From ajyu at ucsd.edu Thu Jun 2 10:54:56 2016 From: ajyu at ucsd.edu (Angela J. Yu) Date: Thu, 2 Jun 2016 16:54:56 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: Postdoc Opening in San Diego Message-ID: <88738DF8-D9A4-4558-9419-FBAFBC45721C@ucsd.edu> Applications are invited from highly motivated researchers for a postdoctoral position immediately available in the Computational & Cognitive Neuroscience Lab, led by Angela Yu, at University of California, San Diego. Initial appointment is one-two years, with flexible start date and opportunity for renewal. The project involves developing a decision-theoretical framework for the inter-related problems of perceptual decision-making, active sensing, active learning, interactions between affective and cognitive processing, and social cognition. Candidates must have a strong mathematical and modeling background in Bayesian statistics, Markov decision process, and general machine learning methods. Experience with measure-theoretic probability theory, stochastic processes, stochastic control theory (stopping problems, bandit problems, sequential decision problems), and/or dynamical systems analysis is also desirable. Applicants should be committed to applying rigorous mathematical tools to modeling cognitive and neural processes. Experience or interest in carrying out human behavioral experiments (either in person or on Amazon M-Turk) and/or collaborating with other human/animal neuroscience laboratories is also desirable. Dr. Yu's lab is situated within the Cognitive Science department of UCSD, and affiliated with the Computer Science Department, Neurosciences Graduate Program, and the Institute of Neural Computation. There are ample opportunities for collaborations with related groups across the UCSD main campus, the medical school, and the Salk Institute. Interested candidates should send a research statement, along with a CV including publications, to Dr. Angela Yu (ajyu at ucsd.edu ). Two or more letters of references should be sent directly to the same address. ------------------------------------- Angela J. Yu Associate Professor UCSD Cognitive Science www.cogsci.ucsd.edu/~ajyu ------------------------------------- -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From C.Campbell at bristol.ac.uk Thu Jun 2 11:05:53 2016 From: C.Campbell at bristol.ac.uk (C Campbell) Date: Thu, 2 Jun 2016 16:05:53 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: PhD studentship available/machine learning and bioinformatics Message-ID: The Intelligent Systems Group, University of Bristol has a fully funded PhD studentship available, to start in September/October 2016. The deadline for applications is *** 10th June 2016 ***. Project title: Novel Methodology for Predicting the Effects of Genetic Variation. Project details: Rapid developments in next-generation sequencing technologies have led to a substantial increase in identified genetic variants, which may be implicated in human disease. A focus of the project is to construct and use algorithmically-based methods for predicting the functional consequence of genetic variation. A representative publication is available as H.A. Shihab et al. Bioinformatics doi:10.1093/bioinformatics/btv009 (2015). We have devised predictors for short insertions and deletions of genetic code (indels.biocompute.org.uk), haploinsufficiency and many other contexts. In this PhD programme we will extend this study in many directions including devising disease-specific predictors and devising predictors for other types of genetic variation. The appointment should also be happy to work with biologists who work with genetically related data and our team is a member of the Genomics England (100,000 genomes) Programme. In addition to this application core, the PhD student should be interested in the development of improved methodology for handling problems specific to the application domain. This includes new methods for handling label noise, improved methods for data integration, target ranking, label dependency and a range of other issues. He or she should be capable of developing novel methodology in addition to having a keen interdisciplinary interest in the given medical application domain. Thus the studentship would be of interest to an applicant with a background in mathematics, statistics, computer science or bioinformatics. Supervisors: Dr. Colin Campbell (C.Campbell at bristol.ac.uk) and Dr. Tom Gaunt (Tom.Gaunt at bristol.ac.uk) Applications: Applicants should hold (or expect to obtain) a minimum upper-second honours degree (or equivalent) in mathematics, statistics, computer science or bioinformatics. The project is available to UK/EU nationals only due to the nature of the funding and is due to start September/October 2016. For EU nationals we are only able to pay tuition fees and not maintenance. Any enquiries relating to the project and/or suitability should be directed to Colin Campbell (C.Campbell at bris.ac.uk) Administrative contact and how to apply: http://www.bris.ac.uk/engineering/graduate-school/pg-open/funding/ Applications portal https://webcentre.hobsons.co.uk/ Contact point for queries: Postgraduate Admissions Team Phone: +44 (0) 117 954 5130 Email: fen-pgadmissions at bristol.ac.uk PhD in Engineering Mathematics Postgraduate Admissions Team University of Bristol Queen's Building University Walk Bristol BS8 1TR, UK - Colin Campbell Director, Intelligent Systems Laboratory, Room 2.39, Merchant Venturer's Building, University of Bristol, Bristol BS8 1UB, United Kingdom *Tel:* +44 (0) 117-33-15620 *E-mail:* C.Campbell at bristol.ac.uk http://seis.bris.ac.uk/~enicgc/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From janet.hsiao at gmail.com Sat Jun 4 10:07:45 2016 From: janet.hsiao at gmail.com (Janet Hsiao) Date: Sat, 4 Jun 2016 22:07:45 +0800 Subject: Connectionists: Postdoctoral Position: Hidden Markov modeling of eye movements, University of Hong Kong Message-ID: *Postdoctoral Position: Hidden Markov modeling of eye movements* *Department of Psychology, the University of Hong Kong* Applicants are invited for appointment as *Post-doctoral Fellow in Cognitive Science in the Department of Psychology*, to commence as soon as possible but not later than February 28, 2017 for a period of 1 year, with the possibility of renewal up to 3 years. Applicants must have a Ph.D. degree in Computer Science, Cognitive Science, or related fields, good programming skills, experience in Matlab and knowledge of machine learning methods. Preference will be given to those with experience in hidden Markov modelling or eye tracking experiments and analysis. The appointee will work in the Attention, Brain and Cognition lab led by Dr. Janet Hsiao, on the project related to hidden Markov modelling of eye movements in cognitive tasks and the application of this method to the understanding of cognitive deficits in the clinical population. The project involves developing hidden Markov model based approaches for analyzing eye movement data, in collaboration with Dr. Antoni Chan (Department of Computer Science, City University of Hong Kong) and Professor Tatia Lee (Department of Psychology, University of Hong Kong). Information about the research can be obtained at http://abc.psy.hku.hk/. For more information about the position, please contact Dr. Janet Hsiao at jhsiao at hku.hk. A highly competitive salary commensurate with qualifications and experience will be offered, in addition to annual leave and medical benefits. Applicants should send a completed application form together with a letter of application, an up-to-date C.V. including academic qualifications, research experience, publications, and at least two letters of reference to Dr. Janet Hsiao at jhsiao at hku.hk, with the subject line ?Post-doctoral position?. Application forms (341/1111) can be downloaded at http://www.hku.hk/apptunit/form-ext.doc. Further particulars can be obtained at http://jobs.hku.hk/. *Review of applications will continue until* *August 31, 2016*. The University thanks applicants for their interest, but advises that only candidates shortlisted for interviews will be notified of the application result. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From p.roelfsema at nin.knaw.nl Sun Jun 5 03:23:34 2016 From: p.roelfsema at nin.knaw.nl (Pieter Roelfsema) Date: Sun, 5 Jun 2016 07:23:34 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: Roelfsema/Levelt labs: Postdoc or PhD Project in visual perception in mice Message-ID: Project in visual perception in mice in the Roelfsema/Levelt labs A post-doc or PhD-student position is available in the Vision & Cognition/ Molecular Visual Plasticity groups at the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience in Amsterdam. This project is funded by a Human Brain Project grant. Feedforward and feedback processing for visual perception We know from our previous work (Poort et al. Neuron, 2012; Self et al., PNAS 2012; Self et al., Curr. Biol. 2013) that feedback connections are crucial for the conscious perception of a figure on a background. Leveraging on the new methods for cell-specific in vivo two-photon imaging (van Versendaal et al. Neuron, 2012), wide field imaging and optogenetics (Saiepour et al, Curr. Biol., 2015), we now aim to test the causal roles of feedforward and feedback connections in the mouse visual cortex as well as their role in learning. We aim to manipulate visual perception in mice in tasks that require visual perception (Self et al., J. Neurosci. 2014) and to test how feedforward and feedback connections change as the result of learning a new task. Qualifications We will consider candidates with a degree in neuroscience, (neuro) psychology, biomedical sciences, natural sciences, mathematics, physics etc. A high level of written and spoken English and excellent programming skills for the setting up of behavioral tasks and for the analysis of imaging data are required. The ideal candidate will have experience with neurophysiological techniques, the analysis of neuronal activity in alert animals and a solid background in cognitive neuroscience. Appointment The positions involve a temporary appointment for 2-3 year (postdoc) or 4 years (PhD student). To apply, please send application letter, CV and two letters of recommendation before July 10th 2016 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 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dwang at cse.ohio-state.edu Wed Jun 1 02:54:32 2016 From: dwang at cse.ohio-state.edu (DeLiang Wang) Date: Wed, 1 Jun 2016 02:54:32 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: NEURAL NETWORKS, June 2016 Message-ID: Neural Networks - Volume 78, June 2016 Special Issue on "Neural Network Learning in Big Data" http://www.journals.elsevier.com/neural-networks Evolving spatio-temporal data machines based on the NeuCube neuromorphic framework: Design methodology and selected applications Nikola Kasabov, et al. Noise-enhanced convolutional neural networks Kartik Audhkhasi, Osonde Osoba, Bart Kosko Hadoop neural network for parallel and distributed feature selection Victoria J. Hodge, Simon O'Keefe, Jim Austin A new Growing Neural Gas for clustering data streams Mohammed Ghesmoune, Mustapha Lebbah, Hanene Azzag Scalable learning method for feedforward neural networks using minimal-enclosing-ball approximation Jun Wang, Zhaohong Deng, Xiaoqing Luo, Yizhang Jiang, Shitong Wang A decentralized training algorithm for Echo State Networks in distributed big data applications Simone Scardapane, Dianhui Wang, Massimo Panella Smart sampling and incremental function learning for very large high dimensional data Diego G. Loyola R, Mattia Pedergnana, Sebastian Gimeno Garcia Least square neural network model of the crude oil blending process Jose de Jesus Rubio Machine learning based sample extraction for automatic speech recognition using dialectal Assamese speech Swapna Agarwalla, Kandarpa Kumar Sarma Learning to decode human emotions with Echo State Networks Lachezar Bozhkov, Petia Koprinkova-Hristova, Petia Georgieva From agabi at koniku.uk Mon Jun 6 02:23:34 2016 From: agabi at koniku.uk (Oshiorenoya E. Agabi) Date: Sun, 5 Jun 2016 23:23:34 -0700 Subject: Connectionists: Open Positions for a 'Computational Neuroscientist' and an 'Experimental Neuroscientist' at Koniku Inc. Message-ID: <90D06E9E-1D42-4F8F-B1AA-AC107051697F@koniku.uk> We need your help! This is an opportunity to challenge conventional wisdom and achieve something truly unique. But thats up to you, koniku is building wetware with biological neurons. Yes! we need all the help we can get. Our startup currently has two open positions: A computational neuroscientist with exceptional theoretical depth and sharp programming skills. Koniku also wants an experimental neuroscientist with solid lab experience especially with neural stem cells, electrophysiology and micro electrode arrays. You have completed a PhD, about to do so or with comparative experience or skill set. Position is available immediately. We are based in Newark California, our small team recently moved to an exciting new lab space and we are building out. Please reach out with a CV, 2 - 3 references, publication record. Send documents and questions to ?agabi at koniku.io ?. We offer a very competitive pay, medical and unlimited vacation - if you want. Thanks! ___ _____ Oshiorenoya E. Agabi Strategy | Computational Neuroscience | Bioengineering Founder & CEO koniku Inc Newark, CA (HQ) | Cambridge, UK mobile: +1 209 509 7234 skype: agabi.osh www.koniku.uk #onikuo #konikutech https://www.linkedin.com/in/agabi _______________ Disclaimer: The information in this internet mail is confidential and is intended solely for the addressee. Access, copying or re-use of information in it by anyone else is unauthorised. Any views or opinions presented are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of koniku Inc. or any of its affiliates. koniku Inc. will not be liable for direct, special, indirect or consequential damages arising from alteration of the contents of this message by a third party or as a result of any indirect or consequential damages arising from alteration of the contents of this message by a third party or as a result of any virus being passed on. If you are not the intended recipient please contact koniku Inc. _______________ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From r.jolivet at ucl.ac.uk Thu Jun 2 12:21:06 2016 From: r.jolivet at ucl.ac.uk (Jolivet, Renaud) Date: Thu, 2 Jun 2016 16:21:06 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: Fully funded PhD position in neuroscience within the MEDICIS-PROMED network, Geneva, Switzerland Message-ID: <7553EF30-0E2D-457F-8832-7EA4AD5DCB57@ucl.ac.uk> We have a fully funded PhD position in neuroscience for 36 months within the Marie Sk?odowska-Curie International Training Network MEDICIS-PROMED (http://medicis-promed.web.cern.ch/). The project will investigate new instruments and delivery methods for brachytherapy using stereotactic or robotic-assisted surgery for the treatment of non-resectable brain cancer and investigate the impact and efficiency of these methods at the organ and cellular levels. In particular, the project will investigate how brachytherapy affects the brain?s microvasculature and immune system. New isotopes with specific types of emission, tissue penetration and half-life will be developed at CERN-MEDICIS and we will use stereotactic and/or image-guided placement of coated particles based on magnetic resonance imaging. The candidate should hold a master degree in biology, biophysics, bioengineering or equivalent, and ideally be skilled in developments at the interface between medical imaging, instrumentation, programming and/or robotic. Experience in the life sciences with a strong motivation to be involved in the development of biomedical applications is a must. A candidate with experience in nuclear medicine would be favoured. The student will take part in all the activities of the network and be supervised directly by Professor L?o B?hler (Geneva University Hospitals) and myself (University of Geneva and CERN). Specific eligibility criteria apply. See http://jobs.web.cern.ch/job/11979 for further details. Apply directly on the CERN website. ? Prof. Renaud Jolivet CERN, Experimental Physics Department & University of Geneva, Physics Section +41 22 767 24 70 (CERN) +41 22 379 62 75 (UNIGE) +41 79 830 21 29 (mobile) renaud.blaise.jolivet at cern.ch https://sites.google.com/site/renaudjolivet/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rod.rinkus at gmail.com Thu Jun 2 14:12:09 2016 From: rod.rinkus at gmail.com (Rod Rinkus) Date: Thu, 2 Jun 2016 14:12:09 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: a web essay to provoke discussion of sparse distributed representation as the key to biological intelligence Message-ID: (apologies for cross-posting) I announce a new hyper-essay (at http://www.sparsey.com/Sparsey_Hyperessay.html) describing a cortex-based machine intelligence model, Sparsey, which I think will be of interest to readers for several reasons. First, Sparsey does storage, best-match retrieval, and belief update of spatial or spatiotemporal inputs (hypotheses) with a number of operations that remains fixed as the number of items stored in the database grows up to a soft limit, N, that depends on model size (essentially the number of weights, W). This set of time performance properties has not been claimed or shown for any other machine intelligence model, including the world-leading Deep Learning (DL) models. This fixed time performance is not constant time complexity, but empirical tests have shown that N scales well in W. This, in concert with the benefits of compositional organization of information/knowledge afforded by deep hierarchies suggests that a model of a fixed, reasonable W (e.g., several billion to several tens of billion weights) may be able to operate without saturating over its lifetime and explain the apparently huge capacity, speed (both during learning and inference), and flexibility of biological, in particular, human, cognition. Second, Sparsey's fixed-time storage (learning), best-match retrieval, and belief update, capability depends crucially on the fact that information is represented using sparse distributed representations (SDRs) in each Sparsey module. (N.b.: SDR is not the same concept as "sparse coding".) It is therefore not surprising that DL models do not have this fixed time capability, since to my knowledge, SDR has not been used in any DL model. On the contrary. the long learning times of DL models, even using massive machine parallelism (GPUs), is well known. I suggest that the availability of cheap massive machine parallelism may in fact be "garden-pathing" researchers to continue pushing algorithms that may be fundamentally different than the processes underlying biological intelligence. I think that the most important difference is the absence of SDR in DL models (because of the fixed time performance SDR confers). But there are other obvious disconnects as well, e.g., the almost universal lack of mesoscale architecture and function in DL models, in contrast to the brain's cortex, for which there is substantial evidence of mesoscale structure and function, and the use of gradient-based learning, which has long been viewed as biologically implausible. Third, it is noteworthy that the fixed time capabilities stated above have not been claimed for any of the few other SDR-based models out there, in particular, Numenta's HTM/Grok and Hecht-Nielsen's Cogent Confabulation. This, despite the obvious importance of fixed time performance for scaling to "big data"-sized problems. I hope readers view the essay and that its elaborations of the above points and many other related ideas engenders a lively debate. Sincerely, Rod Rinkus President, Neurithmic Systems -- Gerard (Rod) Rinkus, PhD President, rod at neurithmicsystems dot com Neurithmic Systems LLC 275 Grove Street, Suite 2-400 Newton, MA 02466 617-997-6272 Visiting Scientist, Lisman Lab Volen Center for Complex Systems Brandeis University, Waltham, MA grinkus at brandeis dot edu http://people.brandeis.edu/~grinkus/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Pavis at iit.it Fri Jun 3 04:40:39 2016 From: Pavis at iit.it (Pavis) Date: Fri, 3 Jun 2016 08:40:39 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: PhD call - 2016 PhD Course on SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY FOR ELECTRONIC AND TELECOMMUNICATION ENGINEERING - Curriculum in "COMPUTATIONAL VISION, AUTOMATIC RECOGNITION AND LEARNING (CODE 6213)" In-Reply-To: <0E09F354EB71FC40A4D51EE54D8A9C887771D0EB@IITMXWGE015.iit.local> References: <0E09F354EB71FC40A4D51EE54D8A9C887771D0EB@IITMXWGE015.iit.local> Message-ID: <0E09F354EB71FC40A4D51EE54D8A9C887771D0FC@IITMXWGE015.iit.local> PhD call - 2016 PhD Course on SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY FOR ELECTRONIC AND TELECOMMUNICATION ENGINEERING, in the "COMPUTATIONAL VISION, AUTOMATIC RECOGNITION AND LEARNING (CODE 6213)" curriculum. Fondazione Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT - www.iit.it) together with the University of Genova opened the call for the 2016 Doctoral Course on Sciences & Technologies For Electronics & Telecommunication - Curriculum in Computer Vision, Pattern Recognition and Machine Learning. In this context, Ph.D. positions are available at the Pattern Analysis and Computer Vision (PAVIS) Dept. and at the Visual Geometry and Modeling Lab (VGM Lab) to work in Computer Vision, Pattern Recognition and Machine Learning, and more specifically on the following themes: Theme A - Computer vision for behavioral analysis and activity recognition Theme B - Computer vision for the prediction of human intentions Theme C - Part-based human body modeling for Socially-Aware Computer Vision Theme D - Crowd behavioral analysis and event recognition Theme E - Re-identification Theme F - Time-lapse Computer Vision for long-term learning Theme G - Semantic 3D scene reconstruction and modelling Theme H - Sensing humans: enhancing social abilities of the iCub platform Theme I - Biomedical imaging Theme L - Connectomics Theme M - Animal behavior analysis More info on the above research topics can be found at: https://pavisdata.iit.it/data/phd2016/ResearchThemes_IIT-PAVIS.pdf or directly asked to Prof. V. Murino (vittorio.murino at iit.it) or any other tutor indicated for each theme. The PhD program on the listed themes will take place at the PAVIS department of Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT) located in Genova (www.iit.it). The department focuses on activities related to the analysis and understanding of images and patterns in general, thus representing a reference for the other IIT Departments and labs which have to deal with such kind of data. The PAVIS and VGM Lab staff has a wide expertise on image processing, computer vision and pattern recognition, machine learning, and related applications (mainly surveillance/security and biomedical). For more information, you can also browse the PAVIS and VGM Lab webpages to see our activities and research at: http://old.iit.it/en/research/departments/pattern-analysis-and-computer-vision.html and www.iit.it/lines/visual-geometry-and- modelling To apply, follow the instructions indicated in this link: http://www.studenti.unige.it/postlaurea/dottorati/XXXII/ in short: a detailed CV, a research proposal under one or more themes chosen among those above indicated, reference letters, and any other formal document concerning the degrees earned. Notice that these documents are mandatory in order to consider valid the application. IMPORTANT: In order to apply, candidates must prepare a research proposal based on the research topics above mentioned. Please follow these indications to prepare it: https://pavisdata.iit.it/data/phd2016/ResearchProjectTemplate.pdf ONLINE APPLICATION DEADLINE is June 10th, 2016 at 12:00 p.m. (noon ? Italian time/CET) Strict deadline, no extension. APPLICATIONS are possible through University of Genoa ONLINE PROCEDURE ONLY - http://www.studenti.unige.it/postlaurea/dottorati/XXXII/ From birgit.ahrens at bcf.uni-freiburg.de Mon Jun 6 08:42:38 2016 From: birgit.ahrens at bcf.uni-freiburg.de (Birgit Ahrens) Date: Mon, 6 Jun 2016 14:42:38 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: BCF/NWG Course "Analysis and Models in Neurophysiology", Freiburg, Germany Message-ID: <04806ba6-2282-8404-9eec-c7a918d70d73@bcf.uni-freiburg.de> *BCF/NWG Course*** *"Analysis and Models in Neurophysiology"*** /Sunday, October 9 - Friday, October 14, 2016 / /Bernstein Center Freiburg, Hansastra?e 9a, 79104 Freiburg, Germany/ *Aim of the course:* The course is intended to provide advanced Diploma/Masters and PhD students, as well as young researchers from the neurosciences with approaches for the analysis of electrophysiological data and the theoretical concepts behind them. *The course includes various topics such as*: * Neuron Models and Point Processes (Prof. Stefan Rotter) * Local field potentials (Prof. Ulrich Egert) * Neural Coding (Dr. Robert Schmidt) * Neural Decoding (Prof. Carsten Mehring) The course will consist of lectures in the morning and matching exercises using Matlab and Mathematica in the afternoon. The participants should have a basic understanding of scientific programming. This course is designated especially for advanced diploma/master students and PhD students (preferentially in their first year). *Application:* Please apply by sending one single pdf document containing your CV and a meaningful letter of motivation to nwg-course at bcf.uni-freiburg.de . The letter of motivation should refer to the following points: * Reasons for wanting to take this course * Background in mathematics * Background in scientific programming * Experience in using Matlab and Mathematica * Background in neuroscience The course is limited to 20 participants. *Course fees:*NWG members - free, others - 125? *Application deadline: *June 15, 2016 *More information: *_http://www.bcf.uni-freiburg.de/events/conferences-workshops/20161009-nwgcourse_ -- Dr. Birgit Ahrens Teaching & Training Coordinator Bernstein Center Freiburg University of Freiburg Hansastr. 9a D - 79104 Freiburg Germany Phone: +49 (0) 761 203-9575 Fax: +49 (0) 761 203-9559 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From malin.sandstrom at incf.org Thu Jun 2 07:55:41 2016 From: malin.sandstrom at incf.org (=?UTF-8?Q?Malin_Sandstr=C3=B6m?=) Date: Thu, 2 Jun 2016 20:55:41 +0900 Subject: Connectionists: INCF short course in neuroinformatics, Aug 31 - Sep 1 in Reading, UK | Apply latest June 17 Message-ID: Dear all, (apologies for cross-posting) We still have a few places left for the two-day INCF short course in neuroinformatics. It will be held in Reading, UK on August 31 - September 1, just before INCF's Neuroinformatics 2016. The course is an excellent "first step" into neuroinformatics; it is intended for neuroscience researchers wishing to develop their interests in neuroinformatics as well as informatics researchers with a strong interest in neuroscience. The course is open to advanced students, postdoctoral researchers, and faculty members. Basic knowledge of neuroscience is a prerequisite. Apply latest June 17! https://www.incf.org/resources/training/incf-short-course-2016 *Topics covered* data analysis and neuronal coding databases and ontologies multiscale modeling neuroengineering simulation/computation/workflows visualization dynamic field theory *Speakers* David Willshaw (Edinburgh, UK) GIacomo Indiveri (Z?rich, Switzerland) Hayriye Cagnan (Oxford, UK) Yulia Sandamirskaya (Z?rich, Switzerland) Roberto Toro (Paris, France) Gaute Einevoll (?s, Norway) Marja-Leena Linne (Tampere, Finland) Please help spread the word to prospective students! Best regards, Malin -- Malin Sandstr?m, PhD Community Engagement Officer malin.sandstrom at incf.org International Neuroinformatics Coordinating Facility Karolinska Institutet Nobels v?g 15 A SE-171 77 Stockholm Sweden http://www.incf.org -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From climate.informatics.workshop at gmail.com Sat Jun 4 03:20:46 2016 From: climate.informatics.workshop at gmail.com (CI 2016) Date: Sat, 04 Jun 2016 00:20:46 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Connectionists: Climate Informatics 2016: First Call for Short Papers Message-ID: <5752814e.3924ed0a.25693.4761@mx.google.com> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jonathan at idsia.ch Wed Jun 1 17:51:17 2016 From: jonathan at idsia.ch (Jonathan Masci) Date: Wed, 1 Jun 2016 23:51:17 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: CfP: ECCV'16 Workshop - Geometry Meets Deep Learning (GMDL) Message-ID: ****************************************** CfP - Apologies for multiple copies. ****************************************** ECCV International Workshop on Geometry Meets Deep Learning (GMDL) 2016 Amsterdam, The Netherlands - October 9th 2016 Web: http://sites.google.com/site/deepgeometry/ Contact: gmdl.workshop at gmail.com ------------------------------- IMPORTANT DATES ------------------------------- Full paper submission: July 2nd Notification of acceptance: July 20th Camera ready due: July 25th ------------------------------- INVITED SPEAKERS ------------------------------- Jitendra Malik, UC Berkeley Michael Black, MPI Vladlen Koltun, Intel Roberto Cipolla, Cambridge Honglak Lee, UMich Michael M. Bronstein, USI Jianxiong Xiao, Princeton Hao Li, USC Joan Bruna, UC Berkeley Niloy Mitra, UCL ------------------------------- CALL FOR PAPERS ------------------------------- Recovering 3D geometry of the world from 2D and 3D visual data is a central task in computer vision. The traditional approaches for geometric vision problems are mostly based on handcrafted geometric representations and image features. With the explosive growth of data and computational power, deep learning has recently emerged as a common approach to learning data-driven representations and features for most of the 2D vision tasks. We believe that the interaction between 3D geometry and deep learning has not been fully explored. The goal of this workshop is to encourage the interplay between 3D vision and deep learning. The workshop aims to bring together experts from both 3D vision and deep learning areas to summarize the recent advances, exchange ideas, and inspire new directions. The workshop will consist of invited talks, spotlight presentations and a poster session. We are soliciting original contributions that deploy deep learning, 3D geometry and optimization techniques to solve 3D vision problems including, but not limited to: * 3D object detection / classification * Object pose estimation and reconstruction * Stereo matching and depth / surface normal / layout estimation * Human pose / hand pose estimation * 3D Shape matching / retrieval / recognition * 3D Scene understanding * Place recognition and visual odometry * Semantic localization and SLAM * Image / object matching * Data mining and signal processing on graphs * Deep learning on manifolds and non-Euclidean domains The best contribution will be awarded a RealSense camera, sponsored by Intel. ------------------------------- SUBMISSION ------------------------------- All submissions will be handled electronically via the CMT system. The format for paper submission is the same as the ECCV 2016 submission format. Papers that violates the anonymity, do not use the ECCV submission template or have more than 14 pages (excluding references) will be rejected without review. ------------------------------- WORKSHOP CHAIRS ------------------------------- Xiaowei Zhou, UPenn, US Emanuele Rodola, USI Lugano, CH Jonathan Masci, USI Lugano, CH Pierre Vandergheynst, EPFL, CH Sanja Fidler, UToronto, CA Kostas Daniilidis, UPenn, US ------------------------------- CONTACTS ------------------------------- Email: gmdl.workshop at gmail.com Website: http://sites.google.com/site/deepgeometry/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From alessandra.sciutti at gmail.com Sat Jun 4 14:00:33 2016 From: alessandra.sciutti at gmail.com (Alessandra Sciutti) Date: Sat, 4 Jun 2016 20:00:33 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: BMVA Workshop on "Vision for interaction: From humans to robots" Message-ID: <005701d1be8a$fdda6e10$f98f4a30$@gmail.com> APOLOGIES FOR CROSS-POSTING =============================================== VISION FOR INTERACTION: From humans to robots One Day BMVA symposium - London, UK on October 19, 2016 Website: www.bmva.org/meetings ================================================ **************** Keynote Speakers: **************** + Prof. Antonia Hamilton? (UCL) and + Prof. Yiannis Aloimonos (Univ. of Maryland). **************** Abstract: **************** Since early infancy, the ability of humans at interacting with each other is substantially strengthened by vision, with several visual processes tuned to support prosocial behaviour. For instance, a natural predisposition to look at human faces or to detect biological motion is present at birth. More refined abilities ? as the understanding and anticipation of others' actions ? progressively develop with age, leading, in a few years, to a full capability of interaction based on mutual understanding, joint coordination and collaboration. A key challenge of robotics research nowadays is to provide artificial agents with similar advanced visual perception skills, with the ultimate goal of designing humanoid robots able to recognize and interpret both explicit and implicit communication cues embedded in human movements.? These achievements pave the way for the large-scale use of Human-Robot Interaction based applications on a variety of contexts, ranging from the design of personal robots, to physical, social and cognitive rehabilitation. ******************* Call for contributions: ******************* In this highly interdisciplinary one-day workshop we aim at bringing together contributions from the fields of cognitive science, robotics, machine vision and artificial intelligence, to corroborate the discussion on the potential guidelines to design and develop biologically-inspired computational vision models that may favour a natural interaction between artificial systems and humans.? Please submit a short abstract summarizing your contribution, you may include links or pointers to web-based illustrations, demonstration material or papers giving more details. The work can be ?in progress? or recently published, in addition to novel research. If you would like to give a talk, please contact Noceti? (nicoletta.noceti at unige.it ) and Sciutti (alessandra.sciutti at iit.it ) by email by July 6, 2016. Areas of interest include but are not limited to: -?Vision neuroscience for interaction - Computational vision models -?Vision for Robotics and Artificial intelligence -?Human robot interaction -?Vision in Social sciences This workshop is supported by the European Project CODEFROR ?