announced soon!


School Directors
Jef D. Boeke, New York University, USA
Giuseppe Nicosia, University of Catania, Italy
Mario Pavone, University of Catania, Italy
Giovanni Stracquadanio, University of Oxford, UK


** Short Talk and Poster Submission **
Students may submit a research abstract for presentation. School  
directors will review the abstracts and will recommend for poster or  
short-oral presentation. Abstract should be submitted by February 15,  
2015. The abstracts will be published on the electronic hands-out  
material of the summer school.

http://www.taosciences.it/ssbss2015/index.html#applicationForm

http://www.taosciences.it/ssbss2015/
ssbss.school at gmail.com


Apologies for multiple copies. Please forward to anybody who might be  
interested.

To unsubscribe from this list, send a mail message (leaving the  
subject line blank) to cfp.ssbss at dmi.unict.it. The body of your  
message should contain the following one line: "unsubscribe your-email"


-- 
Dr. Mario Pavone (PhD)
Assistant Professor
Department of Mathematics and Computer Science
University of Catania
V.le A. Doria 6 - 95125 Catania, Italy
tel: 0039 095 7383038
fax: 0039 095 330094
Email: mpavone at dmi.unict.it
http://www.dmi.unict.it/mpavone/
===========================================================================
International Synthetic & Systems Biology Summer School
* Biology meets Engineering and Computer Science *
July 5-9, 2015 - Taormina, Italy
http://www.taosciences.it/ssbss2015/
===========================================================================
International Workshop on Artificial Immune Systems
* Systems & Synthetic Immunology, Computational Immunology,
         Immune-Inspired Engineering *
June 28-29, 2015 - Taormina, Italy
http://www.dmi.unict.it/ais2015/
===========================================================================
12th European Conference on Artificial Life - ECAL 2013
September 2-6, 2013 - Taormina, Italy
http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/advances-artificial-life-ecal-2013
===========================================================================




From k.hobson at imperial.ac.uk  Fri Oct 17 10:47:31 2014
From: k.hobson at imperial.ac.uk (Hobson, Kate)
Date: Fri, 17 Oct 2014 14:47:31 +0000
Subject: Connectionists: Faculty positions at Imperial College London
In-Reply-To: <2402E86631C41242875786E5D3CD98B44AF1F334@icexch-m6.ic.ac.uk>
References: <2402E86631C41242875786E5D3CD98B44AF1E081@icexch-m6.ic.ac.uk>
 <2402E86631C41242875786E5D3CD98B44AF1F334@icexch-m6.ic.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <2402E86631C41242875786E5D3CD98B44AF1F3B5@icexch-m6.ic.ac.uk>

Dear Colleague,

There are a number of academic positions opening in the Department of Bioengineering at Imperial College London (see below for an extract from, and link to, the departmental ad).

Although the positions are general (within Bioengineering), we would like to encourage applications within the area of Neurotechnology. Of particular interest are individuals with a track record in translational neurotechnology research. Kickstarted by the award of a ?10M EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Neurotechnology for Life and Health, we have recently established a new cross-disciplinary Centre for Neurotechnology integrating research across the Faculties of Engineering, Life Sciences and Medicine. The Centre will have approximately 70 4-year PhD studentships on offer over the next 5 years, making it an extremely attractive place to launch a research career in Neurotechnology (see http://www.imperial.ac.uk/neurotechnology).

--

Due to rapid growth and the strategic importance of the discipline of bioengineering at Imperial College London, the Department of Bioengineering wishes to appoint up to four individuals at Lecturer (equivalent to Assistant Professor) or Senior Lecturer (equivalent to Associate Professor) grade. This is an open call in which we are looking for outstanding candidates in any field of Bioengineering.

Candidates should have an advanced degree (PhD or equivalent) in an appropriate science or engineering discipline and will have demonstrated an ability to generate and execute research at an internationally-leading level. Evidence of teaching at all levels is also required.

A link to the job ad can be found at http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/employment ; select "job search" and enter keyword EN20140342FH.  Closing date 4th December 2014.

Kate Hobson | Centre Administrator
Centre for Neurotechnology | Imperial College London



From martin.pyka at gmail.com  Fri Oct 17 02:17:50 2014
From: martin.pyka at gmail.com (Martin Pyka)
Date: Thu, 16 Oct 2014 23:17:50 -0700
Subject: Connectionists: Product advertisement: rat hippocampus for your desk
Message-ID: <5440B48E.6060201@gmail.com>

Hi everybody,

not sure, whether this list accepts links to commercial products. If 
this is not accepted but passes the moderator of the list I am sorry for 
this disturbance.

I just would like to let you know that I created a 3d model of the rat 
hippocampus in 10:1 scaling, which you can order at Shapeways:

https://www.shapeways.com/model/1809522/hippocampus-dentate-gyrus-ca3-ca2-ca1.html

I think this model helps to understand how the anatomy of the pyramidal 
and granule cell layers of the hippocampus look like in 3d.

Best,
Martin


From sameer at cs.umass.edu  Fri Oct 17 20:49:03 2014
From: sameer at cs.umass.edu (Sameer Singh)
Date: Fri, 17 Oct 2014 17:49:03 -0700
Subject: Connectionists: DEADLINE Extended! NIPS Workshop on AKBC (Automated
	Knowledge Base Construction)
Message-ID: <CALYFm8PFMCs5sv1UygzOJwz5eH6+t5YDOOCmf4Puxujzk44AHg@mail.gmail.com>

*** UPDATE: Deadline moved to 24th of October! ***


AKBC 2014 Call for Papers
=======================
4th Workshop on Automated Knowledge Base Construction (AKBC) at NIPS 2014
=======================
December 13, 2014, Montreal, Canada
http://www.akbc.ws


Knowledge Base Construction
=======================
The advances in information extraction, machine learning, and natural
language processing have led to the creation of large knowledge bases (KBs)
from Web sources. Notable endeavors in this direction include
Wikipedia-based approaches (such as YAGO, DBpedia, and Freebase), systems
that extract from the entire Web (such as NELL, Knowledge Vault, and
PROSPERA) or from specific domains (such as Rexa), and open information
extraction approaches (TextRunner, PRISMATIC). This trend has led to new
applications that make use of semantics. Most prominently, all major search
engine providers (Yahoo!, Microsoft Bing, and Google) nowadays experiment
with semantic tools. The Semantic Web, too, benefits from the new
approaches.

With this year?s workshop, we would like to resume the positive experiences
from three previous workshops: AKBC-2010
(http://akbc.xrce.xerox.com/), AKBC-WEKEX-2012
(http://akbcwekex2012.wordpress.com/), and AKBC 2013 (http://akbc.ws/2013).
The AKBC-2014 workshop will serve as a forum for researchers working in the
area of automated knowledge harvesting from text. By having invited talks
by leading researchers from industry, academia, and the government, and by
focusing particularly on vision papers, we aim to provide a vivid forum of
discussion about the field of automated knowledge base construction.

Call For Papers
=======================
We welcome papers documenting previously unpublished research; ongoing and
exciting preliminary work is perfectly fine. We are particularly interested
in visionary paper submissions. We aim for papers that express intriguing
and promising ideas -- focusing less on where science is today and more on
where it should go tomorrow.

Topic of interest include, but are not limited to:
* information integration; schema alignment; ontology alignment; ontology
construction
* monolingual alignment, alignment between knowledge bases and text
* joint inference between text interpretation and knowledge base
* pattern and semantic analysis of natural language, reading the web,
learning by reading
* scalable computation; distributed computation; probabilistic databases
* information retrieval; search on mixtures of structured and unstructured
data
* machine learning; unsupervised, lightly-supervised and
distantly-supervised learning; learning from naturally-available data
* human-computer collaboration in KB construction; automated population of
wikis
* dynamic data, online/on-the-fly adaptation of knowledge
* inference; scalable approximate inference
* languages, toolkits and systems for automated knowledge base construction
* demonstrations of existing automatically-built knowledge bases

Invited Talks
=======================
* William Cohen, CMU
* Oren Etzioni, Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence
* Ramanathan Guha, Google
* Andrew McCallum, UMass Amherst
* Tom Mitchell, CMU
* Kevin Murphy, Google Research
* Hoifung Poon, Microsoft Research
* Chris Re, Stanford University
* Amarnag Subramanya, Google Research
* Jason Weston, Facebook Research

Submission
=======================
We welcome ongoing and exciting preliminary work. We are particularly
interested in visionary paper submissions. We aim for papers that express
intriguing and promising ideas ? focusing less on where science is today
and more on where it should go tomorrow.

Please format your papers using the standard NIPS Style files, and restrict
it to 4 pages (excluding references). Since the reviewing will not be
double blind, please include author information and the \nipsfinalcopy flag.

Style files: http://nips.cc/Conferences/2014/PaperInformation/StyleFiles
Submission site: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=akbc2014

Organizers
=======================
* Sebastian Riedel, University College London, UK
* Sameer Singh, University of Washington, USA
* Fabian M. Suchanek, T?l?com ParisTech University, France
* Partha Pratim Talukdar, Indian Institute of Science, India
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From gwtaylor at uoguelph.ca  Sat Oct 18 12:36:43 2014
From: gwtaylor at uoguelph.ca (Graham Taylor)
Date: Sat, 18 Oct 2014 12:36:43 -0400
Subject: Connectionists: PhD position in Deep Learning/Representation
	Learning, University of Guelph
In-Reply-To: <CANf8DRT1YnVF3FWCq=4+48dKpkfwrpqmKf-usdCe+MmXe0BM+w@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CANf8DRT1YnVF3FWCq=4+48dKpkfwrpqmKf-usdCe+MmXe0BM+w@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <CANf8DRRNV4EtS1T-v8aZt4QbbBHFemqMJxqYy5jbZkGsNd3MXg@mail.gmail.com>

I have a fully-funded PhD position open in Deep Learning and Representation
Learning to start no later than January 2015. The position is partially
funded by industry, so the project will involve some time on campus at the
University of Guelph and some time at a startup in downtown Toronto
(scheduling is flexible). The project involves developing new
representation learning methods for unstructured, event-based time series.

Ideal candidates will have a MSc or equivalent degree in Computer Science,
Physics, Mathematics, or in a related area, and have a strong interest and
experience in machine learning, statistics and/or scientific computing.

Guelph is a vibrant university community 28 kilometres east of Waterloo and
100 kilometres west of downtown Toronto, with commuter train access to
both. It is consistently rated as one of Canada's best places to live.

The position is open to Canadian and foreign students. To apply, please
send the following documents in a single pdf-file to my attention (email
address available on my webpage).

(1) Your Curriculum Vitae
(2) A brief statement of relevant research interests and/or experience
(preferably one page, at most two)
(3) Transcripts for previous degrees if available
(4) Names of two or three referees who are able to comment on the
applicant's qualifications. I will contact references of short-listed
candidates only.

Only short-listed candidates will be contacted.

-- 
Graham Taylor
Assistant Professor
School of Engineering, University of Guelph
http://www.uoguelph.ca/~gwtaylor
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From giacomo.cabri at unimore.it  Sat Oct 18 10:02:08 2014
From: giacomo.cabri at unimore.it (Giacomo Cabri)
Date: Sat, 18 Oct 2014 16:02:08 +0200
Subject: Connectionists: CfP: COORDINATION 2015
Message-ID: <544272E0.1010604@unimore.it>

========================================================================
IMPORTANT NOTE: High-quality Coordination-2015 papers will be invited
to submit an extended version for a 'fast-track' to the ACM Transactions
on Autonomous and Adaptive Systems (ACM-TAAS).
========================================================================


========================= Call for Papers =============================

                          COORDINATION 2015

17th IFIP International Conference on Coordination Models and Languages
                  A DisCoTec Member Conference

                  http://discotec2015.inria.fr/

                 June 2-4, 2015, Grenoble, France

=======================================================================

----------------
Important dates:

Abstract Submission: 		January 16, 2015 (24:00 UTC-11)
Paper Submission: 		January 23, 2015 (24:00 UTC-11)
Author Notification: 		March 6, 2015
Camera ready copy: 		March 27, 2015
Early registration: 		May 5, 2015
Conferences and workshops: 	June 2-5, 2015

The time of all deadlines is 24:00 SST (UTC-11, Samoa Standard Time).
The submission deadlines are **strict**, there will be no extension.

------
Scope:

COORDINATION 2015 is the premier forum for publishing research results and experience reports on software technologies for collaboration and coordination in concurrent, distributed, and complex systems. The key focus of the conference is the quest for high-level abstractions that can capture interaction patterns and mechanisms occurring at all levels of the software architecture, up to the end-user domain. COORDINATION 2015 seeks high-quality contributions on the usage, study, formal analysis, design, and implementation of languages, models, and techniques for coordination in distributed, concurrent, pervasive, and multicore software systems. This edition also additionally seeks to adapt and integrate traditional COORDINATION techniques in the realm of multi-agent systems (MAS), which typically involve more corse-grained (cognitive, intelligent, goal-oriented) components.


------------------------
Main topics of interest:

* Programming abstractions and languages
* Coordination models and paradigms
* Specification and verification
* Foundations and types
* Distributed middleware architectures
* Multicore programming
* Coordinated distributed applications
* Bio-inspired computing models
* Coordination mechanisms for self-adaptation and self-organisation
* Teamwork and distributed problem solving
* Collective intelligence
* Auction and Negotiation
* Argumentation, trust, norms and reputation
* Coordination mechanisms for rational agents
* Coordination middleware for mobile agents
* Coordination of federated MASs


---------------------------
Submission and publication:

Contributions must be written in English and report on original, unpublished work not submitted for publication elsewhere (cf. IFIP's codes of conduct). The submissions must not exceed the page number limit (see below), including figures and references, prepared using Springer's LNCS style. Submissions not adhering to the above specified constraints may be rejected without review.
Papers should be submitted as PDF or PS via EasyChair:
  https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=coordination2015.
  
We solicit three kinds of submissions:

*Full papers* (up to 16 pages): Describing thorough and complete research results and experience reports.

*Short papers* (up to 8 pages): Describing research results that are not fully developed, or even manifestos, calls to action, personal views on the past of Coordination research, on the current state of the art, or on prospects for the years to come.

*Posters* (up to 3 pages): Summarising research projects worth being advertised and discussed in a lively fashion at the conference.

The conference proceedings, formed by accepted submissions of all three kinds above, will be published by Springer in the LNCS Series.

Post-proceedings publication:

Relevant, high-quality Coordination-2015 papers will be invited for 'fast-track submissions' to the ACM Transactions on Autonomous and Adaptive Systems (ACM-TAAS).


---------------
Invited Speaker

Alois Ferscha (Johannes Kepler Universit?t Linz, Austria)


-----------
Oranization

Program Chairs

Tom Holvoet (KU Leuven, Belgium)
Mirko Viroli (University of Bologna, Italy)

Publication Chair

Giacomo Cabri (University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Italy)


Programme Committee

Gul Agha (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA)
Farhad Arbab (CWI and Leiden University, The Netherlands)
Jacob Beal (Raytheon BBN Technologies, USA)
Olivier Boissier (Ecole Nationale Sup?rieure des Mines of Saint-Etienne, France)
Ferruccio Damiani (Uniersit? di Torino, Italy)
Wolfgang De Meuter (Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium)
Rocco De Nicola (IMT - Institute for Advanced Studies, Italy)
Ed Durfee (University of Michigan, USA)
Schahram Dustdar (Vienna University of Technology, Austria)
Gianluigi Ferrari (University of Pisa, Italy)
Jos? Luiz Fiadeiro (Royal Holloway University of London, UK)
Val?rie Issarny (Inria, France)
Christine Julien (The University of Texas at Austin, USA)
Sarit Kraus (Bar-Ilan University, Israel)
Eva Kuhn (TU Wien, Austria)
Marino Miculan (Universit? di Udine, Italy)
Hanne Riis Nielson (Technical University of Denmark, Denmark)
Andrea Omicini (University of Bologna, Italy)
Sascha Ossowski (University Rey Juan Carlos, Spain)
Paolo Petta (OFAI - Austria Research Institute for Artificial Intelligence, Austria)
Rosario Pugliese (Universit? degli Studi di Firenze, Italy)
Alessandro Ricci (Uniervsit? di Bologna, Italy)
Juan Antonio Rodriguez Aguilar (IIIA-CSIC, Barcelona)
Carles Sierra (IIIA-CSIC, Barcelona)
Marjan Sirjani (Reykjavik University, Iceland)
Carolyn Talcott (SRI International, California, USA)
Emilio Tuosto (University of Leicester, UK)
Herbert Wiklicky (Imperial College London, UK)
Martin Wirsing (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universit?t M?nchen, Germany)
Franco Zambonelli (Universit? di Modena e Reggio Emilia, Italy)


Steering Committee

Gul Agha (University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, USA)
Farhad Arbab (CWI and Leiden University, The Netherlands) (Chair)
Dave Clarke (Uppsala University, Sweden)
Tom Holvoet (KU Leuven, Belgium)
Jean-Marie Jacquet (University of Namur, Belgium)
Christine Julien (The University of Texas at Austin, USA)
Eva K?hn (Vienna University of Technology, Austria)
Wolfgang De Meuter (Vrije Universiteit Brussels, Belgium)
Rocco De Nicola (IMT - Institute for Advanced Studies Lucca, Italy)
Rosario Pugliese (Universit? di Firenze, Italy)
Marjan Sirjani (Reykjavik University, Iceland)
Carolyn Talcott (SRI International, California, USA)
Vasco T. Vasconcelos (University of Lisbon, Portugal)
Gianluigi Zavattaro (University of Bologna, Italy)
Mirko Viroli (University of Bologna, Italy)

-- 

|----------------------------------------------------|
| Prof. Giacomo Cabri - Ph.D., Associate Professor
| Dip. di Scienze Fisiche, Informatiche e Matematiche
| Universita' di Modena e Reggio Emilia - Italia
| e-mail giacomo.cabri at unimore.it
| tel. +39-059-2058320  fax +39-059-2055216
|----------------------------------------------------|


From m.a.wiering at rug.nl  Sun Oct 19 12:28:08 2014
From: m.a.wiering at rug.nl (M.A.Wiering)
Date: Sun, 19 Oct 2014 18:28:08 +0200
Subject: Connectionists: CFP: "Emerging techniques and applications in
 Multi-objective Reinforcement Learning" at ESANN-2015 in Bruges, Beligum
In-Reply-To: <76b0f3b94e02ea.5443e68b@rug.nl>
References: <7650c3934e3a02.5443e4e1@rug.nl>
 <7650c5894e079d.5443e51e@rug.nl> <7650a5b44e4b00.5443e55a@rug.nl>
 <7650c5f14e4860.5443e596@rug.nl> <75e0964e4e52ca.5443e5d3@rug.nl>
 <76b0ce5e4e42dc.5443e610@rug.nl> <771092434e4ce0.5443e64c@rug.nl>
 <76b0f3b94e02ea.5443e68b@rug.nl>
Message-ID: <7520ab3e4e15ee.544402b8@rug.nl>






Apologies for any cross-postings:

Emerging techniques and applications in Multi-Objective Reinforcement Learning (MORL)

Direct links:

https://www.elen.ucl.ac.be/esann/

https://ai.vub.ac.be/ESANN_2015_MORL_special_session

Multi-objective optimization (MOO) and Reinforcement Learning (RL) are two well-established research fields in the area of learning, optimization, and control. RL addresses sequential decision making problems in initially unknown stochastic environments, involving stochastic policies and unknown temporal delays between actions and observable effects. Multi-objective optimization (MOO), which is a sub-area of multi-criteria decision making (MCDM), considers the optimization of more than one objective simultaneously and a decision maker, i.e. an algorithm or a technique, decides either which solutions are important for the user or when to present these solutions to the user for further consideration. Currently, MOO algorithms are seldomly used for stochastic optimization, which makes it an unexplored but promising research area.

