Connectionists: 2015 Telluride Neuromorphic Cognition Engineering Workshop- Call For Applicants

[Ralph Etienne-Cummings]

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**Telluride Neuromorphic Cognition Engineering Workshop*



*2015 Neuromorphic Cognition Engineering Workshop*

*Telluride, Colorado, June 28th - July 18th, 2015*



CALL FOR APPLICATIONS: Deadline is April 2nd, 2015

NEUROMORPHIC COGNITION ENGINEERING WORKSHOP

www.ine-web.org



Sunday June 28th - Saturday July 18th, 2015, Telluride, Colorado



ine-web.org/workshops/workshops-overview/index.html and the workshop wiki
is at https://neuromorphs.net/



GOALS:

Neuromorphic engineers design and fabricate artificial neural systems whose
organizing principles are based on those of biological nervous systems.
Over the past 18 years, this research community has focused on the
understanding of low-level sensory processing and systems infrastructure;
efforts are now expanding to apply this knowledge and infrastructure to
addressing higher-level problems in perception, cognition, and learning. In
this 3-week intensive workshop and through the Institute for Neuromorphic
Engineering (INE), the mission is to promote interaction between senior and
junior researchers; to educate new members of the community; to introduce
new enabling fields and applications to the community; to promote on-going
collaborative activities emerging from the Workshop, and to promote a
self-sustaining research field.



FORMAT:

The three week summer workshop will include background lectures on systems
and cognitive neuroscience (in particular sensory processing, learning and
memory, motor systems and attention), practical tutorials on emerging
hardware design, mobile robots, hands-on projects, and special interest
groups. Participants are required to take part and possibly complete at
least one of the projects proposed. They are furthermore encouraged to
become involved in as many of the other activities proposed as interest and
time allow. There will be two lectures in the morning that cover issues
that are important to the community in general. Because of the diverse
range of backgrounds among the participants, some of these lectures will be
tutorials, rather than detailed reports of current research. These lectures
will be given by invited speakers. Projects and interest groups meet in the
late afternoons, and after dinner. In the early afternoon there will be
tutorials on a wide spectrum of topics, including analog VLSI, mobile
robotics, vision and auditory systems, central-pattern-generators,
selective attention mechanisms, cognitive systems, etc.



*2015 TOPIC AREAS:*



*Human Auditory Cognition: Communicating with EEG and Virtual Reality Links
(The Matrix)*: Shihab Shamma (UM-College Park), Malcolm Slaney (Microsoft),
Edward Lalor (Trinity College, Dublin), and Alain de Cheveigne (UPMC,
France)



*Manipulation Actions: Movements, Forces and Affordances: *Cornelia
Fermüller (UMCP), Michael Pfeiffer (INI-UZH), Ryad Benosman (UPMC, Paris),
and Andreas Andreou (JHU)



*Neuromorphic Natural Language Processing:* John Harris (UFL, Gainesville)
and Chris Huyck (Middlesex University)



*Spike-Based Cognitive Computing: Seeing, Hearing, and Thinking with
Spikes: *Arindam Basu (NTU, Singapore) and John Arthur (IBM Research
Almaden)



*Computational Neuroscience (invitational mini-workshop)* : Terry Sejnowski
(Salk Institute)



LOCATION AND ARRANGEMENTS:

The summer school will take place in the small town of Telluride, 9000 feet
high in southwest Colorado, about 6 hours drive away from Denver (350
miles). Great Lakes Aviation and America West Express airlines provide
daily flights directly into Telluride. All facilities within the
beautifully renovated public school building are fully accessible to
participants with disabilities. Participants will be housed in ski
condominiums, within walking distance of the school. Participants are
expected to share condominiums.



The workshop is intended to be very informal and hands-on. Participants are
not required to have had previous experience in analog VLSI circuit design,
computational or machine vision, systems level neurophysiology or modeling
the brain at the systems level. However, we strongly encourage active
researchers with relevant backgrounds from academia, industry and national
laboratories to apply, in particular if they are prepared to work on
specific projects, talk about their own work or bring demonstrations to
Telluride (e.g. robots, chips, software). Wireless internet access will be
provided. Technical staff present throughout the workshops will assist with
software and hardware issues. We will have a network of PCs running LINUX
and Microsoft Windows for the workshop projects. We encourage participants
to bring along their personal laptop.