(FP7-PIRSES-2013-612555) ************** Important dates: ************** July 6, 2016 ? Deadline for abstract submission October 19, 2016 ? BMVA symposium at BCS (British Computer Society) in London, UK. *********** Chairs: *********** Nicoletta Noceti (Universit? degli Studi di Genova) - nicoletta.noceti at unige.it Alessandra Sciutti (Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia) - alessandra.sciutti at iit.it From leonel.rozo at iit.it Wed Jun 8 02:56:39 2016 From: leonel.rozo at iit.it (Leonel Rozo) Date: Wed, 8 Jun 2016 08:56:39 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: [jobs] Postdoc position in Robot Learning for Dexterous Manipulation at IIT Message-ID: <5757C1A7.3090803@iit.it> Dear colleagues, The*Learning and Interaction Group Lab* at IIT (Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Genoa, Italy) is looking for an outstanding, highly motivated postdoctoral researcher to work in the field of/robot learning for dexterous manipulation/. The position is offered within the PHOLUS project, which is aimed at designing, building and controlling a high performance, high efficiency electric platform that will combine a quadruped-legged base with a twin- armed high dexterity upper body in a configuration that is inspired by the Centaurs of mythology. This combination will amalgamate the talents and capabilities of highly dynamic quadrupedal locomotion over rough and unstructured terrain with a humanoid-inspired upper body/arms/dexterous hands covered with tactile sensors to provide a high dexterity bi-manual manipulative structure. This will allow the PHOLUS robot to navigate, observe, interact and respond effectively in highly unstructured outdoor environments and human engineered locations (e.g. disaster recovery in buildings, access complex power/process/chemical/oil installations) addressing key issues in robot robustness and reliability; autonomous operation; semi-autonomous operation; tele-operation; tactile sensing; active perception; affordances learning; agile loco-manipulation, grasping and dexterity; locomotion; whole-body interactions; whole-body motion planning and control; visualisation; and navigation, localisation and mapping. Desired qualifications include: - PhD degree in computer science, electrical or mechanical engineering (clearly related to machine learning and/or robotics). - Experience in reinforcement learning, learning from demonstration, and/or optimal control. - Experience in machine learning for robotic (uni- and bi-manual) manipulation. - Experience in tactile sensing for robotic manipulation is desirable but not required. - Excellent publication record. - Creativity and proactive attitude. - Fluency in both spoken and written English. - Strong team player. More details about the position and the application process can be found athttps://www.iit.it/careers/openings/opening/177-Post-doc%20position%20in%20Robot%20Learning%20for%20Dexterous%20Manipulation For questions/info please contact me. -- Leonel Rozo, Senior postdoctoral researcher Advanced Robotics Department Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT) http://leonelrozo.weebly.com/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Eirini.Mavritsaki at bcu.ac.uk Thu Jun 9 17:53:23 2016 From: Eirini.Mavritsaki at bcu.ac.uk (Eirini Mavritsaki) Date: Thu, 9 Jun 2016 21:53:23 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: =?windows-1252?q?PhD_in_Investigating_oscillatory?= =?windows-1252?q?_behaviour_in_Alzheimer=92s_disease_to_establish_biomark?= =?windows-1252?q?ers=3A_an_EEG_and_computational_modelling_programme?= In-Reply-To: <3FCD70F47E1E99449079BAD1F20D729C5E06CF8B@EXMBXCC.staff.uce.ac.uk> References: <3FCD70F47E1E99449079BAD1F20D729C5E06CF8B@EXMBXCC.staff.uce.ac.uk> Message-ID: <3FCD70F47E1E99449079BAD1F20D729C5E0846FD@EXMBXCC.staff.uce.ac.uk> Dear colleagues, please forward the email below to anyone that might be interested. Kind regards, Eirini Investigating oscillatory behaviour in Alzheimer?s disease to establish biomarkers: an EEG and computational modelling programme of PhD study Applications are invited for a 3-year PhD studentship within the Department of Psychology, Faculty of Business Law and Social Sciences, Birmingham City University. Applicants need to demonstrate ability and commitment, including excellent communications skills in written and spoken English. Project Synopsis: This proposed PhD work follows high profile research by the University of Birmingham team (Prof. Kim Shapiro, Prof. Howard Bowman and Mr Ali Mazaheri). The project is collaborative work between Birmingham City University (Dr Eirini Mavritsak) and University of Birmingham (Prof. Kim Shapiro and Prof. Howard Bowman). The University of Birmingham team has access to ERP data of a semantic anomaly and word repetition task (Olichney et al, 2002). In the original analysis of the data Olichney and colleagues, the N400 component was analysed, which is related to semantic manipulation. Olichney and colleagues found evidence of N400 abnormalities in mild cognitive impairment patients, which predicted later progression to Alzhemier?s. We plan to simulate this data and the changes observed in this data by developing a computational model that is based on the sSoTS (Mavritsaki, Heinke, Humphreys and Deco, 2011) model. The synaptic currents that sSoTS contains will allow us to extract the ERP profile and simulate the above described experiment. In addition to that sSoTS model has already successfully simulated visual search outcomes for patients with Alzheimer?s (Mavritsaki and Humphreys, 2013). The project is separated into two phases: in phase 1, we plan to develop the computational model to simulate controls and mild cognitive impairment patients and in phase 2 we are planning to extend the model to allow us to predict the development of the disease based on identified biomarkers. The successful applicant will join the Centre for Applied Psychological Research (CAP Research) within the Department of Psychology at Birmingham City University. CAP Research is part of a vibrant and rapidly expanding research community, which offers applicants with an excellent opportunity to develop their research career. The applicant has the opportunity to have teaching experience, to participate in research seminars and to co-supervise undergraduate projects. The successful candidate will also be expected to attend the weekly meetings of the University of Birmingham research team. For more information please contact Dr Eirini Mavritsaki (Eirini.mavritsaki at bcu.ac.uk) or Prof. Howard Bowman (H.Bowman at bham.ac.uk). To apply, please use the link below: http://bcu.ac.uk/courses/social-sciences Candidate Qualification and Specifications: Essential ? The applicant should hold a good undergraduate honours degree (First or 2:1) in psychology or related area. ? The applicant should have experience of computational modelling, evidenced by previous work or masters degree. ? A demonstrated understanding of research methods is essential (as evidenced by degree transcript grades for research methods and dissertation modules). ? Experience in C++ and Matlab. Desirable ? A Masters? degree in research methods, psychology or computational modelling ? Experience in EEG analysis ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Eirini Mavritsaki, Ph.D., CPsychol Senior Lecturer in Cognitive Psychology and Co-Director of the Centre for Applied Psychological Research (CAP Research) Enterprise Coordinator for Social Sciences Department of Psychology Faculty of Business Law and Social Sciences Birmingham City University The Curzon Building 4 Cardigan Street Birmingham B4 7BD eirini.mavritsaki at bcu.ac.uk 0121 331 6361 Special Issue in Frontiers 'Neuropsychology through the lenses of computational modelling' http://fron.tiers.in/go/r2e3M4 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From memming.park at stonybrook.edu Thu Jun 9 21:25:07 2016 From: memming.park at stonybrook.edu (Il Memming Park) Date: Thu, 9 Jun 2016 21:25:07 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: Tenure-track Assistant Professor position in Computational/Theoretical Neuroscience at Stony Brook University Message-ID: The Department of Neurobiology and Behavior at Stony Brook University is recruiting one tenure track faculty member at the level of Assistant Professor in the field of Computational/Theoretical Neuroscience. Eligible candidates must have a PhD, MD or equivalent degree. This position is associated with an exceptional package including state-funded salary and benefits, newly renovated lab and office space and generous start-up funding. The successful candidate will join an interactive, diverse group at Stony Brook University and its affiliated institutions, and will actively contribute to the Department programs in undergraduate and graduate education. Nominations or applications, including CV, statement of research and teaching interests and contact information for three letters of references should be sent to AcademicJobsOnline at: https://academicjobsonline.org/ajo/jobs/7229 Electronic submissions are strongly preferred but hard copy applications can be mailed to: Computational Neuroscience Search, Department of Neurobiology & Behavior, Life Science Bldg., Room 573, SUNY Stony Brook, Stony Brook, NY 11794-5230. Review of applications will begin in June, 2016 and will continue until the position is filled. -- Il Memming Park Assistant Professor Department of Neurobiology and Behavior Stony Brook University -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From alessandra.sciutti at gmail.com Fri Jun 10 04:05:38 2016 From: alessandra.sciutti at gmail.com (Alessandra Sciutti) Date: Fri, 10 Jun 2016 10:05:38 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: =?iso-8859-1?q?CfP_for_the_Workshop_=22Vision_and?= =?iso-8859-1?q?_the_development_of_social_cognition=22_at_ICDL-EPI?= =?iso-8859-1?q?ROB_2016?= Message-ID: <001a01d1c2ee$e0564450$a102ccf0$@gmail.com> Call for Papers?(apologies for multiple postings) ? ?=================================================== Workshop ?Vision and the development of social cognition? =================================================== September 19th?2016 Cergy-Pontoise / Paris https://www.codefror.eu/icdl_workshop In conjunction with the?Sixth Joint IEEE International Conference on Developmental Learning and Epigenetic Robotics(ICDL-EPIROB 2016)? http://www.icdl-epirob.org ? **************************************************************************** *************************** =================? Workshop organisers ================= ? ? Alessandra Sciutti,? RBCS - Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Genova? alessandra.sciutti at iit.it ? ? Nicoletta Noceti, DIBRIS - Universit? degli Studi di Genova? nicoletta.noceti at unige.it This workshop is supported by the European Project CODEFROR (FP7-PIRSES-2013-612555) - www.codefror.eu ? **************************************************************************** *************************** ================== Scope and motivation ==================? Since birth humans show a strong predisposition to social interaction, which is supported by their developing visual perception skills. An important role is played by the vision of others? actions and movements. For instance, a natural predisposition to detect biological motion is present from birth enabling infants to detect interacting agents. More refined abilities ? as the understanding and anticipation of others' actions? progressively develop with age, leading, in a few years, to a full capability of interaction based on mutual understanding, joint coordination and collaboration.? Unfolding the theory of visual motion perception development is one of the main challenges of neuro- and cognitive science research. Over the last decades, the artificial vision community has shown an increasing interest for these theories, stimulated by the ambition of providing artificial agents with comparable perception capabilities. The topics of the workshop will refer to the possible interconnections between human and machine vision in a developmental perspective. The purpose of the meeting will be two-fold: on the one hand the discussion will focus on how the development of human visual perception might inspire the development of?novel methods for artificial vision and social robotics; on the other hand, it will evaluate how the implementation of machine vision methods could help?understanding human social development.? The ambition of this workshop is to stimulate the discussion on these challenging topics, bridging Computer Vision, Developmental Science and Robotics, with an eye to potential applications in the field of human-robot interaction and rehabilitation.? ? Topics of interest?include but are not limited to: ? ? Computational models of visual perception? ? Vision of action and motion? ? Human-Robot Interaction ? Visual social signals ? The relationship of vision and other sensory modalities ? Visual development in healthy and autistic population **************************************************************************** *************************** ===============? Keynote speakers =============== ? ? Giulio Sandini, RBCS - Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Genova? ? ? Mohamed Chetouani - Universit? Pierre et Marie Curie ? ISIR, Paris? ? ? Jacqueline Nadel - Centre Emotion CNRS , Paris? ? ? **************************************************************************** *************************** ==========? Submission ========== Prospective participants are required to submit short (2 pages) or full papers (up to 8 pages). Submissions must be in pdf, following the ICDL conference style. All contributions will be subject to a peer review process. The selected contributions will be assigned either an oral or a poster presentation.?The pdf will have to be sent to?alessandra.sciutti at iit.it?and?nicoletta.noceti at unige.it?by August 22nd, 2016. The e-mail should contain the tag [ICDL_VISION] in the subject. ? **************************************************************************** *************************** ===============? Important dates =============== ? ? 22nd?August 2016?- Deadline for paper submissions? ? 19th September 2016?- Workshop in Cergy-Pontoise / Paris **************************************************************************** *************************** From gluck at pavlov.rutgers.edu Thu Jun 9 08:25:21 2016 From: gluck at pavlov.rutgers.edu (Mark Gluck) Date: Thu, 9 Jun 2016 08:25:21 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: SCIENCE (3 June 2016) features a 4-page story on the Rutgers/Al-Quds Brain Research Exchange, the Palestinian Neuroscience Initiative, and our studies of cognition and Major Depressive Disorder. In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <2C3D1E4F-02D3-4499-B62A-11D50E047345@pavlov.rutgers.edu> Dear Colleagues: The current issue of SCIENCE (3 June 2016, Vol 352, Issue 6290, pp. 1158-1161) features a 4-page story on the Rutgers/Al-Quds Brain Research Exchange, the Palestinian Neuroscience Initiative, and Rutgers University-Newark, entitled "Peace of Mind: A young Palestinian neuroscientist hopes to create a research oasis in the West Bank that transcends politics." It profiles my former graduate student, Mohammad Herzallah, and describes our collaborative and interdisciplinary international research and educational programs in the Palestinian West Bank, focussing on clinical depression and the cognitive neuroscience of learning, generalization, and decision making. The story reviews some of our recent NIH-funded longitudinal studies of the cognitive profiles of medication-naive patients with Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) and how these cognitive profiles that characterize reward-based feedback learning and generalization will change once these patients are placed on SSRI antidepressants. Of particular interest is the possibility that the subset of medication-naive MDD patients who later go on to be SSRI-responding (i.e., finding psychiatric symptom relief from the anti-depressants) may show different cognitive profiles, a priori, than those who subsequently do not respond to SSRIs. If so, then cognitive profiles may help us identify clinically relevant subtypes of Major Depressive Disorder. See the story at http://science.sciencemag.org/content/352/6290/1158.full ? - Mark Gluck ___________________________________ Dr. Mark A. Gluck, Professor Center for Molecular & Behavioral Neuroscience Rutgers University ? Newark 197 University Ave. Newark, New Jersey 07102 Web: http://www.gluck.edu Email: gluck at pavlov.rutgers.edu Ph: ( 973) 353-3298 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From lciti at essex.ac.uk Thu Jun 9 07:10:03 2016 From: lciti at essex.ac.uk (Luca Citi) Date: Thu, 9 Jun 2016 12:10:03 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: JOB: (reminder) Postdoc in Neural Engineering at University of Essex (UK) within outstanding international project - deadline 13th June Message-ID: <57594E8B.8030907@essex.ac.uk> (Reminder) The Essex Brain-Computer Interfaces and Neural Engineering laboratory is happy to announce a postdoctoral position in the newly funded project ?Closed-Loop Multisensory Brain-Computer Interface for Enhanced Decision Accuracy? (see http://www.essex.ac.uk/news/event.aspx?e_id=10503 ). The project is supported by the Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI) programme and it falls within the MURI theme ?Modeling and Analysis of Multisensory Neural Information Processing for Direct Brain-Computer Communications? which is jointly funded by the US Department of Defense and the UK Ministry of Defence. The project is in partnership with the University of Southern California, the University of California Berkeley, Harvard University, New York University, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Imperial College London, and University College London. The award is initially for a three-year base period but may be extended for a further two-year period based on the project successfully achieving its planned outcomes in the first period. The Essex team will work on brain-computer interfacing, on algorithms for signal processing and extraction of information from EEG and other physiological signals, on behavioural and neuro-physiological investigations of multisensory feature binding and integration, as well as methods for predicting the level of attention and confidence in decision making of a participant from behavioural, physiological and neural data in real time. Interested applicants can find further information about the post and the application process at http://csee.essex.ac.uk/staff/lciti/muri_cn . -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jordi.g.ojalvo at upf.edu Wed Jun 8 02:06:17 2016 From: jordi.g.ojalvo at upf.edu (Jordi Garcia Ojalvo) Date: Wed, 8 Jun 2016 08:06:17 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: Systems neuroscience at 2016 ICSB Message-ID: <5757B5D9.6030109@upf.edu> *Conference announcement and call for abstracts* The 2016 International Conference on Systems Biology will take place in Barcelona, Spain on Sep 16-20 (http://www.icsb2016barcelona.org/). This year a special emphasis will be placed on the synergies between systems neuroscience and molecular systems biology. We particularly welcome abstracts exploring how the structure of neural circuits determine their function, and impact behavior at the level of an organism (e.g., sensory coding and sensorimotor control). We still have oral slots open for these topics, so please consider submitting an abstract to ICSB. We will accept post-deadline submissions. We look forward to seeing you in Barcelona, to discuss about the common interests and methods of systems neuroscience and molecular systems biology. James Sharpe, Luis Serrano, Matthieu Louis, and Jordi Garcia-Ojalvo -- Jordi Garcia Ojalvo Department of Experimental and Health Sciences Universitat Pompeu Fabra Parc de Recerca Biomedica de Barcelona Dr. Aiguader 88, 08003 Barcelona, Spain Tel: +34 93 316 0882 E-mail: jordi.g.ojalvo at upf.edu URL: http://www.dsb.upf.edu -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gavin.brown at manchester.ac.uk Tue Jun 7 09:07:02 2016 From: gavin.brown at manchester.ac.uk (Gavin Brown) Date: Tue, 7 Jun 2016 14:07:02 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: Postdoc available in Modular Deep Learning Message-ID: <9159d5da-20e8-a013-2fdf-eeff6ba9cfdd@manchester.ac.uk> Summary: 3-year postdoc in Deep Learning available at University of Manchester, working on modular approaches, including ensemble/mixture methods. Application deadline 6th July. Details: We are seeking a highly creative and motivated researcher to join a team, working on a new 4-year EPSRC project on modular approaches to deep learning architectures. You will explore ensemble/mixture architectures in the context of supervised/unsupervised models, including CNNs, autoencoders, and others. You will be expected to lead the experimental work, and take the initiative to write publications for the very best Machine Learning venues. The post is 3 years, with possible renewal subject to performance. Further details at: http://www.jobs.ac.uk/job/ANV783/research-associate-in-modular-deep-learning/ Enquiries about the vacancy, shortlisting and interviews to Dr Gavin Brown. Email: gavin.brown at manchester.ac.uk From J.Spencer at uea.ac.uk Wed Jun 8 06:31:08 2016 From: J.Spencer at uea.ac.uk (John Spencer (PSY)) Date: Wed, 8 Jun 2016 10:31:08 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: hiring lab technician for brain imaging study... Message-ID: Greetings, I'm hiring a lab technician for a new study looking at structural and functional brain development using image-based fNIRS and MRI. If you know any talented individuals, please encourage them to apply! Details can be found at: https://www.uea.ac.uk/hr/vacancies/technical/-/asset_publisher/h0n2rDvu3ug8/content/psychology-technician?inheritRedirect=false&red Cheers, John Spencer John P. Spencer, PhD Professor School of Psychology, Room 0.09 Lawrence Stenhouse Building, University of East Anglia, Norwich Research Park, Norwich NR4 7TJ United Kingdom Email: j.spencer at uea.ac.uk School website: http://www.uea.ac.uk/psy Telephone 01603 593968 [cid:image001.png at 01D09851.EF67E200] UK Top 20 (16th Complete University Guide 2015, 18th Times and Sunday Times Good University Guide 2015-16) UK 2nd for Student Satisfaction (National Student Survey 2015) World Top 1% (Times Higher Education World Rankings 2015-16) World Top 100 (Leiden Ranking 2015) [facebook] [twitter-old] [tumblr] [flickr] [linkedin] [youtube] [cid:image008.png at 01CF8BB5.50024060] -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... 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Name: F504CEB3-062D-40A4-B03A-6930FDDE7273[7].png Type: image/png Size: 3767 bytes Desc: F504CEB3-062D-40A4-B03A-6930FDDE7273[7].png URL: From Uwe.Aickelin at nottingham.edu.cn Wed Jun 8 04:45:15 2016 From: Uwe.Aickelin at nottingham.edu.cn (Uwe Aickelin) Date: Wed, 8 Jun 2016 08:45:15 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: Job Opportunity at UNNC Message-ID: <41d1385a2390455f98767ff167e6eb07@MTAMBX02.nottingham.edu.cn> Hello, The University of Nottingham Ningbo China is currently recruiting 1 associate professor and 1 assistant professor in Computer Science. It will be appreciated if you can help forward this email to suitable candidates. Associate Professor in Computer Science Reference: UNNC444 Closing Date: Wednesday, 15th June 2016 Job Type: Research & Teaching Salary: ?49230 to ?58754 per annum pro-rata depending on skills and experience. Salary progression beyond this scale is subject to performance. For more details and/or to apply on-line please access: http://www.jobs.ac.uk/job/ANO853/associate-professor-in-computer-science/ Assistant Professor (Lecturer) in Computer Science Reference: UNNC453 Closing Date: Thursday, 30th June 2016 Job Type: Research & Teaching Salary: ?34576 to ?46414 per annum pro-rata depending on skills and experience. Salary progression beyond this scale is subject to performance. For more details and/or to apply on-line please access: https://jobs.nottingham.ac.uk/Vacancy.aspx?id=8317&forced=1 Informal enquiries regarding these vacancies may be addressed to: Professor Guoping Qiu, Head of School of Computer Science, University of Nottingham Ningbo, China Email: guoping.qiu at nottingham.edu.cn Please note that applications sent directly to this address will not be accepted. Applications must be submitted on-line. Interviews will take place in Ningbo, China and your referees will be contacted prior to interview. This message and any attachment are intended solely for the addressee and may contain confidential information. If you have received this message in error, please send it back to me, and immediately delete it. Please do not use, copy or disclose the information contained in this message or in any attachment. Any views or opinions expressed by the author of this email do not necessarily reflect the views of The University of Nottingham Ningbo China. This message has been checked for viruses but the contents of an attachment may still contain software viruses which could damage your computer system: you are advised to perform your own checks. Email communications with The University of Nottingham Ningbo China may be monitored as permitted by UK and Chinese legislation. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hasselmo at gmail.com Mon Jun 6 14:17:05 2016 From: hasselmo at gmail.com (Michael Hasselmo) Date: Mon, 6 Jun 2016 14:17:05 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: Position at Boston University, modeling cortical cognitive function Message-ID: A position is available in the Hasselmo laboratory in the Center for Systems Neuroscience at Boston University focused on computational modeling of cortical cognitive function. This position can be at the level of a post-doctoral fellowship or a pre-doctoral research assistant position. This position involves development of cortical circuit models of cognitive function with a particular emphasis on rule learning in the prefrontal cortex. Applicants are required to have previous experience with development of neural circuit models and programming proficiency in MATLAB and/or Python. The strongest applicants will have experience with modeling the role of cortical structures in cognitive function at different levels of biological detail. This position is part of a collaborative project that includes experimental research using fMRI, ECoG and unit recording. The responsibilities of the position will include developing and maintaining cognitive models of cortical function in neural circuits at different levels of biophysical detail. Models will be used to address data on human fMRI activity and neurophysiological recording in non-human primates during performance of behavioral tasks requiring context-dependent rule learning and hierarchical rule learning. The tasks of the position will include comparing and fitting biologically structured models to experimental data and preparation of publications presenting results. The initial one-year appointment can be extended to three years based on performance. If interested, please send resume, cover letter discussing relevant experience, and the names and e-mail addresses of 2 references (letters not yet required) to Prof. Michael Hasselmo at hasselmo at bu.edu. -- Prof. Michael Hasselmo Director, Center for Systems Neuroscience, Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Center for Memory and Brain, Graduate Program for Neuroscience, Boston University, 2 Cummington St., Boston, MA, 02215, USA Tel: (617) 353-1397, e-mail: hasselmo at bu.edu, http://www.bu.edu/hasselmo -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From davrot at neuro.uni-bremen.de Tue Jun 7 09:04:23 2016 From: davrot at neuro.uni-bremen.de (David Rotermund) Date: Tue, 7 Jun 2016 15:04:23 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: One PhD Position in Neuroscience at the University of Bremen, Germany Message-ID: <5756C657.8050502@neuro.uni-bremen.de> The Institute for Theoretical Physics at the University of Bremen, headed by Prof. Dr. Klaus Pawelzik, offers a PhD position in the field of Complex Adaptive Systems. Successful candidates will join an international research group that is located in the field of Complex Adaptive Systems with a specialization in Econophysics, Psychophysics and Computational Neuroscience. In the latter we work on Attention, Neuronal Dynamics, Learning and Neurotechnology. The project funded by the DFG is entitled: ?Dynamic instabilities from information annihilation in neuronal networks? Many Complex Adaptive Systems, including human balancing behavior, financial markets, and neuronal networks, exhibit complex spatio-temporal activity. Interestingly, all these systems feature a dynamic balance of opposing influences. In this project we will investigate the consequences of simple but biologically realistic mechanisms that yield a balance of excitatory and inhibitory inputs into neurons. In particular, we will determine the conditions where this balance does not result in simple equilibria but causes complex temporal dynamics and power-law distributed avalanches of activity in recurrent networks. This topic is part of a long term research program where we investigate whether a single general principle, by which criticality emerges from an efficient absorption of information, can account for these observations in a wide range of systems. The position is funded with a salary comparable to a 65 % TVL13 position and comes with support for 3 years and direct supervision by the principal investigator. Ideal candidates have a MSc degree in Physics or Mathematics. In any case they must have a strong background in physics and/or computational neuroscience and solid programming skills. Above all, they must have a strong motivation, a sense for responsibility, interest for detailed analysis, and a distinct desire to learn. Fluency in English is required (both written and spoken). If you are interested, please send your complete application by 30th June 2016 by e-mail (see detailed instructions below) to ajanssen at neuro.uni-bremen.de. Severely disabled applicants and women with essentially identical and personal suitability will be preferentially selected. Detailed instructions for applicants ===================== Your application must comprise: Motivation letter -------------------- Your 1-2 page essay should reply the following questions: What is your background? In which fields have you worked before and how do you think this can be useful for the present job? What attracts you to the field of neuroscience? Which problem(s) in neuroscience are you most interested in? Which kind of person are you (e.g. creative, analytic, communicative, pragmatic, etc.) and how do you approach a research problem? What are your plans for your future career? Curriculum Vitae --------------------- Send a classical tabular CV with your contact details, your date-of-birth, a current photograph, and all stages of education and employment. List of skills, awards, publications List your skills, especially proficiency in languages (including the level of proficiency), that you think might be useful for the job. Also list awards you might have got and peer-reviewed papers, in case there are some. Contact details of two academic references -------------------------------------------------------- One of the references should be your MSc advisor. Please contact the references prior to listing their names so that they are not surprised if they get contacted. Your application can be in English or German, whatever language you are more familiar with. Please send your application to ajanssen at neuro.uni-bremen.de by 30th June 2016! All documents must be in PDF format and must not be compressed. Combine all documents to a single PDF file or at least name the separate files appropriately. If we find your application interesting, we will let you know within two weeks and potentially ask for more documents. From cruz at informatik.uni-hamburg.de Tue Jun 7 05:08:03 2016 From: cruz at informatik.uni-hamburg.de (Francisco Cruz) Date: Tue, 7 Jun 2016 11:08:03 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: [meetings] IROS Workshop on Bio-inspired Social Robot Learning in Home Scenarios Message-ID: <57568EF3.7080102@informatik.uni-hamburg.de> Workshop on Bio-inspired Social Robot Learning in Home Scenarios at IEEE/RSJ IROS - October 10th 2016 www.informatik.uni-hamburg.de/wtm/SocialRobotsWorkshop2016/ *First call for papers* We kindly invite you to submit your contributions to the workshop to be held in Daejeon, Korea. This workshop explores the following question: "How well prepared are learning robots to be social actors in daily-life home environments in the near future?". This workshop is therefore not only an opportunity to address this focus on the latest scientific contributions on bio-inspired learning social robotics, but also links this with the presence of robots in people daily-life environment. Thus, the main goal of this workshop is offering a common space for roboticists from different fields of expertise to discuss the current state-of-the-art of learning methods in robotics specially applied to home scenarios and recent developments in assistive robots. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following: - Interactive reinforcement learning - Neural sequence learning - Policy and reward shaping - Learning of object affordances and contextual affordances - Predictive learning from sensorimotor information - Learning understanding of environment ambiguity - Learning with hierarchical and deep neural architectures - Bootstrapping complex action learning in robots - Learning supported by external trainers by demonstration and imitation - Parental scaffolding as a bootstrapping method for learning *Invited speakers* - Angelo Cangelosi, University of Plymouth - Jun Tani, KAIST - Emre Ugur, Bogazici University - Giulio Sandini, Italian Institute of Technology (IIT) - Yukie Nagai, Osaka University - Stefan Wermter, University of Hamburg *Call for contributions* Participants are required to submit a contribution as: - Full paper (maximum 6 pages in length) - Extended abstract (maximum 2 pages in length) Selected contributions will be presented during the workshop as spotlight talks and in a poster session. *Special Issue of IEEE TCDS* Moreover, we are pleased to announce a special issue of IEEE Transactions on Cognitive and Developmental Systems with the same topics of the workshop. Contributors to the workshop will be invited to submit extended versions of the manuscripts to the special issue. Submissions will be peer reviewed consistent with the journal practices and deadline will be in January 2017. *Important dates* August 1, 2016 - Contributions submission deadline August 31, 2016 - Notification of acceptance October 10, 2016 - Workshop *Organizers* Francisco Cruz, University of Hamburg Jimmy Baraglia, Osaka University Yukie Nagai, Osaka University Stefan Wermter, University of Hamburg See more details in: http://www.informatik.uni-hamburg.de/wtm/SocialRobotsWorkshop2016/ -- Francisco Cruz Research Associate Knowledge Technology Institute Department of Informatics University of Hamburg Vogt-K?lln-Str. 30 22527 Hamburg, Germany Phone: +49 40 42883 2524 http://www.informatik.uni-hamburg.de/WTM From stefan.kiebel at tu-dresden.de Mon Jun 13 10:14:01 2016 From: stefan.kiebel at tu-dresden.de (Kiebel, Stefan) Date: Mon, 13 Jun 2016 14:14:01 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: 2 PhD positions available at TU Dresden, Germany Message-ID: <1465827243590.71011@tu-dresden.de> Dear all, please see below for two fully funded PhD positions (cognitive and computational neuroscience) available at the TU Dresden, Germany. With best wishes, Stefan Kiebel -- The Department of Psychology at the TU Dresden (Chair of Neuroimaging, PI: Stefan Kiebel) is looking for two PhD students. One of the PhD student positions is in experimental cognitive neuroscience, and one is in computational neuroscience. Both PhD positions will be working at the interface between computational and experimental neuroimaging research in cognitive control and goal-directed action sequences. Detailed information about both positions can be found at: http://tiny.cc/8ii4by Both positions are part of the DFG-funded CRC 940 'volition and cognitive control' (http://www.sfb940.de/en/home.html). The CRC was established in 2012 and will be funded for the next four years. The CRC aims at identifying the cognitive and neuronal mechanism, which underlie the volitional control of goal-directed actions as well as its dysfunctions in selected mental disorders. PhD position 1: The candidate will work as a member of a team in the CRC940-Project A9 on computational modelling of goal-directed actions and explaining dynamics in cognitive control in terms of variations in meta-control parameters. In this project, neuroimaging (fMRI and EEG) experiments will be used to test hypotheses derived using advanced Bayesian models of goal-reaching over multiple trials. http://tiny.cc/8ii4by (PhD position Cognitive Neuroscience) PhD position 2: The candidate will work as a member of a team in the CRC940-Project Z2 on advanced computational modelling of functional magnetic resonance imaging and electroencephalography data. In this project, advanced modelling techniques will be developed and extended to enable testing novel experimental hypotheses using fMRI and EEG. http://tiny.cc/8ii4by (PhD position Computational Neuroscience) -- Prof. Dr. Stefan Kiebel Technische Universit?t Dresden School of Science Department of Psychology 01062 Dresden, Germany Tel.: +49 (351) 463-43145 Fax: +49 (351) 463-43147 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From juergen at idsia.ch Sun Jun 12 04:34:38 2016 From: juergen at idsia.ch (Juergen Schmidhuber) Date: Sun, 12 Jun 2016 10:34:38 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: =?utf-8?q?PhD_Student_Jobs_2016=3A_RNNAIssance_?= =?utf-8?b?JiAibGVhcm5pbmcgdG8gdGhpbmvigJ0=?= In-Reply-To: References: <31FBB059-0688-48FF-97A1-85CC36CDA4A0@idsia.ch> Message-ID: <6DC81D1F-66F2-4FC9-8772-D6C5B0466B52@idsia.ch> We are now hiring PhD students in Deep Learning & Recurrent Neural Networks & Reinforcement Learning & Unsupervised Learning - please see http://people.idsia.ch/~juergen/rnnai2016.html Earlier we already announced PostDoc positions: Join the Deep Learning team (since 1991) that won more competitions than any other. We are seeking postdocs for the project RNNAIssance based on this tech report on "learning to think:? http://arxiv.org/abs/1511.09249 . The project is about general purpose artificial intelligence for agents living in partially observable environments, controlled by reinforcement learning recurrent neural networks (RNNs), supported by unsupervised predictive RNN world models. Location: The Swiss AI Lab, IDSIA, in Switzerland, the world?s leading science nation, and most competitive country for the 7th year in a row. Competitive Swiss salary. Preferred start: As soon as possible. More details and instructions can be found here: http://people.idsia.ch/~juergen/rnnai2016.html Juergen Schmidhuber http://people.idsia.ch/~juergen/whatsnew.html - From robert.mcdougal at yale.edu Sun Jun 12 22:19:38 2016 From: robert.mcdougal at yale.edu (McDougal, Robert) Date: Mon, 13 Jun 2016 02:19:38 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: Postdoc Postion: Multiscale Modeling Methods & Neuroscience Simulator Development Message-ID: <4226DDAB-5F50-46A0-AFD0-6D665466FC38@yale.edu> A Multiscale Modeling Postdoctoral Fellowship is available for combining cell biology (reaction-diffusion) and electrophysiology in the NEURON simulator (neuron.yale.edu). The position involves an unusual mix of software engineering and science, depending on the candidate?s background and interests. Mathematically, interesting challenges arise in coupling 1D and 3D simulations and coupling deterministic with stochastic simulation. Biologically, dendrites and spines produce complex morphologies with much possibility for spatial variation in concentration. At the network level, the molecular scale interacts in unexpected ways with cellular and network dynamics. Although the work is technical and focused on software development, paper writing is expected with opportunity for both methods papers and biological papers, typically in collaboration with experimental labs. The postdoc will receive training in a wide range of interdisciplinary skills from computer science, applied math, biophysics, cell biology, electrophysiology, etc. The work is being performed in close collaboration with experimental laboratories, giving the opportunity to immediately determine how closely a modeling technique can match the experimental reality (or how experimental artifact can be reduced so as to match a model). Candidates should have a strong background in computer programming, with demonstrated proficiency in C/C++, Python, or some other major language. Familiarity with any or all of threading, MPI, SBML, or user interface design is a strong plus. Strong interest, though not necessarily research experience, in cell biology and/or neuroscience is a must. Some experience with NEURON is desirable. We are part of the team that develops and disseminates the NEURON multiscale modeling (MSM) environment, used by thousands of researchers over decades (now in year 40). As with most simulators, NEURON has historically emphasized neuronal network connectivity and cell membrane electrical dynamics. Recent advances in genomics and proteomics require that the scales of cell biology be added to the MSM mosaic. This extension is particularly important for understanding major problems in learning and memory (the genesis of long-term potentiation in the interaction of chemo- and electro-) and in understanding and developing treatments for brain disease. The work is being done as a collaboration between SUNY Downstate and Yale University under the auspices of a 5 year continuation of an ongoing grant from the National Institute of Mental Health. The NIH and other agencies (FDA, NASA, NSF, DARPA, others) are making a strong push to enhance multiscale modeling in biomedical engineering across organ systems, but particularly with respect to brain function and brain disease -- this is a major growth area in bioscience. Based on the candidate's background and preferences, job could be in Brooklyn, New Haven or via telecommuting. The labs maintain frequent (sometimes seemingly constant) communication via instant messaging (Slack) with software sharing via git and mercurial. Applicants should contact Bill Lytton or Robert McDougal by email (billl at neurosim.downstate.edu robert.mcdougal at yale.edu; no snail mail please) with a CV and cover letter. SUNY is an equal opportunity employer. From brian.mingus at colorado.edu Mon Jun 13 11:13:56 2016 From: brian.mingus at colorado.edu (Brian J Mingus) Date: Mon, 13 Jun 2016 09:13:56 -0600 Subject: Connectionists: Search for the next moderator Message-ID: We are looking for the next moderator of the Connectionists mailing list, which has been serving the academic deep learning community since 1988 and has ~5,000 members. The moderator should be an enthusiastic student with an interest in cognitive science and deep learning. There will be a training period, after which the list must be moderated at least once a week for two years (or more). Send applications to brian.mingus at colorado.edu -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mccallum at cs.umass.edu Mon Jun 13 11:09:57 2016 From: mccallum at cs.umass.edu (Andrew McCallum) Date: Mon, 13 Jun 2016 08:09:57 -0700 Subject: Connectionists: Postdocs in NLP, ML, deep learning, and KR&R Message-ID: <97D2DF4A-AA5C-48E9-B158-7DF5A22D7FBA@cs.umass.edu> Applications are invited for multiple postdoctoral fellowship positions working with Andrew McCallum at University of Massachusetts Amherst in various combinations of natural language processing; deep learning and other areas of machine learning; knowledge representation and logical reasoning, with deep learning; knowledge bases; application areas are flexible; current work includes reasoning about the scientific literature, career paths, peer review. I will be available to meet in person with interested candidates at the 2016 NAACL, ICML and UAI conferences. The postdocs will be part of a large research group with many collaborative opportunities, both within the group as well as across the UMass Amherst's Center for Data Science and College of Information and Computer Sciences (which includes other faculty working in deep learning, NLP, machine learning, computer vision, databases, and information retrieval). UMass Amherst ranks 4th in AI among US universities by publications in top-tier venues. The UMass Amherst Center for Data Science recently announced at $15m gift from MassMutual to further expand faculty hiring. Surrounded by five colleges, Amherst is located in bucolic western New England within day-trip range of both Boston and New York. Successful applicants will have extensive research experience, an excellent publication record in one or more of the research areas above, creativity, and strong communication, experimentation, and coding skills. Examples of McCallum's previous postdocs and PhD students with academic placements: Sebastian Riedel, University College London Charles Sutton, University of Edinburgh David Mimno, Cornell Sameer Singh, UC Irvine Jinho Choi, Emory Benjamin Roth, Munich University Chris Pal, ?cole Polytechnique de Montr?al If you are interested, or have questions, or would like to meet at NAACL, ICML or UAI, please send email to Andrew McCallum and Pam Mandler . The University of Massachusetts is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity employer. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From arnaud.blanchard at ensea.fr Sat Jun 11 05:56:05 2016 From: arnaud.blanchard at ensea.fr (Arnaud Blanchard) Date: Sat, 11 Jun 2016 11:56:05 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: IEEE - ICDL-Epirob 2016 - Babybot Challenge approaching deadline June 15th Message-ID: <173B92F1-9405-4FA1-A1CE-9035D3F7A2D4@ensea.fr> IEEE-ICDL-Epirob 2016 - Babybot Challenge approaching deadline Cergy-Pontoise / Paris, France September 19-22th, 2016 http://icdl-epirob.org Six associated workshops Babybot Challenge Overview ====================== The field of developmental robotics forms a bridge between two research communities: those who study learning and development in humans and those who study comparable processes in artificial systems. The Babybot Challenge is designed to help strengthen this bridge. Specifically, participants in the challenge will select from a list of five infant studies, and design a model that captures infants' performance on the chosen task. Submissions will be judged by three criteria: (1) How well does the model represent the particular features of the research paradigm? (2) How closely does the performance of the model replicate the findings from the chosen study? And (3) what novel insights or explanations for the observed developmental pattern are generated by the model? Format: Participation in the challenge is divided into two stages. During the first stage of the challenge, authors will submit a 4-8 pages paper through ras.paperplaza.net (there is no additional charge for pages 7/8). Papers will be pre-screened, and submissions that are accepted for the challenge will then participate in the second stage, an oral presentation at a special session of the conference. Deadline ------------ June, 15th 2016, we can be flexible contact us. Questions ? -------------- Email Sofiane Boucenna ( sofiane.boucenna at ensea.fr ), Arnaud Blanchard ( arnaud.blanchard at ensea.fr ) or Alex Pitti ( alexandre.pitti at ensea.fr ) Infant Studies (please select one) ========================= On the processes leading to the development of reaching in infancy Daniela Corbetta ---------------------- For decades, the development of infant reaching has been thought to involve the active role of vision in guiding the arm and hand toward the target. In recent years, however, this role of vision in the early emergence of infant reaching has been downplayed. Studies have shown that young infants can learn to reach in the dark as long as they have had some prior visual experience (e.g. Clifton et al., 1993), and others have emphasized the primary role of proprioception (over vision) in learning to guide the arm toward the target location (e.g. Thelen et al. 1993). The two papers provided for the ICDL-EPIROB 2016 challenge aim to examine new scenarios that could account for the process of learning to reach in infancy. The Corbetta et al. (2014) is a hypothesis and theory paper based on the preliminary data of three infants followed weekly over the transition to reaching. Findings reveal that during the first weeks following reach onset, infants actually learn to map vision on their movement, and not the reverse as thought before. These findings suggest that prior to reaching onset, infants may acquire a reliable sense of their body and movement in space, prior to learning to how to calibrate vision in relation to their body centered proprioceptive experience. The second paper (Williams & Corbetta, under review) examines the impact of movement consequences on learning to reach. Findings show that toy motion and sound that is contingent to successful contacts with the toy is more reinforcing for learning to reach compared to a more visually attractive situation where a similar target is moving and sounding independently of infant actions. It appears that discovering the consequences of the action is more important for driving reaching development than attracting infant visual attention toward the target. - Corbetta, D. Thurman, S.L. Wiener, R.F. Guan, Y. and Williams, J.L. (2014) Mapping the feel of the arm with the sight of the object: on the embodied origins of infant reaching Frontiers in Psychology, 5, 00576. ( http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00576/full ) - Williams Joshua L, Corbetta Daniela (2016) Assessing the impact of movement consequences on the development of early reaching in infancy. Frontiers in Psychology, 7, 00587. ( http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00587/full ) Papers from 2015 still valid for 2016: ------------------------------------------------- - Cognition/Perception: Sommerville, J.A., Woodward, A.L., & Needham, A. (2005) Action experience alters 3-month-old infants' perception of others' actions. Cognition, 96, B1-B11. ( http://woodwardlab.uchicago.edu/Publications_files/Sommerville%202005.pdf ) - Language/Social: Iverson, J. M., & Goldin-Meadow, S. (2005). Gesture paves the way for language development. Psychological Science, 16, 367-371. ( https://goldin-meadow-lab.uchicago.edu/sites/goldin-meadow-lab.uchicago.edu/files/uploads/PDFs/2005_Iverson_GM.pdf ) - Motor Skill: von Hofsten, C. (1984). Developmental changes in the organization of prereaching movements. Developmental Psychology, 20, 378-388. ( http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Claes_Hofsten/publication/232516582_Developmental_changes_in_the_organization_of_prereaching_movements/links/0912f50d191cf9b03b000000.pdf ) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tarek.besold at googlemail.com Tue Jun 14 06:41:40 2016 From: tarek.besold at googlemail.com (Tarek R. Besold) Date: Tue, 14 Jun 2016 12:41:40 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: Final Call for Abstracts (June 20, 2016): NeSy'16, the 11th International Workshop on Neural-Sybmolic Learning and Reasoning Message-ID: <018961C3-AD30-467D-AA2E-2CB40720A27F@googlemail.com> == 11th INTERNATIONAL WORKSHOP ON NEURAL-SYMBOLIC LEARNING AND REASONING (NeSy?16) == Location: New York City, USA Date: July 16 & 17, 2016 Website: http://www.neural-symbolic.org/NeSy16/ --------------- NeSy?16 is part of HLAI 2016, the Joint Multi-Conference on Human-Level Artificial Intelligence (http://www.hlai2016.org ) --------------- == ABSTRACT SUBMISSION ENDS == The abstract submission for NeSy?16 closes on June 20, 2016. == REGISTRATION IS OPEN == Registration is handled via the Online Store of the City University London. Early-bird registration is open until Juni 25, 2016, at a price of 75,- GBP (approx. US$110). Late registration from June 26, 2016, is possible at a price of 125,- GBP (approx. US$180). Registration for NeSy?16 covers the participation in the workshop itself and the indicated keynote lectures, as well as an entrance ticket to the general HLAI 2016 reception and poster session on the evening of July 17, 2016. Please go to http://www.neural-symbolic.org/NeSy16/ in order to register for NeSy?16. == KEYNOTE SPEAKERS == Leon Bottou (Facebook AI Research, U.S.A.) Gary Marcus (New York University & Geometric Intelligence Inc., U.S.A.) == INVITED SPEAKERS == Andrea Passerini (University of Trento, Italy) Thomas Trappenberg (Dalhousie University, Canada) == CALL FOR PAPERS == Artificial Intelligence researchers continue to face huge challenges in their quest to develop truly intelligent systems. The recent developments in the field of neural-symbolic integration bring an opportunity to integrate well-founded symbolic artificial intelligence with robust neural computing machinery to help tackle some of these challenges. The Workshop on Neural-Symbolic Learning and Reasoning is intended to create an atmosphere of exchange of ideas, providing a forum for the presentation and discussion of the key topics related to neural-symbolic integration. Topics of interest include: ? The representation of symbolic knowledge by connectionist systems; ? Neural Learning theory. ? Integration of logic and probabilities, e.g., in neural networks, but also more generally; ? Structured learning and relational learning in neural networks; ? Logical reasoning carried out by neural networks; ? Integrated neural-symbolic learning approaches; ? Extraction of symbolic knowledge from trained neural networks; ? Integrated neural-symbolic reasoning; ? Neural-symbolic cognitive models; ? Biologically-inspired neural-symbolic integration; ? Applications in robotics, simulation, fraud prevention, natural language processing, semantic web, software engineering, fault diagnosis, bioinformatics, visual intelligence, etc. == Submission == Researchers and practitioners are invited to submit original papers that have not been submitted for review or published elsewhere. Submitted papers must be written in English, must be formatted according to the Springer LNCS style, and should not exceed 10 pages (excluding references/bibliography) in the case of research and experience papers, and 6 pages (excluding references/bibliography) in the case of position papers or technical notes. All submitted papers will be judged based on their quality, relevance, originality, significance, and soundness. Papers must be submitted through EasyChair (please see http://www.neural-symbolic.org/NeSy16/ for details). Additionally, for the first time presentations based on extended abstracts will be considered. These shall allow to report on latest results which had not been available at the time of paper submission. Therefore, the abstract deadline is significantly closer to the workshop date. Extended abstracts may not exceed 2 pages (including references/bibliography) and should aim to give a good impression of the type of work conducted, the achieved results and their importance for the field. == Presentation == Selected papers will be presented during the workshop. The workshop will include extra time for audience discussion of the presentation allowing the group to have a better understanding of the issues, challenges, and ideas being presented. == Publication == Accepted papers will be published in official workshop proceedings within the CEUR-WS.org series. Authors of the best papers will be invited to submit a revised and extended version of their papers to the newly-established corresponding track of the Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research (JAIR). Accepted abstracts will also be included in the official workshop proceedings. If judged appropriate after presentation and discussion during the workshop, full papers based on the abstracts may also be invited to the JAIR track. == Important Dates == Deadline for abstract submission: June 20, 2016 Notification of abstract acceptance/rejection: June 24, 2016 Camera-ready paper due: July 1, 2016 Workshop day: July 16 & 17, 2016 HLAI 2016 conference: July16-19, 2016 == Workshop Organisers == Tarek R. Besold (Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Italy) Whitney Tabor (University of Connecticut, U.S.A.) Luciano Serafini (Fondazione Bruno Kessler, Italy) Luis Lamb (Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil) == Programme Committee == Antoine Bordes (Facebook AI Research, U.S.A.) Artur d?Avila Garcez (City University London, UK) James Davidson (Google Inc., U.S.A.) Robert Frank (Yale University, U.S.A.) Ross Gayler (Melbourne, Australia) Ramanathan Guha (Google Inc., U.S.A.) Steffen H?lldobler (TU Dresden, Germany) Thomas Icard (Stanford University, U.S.A.) Kristian Kersting (TU Dortmund, Germany) Kai-Uwe K?hnberger (Universit?t Osnabr?ck, Germany) Simon Levy (Washington and Lee University, U.S.A.) Stephen Muggleton (Imperial College London, UK) Isaac Noble (Google Inc., U.S.A.) Andrea Passerini (University of Trento, Italy) Christopher Potts (Stanford University, U.S.A.) Daniel L. Silver (Acadia University, Canada) Ron Sun (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, U.S.A.) Jakub Szymanik (University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands) Serge Thill (University of Skovde, Sweden) Michael Witbrock (Cycorp & Lucid.ai, U.S.A.) Frank van der Velde (University of Twente, The Netherlands) == ADDITIONAL INFORMATION == General questions concerning the workshop should be addressed to TarekRichard.Besold at unibz.it . For additional information, please see the workshop website at http://www.neural-symbolic.org/NeSy16/ . For additional information on HLAI 2016 in general, please see the general website at http://www.hlai2016.org or the HLAI 2016 Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/hlaiconference/ . The neural-symbolic integration mailing list will be used for announcements and discussions. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dengdehao at gmail.com Tue Jun 14 05:57:40 2016 From: dengdehao at gmail.com (Teng Teck Hou) Date: Tue, 14 Jun 2016 17:57:40 +0800 Subject: Connectionists: [TENCON 2016 - CI Special Session] Submission deadline approaching fast Message-ID: <000e01d1c623$37c3f840$a74be8c0$@gmail.com> [Apologies for cross-postings] ############################################### EXTENDED CALL FOR PAPERS TENCON 2016 Special Session - Computational Intelligence Techniques and Applications November 22 - 25, 2016, Marina Bay Sands, Singapore http://www.tencon2016.org ############################################### Computational intelligence (CI) techniques encompass good-old-fashion AI (GOFAI), soft computing and deep learning techniques. The ebb and flow of these CI techniques closely tracks the technology cycles. CI techniques such as evolutionary techniques, swarm intelligence, artificial neural network (ANN) and fuzzy logic were mere research topics for decades before suitable computing hardware is available for their use in a broad spectrum of industrial and consumer applications. Recent computing hardware and sensor technologies have also fast-tracked the research and development of many emerging CI techniques. Held annually in IEEE Region 10 since 1980, TENCON has been an important multi-disciplinary platform of IEEE Region 10 for sharing and discussing new and emerging ideas. The theme for TENCON 2016 is Future Technologies for Smart Nation. Therefore, this TENCON'16 Special Session on Computational Intelligence Techniques and Applications for Smart Nation invites all researchers to submit papers on their use of CI techniques for enabling Smart Nation. ##################Important Date################## - Open for Submission March 1st, 2016 - Submission Deadline June, 20th, 2016 - Notice of Acceptance August 1st, 2016 - Final Manuscript Submission September 10th, 2016 ################################################## ##################Topics and Areas of Interest################## This special session solicits papers addressing original works in topics and areas of interest including, but are not limited to: - Fundamental CI Methodologies o Deep learning techniques o Reinforcement learning techniques o Supervised learning techniques o Unsupervised learning techniques o Evolutionary computing techniques o Artificial Neural Networks o Swarm Intelligence o Graphical Models o Bayesian Statistics - CI in Real-World Applications o Time Series Prediction o Sensor Networks o Recommender Systems o Robotic Systems o Intelligent Transportation System o Big Data for Smart Nation o Pattern Recognition o Computer Vision and Image Understanding o Intelligent Control Systems ################################################################ ############Paper Submission and Publication############ - The best papers will be selected from the contributed papers for awards. - The presented papers will be submitted to IEEE Xplore which is indexed by major databases. - Full papers can have up to four pages in double-column IEEE Conference format. - At least one author of an accepted submission to the conference should register with a regular fee to present their work at the conference. - Any enquiry on the submission of papers can be made to Teck-Hou Teng at thteng at smu.edu.sg ######################################################## ##################Organizing Committee################## - Teck-Hou Teng, Singapore Management University - Justin Dauwels, Nanyang Technological University - Erdal Kayacan, Nanyang Technological University ######################################################## -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From connectionists at turingbirds.com Tue Jun 14 05:41:43 2016 From: connectionists at turingbirds.com (Charl) Date: Tue, 14 Jun 2016 11:41:43 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: International Summer School on Maps in the Brain - 8-12 Aug 2016 Message-ID: ====== International Summer School on Maps in the Brain 8th - 12th of August, 2016 Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands ====== Dear students and colleagues, It is our pleasure to invite you to the Maps in the Brain summer school. Topological maps are widespread in the brain: from hippocampal place cells that encode our movement in space, to the maps of motor cortex that plan and encode action, to neural pathways responsible for decoding sensory information. This week-long summer school will bring together the world's leading scientists in spatial, cognitive and functional maps. The meeting is organised into four main themes: Creating the Maps, Modifying the Maps, Reading the Maps and Function of the Maps. In bridging these themes, we will cover a level of detail from fundamental anatomy and physiology, up to a higher-level functional view and consequences for information processing. Next to the lectures, the course will include daily computer practical sessions, where these topics will be explored hands-on. All participants are also invited to present their research in poster sessions accompanying the four themes, with awards for best poster in each theme! Confirmed lecturers include (in alphabetical order): * Alan Carleton (Geneva Neuroscience Center, University of Geneva - Switzerland) * Tansu Celikel (Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour - Nijmegen, The Netherlands) * Mathew Diamond (SISSA International School for Advanced Studies - Trieste, Italy) * Stephen Eglen (Cambridge Computational Biology Institute - Cambridge, UK) * Vincent Hayward (Institute for Intelligent Systems and Robotics - Paris, France) * Moritz Helmstaedter (Max Planck Institute - Frankfurt, Germany) * Anthony Holtmaat (Geneva Neuroscience Center, University of Geneva - Switzerland) * Henrik J?rntell (Department of Experimental Medical Science, Lund University - Sweden) * Mark van Rossum (Institute for Adaptive and Neural Computation - Edinburgh, UK) * Johannes Seelig (Center of Advanced European Studies and Research - Bonn, Germany) REGISTER NOW: http://tinyurl.com/maps-summer-school Application deadline: June 15th --- late applications may be considered based on space available Looking forward to seeing you in Nijmegen! Charl Linssen and Tansu Celikel < celikel at neurophysiology.nl> -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From asymptotics at googlemail.com Wed Jun 15 15:32:29 2016 From: asymptotics at googlemail.com (Costas Anastassiou) Date: Wed, 15 Jun 2016 12:32:29 -0700 Subject: Connectionists: Scientist II opening in Computational Neuroscience at the Allen Institute for Brain Science (Seattle, USA) Message-ID: <1D410DD9-0826-446C-9B2D-6CCFD3C0B639@gmail.com> Scientist II opening in Computational Neuroscience Lab headed by Dr. Costas Anastassiou Allen Institute of Brain Science Do you want to make a difference in our understanding of brain disorders? Do you have a solid background in computational neuroscience/scientific computing/simulation-based research and curious about how the brain works? Are you able to meet aggressive timelines and deliverables in a collaborative environment? The laboratory headed by Dr. Costas Anastassiou at the Allen Institute is currently looking for a talented Scientist II to work on large-scale, biophysically detailed brain circuit simulations to explore the pathophysiology of epilepsy. Our mission at the Allen Institute for Brain Science is to accelerate the understanding of how the human brain works in health and disease. By implementing a team science approach on a large scale we strive to generate useful public resources, drive technological innovations and discover fundamental brain properties through integration of experiments, modeling and theory. Position summary: We are seeking to fill a position at the level of Scientist II (SciII) to work on an exciting new translational neuroscience pilot project at the Institute. The goal of this project is to investigate cellular and circuit mechanisms of epileptogenesis in human hippocampus. To address these questions, we seek to develop a faithful computational model of the human epileptogenetic hippocampus consisting of a multitude of reconstructed, interconnected and biophysically faithful neurons emulating anatomical and dynamical characteristics of the pathological brain tissue. For examples of biophysically realistic network models as pursued in this work see [Schomburg, Anastassiou et al, J Neurosci, 2012; Reimann, Anastassiou et al, Neuron, 2013; Taxidis, Anastassiou et al, Neuron, 2015]. The aim of the computational model is to (i) understand how synaptic, cellular and connectivity properties of pathological brain tissue give rise to pathophysiological network dynamics, (ii) understand how pathophysiological dynamics are reflected on signals such as depth-, ECoG- and EEG-recordings, and (iii) identify intervention targets to abort or suppress pathological activity. Importantly, the computational effort will occur in parallel with novel in vitro experiments in brain slices derived from patients undergoing surgery for treatment refractory mesial temporal lobe epilepsy that will provide the data on which the computational modeling will be based. The project will be pursued in collaboration with in-house experimental colleagues as well as neurologists and neurosurgeons and has a guaranteed duration initially of 18 months beginning in the summer of 2016. Responsibilities: ? Construct detailed biophysical models using cable theory and NEURON-software. ? Design, implement and analyze large-scale network simulations. ? Publish/present findings in peer-reviewed journals/scientific conferences. ? Prepare written and oral reports on a regular basis. ? Publish scientific findings in peer-reviewed journals and relevant conferences. ? Maintain clear and accurate communication with supervisor and team members. Qualifications: ? PhD degree in computational neuroscience, physics, biology, bioengineering or related fields. ? Strong background in scientific computing; experience in computational neuroscience is preferred, but other strong applicants will be considered (with background in computational physics, biophysics, and related disciplines). Experience with parallel computing is a plus as well as familiarity with high-level programming languages such as python. ? Ability to meet aggressive timelines and deliverables in a collaborative environment. ? Strong publication record. ? Experience in pursuing research projects in collaborative fashion. ? Proven independent thinking and flexibility. ? Familiarity with in vitro and in vivo electrophysiological monitoring techniques and data analyses. ? Strong written and verbal communication skills. How to apply: Visit the Allen Institute for Brain Science Careers website and fill out your information for the Scientist II-position under ?2200-Modeling, Analysis and Theory?. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From huajin.tang at gmail.com Wed Jun 15 11:09:33 2016 From: huajin.tang at gmail.com (Huajin Tang) Date: Wed, 15 Jun 2016 23:09:33 +0800 Subject: Connectionists: 2nd Call for Papers: IEEE Transactions on Cognitive and Developmental Systems Special Issue on Neuromorphic Computing and Cognitive Systems Message-ID: *IEEE Transactions on Cognitive and Developmental Systems* *Special Issue on Neuromorphic Computing and Cognitive Systems* *AIM AND SCOPE* In recent years neuromorphic computing has become an important emerging research area. There has been rapid progress in computational theory, learning algorithms, signal processing and circuit design and implementation, which have shown appealing computational advantages over conventional solutions. The low size, weight, and power of these hardware architectures shows great potential for embedded cognitive systems. Starting from emulating the computational principles and architecture found in neural systems, neuromorphic computing aims to integrate sensory coding, synaptic computing (e.g., STDP), learning and memory, and attempts to develop neuromorphic sensors and chips, and cognitive behaving systems such as robots. Neuromorphic hardware has provided a fundamentally different technique for data representation and learning, e.g., asynchronous events rather than regularly sampled frames of images. Various hardware systems leveraging on neural spikes based computing have been reported to achieve good performance with much lower power consumption. Therefore, neuromorphic computing can inform cognitive systems because the algorithms that run on this hardware must be neurobiologically inspired. A huge potential exists for applying this emerging computing framework to the next generation of cognitive systems and robotics, neuro-inspired sensors and processors, etc. *THEMES* This special issue aims to report state-of-the-art approaches and recent advances on (a) learning algorithms constrained by limits of biology and neuromorphic hardware (b) neuromorphic hardware for cognitive systems and (c) applications of neuromorphic architecture or hardware to cognitive robotics. Topics relevant to this special issue include, but are not limited to ? Neuromorphic cognitive systems ? Cognitive robotics ? Brain-inspired data representation models ? STDP, Spike-based sensing and learning algorithms ? Spike based processing and methods for configuring spike-based processors *SUBMISSION* Manuscripts should be prepared according to the ?Information for Authors? of the journal found at http://cis.ieee.org/publications.html and submissions should be done through the IEEE TCDS Manuscript center: https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/tcds-ieee and please select the category ?SI: Neuromorphic Computing?. *IMPORTANT DATES* 15 June 2016-Extended to 30 June 2016: Deadline for manuscript submission 15 Sep 2016: Notification of authors 15 Oct 2016: Deadline for revised manuscripts 15 Nov 2016?Final version *GUEST EDITORS * Huajin Tang, Sichuan University, China. ?htang at scu.edu.cn? Tiejun Huang, Peking University, China. ?tjhuang at pku.edu.cn? Garrick Orchard?National University of Singapore (garrickorchard at nus.edu.sg? Arindam Basu?Nanyang Technological University, Singapore ( arindam.basu at ntu.edu.sg? Jeffrey L. Krichmar?University of California, Irvine, US ?jkrichma at uci.edu? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From shu-chen.li at tu-dresden.de Wed Jun 15 14:15:11 2016 From: shu-chen.li at tu-dresden.de (Li, Shu-Chen) Date: Wed, 15 Jun 2016 18:15:11 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: 4-year Postdoc Position Cognitive and/or Computational Neuroscience In-Reply-To: <0385BFB4-A583-4443-AB67-978C9E8477F0@tu-dresden.de> References: <0385BFB4-A583-4443-AB67-978C9E8477F0@tu-dresden.de> Message-ID: <9F275F0B-E1DB-4766-A390-04FB36ED06D3@tu-dresden.de> 4-YEAR POSTDOC POSITION IN COGNITIVE AND/OR COMPUTATIONAL NEUROSCIENCE (NEUROMODULATION, AGING, AND COGNITION) The Chair of Lifespan Developmental Neuroscience of TU Dresden's Psychology Dept. and the university's Neuroimaging Center seek to fill the following position within a Collaborative Research Center (?Sonderforschungsbereich? SFB 940) that is founded by the German Research Foundation (DFG). TU Dresden, Germany Postdoctoral Fellow in Cognitive Neuroscience and/or Computational Neuroscience The position could start on Sept. 1st, 2016 and entails 100% of the fulltime weekly hours and is fixed-term for 4 years. The period of employment is governed by ?2Fixed Term Research Contract Act (Wissenschaftszeitvertragsgesetz ?? WissZeitVG). Payment is according to the nationally agreed scale E-13 TV-L. The to-be-filled position in this announcement will be associated with SFB940-Project B3 on Aging and Neuromodulation of Complementary Control Processes. The project will conduct pharmaco-fMRI studies in younger and older adults to investigate how aging may moderate dopamine modulation of complementary control processes in tasks subserved by the frontal-hippocampal-striatal circuitries (e.g., perceptual, spatial, and dynamic decision tasks). In its 2nd funding period the Collaborative Research Center ?Volition and Cognitive Control? (SFB 940) comprises of 14 projects with a budget of over 10 Mill. ? (http://www.sfb940.de/de/home.html). The center combines expertise from experimental psychology, biological psychology, cognitive-affective neuroscience, lifespan developmental neuroscience, clinical psychology and psychiatry to investigate cognitive and neural mechanisms of volitional control, the development and aging of these mechanisms, and volitional dysfunctions in selected mental disorders. The Collaborative Research Center and the TU Dresden (which is one of the 11 Universities of Excellence selected by the German Research Foundation and the German Council of Science and Humanities) provide an outstanding scientific infrastructure and ideal environment for interdisciplinary cooperation. Tasks: The successful applicant will work together with the principle investigators of the project in supervising Ph.D. students and will oversee the executions of neuroimaging experiments, conduct model-based imaging data analyses, as well as prepare manuscripts and conference presentations. Requirements: A doctorate degree in Psychology, Cognitive Neuroscience, Computational Neuroscience, Medicine or related disciplines. Strong backgrounds in conducting and analyzing structural and functional imaging data. We particularly seek applicants who also have experiences in computational modeling and/or advanced imaging data analyses. Applications from women are welcome. The same applies to people with disabilities. Complete applications (including a CV, a short research statement, names and emails of 2 to 3 referees, and 2 to 3 representative articles) should be sent preferably as one PDF-document via email with ?Application-Postdoc-SFB-B3? in the subject header to Prof. Shu-Chen Li, Ph.D. (Shu-Chen.Li at tu-dresden.de) and Prof. Dr. med. Michael Smolka (Michael.Smolka at tu-dresden.de). Please note that we are currently not able to receive electronically signed and encrypted data. Initial deadline of application is July 20th, 2016 (stamped arrival date of TU Dresden central E-mail service applies); however, the search process will continue until the position is filled. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sahidullah at ieee.org Tue Jun 14 07:39:33 2016 From: sahidullah at ieee.org (Md Sahidullah) Date: Tue, 14 Jun 2016 14:39:33 +0300 Subject: Connectionists: Short-term course on brain rhythms in IIT Kharagpur In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Dear all, You may attend the course LIVE in youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJHyj7IMzf4 Thanks Sahid On Fri, Apr 15, 2016 at 8:44 AM, Md Sahidullah wrote: > Dear all, > > IIT Kharagpur, India is organizing a short-term course on Brain Rhythms: > Understanding, measurement, analysis and applications from 12.06.2016 to > 23.06.2016. > > > Please find more details in the link below: > > http://www.gian.iitkgp.ac.in/files/brochures/BR1458394002gsaha_IITKGP_GIAN_Brochure.pdf > > > Thanking you with warm regards. > Sahid > > > > > > > -- > Dr. Md Sahidullah > Post-doctoral researcher > School of Computing > University of Eastern Finland > Joensuu, P.O. Box 111 Finland- 80101 > tel. +358-466250731 > website: http://cs.joensuu.fi/~sahid/ > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From vito.trianni at istc.cnr.it Thu Jun 16 10:09:14 2016 From: vito.trianni at istc.cnr.it (Vito Trianni) Date: Thu, 16 Jun 2016 16:09:14 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: Research position on swarm robotics for precision farming at ISTC-CNR, Rome, Italy Message-ID: <7C119DB5-0428-4B7A-B163-F9687F7008FD@istc.cnr.it> A new research position is open within the SAGA experiment: swarm robotics for agricultural applications. Experiment description: Robotics is expected to play a major role in the agricultural domain, and often multi-robot systems and collaborative approaches are mentioned as potential solutions to improve efficiency and system robustness. Among the multi-robot approaches, swarm robotics stresses aspects like flexibility, scalability and robustness in solving complex tasks, and is considered very relevant for precision farming and large-scale agricultural applications. However, swarm robotics research is still confined into the lab, and no application in the field is currently available. SAGA will demonstrate for the first time the application of swarm robotics principles to the agricultural domain. Specifically, we target a decentralised monitoring/mapping scenario, and implement a use-case for the detection of volunteer potatoes in sugar beet fields by a group of small Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). The experiment is founded within the context of the ECHORD++ EU project (http://echord.eu/), and will last 18 months. It is carried out in collaboration with the Wageningen University (https://www.wageningenur.nl/) and Avular (http://avular.com/). A graduate research scientist positions is available, at the conditions described below. Job Description: The candidate will develop the main strategy for the decentralised monitoring and mapping problem of volunteer potatoes in a sugar beet field, to be deployed on a swarm of UAVs. The monitoring and mapping problem will be framed in the context of the emergence of a categorisation system within the swarm, so that different categories are associated with different portions of the field. Each category features a semantic label that determines the amount of detected weed. The ideal candidate must demonstrate relevant expertise in swarm robotics, swarm intelligence or in the design of decentralised systems. Analytical skills are an asset in order to develop population-level models in support of the design of self-organising behaviours. Previous experiences with robotics and UAV control are also important, as the candidate will actively participate in deploying the UAV swarm for field experiments. Salary and working conditions: The research positions lasts for one year (starting as soon as possible, no later than mid September 2016), with possible extension until the end of the experiment. The positions will be based in Rome with a standard graduate research fellow contract (about 1450?/month net salary), with the possibility of visiting periods in The Netherlands to work in close collaboration with the project partners (Wageningen University and Avular). For further details about the application procedure, see the notice of selection: http://www.istc.cnr.it/vacancy/assegno-di-ricerca-n?-2312016-rm-monitoraggio-e-mappatura-di-un-campo-da-parte-di-un-gruppo- For any informal enquiry about the eligibility conditions, as well as for more details about the position, please contact Vito Trianni . ======================================================================== Vito Trianni, Ph.D. vito.trianni@(no_spam)istc.cnr.it ISTC-CNR http://www.istc.cnr.it/people/vito-trianni Via San Martino della Battaglia 44 Tel: +39 06 44595277 00185 Roma Fax: +39 06 44595243 Italy ======================================================================== From jose at rubic.rutgers.edu Thu Jun 16 08:57:59 2016 From: jose at rubic.rutgers.edu (Stephen =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Jos=E9?= Hanson) Date: Thu, 16 Jun 2016 08:57:59 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: NEW PAPER: Scale Free Exponents of Resting State... Message-ID: <1466081879.2967.34.camel@edison> Please find a new paper on Resting state dynamics as estimated from fMRI. We show in large samples (100s of subjects) that estimated scale-free exponents are significantly larger (30%+) in both atyptical brain activity (autistic spectrum disorder and schziophrenia) and in a known regime that is associated network breakdown of communication and fractioned hub structure. A known phase transition in scale-free structure predicts this breakdown. This is not due to correlation measures as we use graphical estimation and conditional independence. We estimate graphs using an extended Power+ set (283 ROIs)--39k edges. This is not due to motion differences as we demonstrate using overlapping motion frame displacement measures and recompute exponents showing *no change* in value as motion varies from sub-samples of subjects with similar or disparent motion range. This is shown not to be due to the type of estimator (MLE, LSE, MOM, etc) which all agree in the phase transition exponent change point (1.8). We show phenotypic disease severity correlates with exponent increases. We provide confirmatory SVM classifier results on the EDGES of estimated graphs showing with 10-fold cross validation that we can discriminate between Neurotypical (120 independent observations) to the Atypical (120 ASD, SZH independent observations) . Any queries or comment--> SJH. Thanks for your interest in this work. https://arxiv.org/abs/1605.09282 Cheers, Steve Hanson -- Stephen Jos? Hanson Director RUBIC (Rutgers Brain Imaging Center) Professor of Psychology Member of Cognitive Science Center (NB) Member EE Graduate Program (NB) Member CS Graduate Program (NB) Rutgers University email: jose at rubic.rutgers.edu web: psychology.rutgers.edu/~jose lab: www.rumba.rutgers.edu fax: 866-434-7959 voice: 973-353-3313 (RUBIC) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From arindam.basu at ntu.edu.sg Thu Jun 16 06:09:18 2016 From: arindam.basu at ntu.edu.sg (Arindam Basu) Date: Thu, 16 Jun 2016 10:09:18 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: Papers on networks of neurons with nonlinear dendrites and Binary Synapses trained by structural plasticity Message-ID: <077B8C05263E5842BEDBADACDC81F6670157FC70D6@EXCHMBOX31.staff.main.ntu.edu.sg> Dear all Let me draw your attention to some work done by our group over the past few years in developing networks of neurons with lumped dendritic nonlinearity and binary synapses. The connections on each dendritic branch is sparse and the neurons learn to classify patterns when trained using different structural plasticity rules. Thus learning happens by modiying network connection matrix and not by weight change. These networks have advantage for hardware implementations--reduced memory and resistance to mismatch due to binary synapses. We have demonstrated supervised and unsupervised spike time based learning rules and have used these networks as readout of liquid state machines, to improve the reservoir in a liquid state machine, to classify spike latency patterns like tempotron or to classify MNIST images. I summarize the papers below and also include arxiv links for your reading pleasure. 1. S. Hussain, S. C. Liu and A. Basu, "Biologically plausible, Hardware-friendly Structural Learning for Spike-based pattern classification using a simple model of Active Dendrites," Neural Computation , vol. 27, no. 4, pp. 845-897, April 2015 link: http://arxiv.org/pdf/1411.5881.pdf ** Margin based learning, spike time based supervised learning, results on UCI dataset 2. S. Roy, A. Banerjee and A. Basu, "Liquid State Machine with Dendritically Enhanced Readout for Low-power, Neuromorphic VLSI Implementations," IEEE Trans. on Biomedical Circuits & Systems , vol. 8, no. 5, pp. 681-695, 2014. link:http://arxiv.org/pdf/1411.5458.pdf ** Readout of LSM, 30X less binary synapses compared to parallel perceptron 3. S. Roy, P. P. San, S. Hussain, Lee Wang Wei and A. Basu, "Learning Spike Time Codes through Morphological Learning with Binary Synapses," IEEE Trans. on Neural Networks & Learning Systems , vol. 27, no. 7, July 2016. link: http://arxiv.org/pdf/1506.05212.pdf ** Classifying spike time latency patterns, comparison with tempotron 4. S. Hussain and A. Basu, "Multi-class Classification by Adaptive Network of Dendritic Neurons with Binary Synapses using Structural Plasticity," Frontiers in Neuroscience , Mar, 2016. doi: 10.3389/fnins.2016.00113 link: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4814530/ ** Ensemble learning, adaptive allocation of dendrites, performance on MNIST, hardware savings analysis 5. S. Roy and A. Basu, "An Online Unsupervised Structural Plasticity Algorithm for Spiking Neural Networks," IEEE Trans. on Neural Networks and Learning Systems , accepted, 2016. link: http://arxiv.org/pdf/1512.01314.pdf ** unsupervised spike time based learning, sequence learning 6.S. Roy and A. Basu, "An online structural plasticity rule for generating better reservoirs," Neural Computation , accepted, 2016. link: http://arxiv.org/pdf/1604.05459.pdf ** Improving separation property of reservoirs in LSM Thanks Arindam Basu Assistant Professor School of EEE Nanyang Technological University http://www3.ntu.edu.sg/home/arindam.basu/ ________________________________ 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. From compsens at medizin.uni-tuebingen.de Mon Jun 20 03:57:10 2016 From: compsens at medizin.uni-tuebingen.de (Compsens) Date: Mon, 20 Jun 2016 09:57:10 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: =?utf-8?q?Post_Doc/_PhD_Position=2C_NEURAL_REPRES?= =?utf-8?q?ENTATION_OF_SOCIAL_INTENTION=2C_University_T=C3=BCbingen=2C_Ger?= =?utf-8?q?many?= Message-ID: <20160620095710.Horde.ztHhCsuqvkCXAjUmslM2z8E@webmail.uni-tuebingen.de> POSTDOC / PHD POSITION: NEURAL REPRESENTATION OF SOCIAL INTENTION (Hertie Institute / Center for Integrative Neuroscience, University of Tuebingen, Germany) ============================================================ The Section for Computational Sensomotorics at the Center for Integrative Neurosciences (CIN) and the Hertie Institute for Clinical Brain Research (HIH) at the University of Tuebingen invites applications for a Postdoc or a PhD student with a good mathematical background for a maximum duration of 3 years. The position is funded by a collaborative grant by the Human Frontiers Science Foundation (HFSP) as part of a collaborative project together with together with the California Institute of Technology (CALTECH) and Ohio State University (OSU). The work will focus on the development of neural theories for the processing of social signals and their verification by psychophysical experiments, and in collaboration electrophysiological and fMRI experiments. What we offer: -------------- * The HIH is among the top institutions for clinical brain research in Europe and hosts 350 researchers working on different aspects of brain function, and their impairments in disease; the CIN is a leading research facility for systems neuroscience in Germany that was funded as part of the Excellence Initiative of the German government; it includes more than 80 groups from the University and the Max Planck Institutes working on neuroscience; also, the lab is part of the Bernstein Institute for Theoretical Neuroscience in T?bingen * High-end research facilities, including advanced motion capture technology (VICON), VR and augmented reality setups, game engines, state-of-the art equipment for the measurement, modeling, and analysis of human movements and social signals, including advanced methods for the generation of highly-realistic human and animal avatars * close integration with many experimental groups in T?bingen, e.g. working on physiology in nonhuman primates and rodents, relevant problems in neurology and psychiatry, and computational neuroscience * possibility of taking courses and teaching in all fields of neuroscience within the Graduate Training Center for Neuroscience, which offers about 40 courses in molecular, behavioral, and neural information processing * close interactions with high-profile research partners in Europe, Israel, and the US in the fields of systems neuroscience, clinical neuroscience, and robotics What we are looking for: ------------------------- * a highly-motivated individual with enthusiasm for research and capable of self-driven pursuing of the solution of difficult problems; high motivation to learn missing skills quickly * Masters (PhD) degree in Computer Science, Electrical / Mechanical / Biomedical Engineering, Physics, or related fields * strong mathematical background and programming skills (at least in C or Java); willingness to learn relevant techniques and software products (e.g. for computer animation, deep learning, or the simulation of spiking networks) * interest in social neuroscience, computational vision, and detailed neural circuits at the level of single cells * English speaking and writing skills. People without ambition in science who primarily look for a temporary job at a university are discouraged from applying. Committed to Equal Opportunities. Interested people should send their application, including a CV, all marks form studies, 2 letters of reference, and a research statement of about one half page (explaining how their skills might support a project about the understanding neural basis of the processing of social signals in the brain) to: Prof. Dr. Martin Giese Hertie Institute for Clinical Brain Research & Center for Integrative Neuroscience, Otfried-M?ller-Str. 25, 72076 Tuebingen, Germany email: martin.giese at uni-tuebingen.de ================================================== Section for Theoretical Sensomotorics Dept. for Cognitive Neurology Hertie Institute for Clinical Brain Research & Center for Integrative Neuroscience University of Tuebingen Otfried-M?ller Str. 25 D-72076 Tuebingen GERMANY Tel.: +49 7071 2989124 Fax: +49 7071 294790 Email: martin.giese at uni-tuebingen.de Web: http://www.compsens.uni-tuebingen.de/ ============================================== From sliman.bensmaia at gmail.com Thu Jun 16 11:34:13 2016 From: sliman.bensmaia at gmail.com (Sliman Bensmaia) Date: Thu, 16 Jun 2016 15:34:13 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: Programmer wanted for Neuroscience and Neuroprosthetics Lab Message-ID: Lab at the cutting edge of neuroscience and neurotechnology looking for a programmer to keep us at the cutting edge! The lab has two general pursuits: discover the neural basis of touch and proprioception ? how do patterns of activation in the nerve and in the brain mediate our ability to feel objects by touch and sense the position and movements of our limbs in space? ? and to develop a somatosensory neuroprosthesis ? How can we recreate the sense of touch by stimulating the nerve or the brain. See http://bensmaialab.org for additional information regarding the lab and the exciting work we are doing. Ideally, looking for a motivated, intelligent individual who works well with people, someone who might be able to make a long term commitment to the lab and help us build something special. Job Summary Responsible for interfacing the various machines in the lab (robots, sensors, data acquisition systems, etc.) with computers and with each other to run neurophysiological and behavioral experiments with human and non-human primates. Education Bachelor's degree in computer science or a related field of engineering required. Experience One year of relevant programming experience required. Experience developing, implementing, debugging and maintaining applications required. Two years of professional programming experience preferred. Experience developing applications using C++, Matlab, Python, Java, MySQL, Visual Basic, and/or any other object oriented programming language preferred. Experience building and debugging electronic systems preferred but not required. Knowledge of electromechanical systems preferred but not required. Interest in and/or knowledge of neurophysiology preferred but not required. -- Sliman Bensmaia Associate Professor Department of Organismal Biology and Anatomy University of Chicago 773.834.5203 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From felix.putze at uni-bremen.de Thu Jun 16 08:19:48 2016 From: felix.putze at uni-bremen.de (Felix Putze) Date: Thu, 16 Jun 2016 14:19:48 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: PhD student position at University Bremen: machine learning for user modeling Message-ID: <1466079588.2845.31.camel@uni-bremen.de> At the Cognitive Systems Lab at the University of Bremen, Germany, we currently have an open position for a research assistant/PhD student (36 months, fully funded at 100% on the German employee scale TV-L 13). The project is in the area of user modeling based on machine learning methods. The project ?DINCO? deals with the detection of interaction obstacles and competencies during human-computer interaction, i.e. states or characteristics of the user and/or the computer which hinder or facilitate the interaction. For this task, we will record behavioral and psychophysiological data, which is then analyzed using recurrent neural networks and Bayesian models. The prediction of the models will finally be implemented by an adaptive user interface. Read more at: http://csl.uni-bremen.de/cms/en/8-news/181-phd-student-position-user-modeling.html Best Regards, Felix Putze -- Dr.