State of the art

Examples of algorithms that combine the two techniques MOO and RL are:

Multi-objective reinforcement learning is an?extension of RL to multi-criteria stochastic rewards (also called utilities in decision theory). Techniques from multi-objective evolutionary computation have been used for multi-objective RL in order to improve the exploration-exploitation tradeoff. The resulting algorithms are hybrids between MCDM and stochastic optimization. The RL algorithms are enriched with the intuition and efficiency of MOO in handing multi-objective problems.

Preference based reinforcement learning?combines reinforcement learning and preference learning that extend RL with qualitative reward vectors, e.g. ranking functions, that can be directly used by the user. Like MORL algorithms, RL is extended with new order relationships to order the policies.

Some multi-objective evolutionary algorithms use also method inspired by reinforcement learning to cope with noisy and uncertain environments.




Aim and scope

The main goal of this special session is to solicit research and potential synergies between multi-objective optimization, evolutionary computation and reinforcement learning. We encourage submissions describing applications of MOO for agents acting in difficult environments that are possibly dynamic, uncertain and partially observable, e.g. in games, multi-agent applications such as scheduling, and other real-world applications.




Topics of interests

	Novel frameworks combining both MOO and RL
	Multi-objective optimization algorithms such as meta-heuristics and evolutionary algorithms for dynamic and uncertain environments
	Theoretical results on learnability in multi-objective dynamic and uncertain environments
	On-line self-adapting systems or automatic configuration systems
	Solving multi-objective sequential decision making problems with RL
	Real-world multi-objective applications in engineering, business, computer science, biological sciences, scientific computation


Organizers

Madalina M. Drugan (mdrugan at vub.ac.be),?Bernard Manderick (Bernard.Manderick at vub.ac.be) and

Ann Nowe (anowe at vub.ac.be), Artificial Intelligence Lab, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Pleinlaan 2, 1050, Brussels, Belgium




Dates

Submission of papers:?21 November 2014

Notification of acceptance: 31 January 2015

ESANN conference:2 2 - 24 April 2015 in Bruges, Belgium




Author guidelines

	Papers must not exceed 6 pages, including figures and references.
	More information?https://www.elen.ucl.ac.be/esann/index.php?pg=guidelines
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From boris.gutkin at ens.fr  Mon Oct 20 06:48:18 2014
From: boris.gutkin at ens.fr (Boris)
Date: Mon, 20 Oct 2014 12:48:18 +0200
Subject: Connectionists: Postdoctoral Position in Computational Neuroscience
	of Alcohol Addiction
Message-ID: <F4E54284-CEC5-48EC-B42D-CDFFE019F502@ens.fr>

A postdoctoral position is available for a USA-France collaborative project on the influence of alcohol on the central dopamine system. The project combines computational and experimental techniques. The post-doc will design and analyze a biophysical computational models of the brain circuitry affected by alcohol. The position is available immediately for up to three years. The position is based at the Group for Neural Theory, Ecole Normale Superieure Paris France, with extensive research visits between two institutions: Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis, Indiana, USA, and ?cole Normale Sup?rieure, Paris, France. In Paris, he or she will work with Prof. Gutkin (Group of Neural Theory, ENS) and Prof. Mamelli (Institut du Fer a Moulin, INSERM) on circuit level models. In Indianapolis, the post-doc will work with Prof. Kuznetsov (Mathematics Dept.) and Prof. Lapish (Psychology Dept.) on cellular level models. Both locations provide an excellent environment for collaborative research in quantitative biosciences. Ample travel support, competitive salary and full social coverage is offered.

 

Qualifications:  Applicants should have a Ph.D. in Computational Neuroscience, Mathematics, Physics, or a quantitative field, a background in dynamical systems, programming experience and working knowledge in Computational Neuroscience.

 

How to Apply:  Send your CV, list of publications, research statement, and contact information for three references to Prof. Boris Gutkin via e-mail: boris.gutkin at ens.fr. 


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From c.clopath at imperial.ac.uk  Mon Oct 20 13:13:11 2014
From: c.clopath at imperial.ac.uk (Claudia Clopath)
Date: Mon, 20 Oct 2014 18:13:11 +0100
Subject: Connectionists: PhD opportunities in Computational Neuroscience.
Message-ID: <CALqvUjuy-75wb4Mw4N5M9DJ-ZQ3THSsr0rgAf=9MwBiORQbqtA@mail.gmail.com>

Computational Neuroscience Laboratory
Headed by Dr. Claudia *Clopath*
Department of Bioengineering
Imperial College London

-----------------Requirements:-----------------
The Computational Neuroscience Laboratory, headed by Dr. Claudia Clopath,
is looking for a talented PhD student, interested in working in the field
of computational neuroscience, specifically addressing questions of *learning
and memory*. The perfect candidate has a strong mathematical, physical or
engineering background (or equivalent), and a keen interest in biological
and neural systems. Demonstrated programming skills are a plus. Candidates
should be EU nationals.

-----------------Research topic:-----------------
Learning and memory are among the most fascinating topic of neuroscience,
yet our understanding of it is only at the beginning. Learning is thought
to change the connections between the neurons in the brain, a process
called *synaptic plasticity*. Using mathematical and computational tools,
it is possible to model synaptic plasticity across different time scales,
which helps understand how different types of memory are formed. The PhD
candidate will be working to build those models of synaptic plasticity, and
study the functional role of synaptic plasticity in artificial neural
networks. They will have the opportunity to collaborate with experimental
laboratories, which study connectivity changes and behavioural learning.

----------------- The lab:-----------------
The Computational Neuroscience Laboratory is very young and dynamic, and
publishes in prestigious journals, such as Nature and Science. It is part
of the Department of Bioengineering, which conducts state-of-the-art
multidisciplinary research in biomechanics, neuroscience and
neurotechnology. The lab is at *Imperial College London*, the 3rd ranked
university in Europe, is in the top 10 worldwide, and is located in the
city centre of London.
More information can be found at: http://www.bg.ic.ac.uk/research/c.clopath/

----------------- How to apply:-----------------
Candidates should send a single pdf file, consisting of a 1-page motivation
letter, CV (mentioning that they are EU nationals) to
clopathlab.imperial at gmail.com, with the subject containing 'PHD2015'. In
addition, candidates should organize two letters of references to be sent
to clopathlab.imperial at gmail.com. The application *deadline is **Jan 5th*
(both for the application as well as for the two letters of references).
Skype Interviews will be held on the Jan 9th.

----------------- Funding:-----------------
The candidate will apply to an Imperial College PhD scholarship. Deadline
for funding application is on Jan 31st. More information can be found at:
<http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/researchstrategy/funding/phdscholarships>
http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/studentfinance/prospectivepgstudents/phdscholarships/icphd
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From martaruizcostajussa at gmail.com  Mon Oct 20 13:05:23 2014
From: martaruizcostajussa at gmail.com (Marta Ruiz)
Date: Mon, 20 Oct 2014 12:05:23 -0500
Subject: Connectionists: MT MOOC Starts 22nd October
Message-ID: <CABEBqHLCifTvtJvbsxzBaBrE0sPKW2Wp7u4Ue3WTYxrvHuKeuQ@mail.gmail.com>

We are pleased to announce a Massive Open On-line Course on Machine
Translation that will start in early October. The course entitled:
"Approaches to Machine Translation: rule-based, statistical and hybrid" is
an opportunity to learn about the theory behind MT algorithms; how major
on-line MT systems work; and how to manage open-source software to
reproduce prototypes of such systems under a do-it-yourself basis. The MOOC
is offered by the Universitat Polit?cnica de Catalunya under the CANVAS
platform. Students that successfully pass tests and assignments will be
granted a certificate by the same University.



For more information and registration, please visit:
*http://www.mt-mooc.upc.edu
<http://www.mt-mooc.upc.edu>*

With Best Wishes,
Marta R. Costa-juss?
Llu?s Formiga
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From tom_griffiths at berkeley.edu  Tue Oct 21 14:09:56 2014
From: tom_griffiths at berkeley.edu (Tom Griffiths)
Date: Tue, 21 Oct 2014 11:09:56 -0700
Subject: Connectionists: Tenure-track position in Higher-Level Cognition at
	UC Berkeley
Message-ID: <22C41CAC-B79B-4D16-8A14-E5DECFDD1A66@berkeley.edu>


Dear Connectionists,

The Department of Psychology at UC Berkeley is advertising a tenure-track assistant professor faculty position in Higher-Level Cognition. Computational approaches are of particular interest. The full advertisement appears below - deadline is November 13.

Best wishes,

Tom.

--

University of California, Berkeley
Department of Psychology - Higher-Level Cognition

The Department of Psychology is seeking to fill a tenure-track assistant professor faculty position, with an anticipated start date of July 1, 2015. We are interested in candidates with exceptional promise conducting research in the area of higher-level cognition, broadly construed. Research interests may include but are not limited to language, learning, reasoning, decision-making, concepts, attention, expertise, memory, social cognition, or metacognition. Use or development of new experimental or computational methods is highly desirable. The department is interested in candidates who will contribute to diversity and equal opportunity in higher education through their teaching, research, and service.

Ph.D. or equivalent is required by date of hire. Candidates must have completed all degree requirements except the dissertation at the time of application. To apply, please go to the following link: https://aprecruit.berkeley.edu/apply/JPF00492. Applicants should submit a cover letter, curriculum vitae, research statement, summary of teaching experience and interests, and two to five reprints or preprints. Applicants should also arrange for the online submission of three to five letters of recommendation. All letters will be treated as confidential per University of California policy and California state law. Please refer potential referees, including when letters are provided via a third party (i.e., dossier service or career center), to the UC Berkeley statement of confidentiality (http://apo.berkeley.edu/evalltr.html) prior to submitting their letters. Applications must be received by November 13, 2014. Please direct questions to psychsearch2 at berkeley.edu, and include "Higher-Level Cognition Search" in the subject line.

The University of California is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, disability, age or protected veteran status. For the complete University of California nondiscrimination and affirmative action policy see: http://policy.ucop.edu/doc/4000376/NondiscrimAffirmAct. The University is committed to addressing the family needs of faculty, including dual career couples and single parents. For information about potential relocation to Berkeley, or career needs of accompanying partners and spouses, please visit the CALcierge office website at http://calcierge.berkeley.edu.

--
Tom Griffiths
Associate Professor, Psychology and Cognitive Science
Director, Institute of Cognitive and Brain Sciences
University of California, Berkeley

http://cocosci.berkeley.edu/tom/



From tbrown at research.baycrest.org  Mon Oct 20 12:10:26 2014
From: tbrown at research.baycrest.org (Tanya Brown)
Date: Mon, 20 Oct 2014 12:10:26 -0400
Subject: Connectionists: The Virtual Brain NODE#2 Workshop
Message-ID: <6037BE6B-53A3-44D5-B2AF-DD8E29BAB611@research.baycrest.org>

--- PLEASE SHARE THE FOLLOWING ANNOUNCEMENT ----






NODE#2 : Training Workshop, Washington DC, November 14, 2014

www.thevirtualbrain.org/node2

 
For those planning to attend the Society for Neuroscience (SfN) annual conference, you may want to consider attending. In this workshop we will explain the fundamental principles of full brain network modelling using the open source neuroinformatics platform The Virtual Brain (TVB). This simulation environment enables the biologically realistic modelling of network dynamics using Connectome-based approaches across different brain scales. Configurable brain network models generate macroscopic neuroimaging signals including functional MRI (fMRI), intracranial and stereotactic EEG, surface EEG and MEG for single subjects. Researchers from different backgrounds can benefit from an integrative software platform including a supporting framework for data management (generation, organization, storage, integration and sharing) and a simulation core written in Python.  The architecture of TVB supports interaction with MATLAB packages, for example, the well-known Brain Connectivity Toolbox.

Workshop Goals: to create a conceptual and technical understanding of the various network modelling approaches in TVB; familiarization with TVB graphical user interface, Python and Matlab programming environment and data formats.

Workshop Format:  lectures and hands-on tutorials - space is limited*
================================================================== 

For more details and registration, please visit our website:	

http://www.thevirtualbrain.org/node2

 ================================================================== 

Important Dates:

September 12, 2014 ? Registration Open - space is limited*
October 31, 2014 ? Registration Closed 
November 14, 2014 ? TVB NODE#2 Training Workshop

Location: 

Renaissance Washington, Downtown DC Hotel

Congressional Ballroom C

999 Ninth St NW, Washington DC, US, 20001
 

NOTE: THIS WORKSHOP IS AN OFFICIAL SATELLITE EVENT OF THE 2014 SOCIETY FOR NEUROSCIENCE CONFERENCE.




With our best regards,

 
The TVB Team









Tanya Brown
Program Manager - The Virtual Brain
Rotman Research Institute at Baycrest
Toronto, ON, Canada

416-785-2500 x 2782
tbrown at research.baycrest.org



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From mcarreira-perpinan at ucmerced.edu  Sun Oct 19 23:23:05 2014
From: mcarreira-perpinan at ucmerced.edu (Miguel A. Carreira-Perpinan)
Date: Sun, 19 Oct 2014 20:23:05 -0700
Subject: Connectionists: PhD positions in machine learning/optimization at
	the UC Merced
Message-ID: <21572.32793.605319.946226@ucmerced.edu>

PHD POSITIONS IN MACHINE LEARNING/OPTIMIZATION
AT THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, MERCED

I am looking for one or more new PhD students to start in Fall 2015, in
the interface between machine learning and optimization. Students will be
funded through research assistantships, in particular through NSF award
IIS-1423515 "Algorithms for accelerating optimization in deep learning",
and/or teaching assistantships. Specific interests include developing
optimization algorithms based on auxiliary coordinates for deep learning,
nonlinear dimensionality reduction and other problems. This work can be
tied with specific applications in computer vision (eg segmentation,
articulated pose tracking, image registration); computer speech (eg
articulatory inversion, audiovisual speech processing); robotics and
computer graphics (eg inverse kinematics); sensor networks; and related
areas.

I'm looking for individuals strongly motivated to earn a PhD in computer
science or electrical engineering and publish their work in leading
conferences and journals in the areas mentioned above (NIPS, ICML,
AISTATS, CVPR, Interspeech, ICASSP, etc.). Desired qualifications:
- A BS or preferably an MS in CS, EE, Applied Maths or related areas.
- Strong mathematical skills (multivariate calculus, linear algebra,
  probability & statistics, optimization, numerical analysis, information
  theory, etc.).
- Strong programming ability in Matlab and C/C++.
- Research experience in machine learning, speech processing or computer
  vision.

For further information:
- My research: http://faculty.ucmerced.edu/mcarreira-perpinan.
- EECS graduate group at UC Merced: http://eecs.ucmerced.edu.
- Application procedure: http://graduatedivision.ucmerced.edu.
- Application deadline: January 15, 2015.

The Electrical Engineering & Computer Science (EECS) graduate group at UC
Merced consists of 12 core faculty members and over 40 PhD and MS
students. The group has collective interests in machine learning, computer
vision, speech processing, artificial intelligence, robotics, sensor
networks, distributed computing, computer graphics, databases, intelligent
systems and computational neuroscience, among others. UC Merced is the
tenth campus of the University of California and the first American
research university built in the 21st century. It is located in the
California Central Valley, at one hour drive from the Yosemite National
Park and two hours from San Francisco and the Bay Area.

-- 
Miguel A. Carreira-Perpinan
Associate professor
Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
School of Engineering, University of California, Merced
5200 N. Lake Road. Merced, CA 95343
Tel. 209-2284545, Fax 209-2284047
http://faculty.ucmerced.edu/mcarreira-perpinan

From dchau at cs.cmu.edu  Wed Oct 22 01:15:19 2014
From: dchau at cs.cmu.edu (bgm14www@gmail.com)
Date: Wed, 22 Oct 2014 01:15:19 -0400
Subject: Connectionists: New interdisciplinary MS in Analytics Degree at
	Georgia Tech
Message-ID: <2516BA2C-7F5C-4624-9C6B-98E68B548148@cs.cmu.edu>

Dear Colleagues,

For those of you who aren't aware of it, we'd like to introduce Georgia
Tech's interdisciplinary Master of Science in Analytics.