No cars are required. Given the small size of the town, we recommend that
you do not rent a car. Bring hiking boots, warm clothes, rain gear, and a
backpack, since Telluride is surrounded by beautiful mountains.



Unless otherwise arranged with one of the organizers, we expect
participants to stay for the entire duration of this three week workshop.



FINANCIAL ARRANGEMENTS:

Notification of acceptances will be mailed out around the April 15th, 2015.
The Workshop covers all your accommodations and facilities costs for the 3
weeks duration. You are responsible for your own travel to the Workshop,
however, sponsored fellowships will be available as described below to
further subsidize your cost.



Registration Fees: For expenses not covered by federal funds, a Workshop
registration fee is required. The fee is TBD per participant for the 3-week
Workshop. This is expected from all participants at the time of acceptance.

Accommodations: The cost of a shared condominium, typically a bedroom in a
shared condo for senior participants or a shared room for students, will be
covered for all academic participants. Upgrades to a private rooms or
condos will cost extra. Participants from National Laboratories and
Industry are expected to pay for these condominiums.



Fellowships: This year we will offer one Fellowship program to subsidize
your costs:

The EU-CSNII Fellowship (http://csnetwork.eu/) which is funded by the 7th
Research Framework Program FP7-ICT-CSNII-601167. The top 8 EU applicants
will be reimbursed for their registration fees ($1250), subsistence/travel
subsidy (up to Euro 2000) and accommodations cost ($1500). The registration
and accommodation costs will go directly to the INE (the INE will reimburse
them).



We invite applications for a three-week summer workshop that will be held
in Telluride, Colorado. Sunday June 28th - Saturday July 18th, 2015. The
application deadline is Wednesday, April 2nd and application instructions
are described at the bottom of this document.



The 2015 Workshop and Summer School on Neuromorphic Engineering is
sponsored by the National Science Foundation, Institute of Neuromorphic
Engineering, DARPA, Office of Naval Research, The EU-Collaborative
Convergent Science Network (CNS-II), University of Maryland - College Park,
Institute for Neuroinformatics – University of Zurich and ETH Zurich,
Georgia Institute of Technology, Johns Hopkins University, Boston
University, University of Western Sydney and the Salk Institute.



Directors:

Cornelia Fermuller, University of Maryland, College Park

Ralph Etienne-Cummings, Johns Hopkins University

Shih-Chii Liu, Institute of Neuroinformatics, UNI/ETH Zurich, Switzerland

Timothy Horiuchi, University of Maryland, College Park



Workshop Advisory Board:

Andreas Andreou, Johns Hopkins University

Andre van Schaik, University Western Sydney, Australia

Avis Cohen, University of Maryland

Barbara Shinn-Cunningham, Boston University

Giacomo Indiveri, Institute of Neuroinformatics, Uni/Eth Zurich, Switzerland

Jonathan Tapson, University Western Sydney, Australia

Malcolm Slaney, Microsoft Research

Jennifer Hasler, Georgia Institute of Technology

Rodney Douglas, Institute of Neuroinformatics, Uni/Eth Zurich, Switzerland

Shihab Shamma, University of Maryland

Tobi Delbruck, Institute of Neuroinformatics, Uni/Eth Zurich, Switzerland



Previous year workshop can be found at:
<http://ine-web.org/workshops/workshops-overview/index.html> participant’s
registration fees after receipt from CSNII), while the subsistence/travel
reimbursement will be provided directly to the participants by the CSNII at
the University of Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain.

HOW TO APPLY:

Applicants should be at the level of graduate students or above (i.e.
postdoctoral fellows, faculty, research and engineering staff and the
equivalent positions in industry and national laboratories). We actively
encourage women and minority candidates to apply.



Anyone interested in proposing or discussing specific projects should
contact the appropriate topic leaders directly.



The application website is (after February 23rd, 2015):

ine-web.org/telluride-conference-2015/apply-info



Application information needed:

Contact email address.

First name, Last name, Affiliation, valid e-mail address.

Curriculum Vitae (a short version, please).

One page summary of background and interests relevant to the workshop,
including possible ideas for workshop projects. Please indicate which topic
areas you would most likely join.

Two letters of recommendation (uploaded directly by references).

Applicants will be notified by e-mail.

23rd February, 2015 - Applications accepted on website

2nd April, 2015 - Applications Due

15th April, 2015 - Notification of Acceptance



-- 
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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