-Ing. Felix Putze E-Mail: felix.putze at uni-bremen.de Phone: +49 421 218 64272 University of Bremen Cognitive Systems Lab (CSL) Enrique-Schmidt-Stra?e 5 (Cartesium) 28359 Bremen From torsello at dsi.unive.it Fri Jun 17 01:51:34 2016 From: torsello at dsi.unive.it (Andrea Torsello) Date: Fri, 17 Jun 2016 07:51:34 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: Last Call for Participation ISSCN 2nd International Summer School on Complex Networks Message-ID: <16114600.O7Qrq5iceR@patsy> ISSCN 2nd International Summer School on Complex Networks Bertinoro, Italy July 11-15 2016 http://www.dsi.unive.it/isscn/ Complex networks are an emerging and powerful computational tool in the physical, biological and social sciences. They aim is to capture the structural properties of data represented as graphs or networks, providing ways of characterising both the static and dynamic facets of network structure. The topic draws on ideas from graph theory, statistical physics and dynamic systems theory. Applications include communication networks, epidemiology, transportation, social networks and ecology. The aim in the Summer School is to provide an overview of both the foundations and state of the art in the field. Lectures will be presented by intellectual leaders in the field, and there will be an opportunity to interact closely with them during the school. The school will be held in the Bertinoro Residential Centre of the University of Bologna, which is situated in beautiful hills between Ravenna and Bologna. The summer school is aimed at PhD students, and younger postdocs or RA's working in the complex networks area. It will run for 5 days with lectures in the mornings and afternoons, and the school fee includes residential accommodation and meals at the residential centre. List of Lecturers Michele Benzi, Emory University, USA Ernesto Estrada, University of Strathclyde, UK Jesus Gomez Gardenes, University of Zaragoza, Spain Edwin Hancock, University of York, UK Lucas Lacasa, Queen Mary University, UK Simone Severini, University College London, UK Richard Wilson, University of York, UK Organizers Andrea Torsello, Universit? Ca' Foscari Venezia, Italy Edwin Hancock, University of York, UK Richard Wilson, University of York, UK Ernesto Estrada, University of Strathclyde, UK Registration Fee: ?750 Registration includes Accommodation in single rooms for 5 nights (10/7/2016 to 14/7/2016), meals and coffee breaks. Application and registration are now open through the schools's website. There are seats still available, so the application will remain open on a first-come-first served basis. Applicants must send an expression of interest along with their Curriculum vitae. PhD students can send also a letter from the supervisor in support of their application. Contact: Andrea Torsello -- Andrea Torsello PhD Dipartimento di Scienze Ambientali, Informatica, Statistica Universita' Ca' Foscari Venezia via Torino 155, 30172 Venezia Mestre, Italy Tel: +39 0412348468 Fax: +39 0412348419 http://www.dsi.unive.it/~atorsell From yang at maebashi-it.org Thu Jun 16 11:12:02 2016 From: yang at maebashi-it.org (Yang) Date: Fri, 17 Jun 2016 00:12:02 +0900 Subject: Connectionists: [Deadline Approaching] Call for Abstract - BIH'16 Message-ID: <5AD4C76C5BEF4E0081799757790B9357@yangPC> [Apologies if you receive this more than once] The 2016 International Conference on Brain Informatics & Health (BIH'16) October 13-16, 2016, Hilton Omaha, USA Homepage: http://wibih.unomaha.edu/bih ***Type II (Abstract) Submission Deadline*** - June 20, 2016 *** On-Line Submission *** https://wi-lab.com/cyberchair/2016/bih16/scripts/submit.php?subarea=B ----------------------------------------------------------------------- CALL FOR TYPE II SUBMISSIONS *** KEYNOTE SPEAKERS *** Stephen Smith, Allen Institute for Brain Science Ivan Soltesz, Stanford School of Medicine *** FEATURE SPEAKERS *** Steven Schiff, Pennsylvania State University Kristen Harris, University of Texas at Austin Giulio Tononi, University of Wisconsin-Madison Bob Jacobs, Colorado College Partha Mitra, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Paola Pergami, George Washington University **************** The BIH series provides a premier forum that brings together researchers and practitioners from neuroscience, cognitive science, computer science, data science, artificial intelligence, information communication technologies, and neuroimaging technologies with the purpose of exploring the fundamental roles, interactions as well as practical impacts of Brain Informatics. BIH'16 addresses the computational, cognitive, physiological, biological, physical, ecological and social perspectives of brain informatics, with a strong emphasis on emerging trends of big data analysis and management technology for brain research, behaviour learning, and real-world applications of brain science in human health and well-being. BIH'16 will be co-located with the 2016 IEEE/WIC/ACM International Conference Web Intelligence (WI'16) (http://wibih.unomaha.edu/wi). Under our theme Connecting Network and Brain with Big Data, BIH'16 and WI'16 will provide a broad forum that academia, professionals and industry can use to exchange their ideas, findings and strategies in utilizing the power of human brains and man-made networks to create a better world. The attendees only need to register for one of the 2 conferences, but they can attend all sessions and social events of the 2 conferences. Tutorial, Workshop and Special-Session proposals and Industry/Demo-Track papers are also welcome. The organizers of Workshops and Special-Sessions are invited to prepare a book proposal based on the topics of the workshop/special session for possible book publication in the Springer Brain Informatics & Health book series. IMPORTANT DATES: ================ Notification of full paper acceptance: June 20, 2016 Notification of Workshop/Special-Session full paper acceptance: June 20, 2016 Submission of abstracts: June 20, 2016 Notification of abstract acceptance: July 10, 2016 Tutorial proposal submission: July 10, 2016 Tutorials, Workshop and Special-Sessions: October 13, 2016 Main conference: October 14-16, 2016 PAPER SUBMISSIONS & PUBLICATIONS: ================================= TYPE-II (Abstract Submissions; Submission Deadline: June 20, 2016): Abstracts have a word limit of 500 words. Experimental research is particularly welcome. Accepted abstract submissions will be included in the conference program, and will be published as a single, collective proceedings volume. Title: Include in the title of the abstract all words critical for a subject index. Write your title in sentence case (first letter is capitalized; remaining letters are lower case). Do not bold or italicize your full title. Author: List all authors who contributed to the work discussed in the abstract. The presenting author must be listed in the first author slot of the list. Be prepared to submit contact information as well as conflict of interest information for each author listed. Abstract: Enter the body of the abstract and attach any applicable graphic files or tables here. Do not re-enter the title, author, support, or other information that is collected in other steps of the submission form. Presentation Preference: Authors may select from three presentation formats when submitting an abstract: "poster only", "talk preferred" or "no preference". The "talk preferred" selection indicates that you would like to give a talk, but will accept a poster format if necessary. Marking "poster only" indicates that you would not like to be considered for an oral-presentation session. Selecting "no preference" indicates the author's willingness to be placed in the best format for the program. Each paper or abstract requires one sponsoring attendee (i.e. someone who registered and is attending the conference). A single attendee can not sponsor more than two abstracts or papers. Oral presentations will be selected from both full length papers and abstracts. *** Post-Conference Journal Publication *** The BIH conferences have the formal ties with Brain Informatics journal (Springer, http://www.springer.com/40708). Accepted papers from the conference, including their Best Paper Award papers, will be expanded and revised for possible inclusion in the Brain Informatics journal each year. It is fully sponsored and no any article-processing fee is charged for BIH authors. *** Topics and Areas *** Track 1: Investigations of Human Information Processing Systems (HIPS) and Computational Foundations of Brain Science Track 2: Information Technologies for Curating, Mining and Using Brain Big Data Track 3: Brain-Inspired Technologies, Systems and Applications Please find the topics and areas of interest of BIH'16 at http://wibih.unomaha.edu/bih *** On-Line Submission *** https://wi-lab.com/cyberchair/2016/bih16/scripts/submit.php?subarea=B ================================ A Celebration to the 60th Anniversary of AI ================================ This year, the Brain Informatics & Health (BIH) conference is especially dedicated to the celebration of the 60th anniversary of Artificial Intelligence (AI). In the past years, the attempt by brain scientists to understand how the human brain works has never stopped. Meanwhile, the AI researchers also have been striving to formalize the structure and function of human brain, aiming at creating computers and computer software with capacity of intelligent behavior. By integrating techniques and academic researchers, abundant brain-inspired achievements have been yielded. Recently, the so-called neuromorphic computer architectures-chips, that mimic the human brain's ability to be both analytical and intuitive to deliver context and meaning to big data, have been invented and showed us the promising future of AI. There is never been a more exciting moment than now, in neuroscience, cognitive science, computer science, and AI. Brain Informatics (BI) has extended and made use of artificial intelligence for new products, services and frameworks that are empowered by the World Wide Web. By means of brain data collected globally and systematic researches on the human brain across macro, meso, and micro scales, i.e., mind and behavior, brain cognition and structure, neuronal morphology and gene, BI is committed to developing a big data sharing mind on the Wisdom Web of Things (W2T), and disclosing the intrinsic qualities of human intelligence. As a part of the celebration to the sixty years of AI, BIH'16 will be co-located with Web Intelligence (WI) 2016, and proudly host two distinguished brain scientists, Dr. Stephen Smith and Dr. Ivan Soltesz as the BIH keynote speakers, as well as two Turing Award laureates, Dr. Leslie Valiant (Turing Award 2010) and Dr. Butler Lampson (Turing Award 1992) as the WI keynote speakers, for the community to share with their intelligent, wisdom minds. We also will organize a panel on Connecting Network and Brain with Big Data and invite keynote/feature speakers of the 2 conferences as panelists. ORGANIZERS ========== General Chairs Hesham Ali (University of Nebraska at Omaha, USA) Deepak Khazanchi (University of Nebraska at Omaha, USA) Yong Shi (University of Nebraska at Omaha/Chinese Academy of Sciences) BIH'16 PC Chairs Giorgio Ascoli (George Mason University, USA) Michael Hawrylycz (Allen Institute for Brain Science, USA) BIH'16 Workshop/Special-session/Tutorial Chairs Bingni Wen Brunton (University of Washington, USA) Arvind Ramanathan (Oak Ridge National Laboratory, USA) Yi Zeng (Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China) BIH'16 Publicity Chairs Kate Cooper (University of Nebraska at Omaha, USA) Weidong Cai (University of Sydney, Australia) Henning Muller (HES-SO, Switzerland) Local Organizing Committee Prithviraj (Raj) Dasgupta Zhengxin Chen Peter Wolcott Haifeng Guo Mark Pauley Wikil Kwak Kerry Ward Dhundy (Kiran) Bastola Kate Cooper (publicity) Bettina Lechner (webmaster) BIH Steering Committee Co-chairs Ning Zhong (Maebashi Institute of Technology, Japan) Hanchuan Peng (Allen Institute for Brain Science, USA) *** Contact Information *** kdempsey at unomaha.edu MikeH at alleninstitute.org ascoli at gmu.edu -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From neuro at aewald.net Sun Jun 19 17:21:11 2016 From: neuro at aewald.net (Arne Ewald) Date: Sun, 19 Jun 2016 23:21:11 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: Biomag 2016 Brain Connectivity Analysis Competition Message-ID: Dear colleagues, [apologies for cross-postings] we have just launched a data analysis competition on brain connectivity analysis using EEG and MEG. Detailed information on the challenge and the data to be analyzed can be found at http://bbci.de/supplementary/EEGconnectivity/BBCB.html . At this website, we also offer a basic Matlab-based software framework for generating EEG/MEG data in a realistic head model, plotting results, etc. You and your colleagues are warmly invited to participate in the challenge. Please feel free to pass on this link to anyone else who might be interested. Besides active participation we would also be very happy to just hear your general opinion on the design of the challenge, and about any suggestions for extension (in the future). Our challenge is on of three official data analysis competitions of this year's BIOMAG conference. The invitation to participate in all three challenges is pasted below for your convenience. With best wishes, Arne Ewald and Stefan Haufe -------- Forwarded Message -------- Subject: [megcommunity] Biomag 2016 Data Analysis Competition Date: Mon, 30 May 2016 16:56:31 +0200 From: Ole Jensen Reply-To: Ole Jensen To: MEGCOMMUNITY at JISCMAIL.AC.UK Dear all, We are happy to announce three challenges for the 'Data Analysis Competition' at Biomag 2016. Please see details at http://www.biomag2016.org/data_analysis_competition.php The aim of the competitions is to promote the development and application of new analysis techniques. The challenges will help to elucidate pros and cons of different techniques and attract experts from outside the MEG field. The winners of the competition will be given the opportunity to present their proposal at the Biomag meeting in Seoul (Oct 1-6) in order to spark discussions on analysis. Please encourage colleagues to participate! Best regards, Ole Jensen -- Prof. dr. Ole Jensen http://www.neuosc.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From emmanuel.mazer at inria.fr Thu Jun 16 09:03:49 2016 From: emmanuel.mazer at inria.fr (Emmanuel Mazer) Date: Thu, 16 Jun 2016 15:03:49 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: PhD Thesis proposal Message-ID: <6d4f9c47-87c3-c965-f19a-f8a1900fc5b0@inria.fr> *PhD Thesis proposal* *Rebooting computing : Design of stochastic machines * *Advisor:*Emmanuel Mazer (LIG) Contact: Emmanuel.Mazer at inria.fr *Co-advisors:*Laurent Fesquet (TIMA), Didier Piau (Institut Fourier) Contacts: Laurent.Fesquet at imag.fr, Didier.Piau at ujf-grenoble.fr The Persyval Labex is offering a PhD grant for a 3-year period. *Overview:* As the physical limits of Moore's law are being reached, a research effort is launched to achieve further performance improvements by exploring computation paradigms departing from standard approaches. The project aims at developing hardware dedicated to probabilistic computation, which extends logic computation realized by Boolean gates in current computer chips. Such probabilistic computing devices would allow to solve faster and at a lower energy cost a wide range of Artificial Intelligence applications, especially when decisions need to be taken from incomplete data in an uncertain environment. ** *More detailed presentation: * The overall goal of the proposed research is to design, build and program new types of information processing machines and to demonstrate their effectiveness in low-level sensor signal processing such as sound source localization and separation. The goal of the research is to replace the Von Neuman architecture and the floating point arithmetic units found in CPU and GPU by innovative designs of processing random bit stream in order to reduce the power consumption of computing devices while increasing their processing speed and robustness to noise. To address this multi-disciplinary subject, the candidate will work in close cooperation with four laboratories (Institut Fourier, Gipsa, LIG, TIMA), part of the Persyval Labex. The candidate will firstly improve the design of an existing stochastic machine based on the Gibbs sampling technique. For instance, by using generating sets, one of the goals is to make generic the random walk used by the Gibbs sampler. Another is to elaborate the stochastic machine architecture and to implement it in hardware. Therefore the candidate will have to become familiar with computer architecture, stochastic computing, Bayesian programming, generating sets for random exploration as well as circuit design. After an initial period for acquiring the interdisciplinary technical background, the PhD candidate will develop a novel architecture dedicated to stochastic computing and will validate it on an FPGA platform. As a proof a concept, the stochastic machine will be integrated in a signal processing chain in order to evaluate it on a sound source localization application or a source separation problem. The hardware experimentation will be done in collaboration with post-doc hired on the project. *Scientific and technical skills:* Digital circuit design, computer architecture, programming skills, basics in probabilities, Bayesian techniques, mathematical skills, digital signal processing -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From simone.scardapane at uniroma1.it Mon Jun 20 06:11:02 2016 From: simone.scardapane at uniroma1.it (Simone Scardapane) Date: Mon, 20 Jun 2016 12:11:02 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: CfP: Advances in Biologically Inspired Reservoir Computing (Cognitive Computation) Message-ID: <766054fe-4eff-4a10-a33d-a24c7366eb97@uniroma1.it> [Apologies if you receive multiple copies of this CFP] -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Call for papers: Cognitive Computation - Special Issue ADVANCES IN BIOLOGICALLY INSPIRED RESERVOIR COMPUTING Submission deadline: 31th September, 2016 http://ispac.diet.uniroma1.it/cognitive-computation-special-issue/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Scope and motivations -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Reservoir computing is a family of techniques for training and analyzing recurrent neural networks, wherein the recurrent portion of the network is assigned before the training process, typically via stochastic assignment of its weights. The non-linear reservoir acts as a high-dimensional kernel space, which generates complex dynamics characterized by sharp transitions between ordered and chaotic regimes. The behavior of this model emulates the functioning of many biological (complex) systems, among which the brain. Driven by the conceptual simplicity of the reservoir and by links with neuroscience, computer science and systems? theory, researchers have achieved remarkable breakthroughs, both in theory and in practice. These include dynamical models for explaining the working behavior of reservoirs, unsupervised strategies for the adaptation of the network, and the design of unconventional computing architectures for its execution. The recent upsurge of interest in fully adaptable recurrent networks, far from shifting the attention from the field, has brought renewed interest in reservoir computing models. In our era of extreme computational power and sophisticated problems, it is essential to understand the limits and the potentialities of simple (both deterministic and random) collections of processing units. For this reason, many fundamental questions remain open, including the design of optimal task-dependent reservoirs in a stable fashion, novel investigations on the memory and power capabilities of reservoir devices, and their applicability in an ever-increasing range of domains. In light of this, the aim of this special issue is to provide a unified platform for bringing forth and advancing the state-of-the-art in reservoir computing approaches. Researchers are invited to submit innovative works on the theory and implementation of this family of techniques, in order to provide an up-to-date overview on the field. Topics -------------------------------------------------------------------------- The topics of interest to be covered by this Special Issue include, but are not limited to: * Theoretical analyses on the computational power of reservoir computing. * Deep reservoir models. * Techniques for the automatic adaptation of the reservoir and the readout. * Supervised, unsupervised and semi-supervised training criteria. * Non-conventional substrates for the implementations of reservoirs. * Parallel and distributed algorithms for reservoir computing. * Comparisons between reservoir computing and standard (deep) neural networks. * Reservoir computing for reinforcement learning problems. * Fundamental links between reservoir computing and neuroscientific findings. * Investigation of reservoir dynamic in a phase space of reduced dimensionality. Applicative papers in all areas (including robotics, industrial control, etc.) are welcome, as well as outstanding surveys on specific aspects of the field. Paper submission -------------------------------------------------------------------------- All papers should follow the manuscript preparation requirements for the Springer Cognitive Computation submissions, see http://www.springer.com/biomed/neuroscience/journal/12559. The authors are requested to submit their manuscripts via the online submission manuscript system, available at http://www.editorialmanager.com/cogn/. During submission, authors should explicitly choose the title of the special issue in the Subject line. Should there be any further enquiries, please feel free to address them to the lead guest editor: Simone Scardapane (simone.scardapane at uniroma1.it) Important dates -------------------------------------------------------------------------- * Paper submission deadline: September 31, 2016 * First notification of acceptance: November 30, 2016 * Submission of revised papers: January 15, 2017 * Final notification to the authors: January 31, 2017 * Submission of final/camera-ready papers: February 15, 2017 * Publication of special issue: TBD Organizers -------------------------------------------------------------------------- * Simone Scardapane (Sapienza University of Rome) - simone.scardapane at uniroma1.it * John B. Butcher (Keele University) - j.b.butcher at keele.ac.uk * Filippo M. Bianchi (UiT, Troms?) - filippo.m.bianchi at uit.no * Zeeshan K. Malik (University of Stirling) - zkm at cs.stir.ac.uk -- ___________________________________________ INVESTI SUL FUTURO, FAI CRESCERE L?UNIVERSIT?: *DONA IL 5 PER MILLE ALLA SAPIENZA* CODICE FISCALE *80209930587* From smart at neuralcorrelate.com Mon Jun 20 14:33:54 2016 From: smart at neuralcorrelate.com (Susana Martinez-Conde) Date: Mon, 20 Jun 2016 14:33:54 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: Top 10 Finalists announced: The 12th Best Illusion of the Year Contest In-Reply-To: <00e701d1cb22$04e729c0$0eb57d40$@neuralcorrelate.com> References: <00e701d1cb22$04e729c0$0eb57d40$@neuralcorrelate.com> Message-ID: <013f01d1cb22$4f9de710$eed9b530$@neuralcorrelate.com> The Best Illusion of the Year Contest , hosted by the Neural Correlate Society , is now an annual online event, in which anybody with an internet connection (that means YOU!) can vote to pick the Top 3 Winners from the current Top 10 List. Ten novel illusions, submitted from six different countries, and selected by an international judge panel from dozens of entries, will compete for first, second, and third placement on June 29th-30th. The final rankings will be decided by worldwide online voting. The winning illusions will receive a $3,000 award for 1st place, a $2,000 award for 2nd place, and a $1,000 award for 3rd place. Worldwide voting will take place on the Best Illusion of the Year Contest website , from 4pm EST June 29th to 4pm EST June 30th. The Top 10 finalist illusions, listed below, will be publicly revealed at that time! Jose-Manuel Alonso: ?Lights and Darks in Vision.? State University of New York, USA Peter Brugger and Rebekka Meier: ?A New Illusion At Your Elbow.? University Hospital Zurich, Switzerland Vebj?rn Ekroll, Bilge Sayim, Ruth Van der Hallen and Johan Wagemans: ?The Shrunken Finger Illusion.? University of Leuven, Belgium Mathew T. Harrison and Gideon P. Caplovitz: ?Motion Integration Unleashed: New Tricks for an Old Dog.? University of Nevada Reno, USA Arthur G. Shapiro: ?Remote Controls.? American University, USA Mike Pickard and Gurpreet Singh: ?The Dalesmen Singers Illusion.? Sunderland University, UK Kokichi Sugihara: ?Ambiguous Cylinder Illusion.? Meiji University, Japan Christine Veras: ?Silhouette Zoetrope.? Nanyang Technological University, Singapore Mark Vergeer, Stuart Anstis and Rob van Lier: ?Caught Inside a Bubble.? University of Leuven, Belgium, Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands, and UC San Diego, USA Sylvia Wenmackers: ?Millusion.? University of Leuven, Belgium -------------------------------------- Susana Martinez-Conde, PhD Professor of Ophthalmology, Neurology, and Physiology & Pharmacology Empire Innovator Scholar Director, Laboratory of Integrative Neuroscience State University of New York (SUNY) Downstate Medical Center 450 Clarkson Ave, Brooklyn NY 11203, USA Email: smart at neuralcorrelate.com Phone: +1 718-270-4520 http://smc.neuralcorrelate.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From cgf at isep.ipp.pt Mon Jun 20 14:50:10 2016 From: cgf at isep.ipp.pt (Carlos Ferreira) Date: Mon, 20 Jun 2016 19:50:10 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: Workshop on Big Data & Deep Learning in HPC - PROGRAMME IS NOW AVAILABLE Message-ID: <57683AE2.3030603@isep.ipp.pt> Porto, Portugal, on June 30, 2016 The programme of the Workshop on Big Data & Deep Learning in HPC is fantastic and is now available at the workshop web site (http://bigdatadeeplearning2016.inesctec.pt/programme). This is a great opportunity to update your skills on topics like Big Data, Deep Learning, Machine Learning, Data Mining and High Performance Computing. This will also be a great opportunity to know Porto. Porto has been crowned the BEST EUROPEAN DESTINATION of 2014 for its postcard-perfect views, friendly locals and gastronomy. All participants must register themselves at http://vecpar.fe.up.pt/2016/registration.html. There are reduced fees! See you at VECPAR 2016! Best Regards, Carlos Ferreira Carlos Ferreira ISEP | Instituto Superior de Engenharia do Porto Rua Dr. Ant?nio Bernardino de Almeida, 431 4249-015 Porto - PORTUGAL tel. +351 228 340 500 | fax +351 228 321 159 mail at isep.ipp.pt | www.isep.ipp.pt From mklados at gmail.com Mon Jun 20 16:36:21 2016 From: mklados at gmail.com (Manousos Klados) Date: Mon, 20 Jun 2016 22:36:21 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: Extended Deadline for the SAN2016 Message-ID: Dear colleagues, please, accept our advanced apologies for any multiple cross-postings... The Society of Applied Neuroscience (SAN, http://www.applied-neuroscience.org/) in cooperation with the Medical School of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and the Department of Neurology of the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, have the great pleasure to invite you to the biennial meeting of the Society, SAN2016 (http://applied-neuroscience.org/san2016/), which will be held in Corfu Island, Greece between 6-9 of October, 2016. We cordially invite everyone engaged in studies of Neuroscience, to participate in the SAN2016 meeting. Apart from the highly promising scientific program, blended with numerous workshops and special sessions, there will also be a lively social program which will give our guests the opportunity to enjoy Greece and Corfu.We feel confident than you will enjoy SAN2016 both scientifically and socially as one of our main purposes is to give the chance to all colleagues to establish new fruitful international collaborations in areas of mutual academic and clinical interests. SAN2016 will bring together scientists and practitioners from a wide range of specialist fields. These include, but are not limited to: EEG/ MEG/ fMRI/ fNIRS Neurofeedback fMRI-NFB studies Brain Computer Interfaces Trans Cranial Magnetic Stimulation Peripheral Biofeedback Direct Current Stimulation Event-Related Potentials Brain Connectivity Neuronal Reorganization EEG and Cognition QEEG Diagnosis Emerging combined EEG and Virtual/augmented reality technology Instrumentation Audio-Visual Stimulation LORETA & Methodology Clinical, educational, sport and optimal performance applications Rehabilitation Integrative Therapy Complimentary evidence-based applications ...and all fields of applied neuroscience. All the above blended by an attractive selection of keynote and invited speeches, as well as, hands-on pre-conference workshops. There will be a practitioner track focusing on topical issues. The conference committee receives more proposals than space available. Careful attention to Quality of work, clarity and completeness of the submitted materials is likely to increase the chance for acceptance. All the accepted abstracts will be published in the Frontiers in Human Neuroscience. SAN2016 abstract submission is supported by a Frontiers event and are directly submitted through the following link until the *30th of June, 2016* : http://www.frontiersin.org/events/SAN2016_Meeting/3717 Numerous special issues and research topics are also planned by Society members as per tradition. We believe that SAN2016 will be a wonderful chance for you, to meet old friends and make new ones. We look forward to seeing you in Corfu, Greece! Panos Bamidis John Gruzelier Manousos Klados SAN2016 Conference Chairs [image: photo] *Manousos Klados, MSc, PhD* Postdoctoral Researcher, Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive & Brain Sciences, +49(0)-341-9940-2507 | +49(0)-176-6988-1781 | http://www.mklados.com | Skype: mklados | Stephanstra?e 1a PC D-04103 Leipzig Germany ------------------------------ *Call for Papers (Frontiers):*Applied Neuroscience: Methodology, Modeling, Theory, Applications and Reviews *Find me at* SAN2016 Conference ------------------------------ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From chriskanan at gmail.com Tue Jun 21 03:55:05 2016 From: chriskanan at gmail.com (Christopher Kanan) Date: Tue, 21 Jun 2016 00:55:05 -0700 Subject: Connectionists: Postdoc Position Available in the Kanan lab at the Rochester Institute of Technology Message-ID: Topic: Machine learning and deep learning for detecting manipulated images One postdoctoral position is available in the laboratory of Christopher Kanan at the Rochester Institute of Technology, in Rochester, NY (USA). The lab specializes in applying machine learning algorithms to solve problems in computer vision and related fields. The candidate will be responsible for developing new algorithms for the detecting manipulated and tampered images. Requirements: Ph.D. in computer science or related field; A research record in computer vision and/or machine learning; Familiarity with deep learning The position is initially for one year, but is renewable upon strong performance for an additional year. The salary is significantly above the typical postdoctoral market rate. Applications should be sent by email to ( christopher.kanan at rit.edu) and should include a CV, the expected data of availability, and contact information for 3 references. The starting date is September 2016. I will be available to do interviews during CVPR-2016. -- Christopher Kanan, Ph.D. Assistant Professor Carlson Center for Imaging Science Rochester Institute of Technology Office 3140, Building #76 http://klab.cis.rit.edu/ http://www.chriskanan.