Offered jointly by GT's nationally-ranked colleges of Computing,
Engineering, and Business, the MS in Analytics degree leverages the
strengths and resources of Georgia Tech in computing, business,
statistics, and operations research.

The curriculum includes:

  * An interdisciplinary core to give students integrated breadth

  * Customized, specialized depth: electives chosen from more than 40
possibilities across the three colleges, based on each student's
personal interests and career goals, and specialization in one of
three tracks in analytical tools, business analytics, and
computational data analytics

  * Experience with a wide variety of analytics software (R, SAS,
Hadoop, etc.) and computing platforms (high-performance clusters,
clouds, etc.)

  * Practical analytics experience through an applied analytics
practicum with a company or organization

Students also benefit from training and resources in:
  * Creativity
  * Teamwork and leadership
  * Oral and written communication
  * Job placement, including a dedicated placement professional,
funding to attend a major analytics conference, exposure at Georgia
Tech's annual Big Data Forum, etc.

Our incoming Fall 2014 cohort is an impressive lot!  Our 40 students have
a median quantitative GRE/GMAT score in the 93rd percentile, a median GPA
of 3.7, and a median 2 years of work experience, with 25% having 10+ years
of experience.  15 incoming students already have a Master's degree in
another field, and 5 have a PhD or MD.

They come from very diverse academic backgrounds -- not just business,
engineering, math, computer science, statistics, and economics, but also
anthropology, clinical research, medicine, psychology, religion, etc.
Give us anyone with the right ability, and we'll teach them the skills
they need to be an outstanding analytics professional!

On that note, we'd like to ask you to consider pointing your top analytics-
interested students in our direction.  If you or they have any questions about
Georgia Tech's MS in Analytics, we'd be happy to be answer them.

Thanks very much!

Joel Sokol
Director, Master of Science in Analytics
Fouts Family Associate Professor
H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering
Georgia Institute of Technology

Sandra Slaughter
Associate Director, Master of Science in Analytics
Scheller College of Business
Georgia Institute of Technology

Polo Chau
Associate Director, Master of Science in Analytics
College of Computing
Georgia Institute of Technology


For more information see: http://www.analytics.gatech.edu/

From randy.oreilly at colorado.edu  Wed Oct 22 13:46:19 2014
From: randy.oreilly at colorado.edu (Randall O'Reilly)
Date: Wed, 22 Oct 2014 11:46:19 -0600
Subject: Connectionists: Assistant/Associate Professor position at CU Boulder
Message-ID: <5BA64761-631E-46B4-84A4-AE0629F6C115@colorado.edu>

Assistant/Associate Professor Tenure track position
Institute of Cognitive Science, CU-Boulder

The Institute of Cognitive Science at the University Colorado Boulder is seeking to hire a tenure-track professor at the Assistant level or a tenured professor at the Associate level. Institute research is focused in three strategic areas:
? Learning and Education: theories, communities, and technologies;
? Language Processing: computational and technological advances;
? Cognition and Cognitive Neuroscience: memory, executive function, language, affective, decision, social processes, brain-computer interaction.

We are looking for candidates with a strong research track record in one or more of these areas, whose work demonstrates both computational sophistication and a commitment to interdisciplinary research.

Applicants should have expertise in computational methods for the analysis and characterization of complex data sets in cognitive science, such as machine learning or network analysis (e.g., network topology, social networks, graph theory, brain or interpersonal dynamics). Cognitive scientists are at the forefront of exploiting the internet and massive data repositories (e.g., language corpora, neuroimaging collections, educational data logs) to advance understanding of learning and cognition. These data and methods for analyzing it are changing paradigms in the allied fields of cognitive science. 
Applicants should demonstrate a strong capacity for, and a commitment to, interdisciplinary research and education. The Institute integrates faculty and researchers from seven departments ? Computer Science, Education, Integrative Physiology, Linguistics, Philosophy; Psychology & Neuroscience; and Speech, Language and Hearing Sciences ? and offers a Joint PhD in Cognitive Science and an affiliated field. Ideal candidates can collaborate with faculty across these departments and teach courses in cognitive science and an allied field(s). This vanguard characteristic should be evident in the applicant?s publication history.?

Applicants should have a Ph.D. in a field related to Cognitive Science. For full consideration, applications should be completed by December 1,2014 but will continue to be accepted until the position is filled.

Applications should include a current curriculum vitae, three letters of recommendation, statement of teaching philosophy, statement of research philosophy, publications demonstrating the characteristics described above, and a cover letter specifically addressing the applicant?s match to the criteria described above. Applications are not considered complete until all letters of recommendation have been received.

Applications will only be accepted at http://www.jobsatcu.com/postings/89482.

The University of Colorado is an Equal Opportunity Employer committed to building a diverse workforce. We encourage applications from women, racial and ethnic minorities, individuals with disabilities and veterans. Alternative formats of this ad can be provided upon request for individuals with disabilities by contacting the ADA Coordinator at hr-ada at colorado.edu.

The University of Colorado Boulder conducts background checks on all final applicants being considered for employment.

For questions please contact:

Donna Caccamise, Search Committee Chair
donna.caccamise at colorado.edu

From cie.conference.series at gmail.com  Wed Oct 22 16:20:38 2014
From: cie.conference.series at gmail.com (CiE Conference Series)
Date: Wed, 22 Oct 2014 21:20:38 +0100 (BST)
Subject: Connectionists: CiE 2015: Evolving Computability - 1st CfP -
 Bucharest, 29/6-3/7/2015
Message-ID: <alpine.LNX.2.00.1410222120290.4079@csltab3.site>

1st CALL FOR PAPERS:
      COMPUTABILITY IN EUROPE 2015: Evolving Computability
                   Bucharest, Romania
                    June 29 - July 3
             http://fmi.unibuc.ro/CiE2015/


IMPORTANT DATES:

Submission Deadline for LNCS:                 11 January 2015
Notification of authors:                         9 March 2015
Deadline for final revisions:                    6 April 2015


CiE 2015 is the 11-th conference organized by CiE (Computability
in Europe), a European association of mathematicians, logicians,
computer scientists, philosophers, physicists and others
interested in new developments in computability and their
underlying significance for the real world. Previous meetings
have taken place in Amsterdam (2005), Swansea (2006), Siena
(2007), Athens (2008), Heidelberg (2009), Ponta Delgada (2010),
Sofia (2011), Cambridge (2012), Milan (2013) and Budapest (2014)

Evolution of the universe, and us within it, invite a parallel
evolution in understanding. The CiE agenda - fundamental and
engaged - targets the extracting and developing of computational
models basic to current challenges.  From the origins of life, to
the understanding of human mentality, to the characterising of
quantum randomness - computability theoretic questions arise in
many guises.  The CiE community, this coming year meeting for the
first time in Bucharest, carries forward the search for
coherence, depth and new thinking across this rich and vital
field of research.

In all cases we are looking for fundamental and theoretical
submissions. In line with other conferences in this series, CiE
2015 has a broad scope and provides a forum for the discussion of
theoretical and practical issues in Computability with an
emphasis on new paradigms of computation and the development of
their mathematical theory.

We particularly invite papers that build bridges between
different parts of the research community.

For topics covered by the conference, please visit
        http://fmi.unibuc.ro/CiE2015/topics.html


TUTORIAL SPEAKERS

  * John Reif (Duke Unversity)
  * Steve Simpson (Pennsylvania State University)

CONFIRMED PLENARY SPEAKERS

  * Ann Copestake (University of Cambridge)
  * Mircea Dumitru (University of Bucharest, Public Lecture)
  * Pawel Gawrychowski (Max-Planck-Institut fuer Informatik)
  * Julia Knight (University of Notre Dame)
  * Anca Muscholl (Universite Bordeaux)
  * Gheorghe Paun (Romanian Academy)
  * Alexander Razborov (University of Chicago
       and Steklov Mathematical Institute)
  * Vlatko Vedral (University of Oxford)

SPECIAL SESSIONS on

  * Representing streams
     (Organizers: Joerg Endrullis and Dimtri Hendriks)
  * Automata, logic and infinite games
     (Organizers: Dietmar Berwanger and Ioana Leustean)
  * Reverse mathematics
     (Organizers: Damir Dzhafarov and Alberto Marcone)
  * Classical computability theory
     (Organizers: Marat Arslanov and Steffen Lempp)
  * Bio-inspired computation
     (Organizers: Andrei Paun and Petr Sosik)
  * History and philosophy of computing
     (Organizers: Christine Proust and Marco Benini)


The PROGRAMME COMMITTEE consists of:

  * Marat Arslanov (Kazan)           * Jeremy Avigad (Pittsburgh)
  * Veronica Becher (Buenos Aires)   * Arnold Beckmann (Swansea)
  * Laurent Bienvenu (Paris)         * Alessandra Carbone (Paris)
  * Gabriel Ciobanu (Iasi)           * S Barry Cooper (Leeds)
  * Laura Crosilla (Leeds)           * Liesbeth De Mol (Ghent)
  * Walter Dean (Warwick)            * Volker Diekert (Stuttgart)
  * Damir Dzhafarov (Storrs, Connecticut)
  * Peter van Emde Boas (Amsterdam)  * Rachel Epstein (Harvard)
  * Johanna Franklin (Hempstead, NY) * Neil Ghani (Glasgow)
  * Joel David Hamkins (New York)    * Rosalie Iemhoff (Utrecht)
  * Emmanuel Jeandel (LORIA)         * Natasha Jonoska (Tampa, FL)
  * Antonina Kolokolova (St.John's, NL)
  * Antonin Kucera (Prague)          * Oliver Kutz (Magdeburg)
  * Benedikt Loewe (Hamburg & Amsterdam)
  * Jack Lutz (Ames, IA)             * Florin Manea (Kiel)
  * Alberto Marcone (Udine)          * Radu Mardare (Aalborg)
  * Joe Miller (Madison, WI)
  * Russell Miller (Flushing, NY)    * Mia Minnes (La Jolla, CA)
  * Victor Mitrana (Bucharest, co-chair)
  * Ian Pratt-Hartmann (Manchester)  * Dag Normann (Oslo)
  * Mehrnoosh Sadrzadeh (London)     * Anne Smith (St Andrews)
  * Mariya Soskova (Sofia, co-chair) * Susan Stepney (York)
  * Paul Spirakis (Patras & Liverpool)
  * Jacobo Toran (Ulm)               * Marius Zimand (Towson, MD)

The PROGRAMME COMMITTEE cordially invites all researchers
(European and non-European) in computability related areas to
submit their papers (in PDF format, max 10 pages using the LNCS
style) for presentation at CiE 2015.

The submission site
    https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=cie2015
is open.

For submission instructions consult
    http://fmi.unibuc.ro/CiE2015/submission.html

The CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS will be published by LNCS, Springer
Verlag.

____________________________________________________________________

CiE 2015 http://fmi.unibuc.ro/CiE2015/

ASSOCIATION COMPUTABILITY IN EUROPE http://www.computability.org.uk
CiE Conference Series http://www.illc.uva.nl/CiE
CiE Membership Application Form http://www.lix.polytechnique.fr/CIE
Computability (Journal of CiE) http://www.computability.de/journal/
CiE on FaceBook https://www.facebook.com/AssnCiE
Association CiE on Twitter https://twitter.com/AssociationCiE


From dayan at gatsby.ucl.ac.uk  Thu Oct 23 03:32:00 2014
From: dayan at gatsby.ucl.ac.uk (Peter Dayan)
Date: Thu, 23 Oct 2014 08:32:00 +0100
Subject: Connectionists: Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit,
	PhD Programme
In-Reply-To: <20140429130531.GE24277@gatsby.ucl.ac.uk>
References: <20140429130531.GE24277@gatsby.ucl.ac.uk>
Message-ID: <20141023073200.GA16457@gatsby.ucl.ac.uk>

Training in theoretical and computational neuroscience and machine
learning.

The Gatsby Unit is a centre for theoretical neuroscience and machine
learning, focusing on unsupervised, semi-supervised and reinforcement
learning, neural dynamics, population coding, Bayesian (Including
nonparametric) statistics, kernel methods and applications of these to
the analysis of perceptual processing, neural data, artificial
intelligence and bioinformatics. It provides a unique opportunity for a
critical mass of theoreticians to interact closely with each other, and
with other world-class research groups in related departments at UCL,
including Computer Science, Functional Imaging, Physics, Physiology,
Psychology, Neurology, Ophthalmology, Statistical Science, the
cross-faculty Centre for Computational Statistics and Machine Learning,
and with other UK and overseas universities. We expect particularly
close links with the nascent Sainsbury Wellcome Centre for Neural
Circuits and Behaviour, with which we will shortly share a brand new
building.

The Unit has openings for exceptional PhD candidates. Applicants should
have a strong analytical background, a keen interest in neuroscience
and/or machine learning and a relevant first degree, for example in
Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, Neuroscience, Physics,
Psychology or Statistics.

The PhD programme lasts four years, including a first year of intensive
instruction in techniques and research in theoretical neuroscience and
machine learning.

All students are fully funded, regardless of nationality. The Unit also
welcomes applications from students with pre-secured funding or who are
currently soliciting other scholarship/studentships. Gatsby PhD
studentships cover the cost of tuition at the appropriate rate, and
include a tax-free stipend of ?20,000 per annum.

Applications (including a CV, statement of research interests, and
letters from three referees) for 2015/16 admission must be sent directly
to the Gatsby Unit admissions at gatsby.ucl.ac.uk by midnight December
17th, 2014.

Full details of our programme, and how to apply, are available at:
http://www.gatsby.ucl.ac.uk/teaching/phd

For further details of research interests please see
http://www.gatsby.ucl.ac.uk/research.html
and the individual faculty webpages at
http://www.gatsby.ucl.ac.uk/members.html 

From z.yang at mdx.ac.uk  Wed Oct 22 05:02:54 2014
From: z.yang at mdx.ac.uk (Zhijun Yang)
Date: Wed, 22 Oct 2014 10:02:54 +0100
Subject: Connectionists: Neurocomputing special issue Call for Papers
Message-ID: <783C90F4BCF95D469F318BA018780EC7D320C6B630@WGFP-EXMAV1.uni.mdx.ac.uk>

Dear Colleagues,

May we draw your attention to a Neurocomputing special issue CFP: Advances on Biological Rhythmic Pattern Generation: Experiments, Algorithms and Application. The full announcement can be found in an internet link below. Please note, due to requests for extra time to allow more authors to prepare their manuscripts, we have made this final extension of submission due date to 10 December 2014.

http://www.journals.elsevier.com/neurocomputing/call-for-papers/special-issue-on-advances-on-biological-rhythmic-pattern-gen/

Instructions for submission:
*  The submission website for Neurocomputing is located at: http://ees.elsevier.com/neucom/default.asp
*  To ensure that all relevant manuscripts are correctly identified for inclusion into this special issue, it is important that authors select SI: Creating Biology Rhythm when reaching the "Article Type" step in the submission process.

We look forward to receiving your contributions to what promises to be an exciting special issue.

Regards,
Zhijun Yang
Mehmet Karamanoglu
Felipe M.G. Fran?a




---------------------------------------------------------------------------


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From ythomas at csail.mit.edu  Thu Oct 23 04:43:24 2014
From: ythomas at csail.mit.edu (Thomas Yeo)
Date: Thu, 23 Oct 2014 16:43:24 +0800
Subject: Connectionists: Postdoctoral Fellow in Human-Macaque Brain Network
	Organization
Message-ID: <CANZVnTaj9yXHC=J6CoaE8viS_BPV9zHTwBwshECVdd9HfvUx5A@mail.gmail.com>

Dear All,

I am looking to hire a postdoc in human-macaque brain organization.
Details below.

Cheers,
Thomas

Project: (1) Discover homologies and divergences between macaque and
human brain organization using resting-fMRI and/or (2) Elucidate
relationship between macaque brain network organization revealed by
fMRI versus neurophysiological recordings.

Requirements: PhD in neuroscience, psychology, cognitive science or
related fields. The successful applicant will work with an
interdisciplinary team of computer scientists and neuroscientists, and
must be willing to do some programming.

Research Webpage: https://sites.google.com/site/yeoyeo02/home

Compensation: Competitive and commensurate with experience

Attraction: The National University of Singapore (NUS) boasts one of
the few primate neurophysiology labs in the world. Perform
ground-breaking research at NUS, while enjoying the beautiful
sceneries and cultures of South-East Asia. NUS is a research-intensive
university consistently ranked among the top 30 universities in the
world (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_University_of_Singapore#University_rankings).

Contact: Email BT Thomas Yeo (thomas.yeo at nus.edu.sg) with your CV.

Deadline: Whenever the position is filled.

From vogt at cbio.mskcc.org  Wed Oct 22 11:07:46 2014
From: vogt at cbio.mskcc.org (Julia Vogt)
Date: Wed, 22 Oct 2014 11:07:46 -0400
Subject: Connectionists: NIPS 2014 Workshop on Machine Learning for Clinical
	Data, Healthcare and Genomics
Message-ID: <7184D58C-DD97-48E8-9F60-06E0115A8077@cbio.mskcc.org>

NIPS 2014 Workshop on Machine Learning for Clinical Data, Healthcare and Genomics

=== Call for Late Breaking Submissions ===
When: Dec. 12th 2014
Where: Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Submission website: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=mlcda14
Workshop Website: http://goo.gl/gbfUl0

Abstract:

Advances in medical information technology have resulted in enormous warehouses of data that are both overwhelming and sparse. A single patient visit may result in tens to thousands of measurements and structured information, including clinical factors, diagnostic imaging, lab tests, genomic and proteomic tests. Hospitals may see thousands of patients each year. However, each patient may have relatively few visits to any particular medical provider. The resulting data are a heterogeneous amalgam of patient demographics, vital signs, diagnoses, records of treatment and medication receipt and annotations made by nurses or doctors, each with its own idiosyncrasies.

