Connectionists: Telluride Neuromorphic Cognition Engineering Workshop 2016: Call for Topics

[Ralph Etienne-Cummings]

Call for Topic Area Proposals 2016 Neuromorphic Cognition Engineering
Workshop

*Telluride, Colorado, June 26 –July 16, 2016*


*DEADLINE:  January 8th, 2016*



We are now accepting proposals for Topic Areas in the 2016 Telluride
Neuromorphic Cognition Engineering Workshop.  We support topics and
projects in neuromorphic cognition, particularly those that involve solving
challenging ‘everyday’ tasks that incorporate domain-specific knowledge,
exploration, prediction, and problem solving. In particular, we are
interested in projects that hold promise for addressing Grand Challenge
types of problems that do not have strong solutions of any form,
neuromorphic or not.  These Challenge problems should feature long-duration
sensorimotor problems that involve autonomous cognitive decision making.
Examples might include tasks such as learning a new language, navigating
through an unknown environment to locate an object or reach a desired
location, visual and auditory understanding of human actions, adaptively
manipulating unknown or complex objects in the service of a task, playing a
game requiring inference of hidden information or long-term planning and
learning, etc. Proposals related to hardware technologies that aim to bring
these capabilities to reality are also encouraged. Topic proposals that aim
to solve a particular problem using the multidisciplinary experience of
participants will be favored over topics that simply gather a large number
of people working within a discipline, or using a single technology, or
approach.



Topic areas for this summer's Telluride Neuromorphic Cognition Engineering
Workshop <http://ine-web.org/> will be chosen from proposals submitted to
the organizers.





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



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



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



*Pre-workshop topic area choices and study assignments.*

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



 *The maximum 2-page proposals should include:*



1. Title of topic area.

2. Names of the two topic leaders, their affiliations, and contact
information (email

    addresses).

3. A paragraph explaining the focus and goals of the topic area.

4. A list of possible specific topic area projects.

5. A list of example invitees (up to six names and institutions). No
commitments necessary.

6. Any other material that fits within the two-page limit that will help us
make a smart

    choice.



*Send your topic area proposal* in pdf or text format to
organizers13 at neuromorphs.net <organizers12 at neuromorphs.net> with subject
line containing "topic area proposal".



*Proposals must be received by January 8, 2016*; proposals received after
the deadline may still be considered if space is available.



*We expect to accept 4-5 topic areas*, each with 5 invitees*.* If your
proposal for the topic area is not accepted, we will work with you to see
if there is a natural way to include your ideas (and you) into the accepted
topic areas. We hope to have significant turn-over each year in the topic
areas and leaders to ensure fresh new ideas and participants.



See the Institute of Neuromorphic Engineering (www.ine-web.org) for
background information on the workshop and neuromorphs.net
<https://neuromorphs.net/ws2009/wiki/PastWorkshops> for past workshop wikis.



We look forward to your topic proposals!



*Deadline: January 8, 2016*



*The Workshop Directors:*

Cornelia Fermüller <http://www.cfar.umd.edu/~fer/> (University of
Maryland), Ralph Etienne-Cummings
<http://etienne.ece.jhu.edu/people/ralph/index.html> (Johns Hopkins
Univ.) Shih-Chii
Liu <https://www.ini.uzh.ch/~shih/> (University of Zurich and ETH
Zurich), Timmer
Horiuchi <https://www.isr.umd.edu/faculty/horiuchi> (University of
Maryland), Katalin Gotthard
<http://physiological-sciences.arizona.edu/katalin-gothard> (University of
Arizona), Michael Pfeiffer <https://www.ini.uzh.ch/~pfeiffer/index.html>
(University of Zurich and ETH Zurich), Francisco Barranco <fbarranco at ugr.es>
(University of Granada)



*Former 2007-2013 Workshop Director: *

Tobi Delbruck <https://www.ini.uzh.ch/~tobi/> (University of Zurich and ETH
Zurich)







-- 
Ralph Etienne-Cummings, PhD, FIEEE
Professor and Chairman
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Computational Sensor Motor Systems Lab
Laboratory for Computational Sensing and Robotics
The Johns Hopkins University
Baltimore, MD
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