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Luka.Peternel at iit.it Tue Jun 21 05:56:59 2016 From: Luka.Peternel at iit.it (Luka Peternel) Date: Tue, 21 Jun 2016 09:56:59 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: [meetings] IROS 2016 Workshop on Human-Robot Collaboration: Towards Co-Adaptive Learning Through Semi-Autonomy and Shared Control Message-ID: ***First Call for Participation*** Workshop on Human-Robot Collaboration: Towards Co-Adaptive Learning Through Semi-Autonomy and Shared Control IROS 2016, 10 October, Daejeon, Korea WORKSHOP WEBSITE: http://www.ausy.tu-darmstadt.de/Workshops/IROS2016 CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS: We welcome prospective participants to submit extended abstracts (up to 4 pages) to be presented as posters. The manuscripts should use the IEEE IROS two-column format. Please submit a PDF copy of your manuscript through our EasyChair platform before August 1. Each paper will receive a minimum of two reviews. Papers will be selected based on their originality, relevance to the workshop topics, contributions, technical clarity, and presentation. Accepted papers require that at least one of the authors register to the workshop. This workshop is an excellent opportunity to present and discuss your ongoing work and get an early feedback from the participants. To submit the paper please follow: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=iroshrc2016 Important dates: -Submission deadline for papers: 1 August, 2016 -Notification of acceptance: 20 August, 2016 TOPICS OF INTEREST: -Co-adaptation between human and robot -Learning and modelling human-robot interaction, human instructions and collaborative behaviour -Methods for self-improvement, interactive and incremental learning of collaborative tasks -Shared control between human and robot in online learning of coupled tasks -Intention recognition, skill level/gap evaluation and role allocation -Transferring and reusing skills from human-human tasks and from existing human-robot tasks to new scenarios -Discussion on current and future applications of semi and shared autonomy in human-robot collaboration: industrial, rescue, surgical, rehabilitation, home-care, companion, etc. SPEAKERS: -Heni Ben Amor (Arizona State University, USA) -Sylvain Calinon (Idiap Research Institute, Switzerland) -Abderrahmane Kheddar (CNRS, France) -Anca Dragan (University of California, Berkeley, USA) (tentative) -Ross Knepper (Cornell University, USA) -Kazuhiro Kosuge (Tohoku University, Japan) (tentative) -Dongheui Lee (TU Munich, Germany) -Manuel Lopes (Inria Bordeaux, France) -Yukie Nagai (Osaka University, Japan) -Patrick van der Smagt (TU Munich, Germany) (tentative) -Fumihide Tanaka (University of Tsukuba, Japan) (tentative) MAIN ORGANISERS: Luka Peternel (HRI2, ADVR, IIT, Italy) Guilherme Maeda (IAS, TU Darmstadt, Germany) CO-ORGANISERS: Leonel Rozo (ADVR, IIT, Italy) Serena Ivaldi (INRIA Nancy Grand-Est, France) Claudia P?rez D'Arpino (MIT, USA) Julie A. Shah (MIT, USA) Jan Babi? (ABR, JSI, Slovenia) Tamim Asfour (KIT, Germany) Erhan Oztop (Ozyegin University, Turkey) ACKNOWLEDGMENT: This workshop receives support from the European Community?s Seventh Framework Programmes (FP7-ICT-2013-10) under grant agreement 610878 3rd Hand Robot Project, under grant agreement 600716 CoDyCo Project and FP7 MC-CIG under grant agreement 321700 Converge Project (Convergent Human Learning for Robot Skill Generation); and from the European Community?s Horizon 2020 under grant agreement 687662 SPEXOR Project. This workshop is supported by the IEEE Robotics and Automation?s Technical Committee on Human-Robot Interaction & Coordination, the Technical Committee on Cognitive Robotics (CORO), the Technical Committee on Humanoid Robotics, and the Technical Committee on Telerobotics. Best regards, Luka Peternel, Ph.D. _________________________________ Post-Doctoral researcher HRI2 lab, Advanced Robotics, Italian Institute of Technology, Via Morego 30, 16163 Genova www.iit.it/en/people/luka-peternel -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From petzschner at biomed.ee.ethz.ch Tue Jun 21 06:00:29 2016 From: petzschner at biomed.ee.ethz.ch (Petzschner Frederike) Date: Tue, 21 Jun 2016 10:00:29 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: International Computational Psychiatry Course in Zurich Message-ID: International Computational Psychiatry Course (CPC2016) Zurich 29th August - 2nd September -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The ETH and University of Zurich are hosting a 5 day international course on Computational Psychiatry. ABOUT The course is meant to be practically useful for students and scientists who would like to apply modelling techniques to study learning, decision-making and brain physiology in patients with psychiatric disorders. It will not only teach the theory of computational modeling, but also demonstrate open source software from multiple labs in it?s application to example data sets. The goal is that students attending this course can go home with a clear idea of which freely available software exists and how it can be applied to concrete problems, enabling them to use computational models with more expertise and confidence in their own scientific work. STRUCTURE The course will consist of four parts: * Day 1 will cover topics in Psychiatry (Mood disorders, Autism, Addiction, Psychosis) providing a conceptual basis for the type of questions that Computational Psychiatry will need to address. * Day 2 will explain basic modelling principles: Model Selection, Model Averaging, Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) * Day 3 and 4 will include presentations on existing modelling techniques and the application of open source software to concrete problems and datasets: Drift-Diffusion Modeling, Bayesian models for perception, Markov Decision Processes, Reinforcement Learning, Predictive Coding, Machine Learning Techniques, Hierarchical Gaussian Filter, Dynamic Causal Modeling... * Day 5 will feature a series of talks on practical applications of computational models to problems from psychiatry and neuroeconomics. SPEAKERS Eduardo Aponte Dominik Bach Rafal Bogacz Christian B?chel Ed Bullmore Huang Crane Jean Daunizeau Nathaniel Daw Hanneke Den Ouden Stefan Fr?ssle Karl Friston Helene Haker R?ssler Jakob Heinzle Quentin Huys Christoph Mathys Janaina Miranda Read Montague Rosalyn Moran Saee Paliwal Martin Paulus Frederike Petzschner Lionel Rigoux Katharina Schmack Dario Sch?bi Philipp Schwartenbeck Peggy Series Klaas Enno Stephan Lilian Weber REGISTRATION Course registration is now open: http://www.translationalneuromodeling.org/cpcourse/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gershman at fas.harvard.edu Tue Jun 21 05:56:08 2016 From: gershman at fas.harvard.edu (Sam Gershman) Date: Tue, 21 Jun 2016 05:56:08 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: postdoctoral position in reinforcement learning and decision making at Harvard Message-ID: The Computational Cognitive Neuroscience Lab at Harvard University (Director: Sam Gershman) is seeking a postdoctoral fellow to work in the area of reinforcement learning and decision making. The start date is on or after September 1, 2016. The position is for two years, with a possible extension to a third year contingent on funding. Requirements for this position are: (1) Experience with fMRI and human behavioral experiments. (2) A strong technical background in Bayesian and reinforcement learning models. Interested applicants should e-mail gershman at fas.harvard.edu with a CV, statement of interest (not to exceed 2 pages), and any relevant publications. For more information on the lab's research, please visit http://gershmanlab.webfactional.com/ Harvard is an equal opportunity employer and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, disability status, protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From ahu at cs.stir.ac.uk Tue Jun 21 17:05:00 2016 From: ahu at cs.stir.ac.uk (Dr Amir Hussain) Date: Tue, 21 Jun 2016 22:05:00 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: Postdoc position available in Cognitive Big Data Informatlcs (CogBID) Lab at Stirling University, Scotland Message-ID: Post Details: Fixed Term Contract: expected dates: 01 August 2016 to 30 September 2018. Closing date: midnight on 26 June 2015. The UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) funded project ?Towards visually-driven speech enhancement for cognitively-inspired multi-modal hearing-aid devices (AV-COGHEAR)?, aims to develop a new generation of hearing aid technology that extracts speech from noise by using a camera to see what the talker is saying. Our proposed approach is consistent with normal hearing. Listeners naturally combine information from both their ears and eyes: we use our eyes to help us hear. When listening to speech, eyes follow the movements of the face and mouth and a sophisticated, multi-stage process uses this information to separate speech from the noise and fill in any gaps. Our proposed cognitively-inspired multi-modal approach will act much the same way by exploiting visual information from a camera, and develop novel causal algorithms, for intelligently combining audio and visual Big Data information, in order to improve speech quality and intelligibility in real-world noisy environments. The postdoctoral research fellow will be part of a multi-institute team, led by Stirling University, based at the Cognitive Big Data Informatics (CogBID) Research Lab (headed by Prof. Amir Hussain), comprising speech researchers, psychologists, and industry partners, and will focus heavily on cognitively-inspired signal and image processing. Specifically, the postdoc will research and develop a next-generation audiovisual speech enhancement system, in close collaboration with project partners at the University of Sheffield (UK), clinical researchers at the Institute of Hearing Research (Scottish Section), and the industrial partner: Phonak. For further information, including essential criteria and details on how to apply, please see: www.stir.ac.uk/jobs For informal enquiries, contact the project Principal Investigator (PI): Prof. Amir Hussain, E-mail: ahu at cs.stir.ac.uk, http://cs.stir.ac.uk/~ahu/ -- The University achieved an overall 5 stars in the QS World University Rankings 2015 The University of Stirling is a charity registered in Scotland, number SC 011159. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From education at humanbrainproject.eu Wed Jun 22 04:37:58 2016 From: education at humanbrainproject.eu (HBP Education) Date: Wed, 22 Jun 2016 10:37:58 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: Event Announcement: 1st HBP Student Conference - Transdisciplinary Research Linking Neuroscience, Brain Medicine and Computer Scienc Message-ID: <6092B003-836E-4A50-BD43-E8FD22F34C70@humanbrainproject.eu> Dear all, In February 2017, the Education Programme Office of the Human Brain Project will organise its 1st Student Conference in Vienna, Austria under the title ?Transdisciplinary Research Linking Neuroscience, Brain Medicine and Computer Science?. Please find some general information about the conference below. We are looking forward to receiving your submissions and maybe also seeing you on-site! Best regards, The Education Programme Office Medical University Innsbruck (MUI) Center of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy Experimental Psychiatry Unit Innrain 66a, 6020 Innsbruck, Austria Phone Office: +43 512 504 23710 Fax Office: +43 512 504 23716 Email: education at humanbrainproject.eu 1st HBP Student Conference: Transdisciplinary Research Linking Neuroscience, Brain Medicine and Computer Science Vienna, Austria, 8-10 February 2017 education.humanbrainproject.eu/web/studentconference Description In the context of the 1st HBP Student Conference, young researchers from the fields of neuroscience, brain medicine and computer science receive the possibility to exchange ideas and perspectives and discuss various aspects of their particular fields of expertise relevant to the Human Brain Project. The conference offers a variety of discussion sessions, lectures and social events. Through working across boundaries and linking the various fields, it serves as a platform for both intra- and interdisciplinary exchange and is a great opportunity for extensive scientific discussions among peers and faculty, and also a fertile soil for new, innovative ideas. Conference Structure Keynote Lectures Discussion Sessions Student Lightning Talks Poster Presentations Round Table Discussion Social Event We are looking for original high-quality submissions containing innovative research from all fields relating to the HBP research programme. Contributions emphasising theoretical and empirical foundations are just as welcome as new approaches to specific questions concerning the twelve subprojects of the HBP. Finally, we particularly encourage submissions introducing new and relevant problems, concepts and ideas with the potential to inspire the research community ? even if the approach is at an early stage of development. All participants may submit an extended abstract and will have the opportunity to present their work. Presentations will include a brief oral presentation, a poster, or both. Abstracts to be submitted before 7 October 2016. The conference will start on Wednesday, 8 February 2017 in the early afternoon with registration and end the afternoon of Friday, 10 February 2017. Scientific Committee Nikola Simidjievski, chair | JSI Andrea Santuy | UPM Miriam Menzel | FZ JUELICH Jovan Tanevski | JSI Vitali Karasenko | UHEI Tara Mahfoud | KCL Organised by HBP Education Programme Office Upcoming Deadlines Abstract submission: 7 October 2016 Online registration closes: 23 January 2017 Contact HBP Education Programme Office Medical University Innsbruck Center of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy Experimental Psychiatry Unit Innrain 66a, 6020 Innsbruck, Austria Phone: +43 512 504 23710 Fax: +43 512 504 23716 E-mail: education at humanbrainproject.eu Website: education.humanbrainproject.eu/web/studentconference The Venue The conference will take place at the Campus of the University of Vienna. It is a place of work for students and researchers, a place for the exchange of knowledge, and in its function as congress venue also serves as an important meeting point for students and researchers from all over the world. Vienna is the capital and largest city of Austria, located in the northeast of the country on the banks of the Danube River. As Austria's cultural, economic and political centre, the city unites the royal-imperial flair of the past with the latest trends. There are excellent museums, art collections, numerous theatres and operas. Vienna is also famous for its coffeehouses and cuisine. Keynote Lectures Christine Aicardi | KCL Anna Letizia Allegra | UFI Gaute Einevoll | NMBU Dragi Kocev | JSI Kai Kummer | MUI Mihai Petrovici | UHEI Florian R?hrbein | TUM Keywords Neuroscience Brain Medicine Computer Science -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: 1st HBP Student Conference 2017_160615_TR.pdf Type: application/pdf Size: 550096 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: Call_for_Submissions_1st_HBP_Student_Conference.pdf Type: application/pdf Size: 431907 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From risto at cs.utexas.edu Wed Jun 22 08:41:26 2016 From: risto at cs.utexas.edu (Risto Miikkulainen) Date: Wed, 22 Jun 2016 07:41:26 -0500 Subject: Connectionists: Research Positions at Sentient Message-ID: Sentient Technologies, a Machine Learning startup in San Francisco, has multiple research positions open in - evolutionary computation - deep learning - recurrent neural networks - blackbox optimization - data science - computer vision. Sentient was founded by the same entrepreneurs who created the technology behind Siri. Emerging from stealth in 2015, Sentient is currently the world's best funded AI startup, and has already deployed products in stock trading and e-commerce, with possible expansions to healthcare, finance, and cyberphysical systems in the future. These products were made possible by original research in evolutionary computation and deep learning, as well as massive computing power: Sentient has developed grid computing technology that harnesses millions of CPUs and thousands of GPUs around the globe, amounting to the largest intelligent system in the world. In line with the recent trend of merging academic and industry research, several academic faculty are involved in research at Sentient as employees, advisors, or collaborators, including Peter Bartlett (Berkeley), Nello Christianini (Bristol), David Helmbold (UCSC), Chris Holmes (Oxford), Risto Miikkulainen (UTexas), and Caleb Harper (MIT). Sentient also participates in (and sponsors) conferences such as AAAI Symposia, GECCO, and NIPS. If you are going to one of those conferences, please stop by to chat! Positions are open immediately, and in the near future, for - new PhDs - senior research scientists - visiting faculty, and - student interns. Succesful candidates will be expected to pursue original research, resulting in publications and patents, and apply it to transformative products in Sentient's core areas. In other words, at Sentient you will have the resources and opportunities to change the world with your work. To find out more, please contact risto.miikkulainen at sentient.ai, or check out our website at sentient.ai From alberto.montebelli at gmail.com Wed Jun 22 16:49:08 2016 From: alberto.montebelli at gmail.com (Alberto Montebelli) Date: Wed, 22 Jun 2016 22:49:08 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: Final CfP and extended deadline (July 1, 2016) - "Workshop on Communicating Intentions in Human-Robot Interaction", New York August 31, 2016 Message-ID: <3DBB0969-94B0-46B2-9A70-ABE89F924FB5@gmail.com> [Apologies for cross-posting] =================================================== Call for papers Workshop on Communicating Intentions in Human-Robot Interaction August 31, 2016 in conjunction with IEEE International Symposium on Robot and Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN 2016) August 26-31, 2016 Columbia University, New York =================================================== ---[Dates]--- Submission deadline extended: July 1, 2016 (23:59 PST) Notification of acceptance: July 8, 2016 Workshop date: August 31, 2016 ---[Background and motivation]--- Research in the cognitive sciences, in particular social neuroscience, has in recent years made substantial progress in elucidating the mechanisms underlying the recognition and communication of intentions in natural human-human social interactions and in developing computational models of these mechanisms. However, there is much less research on the mechanisms underlying the human interpretation of the behavior of artifacts, such as robots or automated vehicles, and the attribution of intentions to such systems. Furthermore, robots? recognition of human intentions is arguably a prerequisite for pro-social behavior, and necessary to engage in, for instance, instrumental helping or mutual collaboration. To develop robots that can interact naturally and effectively with people therefore requires the creation of systems that can perceive and comprehend intentions in other agents. For research on social interactions between humans and robots/agents in general, and mutual recognition/communication of intentions in particular, it is therefore important to be clear about the theoretical framework and inherent assumptions underlying technological implementations. This also has ramifications for the evaluation of the quality of human-robot interactions. Overall, the role of intentions in human-robot interaction very much remains an active and growing research area in which further development is necessary, and the purpose of this workshop is to advance the state of the art in that respect. The intended audience consists of researchers from robotics, AI and the cognitive sciences. The focus is on interdisciplinary interaction. ---[Workshop Content]--- The workshop will be centered around three main activities: (i) keynote presentations to highlight the overall state of the art; (ii) paper presentations that deal with specific aspects of the work carried out by workshop participants; (iii) a round-table discussion that will allow all participants to contribute their thoughts on the open and most pressing research challenges. ---[Keynote Speakers]--- * Vanessa Evers, University of Twente * TBA ---[Scope]--- Suitable topics for the workshop address intention communication in Human-Robot Interaction; for instance: * mechanisms of intention communication in Human-Robot interaction; * machine recognition of human intentions; * human recognition/attribution of robot intentions; * implications for the evaluation of HRI. We particularly encourage papers that consider mutual recognition/communication of intentions (i.e. that consider both human recognition of robot intentions and robot recognition of human intentions in given application contexts), but will also consider papers that deal with uni-directional intention recognition/communication. Papers can be pure position papers, or can substantiate their message with empirical work. Papers will be peer-reviewed and we emphasize that papers must make an interesting, relevant, and novel contribution (whether theoretical or empirical) to the state of the art. ---[Submission Instructions]--- We expect papers to be 4 - 8 pages using the IEEE conference templates (available at http://www.ieee.org/conferences_events/conferences/publishing/templates.html ). Please e-mail your paper to tom.ziemke at his.se , serge.thill at his.se and alberto.montebelli at his.se by the submission deadline. ---[Publication]--- Preliminary proceedings will be published in the "Sk?vde University Studies in Informatics" series (ISSN 1653-2325). Authors have the right to opt out of these proceedings. We will further organize a Frontiers (in Neurorobotics) research topic as a venue for extended papers on the themes of the workshop. ---[Website]--- News and updates will be available at: http://www.intentions.xyz/roman-2016-workshop/ ---[Organisers]? Tom Ziemke, Link?ping University & University of Sk?vde, Sweden Serge Thill, University of Sk?vde, Sweden Alberto Montebelli, University of Sk?vde, Sweden ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Alberto Montebelli, PhD Robotics and Cognitive Systems University of Sk?vde P.O. Box 408 SE-541 28 SK?VDE SWEDEN Tel: +46 76 100 3516 Email: alberto.montebelli at his.se Web: albertomontebelli.wordpress.com ?www.intentions.xyz ---------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From bhammer at techfak.uni-bielefeld.de Thu Jun 23 03:10:39 2016 From: bhammer at techfak.uni-bielefeld.de (Barbara Hammer) Date: Thu, 23 Jun 2016 09:10:39 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: workshop New Challenges in Neural Computation NC^2 Message-ID: <6ee86712-b0b7-2d89-6bf2-6c1f9a43d920@techfak.uni-bielefeld.de> CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS The 7th Workshop New Challenges in Neural Computation and Machine Learning (NC^2) will be held in conjunction with GCPR'16 (http://www.kcmweb.de/conferences/gcpr2016/) at September, 12th, 2016, in Hanover, Germany. See: http://www.techfak.uni-bielefeld.de/~bhammer/GINN/NC2/ Submissions are welcome connected to the following non-exhaustive list of topics: * deep learning * nonlinear dimensionality reduction, blind source separation, and visualisation * models for very large or streaming data sets, life-long and online learning, * parallelization and hardware implementations * models for non-euclidean data * recursive models and dynamic systems * adaptive data representations * bio-inspired models * challenges in machine learning * challenges in applications Submission deadline extended to 15. July 2016. INVITED SPEAKERS: Marc Toussaint, Joerg Luecke ORGANIZERS: Barbara Hammer, Thomas Martinetz, Thomas Villmann PROGRAM COMMITTEE: Michael Biehl, Kerstin Bunte, Benoit Frenay, Andrej Gisbrecht, Fred Hamker, Gunther Heidemann, Sven Hellbach, Christian Igel, Oliver Kramer, Paulo Lisboa, Alessio Micheli, Madalena Olteanu, Jaakko Peltonen, Felix Reinhart, Franco Scarselli, Frank-Michael Schleif, Fiedhelm Schwenker, Udo Seiffert, Peter Tino, Heiko Wersing, Rolf W?rtz -- Prof. Dr. Barbara Hammer CITEC centre of excellence Bielefeld University D-33594 Bielefeld Phone: +49 521 / 106 12115 Fax: +49 521 / 106 12181 From bhammer at techfak.uni-bielefeld.de Thu Jun 23 07:25:52 2016 From: bhammer at techfak.uni-bielefeld.de (Barbara Hammer) Date: Thu, 23 Jun 2016 13:25:52 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: special session on Computational intelligent techniques for big and streaming data analysis Message-ID: Call fo papers: Special Session on Computational intelligent techniques for big and streaming data analysis http://www.oulu.fi/cse/node/34555 at the 2016 IEEE Symposium Series on Computational Intelligence (IEEE SSCI 2016), December 6-9, 2016, Athens, Greece http://ssci2016.cs.surrey.ac.uk/ The digitalization of society has enabled a rapid growth of data sources around us. Improved sensor technology produces vast amount of data as multi-dimensional values, time series or streaming data; for example, wearable sensors only have make possible that monitoring of human related data has become a growing research area in data mining. While the amount of data is growing more sophisticated and reliable methods are needed to ensure the capture of the meaningful information. The methods include different fusion techniques, time series and signal analysis solutions as well as novel approaches for learning. Within the session, the focus will lie on advanced data analysis and data visualization techniques with a particular focus on big, complex and streaming data, connected to the following non-exhaustive list of topics: adaptive models for human related data, activity recognition, probabilistic modeling and Internet of Things, uncertainty of models and uncertain data, online solutions, Internet of Things applications Organizers: Yaochu Jin, Barbara Hammer, Heli Koskim?ki Important Dates: Paper submission due: July 18, 2016 Paper acceptance: September 12, 2016 Final paper submission: October 10, 2016 Early registration: October 10, 2016 -- Prof. Dr. Barbara Hammer CITEC centre of excellence Bielefeld University D-33594 Bielefeld Phone: +49 521 / 106 12115 Fax: +49 521 / 106 12181 From Roland.W.Fleming at psychol.uni-giessen.de Fri Jun 24 06:31:09 2016 From: Roland.W.Fleming at psychol.uni-giessen.de (Roland Fleming) Date: Fri, 24 Jun 2016 12:31:09 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: PRISM6 Conference on Illumination, Shape and Materials: 19-23 Oct 2016 Message-ID: <745A9A0C-588D-4014-B36B-D67BE07637C2@psychol.uni-giessen.de> SIXTH CONFERENCE ON THE PERCEPTUAL REPRESENTATION OF ILLUMINATION, SHAPE AND MATERIALS (PRISM6) 19th-23rd October 2016, Rauischholzhausen Castle, Germany SUBMISSION NOW OPEN! Applicants are invited to submit an abstract to take part in the 6th (and final) Conference on the Perceptual Representation of Illumination, Shape and Materials. The goal of the meetings is to bring together researchers from different fields to present their latest research related to the perception of shape, shading and materials, and more broadly to discuss important emerging areas at the intersection between psychology, neuroscience, machine learning, computer graphics, industry and design. CONFIRMED PRESENTERS: KEYNOTE: Hidehiko Komatsu (NIPS) Bart Anderson (Sydney) Kavita Bala (Cornell) Pascal Barla (INRIA Bordeaux) Johannes Burge (UPenn) Alexei Efros (UC Berkeley) Jiri Filip (Czech Academy of Sciences) Bill Geisler (UT Austin) Julie Harris (St Andrews) Anya Hurlbert (Newcastle) Peter Janssen (KU Leuven) Bobby Klatzky (Carnegie Mellon) Shin'ya Nishida (NTT Research) Ga?l Obein (LNE-CNAM) Flip Phillips (Skidmore) Sylvia Pont (TU Delft) Holly Rushmeier (Yale) Ohad Ben Shahar (Ben Gurion) Romain Vergne (Grenoble) Greg Ward (Anyhere Software) Andrew Welchman (Cambridge) John Winawer (NYU) Nathan Witthoft (Stanford) Plus industrial perspectives from: Thomas Dauser (Audi) Bill Eibon (PPG) Frank Maile (Schlenk) LOCATION / TRAVEL: Rauischholzhausen Castle (http://schloss.faber-management.de ) is a splendid residence, owned by the University of Giessen, with scenic gardens, creaky spiral staircases and a nice beer cellar. Full board and lodging are included in the price. The closest airport is Frankfurt (FRA), the closest train station is Marburg. We?ll arrange some shuttles directly from the airport, but if you are coming in from Marburg, we recommend just catching a taxi. Further travel details will be given to participants. On Saturday afternoon, there will a sightseeing trip for visitors. APPLICATION PROCEDURE: Participation, which includes food board and lodging, costs 750 Euros. To apply, please submit a max 1-page abstract as a PDF or Word File to roland.w.fleming at psychol.uni-giessen.de AND to matteo.valsecchi at gmail.com . The top two abstracts will be asked to present a 15 minute talk, the remaining accepted abstracts will present posters (size A0). The deadline is 31st July 2016, but please note that place is extremely limited and it is possible that will not be able to accept everyone, so it is better to submit sooner than later. Additional information will be posted in the coming weeks at: http://prism-network.eu/events/prism6-final-conference -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From alessandro.dausilio at iit.it Fri Jun 24 08:33:54 2016 From: alessandro.dausilio at iit.it (Alessandro D'Ausilio) Date: Fri, 24 Jun 2016 14:33:54 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: [Jobs] PhD positions @ Italian Institute of Technology - Center for Translational Neurophysiology Message-ID: <9893BD62-BB91-408B-AC19-DC67F1D98E1D@iit.it> PHD PROGRAM in TRANSLATIONAL NEUROSCIENCES AND NEUROTECHNOLOGIES The Center for Translational Neurophysiology of Speech and Communication (CTNSC) at the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT) is looking for up to 4 highly motivated, full-time PhD students to work in the core research areas of the Center. At the CTNSC we focus our efforts in two integrated directions. On one side we are studying how the brain builds communicative and linguistic representations. On the other side we are designing new brain interfaces, specifically conceived for human use, to record and computationally decode neural signals. Speech and communication are of central importance for us, because we believe that many paralyzing pathologies require, at first, the restoring of an efficient communicative flow between the patient and the environment. Therefore, our research goal is to advance knowledge on brain functioning to help building the next generation of brain-computer interfaces. We are looking for outstanding students, with a specific interest on translational research and willing to contribute to the development of the future of human-machine communication. The CTNSC is hosted by the Section of Physiology of the University of Ferrara, one of the oldest in Italy (founded in 1391). The identity of the University of Ferrara is rooted in the historical and cultural tradition that welcomed and formed illustrious figures such as Copernico and Paracelso. In terms of its size, facilities, quality and quantity of education and research, the university is a point of excellence within Italy. The CTNSC is located in an ancient and prestigious artistic and historical building in the city center. The PhD student will work in Ferrara, in an international and multidisciplinary team including biomedical engineers, biologists, computer scientists, psychologists and medical doctors. The PhD positions will cover the following core areas of CTNSC: A) Improving performance and biocompatibility in brain machine interfaces Long term neurophysiological and Brain Machine Interface studies require significant improvements in the properties of chronic electrode implants. The candidate will be involved in the design, fabrication and test of innovative microelectrode arrays - intracortical and epicortical - for both recording and stimulation in rats, primates and humans. Activities will include the development of: variable stiffness biocompatible polymers for electrode support and insulation, nanomaterials for low noise electrical interfaces, biocompatible hydrogels for