The objective of this workshop is to discuss how advanced machine learning techniques can derive clinical and scientific impact from these messy, incomplete, and partial data. We will bring together machine learning researchers and experts in medical informatics who are involved in the development of algorithms or intelligent systems designed to improve quality of healthcare. Relevant areas include health monitoring systems, clinical data labeling and clustering, clinical outcome prediction, efficient and scalable processing of medical records, feature selection or dimensionality reduction in clinical data, tools for personalized medicine, time-series analysis with medical applications and clinical genomics.

We seek submissions on topics including:

* Health monitoring systems
* Clinical data labeling
* Clustering and phenotype discovery
* Clinical outcome prediction and tools for personalized medicine
* Efficient, scalable processing of clinical data
* Feature selection and dimensionality reduction in clinical data
* Time series analysis with medical applications
* Clinical genomics

Submission Details:
Late breaking contributions will be presented at the workshop as posters. Submissions should be extended abstracts no more than 2 pages in length in NIPS format. They do not need to be anonymous. Extended abstracts should be submitted at https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=mlcda14 by October 31 11:59 PM PDT.

Important Dates:
Submission: 31st October 2014 11:59 PM PDT
Notification: 7th November 2014
Workshop: 12th December 2014

Organizers:
Madalina Fiterau (CMU, http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~mfiterau/)
Julia Vogt (MSKCC, http://cbio.mskcc.org/directory/julia-vogt)
Gunnar R?tsch (MSKCC, http://www.mskcc.org/research/lab/gunnar-ratsch)

From ythomas at csail.mit.edu  Thu Oct 23 04:42:28 2014
From: ythomas at csail.mit.edu (Thomas Yeo)
Date: Thu, 23 Oct 2014 16:42:28 +0800
Subject: Connectionists: Postdoctoral Fellow in Analysis of Cross-Species
	fMRI and/or Neurophysiology
Message-ID: <CANZVnTZj6LC4o6bt+J50fYPbnT16UzCL-io8oLS6z13XBoePvg@mail.gmail.com>

Dear All,

I am looking to hire a postdoc to develop novel tools for fMRI and/or
neurophysiology analysis. Details below.

Cheers,
Thomas

Project: Develop computational tools for discovering (1) homologies
and divergences between macaque and human brain organization using
resting-fMRI and/or (2) relationship between macaque brain network
organization revealed by fMRI versus neurophysiological recordings.

Requirements: Ph.D. in computer science, electrical engineering,
statistics, computational neuroscience or related fields. The
successful applicant will work with an interdisciplinary team of
computer scientists and neuroscientists, and must be willing to learn
some neuroscience.

Research Webpage: https://sites.google.com/site/yeoyeo02/home

Compensation: Competitive and commensurate with experience

Attraction: Perform ground-breaking research at the National
University of Singapore (NUS), while enjoying the beautiful sceneries
and cultures of South-East Asia. NUS is a research-intensive
university consistently ranked among the top 30 universities in the
world (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_University_of_Singapore#University_rankings).

Contact: Email BT Thomas Yeo (thomas.yeo at nus.edu.sg) with your CV.

Deadline: Whenever the position is filled.

From erdi.peter at wigner.mta.hu  Tue Oct 21 20:42:07 2014
From: erdi.peter at wigner.mta.hu (=?ISO-8859-2?Q?=C9rdi_P=E9ter?=)
Date: Wed, 22 Oct 2014 02:42:07 +0200 (CEST)
Subject: Connectionists: Summer and Fall Study Abroad Programs in Budapest,
	2015
Message-ID: <alpine.DEB.2.00.1410220224580.22043@lx0.kfki.hu>


Dear All:

BSCS-US announces a regular and a new study abroad program in Budapest
for 2015.

1. Our regular program: BSCS - BUDAPEST SEMESTER IN COGNITIVE SCIENCE
PHILOSOPHY TO NEUROSCIENCE will be held in the Fall of 2015, see

http://www.bscs-us.org/ [www.bscs-us.org] .

2. We open also a new program:

*****************************************
Systems Neuroscience: a study abroad summer program

Program start/end dates
June 8th- Aug 7th, 2015

The BSCS Systems Neuroscience Program takes place at and academically
supervised by the Department of Anatomy, Histology and Embryology,
Semmelweis University Medical School, Budapest

****************************************

For details, see: http://sysneuro-semester.org/ [sysneuro-semester.org]

Inquiry:
P?ter ?rdi (SysNeuro Director; BSCS Co-Director),
perdi at kzoo.edu
bscs at bscs-us.org, jhegedus at kzoo.edu


From S.M.Bohte at cwi.nl  Thu Oct 23 07:27:02 2014
From: S.M.Bohte at cwi.nl (Sander Bohte)
Date: Thu, 23 Oct 2014 13:27:02 +0200
Subject: Connectionists: PhD student in Spiking Neural Networks
Message-ID: <CAGU9Tt1kq4VM4+_-oqH=-O21BnyoAocf8k4gnRSs4+NrPQgOXA@mail.gmail.com>

Apologies for cross posting.

Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica - PhD student "Spiking Neural Networks for
Efficient Computer Vision"



A PhD student position is available to develop (deep) spiking neural
networks for video interpretation. This project is an interdisciplinary
collaboration between the Neuroinformatics group at CWI (the Netherlands
Center for Mathematics and Computer Science), with dr Sander Bohte, and the
Visual Cognitive Neuroscience group at University of Amsterdam (dr H.
Steven Scholte and dr Sennay Ghebreab). This aim of the research is to
develop effective next-generation neural networks based on neural spike
coding (e.g. Bohte, NIPS 2012) that efficiently implement state-of-the-art
models of the visual system.



The successful applicant will have a solid computational background, an
interest in neural computation and good programming skills.



The position involves a temporary appointment for 4 years at CWI. We offer
a competitive salary with excellent secondary benefits, and also an
extremely friendly, interactive and international working environment. This
includes new buildings in one of Europe's most beautiful and lively cities,
and direct access to high-end computing facilities. Moreover, since
Amsterdam is a very international city where almost everybody speaks and
understands English, candidates need not be afraid of the language barrier.



To apply, please send application letter and CV:



Dr Sander Bohte

CWI Life Sciences

Science Park 123

1098XG Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Telephone: +31-20-5924074

E-mail: sbohte at cwi.nl
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From ghio.alessandro at gmail.com  Wed Oct 22 07:58:29 2014
From: ghio.alessandro at gmail.com (Alessandro Ghio)
Date: Wed, 22 Oct 2014 13:58:29 +0200
Subject: Connectionists: "Advances in Learning Analytics and Educational
 Data Mining" - CFP ESANN 2015
Message-ID: <CAC1j2qUUHY46knOU4CEqAahGghRMcVXU532OpSve1MJ3-gpvAQ@mail.gmail.com>

***     Apologies for cross posting     ***


*ESANN 2015 Special Session ? "Advances in Learning Analytics and
Educational Data Mining" - CALL FOR PAPERS*

European Symposium on Artificial Neural Networks, Computational
Intelligence and Machine Learning (ESANN 2014). 23-25 April 2014, Bruges,
Belgium ? http://www.esann.org



Submissions are invited for next year ESANN Special Session "Advances in
Learning Analytics and Educational Data Mining".



*Organizers*:

Davide Anguita, Alessandro Ghio, Luca Oneto - University of Genoa, Genoa,
Italy

Mathias Funk, Matthias Rauterberg - Eindhoven University of Technology,
Eindhoven, The Netherlands





ESANN 2015 Special Session "Advances in Learning Analytics and Educational
Data Mining" webpage: http://esann2015.la.smartlab.ws

Smartlab webpage on Learning Analytics activities: http://la.smartlab.ws





*ABSTRACT*

Thanks to the emerging of computer-assisted learning systems, the automatic
information collection of interaction between the student and Technology
Enhanced Learning (TEL) system has become increasingly common: data are now
available and should be exploited to get more insights on students?
attitudes, interactions and learning paths, as well as to improve the
effectiveness of TEL methods in a virtuous loop framework. Such data
availability has led to applications of Learning Analytics (LA) and
Educational Data Mining (EDM) techniques in this domain, characterized by
the capability of extracting non-trivial patterns from them: based on such
information, actions can be undertaken in a proactive, rather than
reactive, way. In this framework, the main issues are related to several
factors such as the presence of contradictory data (due to the centrality
of the human factors in data generation), or their potentially
high-dimensionality (i.e. several variables describing the behavior of a
limited number of students in a class). These features represent a
significant challenge in the application of classical modeling techniques,
for example, parametric statistics, thus enabling the necessity of
switching towards more sophisticated approaches. Examples of such methods
are: Visual Analytics methods, allowing the final user (e.g. the teacher)
to discover common patterns and cross-correlations between variables in a
user-friendly graphical, interactive, and appealing way; Descriptive
Analytics methods, based on non-parametric statistics, where
cross-fertilizations with analogous methodologies, developed in
heterogeneous domains (e.g. retail), is fostered towards profiling
students? learning activities and attitudes. Such activities could be
inflated in several fields, spanning from university classes to corporate
training, where TEL technologies are adopted.



*TOPICS*

In this special session, we would like to encourage submissions related to:


   - the development of innovative LA/EDM techniques based on Machine
   Learning, Computational Intelligence, and Data Analytics approaches
   - the application of LA/EDM approaches to real-world problems, both in
   academic and corporate training domains
   - the development of new datasets for testing and validating innovative
   LA/EDM approaches
   - the development of protocols for improving LA/EDM applications and TEL
   usage
   - the development of Visual Analytics approaches to analyze and improve
   human-computer interaction with data gathered from TEL systems
   - techniques for learner profiling and adaptive recommender systems
   - techniques for supporting new teaching styles and contemporary
   learning activities, as well as the analysis thereof.



*SUBMISSION & IMPORTANT DATES*

We kindly invite you to submit a paper to this special session. Each paper
will undergo to a peer reviewing process for its acceptance. Paper
submission should be done exclusively through the ESANN portal following
the instructions provided in: (
http://www.elen.ucl.ac.be/esann/index.php?pg=submission).



Paper submission deadline : 21 November 2014

Notification of acceptance : 31 January 2015

ESANN 2014 conference : 22-24 April 2015





*NOTES*

You can find details about the special session at
http://esann2015.la.smartlab.ws. If you have any questions concerning the
special session, please do not hesitate to contact us via email to:
la at smartlab.ws



More information about the Conference Program, accommodation facilities and
registration fees is available on the ESANN website http://www.esann.org



---
Dr. Alessandro Ghio, Ph.D.

Research Fellow

Smartlab - Polytechnic School ? University of Genoa
Via Opera Pia 11a, I-16145 Genoa (Italy)

T. +39-(0)10-3532192
F. +39-(0)10-3532897
@  <Alessandro.Ghio at smartlab.ws>Alessandro.Ghio <alessandro.ghio at unige.it>
@unige.it <alessandro.ghio at unige.it>

W http://smartlab.ws/
---
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From serge.thill at his.se  Thu Oct 23 07:07:38 2014
From: serge.thill at his.se (Serge Thill)
Date: Thu, 23 Oct 2014 11:07:38 +0000
Subject: Connectionists: =?utf-8?q?Associate_Senior_Lecturer_in_Informatic?=
 =?utf-8?q?s_at_the_University_of_Sk=C3=B6vde=2C_Sweden?=
Message-ID: <5448E182.1030704@his.se>

[Apologies for cross-posting]

We are looking for an Associate Senior Lecturer in Informatics. We are 
particularly interested in candidates with previous research and 
teaching experience within cognitive systems, especially with a focus on 
models of learning and planning in robots and previous research 
experience in computational modelling of human or animal cognition.

Full details are available here:

https://www.his.se/en/about-us/Job-opportunities/job-opportunities/Associate-Senior-Lecturer/Associate-Senior-Lecturer-in-Informatics-HS-2014551-application-deadline-November-18th-2014/

cheers,
Serge


From S.M.Bohte at cwi.nl  Thu Oct 23 08:01:28 2014
From: S.M.Bohte at cwi.nl (Sander Bohte)
Date: Thu, 23 Oct 2014 14:01:28 +0200
Subject: Connectionists: Post-doc or PhD position in Visual Computational
	Neuroscience
Message-ID: <CAGU9Tt1PCHysDFWCvr-UKLnDTcgaA2=uOWCt6G39kDyQ5o=vYA@mail.gmail.com>

Apologies for cross-posting,


Amsterdam Brain & Cognition (ABC) Institute - Post-doc (or PhD student) in
visual computational neuroscience



*Job description*

We are inviting applications for an interdisciplinary position to research
the relationship between various computer vision models (Bag of Words,
Summary statistics, Deep Learning, HMax) and the actual functioning of the
brain. This will be done by evaluating the explained variance of different
computer vision models using BOLD-MRI and EEG data. The successful
candidates will work in a stimulating environment of a leading and highly
active research team including faculty in the department of psychology (dr
H. Steven Scholte, dr. Sennay Ghebreab), and CWI (dr. Sander Bohte).



*Requirements*

The successful applicant will have a solid computational background, good
programming skills and experience with computer vision and machine learning
models. Affinity with neuroimaging is appreciated. For the post-doc
position, a strong publication record in top-tier international conferences
and journals is mandatory.



*Conditions of employment*

The position can start any time after November 2014 and is for temporary
appointment of 2-4 years. The appointment will be within the UvA department
of psychology. We offer a competitive salary with excellent secondary
benefits and an extremely friendly, interactive and international working
environment. This includes new buildings in one of Europe's most beautiful
and lively cities, and direct access to high-end computing facilities.
Moreover, since Amsterdam is a very international city where almost
everybody speaks and understands English, candidates need not be afraid of
the language barrier.



*Organisation*

Amsterdam Brain & Cognition (ABC) Institute



*Additional information*

Brain & Cognition is the first priority area of the University of Amsterdam
centered in the Amsterdam Brain & Cognition (ABC) Institute. The current
project is an example of the type of research pursued in the ABC and is a
collaboration between the department of psychology, the informatics
institute and CWI.

For specific questions about the project, please contact:

Dr. H.Steven Scholte (h.s.scholte at uva.nl)
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From aude.billard at epfl.ch  Thu Oct 23 10:08:43 2014
From: aude.billard at epfl.ch (Aude Billard)
Date: Thu, 23 Oct 2014 16:08:43 +0200
Subject: Connectionists: [jobs] Postdoctoral Position at EPFL - LASA
Message-ID: <54490BEB.7000200@epfl.ch>

The EPFL LASA laboratory is accepting applications for a postdoctoral 
appointment in the areas of robot learning and computational neuroscience.

The postdoctoral researcher will develop computational models of human 
motions when engaged in dyadic interaction with another human and apply 
these models to control robots engaged in coordinated activities with 
humans.

The successful candidate should have a solid background and excellent analytical skills in at least one (or all) of the following areas: dynamical systems, machine learning, impedance control. The candidate should have hands-on experience in robotics and interest in safety issues in human-robot interaction.

  

The application should include the following documents:

  

1. CV including publication list

  

2. A list with the names of at least 3 references.

  

3. A selection of_two_  (no more than two) publications

  

should be sent by email to aude.billard at epfl.ch

This is a one-year appointment with a February 1, 2014 start date 
(negotiable) and possibility for annual renewal.

The LASA laboratory is affiliated with EPFL's institute of 
MicroEngineering and Mechanical Engineering.To learn more, visit us at 
http://lasa.epfl.ch <http://lasa.epfl.ch/>



-- 
-----------------

Prof. Aude Billard
LASA laboratory, http://lasa.epfl.ch
EPFL - Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne

Mail to: Station 9, 1015 Lausanne, Switzerland
Email: aude.billard at epfl.ch<mailto:aude.billard at epfl.ch>
Tel: +41-21-693-5464
Fax: +41-21-694-7850


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From felix at pharmaticsltd.com  Thu Oct 23 15:56:38 2014
From: felix at pharmaticsltd.com (Felix Agakov)
Date: Thu, 23 Oct 2014 19:56:38 GMT
Subject: Connectionists: Experienced researcher in machine learning for
 personalized medicine
Message-ID: <1414094198851.70879.5052@webmail5>

Dear Colleagues,
we are looking for an experienced researcher in machine learning to work on applications in personalized medicine. Please find details below.
Thanks!
Felix Agakov

Experienced researcher in machine learning for personalized medicine
Applications are invited for an Experienced Researcher (ER) position in Machine Learning for Personalized Medicine (MLPM), to be funded by the Marie Curie Initial Training Network MLPM2012 of the 7th Framework Program of the European Commission (http://mlpm.eu). MLPM is a consortium of 14 universities and companies with expertise in Statistical Genetics or Machine Learning located throughout Europe and in the USA. The recruited ER will be based at research-intensive SME company Pharmatics in Edinburgh, UK (http://pharmaticsltd.com). The ER will visit other nodes and attend training events. The position is fully funded for 2 years or until 31/12/2016 according to the Marie Curie program.
PROJECT: The recruited ER will develop new machine learning methods for disease subtyping and patient stratification based on high-dimensional heterogeneous molecular and environmental measurements. Possible differences between training and test distributions will be considered. The methods will be investigated for several clinical datasets and build on the current understanding of diseases. The project will try to address the following questions:
* How can predictions of diseases and related traits be improved by stratifying patients into distinct groups based on heterogeneous molecular and clinical measurements?
* How should the existing understanding of biology be used to improve predictions?
* Which minimal sets of variables are needed to identify patient groups and make accurate predictions of diseases and related outcomes within each group?
* How should the models be trained to account for possibly differing training and test distributions?
ELIGIBILITY: Experienced researchers will have a PhD or over 4 years of research experience in machine learning, statistics, bioinformatics, computer science, or computational biology at the time of recruitment. They must not have more than 5 years of research experience. The years of experience are measured from the time when the researcher received a degree entitling him/her to embark on a PhD program. The researcher must not have resided, worked or studied in the UK for more than 12 months in the 3 years prior to the time of recruitment. Proficiency with Matlab, R, or Python is required. Familiarity with sparse regression, kernel methods, ensemble methods, transfer learning, network modelling, in vitro diagnostics, molecular pathology, epidemiology is a plus.
SALARY: The successful candidate will be paid at Marie Curie rates for experienced researchers (~?52,110 per anum, plus the mobility allowance of ?7,400 - ?10,495 per anum). Both allowances are in UK STERLINGs and subject to currency rate fluctuations.
PROCESS: Applications should be sent as a single PDF file to Dr Felix Agakov (<felix at pharmaticsltd.com>)?and should include a CV with a list of publications and completed projects, a statement of research interests, contacts of 2 referees, and a written statement that the eligibility criterion is fulfilled. Applications should be submitted by November 13, 2014 but the position will remain open until filled.
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From jkrichma at uci.edu  Fri Oct 24 03:15:47 2014
From: jkrichma at uci.edu (Jeff Krichmar)
Date: Fri, 24 Oct 2014 09:15:47 +0200
Subject: Connectionists: Neucomp 2015 CFP (in conjunction with DATE'15
	conference)
References: <54490FC3.9020202@univ-ubs.fr>
Message-ID: <D1446DA9-4871-4F6B-AD31-C900972D2907@uci.edu>

Dear Connectionists,

This CFP may be of interest to many of you.

Best regards,

Jeff Krichmar
Department of Cognitive Sciences
2328 Social & Behavioral Sciences Gateway
University of California, Irvine
Irvine, CA 92697-5100
jkrichma at uci.edu
http://www.socsci.uci.edu/~jkrichma

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Philippe Coussy <philippe.coussy at univ-ubs.fr>
> Subject: Neucomp 2015 CFP (in conjunction with DATE'15 conference)
> Date: October 23, 2014 at 4:25:07 PM GMT+2
> To: Nikil Dutt <dutt at ics.uci.edu>, Jeff Krichmar <jkrichma at uci.edu>, Philippe Coussy <philippe.coussy at univ-ubs.fr>
> 
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Apologies in advance for any duplicate announcements
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> CALL FOR POSTER ABSTRACTS
> 
> 2nd International Workshop on Neuromorphic and Brain-Based Computing Systems (NeuComp 2015)
> http://www.date-conference.com/conference/workshop-w03
> Friday March 13, 2015, Grenoble, France
> 
> held in conjunction with DATE'15 conference
> (http://www.date-conference.com)
> 
> 
> **Description**
> Biological neural systems are well known for their robust and power-efficient operation in highly noisy environments. Biological circuits are made up of low-precision, unreliable and massively parallel neural elements with highly reconfigurable and plastic connections. Two of the most interesting properties of the neural systems are its self-organizing capabilities and its template architecture. Recent research in biologically-plausible neural networks has demonstrated interesting principles about learning and neural computation. Understanding and applying these principles to practical problems is only possible if large-scale neural simulators or circuits can be constructed. This workshop will outline key modelling abstractions for the brain and focus on recent neural network models. Aspects of neuronal processing and computational issues related to modelling these processes will be discussed. Hardware and software solutions readily usable by neuroscientists and computer scientists and efficient enough to construct very large networks comparable to brain networks will be presented.
> 
> 
> **Target Audience and Workshop Format**
> NeuComp 2015 is the second edition of a DATE workshop designed to attract both newcomers to neuromorphic computing, as well as neuromorphic researchers who wish to interact with the DATE community to stimulate new ideas, topics and collaborations. Since this is a hot area but one that is probably new to a large segment of the DATE community, half of the workshop will be devoted to a comprehensive introduction to Neuromorphic and Brain-Based Computing, where the audience will be exposed to basic definitions, key concepts, abstractions, design flows, and design constraints; also some highly visible research projects will be presented as exemplars to provide an overview of existing and emerging solutions in this domain. The other half of the event will create a forum for interactive discussion and exchange of ideas and experiences between researchers through posters and demonstrations, with the goal of highlighting details on applicability, performance, and strengths of current solutions. Our aim is for attendees to learn about emerging Neuromorphic and Brain-Based computing techniques, highlight publicly available modelling and simulation tools, and view directions for longer term research.
> 
> 
> **Topics of interest**
> Authors are invited to submit original unpublished works on topics from a wide range of Neuromorphic and Brain-Based computing areas, including but not limited to:
> - Formal models
> - Hardware architectures
> - Software tools
> - Systems and applications
> - Simulation Infrastructures
> 
> 
> **Submission**
> Submissions are invited in the form of 2-page extended abstract describing the novelties and advantages of the work.
> Submissions must be done through Easychair at https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=neucomp2015
> All submissions will be evaluated with regard to their suitability for the workshop, originality and technical soundness. Selected submissions will be accepted for oral presentation and/or poster/interactive presentations. This workshop does not require blind submissions. Informal proceedings with accepted papers will be made available at the workshop as detailed below.
> 
> 
> **Important dates**
> - Submission deadline            	October 30th, 2014
> - Notification of acceptance     	November 30th, 2015
> - Final program                    	December 15th, 2015
> 
> 
> **Informal Workshop Digest**
> NeuComp 2015 will distribute an informal workshop digest to all workshop participants.  NeuComp 2015 presenters are encouraged to submit papers for inclusion in this informal workshop digest.
> Note that since the informal workshop digest is only distributed to workshop participants (and is not archived as part of DATE or ACM/IEEE digital libraries), authors are free to submit their work to other archival conferences and journals.
> 
> 
> **Proceedings**
> Selected results of the two first editions of Neucomp will be published in form of an edited book by Springer.
> 
> 
> **Workshop format**
> The workshop will combine oral and interactive sessions (posters and demonstrations) together with invited talks representing major neuromorphic research projects.  The event will be designed to be highly interactive, with ample time for discussion and cross-disciplinary engagement.
> 
> 
> **Confirmed Invited speakers**
> - Romain Brette (ENS, FR)
> - Kristofor Carlson (UCI, US)
> - J?rg Conradt (TU Munich, DE)
> - Steve Furber (Manchester Univ., UK)
> - Todd Hylton (Brain Corporation, US)
> - Giacomo Indiveri (ETHZ, CH)
> - Anders Lansner (KTH, SW)
> - Rajit Manohar (Cornell Univ., US)
> 
> 
> **General Co-chairs**
> Philippe Coussy	Universit? de Bretagne-Sud/Lab-STICC, FR
> Nikil Dutt University of California ? Irvine, Irvine, CA USA
> 
> 
> **Preliminary Technical Program Committee**
> Jeff Krichmar University of California ? Irvine, Irvine, USA (Program Co-Chair)
> Philippe Coussy Universit? de Bretagne-Sud/Lab-STICC, FR (Program Co-Chair)
> 
> Angelo Arleo Universit? Pierre et Marie Curie, FR
> Romain Brette ENS Paris, FR
> Gert Cauwenberghs UCSD, USA
> Yiran Chen University of Pittsburgh, USA
> Jorg Conradt TU Munich, GER
> Nikil Dutt UC Irvine, USA
> Steve Furber Manchester University, UK
> Karlheinz Meier Heidelberg University, GER
> Vijaykrishnan Narayanan	Pennsylvania State University, USA
> Narayan Srinivasa HRL, USA
> Massimiliano Versace Boston University, USA
> 
> 
> If you have any questions about the workshop, please contact philippe.coussy at univ-ubs.fr
> 
> **Previous edition**
> For more information about Neucomp 2013 program, see
> http://www-labsticc.univ-ubs.fr/~coussy/neucomp2013/
> 
> 
> -- 
> ================================================
> Pr. Philippe COUSSY
> 
> Universit? de Bretagne-Sud - UEB
> Laboratoire Lab-STICC - CNRS, UMR 6285
> Centre de Recherche - BP 92116
> F-56321 Lorient Cedex - FRANCE
> 
> Phone +33 (0)2 97 87 45 65
> Web   http://www-labsticc.univ-ubs.fr/~coussy/
> ================================================
> 
> 
> 

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From antonior at ffclrp.usp.br  Thu Oct 23 17:15:27 2014
From: antonior at ffclrp.usp.br (Antonio C. Roque)
Date: Thu, 23 Oct 2014 19:15:27 -0200
Subject: Connectionists: Postdoc positions in neuromathematics in Brazil
Message-ID: <CADprDw1y82pgPzbWoXrv0o3J7GZQ420kiQRFDi6JS4U7YkfZZg@mail.gmail.com>

Positions for postdoctoral researchers

The recently established Research, Innovation and Dissemination Center for
Neuromathematics (NeuroMat), hosted by the University of Sao Paulo, Brazil,
and funded by FAPESP (Sao Paulo Research Foundation,
http://www.fapesp.br/en/), is offering several postdoctoral fellowships for
recent PhDs with outstanding research potential.

We seek candidates fitting at least one of the profiles below:

- A strong background in probability theory with emphasis on stochastic
processes or alternatively in statistics with emphasis on statistical model
selection. Previous knowledge of rigorous statistical mechanics, random
graphs or stochastic modeling in biosciences will be favorably considered.
- A strong background in systems neuroscience, backed by programming
skills, experience of imaging and/or EEG acquisition and analysis and
strong interest in interdisciplinary research.
- A strong background in computer science, interested in developing
algorithms, software tools or databases in close connection with the
several research teams of NeuroMat.

The initial appointment is for two years, with a possible extension to up
to four years, conditional or research progress. Salary is competitive at
international level, and fellows benefit from extra funds for travel and
research expenses plus limited support for relocation expenses.

Application instructions

Applicants should complete and submit the application form at
http://neuromat.numec.prp.usp.br/postdoc-form. The following documents and
information are requested (please see the form for further details):
- Summary of the CV. Please follow the FAPESP format; see
www.fapesp.br/en/6351 for instructions.
- List of publications, with links if available online.
- Pointers to other research related output, such as software, web pages,
and so forth. Candidates should be willing to send copies of publications,
if requested.
- A summary of your research plan for the next 2 years, up to 5 pages
length. It should explicitly address its place in the framework of the
Neuromat mission and research program (
http://neuromat.numec.prp.usp.br/scientific_project).
- Any further information deemed relevant to the application.

In addition to the above, we require *at least 2 recommendation letters*.
Those should be mailed by the recommenders directly to
*postdoc-appl at numec.prp.usp.br* <postdoc-appl at numec.prp.usp.br>.

Candidates are encouraged to apply at their earliest convenience. Two
independent evaluation rounds are planned, each one over then current
applications:

1. On November 20, 2014.

2. On January 30, 2015.

Appointments are expected to be effective within 2 to 6 months after
evaluation date.

*Remark*

Candidates approved on either round will be requested to expand their
five-page research plan to full two-year proposals. For the implementation
of the fellowships, those proposals, together with all the application
material received, will be submitted to FAPESP for final approval.



-- 

Dr. Antonio C. Roque
Professor Associado
Departamento de Fisica
FFCLRP, Universidade de Sao Paulo
14040-901 Ribeirao Preto-SP
Brazil  -  Brasil
E-mails:
antonior at ffclrp.usp.br
aroquesilva at gmail.com
URL: www.sisne.org

Tels: +55 16 3602-3768 (sala/office);
         +55 16 3602-3859 (lab)
FAX: +55 16 3602-4887
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From THTeng at ntu.edu.sg  Fri Oct 24 02:06:53 2014
From: THTeng at ntu.edu.sg (Teng Teck Hou (Dr))
Date: Fri, 24 Oct 2014 06:06:53 +0000
Subject: Connectionists: Call for Papers: IAT 2015
Message-ID: <9237A50F72F4DF4A8CA542FF9E5A5D40D4324F74@EXCHMBOX34.staff.main.ntu.edu.sg>

[Apologies for cross-postings]

#######################################################################
                                                CALL FOR PAPERS

IEEE/WIC/ACM International Conference on Intelligent Agent Technology 2015 (IAT'15) December 6-9, 2015 / Singapore

Homepage: http://wi-iat15.ntulily.org

Sponsored By:
IEEE Computer Society
Web Intelligence Consortium (WIC)
Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)
#######################################################################

The 2015 IEEE/WIC/ACM International Conference on Intelligent Agent Technology
(IAT'15) will be held in Singapore on December 6-9, 2015, hosted by the Joint
NTU-UBC Research Centre of Excellence in Active Living for the Elderly (LILY)
at Nanyang Technological University (NTU) and the Living Analytics Research
Centre at Singapore Management University (SMU). Co-located with the 2015
IEEE/WIC/ACM International Conference on Web Intelligence (WI'15), IAT'15 is
sponsored by IEEE Computer Society Technical Committee on Intelligent
Informatics (TCII), Web Intelligence Consortium (WIC), ACM-SIGAI, and Memetic
Computing Society.

IAT'15 will feature special thematic workshops, technical sessions, tutorials
and panels. Conference programme will further include a welcome reception,
keynotes, demos, poster sessions, and a banquet. Attendees only need one
registration to attend all technical events.

TOPICS AND AREAS (INCLUDE, BUT NOT LIMITED TO)

* Autonomy-Oriented Computing
* Agent and Multi-Agent Systems Engineering
* Agent and Multi-Agent Systems Modeling
* Knowledge and Information Agents
* Autonomous Auction and Negotiation
* Distributed Problem Solving
* Cooperation & Coordination
* Agent Systems Applications

+++++++++++++++
IMPORTANT DATES
+++++++++++++++

Workshop/Special Session Proposal Submission              February 15, 2015
Submission of Regular/Special Session Papers                  April 15, 2015
Tutorial Proposal Submission                                                    June 1, 2015
Workshop Paper Submission                                                     June 1, 2015
Notification on Conference Paper Acceptance                  July 1, 2015
Notification  on Workshop Paper Acceptance                    July 15, 2015

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
PAPER SUBMISSION AND PUBLICATION
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

IAT'15 solicits original work submitted as a regular paper (limited to 8
pages) or as short paper (limited to 4 pages) in IEEE 2-column format. Each
paper will be peer-reviewed by at least three PC members on the basis of
technical quality, relevance, originality, significance and clarity. Accepted
papers will be published in the conference proceedings by the IEEE Computer
Society Press and indexed by EI. Selected IAT'15 papers will be further
invited for expansion and publication in Web Intelligence and Agent Systems
and other international Journals.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
CALL FOR TUTORIALS/WORKSHOPS/SPECIAL SESSIONS/PANELS
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

IAT'15 solicits proposals for tutorials, workshops, special sessions and
panels on specific topics of interests, which will form an integral part of
the conference program. Inquiries and submission of proposals should be
addressed to the respective chairs.

++++++
AWARDS
++++++

Best Paper awards will be conferred at the conference on the authors of (1)
the best research paper, (2) the best student paper. Application-oriented
submissions will be considered for the best application paper award.

++++++++++++++++++++
ORGANIZING COMMITTEE
++++++++++++++++++++

General Chairs
* Ah-Hwee Tan, Singapore
* Yuefeng Li, Australia

Program Chair
* Ee-Peng Lim, Singapore

Program Vice-Chairs
* Atsuhiro Takasu, Japan
* Hoong-Chuin Lau, Singapore
* Chunyan Miao, Singapore

IAT Technical PC Chairs
* Sarvapali Ramchurn, UK
* Anita Raja, USA
* Bo An, Singapore

Local Organizing Chair
* Meng-Hiot Lim, Singapore

Finance Chair and CyberChair-Master
* Juzhen Dong, Japan

Industry and Sponsorship Chairs
* Xiaoli Li, Singapore
* Richi Nayak, Australia

Workshop Chairs
* Bryan Kian-Hsiang Low, Singapore
* Einoshin Suzuki, Japan
* Jason Watson, Australia

Tutorial Chairs
* Pradeep Reddy Varakantham, Singapore
* Yue Xu, Australia

Publicity Chairs
* Xiaohui Tao, Australia
* Teck-Hou Teng, Singapore

Demo/Poster Chair
* Zhiqi Shen, Singapore

Panel Chairs
* Hady Lauw, Singapore
* Neil Yorke-Smith, Lebanon

Award Chairs
* Raj Sunderraman, USA
* Ee-Peng Lim, Singapore

Webmaster
* Yuting Zheng, Singapore

________________________________
CONFIDENTIALITY: This email is intended solely for the person(s) named and may be confidential and/or privileged. If you are not the intended recipient, please delete it, notify us and do not copy, use, or disclose its contents.
Towards a sustainable earth: Print only when necessary. Thank you.
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From bressler.stevenl at gmail.com  Fri Oct 24 17:00:08 2014
From: bressler.stevenl at gmail.com (Steven Bressler)
Date: Fri, 24 Oct 2014 17:00:08 -0400
Subject: Connectionists: TENURE-TRACK FACULTY POSITION
Message-ID: <CA+CaCXKSVmp+j0+h8dgChjtEG6dRo+_A5Tk55Bz6YsRU6qM1NA@mail.gmail.com>

TENURE-TRACK FACULTY POSITION
CENTER FOR COMPLEX SYSTEMS AND BRAIN SCIENCES
FLORIDA ATLANTIC UNIVERSITY

The Center for Complex Systems and Brain Sciences at Florida Atlantic
University invites applications for a tenure-track faculty position at the
Assistant or Associate Professor level. Candidates will have the
opportunity to work in a multidisciplinary setting and interact with a
group of cognitive and behavioral neuroscientists whose research spans
human, animal, and computational models on three Florida Atlantic
University campuses. The ideal candidate will have a strong research
program in cognitive or theoretical neuroscience that includes a blend of
empirical experimentation, computational modeling, and data analysis.
Preference will be given to research programs focused on complex systems in
the brain and behavioral sciences that use electrophysiological recording
and/or brain stimulation.

Applicants are expected to have a Ph.D. in Neuroscience, Experimental
Psychology, or a related discipline, an excellent record of research
productivity, the potential to develop an independent and internationally
recognized research program, and strong commitment to undergraduate and
graduate education.

The position is open until filled and may close without prior notice.
Applications received by November 20, 2014 will receive full consideration.



All applicants must apply electronically to the currently posted position
(991202) on the Office of Human Resources' job website (https://jobs.fau.edu)
by completing the Faculty, Administrative, Managerial & Professional
Position Application and submitting the related documents.



The site permits the attachment of required/requested documentation. In
addition to completing the online application, please upload the following:
a cover letter, curriculum vitae, copies of official transcripts scanned
into an electronic format, statement of research interests and teaching
philosophy, sample publications, and letters from three references.