nanomaterial encapsulation and tissue interface, ultrathin flexible and compliant conductors for wiring. In-vivo validation will be carried-out within the research team. Techniques: Electrochemical Impedance Spectroscopy/ Chronoamperometry/Cyclic Voltammetry. Electrochemical deposition. Dip coating and spin coating. Mechanical characterizations. Optical and SEM (scanning electron microscopy) characterization of surfaces. Requirements: The candidate should have a background in one or more of the following fields: Material Science, Chemistry, Electrochemistry, Bioengineering or Physics. Programming experience is highly appreciated. Contacts: Dr. Davide Ricci: davide.ricci at iit.it - Dr. Elisa Castagnola: elisa.castagnola at iit.it - Prof. Luciano Fadiga: luciano.fadiga at iit.it B) Functional investigation of innovative neural interfaces Evidences show that using electrophysiological techniques is possible to extract information about brain processes and then translate these signals into commands that could be used to recover the lost capabilities. The purpose of the project is to investigate the in-vivo performance of novel devices - both in-house developed or obtained from collaborating laboratories - with a focus on i) enhanced capability to record neural signals; ii) large charge transfer capability to enhance the stimulation performance and iii) small size to minimize inflammatory reaction and gliosis. The candidate will be involved in the development of a stable and functional interface between living neural tissue and probes in rat model. Techniques: in-vivo single-unit recording and epicortical recording , histological techniques and image analysis, microscopy techniques and data analysis. Requirements: The candidate should have a background in one or more of the following fields: biology, medicine, pharmacology or related disciplines. Programming experience is appreciated but not mandatory. Familiarity with electrophysiological and/or microscopy techniques is of advantage. Contacts: Dr. Emma Maggiolini: emma.maggiolini at iit.it - Prof. Luciano Fadiga: luciano.fadiga at iit.it C) Animal neurophysiology investigation of sensorimotor functions The discovery of mirror and canonical neurons in monkey premotor and parietal cortex motivated a number of studies on how sensorimotor transformations in the brain may support understanding of action performed by conspecifics. This still constitute a fundamental area of research which is necessary to unravel the basic mechanisms of sensorimotor sharing during social interaction. The candidate working in this core area will investigate, in animal models, the neuronal activity of different (motor and somatosensory) cortical regions, pointing out their topographic organization as well as their role during observation, planning and execution of particular motor acts. Techniques: multidisciplinary approach involving behavioral testing, electrophysiological techniques (intracortical microstimulation, single-unit recording, field potentials recording, electromyography) and histological evaluations. Requirements: The candidate must have a background in the biological fields (biology, medicine, pharmacy and similar). At the end of the three-year period, the Ph.D. student will obtain deep knowledge and experience on in vivo neuroscience. Contacts: Dr. Riccardo Viaro: riccardo.viaro at iit.it - Prof. Luciano Fadiga: luciano.fadiga at iit.it D) Brain- and multimodal signal- based speech recognition Our approach to speech recognition is an ?analysis by synthesis? approach which assumes that in order to recognize speech we need to understand the causal process (i.e., the speech production process) that stems from brain activity and, through coordinated movements of the vocal tract articulators, produces speech sounds. Such approach is largely motivated by work on speech perception carried out at CTNSC and serves two goals. The first goal is to build automatic speech recognition systems that, as humans do, work in very challenging scenarios (e.g., in the so called ?cocktail party? scenario) and are able to learn how to recognize speech without relying on huge amount of carefully annotated speech data (as opposed to ?data hungry? current recognition systems). The second goal is to recognize speech from one or more modalities that are within the speech production process, e.g., from brain signal or from visual and kinematic signals of the face and the vocal tract. Techniques: Machine learning, deep neural network, multimodal signal processing. Requirements: The successful candidate will have a degree in computer science bioengineering, physics or related disciplines. A background in machine learning and in speech and language processing. Contacts: Dr. Leonardo Badino: leonardo.badino at iit.it - Prof. Luciano Fadiga: luciano.fadiga at iit.it E) Human Neurophysiology investigation of speech and communication abilities by means of micro-electrocorticography Historically, the study of speech processing has emphasized a strong link between auditory perceptual input and motor production output. The main aim of this area is to describe the neural systems involved in this sensorimotor representation linking speech perception and production. To this purpose, we use high-density surface microelectrodes for electrocorticography (micro-ECoG) to record electrical signals directly from the cortical surface in patients during awake surgery for low-grade glioma resection. Micro-ECoG is an important electrophysiological signal recording technique that combines high temporal resolution with good spatial localization. Techniques: Micro-ECoG, direct brain electrical stimulation, functional electrical mapping. Requirements: Applicants are expected to have a degree in biomedical engineering or basic/applied/health sciences. Requirements include a knowledge of neural signal processing and/or neuroimaging skills. Contact: Dr. Luciano Simone: luciano.simone at iit.it - Prof. Luciano Fadiga: luciano.fadiga at iit.it F) Human Neurophysiology investigation of speech and sensorimotor communication abilities by means of non-invasive techniques The neural mechanisms underlying speech and sensorimotor communication abilities, during real-life social encounters are mostly unknown. In the classic motor control frame of reference, individuals can be conceived as proactively building models of their action and of their sensory consequence. During interaction, these sensorimotor models can be extended to the social space whereby the control signal becomes the negotiated behavior of other people. The candidate will help in mapping the brain activities responsible for the emergence of such a shared behavior, in the domain of speech (phonological level) or action (upper arm movements). These experiments will inform the next generation of biologically inspired automatic communication recognition systems, essential to augment natural human-human coordination and promote the future of efficient human-robot interaction. Techniques: Electroencephalography (EEG), Electromyography (EMG), body motion kinematics (MoCap), Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS), transcranial Direct (tDCs) and Alternate (tACs) current stimulation. Requirements: The successful candidate will have a background in neuroscience, experimental psychology, computer science or engineering. Programming skills as well as a strong interest in cognitive neuroscience are fundamental. Electroencephalographic and kinematic data analyses skills are a plus. Contact: Dr. Alessandro D?Ausilio: alessandro.dausilio at iit.it - Prof. Luciano Fadiga: luciano.fadiga at iit.it Necessary skills for all applicants are: Strong team-work skills - Strong communication and English skills (written and oral) - Adaptability and problem solving - Creativity and scientific curiosity - Proactive attitude The salary will be based on standards of the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (c.a. 1250?/month; as a reference, rent for a studio apartment in the city center is 300-400?/month). For additional information, please contact the responsible person for the research line of interest and/or the CTNSC Director (Prof. Luciano Fadiga - luciano.fadiga at iit.it) . DEADLINE: 5TH AUGUST 2016 CTNSC Info: https://www.iit.it/centers/ctnsc-unife PhD page [ITA]: http://www.unife.it/studenti/dottorato/concorsi/ordinario How to participate to the selection [ITA/ENG]: http://www.unife.it/studenti/dottorato/modulistica/Guidaconcorso.pdf -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dwang at cse.ohio-state.edu Sun Jun 26 10:33:23 2016 From: dwang at cse.ohio-state.edu (DeLiang Wang) Date: Sun, 26 Jun 2016 10:33:23 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: NEURAL NETWORKS, July 2016 Message-ID: Neural Networks - Volume 79, July 2016 http://www.journals.elsevier.com/neural-networks Interplay between non-NMDA and NMDA receptor activation during oscillatory wave propagation: Analyses of caffeine-induced oscillations in the visual cortex of rats Hiroshi Yoshimura, et al. Robust mixture of experts modeling using the image distribution F. Chamroukhi Dynamical analysis of contrastive divergence learning: Restricted Boltzmann machines with Gaussian visible units Ryo Karakida, Masato Okada, Shun-ichi Amari Improvements on image-Twin Support Vector Machine Reshma Khemchandani, Pooja Saigal, Suresh Chandra When are two multi-layer cellular neural networks the same? Jung-Chao Ban, Chih-Hung Chang Effect of network architecture on burst and spike synchronization in a scale-free network of bursting neurons Sang-Yoon Kim, Woochang Lim Global exponential stability of complex-valued neural networks with both time-varying delays and impulsive effects Qiankun Song, Huan Yan, Zhenjiang Zhao, Yurong Liu Multistability analysis of a general class of recurrent neural networks with non-monotonic activation functions and time-varying delays Peng Liu, Zhigang Zeng, Jun Wang Regular expressions for decoding of neural network outputs Tobias Straus, Gundram Leifert, Tobias Gruning, Roger Labahn Engineering neural systems for high-level problem solving Jared Sylvester, James Reggia Pattern recognition for electroencephalographic signals based on continuous neural networks M. Alfaro-Ponce, A. Arguelles, I. Chairez FPGA implementation of neuro-fuzzy system with improved PSO learning Cihan Karakuzu, Fuat Karakaya, Mehmet Ali Cavuslu From ahu at cs.stir.ac.uk Sun Jun 26 11:18:34 2016 From: ahu at cs.stir.ac.uk (Dr Amir Hussain) Date: Sun, 26 Jun 2016 16:18:34 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: FINAL Call for Papers: 8th International Conference on Brain Inspired Cognitive Systems (BICS 2016), Beijing, 28-30 Nov 2016: http://bii.ia.ac.cn/bics-2016/index.html Message-ID: FINAL CALL FOR PAPERS (Abstract submission deadline: 5 July 2016, Full paper submission deadline: 15 July 2016. All accepted papers will be published in conference proceedings of the premier Springer LNAI Book series. Selected extended papers will be published in a special issue of the leading (ISI SCI indexed) Cognitive Computation Journal (published by Springer Nature: http://Springer.com/12559 - latest (2015) impact factor: 1.933)): (with apologies for any cross postings - please forward to any interested colleagues, thank you) The 8th International Conference on Brain-Inspired Cognitive Systems (BICS 2016), is being organized by the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Research Centre for Brain-Inspired Intelligence, Institute of Automation) in Beijing, November 28-30, 2016 - in partnership with the University of Stirling (Scotland, UK), and with technical co-sponsorship of the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society: http://bii.ia.ac.cn/bics-2016/index.html BICS 2016 is being held in Beijing, China, as a sequel of BICS 2004 - 2015. The first BICS 2004 was held in Stirling, Scotland, UK and the last BICS 2015 in Hefei, Anhui, China. BICS 2016 aims to provide a high-level international forum for scientists, engineers, and educators to present the state-of-the-art in brain-inspired cognitive systems research and applications in diverse fields. It will bring together leading scientists and engineers who use analytic, syntactic and computational methods both to understand the prodigious processing properties of biological systems and, specifically, of the brain, and to exploit such knowledge to advance computational methods towards ever higher levels of cognitive competence. The conference will feature plenary lectures given by world renowned scholars, regular sessions with broad coverage, and special sessions/workshops focusing on popular and timely topics. All accepted BICS 2016 papers will be published in conference proceedings of the premier Springer LNAI Book series. Selected extended papers will be published in a special issue of the leading (ISI SCI indexed) Cognitive Computation Journal (published by Springer Nature: http://Springer.com/12559 - latest (2015) impact factor: 1.933) BICS'2016 TOPICS OF INTEREST: These include, but are not limited to the following: 1. Biologically Inspired Systems (BICS-BIS) - Brain inspired systems - Brain inspired vision - Brain inspired audition and sound processing - Brain inspired other sensory modalities - Brain inspired motion processing - Brain inspired robotics - Brain inspired adaptive and control systems - Brain inspired evolutionary systems - Brain inspired oscillatory systems - Brain inspired signal processing - Brain inspired learning - Neuromorphic systems 2. Cognitive Neuroscience (BICS-CNS) - Cognitive neuroscience - Cognitive neuroscience of vision - Cognitive neuroscience of non-vision sensory modalities - Cognitive neuroscience of volition - Systems neuroscience - Attentional mechanisms - Affective systems - Language - Cortical models - Sub-cortical models - Cerebellar models - Neural correlates 3. Models of Consciousness (BICS-MoC) - World awareness - Self-awareness - Global workspace theory - Imagination - Qualia models - Virtual machine approaches - Formal models fo consciousness - Control theoretical models - Developmental/Infant models - Will and volition - Emotion and affect - Philosophical implications - Neurophysiological grounding - Enactive approaches - Heterophenomenology - Analyitic/Synthetic phenomenology 4. Neural Computation (BICS-NC) - Neuro-computational systems - Hybrid neural systems - Neural learning - Neural control systems - Neural signal processing - Architectures of neural computation - Neural devices - Neural perception and pattern classifiers - Neuro-fuzzy systems - Evolutionary neural networks - Biological neural network models - Applications - Others BICS 2016 SPECIAL SESSIONS AND WORKSHOPS: CALL FOR PROPOSALS To enhance the technical program and open the door to more specific cutting-edge topics and areas related to Brain-inspired Cognitive Systems, BICS 2016 welcomes proposals for timely Special Sessions and Workshops (which will be included in the Conference programme, in addition to regular sessions). Special sessions/workshops can cover subjects or cross-subjects belonging to any relevant BICS topic(s) of interest, or novel topic(s) related to BICS topics of interest. Papers submitted for special sessions and workshops will be peer-reviewed with the same criteria as for regular sessions. All proposals for BICS2016 Special Sessions and Workshops should contain the following information: -Title of the special session or workshop -Names, affiliations, email addresses and short bios of proposers -Description of the proposed session or workshop (including aims and scope) -List of 6-10 potential contributors Researchers interested in organizing Special Sessions/Workshops are invited to submit a formal proposal, which will be evaluated based on the timeliness of the topic, its uniqueness, and qualifications of the proposers. A tentative accept/reject decision on the proposal will be sent to proposers within one week after its receipt by the BICS 2016 Special Sessions and Workshops Chair. Accepted Special Sessions/Workshops will be listed on the website. Formal proposals (including any queries) should be submitted to the BICS 2016 Special Sessions & Workshops Chair: Dr. Jingpeng Li ( jli at cs.stir.ac.uk ). Special Sessions/Workshops proposals deadline: 5 July 2016 PAPER SUBMISSION: Full papers should be limited to 8-10 pages in Springer LNCS format. Details can be found in http://bii.ia.ac.cn/bics-2016/submission.htm To submit, please login at https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=bics2016 IMPORTANT DATES (EXTENDED DEADLINES): Abstract submission deadline: July 5, 2016 Full paper submission deadline: July 15, 2016 Acceptance notification: August 10, 2016 Camera-ready papers due: September 10, 2016 Conference dates: November 28-30, 2016 Special Session/Workshop proposals deadline: July 5, 2016 (acceptance notification: July 8, 2016) BICS 2016 ORGANIZING COMMITTEE: General Chairs: Cheng-Lin Liu (Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China) Amir Hussain (University of Stirling, Scotland, UK) Program Chairs: Bin Luo (Anhui University, China) Kay Chen Tan (National University of Singapore, Singapore) Publicity Chairs: Cesare Alippi (Politecnico di Milano, Italy) Haibo He (University of Rhode Island, USA) Hussein Abbass (University of New South Wales - Canberra - Australia) Erik Cambria (NTU, Singapore) Local Organization Chair: Yi Zeng (Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China) Publication Chair: Zhaoxiang Zhang (Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China) Special Sessions and Workshops Chair: Jingpeng Li (University of Stirling, Scotland, UK) Secretariat: bics2016 at ia.ac.cn We looking forward to seeing you at BICS'2016! -- The University achieved an overall 5 stars in the QS World University Rankings 2015 The University of Stirling is a charity registered in Scotland, number SC 011159. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From missura.olana at gmail.com Sun Jun 26 14:19:13 2016 From: missura.olana at gmail.com (Olana Missura) Date: Sun, 26 Jun 2016 14:19:13 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: ECML/PKDD 2016: Updated prizes and deadlines for SPHERE challenge Message-ID: ECML/PKDD 2016: Updated prizes and deadline for SPHERE ChallengePrizesPrizes will be awarded to the first three winners: - ?1,000 ? 5,000 being awarded to the winner; - ?600 ? 3,000 to the runner up; and - ?400 ? 2,000 to the second runner up. Deadlines - Solution Proposal Deadline: July 19th 2016 - Paper submission deadline: July 8th 2016 (Selected Teams will be invited to submit their solution to the challenge workshop) - Notification: July 25th 2016 - Challenge Websitehttps://www.drivendata.org/competitions/sphere *Good luck!* -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From leonel.rozo at iit.it Mon Jun 27 03:43:13 2016 From: leonel.rozo at iit.it (Leonel Rozo) Date: Mon, 27 Jun 2016 09:43:13 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: [journals] CfP - AURO Special Issue on Learning for Human-Robot Collaboration Message-ID: <5770D911.7040609@iit.it> Dear colleagues, We are pleased to announce the Call for Papers of the AURO special Issue on "Learning for Human-Robot Collaboration". Please see all the details below. Autonomous Robots Journal Special Issue: Learning for Human-Robot Collaboration Deadline: October 1st, 2016 Once isolated behind safety fences, the new emerging generation of robots endowed with more precise and sophisticated sensors, as well as better actuators, are materializing the idea of having robots working alongside people not only on manufacturing production lines, but also in spaces such as houses, museums, and hospitals. In this context, one of the next frontiers is the collaboration between humans and robots, which raises new challenges for robotics. A collaborative robot must be able to assist humans in a large diversity of tasks, understand its collaborator's intentions as well as communicate its own, predict human actions to adapt its behavior accordingly, and decide when it can lead the task or when just follow its human counterpart. All these aspects demand the robot to be endowed with an adaptation capability so that it can satisfactorily collaborate with humans. In this sense, learning is a crucial feature for creating robots that can execute different tasks, and rapidly adapt to its human partner's actions and requirements. The goal of this special issue is to document and highlight recent progress in the use of machine learning for human-robot collaboration tasks. In recent years, various interesting approaches and systems have been proposed that tackle different aspects of human-robot collaboration. This journal special issue will therefore present the state-of-the-art in the field and discuss future challenges and research opportunities. List of topics: Papers addressing one or more of the topics below in the context of human-robot collaboration are of particular interest: * Learning from demonstration * Reinforcement learning * Active learning * Force and impedance control * Physical human-robot interaction * Human-robot coordination * Recognition and prediction of human actions * Reactive and proactive behaviors * Roles allocation * Haptic communication * Cooperative human-human interaction * Human activity understanding * Learning from tactile experiences * Human-robot collaborative tasks in manufacturing Important Dates: * Paper submission deadline: October 1st, 2016 * Notification to authors: November 30th, 2016 * Final manuscript due: December 15th, 2016 * Final decision: January 10th, 2017 Guest editors: Heni Ben Amor (hbenamor at asu.edu) - Assistant Professor (Arizona State University) Leonel Rozo (leonel.rozo at iit.it)- Senior postdoctoral fellow (Italian Institute of Technology IIT) Sylvain Calinon (sylvain.calinon at idiap.ch) - Permanent Researcher (IDIAP research institute) Dongheui Lee (dhlee at tum.de) - Assistant Professor (Technical University of Munich) Anca Dragan (anca at berkeley.edu) - Assistant Professor (UC Berkeley) Submission: Papers must be prepared in accordance with AURO guidelines. All papers will be reviewed following the regular reviewing procedure of the journal. More information at: http://static.springer.com/sgw/documents/1572468/application/pdf/AURO+CFP+-+Human-Robot+Collaboration.pdf -- Leonel Rozo, Senior postdoctoral researcher Advanced Robotics Department Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT) http://leonelrozo.weebly.com/ From missura.olana at gmail.com Sun Jun 26 14:19:13 2016 From: missura.olana at gmail.com (Olana Missura) Date: Sun, 26 Jun 2016 14:19:13 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: ECML/PKDD 2016: Updated prizes and deadlines for SPHERE challenge Message-ID: ECML/PKDD 2016: Updated prizes and deadline for SPHERE ChallengePrizesPrizes will be awarded to the first three winners: - ?1,000 ? 5,000 being awarded to the winner; - ?600 ? 3,000 to the runner up; and - ?400 ? 2,000 to the second runner up. Deadlines - Solution Proposal Deadline: July 19th 2016 - Paper submission deadline: July 8th 2016 (Selected Teams will be invited to submit their solution to the challenge workshop) - Notification: July 25th 2016 - Challenge Websitehttps://www.drivendata.org/competitions/sphere *Good luck!* -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From benjamin.lindner at physik.hu-berlin.de Mon Jun 27 11:48:34 2016 From: benjamin.lindner at physik.hu-berlin.de (Benjamin Lindner) Date: Mon, 27 Jun 2016 11:48:34 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: PhD position at HU Berlin available Message-ID: <57714AD2.3030905@physik.hu-berlin.de> We are looking for a PhD candidate in Computational Neuroscience with a strong background in theoretical physics, specifically in stochastic processes, to work on effective descriptions of temporal and spatial correlations in recurrent networks of spiking neurons. Funding is provided for three years, starting October 2016, through the international research training group IRTG 1740 "Dynamical Phenomena in Complex Networks: Fundamentals and Applications". Part of this program is a (minimum six month) stay in the lab of our collaborator in Brazil, Prof. Roque (FFCLRP, Universidade de Sao Paulo). For details on the doctoral examination process at the Physics Department of Humboldt University Berlin, see https://fakultaeten.hu-berlin.de/en/mnf/wisskar/promotionen/index_html?set_language=en. Please, send your application until July 31, 2016 to Nikola Schrenk (nikola.schrenk at bccn-berlin.de) and to me (benjamin.lindner at physik.hu-berlin.de). -- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Benjamin Lindner Theory of Complex Systems and Neurophysics Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience Berlin Philippstr. 13, Haus 2, 10115 Berlin Room: 1.17, phone: 0049(0)302093 6336 Department of Physics Humboldt University Berlin Newtonstr. 15 12489 Berlin Room: 3.408, phone: 0049(0)302093 7934 http://people.physik.hu-berlin.de/~lindner/index.html -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From benjamin.lindner at physik.hu-berlin.de Mon Jun 27 11:45:30 2016 From: benjamin.lindner at physik.hu-berlin.de (Benjamin Lindner) Date: Mon, 27 Jun 2016 11:45:30 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: PhD position at HU Berlin available Message-ID: <57714A1A.4060806@physik.hu-berlin.de> We are looking for a PhD candidate in Computational Neuroscience with a strong background in theoretical physics, specifically in stochastic processes, to work on effective descriptions of temporal and spatial correlations in recurrent networks of spiking neurons. Funding is provided for three years, starting October 2016, through the international research training group IRTG 1740 "Dynamical Phenomena in Complex Networks: Fundamentals and Applications". Part of this program is a (minimum six month) stay in the lab of our collaborator in Brazil, Prof. Roque (FFCLRP, Universidade de Sao Paulo). For details on the doctoral examination process at the Physics Department of Humboldt University Berlin, see https://fakultaeten.hu-berlin.de/en/mnf/wisskar/promotionen/index_html?set_language=en. Please, send your application until July 31, 2016 to Nikola Schrenk (nikola.schrenk at bccn-berlin.de) and to me (benjamin.lindner at physik.hu-berlin.de). -- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Benjamin Lindner Theory of Complex Systems and Neurophysics Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience Berlin Philippstr. 13, Haus 2, 10115 Berlin Room: 1.17, phone: 0049(0)302093 6336 Department of Physics Humboldt University Berlin Newtonstr. 15 12489 Berlin Room: 3.408, phone: 0049(0)302093 7934 http://people.physik.hu-berlin.de/~lindner/index.html -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From friedhelm.schwenker at uni-ulm.de Tue Jun 28 09:15:29 2016 From: friedhelm.schwenker at uni-ulm.de (Friedhelm Schwenker) Date: Tue, 28 Jun 2016 15:15:29 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: Post Graduate School "Cognitive Computing in Socio-Technical Systems" of Ulm University and University of Applied Sciences Ulm Message-ID: <220f4a12-c709-c238-b3e5-cbf9ba9352e3@uni-ulm.de> Post Graduate School "Cognitive Computing in Socio-Technical Systems" of Ulm University and University of Applied Sciences Ulm In 2016 Ulm University and the University of Applied Sciences Ulm award *12 scholarships to highly-qualified scientific talents* for preparing the doctoral degree in accordance with the Landesgraduiertenf?rderungsgesetz (LGFG). Scholarships will be granted for 12 doctoral projects for initially one year, starting ? if possible ? on 1st October 2016. There will be the option of a two-year extension (i.e. standard funding term is 3 years). The 12 doctoral projects aim at tightly linking the fundamental pillars of cognitive computing, i.e., (i) perception, (ii) planning & reasoning, (iii) learning, and (iv) interaction. Applications include service robotics, Industry 4.0, logistics, and adaptive process management systems. A scholarship can be granted provided that the following conditions are met: * an outstanding qualification, * acceptance as a doctoral candidate in the respective department of Ulm University, and * scientific support by a professor of Ulm University / University of Applied Sciences Ulm. Please submit your application *no later than 1st August 2016*. You may send it, together with the required attachments (e.g., certificates), as PDF file to Prof. Manfred Reichert (email: manfred.reichert(at)uni-ulm.de). Please use the application template provided on our website (see below). As subject of the email use "Application KPK Cognitive Systems". Alternatively, you may send your application to the following postal address: Prof. Dr. Manfred Reichert Universit?t Ulm, Institut f?r Datenbanken und Informationssysteme D-89069 Ulm, Germany On your cover letter please write code number 68, KPK "Cognitive Computing" as well as the supervisors of the projects you are interested in. You may find additional Information and the application template on the following website: * http://www.uni-ulm.de/KPK_Cognitive_Computing * http://www.hs-ulm.de/KPK_Cognitive_Computing -- PD Dr. Friedhelm Schwenker University of Ulm Institute of Neural Information Processing D-89069 Ulm, Germany phone: +49-731-50-24159 fax: +49-731-50-24156 email: friedhelm.schwenker at uni-ulm.de www: http://www.uni-ulm.de/in/neuroinformatik/mitarbeiter/f-schwenker.html -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Wilson_Truccolo at brown.edu Tue Jun 28 17:46:34 2016 From: Wilson_Truccolo at brown.edu (Wilson Truccolo) Date: Tue, 28 Jun 2016 17:46:34 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: POSTDOCTORAL POSITION IN COMPUTATIONAL NEUROSCIENCE AT BROWN UNIVERSITY Message-ID: Applications for an NIH-funded post-doctoral position are invited for the Laboratory of Dr. Wilson Truccolo in the Department of Neuroscience at Brown University, Providence, RI, USA. The positions are for the development of data-driven stochastic models of multiscale neural dynamics in human epilepsy. Data consist of simultaneous intracortical microelectrode array recordings of ensembles of single neurons and local field potentials, as well as ECoGs, during seizure and non-seizure states in individuals with pharmacologically resistant epilepsy. The project involves a collaboration between the labs of Dr. Truccolo and Dr. Sydney Cash (Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston). The ideal candidate will have a strong background in computational/theoretical neuroscience, modeling of stochastic neural dynamics and experiments involving closed-loop electrical stimulation. Related recent publications can be found on the Truccolo lab website ( http://www.truccololab.com/ ). Inquiries should be addressed to Dr. Truccolo (wilson_truccolo at brown.edu). Applications including a CV, statement of research interests, and the names and full contact details of three referees should be sent to wilson_truccolo at brown.edu. -- Wilson Truccolo, Ph.D. Pablo J. Salame '88 Goldman Sachs Assistant Professor of Computational Neuroscience Department of Neuroscience & Institute for Brain Science, Brown University Lab website: http://www.truccololab.com/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From terry at salk.edu Tue Jun 28 13:12:06 2016 From: terry at salk.edu (Terry Sejnowski) Date: Tue, 28 Jun 2016 10:12:06 -0700 Subject: Connectionists: NEURAL COMPUTATION - July 1, 2016 In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Neural Computation - Volume 28, Number 7 - July 1, 2016 Available online for download now: http://www.mitpressjournals.org/toc/neco/28/7 ----- Articles Learning Visual Spatial Pooling by Strong PCA Dimension Reduction Haruo Hosoya, Aapo Hyvarinen An Infinite Restricted Boltzmann Machine Marc-Alexandre Cote, Hugo Larochelle Note A Single Hidden Layer Feedforward Network With Only One Neuron in the Hidden Layer Can Approximate Any Univariate Function Namig J. Guliyev, Vugar E. Ismailov Letters 1-D Current-source Density (CSD) Estimation in Inverse Theory: A Unified Framework for Higher-order Spectral Regularization of Quadrature and Expansion Type CSD Methods Pascal Kropf, Amir Shmuel A Novel Nonparametric Approach for Neural Encoding and Decoding Models of Multimodal Receptive Fields Rahul Agarwal, Zhe Chen, Fabian Kloosterman, Matthew A Wilson, and Sridevi V. Sarma Regularized Multi-Task Learning for Multi-Dimensional Log-Density Gradient Estimation Ikko Yamane, Hiroaki Sasaki, and Masashi Sugiyama Nonlinear Memory Capacity of Parallel Time-delay Reservoir Computers in the Processing of Multidimensional Signals Lyudmila Grigoryeva, Julie Henriques, Laurent Larger, and Juan-Pablo Ortega ------------ ON-LINE -- http://www.mitpressjournals.org/neuralcomp SUBSCRIPTIONS - 2016 - VOLUME 28 - 12 ISSUES Student/Retired $78 Individual $138 Institution $1,108 MIT Press Journals, One Rogers Street, Cambridge, MA 02142-1209 Tel: (617) 253-2889 FAX: (617) 577-1545 journals-cs at mit.edu ------------ From smart at neuralcorrelate.com Tue Jun 28 17:56:25 2016 From: smart at neuralcorrelate.com (Susana Martinez-Conde) Date: Tue, 28 Jun 2016 17:56:25 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: Vote for the Best Illusion of the Year! The 12th Best Illusion of the Year Contest In-Reply-To: <001101d1d187$5204a000$f60de000$@neuralcorrelate.com> References: <001101d1d187$5204a000$f60de000$@neuralcorrelate.com> Message-ID: <002c01d1d187$ee0b6790$ca2236b0$@neuralcorrelate.com> Worldwide voting will take place on the Best Illusion of the Year Contest website this week, from 4pm EDT June 29th Wednesday, to 4pm EDT June 30th Thursday. The winning illusions will receive a $3,000 award for 1st place, a $2,000 award for 2nd place, and a $1,000 award for 3rd place. The Best Illusion of the Year Contest is now an annual online event, in which anybody with an internet connection (that means YOU!) can vote to pick the Top 3 Winners from the current Top 10 List. The Top 10 finalist illusions, listed below, will be publicly revealed at voting time! Jose-Manuel Alonso: ?Lights and Darks in Vision.? State University of New York, USA Peter Brugger and Rebekka Meier: ?A New Illusion At Your Elbow.? University Hospital Zurich, Switzerland Vebj?rn Ekroll, Bilge Sayim, Ruth Van der Hallen and Johan Wagemans: ?The Shrunken Finger Illusion.? University of Leuven, Belgium Mathew T. Harrison and Gideon P. Caplovitz: ?Motion Integration Unleashed: New Tricks for an Old Dog.? University of Nevada Reno, USA Arthur G. Shapiro: ?Remote Controls.? American University, USA Mike Pickard and Gurpreet Singh: ?The Dalesmen Singers Illusion.? Sunderland University, UK Kokichi Sugihara: ?Ambiguous Cylinder Illusion.? Meiji University, Japan Christine Veras: ?Silhouette Zoetrope.? Nanyang Technological University, Singapore Mark Vergeer, Stuart Anstis and Rob van Lier: ?Caught Inside a Bubble.? University of Leuven, Belgium, Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands, and UC San Diego, USA Sylvia Wenmackers: ?Millusion.? University of Leuven, Belgium On behalf of the Executive Board of the Neural Correlate Society: Jose-Manuel Alonso, Stephen Macknik, Susana Martinez-Conde, Luis Martinez, Xoana Troncoso, Peter Tse -------------------------------------- Susana Martinez-Conde, PhD Professor of Ophthalmology, Neurology, and Physiology & Pharmacology Empire Innovator Scholar Director, Laboratory of Integrative Neuroscience State University of New York (SUNY) Downstate Medical Center 450 Clarkson Ave, Brooklyn NY 11203, USA Email: smart at neuralcorrelate.com Phone: +1 718-270-4520 http://smc.neuralcorrelate.