Confidential letters may be sent by email to the Search Committee Chair at
bressler at fau.edu. All other application materials must be submitted
electronically at https://jobs.fau.edu.



Degrees from outside the United States must be validated by an organization
belonging to the National Association of Credential Evaluation Service
(NACES), with an indication of the documents the evaluation was prepared
from (official transcripts, diplomas, dissertation abstracts). The
evaluation should be scanned and electronically attached to one's
application as with other US-based transcripts.



Prior to appointment, candidates must submit official, sealed transcripts
from all institutions where graduate coursework was attempted, whether or
not a degree was obtained, as well as an original NACES evaluation, if
applicable. Transcripts must be issued to Florida Atlantic University not
to you as the student.



A background check will be required for any selected candidate. The
position is subject to funding.



Florida Atlantic University is an Equal Opportunity/Equal Access
Institution. Individuals with disabilities requiring accommodation, please
call 561-297-3057 <file://localhost/tel/561-297-3057>. TTY/TDD
1-800-955-8771.
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From Michael_Frank at brown.edu  Sat Oct 25 17:30:03 2014
From: Michael_Frank at brown.edu (Michael J Frank)
Date: Sat, 25 Oct 2014 17:30:03 -0400
Subject: Connectionists: PhD studentships: Computation in Brain and Mind at
	Brown University
Message-ID: <CAGYaZ+fNqcTNpchYEQQ407dNWPJBvJFaoVFPM9F-1Gkic9o6DQ@mail.gmail.com>

The Brown University initiative for Computation in Brain and Mind
<http://compneuro.clps.brown.edu/>, soon to be a Center within the Brown
Institute for Brain Science, invites PhD applicants to apply directly to
any of the affiliated departments, including Neuroscience, Cognitive,
Linguistic and Psychological Sciences, Applied Mathematics, Computer
Science and others.   Among other events, the initiative includes a seminar
series focused on computation with distinguished lecturers, technical
workshops and symposia,  and a yearly neural decoding competition. The
initiative also has close links to parallel initiatives at Brown in
Human-Robot Interaction, Digital Society (big data), and access to a high
performance compute cluster with dedicated cycles for Brain Science.

Brown has particular expertise in computational approaches to higher order
brain function, from perception to cognition, spanning departments of
Neuroscience, Cognitive, Linguistic & Psychological Sciences, Applied
Mathematics, Computer Science, Neurosurgery, Biostatistics, and
Engineering. Most of these faculties cross theory and experiment, but
primary foci are listed here:


* Computational perception: Theories about how the brain integrates sensory
information to give rise to percepts, constrained by biophysics and
computational objectives.

* Control over action: reinforcement learning, decision making, and
cognitive control; application to mental illnesses.

* Fundamental questions in neural computation: synaptic plasticity,
circuits, networks.

* Neurotechnology: brain-machine interface, advanced neural data analysis.

* Automated collection of neuroscience data, e.g. via computer vision and
annotation.

* These core areas are supported by boundary-pushing development of
technical and analytic methods in Computer Science an Applied Mathematics.


Michael J Frank, PhD, Associate Professor
Laboratory for Neural Computation and Cognition
Brown University
http://ski.clps.brown.edu
(401)-863-6872
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From dsontag at cs.nyu.edu  Mon Oct 27 14:40:41 2014
From: dsontag at cs.nyu.edu (David Sontag)
Date: Mon, 27 Oct 2014 14:40:41 -0400
Subject: Connectionists: Tenure-track faculty positions at NYU Shanghai
Message-ID: <CALQ6fLvMGAe5GD11KcPzY6EFGMJrZgWEiVXQdRZWx2_xoB-xYg@mail.gmail.com>

TENURED/TENURE-TRACK FACULTY POSITIONS
Computer Science: Machine Learning & Big Data/Data Science
NYU Shanghai

New York University, one of the largest and most highly regarded private
universities in the United States, has established itself as a Global Network
University with three degree-granting campuses - New York, Shanghai, and
Abu Dhabi - complemented by 12 additional academic centers across five
continents. NYU has identified Data Science as one target area for growth, and
is planning to add multiple tenured/tenure track faculty members across its
campuses and across several departments.

NYU Shanghai is the first Sino-US higher-education joint venture to grant
a degree that is accredited in the US as well as in China. A research
university with liberal arts and sciences at its core, it resides in one
of the world's great cities, which is also a vibrant intellectual community
(http://shanghai.nyu.edu/). NYU Shanghai will recruit scholars who are
committed to our global vision of transformative teaching and innovative
research. New York University Faculty and students circulate within the
network in pursuit of common research interests and cross-cultural,
interdisciplinary endeavors, both local and global. The terms of employment in
NYU Shanghai are comparable to U.S. institutions. Faculty may also spend time
at NYU New York and other sites of the global network, engaging in both
research and teaching opportunities,  and have opportunities to collaborate
with the many research centers and groups at NYU, including our recently
launched centers for Data Science (CDS) and Urban Science and Progress (CUSP).

NYU Shanghai invites outstanding applications for two tenure-track or tenured
faculty appointments in Computer Science. Applicants to the first position
should have an active research program in machine learning and be dedicated
to making fundamental technical contributions in this vital area. Applicants
to the second position should have research interests related to big data and
data science as broadly defined, including database systems, data mining,
information retrieval, natural language processing, data visualization, and
applications in areas such as medicine, business, and the natural and social
sciences. Applicants must have demonstrated excellence in both research and
teaching. When discussing their teaching experience and interests, candidates
should identify courses they could teach both within and outside their
specialty. Candidates must have completed a Ph.D. or equivalent by the time
of appointment.

Applicants should submit a curriculum vitae, a statement of research and
teaching interests, electronic copies of up to 5 recent relevant publications,
and the names and addresses of three or more individuals willing to provide
letters of reference, by the application deadline of Jan. 31, 2015. Please
visit our website at http://shanghai.nyu.edu/about/work/faculty-positions for
instructions and other information on how to apply. If you have any questions,
please e-mail shanghai.faculty.recruitment at nyu.edu.

NYU-Shanghai is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer

From dorianaur at gmail.com  Mon Oct 27 13:58:10 2014
From: dorianaur at gmail.com (Dorian Aur)
Date: Mon, 27 Oct 2014 10:58:10 -0700
Subject: Connectionists: Place cells. What does it prove?
Message-ID: <CANPcXCnyX_pVTGOVdrySt_xsgesqyf0227coz=U5a1jSP7f7uA@mail.gmail.com>

 Dear Colleagues,

New,  interesting (intriguing) things have been  posted to
https://www.researchgate.net/post/Place_cells_What_does_it_prove

Your expertise in this field is well known, please feel free to contribute.

Thank you,
Dorian Aur
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From ted.carnevale at yale.edu  Tue Oct 28 10:52:48 2014
From: ted.carnevale at yale.edu (Ted Carnevale)
Date: Tue, 28 Oct 2014 10:52:48 -0400
Subject: Connectionists: 2014 SFN Mtg Workshop: Portal for parallel
	simulations
Message-ID: <544FADC0.7030906@yale.edu>

A few seats remain open for the workshop

Using the Neuroscience Gateway Portal (NSG) for Parallel Simulations

which will be held on the morning of Saturday, November 15, 2014,
from 9 AM to Noon in Washington DC as a satellite to the SFN 2014
meeting.  The NSG is being developed with suport from NSF to help
neuroscientists access high performance computing resources.  Several
parallel simulators are already installed, including Brian, NEST,
NEURON, PGENESIS, and PyNN, and more are planned for the future.
Find out how the NSG makes it easy to get allocations of free CPU
time, upload your model, launch and monitor jobs, and download
results.

The registration deadline is Friday, Oct. 31, so you'll need to
act quickly.  See
http://www.neuron.yale.edu/neuron/static/courses/nsg2014/nsg2014.html
for further details and the registration form.

--Ted

From olwi at dtu.dk  Tue Oct 28 04:13:40 2014
From: olwi at dtu.dk (Ole Winther)
Date: Tue, 28 Oct 2014 08:13:40 +0000
Subject: Connectionists: PhD Project in Non-Linear Temporal Machine Learning
 Models for Conditioning Monitoring in Large-Scale Solar Energy Systems
Message-ID: <4120B32CDA5C4F48AB8EB244EF8A7D5482968F@ait-pex02mbx04.win.dtu.dk>

PhD Project in Non-Linear Temporal Machine Learning Models for Conditioning Monitoring in Large-Scale Solar Energy Systems

DTU compute, Technical University of Denmark (DTU) would like to invite applications for a 3-year PhD position starting December 2014 or soonest hereafter. The project is partially funded by the Danish National Advanced Technology Foundation project ?Fully Automated Service Execution platform for PhotoVoltaic power plants (FASE)?. The project is a collaboration between GreenGo Energy (greengoenergy.com/) and DTU (dtu.dk).

Project Description
The large number of condition monitoring sensors installed in all GreenGo Energy?s solar energy power plants generates terabyte data that are collected in common cloud based solution. A global scale synchronised data acquisition system is providing data with unprecedented precision, size, geographical diversity provides unique possibilities for big data modelling. A successful machine learning system build on top of the cloud solution will be able to detect many type of faults and wear characteristics. The scale of the data poses computational challenges and requires application and development of novel non-linear dynamical models that scale to large datasets. In the PhD project, Bayesian approaches to filtering will be investigated as well as deep learning methodologies for integration of high frequency heterogeneous sensor data. The service platform will integrate state-of-the-art fault diagnosis, and portfolio based service planning and execution automation.

Requirements
Candidates must have a master degree in machine learning, computational science and engineering (CSE), applied mathematics, or engineering, or equivalent academic qualifications. Preference will be given to candidates who can document experience in conditioning monitoring, and in addition have a background in machine learning. Furthermore, good command of the English language is essential.

Approval and Enrolment
The scholarship for the PhD degree is subject to academic approval, and the candidate will be enrolled in the ITMAN Graduate School Programme of DTU Compute. Information about the general requirements for enrolment and the general planning of the scholarship studies is included in the general rules at DTU, which may be obtained from http://www.dtu.dk/english/Education/phd/.

Assessment
The assessment of the applicants will be made by DTU Supervisor Ole Winther and GreenGo co-supervisor Karsten Nielsen.

Salary and appointment terms
The salary and appointment terms are consistent with the current Danish rules for PhD degree students.

Further Information
Further information concerning the project can be obtained from Ole Winther olwi at dtu.dk<mailto:olwi at dtu.dk> and Karsten Nielsen karsten at greengoenergy.dk<mailto:karsten at greengoenergy.dk>.

Further information concerning the application can be obtained from http://www.compute.dtu.dk/english/education/phd or by contacting PhD coordinator Ulla Jensen, ulje at dtu.dk, +45 4525 3359.

Application deadline is November 23, 2014. Further information about application requirements can be found here: http://www.dtu.dk/Job/job?id=3eb58a13-c175-4404-887e-a8363901ee1b.
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From sebastian.risi at gmail.com  Tue Oct 28 07:56:52 2014
From: sebastian.risi at gmail.com (Sebastian Risi)
Date: Tue, 28 Oct 2014 12:56:52 +0100
Subject: Connectionists: Neural networks. Evolution. Games. Your comments?
Message-ID: <CAJn6=dryLLWykcrk+vn_NjUJSdpKTTWgCfG-7Nab4YE+R+h8Ng@mail.gmail.com>

Neuroevolution - the evolution of weights and/or topology for neural
networks - is a common and powerful method in evolutionary robotics and
machine learning. In the last decade or so, we have seen a large number of
applications of neuroevolution in games. Evolved neural networks have been
used to play games, model players, generate content and even enable
completely new game genres. To some extent, games seem to be replacing the
small mobile robots ubiquitous in evolutionary robotics and simple
benchmarks used in reinforcement learning research.

Julian Togelius and myself have written a survey on neuroevolution in
games, including a discussion of future research challenges. The main
reason is that there was no survey of neuroevolution in games in existence;
the other reason was that we wanted a tutorial overview to hand out to the
students in our Modern AI for Games course.

The preprint is available here on arXiv: http://arxiv.org/abs/1410.7326
PDF: http://arxiv.org/pdf/1410.7326v1.pdf

Now we would like your input on this. We have not submitted the paper yet,
but we plan to submit to TCIAIG once we're reasonably sure that we have
included all major work on neuroevolution and games and that we are not
misrepresenting any of it.

So please feel free to send us your comments, either as a reply in this
mail thread or directly to the authors (sebr at itu.dk and julian at togelius.com).
All kind of comments are welcome. We are particularly looking for
suggestions for important work we might have overlooked. It is completely
OK to suggest that we cite you, or even that we cite you more than we
already have. But whatever you suggest, please try to explain how the work
would fit into the current structure of the paper, and provide full
bibliographic info (preferable in BIBTEX format).

Please note the scope of the paper, which is neuroevolution being applied
in some way to a game problem. By games, we refer to games that people
commonly play as games (e.g. board games, card games, arcade games, racing
games, strategy games) but not purely abstract games such as prisoner?s
dilemma, robotics tasks or non-game benchmarks for reinforcement learning,
such as pole balancing.

Looking forward to your feedback.

Cheers,

Sebastian & Julian
-- 
Dr. Sebastian Risi
Assistant Professor
IT University of Copenhagen, Room 5D08
Rued Langgaards Vej 7, 2300 Copenhagen, Denmark
email: sebastian.risi at gmail.com, web: www.sebastianrisi.com
mobile: +45-50250355, office: +45-7218-5127
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From smednick at ucr.edu  Wed Oct 29 13:05:07 2014
From: smednick at ucr.edu (Sara C. Mednick)
Date: Wed, 29 Oct 2014 10:05:07 -0700
Subject: Connectionists: The PhD program in Cognitive Psychology at UC
	Riverside
Message-ID: <CAOZqGeGqDyMkRTUqBRjnkfE305gRK119vEvqEWwUfDuRm0w1cQ@mail.gmail.com>

The program in Cognitive Psychology at UC Riverside offers training in the
psychology and neuroscience of human cognition with core expertise in the
area of experience-dependent changes in human cognition. The program
includes specializations in visual, auditory and multisensory perception,
speech, language, and communication, memory, perceptual learning, sleep,
cerebral lateralization and individual differences in brain structure,
brain training and video games and mathematical/computational modeling of
cognitive processes. This research makes use of a diverse set of tools
including, EEG, MRI, electrical stimulation, eye-tracking,
psychopharmacology, driving simulators, psychophysics; and tests
populations ranging from children to seniors and in normally functioning
and cognitively impaired populations. The primary cognitive faculty are
Professors John Andersen
<http://www.psych.ucr.edu/faculty/andersen/index.html>, Curt Burgess
<http://www.psych.ucr.edu/faculty/burgess/index.html>, Christine Chiarello
<http://www.psych.ucr.edu/faculty/chiarello/index.html>, Steven Clark
<http://www.psych.ucr.edu/faculty/clark/index.html>, Sara Mednick
<http://www.psych.ucr.edu/faculty/mednick/index.html>, Lawrence Rosenblum
<http://www.psych.ucr.edu/faculty/rosenblum/index.html>,  Aaron Seitz
<http://www.psych.ucr.edu/faculty/seitz/index.html>, and Weiwei Zhang
<http://www.psych.ucr.edu/faculty/zhang/index.html>. The diversity of the
UCR campus, the Department?s affiliation with UCR?s new Medical School, and
the surrounding community make UCR an ideal campus for graduate students
interested in studying the ways in which cognitive processes are influenced
by and interact with, variations in environment.

-- 
Assistant Professor
University of California, Riverside
Department of Psychology
Sleep and Cognition (SaC) Lab
www.saramednick.com
www.sleepandcognitionlab.org
TEDx Talk <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MklZJprP5F0>

Amandla awethu!
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From yiz at soe.ucsc.edu  Tue Oct 28 12:28:24 2014
From: yiz at soe.ucsc.edu (Yi Zhang)
Date: Tue, 28 Oct 2014 09:28:24 -0700
Subject: Connectionists: Tenure Track Assistant Professor in University of
 California Santa Cruz: Economic and Information Networks
Message-ID: <CAJ74G7geV92kkOj8GRUH__WfSXO+-n2=kc3EWGY3pZgb=rnxGQ@mail.gmail.com>

Please share the information to those who might be interested. Thanks!

http://apo.ucsc.edu/academic_employment/jobs/JPF00218-15.pdf

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SANTA CRUZ

Baskin school of engineering

DEPARTMENT OF TECHNOLOGY MANAGEMENT

Assistant Professor in Economic and Information Networks

The Baskin School of Engineering (BSoE) at the University of
California, Santa Cruz (UCSC) invites applications for a tenure track
position in the Technology Management Department at the Assistant
Professor level. We seek outstanding candidates who do empirical
and/or analytical fundamental research in information economics,
network science, computational advertising or marketing analytics,
mechanism design, or computational/algorithmic economics. Technology
Management is one of seven departments hosted in the Baskin School of
Engineering and is currently undergoing an exciting growth phase in
our focus areas of Management, Data Science, and the Economics of
Information and/or Technology.

Relevant disciplines for this position include Computer Science,
Economics, Electrical Engineering, Industrial and Systems Engineering,
Operations Research, Management, Statistics (particularly temporal,
streaming, massive data, and causal modeling), Social Sciences (causal
and longitudinal modeling), or other relevant interdisciplinary
programs.

The successful candidate will be expected to maintain an active
research program with evidence of a developed research trajectory,
teach courses that contribute to the Technology Management Department
undergraduate and graduate degree programs, mentor and advise students
at the graduate and undergraduate level individually and in the
classroom, and undertake service obligations for the department and
campus consistent with a ladder-rank faculty member. Applicants are
expected to develop externally funded research programs. The candidate
must be able to work with students, faculty, and staff from a wide
range of social and cultural backgrounds. We are especially interested
in candidates who can contribute to the diversity and excellence of
the academic community.

This position will contribute to UCSC?s initiative to expand research
and teaching in the Silicon Valley. The successful candidate will have
a presence on campus (in Santa Cruz) and at the UCSC Silicon Valley
Campus (in Santa Clara). The candidate will be expected to help build
academic programs in Silicon Valley and Santa Cruz.

RANK: Assistant Professor

SALARY: Commensurate with qualifications and experience; academic year
(9-month) basis

BASIC QUALIFICATIONS: Ph.D. or equivalent foreign degree in relevant
field listed above expected to be conferred by June 30, 2015;
Demonstrated record of research and teaching.

PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS: Strong training in empirical and/or
analytical research methods; research with applications in
computational advertising and marketing analytics, auctions,
crowd-sourcing, gaming, information aggregation, machine learning and
statistics in markets, market interfaces, mechanism design, market
makers, monetization, preference elicitation, scoring rules, or social
media.

POSITION AVAILABLE: July 1, 2015, with academic year beginning September 2015

TO APPLY Applications are accepted via the UCSC Academic Recruit
online system, and must include: 1) letter of application; 2)
curriculum vitae; 3) research statement; 4) teaching statement; 5) 1-3
publications; 6) 3?5 confidential letters of reference*; 7) instructor
teaching evaluations (optional). Applicants are invited to submit a
statement addressing their contributions to diversity through
research, teaching, and/or service. Documents/materials must be
submitted as PDF files.

Apply at https://recruit.ucsc.edu/apply/JPF00218
Refer to Position #JPF00218-15 in all correspondence

*All letters will be treated as confidential per University of
California policy and California state law. For any reference letter
provided via a third party (i.e., dossier service, career center),
direct the author to UCSC?s confidentiality statement at
http://apo.ucsc.edu/confstm.htm

CLOSING DATE: Review of applications will begin on January 5, 2015. To
ensure full consideration, applications should be complete and letters
of recommendation received by this date. The position will remain open
until filled, but not later than 6/30/2015.

UC Santa Cruz faculty make significant contributions to the body of
research that has earned the University of California the ranking as
the foremost public higher education institution in the world. In the
process, our faculty demonstrate that cutting-edge research, excellent
teaching and outstanding service are mutually supportive.

The University of California is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative
Action Employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration
for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national
origin, disability, age, or protected veteran status. UC Santa Cruz is
committed to excellence through diversity and strives to establish a
climate that welcomes, celebrates, and promotes respect for the
contributions of all students and employees. Inquiries regarding the
University?s equal employment opportunity policies may be directed to:
Office for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at the University of
California, Santa Cruz, CA 95064; (831) 459-2686.

Under Federal law, the University of California may employ only
individuals who are legally able to work in the United States as
established by providing documents as specified in the Immigration
Reform and Control Act of 1986. Certain UCSC positions funded by
federal contracts or sub-contracts require the selected candidate to
pass an E-Verify check. More information is available here or from the
Academic Personnel Office (APO) at (831) 459-4300.

UCSC is a smoke & tobacco-free campus.

If you need accommodation due to a disability, please contact the
Academic Personnel Office at apo at ucsc.edu (831) 459-4300.

                   VISIT THE APO WEB SITE AT: http://apo.ucsc.edu

-- 
-----------------------------------
Yi Zhang
Associate Professor
Baskin School of Engineering
SOE 3, University of California, Santa Cruz
1156 High Street
Santa Cruz, CA, USA 95064
Phone: (831) 459-4549
Fax: (831) 459-4829

Room 319, UCSC Silicon Valley Center
2505 Augustine Drive
Santa Clara, CA 95054
Phone: (408) 9198907


From ghio.alessandro at gmail.com  Wed Oct 29 06:58:48 2014
From: ghio.alessandro at gmail.com (Alessandro Ghio)
Date: Wed, 29 Oct 2014 11:58:48 +0100
Subject: Connectionists: "Advances in Learning Analytics and Educational
 Data Mining" - CFP ESANN 2015
Message-ID: <D07686F8.1773F%ghio.alessandro@gmail.com>

We are re-circulating the CFP, as the previous one included a typo in the
conference dates. 
We apologize for the inconvenience.


***     Apologies for cross posting     ***


ESANN 2015 Special Session ? "Advances in Learning Analytics and Educational
Data Mining" - CALL FOR PAPERS
European Symposium on Artificial Neural Networks, Computational Intelligence
and Machine Learning (ESANN 2015). 22-24 April 2015, Bruges, Belgium ?
http://www.esann.org <http://www.esann.org/>
 
Submissions are invited for next year ESANN Special Session "Advances in
Learning Analytics and Educational Data Mining".
 
Organizers: 
Davide Anguita, Alessandro Ghio, Luca Oneto - University of Genoa, Genoa,
Italy
Mathias Funk, Matthias Rauterberg - Eindhoven University of Technology,
Eindhoven, The Netherlands
 
 
ESANN 2015 Special Session "Advances in Learning Analytics and Educational
Data Mining" webpage: http://esann2015.la.smartlab.ws
<http://esann2015.la.smartlab.ws/>
Smartlab webpage on Learning Analytics activities: http://la.smartlab.ws
<http://la.smartlab.ws/>
 
 
ABSTRACT
Thanks to the emerging of computer-assisted learning systems, the automatic
information collection of interaction between the student and Technology
Enhanced Learning (TEL) system has become increasingly common: data are now
available and should be exploited to get more insights on students?
attitudes, interactions and learning paths, as well as to improve the
effectiveness of TEL methods in a virtuous loop framework. Such data
availability has led to applications of Learning Analytics (LA) and
Educational Data Mining (EDM) techniques in this domain, characterized by
the capability of extracting non-trivial patterns from them: based on such
information, actions can be undertaken in a proactive, rather than reactive,
way. In this framework, the main issues are related to several factors such
as the presence of contradictory data (due to the centrality of the human
factors in data generation), or their potentially high-dimensionality (i.e.
several variables describing the behavior of a limited number of students in
a class). These features represent a significant challenge in the
application of classical modeling techniques, for example, parametric
statistics, thus enabling the necessity of switching towards more
sophisticated approaches. Examples of such methods are: Visual Analytics
methods, allowing the final user (e.g. the teacher) to discover common
patterns and cross-correlations between variables in a user-friendly
graphical, interactive, and appealing way; Descriptive Analytics methods,
based on non-parametric statistics, where cross-fertilizations with
analogous methodologies, developed in heterogeneous domains (e.g. retail),
is fostered towards profiling students? learning activities and attitudes.
Such activities could be inflated in several fields, spanning from
university classes to corporate training, where TEL technologies are
adopted.
 
TOPICS
In this special session, we would like to encourage submissions related to:
* the development of innovative LA/EDM techniques based on Machine Learning,
Computational Intelligence, and Data Analytics approaches
* 
* the application of LA/EDM approaches to real-world problems, both in
academic and corporate training domains
* 
* the development of new datasets for testing and validating innovative
LA/EDM approaches
* 
* the development of protocols for improving LA/EDM applications and TEL
usage
* 
* the development of Visual Analytics approaches to analyze and improve
human-computer interaction with data gathered from TEL systems
* 
* techniques for learner profiling and adaptive recommender systems
* 
* techniques for supporting new teaching styles and contemporary learning
activities, as well as the analysis thereof.

 
SUBMISSION & IMPORTANT DATES
We kindly invite you to submit a paper to this special session. Each paper
will undergo to a peer reviewing process for its acceptance. Paper
submission should be done exclusively through the ESANN portal following the
instructions provided in:
(http://www.elen.ucl.ac.be/esann/index.php?pg=submission)
<http://www.elen.ucl.ac.be/esann/index.php?pg=submission)> .
 
Paper submission deadline : 21 November 2014
Notification of acceptance : 31 January 2015
ESANN 2015 conference : 22-24 April 2015
 
 
NOTES
You can find details about the special session at
http://esann2015.la.smartlab.ws <http://esann2015.la.smartlab.ws/> . If you
have any questions concerning the special session, please do not hesitate to
contact us via email to: la at smartlab.ws
 
More information about the Conference Program, accommodation facilities and
registration fees is available on the ESANN website http://www.esann.org
<http://www.esann.org/>
 
---
Dr. Alessandro Ghio, Ph.D.

Research Fellow
Smartlab - Polytechnic School ? University of Genoa
Via Opera Pia 11a, I-16145 Genoa (Italy)

T. +39-(0)10-3532192
F. +39-(0)10-3532897
@  <mailto:Alessandro.Ghio at smartlab.ws> Alessandro.Ghio
<mailto:alessandro.ghio at unige.it> @unige.it
<mailto:alessandro.ghio at unige.it>

W http://smartlab.ws/
---


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From idan at lobster.ls.huji.ac.il  Thu Oct 30 04:08:47 2014
From: idan at lobster.ls.huji.ac.il (Idan Segev)
Date: Thu, 30 Oct 2014 10:08:47 +0200
Subject: Connectionists: Segev/Sompolinsky Labs. - Fellowships under the
	Max-Planck Hebrew University Centre for Brain Research
Message-ID: <41D5C82C-7ADF-4428-9B2C-1C847A7C04E3@lobster.ls.huji.ac.il>

                            Call for graduate and post-doctoral research in theoretical neuroscience at the Hebrew University 
 
The Max Planck Hebrew University Center for Brain Research invites applications for research positions at the Hebrew University at the graduate and postdoctoral levels, for theoretical research in the general areas of cortical circuitry, sensory processing, and sensory-motor loops. The research will be conducted at the Edmond and Lily Safra Center for Brain Sciences (ELSC), Hebrew University, under the supervision of Professors Idan Segev and Haim Sompolinsky in tight collaboration with the Principal Investigators at the Max Planck Institute (MPI) of Neurobiology in Martinsried.
 
Applicants should send their CV and a short research statement to Ms. Irit Dagan (irit.dagan1 at mail.huji.ac.il) and shall solicit three recommendation letters. For further inquiry, please contact Ms. Dagan, Idan Segev (idan at lobster.ls.huji.ac.il) or Haim Sompolinsky (haim at fiz.huji.ac.il).
 
About the Center: The Max Planck Society and the Hebrew University (HU) have established in October 2012, a joint research center for Sensory Processing of the Brain in Action, which supports collaborative research between ELSC and the MPI in Martinsried. The Center's goal is to advance our understanding of the neural mechanisms of sensory processing and behavior. The HU Principal Investigators are: Idan Segev (Director) ? sensory processing in dendritic modules, Haim Sompolinsky ?theory of neuronal circuits, Adi Mizrahi ? sensory coding and plasticity in the mammalian brain. The MPI Principal Investigators are: Tobias Bonhoeffer (Director) ? synaptic plasticity in the behaving brain, Alexander Borst ? motion processing in the fly visual system, Bert Sakmann ? cortical columns in vivo and in silico. For further information about the center see: http://elsc.huji.ac.il/max-planck
 
--
Idan Segev
Institute of Life Sciences, Department of Neurobiology and Edmond and Lily Safra Center for Brain Sciences
Director of the Max Planck Centre for Brain Research
The David & Inez Myers Chair in Computational Neuroscience
The Hebrew University, Edmond J. Safra Campus, Givat Ram
Jerusalem, 91904, Israel.
Tel: (972)- 2- 6585984 (lab.)
Fax: (972)- 2- 6586296 (lab.)
email: idan at lobster.ls.huji.ac.il
http://lobster.ls.huji.ac.il/idan/
http://elsc.huji.ac.il (ELSC)
http://elsc.huji.ac.il/max-planck (Max Planck Center)









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From jwmbrown at indiana.edu  Fri Oct 31 11:29:43 2014
From: jwmbrown at indiana.edu (Joshua Brown)
Date: Fri, 31 Oct 2014 11:29:43 -0400
Subject: Connectionists: Why should neuroscience care about modeling?
Message-ID: <05e401cff51f$7efec1d0$7cfc4570$@indiana.edu>

Dear Connectionists,

 

We interrupt the usual stream of job and conference ads to bring you the
following:   If you've ever thought about how neuroscientists should care
more about computational modeling, or how to communicate the value of your
work to empirical researchers, this allegory basically sums it up.  Read on
and enjoy...

 

The tale of the neuroscientists and the computer:  Why mechanistic theory
matters

 

http://journal.frontiersin.org/Journal/10.3389/fnins.2014.00349/full

 

A little over a decade ago, a biologist asked the question "Can a biologist
fix a radio?" (Lazebnik, 2002). That question framed an amusing yet profound
discussion of which methods are most appropriate to understand the inner
workings of a system, such as a radio. For the engineer, the answer is
straightforward: you trace out the transistors, resistors, capacitors etc.,
and then draw an electrical circuit diagram. At that point you have
understood how the radio works and have sufficient information to reproduce
its function. For the biologist, as Lazebnik suggests, the answer is more
complicated. You first get a hundred radios, snip out one transistor in
each, and observe what happens. Perhaps the radio will make a peculiar
buzzing noise that is statistically significant across the population of
radios, which indicates that the transistor is necessary to make the sound
normal. Or perhaps we should snip out a resistor, and then homogenize it to
find out the relative composition of silicon, carbon, etc. We might find
that certain compositions correlate with louder volumes, for example, or
that if we modify the composition, the radio volume decreases. In the end,
we might draw a kind of neat box-and-arrow diagram, in which the antenna
feeds to the circuit board, and the circuit board feeds to the speaker, and
the microphone feeds to the recording circuit, and so on, based on these
empirical studies. The only problem is that this does not actually show how
the radio works, at least not in any way that would allow us to reproduce
the function of the radio given the diagram. As Lazebnik argues, even though
we could multiply experiments to add pieces of the diagram, we still won't
really understand how the radio works. To paraphrase Feynmann, if we cannot
recreate it, then perhaps we have not understood it (Eliasmith and Trujillo,
2014; Hawking, 2001). 

 

Lazebnik's argument should not be construed to disparage biological research
in general. There are abundant examples of how molecular biology has led to
breakthroughs, including many if not all of the pharmaceuticals currently on
the market. Likewise, research in psychology has provided countless insights
that have led to useful interventions, for instance in cognitive behavioral
therapy (Rothbaum et al., 2000). These are valuable ends in and of
themselves. Still, are we missing greater breakthroughs by not asking the
right questions that would illuminate the larger picture? Within the fields
of systems, cognitive, and behavioral neuroscience in particular, I fear we
are in danger of losing the meaning of the Question "how does it work"? As
the saying goes, if you have a hammer, everything starts to look like a
nail. Having been trained in engineering as well as neuroscience and
psychology, I find all of the methods of these disciplines useful. Still,
many researchers are especially well-trained in psychology, and so the
research questions focus predominantly on understanding which brain regions
carry out which psychological or cognitive functions, following the
established paradigms of psychological research. This has resulted in the
question being often reframed as "what brain regions are active during what
psychological processes", or the more sophisticated "what networks are
active", instead of "what mechanisms are necessary to reproduce the
essential cognitive functions and activity patterns in the system." To
illustrate the significance of this difference, consider a computer. How
does it work?

 

**The Tale**

Once upon a time, a group of neuroscientists happened upon a computer
(Carandini, 2012). Not knowing how it worked, they each decided to find out
how it sensed a variety of inputs and generated the sophisticated output
seen on its display. The EEG researcher quickly went to work, putting an EEG
cap on the motherboard and measuring voltages at various points all over it,
including on the outer case for a reference point. She found that when the
hard disk was accessed, the disk controller showed higher voltages on
average, and especially more power in the higher frequency bands. When there
was a lot of computation, a lot of activity was seen around the CPU.
Furthermore, the CPU showed increased activity in a way that is time-locked
to computational demands. "See here," the researcher declared, "we now have
a fairly temporally precise picture of which regions are active, and with
what frequency spectra." But has she really understood how the computer
works? 

 

Next, the enterprising physicist and cognitive neuroscientist came along.
"We don't have enough spatial resolution to see inside the computer," they
said. So they developed a new imaging technique by which activity can be
measured, called the Metabolic Radiation Imaging (MRI) camera, which now
measures the heat (infrared) given off by each part of the computer in the
course of its operations. At first, they found simply that lots of math
operations lead to heat given off by certain parts of the CPU, and that
memory storage involved the RAM, and that file operations engaged the hard
disk. A flurry of papers followed, showing that the CPU and other areas are
activated by a variety of applications such as word-processing, speech
recognition, game play, display updating, storing new memories, retrieving
from memory, etc. 

 

Eventually, the MRI researchers gained a crucial insight, namely that none
of these components can be understood properly in isolation; they must
understand the network. Now the field shifts, and they begin to look at
interactions among regions. Before long, a series of high profile papers
emerge showing that file access does not just involve the disks. It involves
a network of regions including the CPU, the RAM, the disk controller, and
the disk. They know this because when they experimentally increase the file
access, all of these regions show correlated increases in activity. Next,
they find that the CPU is a kind of hub region, because its activity at
various times correlates with activity in other regions, such as the display
adapter, the disk controller, the RAM, and the USB ports, depending on what
task they require the computer to perform. 

 

Next, one of the MRI researchers has the further insight to study the
computer while it is idle. He finds that there is a network involving the
CPU, the memory, and the hard disk, as (unbeknownst to them) the idle
computer occasionally swaps virtual memory on and off of the disk and
monitors its internal temperature. This resting network is slightly
different across different computers in a way that correlates with their
processor speed, memory capacity, etc., and thus it is possible to predict
various capacities and properties of a given computer by measuring its
activity pattern when idle. Another flurry of publications results. In this
way, the neuroscientists continue to refine their understanding of the
network interactions among parts of the computer. They can in fact use these
developments to diagnose computer problems. After studying 25 normal
computers and comparing them against 25 computers with broken disk
controllers, they find that the connectivity between the CPU and the disk
controller is reduced in those with broken disk controllers. This allows
them to use MRI to diagnose other computers with broken disk controllers.
They conclude that the disk controller plays a key role in mediating disk
access, and this is confirmed with a statistical mediation analysis. Someone
even develops the technique of Directional Trunk Imaging (DTI) to
characterize the structure of the ribbon cables (fiber tract) from the disk
controller to the hard disk, and the results match the functional
correlations between the hard disk and disk controller. But for all this,
have they really understood how the computer works? 

 

The neurophysiologist spoke up. "Listen here", he said. "You have found the
larger patterns, but you don't know what the individual circuits are doing."
He then probes individual circuit points within the computer, measuring the
time course of the voltage. After meticulously advancing a very fine
electrode in 10 micron increments through the hard material (dura mater)
covering the CPU, he finds a voltage. The particular region shows brief
"bursts" of positive voltage when the CPU is carrying out math operations.
As this is the math co-processor unit (unbeknownst to the
neurophysiologist), the particular circuit path is only active when a
certain bit of a floating point representation is active. With careful
observation, the neurophysiologist identifies this "cell" as responding
stochastically when certain numbers are presented for computation. The cell
therefore has a relatively broad but weak receptive field for certain
numbers. Similar investigations of nearby regions of the CPU yield similar
results, while antidromic stimulation reveals inputs from related
number-representing regions. In the end, the neurophysiologist concludes
that the cells in this particular CPU region have receptive fields that
respond to different kinds of numbers, so this must be a number
representation area. 

 

Finally the neuropsychologist comes along. She argues (quite reasonably)
that despite all of these findings of network interactions and voltage
signals, we cannot infer that a given region is necessary without lesion
studies. The neuropsychologist then gathers a hundred computers that have
had hammer blows to various parts of the motherboard, extension cards, and
disks. After testing their abilities extensively, she carefully selects just
the few that have a specific problem with the video output. She finds that
among computers that don't display video properly, there is an overlapping
area of damage to the video card. This means of course that the video card
is necessary for proper video monitor functioning. Other similar discoveries
follow regarding the hard disks and the USB ports, and now we have a map of
which regions are necessary for various functions. But for all of this, have
the neuroscientists really understood how the computer works? 

 

**The Moral**

As the above tale illustrates, despite all of our current sophisticated
methods, we in neuroscience are still in a kind of early stage of scientific
endeavor; we continue to discover many effects but lack a proportionally
strong standard model for understanding how they all derive from mechanistic
principles. There are nonetheless many individual mathematical and
computational neural models. The Hodgkin-Huxley equations (Hodgkin and
Huxley, 1952), Integrate-and-fire model (Izhikevich, 2003), Genesis (Bower
and Beeman, 1994), SPAUN (Eliasmith et al., 2012), and Blue Brain project
(Markram, 2006) are only a few examples of the models, modeling toolkits,
and frameworks available, besides many others more focused on particular
phenomena. Still, there are many different kinds of neuroscience models, and
even many different frameworks for modeling. This means that there is no one
theoretical lingua franca against which to evaluate empirical results, or to
generate new predictions. Instead, there is a patchwork of models that treat
some phenomena, and large gaps where there are no models relevant to
existing phenomena. The moral of the story is not that the brain is a
computer. The moral of the story is twofold: first, that we sorely need a
foundational mechanistic, computational framework to understand how the
elements of the brain work together to form functional units and ultimately
generate the complex cognitive behaviors we study. Second, it is not enough
for models to exist-their premises and implications must be understood by
those on the front lines of empirical research. 

 

**The Path Forward**

A more unified model shared by the community is not out of reach for
neuroscience. Such exists in physics (e.g. the standard model), engineering
(e.g. circuit theory), and chemistry. To move forward, we need to consider
placing a similar level of value on theoretical neuroscience as for example
the field of physics places on theoretical physics. We need to train
neuroscientists and psychologists early in their careers in not just
statistics, but also in mathematical and computational modeling, as well as
dynamical systems theory and even engineering. Computational theories exist
(Marr, 1982), and empirical neuroscience is advancing, but we need to
develop the relationships between them. This is not to say that all
neuroscientists should spend their time building computational models.
Rather, every neuroscientist should at least possess literacy in modeling as
no less important than, for example, anatomy. Our graduate programs
generally need improvement on this front. For faculty, if one is in a soft
money position or on the tenure clock and cannot afford the time to learn or
develop theories, then why not collaborate with someone who can? If we
really care about the question of how the brain works, we must not delude
ourselves into thinking that simply collecting more empirical results will
automatically tell us how the brain works any more than measuring the heat
coming from computer parts will tell us how the computer works. Instead, our
experiments should address the questions of what mechanisms might account
for an effect, and how to test and falsify specific mechanistic hypotheses
(Platt, 1964).

 

Best wishes,

Josh Brown

 

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From gangluo at cs.wisc.edu  Wed Oct 29 23:05:51 2014
From: gangluo at cs.wisc.edu (Gang Luo)
Date: Wed, 29 Oct 2014 21:05:51 -0600
Subject: Connectionists: Call for applications to PhD/Postdoc study in Data
 Science/Big Data for Health Informatics
In-Reply-To: <201410291917.s9TJHENs014586@igor.cs.wisc.edu>
References: <201410291917.s9TJHENs014586@igor.cs.wisc.edu>
Message-ID: <5451AB0F.1080105@cs.wisc.edu>

Call for applications to PhD/Postdoc study in Data Science/Big Data for Health Informatics  in the Department of Biomedical Informatics at the University of Utah

TheDepartment of Biomedical Informatics (http://medicine.utah.edu/bmi/) 
at the University of Utah was established in 1964 as the first one of 
its kind in the world. We have openings for PhD and Postdoc students to 
work on data science / big data projects for health informatics. The 
applicants for these projects should have formal education background in 
computer science or related fields, preferably in the areas of data 
science / big data, machine learning, data mining, database, and/or text 
processing.

The Department has a Biomedical Informatics Training Grant from the 
National Library of Medicine (NLM). The primary purpose of this grant is 
to train research investigators in Biomedical Informatics. The NLM 
funding for students is limited to US citizens and permanent residents. 
For Pre-doctoral students, this grant is designed to fund students to 
achieve the PhD degree. The NLM training grant pays a stipend, tuition 
expenses, health insurance premiums, and travel expenses to the annual 
NLM trainees meeting. Continuation of funding is made on a year-to-year 
basis and is contingent upon adequate student performance each year and 
the availability of funds.

Pre-doctoral Training Positions:

Eligible funding for 1-5 years for advanced informatics training and 
leads towards a PhD degree. Please follow the general application 
instructions at 
http://medicine.utah.edu/bmi/academics-education/application-instructions.php

Post-doctoral Training Positions (trainees from a non-health related 
field):

Eligible funding for 1-3 years for advanced informatics training, and 
typically do not lead to a degree. Applicants must have a PhD to apply. 
These positions are funded at the NLM stipend support rates 
(http://www.nlm.nih.gov/ep/trainingdirectors.html).

Application Requirements:

1.Statement of Research Interests

2.CV

3.Faculty member(s) you are interested in working with

4.Completion of Department Supplementary Application 
Form (http://medicine.utah.edu/bmi/documents/supplementary-form2014.pdf)


        Applicants interested in data science / big data projects for
        health informaticsare welcome to contact Gang Luo at gang dot
        luo at utah dot edu for more information. The application
        deadline is December 31, 2014.

Each NLM informatics research training program makes special efforts to 
recruit individuals from underrepresented racial and ethnic groups, 
individuals with disabilities, and those from economically, socially, 
culturally or educationally disadvantaged backgrounds, into careers in 
biomedical informatics. The positions are for US citizens and permanent 
residents. For more information, see 
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/pubs/factsheets/trainedu.html

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From jkrichma at uci.edu  Fri Oct 31 12:47:23 2014
From: jkrichma at uci.edu (Jeff Krichmar)
Date: Fri, 31 Oct 2014 09:47:23 -0700
Subject: Connectionists: Neucomp 2015 CFP (in conjunction with DATE'15
	conference) - DEADLINE EXTENDED
References: <54490FC3.9020202@univ-ubs.fr>
Message-ID: <04AAE650-8EAC-459F-A3BC-316492612038@uci.edu>


----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Apologies in advance for any duplicate announcements
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

CALL FOR POSTER ABSTRACTS

2nd International Workshop on Neuromorphic and Brain-Based Computing Systems (NeuComp 2015)
http://www.date-conference.com/conference/workshop-w03
Friday March 13, 2015, Grenoble, France

held in conjunction with DATE'15 conference
(http://www.date-conference.com)


**Description**
Biological neural systems are well known for their robust and power-efficient operation in highly noisy environments. Biological circuits are made up of low-precision, unreliable and massively parallel neural elements with highly reconfigurable and plastic connections. Two of the most interesting properties of the neural systems are its self-organizing capabilities and its template architecture. Recent research in biologically-plausible neural networks has demonstrated interesting principles about learning and neural computation. Understanding and applying these principles to practical problems is only possible if large-scale neural simulators or circuits can be constructed. This workshop will outline key modelling abstractions for the brain and focus on recent neural network models. Aspects of neuronal processing and computational issues related to modelling these processes will be discussed. Hardware and software solutions readily usable by neuroscientists and computer scientists and efficient enough to construct very large networks comparable to brain networks will be presented.


**Target Audience and Workshop Format**
NeuComp 2015 is the second edition of a DATE workshop designed to attract both newcomers to neuromorphic computing, as well as neuromorphic researchers who wish to interact with the DATE community to stimulate new ideas, topics and collaborations. Since this is a hot area but one that is probably new to a large segment of the DATE community, half of the workshop will be devoted to a comprehensive introduction to Neuromorphic and Brain-Based Computing, where the audience will be exposed to basic definitions, key concepts, abstractions, design flows, and design constraints; also some highly visible research projects will be presented as exemplars to provide an overview of existing and emerging solutions in this domain. The other half of the event will create a forum for interactive discussion and exchange of ideas and experiences between researchers through posters and demonstrations, with the goal of highlighting details on applicability, performance, and strengths of current solutions. Our aim is for attendees to learn about emerging Neuromorphic and Brain-Based computing techniques, highlight publicly available modelling and simulation tools, and view directions for longer term research.


**Topics of interest**
Authors are invited to submit original unpublished works on topics from a wide range of Neuromorphic and Brain-Based computing areas, including but not limited to:
- Formal models
- Hardware architectures
- Software tools
- Systems and applications
- Simulation Infrastructures


**Submission**
Submissions are invited in the form of 2-page extended abstract describing the novelties and advantages of the work.
Submissions must be done through Easychair at https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=neucomp2015
All submissions will be evaluated with regard to their suitability for the workshop, originality and technical soundness. Selected submissions will be accepted for oral presentation and/or poster/interactive presentations. This workshop does not require blind submissions. Informal proceedings with accepted papers will be made available at the workshop as detailed below.


**Important dates**
- Submission deadline            	November 30th, 2014
- Notification of acceptance     	December 10th, 2015
- Final program                    	December 15th, 2015


**Informal Workshop Digest**
NeuComp 2015 will distribute an informal workshop digest to all workshop participants.  NeuComp 2015 presenters are encouraged to submit papers for inclusion in this informal workshop digest.
Note that since the informal workshop digest is only distributed to workshop participants (and is not archived as part of DATE or ACM/IEEE digital libraries), authors are free to submit their work to other archival conferences and journals.


**Proceedings**
Selected results of the two first editions of Neucomp will be published in form of an edited book by Springer.


**Workshop format**
The workshop will combine oral and interactive sessions (posters and demonstrations) together with invited talks representing major neuromorphic research projects.  The event will be designed to be highly interactive, with ample time for discussion and cross-disciplinary engagement.


**Confirmed Invited speakers**
- Romain Brette (ENS, FR)
- Kristofor Carlson (UCI, US)
- J?rg Conradt (TU Munich, DE)
- Steve Furber (Manchester Univ., UK)
- Todd Hylton (Brain Corporation, US)
- Giacomo Indiveri (ETHZ, CH)
- Anders Lansner (KTH, SW)
- Rajit Manohar (Cornell Univ., US)


**General Co-chairs**
Philippe Coussy	Universit? de Bretagne-Sud/Lab-STICC, FR
Nikil Dutt University of California ? Irvine, Irvine, CA USA


**Preliminary Technical Program Committee**
Jeff Krichmar University of California ? Irvine, Irvine, USA (Program Co-Chair)
Philippe Coussy Universit? de Bretagne-Sud/Lab-STICC, FR (Program Co-Chair)

Angelo Arleo Universit? Pierre et Marie Curie, FR
Romain Brette ENS Paris, FR
Gert Cauwenberghs UCSD, USA
Yiran Chen University of Pittsburgh, USA
Jorg Conradt TU Munich, GER
Nikil Dutt UC Irvine, USA
Steve Furber Manchester University, UK
Karlheinz Meier Heidelberg University, GER
Vijaykrishnan Narayanan	Pennsylvania State University, USA
Narayan Srinivasa HRL, USA
Massimiliano Versace Boston University, USA


If you have any questions about the workshop, please contact philippe.coussy at univ-ubs.fr

**Previous edition**
For more information about Neucomp 2013 program, see
http://www-labsticc.univ-ubs.fr/~coussy/neucomp2013/


-- 
================================================
Pr. Philippe COUSSY

Universit? de Bretagne-Sud - UEB
Laboratoire Lab-STICC - CNRS, UMR 6285
Centre de Recherche - BP 92116
F-56321 Lorient Cedex - FRANCE

Phone +33 (0)2 97 87 45 65
Web   http://www-labsticc.univ-ubs.fr/~coussy/
================================================

Jeff Krichmar
Department of Cognitive Sciences
2328 Social & Behavioral Sciences Gateway
University of California, Irvine
Irvine, CA 92697-5100
jkrichma at uci.edu
http://www.socsci.uci.edu/~jkrichma
> 
> 
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From Vittorio.Murino at iit.it  Fri Oct 31 12:50:08 2014
From: Vittorio.Murino at iit.it (Vittorio Murino)
Date: Fri, 31 Oct 2014 17:50:08 +0100
Subject: Connectionists: Open postdoc position in pattern recognition,
 machine learning and computer vision for biomedical data analysis
Message-ID: <5453BDC0.7070004@iit.it>

Postdoctoral position in pattern recognition, machine learning and 
computer vision for biomedical data analysis

Budget code: 68041

The Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT) was established by the Italian 
government with the objective of promoting technological development and 
higher education in science and technology. In this sense, IIT is 
implementing a detailed scientific program, which comprises integration 
across fundamental research and application. IIT's research endeavour 
focuses on high-tech and innovation, representing the forefront of 
technology with possible application from medicine to industry, computer 
science, robotics, life sciences and nanobiotechnologies.

The Pattern Analysis and Computer Vision department (PAVIS) at IIT 
(http://www.iit.it/pavis.html) is looking for a highly qualified 
researcher in the field of Computer Vision, Pattern Recognition, Machine 
Learning, and Image Analysis with applications to Biomedical Data Analysis

Research in PAVIS follows two main streams. One mission of PAVIS is to 
design and develop innovative video surveillance systems, characterized 
by the use of highly-functional smart sensors and advanced video 
analytics features. PAVIS also has an active role in supporting the 
research facilities in IIT providing solutions to life-scientists in 
Neuroscience, Drug Discovery and Development and Nanophysics. To this 
end, the group is involved in activities concerning computer vision and 
pattern recognition, machine learning, multimodal data analysis and 
sensor fusion, sensors networks, and embedded computer vision systems. 
The lab will pursue this goal by working collaboratively and in 
cooperation with external private and public partners as well.

This call aims at consolidating PAVIS expertise in the following 
research areas:

+ Biomedical image analysis
+ Neuroimaging (functional and structural)
+ Biological signal/image/video processing
+ Neuronal network structural and functional activity analysis
+ Animal behaviour analysis
+ Multimodal data analysis and data fusion

We are seeking a self-motivated individual with the ability to take 
day-to-day responsibility for the progress of his own activities. The 
ideal candidate will have a PhD in Computer Science, Mathematics, 
Electronic Engineering or a closely-related discipline, with experience 
and qualification on machine learning, pattern recognition, computer 
vision, coupled with a keen interest on biomedical applications.
Evidence of top quality research on the specified areas in the form of 
published papers is mandatory. Expertise or experience about *deep 
learning approaches, sparse leaning, and/or dictionary learning *are 
highly appreciated. Programming skills are also required.

The postdoctoral position is up to 3 years. The salary will be 
commensurate to qualification and experience and in line to that of the 
research institutes in the rest of Europe. The position will be occupied 
according to a first come-first serve policy, and the search will 
continue until an appropriate candidate will be identified. Further 
details and informal enquires can be made by email to pavis at iit.it.

Completed application forms along with a curriculum listing all 
publications, a pdf of most representative publications and a research 
statement describing previous research experience and outlining its 
relevance to these topics should be sent by email to pavis at iit.it.
Please, indicate the *budget code: 68041 in the subject line*. Please, 
also indicate three independent references inside the CV.

=================================================================================
In order to comply with the Italian law (art. 23 of Privacy Law of the 
Italian Legislative Decree n. 196/03), we have to kindly ask the 
candidate to give his/her consent to allow IIT to process his/her 
personal data. We inform you that the information you provide will be 
used solely for the purpose of assessing your professional profile to 
meet the requirements of Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia. Your data will 
be processed by Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, with headquarters in 
Genoa, Via Morego 30, acting as the Data Holder, using computer and 
paper based means, observing the rules on protection of personal data, 
including those relating to the security of data. Please also note that, 
pursuant to art.7 of Legislative Decree 196/2003, you may exercise your 
rights at any time as a party concerned by contacting the Data Manager.
The Italian Institute of Technology is an Equal Opportunity Employer 
that actively seeks diversity in the workforce.
=================================================================================


-- 
Vittorio Murino

*******************************************
Prof. Vittorio Murino, Ph.D.
PAVIS - Pattern Analysis & Computer Vision

IIT Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia
Via Morego 30
16163 Genova, Italy

Phone:	+39 010 71781 504
Mobile: +39 329 6508554
Fax: +39 010 71781 236
E-mail: vittorio.murino at iit.it

Secretary: Sara Curreli
email:	sara.curreli at iit.it
Phone: 	+39 010 71781 917

http://www.iit.it/pavis
********************************************

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