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From yang at maebashi-it.org Wed Jun 29 08:31:13 2016 From: yang at maebashi-it.org (Yang) Date: Wed, 29 Jun 2016 21:31:13 +0900 Subject: Connectionists: [Deadline Extended] Call for Abstract - Brain Informatics & Health 2016 Message-ID: <554A37C890964953BB681806A6ED285F@yangPC> [Apologies if you receive this more than once] Due to many requests, the submission deadline has been extended. ============================== Type II (Abstract) Submission Deadline: July 17, 2016 ============================== ----------------------------------------------------------------------- CALL FOR TYPE II SUBMISSIONS The 2016 International Conference on Brain Informatics & Health (BIH'16) October 13-16, 2016, Hilton Omaha, USA Homepage: http://wibih.unomaha.edu/bih ***Type II (Abstract) Submission Deadline*** - July 17, 2016 (EXTENDED!!) *** On-Line Submission *** https://wi-lab.com/cyberchair/2016/bih16/scripts/submit.php?subarea=B *** KEYNOTE SPEAKERS *** Stephen Smith, Allen Institute for Brain Science Ivan Soltesz, Stanford School of Medicine *** FEATURE SPEAKERS *** Steven Schiff, Pennsylvania State University Kristen Harris, University of Texas at Austin Giulio Tononi, University of Wisconsin-Madison Bob Jacobs, Colorado College Partha Mitra, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Paola Pergami, George Washington University **************** The BIH series provides a premier forum that brings together researchers and practitioners from neuroscience, cognitive science, computer science, data science, artificial intelligence, information communication technologies, and neuroimaging technologies with the purpose of exploring the fundamental roles, interactions as well as practical impacts of Brain Informatics. BIH'16 addresses the computational, cognitive, physiological, biological, physical, ecological and social perspectives of brain informatics, with a strong emphasis on emerging trends of big data analysis and management technology for brain research, behaviour learning, and real-world applications of brain science in human health and well-being. BIH'16 will be co-located with the 2016 IEEE/WIC/ACM International Conference Web Intelligence (WI'16) (http://wibih.unomaha.edu/wi). Under our theme Connecting Network and Brain with Big Data, BIH'16 and WI'16 will provide a broad forum that academia, professionals and industry can use to exchange their ideas, findings and strategies in utilizing the power of human brains and man-made networks to create a better world. The attendees only need to register for one of the 2 conferences, but they can attend all sessions and social events of the 2 conferences. Tutorial, Workshop and Special-Session proposals and Industry/Demo-Track papers are also welcome. The organizers of Workshops and Special-Sessions are invited to prepare a book proposal based on the topics of the workshop/special session for possible book publication in the Springer Brain Informatics & Health book series. IMPORTANT DATES: ================ Notification of full paper acceptance: June 23, 2016 Notification of Workshop/Special-Session full paper acceptance: June 23, 2016 Submission of abstracts: July 17, 2016 (EXTENDED!!) Notification of abstract acceptance: July 25, 2016 Tutorial proposal submission: July 10, 2016 Tutorials, Workshop and Special-Sessions: October 13, 2016 Main conference: October 14-16, 2016 PAPER SUBMISSIONS & PUBLICATIONS: ================================= TYPE-II (Abstract Submissions; Deadline: July 17, 2016 **EXTENDED**): Abstracts have a word limit of 500 words. Experimental research is particularly welcome. Accepted abstract submissions will be included in the conference program, and will be published as a single, collective proceedings volume. Title: Include in the title of the abstract all words critical for a subject index. Write your title in sentence case (first letter is capitalized; remaining letters are lower case). Do not bold or italicize your full title. Author: List all authors who contributed to the work discussed in the abstract. The presenting author must be listed in the first author slot of the list. Be prepared to submit contact information as well as conflict of interest information for each author listed. Abstract: Enter the body of the abstract and attach any applicable graphic files or tables here. Do not re-enter the title, author, support, or other information that is collected in other steps of the submission form. Presentation Preference: Authors may select from three presentation formats when submitting an abstract: "poster only", "talk preferred" or "no preference". The "talk preferred" selection indicates that you would like to give a talk, but will accept a poster format if necessary. Marking "poster only" indicates that you would not like to be considered for an oral-presentation session. Selecting "no preference" indicates the author's willingness to be placed in the best format for the program. Each paper or abstract requires one sponsoring attendee (i.e. someone who registered and is attending the conference). A single attendee can not sponsor more than two abstracts or papers. Oral presentations will be selected from both full length papers and abstracts. *** Post-Conference Journal Publication *** The BIH conferences have the formal ties with Brain Informatics journal (Springer, http://www.springer.com/40708). Accepted submissions from the conference, including their Best Paper Award papers, will be expanded and revised for possible inclusion in the Brain Informatics journal each year. It is fully sponsored and no any article-processing fee is charged for BIH authors. *** Topics and Areas *** Track 1: Investigations of Human Information Processing Systems (HIPS) and Computational Foundations of Brain Science Track 2: Information Technologies for Curating, Mining and Using Brain Big Data Track 3: Brain-Inspired Technologies, Systems and Applications Please find the topics and areas of interest of BIH'16 at http://wibih.unomaha.edu/bih *** On-Line Submission *** https://wi-lab.com/cyberchair/2016/bih16/scripts/submit.php?subarea=B ================================ A Celebration to the 60th Anniversary of AI ================================ This year, the Brain Informatics & Health (BIH) conference is especially dedicated to the celebration of the 60th anniversary of Artificial Intelligence (AI). In the past years, the attempt by brain scientists to understand how the human brain works has never stopped. Meanwhile, the AI researchers also have been striving to formalize the structure and function of human brain, aiming at creating computers and computer software with capacity of intelligent behavior. By integrating techniques and academic researchers, abundant brain-inspired achievements have been yielded. Recently, the so-called neuromorphic computer architectures-chips, that mimic the human brain's ability to be both analytical and intuitive to deliver context and meaning to big data, have been invented and showed us the promising future of AI. There is never been a more exciting moment than now, in neuroscience, cognitive science, computer science, and AI. Brain Informatics (BI) has extended and made use of artificial intelligence for new products, services and frameworks that are empowered by the World Wide Web. By means of brain data collected globally and systematic researches on the human brain across macro, meso, and micro scales, i.e., mind and behavior, brain cognition and structure, neuronal morphology and gene, BI is committed to developing a big data sharing mind on the Wisdom Web of Things (W2T), and disclosing the intrinsic qualities of human intelligence. As a part of the celebration to the sixty years of AI, BIH'16 will be co-located with Web Intelligence (WI) 2016, and proudly host two distinguished brain scientists, Dr. Stephen Smith and Dr. Ivan Soltesz as the BIH keynote speakers, as well as two Turing Award laureates, Dr. Leslie Valiant (Turing Award 2010) and Dr. Butler Lampson (Turing Award 1992) as the WI keynote speakers, for the community to share with their intelligent, wisdom minds. We also will organize a panel on Connecting Network and Brain with Big Data and invite keynote/feature speakers of the 2 conferences as panelists. ORGANIZERS ========== General Chairs Hesham Ali (University of Nebraska at Omaha, USA) Deepak Khazanchi (University of Nebraska at Omaha, USA) Yong Shi (University of Nebraska at Omaha/Chinese Academy of Sciences) BIH'16 PC Chairs Giorgio Ascoli (George Mason University, USA) Michael Hawrylycz (Allen Institute for Brain Science, USA) BIH'16 Workshop/Special-session/Tutorial Chairs Bingni Wen Brunton (University of Washington, USA) Arvind Ramanathan (Oak Ridge National Laboratory, USA) Yi Zeng (Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China) BIH'16 Publicity Chairs Kate Cooper (University of Nebraska at Omaha, USA) Weidong Cai (University of Sydney, Australia) Henning Muller (HES-SO, Switzerland) Local Organizing Committee Prithviraj (Raj) Dasgupta Zhengxin Chen Peter Wolcott Haifeng Guo Mark Pauley Wikil Kwak Kerry Ward Dhundy (Kiran) Bastola Kate Cooper (publicity) Bettina Lechner (webmaster) BIH Steering Committee Co-chairs Ning Zhong (Maebashi Institute of Technology, Japan) Hanchuan Peng (Allen Institute for Brain Science, USA) *** Contact Information *** kdempsey at unomaha.edu MikeH at alleninstitute.org ascoli at gmu.edu -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From leonel.rozo at iit.it Thu Jun 30 02:24:13 2016 From: leonel.rozo at iit.it (Leonel Rozo) Date: Thu, 30 Jun 2016 08:24:13 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: [jobs] Postdoc position in Robot Learning for Dexterous Manipulation at IIT Message-ID: <5774BB0D.8010200@iit.it> Dear colleagues, The*Learning and Interaction Group Lab* at IIT (Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Genoa, Italy) is looking for an outstanding, highly motivated postdoctoral researcher to work in the field of/robot learning for dexterous manipulation/. _*Application deadline: July 6th, 2016*_ The position is offered within the PHOLUS project, which is aimed at designing, building and controlling a high performance, high efficiency electric platform that will combine a quadruped-legged base with a twin- armed high dexterity upper body in a configuration that is inspired by the Centaurs of mythology. This combination will amalgamate the talents and capabilities of highly dynamic quadrupedal locomotion over rough and unstructured terrain with a humanoid-inspired upper body/arms/dexterous hands covered with tactile sensors to provide a high dexterity bi-manual manipulative structure. This will allow the PHOLUS robot to navigate, observe, interact and respond effectively in highly unstructured outdoor environments and human engineered locations (e.g. disaster recovery in buildings, access complex power/process/chemical/oil installations) addressing key issues in robot robustness and reliability; autonomous operation; semi-autonomous operation; tele-operation; tactile sensing; active perception; affordances learning; agile loco-manipulation, grasping and dexterity; locomotion; whole-body interactions; whole-body motion planning and control; visualisation; and navigation, localisation and mapping. Desired qualifications include: - PhD degree in computer science, electrical or mechanical engineering (clearly related to machine learning and/or robotics). - Experience in reinforcement learning, learning from demonstration, and/or optimal control. - Experience in machine learning for robotic (uni- and bi-manual) manipulation. - Experience in tactile sensing for robotic manipulation is desirable but not required. - Excellent publication record. - Creativity and proactive attitude. - Fluency in both spoken and written English. - Strong team player. More details about the position and the application process can be found athttps://www.iit.it/careers/openings/opening/177-Post-doc%20position%20in%20Robot%20Learning%20for%20Dexterous%20Manipulation For questions/info please contact me. -- Leonel Rozo, Senior postdoctoral researcher Advanced Robotics Department Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT) http://leonelrozo.weebly.com/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From vito.trianni at istc.cnr.it Wed Jun 29 16:40:49 2016 From: vito.trianni at istc.cnr.it (Vito Trianni) Date: Wed, 29 Jun 2016 22:40:49 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: [jobs] few days left to apply for a research position on swarm robotics and precision farming, Rome, Italy In-Reply-To: <7C119DB5-0428-4B7A-B163-F9687F7008FD@istc.cnr.it> References: <7C119DB5-0428-4B7A-B163-F9687F7008FD@istc.cnr.it> Message-ID: <90206320-3802-4ADC-A26C-44723BC9E7B9@istc.cnr.it> A new research position is open within the SAGA experiment: swarm robotics for agricultural applications. The deadline for presenting applications is approaching: July the 4th, 2016 Experiment description: Robotics is expected to play a major role in the agricultural domain, and often multi-robot systems and collaborative approaches are mentioned as potential solutions to improve efficiency and system robustness. Among the multi-robot approaches, swarm robotics stresses aspects like flexibility, scalability and robustness in solving complex tasks, and is considered very relevant for precision farming and large-scale agricultural applications. However, swarm robotics research is still confined into the lab, and no application in the field is currently available. SAGA will demonstrate for the first time the application of swarm robotics principles to the agricultural domain. Specifically, we target a decentralised monitoring/mapping scenario, and implement a use-case for the detection of volunteer potatoes in sugar beet fields by a group of small Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). The experiment is founded within the context of the ECHORD++ EU project (http://echord.eu/), and will last 18 months. It is carried out in collaboration with the Wageningen University (https://www.wageningenur.nl/) and Avular (http://avular.com/). Job Description: The candidate will develop the main strategy for the decentralised monitoring and mapping problem of volunteer potatoes in a sugar beet field, to be deployed on a swarm of UAVs. The monitoring and mapping problem will be framed in the context of the emergence of a categorisation system within the swarm, so that different categories are associated with different portions of the field. Each category features a semantic label that determines the amount of detected weed. The ideal candidate must demonstrate relevant expertise in swarm robotics, swarm intelligence or in the design of decentralised systems. Analytical skills are an asset in order to develop population-level models in support of the design of self-organising behaviours. Previous experiences with robotics and UAV control are also important, as the candidate will actively participate in deploying the UAV swarm for field experiments. Salary and working conditions: The research positions lasts for one year (starting as soon as possible, no later than mid September 2016), with possible extension. The positions will be based in Rome with a standard graduate research fellow contract (about 1450?/month net salary), with the possibility of visiting periods in The Netherlands to work in close collaboration with the project partners (Wageningen University and Avular). For further details about the application procedure, see the notice of selection: http://www.istc.cnr.it/vacancy/assegno-di-ricerca-n?-2312016-rm-monitoraggio-e-mappatura-di-un-campo-da-parte-di-un-gruppo- For any informal enquiry about the eligibility conditions, as well as for more details about the position, please contact Vito Trianni . ======================================================================== Vito Trianni, Ph.D. vito.trianni@(no_spam)istc.cnr.it ISTC-CNR http://www.istc.cnr.it/people/vito-trianni Via San Martino della Battaglia 44 Tel: +39 06 44595277 00185 Roma Fax: +39 06 44595243 Italy ======================================================================== ======================================================================== Vito Trianni, Ph.D. vito.trianni@(no_spam)istc.cnr.it ISTC-CNR http://www.istc.cnr.it/people/vito-trianni Via San Martino della Battaglia 44 Tel: +39 06 44595277 00185 Roma Fax: +39 06 44595243 Italy ======================================================================== From Pavis at iit.it Wed Jun 29 12:12:29 2016 From: Pavis at iit.it (Pavis) Date: Wed, 29 Jun 2016 16:12:29 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: Postdoctoral position in Pattern Recognition, Machine Learning and Computer Vision for the analysis of neuroimaging, biomedical and biological data - 71883 In-Reply-To: <0E09F354EB71FC40A4D51EE54D8A9C887773A8C6@IITMXWGE015.iit.local> References: <0E09F354EB71FC40A4D51EE54D8A9C887773A8C6@IITMXWGE015.iit.local> Message-ID: <0E09F354EB71FC40A4D51EE54D8A9C887773A8DE@IITMXWGE015.iit.local> Postdoctoral position in Pattern Recognition, Machine Learning and Computer Vision for the analysis of neuroimaging, biomedical and biological data BC 71883 The Pattern Analysis and Computer Vision department (PAVIS) at IIT (http://www.iit.it/pavis.html) is looking for a highly qualified candidate in the field of Computer Vision, Pattern Recognition, Machine Learning, and Image Analysis with applications to Biomedical Data Analysis. The main mission of PAVIS is to design and develop innovative image- and video-based intelligent systems, characterized by the use of highly-functional smart sensors and advanced data analytics features. PAVIS also plays an active role in supporting the other research units inside IIT providing scientists in Neuroscience, Nanophysics and other research lines with ad-hoc solutions. To this end, the group is involved in activities concerning computer vision and pattern recognition, machine learning, multimodal data analysis, sensor fusion, and embedded computer vision systems. The lab will also pursue this goal by working collaboratively and in cooperation with external private and public partners. This call aims at consolidating PAVIS expertise in the following research areas: ? Biomedical image analysis; ? Neuroimaging (functional and structural connectome); ? Biological signal/image/video processing; ? Neuronal network structural connectivity and functional activity analysis; ? Animal behavior analysis; ? Multimodal data analysis and data fusion. >From the methodological standpoint, the ideal candidate should be familiar withone or more of the following subjects: Probabilistic Graphical Models, Topic Models, Bayesian Non-parametrics, Deep Learning, Neural Networks and Autoencoders, Sparse and Dictionary Learning, Kernel methods and Manifold Learning, Graph-based Learning, Spectral Graph theory. As the activities may be carried out in collaboration with other research units inside IIT, previous multidisciplinary experience is an added value which will be duly considered. Strong programming skills are also required. Candidates to this position have a Ph.D. in computer vision, machine learning, pattern recognition or related areas, and research experience and qualification should follow along the same lines. A keen interest in biomedical issues and applications is of course necessary. Evidence of top quality research in the above specified areas, in the form of published papers in top conferences/journals and/or patents, is therefore mandatory. Experience in the preparation and management of research proposals (EU, US, national) and a few years of postdoc experience, either in academia or industrial lab, will also be duly considered. The scientist is expected to publish his/her research results in leading international journals and conferences. She/he will also be asked to contribute to set new project proposals, participate in funding activities, supervising PhD candidates and collaborate with scientists from different disciplines. The position is offered for a period of 2 years. Salary will be commensurate to qualification and experience and in line with international standards. Workplace: Genova, Italy. Further details and informal enquires can be made by email to pavis at iit.it quoting PAVIS- BC 71883 as reference number in the subject line. Please send your completed application forms along with a curriculum listing all publications (possibly including a pdf of your most representative publications), and a research statement describing your previous research experience and outlining its relevance to the above topics by email to applications at iit.it, quoting PAVIS-PD 71883 as reference number In the subject line. Please also send 2 reference letters. This call will remain open and applications will be reviewed until the position is filled, but for full consideration please apply by July 31st, 2016. IIT was established in 2003 and successfully created a large-scale infrastructure in Genova, a network of 10 state-of-the-art laboratories countrywide and recruited an international staff of about 1100 people from more than 50 countries. IIT's research endeavor 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. In order to comply with the Italian law (art. 23 of Privacy Law of the Italian Legislative Decree n. 196/03), the candidate is kindly asked to give his/her consent to allow IIT to process his/her personal data. We inform you that the information you provide will be solely used 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 its headquarters in Genoa, Via Morego 30, acting as the Data Holder, using computer and paper- based means, observing the rules on the 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. Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia is an Equal Opportunity Employer that actively seeks diversity in the workforce From Pavis at iit.it Wed Jun 29 12:14:23 2016 From: Pavis at iit.it (Pavis) Date: Wed, 29 Jun 2016 16:14:23 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: Postdoctoral position in Computer Vision, Machine Learning and Pattern Recognition - [ Postdoc ] PAVIS-PD 71372 In-Reply-To: <0E09F354EB71FC40A4D51EE54D8A9C887773A909@IITMXWGE015.iit.local> References: <0E09F354EB71FC40A4D51EE54D8A9C887773A909@IITMXWGE015.iit.local> Message-ID: <0E09F354EB71FC40A4D51EE54D8A9C887773A91E@IITMXWGE015.iit.local> Postdoctoral position in Computer Vision, Machine Learning and Pattern Recognition - [ Postdoc ] PAVIS-PD 71372 Fondazione Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia - IIT - was founded with the objective of promocting Italy?s technological development and further education in science and technology. In this sense, IIT?s scientific program is based in the combination of basic scientific research and development of technical applications, a major inspirational principle. Researchareas cover scientific topics of high innovative content, representing the most advanced frontiers of modern technology, with wide application possibilities in various fields ranging from medicine to industry, from computer science to robotics, life sciencesand nanobiotechnology. PAVIS department at Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT) (http://www.iit.it/pavis) is looking for a highly qualified researcher with a strong background in Computer Vision, Pattern Recognition and Machine Learning, with particular emphasis on recognition, video analysis, behavior understanding and prediction. As the activities may be carried out in collaboration with other research units inside IIT, previous multidisciplinary experience is an added value which will be duly considered. The main mission of PAVIS (Pattern Analysis and Computer Vision) 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 plays an active role in supporting the other research units inside IIT providing providing scientists in Neuroscience, Nanophysics and other IIT departments/centers with ad hoc solutions. To this end, the group is involved in activities concerning computer vision and pattern recognition, machine learning, multimodal\multimedia data analysis and sensor fusion, and embedded computer vision systems. The lab will pursue this goal by working collaboratively and in cooperation with external private and public partners. In particular, this call aims at consolidating PAVIS expertise in one or more of the following research areas: ? Analysis of static and dynamic scenes. ? Recognition (objects, scenes, actions, events, etc.) and reconstruction. ? Behavior Analysis & Activity Recognition (individuals, groups, crowd). ? Prediction of intentions. >From the methodological standpoint, the ideal candidate should be familiar with one or more of the following subjects: Graphical Models, Topic Models, Bayesian Nonparametrics, Deep Learning, Representation/Feature Learning, Sparse and Dictionary Learning, Clustering, Kernel methods, Manifold Learning and Statistical and Probabilistic Models in general. Candidates to this position have a Ph.D. in computer vision, machine learning or related areas. Research experience and qualification in computer vision and pattern recognition/machine learning are clearly a must and evidence of top quality research on the above specified areas in the form of published papers in top conferences/journals and/or patents is mandatory. This call is opened for scientists with more seniority, having specific experience in the preparation and management of research proposals (EU, US, national), so a few years of postdoc experience, either in academia or industrial lab, should be manifest. Evidence of such experience should be duly and clearly provided. The winning candidate will also be asked to contribute to setting up new (funding) project proposals and will participate in funding activities. He/she is also expected to publish his/her research results in leading international journals and conferences, supervise PhD candidates and collaborate with other scientists, also with different expertise. The position is offered for an initial (renewable) period of 2 years. Salary will be commensurate to qualification and experience and in line with international standards. The workplace is Genova, Italy. Further details and informal enquires can be made by email to pavis at iit.it quoting PAVIS-PD 71372 as reference number. Completed application forms along with a curriculum listing all publications (possibly including pdf of your most representative publications), and a research statement describing your previous research experience and outlining its relevance to the above topics should be sent by email to applications at iit.it, quoting PAVIS-PD 71372 as reference number. Please also send 2 reference letters. This call will remain open and applications will be reviewed until the position is filled, but for full consideration please apply by July 31st, 2016. In order to comply with Italian law (art. 23 of Privacy Law of the Italian Legislative Decree n. 196/03), the candidate is kindly asked to give his/her consent to allow Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia to process his/her personal data. We inform you that the information you provide will be solely used for the purpose of evaluating and selecting candidates in order to meet the requirements of Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia. Your data will be processed by Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, with its headquarters in Genoa, Via Morego 30, acting as the Data Holder, using computer and paper-based means, observing the rules on the protection of personal data, including those relating to the security of data, and they will not be communicated to thirds. 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 Holder. Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia is an Equal Opportunity Employer that actively seeks diversity in the workforce. From bernabe at imse-cnm.csic.es Thu Jun 30 09:02:05 2016 From: bernabe at imse-cnm.csic.es (bernabe) Date: Thu, 30 Jun 2016 15:02:05 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: Vision chip Design Position at Sevilla Microelectronics Institute Message-ID: <5d9cb36c-fa7c-3a75-fe4b-9d80029d5ef4@imse-cnm.csic.es> Apologies for Cross-Posting --------------------------- The Sevilla Microelectronics Institute (www.imse-cnm.csic.es), from the Spanish Research Council (www.csic.es) is seeking a post-doc (or highly experienced researcher) with strong analog IC design experience, preferably in vision sensors (but not mandatory). The work to be carried out will be in collaboration with French company Chronocam (http://www.chronocam.com) with the goal of developing new generations of Event-Driven Dynamic Vision Sensors. Salary is 40,000?/year, negotiable depending on experience and qualifications. Interested candidates please contact directlybernabe at imse-cnm.csic.es. -- -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bernabe Linares-Barranco, PhD, IEEE Fellow Full Professor (Profesor de Investigacion) CSIC Instituto Microelectronica Sevilla (IMSE) Phone: 34-954-466643/66 National Microelectronics Center, CNM-CSIC Fax: 34-954-466600 Av. Americo Vespucio s/n E-mail: Bernabe.Linares(AT)imse-cnm.csic.es 41092 Sevilla, SPAIN URL: http://www.imse-cnm.csic.es/~bernabe ------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: