From mail at jan-peters.net Mon Oct 1 14:16:38 2007 From: mail at jan-peters.net (Jan Peters) Date: Mon Oct 1 14:20:39 2007 Subject: [Comp-neuro] [NIPS 2007 WORKSHOP] Reminder/Call for Posters-Robotics Challenges for Machine Learning Message-ID: *** Apologies for Multiple Postings *** ======== ==== CALL FOR POSTERS ==== =========== NIPS 2007 WORKSHOP: Robotics Challenges for Machine Learning Dates: 7 December, 2007 Organizers: Jan Peters (Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics & USC), Marc Toussaint (Technical University of Berlin) WWW: http://www.robot-learning.de email: nips07@robot-learning.de Poster request: Submit a one page abstract!!! Abstract Submission Deadline: October 21, 2007 Acceptance Notification: October 26, 2007 ======== ==== CALL FOR POSTERS ==== =========== Abstract: Creating autonomous robots that can assist humans in situations of daily life is a great challenge for machine learning. While this aim has been a long standing vision of robotics, artificial intelligence, and the cognitive sciences, we have yet to achieve the first step of creating robots that can accomplish a multitude of different tasks, triggered by environmental context or higher level instruction. Despite the wide range of machine learning problems encountered in robotics, the main bottleneck towards this goal has been a lack of interaction between the core robotics and the machine learning communities. To date, many roboticists still discard machine learning approaches as generally inapplicable or inferior to classical, hand-crafted solutions. Similarly, machine learning researchers do not yet acknowledge that robotics can play the same role for machine learning which for instance physics had for mathematics: as a major application as well as a driving force for new ideas, algorithms and approaches. Some fundamental problems we encounter in robotics that equally inspire current research directions in Machine Learning are: -- learning and handling models, (e.g., of robots, task or environments) -- learning deep hierarchies or levels of representations (e.g., from sensor & motor representations to task abstractions) -- regression in very high-dimensional spaces for model and policy learning -- finding low-dimensional embeddings of movement as an implicit generative model -- methods for probabilistic inference of task parameters from vision, e.g., 3D geometry of manipulated objects -- the integration of multi-modal information (e.g., proprioceptive, tactile, vision) for state estimation and causal inference -- probabilistic inference in non-linear, non-Gaussian stochastic systems (e.g., for planning as well as optimal or adaptive control) Robotics challenges can inspire and motivate new Machine Learning research as well as being an interesting field of application of standard ML techniques. Inversely, with the current rise of real, physical humanoid robots in robotics research labs around the globe, the need for machine learning in robotics has grown significantly. Only if machine learning can succeed at making robots fully adaptive, it is likely that we will be able to take real robots out of the research labs into real, human inhabited environments. To do so, future robots will need to be able to make proper use of perceptual stimuli such as vision, proprioceptive & tactile feedback and translate these into motor commands. To close this complex loop, machine learning will be needed on various stages ranging from sensory-based action determination over high-level plan generation to motor control on torque level. Among the important problems hidden in these steps are problems which can be understood from the robotics and the machine learning point of view including perceptuo-action coupling, imitation learning, movement decomposition, probabilistic planning problems, motor primitive learning, reinforcement learning, model learning and motor control. Format: The goal of this one-day workshop is to bring together people that are interested in robotics as a source and inspiration for new Machine Learning challenges, or which work on Machine Learning methods as a new approach to robotics challenges. In the robotics context, among the questions which we intend to tackle are Reinforcement Learning, Imitation, and Active Learning: * What methods from reinforcement learning scale into the domain of robotics? * How can we improve our policies acquired through imitation by trial and error? * Can we turn many simple learned demonstrations into proper policies? * Does the knowledge of the cost function of the teacher help the student? * Can statistical methods help for generating actions which actively influencing our perception? E.g., Can these be used to plan visuo-motor sequences that will minimize our uncertainty about the scene? * How can image understanding methods be extended to provide probabilistic scene descriptions suitable for motor planning? Motor Representations and Control: * Can we decompose human demonstrations into elemental movements, e.g., motor primitives, and learn these efficiently? * Is it possible to build libraries of basic movements from demonstration? How to create higher-level structured representations and abstractions based on elemental movements? * Can structured (e.g., hierarchical) temporal stochastic models be used to plan the sequencing and superposition of movement primitives? * Is probabilistic inference the road towards composing complex action sequences from simple demonstrations? Are superpositions of motor primitives and the coupling in timing between these learnable? * How to generate compliant controls for executing complex movement plans which include both superposition and hierarchies of elemental movements? Can we find learned versions of prioritized hierarchical control? * Can we learn how to control in task-space of redundant robots in the presence of under-actuation and complex constraints? Can we learn force or hybrid control in task-space? * Is real-time model learning the way to cope with executing tasks on robots with unmodeled nonlinearities and manipulating uncertain objects in unpredictable environmental interactions? * What new regression techniques can help real-time model learning to improve the execution of tasks on robots with unmodeled nonlinearities and manipulating uncertain objects in unpredictable environmental interactions? Learning structured models and representations: * What kind of probabilistic models provide a compact and suitable description of real-world environments composed of manipulable objects? * How can abstractions or compact representations be learnt from sensori-motor data? * How can we extract features of the sensori-motor data that are relevant for motor control or decision making? E.g., can we extract visual features of objects directly related to their manipulability or ``affordance''? Posters: We are open for any posters posing problems for machine learning and for presenting machine learning algorithms with applications in robotics. Please send us a one page abstract (A4 or letter) describing the poster which you intend to present with at least one reference to previous work. Choose a format of your liking, e.g., the standard NIPS template. The deadline for abstract submissions is October 21, 2007 and the notification will be October 26, 2007 Abstract Submission Deadline: October 21, 2007 Acceptance Notification: October 26, 2007 From steve at cns.bu.edu Mon Oct 1 22:34:39 2007 From: steve at cns.bu.edu (Stephen Grossberg) Date: Tue Oct 2 08:55:25 2007 Subject: [Comp-neuro] autonomous neural system for learning planned action sequences towards a rewarded goal Message-ID: The following article is now available at http://www.cns.bu.edu/Profiles/Grossberg : Gnadt, W. and Grossberg, S. SOVEREIGN: An autonomous neural system for incrementally learning planned action sequences to navigate towards a rewarded goal. Neural Networks, in press. ABSTRACT How do reactive and planned behaviors interact in real time? How are sequences of such behaviors released at appropriate times during autonomous navigation to realize valued goals? Controllers for both animals and mobile robots, or animats, need reactive mechanisms for exploration, and learned plans to reach goal objects once an environment becomes familiar. The SOVEREIGN (Self-Organizing, Vision, Expectation, Recognition, Emotion, Intelligent, Goal-oriented Navigation) animat model embodies these capabilities, and is tested in a 3D virtual reality environment. SOVEREIGN includes several interacting subsystems which model complementary properties of cortical What and Where processing streams and which clarify similarities between mechanisms for navigation and arm movement control. As the animat explores an environment, visual inputs are processed by networks that are sensitive to visual form and motion in the What and Where streams, respectively. Position-invariant and size-invariant recognition categories are learned by real-time incremental learning in the What stream. Estimates of target position relative to the animat are computed in the Where stream, and can activate approach movements toward the target. Motion cues from animat locomotion can elicit head-orienting movements to bring a new target into view. Approach and orienting movements are alternately performed during animat navigation. Cumulative estimates of each movement are derived from interacting proprioceptive and visual cues. Movement sequences are stored within a motor working memory. Sequences of visual categories are stored in a sensory working memory. These working memories trigger learning of sensory and motor sequence categories, or plans, which together control planned movements. Predictively effective chunk combinations are selectively enhanced via reinforcement learning when the animat is rewarded. Selected planning chunks effect a gradual transition from variable reactive exploratory movements to efficient goal-oriented planned movement sequences. Volitional signals gate interactions between model subsystems and the release of overt behaviors. The model can control different motor sequences under different motivational states and learns more efficient sequences to rewarded goals as exploration proceeds. From renaud.jolivet at epfl.ch Tue Oct 2 10:53:58 2007 From: renaud.jolivet at epfl.ch (Renaud Jolivet) Date: Tue Oct 2 11:06:06 2007 Subject: [Comp-neuro] PhD position announcement - High resolution quantitative optical imaging of neurometabolic and neurovascular coupling mechanisms Message-ID: <47020726.4040605@epfl.ch> Noninvasive functional neuroimaging tools are widely applied to study the human brain in action. However, the hemodynamic signals of the most extensively used method are still not well understood. This joint EPFL and ETHZ PhD project aims at understanding the quantitative aspects of hemodynamic changes that occur in the brain. For this aim, novel multimodal high resolution optical imaging tools will be developed and applied in animal experiments. The thesis project (3 years) will consist of the following tasks 1. Development and validation of quantitative spectroscopic optical imaging (Lausanne). 2. In-vivo experiments in the rat and data analysis (Zurich). Applicants should have a strong interest and background in engineering and/or physics. Experience in animal experiments are not mandatory, however, the candidate must be open and interested in this part of the project. Please contact Prof. Dr. Bruno Weber bweber@pharma.unizh.ch or Prof. Dr. Christian Depeursinge christian.depeursinge@epfl.ch. From giovanni.pezzulo at istc.cnr.it Fri Oct 5 10:33:05 2007 From: giovanni.pezzulo at istc.cnr.it (Giovanni Pezzulo) Date: Fri Oct 5 11:00:06 2007 Subject: [Comp-neuro] CNCC Essay Award for Junior Scholars Message-ID: (apologies for cross-postings) Dear colleagues, This message is to inform you that the CNCC Essay Award for Junior Scholars has been launched. The European Science Foundation offers two essay prizes of ? 1.500 each for academic papers related to the topics of the EUROCORES Programme CNCC ? Consciousness in a Natural and Cultural Context. The six finalist papers, including the two winners, will be published on the journal Psyche (http://psyche.cs.monash.edu.au/) in early 2009. The competition is open to researchers in the field of consciousness studies who are PhD students at the moment or that have recently completed their PhD, i.e. dissertation must have been defended no earlier than June 30, 2005. Aside from these constraints, no age limit is set, while participation of younger scholars is highly encouraged. The deadline for submission is *15 February 2008*. Full details are available on line at http://www.esf.org/cncc-award We strongly encourage participation of anyone eligible, and would greatly appreciate your collaboration in disseminating this call as widely as possible among your colleagues. Inquiries on this initiative can be addressed to cncc-award@esf.org Kind regards, The Organizers Fabio Paglieri, ISTC-CNR Roma Till Vierkant, University of Edinburgh Manos Tsakiris, University College London From ps629 at columbia.edu Fri Oct 5 18:36:54 2007 From: ps629 at columbia.edu (Paul Sajda) Date: Sat Oct 6 10:33:39 2007 Subject: [Comp-neuro] Faculty Position in Neural Engineering Message-ID: <4884A127-6A2D-4F89-9C56-AD98BF439967@columbia.edu> Faculty Position in Neural Engineering Description & Requirement The Department of Biomedical Engineering in the Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science at Columbia University invites applications for a tenure-track faculty position at the Assistant, Associate or Full Professor level in Neural Engineering. Level of appointment depends on qualification. Specific areas of interest include: neuroimaging, neural tissue engineering, neuromorphic engineering, computational neural modeling and brain machine interfaces. Successful candidates must demonstrate an ability to develop a world-class research program, be capable of obtaining competitive external research funding, and participate in and be committed to outstanding teaching at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. The candidate should have a doctorate in Biomedical Engineering or a related discipline. Application Applicants should send a complete curriculum vitae, three publication reprints, a statement of research interests, a statement of teaching experience and philosophy, and names and contact information for four references to: Professor Paul Sajda, Chair of the Faculty Search Committee, 351 Engineering Terrace, MC 8904, 1210 Amsterdam Avenue, Columbia University, New York, N.Y. 10027 by February 1, 2008. Materials can also be emailed to ps629@columbia.edu. The search will remain open until the position has been filled. Columbia University is an affirmative action/equal opportunity employer. Women and minorities are encouraged to apply. Paul Sajda, Ph.D. Associate Professor Department of Biomedical Engineering Columbia University 351 Engineering Terrace Building, Mail Code 8904 1210 Amsterdam Avenue New York, NY 10027 tel: (212) 854-5279 fax: (212) 854-8725 email: ps629@columbia.edu http://liinc.bme.columbia.edu From f.cincotti at hsantalucia.it Sat Oct 6 00:03:09 2007 From: f.cincotti at hsantalucia.it (Febo Cincotti) Date: Sat Oct 6 10:33:41 2007 Subject: [Comp-neuro] "NeuroMath Workshop" & "BCI2000 Workshop" - Rome, Dec. 4-6, 2007 Message-ID: <004601c8079b$855e1540$901a3fc0$@cincotti@hsantalucia.it> Workshop announcements: (1) 1st Workshop of the NeuroMath COST action Rome, Italy, Dec. 4-5, 2007 and (2) 3rd Workshop of the BCI2000 Project Rome, Italy, Dec. 5-6, 2007 ---------------- (1) NEUROMATH: Advanced methods for the estimation of human brain activity and connectivity The main objective of the NEUROMATH Workshop is to describe the state of the art in the use of advanced mathematical methods for the estimation of the human cortical activity and connectivity from non invasive neuroelectric and hemodynamic measurements. In the NEUROMATH workshop, through lectures and poster session, scientists are called to discuss their computational tools in order to offer a comprehensive approach to the problem of the estimation of brain activity and connectivity for sensory and cognitive tasks. The NEUROMATH workshop will offer a review of the advance neuroelectric and hemodynamic brain processing methods currently applied in several leading European and Asiatic research institutions. The NEUROMATH workshop will host scientists from 21 European countries, Japan and China. + Venue: Conference center of Fondazione Santa Lucia, via ardeatina 354, Rome Italy + Contributions: Send a 2 page paper to workshop@neuromath.eu. Use formatting as specified in http://www.ijbem.org/ . A selection of contributions will be published on a special issue of the International Journal of Bioelectromagnetism (IJBEM; www.ijbem.org) + Registration: The participation fee is 100 EUR for the early registration and 150 EUR on site, that are intended to cover the cost of beverages meals and the materials distributed at the conference. + Important dates: Paper submission: 15 October 2007 Early registration: 5 November 2007 Conference celebration: 4-5 December 2007 + Speakers: Prof. Sylvain Baillet, Cognitive Neuroscience & Brain Imaging Laboratory, Paris, France Prof. Anastasios Bezerianos, Biosignal Processing, University of Patras, Greece Prof. Andrzej Cichocki, RIKEN Institute, Japan Prof. Katarzyna Cieslak-Blinowska, Department of Biomedical Physics, Warsaw, Poland Dr. Febo Cincotti, IRCCS Fondazione Santa Lucia, Rome, Italy Prof. Shangkai Gao, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China Dr. Rolando Grave de Peralta, Electrical Neuroimaging Group, Geneva, Switzerland Dr. Andrea K?bler, University of T?bingen, Germany Prof. Juergen Kurths, Institut f?r Physik Universit?t Potsdam, Germany Prof. Andreas Ioannidis, RIKEN Institute, Japan Dr. Donatella Mattia, IRCCS Fondazione Santa Lucia, Rome, Italy Prof. Jos? Millan, IDIAP Research Institute, Lousanne, Switzerland Dr. Adrian Owen, Cognition & Brain Sciences Unit, Cambridge, UK Prof. Gert Pfurtscheller, University of Graz, Austria + Info: Web page: http://www.neuromath.eu; Send info request to: info@neuromath.eu. See also attached flyer. ---------------- (2) BCI2000, facilitating brain-computer interface research. Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) use brain signals to communicate a user's intent. These systems do not depend on peripheral nerves and muscles. Thus, they can be used by people with severe motor disabilities to express their wishes to the outside world just by thinking. BCIs exploit achievements in the field of neuroscience, neuropsychology, computer science, and engineering, to develop a novel communication tool, which is has possible application in the field of assistive technologies. The first day will provide an overview of Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) technology. The format is a series of talks that will be delivered by BCI experts from the USA and Europe. The second day will provide hands-on practical tutorials using different BCI approaches implemented using BCI2000 software. In these tutorials, we provide several EEG-based BCI systems for use by workshop participants. + Venue: Conference center of Fondazione Santa Lucia, via ardeatina 354, Rome Italy + Registration: Participation is limited to 50 attendants. Pre-register by sending an email to workshop@bci2000.org. The registration fee is ?50. Registration includes coffee breaks and workshop material. + Important dates: Registration deadline: November 1, 2007 Workshop dates: December 5-6, 2007 + Speakers and Tutors: - Erik Aarnoutse, Rudolf Magnus Institute of Neuroscience, Utrecht, the Netherlands - Febo Cincotti, Fondazione Santa Lucia, Rome, Italy. - Christoph Guger, g.tec medical engineering GmbH, Austria. - J?rgen Mellinger, University of T?bingen, Germany. - Eric Sellers, Wadsworth Center, Albany, New York, USA + Info: Web page: http://www.bci2000.org/dissemination; Send info request to: workshop@bci2000.org. See also attached flyer. ---------------- =========================== Febo Cincotti Neurofisiopatologia Clinica Fondazione Santa Lucia Via Ardeatina, 306 I-00179 Roma, Italy Tel +39 06 5150 1466 Fax +39 06 5150 1465 Email f.cincotti@hsantalucia.it =========================== From antonior at neuron.ffclrp.usp.br Tue Oct 9 03:35:32 2007 From: antonior at neuron.ffclrp.usp.br (antonior@neuron.ffclrp.usp.br) Date: Tue Oct 9 08:58:26 2007 Subject: [Comp-neuro] 2nd Latin American School on Computational Neuroscience Message-ID: <380-2200710291353279@M2W035.mail2web.com> Applications are invited for LASCON 2008 SECOND LATIN AMERICAN SCHOOL ON COMPUTATIONAL NEUROSCIENCE Ribeirao Preto, Sao Paulo State, Brazil July 13 - August 1 2008 http://neuron.ffclrp.usp.br/page.php?15 ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- LASCON aims at introducing advanced undergraduate and graduate students to the use of computational methods for modeling neurons and neural circuits. These methods will be illustrated with the use of programs like neuroConstruct, GENESIS, NEURON, XPPAUT and MATLAB. The faculty is composed of researchers with large experience in computational neuroscience and the use of these programs. The school will last for three weeks, and will consist of theoretical lectures and hands on tutorials given by the lecturers and computational exercises made by the students. Students also will have to work on individual research projects, which they will present orally at the end of the school. The school lectures and tutorials will cover the following topics: 1. Realistic neural modeling; 2. Simplified neural modeling and phase-plane methods of analysis; 3. Spike-train statistics and analysis; 4. Plasticity and learning. Faculty (tentative): David Beeman, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO, USA James Bower, University of Texas, San Antonio, TX, USA Avrama Blackwell, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, USA Ram?n Huerta, University of California, San Diego, CA, USA Roland K?berle, University of Sao Paulo, Sao Carlos, SP, Brazil Rodrigo Oliveira, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, USA Reynaldo Pinto, University of Sao Paulo, Sao Paulo, SP, Brazil Sidarta Ribeiro, Edmond and Lily Safra International Institute of Neuroscience of Natal, Natal, RN, Brazil John Rinzel, New York University, New York, NY, USA Arnd Roth, University College, London, UK Volker Steuber, University of Hertfodshire, Hatfield, UK School organizer: Antonio Roque, University of Sao Paulo, Ribeirao Preto, SP, Brazil ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Antonio Roque Departamento de Fisica e Matematica FFCLRP, Universidade de Sao Paulo 14040-901 Ribeirao Preto-SP Brazil - Brasil Tels: +55 16 3602-3768 (office); +55 16 3602-3859 (lab) FAX: +55 16 3602-4887 E-mails: antonior@neuron.ffclrp.usp.br antonior@ffclrp.usp.br URL: http://neuron.ffclrp.usp.br -------------------------------------------------------------------- mail2web.com ? Enhanced email for the mobile individual based on Microsoft? Exchange - http://link.mail2web.com/Personal/EnhancedEmail From fidel.santamaria at utsa.edu Wed Oct 10 18:13:47 2007 From: fidel.santamaria at utsa.edu (Fidel Santamaria) Date: Thu Oct 11 09:28:57 2007 Subject: [Comp-neuro] PhD program in Neurobiology Message-ID: <2768A5B569B1D54EA47861B9A05422E10266208C@jade1604.UTSARR.NET> Dear colleagues, I would like to bring to your attention our Ph.D. program in Neurobiology at The University of Texas at San Antonio (http://bio.utsa.edu/neurobiology/). The Ph.D. program in Neurobiology at UTSA has been expanding tremendously over the past few years. The main focus of this expansion has been Computational Neuroscience. We have recruited 6 new assistant professors that add to the 20+ labs already working in neurobiology (http://bio.utsa.edu/neurobiology/faculty.html). Our program covers a wide range of areas in neuroscience, from biophysics, to behavior, to molecular biology. Our facilities include three core facilities: advanced imaging center, with confocal and 2-photon microscopes; the computational biology initiative (http://cbi.utsa.edu/), with a large computing cluster and a multitude of high-end software; and the proteomics facility. All of these core facilities are staffed and offer training and help in carrying out our research. Other area research centers that offer potential for collaborations in San Antonio are the UT Health Science Center (http://www.uthscsa.edu/) and the Southwest Foundation for Biomedical Research (http://www.sfbr.org/). UTSA offers multiple sources of financial support. There are fellowships for qualified students that can last the extent of their studies, covering stipend, tuition and fees, health insurance, and travel to scientific meetings. UTSA is in the outskirts of San Antonio, a town of about 2x10^6 people. I could list many tourist attractions like the Alamo, the River Walk, Fiesta Texas, or Sea World. However, there are three factors that make this city different from other places to study a PhD in neurobiology: It's friendly, it's affordable, and the range of average temperatures in February is between 43-62F. For more information please check the following links http://bio.utsa.edu/neurobiology/ http://bio.utsa.edu/ http://vpr.utsa.edu/cores.php http://utsa.edu Best regards, -Fidel -- Fidel Santamaria, PhD Assistant Professor Department of Biology One UTSA circle University of Texas at San Antonio, San Antonio, TX 78249 Office: (210) 458-6910 Fax: (210) 458-5658 Office Location: BSB 1.03.28 http://bio.utsa.edu/faculty/santamaria.html -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.neuroinf.org/pipermail/comp-neuro/attachments/20071010/df43eee5/attachment.html From goodman2 at fas.harvard.edu Wed Oct 10 21:54:26 2007 From: goodman2 at fas.harvard.edu (Julie Goodman) Date: Thu Oct 11 09:28:58 2007 Subject: [Comp-neuro] Web Application and Java Software Developer position Message-ID: Web Application and Java Software Developer The Center for Brain Science at Harvard University and the Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging at the Massachusetts General Hospital seek a highly motivated individual to work on neuroinformatics projects associated with human brain imaging. Reporting to the Head of Neuroinformatics and working in the Neuroinformatics Research Group, the successful applicant will be responsible for developing primarily web-based applications designed to aid in these studies. Typical projects include visualization tools, database and file system storage. These applications will be released to the general scientific community as open-source software, so documentation and structured programming techniques will be an important part of the job responsibilities. Basic requirements: Bachelor's degree in computer science, software engineering or other field with comparable software engineering experience. Demonstrable expert-level knowledge of Java, databases (SQL and MySQL, PostgreSQL or Oracle), one or more scripting language(s) (Perl, PHP, etc.), Linux / Unix environments with shell scripting experience, and web development (AJAX, XML, DOM, HTML, JavaScript, CSS, etc.). Interest in biomedicine and informatics. Strong software engineering skills. Additional requirements: Master's degree in computer science or software engineering. 5 or more years experience in Java and Web programming. Proficiency in programming image databases and visualization applications. Strong application architecture skills. Must be qualified to work in the US (No visa or residency sponsorship is available) No relocation package offered. Must be able to interview in person in Cambridge, MA. Please apply online at http://jobs.harvard.edu/jobs/summ_req?in_post_id=35682 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.neuroinf.org/pipermail/comp-neuro/attachments/20071010/3094be17/attachment.html From paul.cisek at umontreal.ca Thu Oct 11 18:17:18 2007 From: paul.cisek at umontreal.ca (Paul Cisek) Date: Fri Oct 12 09:48:27 2007 Subject: [Comp-neuro] Postdoctoral position in decision-making at the University of Montreal Message-ID: <007701c80c22$31f65df0$f2e4cc84@Homunculus> Title: Postdoctoral fellowship in decision-making: Dept of physiology, University of Montr?al. The department of physiology at the University of Montr?al invites applications for a postdoctoral fellowship in neurophysiological and computational studies of decision-making and voluntary behavior control. The successful applicant will possess a PhD in neuroscience or related field. Experience with neurophysiological techniques or computational modeling is highly desirable. This individual will take part in a research project studying the cerebral cortical mechanisms of decision-making in humans and non-human primates using a combination of computational modeling techniques and multi-electrode recording, 3T functional MRI, and/or transcranial magnetic stimulation. Depending on the applicant's qualifications and interests, they will help to design and conduct behavioral and neurophysiological experiments, analyze data, develop theoretical models of neural systems, prepare manuscripts for publication, and participate in international conferences. Starting date of the appointment is flexible, and salary will be determined according to Canadian Institutes of Health Research guidelines. For further information, please contact Dr. Paul Cisek (paul.cisek@umontreal.ca). Applicants are asked to submit a curriculum vita, a statement of research interests, and the names and contact information of three references, to: Dr. Paul Cisek Department of physiology University of Montr?al C.P. 6128 Succursale Centre-ville Montr?al, QC H3C 3J7, CANADA Phone : 514-343-6111 x4355 Web : www.cisek.org/pavel email: paul.cisek@umontreal.ca Applications will be accepted until the position is filled. A preliminary interview at the Society for Neuroscience meeting is possible. ----------------------------------------------- Paul Cisek, Ph.D. Department of physiology, room 4141 University of Montreal C.P. 6128 Succursale Centre-ville Montreal QC H3C 3J7 Canada phone: 514-343-6111 x4355 FAX: 514-343-2111 email: paul.cisek@umontreal.ca ----------------------------------------------- -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.neuroinf.org/pipermail/comp-neuro/attachments/20071011/267d1a1c/attachment-0001.html From bressler at fau.edu Thu Oct 11 23:41:30 2007 From: bressler at fau.edu (Steven L Bressler) Date: Fri Oct 12 09:48:30 2007 Subject: [Comp-neuro] PhD Program in Complex Systems and Brain Sciences Message-ID: <009b01c80c4f$7bf36ec0$331e5b83@opal> PH.D. PROGRAM IN COMPLEX SYSTEMS AND BRAIN SCIENCES AT FLORIDA ATLANTIC UNIVERSITY PREDOCTORAL FELLOWSHIPS, RESEARCH & TEACHING ASSISTANTSHIPS The aim of this program is to train scientists who are both mathematically and biologically literate so that they can fully participate in multi-disciplinary research to bring new ways of thinking into neuroscience. Individuals with undergraduate degrees in any pertinent discipline are invited to apply for this 5-year training program at the FAU Center for Complex Systems and Brain Sciences. Graduate training consists of a core curriculum in nonlinear dynamics, neuroscience, computational modeling and cognitive science. Research areas include sensorimotor coordination and learning, human brain imaging, including functional magnetic resonance imaging, EEG, brainstem mechanisms of behavior, neural growth and development, cellulr neurosciences, ion channel dynamics, speech production and perception, neurolinguistics, visual perception, music perception and mathematics of complex systems. Applicants should complete the application package that can be found on our website http://www.ccs.fau.edu and send it together with a letter of interest, vitae and 3 letters of reference to: Rhona Frankel, Center for Complex Systems and Brain Sciences, BS-12, Florida Atlantic University, 777 Glades Road, Boca Raton, FL 33431. E-mail: frankel@ccs.fau.edu. Deadline: January 15th, 2008. Additional mandatory FAU application can be found at http://graduate.fau.edu/GradApp/. --- Steven Bressler, Ph.D. Professor From oschwart at aecom.yu.edu Fri Oct 12 17:06:00 2007 From: oschwart at aecom.yu.edu (Odelia Schwartz) Date: Sat Oct 13 11:55:14 2007 Subject: [Comp-neuro] Postdoctoral position in computational/theoretical neuroscience Message-ID: Postdoctoral position in computational/theoretical neuroscience Applications are invited for a postdoctoral position in computational/theoretical neuroscience, in the lab of Odelia Schwartz at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York City. Our lab employs tools of computational and theoretical neuroscience, to study systems from the neural level through to perception and behavior. For example, we develop models of sensory processing based on the hypothesis that images and sounds have predictable and quantifiable statistical regularities to which the brain is sensitive. The models are constructed through interplay with physiological and psychophysical data. Example projects: (1) Models of how neurons and percepts are affected by contextual information: spatially, what surrounds a given feature or object; and temporally, what has been observed in the past, i.e., adaptation. (2) Models of hierarchical neural processing. (3) Characterizing the statistics of images for classes of scenes and textures, and understanding how manipulating such statistics affect neural processing. For more information about the lab and recent publications, see: http://neuroscience.aecom.yu.edu/faculty/primary_faculty_pages/schwartz.html The candidate should have a Ph.D. in a relevant discipline, a strong quantitative background, and an interest in neuroscience. Prior experience would ideally include areas such as computational neuroscience, machine learning, statistics and/or signal processing. Albert Einstein College of Medicine (AECOM) offers a vibrant interdisciplinary environment, with a growing systems and computational contingent. The position will be in the Department of Neuroscience and Center for Bioinformatics, with opportunities for experimental interactions and collaborations. AECOM is located in a quiet neighborhood of New York, only a short subway ride from Manhattan. Information about working at the AECOM, including housing for postdocs, can be found at: http://www.aecom.yu.edu/home/belfer_institute/ Initial appointments are for one year and renewable for a total period of three years. Salary is competitive and will commensurate with experience. Please send inquiries; or a CV, short statement of research interests, and names and contact information of 3 references to: Odelia Schwartz oschwart@aecom.yu.edu Meetings: I will be available to meet at the upcoming SFN and NIPS conferences. From terry at salk.edu Sun Oct 14 04:12:45 2007 From: terry at salk.edu (Terry Sejnowski) Date: Mon Oct 15 10:42:47 2007 Subject: [Comp-neuro] Neuro Thursday at NIPS 2007 Message-ID: Neural Information Processing Systems 2007: http://nips.cc/Conferences/2007/ Conference December 3-6, 2007, Vancouver Workshop December 7-8, 2007, Whistler NEURO-THURSDAY at NIPS: Thusday, December 6 - 8:30 AM - Noon - Vancouver Thursday, December 6 (the final day of the Conference), will be devoted to Neuroscience, and will consist of a fascinating invited talk by Professor Manabu Tanifuji (Riken) on the monkey visual cortex, plus six outstanding plenary talks. In addition, all of the Neuroscience posters will take place on Wednesday night, allowing early arrivals to interact with researchers. The Wednesday night poster program will also contain many posters on Machine learning and Computer Vision, focused on topics that are also relevant to Neuroscience. All of the morning events (including the Wednesday night Poster Session and the Spotlights that precede it) will be available for the special "Neuro-Thursday" registration rate of $50. For those attending the entire Conference, "Neuro-Thursday" is included in the registration price. -------- Deep Learning Workshop: Foundations and Future Directions Thursday, December 6 - 2:00 to 5:30 PM - Vancouver Theoretical results strongly suggest that in order to learn the kind of complicated functions that can represent high-level abstractions (e.g. in vision, language, and other AI-level tasks), one may need "deep architectures", which are composed of multiple levels of non-linear operations (such as in neural nets with many hidden layers). Searching the parameter space of deep architectures is a difficult optimization task, but learning algorithms (e.g. Deep Belief Networks) have recently been proposed to tackle this problem with notable success, beating the state-of-the-art in certain areas. This Workshop is intended to bring together researchers interested in the question of deep learning in order to review the current algorithms' principles and successes, but also to identify the challenges, and to formulate promising directions of investigation. Besides the algorithms themselves, there are many fundamental questions that need to be addressed: What would be a good formalization of deep learning? What new ideas could be exploited to make further inroads to that difficult optimization problem? What makes a good high-level representation or abstraction? What type of problem is deep learning appropriate for? There is no charge for this Workshop or for the bus to Whistler that will leave after the Workshop; however, a separate registration is required. To register: http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~lisa/twiki/bin/view.cgi/Public/DeepLearningWorkshopNIPS2007 --------- NIPS Whistler Workshops Friday December 7 - Saturday December 8, 2007) The post-Conference Workshops will be held at the Westin Resort and Spa and the Westin Hilton in Whistler, British Columbia, Canada on December 7 and 8, 2007. The Workshops provide multi-track intensive sessions on a wide range of topics. The venue and schedule facilitate informality and depth. Partial List of Workshop Topics and Organizers: Beyond Simple Cells: Probabilistic Models for Visual Cortical Processing Richard Turner, Pietro Berkes, Maneesh Sahani Hierarchical Organization of Behavior: Computational, Psychological and Neural Perspectives Yael Niv, Matthew Botvinick, Andrew Barto Large Scale Brain Dynamics Ryan Canolty, Kai Miller, Joaquin Quiñonero Candela, Thore Graepel, Ralf Herbrich Mechanisms of Visual Attention Jillian Fecteau, Dirk Walther, Vidhya Navalpakkam, John Tsotsos Music, Brain and Cognition. Part 1: Learning the Structure of Music and Its Effects On the Brain David Hardoon, Eduardo Reck-Miranda, John Shawe-Taylor Music, Brain and Cognition. Part 2: Models of Sound and Cognition Hendrik Purwins, Xavier Serra, Klaus Obermayer Principles of Learning Problem Design John Langford, Alina Beygelzimer Representations and Inference on Probability Distributions Kenji Fukumizu, Arthur Gretton, Alex Smola The Grammar of Vision: Probabilistic Grammar-Based Models for Visual Scene Understanding and Object Categorization Jan Peters, Marc Toussaint A complete list of all 25 workshop and links for more information: http://nips.cc/Conferences/2007/Program/schedule.php?Session=Workshops --------- From alexander.gepperth at honda-ri.de Mon Oct 15 16:08:06 2007 From: alexander.gepperth at honda-ri.de (Alexander Gepperth) Date: Mon Oct 15 16:10:51 2007 Subject: [Comp-neuro] Large real-world color object dataset available Message-ID: <47137446.30602@honda-ri.de> A large dataset of real-world color objects is now available. It consists of the object classes "car" (~1800 examples), "signal board"(~1000 examples) and "clutter"(~3500 examples). The objects were taken from the segmentation results of a vision system operating within a moving car and are thus biased as well as imperfectly segmented, posing challenges to object recognition. The data is partitioned into 4 classes of (heuristically determined) increasing complexity and difficulty. The dataset consists of images in the standard PPM format and can be obtained from http://www.gepperth.eu/alexander/carDatasetsICANN.html The paper in which this dataset is described and used is A. Gepperth, B. Mersch, J. Fritsch, C. Goerick. Color object recognition in real-world scenes. In J.M. de Sa, editor, ICANN 2007, part II, Lecture notes in Computer Science, number 4469. Springer Verlag Berlin, Heidelberg, New York, 2007. available from the same site: http://www.gepperth.eu/alexander/papers/gepperthEtAl2007.ps From mikael at djurfeldt.com Mon Oct 15 17:17:16 2007 From: mikael at djurfeldt.com (Mikael Djurfeldt) Date: Tue Oct 16 10:20:12 2007 Subject: [Comp-neuro] Swedish Masters Program in Computational and Systems Biology Message-ID: <66e540fe0710150817j3fa84bd9t9b0350d7d2b5876f@mail.gmail.com> The School of Computer Science and Communication of KTH Royal Institute of Technology (Stockholm, Sweden) wishes to bring to your attention a new Master Program in Computational and Systems Biology, starting in the fall of 2008. The Master Program is of two years, in the Bologna format of European Higher education. A web page with more information is at http://www.csc.kth.se/utbildning/program/compsysbio/home Tuition in Swedish higher education is free, for anyone, from any country. Stockholm/Uppsala is a major center of the biotech/pharma industries in Europe, and one of the major hubs in biomedical research, worldwide. KTH has strong traditions in Biotechnology, Theoretical Computer Science (Algorithmic complexity theory) and many other fields, and pursues a vigorous program in Entrepreneurship and Innovation. For any questions or queries, please feel free to get in touch with me, or with any faculty member as listed on the the program web page. Mikael Djurfeldt Research engineer CBN/CSC From turner at gatsby.ucl.ac.uk Tue Oct 16 12:43:45 2007 From: turner at gatsby.ucl.ac.uk (Richard Turner) Date: Tue Oct 16 13:21:47 2007 Subject: [Comp-neuro] NIPS 2007 workshop, Call for Posters - 'Beyond Simple Cells: Probabilistic models for visual cortical processing' Message-ID: ---------- CALL FOR POSTERS ---------- Beyond Simple Cells: Probabilistic models for visual cortical processing NIPS 2007 workshop, December 7 Organizers: Richard Turner, Pietro Berkes, and Maneesh Sahani (Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit, UCL) Web page: http://www.gatsby.ucl.ac.uk/~berkes/docs/NIPS07 -------------------------------------- SUBMISSION DETAILS: This one day workshop (description below) will include a poster session. We encourage contributions from workshop participants, especially those wanting to actively take part in the discussion phases. Authors should submit an extended abstract of max 2 pages to the organizers: Richard Turner: turner@gatsby.ucl.ac.uk Pietro Berkes: berkes@gatsby.ucl.ac.uk The abstracts will also be published on our web site. --------------------------------------- DEADLINES: Abstract submission: Oct, 24 Acceptance Notification: Oct, 26 --------------------------------------- WORKSHOP DESCRIPTION: The goal of the workshop is to assess the success of computational models for cortical processing based on probabilistic models and to suggest new directions for future research. Models for simple cells are now well established; how can the field progress beyond them? We will review important questions in the field through both theoretical and experimental lenses. We have invited a panel of experimentalists to provide the latter with the hope of inspiring new research directions of greater general neuroscientific interest. More precisely, the issues to be discussed include: * Moving beyond a two-layer hierarchy: how can we bridge the gap between objects and Gabors? * What experimental results should we attempt to model? Are current comparisons with physiology at all relevant? * What experimental results would we like to have? * What aspects of visual input are relevant for modeling (eye movements, head movements, color etc.)? How relevant is time? * Is the cortical representation best described by energy models or generative models? * What inference and learning algorithms should we use (beyond MAP: MCMC, CD, VB, score matching)? Modelers will present their current work in short talks. The experimentalists, on the other hand, will form a panel of experts which will drive the discussion, bringing their perspective into play, and constructively expose discrepancies with biology. Through this process, the aim is to attack the main list of questions above, and determine which aspects of the vision problem would especially benefit from a stronger collaboration between modelers and experimentalists. In addition we will have a poster session in which attendees will be able to present state of the art work. --------------------------------------- CONFIRMED SPEAKERS: Michael Black Odelia Schwartz Bruno Olshausen Mike Lewicki CONFIRMED PANEL MEMBERS: Dario Ringach Jozsef Fiser Andreas Tolias From ale at sissa.it Tue Oct 16 15:31:24 2007 From: ale at sissa.it (Alessandro Treves) Date: Tue Oct 16 16:07:26 2007 Subject: [Comp-neuro] Independent-minded Postdoc in Neural Computation at SISSA, Trieste, Italy Message-ID: <1192541484.4714bd2c433ac@webmail.sissa.it> A postdoctoral position is available from February 1st, 2008, for 3 years, to study the network mechanisms underlying spatial processing and spatial memory in mammals. The research, to be carried out within the LIMBO group at SISSA, is part of a collaboration coordinated by Edvard Moser, and funded by the EU contract SPACEBRAIN. It includes another theoretical group, led by Misha Tsodyks at the Weizmann, and experimental labs in Trondheim, London, Zurich and Heidelberg. At SISSA, activity will focus on mathematical analyses of neural network models, on network simulations and on the analysis of neural activity recorded by the collaborating labs. The ideal candidate is one who brings into the project a perspective different from mine, who is a proficient programmer and a creative thinker. A lack of familiarity with grid cells, the hippocampus and spatial navigation may be advantageous, if combined with an open mind and plastic synapses. The tiny but vibrant Cognitive Neuroscience sector of SISSA includes groups led by Mathew Diamond, Tim Shallice, Raffaella Rumiati and Jacques Mehler and is temporarily located in downtown Trieste. I will review applications from Dec 1st, and until the position is filled. Alessandro Treves -- SISSA - Cognitive Neuroscience, now downtown in via Stock 2/2, V fl BUT NOTE, POSTAL ADDRESS: SISSA, via Beirut 2, 34014 Trieste, Italy tel:972-2-6584945 fax:972-2-6523429 http://people.sissa.it/~ale ---------------------------------------------------------------- SISSA Webmail https://webmail.sissa.it/ Powered by Horde http://www.horde.org/ From atobin at brandeis.edu Wed Oct 17 23:17:22 2007 From: atobin at brandeis.edu (Anne-Elise Tobin) Date: Thu Oct 18 10:17:37 2007 Subject: [Comp-neuro] SFN Computational Neuroscience Socials Message-ID: <47167BE2.8090701@brandeis.edu> Dear Computational Neuroscientist, This year at the Society for Neuroscience meeting, there are two special socials focused on computational neuroscience. Sunday evening from 6:30 to 8:30, the Cajal Club will host a social honoring Dr. Wilfrid Rall. Tuesday evening from 6:30 to 8:30 the first ever Computational Neuroscience Social will feature many honored guests including Dr. Rall. Take advantage of these opportunities to meet with friends and colleagues. Please forward this to colleagues and other appropriate Computational Neuroscience lists. Thank you, Anne-Elise Tobin -- Anne-Elise Tobin, PhD Volen Center for Complex Systems, MS 013 Brandeis University 415 South Street, Waltham, MA 02454 Phone:781.736.3134 Fax: 781.736.3142 From S.J.Eglen at damtp.cam.ac.uk Thu Oct 18 14:33:18 2007 From: S.J.Eglen at damtp.cam.ac.uk (Stephen Eglen) Date: Thu Oct 18 15:08:58 2007 Subject: [Comp-neuro] Software announcement - SA3D: Spatial Analysis 3D Message-ID: <18199.21134.108678.214258@notch.damtp.cam.ac.uk> Please find below a brief summary of a new programme for spatial analysis, which has been designed with neuronal positioning in mind. Best wishes, Stephen Eglen ---------------------------------------------------------------------- SA3D: Spatial Analysis 3D Dan Lofgreen, Mary Raven, Stephen Eglen, Ben Reese http://www.nri.ucsb.edu/Labs/breese/SA3D.html Spatial Analysis 3D is a user-friendly program that allows statistical and visual manipulations of real and simulated three-dimensional spatial point patterns. Examples of the types of analyses performed include those derived from the Delaunay tessellation associated with such spatial point patterns, and those associated with the correlation of such point patterns, including autocorrelation analysis and its derived density recovery profile, as well as the related K, F, and G-functions. The stimulus for the development of Spatial Analysis 3D has been the study of neuronal positioning within the central nervous system, but many other applications in science, engineering, statistics and mathematics should benefit from this suite of programs. The program is freely available from the website above. The program is written in Matlab and C. Matlab version 7 is required. Acknowledgements: Funded by the NIMH (MH-069997). Thanks to Adrian Baddeley for his code to compute K,F,G functions. From jean-marc.bollon at inrialpes.fr Fri Oct 19 17:00:19 2007 From: jean-marc.bollon at inrialpes.fr (Jean-Marc Bollon) Date: Sat Oct 20 10:49:30 2007 Subject: [Comp-neuro] BAYESIAN COGNITION Winter School Message-ID: ----------------------------------------------------- BAYESIAN COGNITION Winter School ----------------------------------------------------- January 6-11, 2008 Chamonix - Mont-Blanc, France Web : http://bayesian-cognition.org Rationale: -------------- Animals and artificial systems alike are faced with the problem of making inferences about their environments and choosing appropriate responses based on incomplete, uncertain and noisy data. Probabilistic models and algorithms are flourishing in both life sciences and information sciences as ways of understanding the behavior of subjects and the neural processing underlying this behavior, and building robots and artificial agents that can function effectively in such circumstances. The objective of this winter school is to present the latest advances in this subject. This winter school is a prolongation of the Bayesian Cognition workshop held in Paris in January 2006 (Bayesian-Cognition.org) Program: ------------- The school is made of 7 tutorial modules (4 hours long) covering the following topics made by senior researchers in the field: - Probability theory as an alternative to logic (Pierre Bessi?re - CNRS, Grenoble) - Satistical learning (Samy Bengio - Google, Mountain View) - Probabilistic models of Central Nervous System (Sophie Den?ve - Ecole Normal Sup?rieur, Paris) - Approximate evaluation of Bayesian calculus (Vaclav Smidl - UTIA, Prague) - Probabilistic Robotics (Wolfram Burgard - Universit?t Freiburg) - Probabilistic interpretation of physiological and psychophysical data (Jacques Droulez - Coll?ge de France, Paris) - Industrial applications (Emmanuel Mazer - ProBAYES, Grenoble) There will be also 9 presentations (50 minutes long) made by young researchers (typically Postdocs) who will present their thesis work in some details. Finally, there will be a 6 hours practical training session where students will have the opportunity to design, write and run short Bayesian programs using the ProBT? toolkit (Juan-Manuel Ahuactzin - ProBAYES, Grenoble) Main clientele: -------------------- The winter school is mainly conceived for PhD students in cognitive science and robotics interested by the variety of probabilistic models and techniques used in these fields. Master students and postdocs could also find benefits in attending this school. Accomodation: -------------------- The accommodation will be at the Centre Jean Franco in Chamonix, France: http://www.centrejeanfranco.asso.fr/ The Centre Jean Franco is the old national school of mountaineering. The school moved to new buildings in Chamonix. It is located downtown Chamonix, 200 hundred meters from the Aiguille du midi cable car. It offer accommodation for at least 60 students by room of 3. There is a big amphitheatre for the venue of the tutorial. Evaluation and admission criteria: ---------------------------------------------- PhD students and PostDocs: Admission will be done on a first registered basis for PhD and PostDocs students in cognitive science and robotics. Master students: will be accepted only if some spare room is still available on December 1st 2007. PostDoc Call for presentation: ----------------------------------------- There will be 9 presentations (50 minutes long) by PostDocs or young researchers in the field who will have the opportunity to present in details their PhD work. Please send a short abstract of your work before November 30th, 2007. The selected persons will have no registration fee to pay. Registration: ----------------- For registration please go to the Bayesian-Cognition.org web site The registration fee (including lodging and meals for 6 days) is : 500? The winter school is sponsored by the EURON (European Robotics Research Network - http://www.euron.org/) and consequently there is a 200? discount for any student coming from a EURON member institution. Contact Person: ---------------------- Jean-Marc.Bollon@inrialpes.fr -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.neuroinf.org/pipermail/comp-neuro/attachments/20071019/fa18236b/attachment-0001.html From announce at ccnconference.org Fri Oct 19 22:27:17 2007 From: announce at ccnconference.org (announce@ccnconference.org) Date: Sat Oct 20 10:49:33 2007 Subject: [Comp-neuro] Registration DEADLINE extended for CCNC 2007 one week to Fri 26-Oct-07 Message-ID: <200710191427.17682.announce@ccnconference.org> ~ CCNC 2007/DYNAMICAL NEUROSCIENCE XV ~ The planning committee has extended the deadline for standard registration to MIDNIGHT next FRIDAY October 26, 2007. After that, registration fees will increase to $225 faculty/$110 student. The committee requests that you PLEASE try to register for the conference by this deadline in order to help us optimally plan the conference and manage our budget. Registration should be done via the conference website at: http://ccnconference.org/page5.html HOTEL reservations can be made via the SfN website: http://www.sfn.org. (CCNC will be held in the San Diego Convention Center.) The final program schedule for this year's conference can be viewed at: http://ccnconference.org/page2.html PLEASE NOTE: In an effort to be family friendly (Halloween), the first day will start at 1:30PM to allow for travel that morning, if desired. Based on the number of poster submissions, it looks like this year's conference should be very well attended, with lots of very interesting work! Regards, CCNC 2007 Planning Committee ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- 3RD ANNUAL CONFERENCE ON COMPUTATIONAL COGNITIVE NEUROSCIENCE ????????????????www.ccnconference.org To be held in conjunction with Dynamical Neuroscience XV immediately prior to the 2007 SOCIETY FOR NEUROSCIENCE (SfN) meeting, November 3-7, 2007 at the San Diego Convention Center, San Diego, CA. * CONFERENCE DATES: Thu-Fri November 1 & 2, 2007 * REGISTER AT: ????????www.ccnconference.org/page5.html The inaugural CCNC 2005 meeting held prior to Society for Neuroscience (SfN) in Washington, DC (also in conjunction with the Dynamical Neuroscience satellite) was a great success, with approximately 250 attendees, 60 presented posters, and strongly positive reviews. For 2006, we went to Houston for the much smaller Psychonomics meeting and still had over 100 attendees and almost 50 posters. In future years, we will continue to rotate among different neuroscience and psychology meetings. ____________________________________________________________________________ * DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSION OF ABSTRACTS: (NOW CLOSED - POSTERS ACCEPTED ON A SPACE AVAILABLE BASIS ONLY) Abstracts are to be submitted online via the website: ???????? ?www.ccnconference.org/page6.html As in past years, there will be two categories of submissions: ? ?-Poster only ? ?-Poster, plus short talk (15 min) to highlight the poster Abstracts should be limited to 250 words. Women and underrepresented minorities are especially encouraged to apply. Reviewing of posters will be inclusive and only to ensure appropriateness to the meeting. Short talks will be selected on the basis of research quality, relevance to conference theme, and expected accessibility in a talk format. Abstracts not selected for short talks will still be accepted as posters as long as they meet appropriateness criteria. * NOTIFICATION OF POSTER ACCEPTANCE: DONE * CONTRIBUTED SHORT TALK SELECTION: DONE __________________________________________________________________________ Program Summary: * 2007 Keynote Speakers: ? ? ? ? Read Montague, Baylor College of Medicine Alex Pouget, University of Rochester ? ? ? * 3 Symposia, each including a mixture of modelers and non-modelers and ? focused on a common theme or issue: ** Computational Models in Biological Psychiatry Moderator: Michael Frank, University of Arizona ** Computionally-Based Brain Imaging: Models, Levels, and Approaches ? ?Moderator: Todd Braver, Washington University - St. Louis ** Hippocampal Neurogenesis in Learning and Memory ? ?Moderator: Janet Wiles, University of Queensland * 12 short talks will be chosen featuring selected posters * Poster sessions ____________________________________________________________________________ 2007 Planning Committee: Suzanna Becker, McMaster University Jonathan Cohen, Princeton University Nathaniel Daw, New York University David Noelle, University of California, Merced Maximilian Riesenhuber, Georgetown University Medical Center Randall O'Reilly, University of Colorado, Boulder (ex officio) Executive Staff: Thomas Hazy, University of Colorado, Boulder For more information and to sign up for the mailing list visit: ???????? www.ccnconference.org _______________________________________________ From mail at jan-peters.net Mon Oct 22 08:53:38 2007 From: mail at jan-peters.net (Jan Peters) Date: Mon Oct 22 10:10:36 2007 Subject: [Comp-neuro] [NIPS 2007 WORKSHOP] Abstract Submission Extended! Reminder/Call for Posters-Robotics Challenges for Machine Learning Message-ID: <6804218E-EC2B-4F45-83A6-38A1E6D15E4C@jan-peters.net> *** Apologies for Multiple Postings *** Abstract Submission Extended! Abstract Submission Extended! Abstract Submission Extended! Abstract Submission Extended! Abstract Submission Extended! Abstract Submission Extended! ======== ==== CALL FOR POSTERS ==== =========== NIPS 2007 WORKSHOP: Robotics Challenges for Machine Learning Dates: 7 December, 2007 Organizers: Jan Peters (Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics & USC), Marc Toussaint (Technical University of Berlin) WWW: http://www.robot-learning.de email: nips07@robot-learning.de Poster request: Submit a one page abstract!!! Abstract Submission Deadline: October 24, 2007 Acceptance Notification: October 26, 2007 ======== ==== CALL FOR POSTERS ==== =========== Abstract: Creating autonomous robots that can assist humans in situations of daily life is a great challenge for machine learning. While this aim has been a long standing vision of robotics, artificial intelligence, and the cognitive sciences, we have yet to achieve the first step of creating robots that can accomplish a multitude of different tasks, triggered by environmental context or higher level instruction. Despite the wide range of machine learning problems encountered in robotics, the main bottleneck towards this goal has been a lack of interaction between the core robotics and the machine learning communities. To date, many roboticists still discard machine learning approaches as generally inapplicable or inferior to classical, hand-crafted solutions. Similarly, machine learning researchers do not yet acknowledge that robotics can play the same role for machine learning which for instance physics had for mathematics: as a major application as well as a driving force for new ideas, algorithms and approaches. Some fundamental problems we encounter in robotics that equally inspire current research directions in Machine Learning are: -- learning and handling models, (e.g., of robots, task or environments) -- learning deep hierarchies or levels of representations (e.g., from sensor & motor representations to task abstractions) -- regression in very high-dimensional spaces for model and policy learning -- finding low-dimensional embeddings of movement as an implicit generative model -- methods for probabilistic inference of task parameters from vision, e.g., 3D geometry of manipulated objects -- the integration of multi-modal information (e.g., proprioceptive, tactile, vision) for state estimation and causal inference -- probabilistic inference in non-linear, non-Gaussian stochastic systems (e.g., for planning as well as optimal or adaptive control) Robotics challenges can inspire and motivate new Machine Learning research as well as being an interesting field of application of standard ML techniques. Inversely, with the current rise of real, physical humanoid robots in robotics research labs around the globe, the need for machine learning in robotics has grown significantly. Only if machine learning can succeed at making robots fully adaptive, it is likely that we will be able to take real robots out of the research labs into real, human inhabited environments. To do so, future robots will need to be able to make proper use of perceptual stimuli such as vision, proprioceptive & tactile feedback and translate these into motor commands. To close this complex loop, machine learning will be needed on various stages ranging from sensory-based action determination over high-level plan generation to motor control on torque level. Among the important problems hidden in these steps are problems which can be understood from the robotics and the machine learning point of view including perceptuo-action coupling, imitation learning, movement decomposition, probabilistic planning problems, motor primitive learning, reinforcement learning, model learning and motor control. Format: The goal of this one-day workshop is to bring together people that are interested in robotics as a source and inspiration for new Machine Learning challenges, or which work on Machine Learning methods as a new approach to robotics challenges. In the robotics context, among the questions which we intend to tackle are Reinforcement Learning, Imitation, and Active Learning: * What methods from reinforcement learning scale into the domain of robotics? * How can we improve our policies acquired through imitation by trial and error? * Can we turn many simple learned demonstrations into proper policies? * Does the knowledge of the cost function of the teacher help the student? * Can statistical methods help for generating actions which actively influencing our perception? E.g., Can these be used to plan visuo-motor sequences that will minimize our uncertainty about the scene? * How can image understanding methods be extended to provide probabilistic scene descriptions suitable for motor planning? Motor Representations and Control: * Can we decompose human demonstrations into elemental movements, e.g., motor primitives, and learn these efficiently? * Is it possible to build libraries of basic movements from demonstration? How to create higher-level structured representations and abstractions based on elemental movements? * Can structured (e.g., hierarchical) temporal stochastic models be used to plan the sequencing and superposition of movement primitives? * Is probabilistic inference the road towards composing complex action sequences from simple demonstrations? Are superpositions of motor primitives and the coupling in timing between these learnable? * How to generate compliant controls for executing complex movement plans which include both superposition and hierarchies of elemental movements? Can we find learned versions of prioritized hierarchical control? * Can we learn how to control in task-space of redundant robots in the presence of under-actuation and complex constraints? Can we learn force or hybrid control in task-space? * Is real-time model learning the way to cope with executing tasks on robots with unmodeled nonlinearities and manipulating uncertain objects in unpredictable environmental interactions? * What new regression techniques can help real-time model learning to improve the execution of tasks on robots with unmodeled nonlinearities and manipulating uncertain objects in unpredictable environmental interactions? Learning structured models and representations: * What kind of probabilistic models provide a compact and suitable description of real-world environments composed of manipulable objects? * How can abstractions or compact representations be learnt from sensori-motor data? * How can we extract features of the sensori-motor data that are relevant for motor control or decision making? E.g., can we extract visual features of objects directly related to their manipulability or ``affordance''? Posters: We are open for any posters posing problems for machine learning and for presenting machine learning algorithms with applications in robotics. Please send us a one page abstract (A4 or letter) describing the poster which you intend to present with at least one reference to previous work. Choose a format of your liking, e.g., the standard NIPS template. The deadline for abstract submissions is October 24, 2007 and the notification will be October 26, 2007 Abstract Submission Deadline: October 24, 2007 Acceptance Notification: October 26, 2007 From mlittman at cs.rutgers.edu Wed Oct 24 13:38:27 2007 From: mlittman at cs.rutgers.edu (Michael L. Littman) Date: Thu Oct 25 09:18:48 2007 Subject: [Comp-neuro] CALL FOR ICML/UAI/COLT 2008 WORKSHOP PROPOSALS Message-ID: <200710241138.l9OBcREb006196@constance.rutgers.edu> CALL FOR ICML/UAI/COLT 2008 WORKSHOP PROPOSALS ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Helsinki, Finland, July 9, 2008 http://uai2008.cs.helsinki.fi/ Proposal Deadline: February 1, 2008. Acceptance Notification: February 15, 2008 The ICML, UAI, and COLT conferences, being colocated in Helsinki July 5-12 2007, hereby solicit proposals for workshops to be held during a single joint workshop day on July 9. This date is between ICML (July 5-8) and UAI/COLT (July 10-12). Workshops will be selected on the basis of their interest to the attendees of one or more of the conferences. Organization: ============= The format, style, and content of accepted workshops is under the control of the workshop organizers and largely autonomous from the main conferences. The workshops will be seven hours long and split into two sessions: from 8.30am to 11:30am and from 2pm to 6pm. Workshop organizers will be expected to manage the workshop content, specify the workshop format, be present to moderate the discussion and panels, invite experts in the domain, and maintain a website for the workshop. Workshop registration will be handled centrally by the main conferences with a single uniform registration fee and with registrants allowed to attend workshops other than the one they register for. Submission Instructions: ======================== Proposals should specify clearly the workshop's title, motivation, impact, expected outcomes, and invited potential speakers and a list of related publications. The proposal should also designate the main workshop organizer and submit a brief CVs of the organizers. Please visit http://www.cs.rutgers.edu/~mlittman/topics/icml08.html for details on submitting a proposal. From py at csl.sony.fr Thu Oct 25 12:38:42 2007 From: py at csl.sony.fr (Pierre-Yves Oudeyer) Date: Thu Oct 25 13:32:02 2007 Subject: [Comp-neuro] [urgent] INRIA postdoc proposal in developmental robotics Message-ID: <47207232.8090304@csl.sony.fr> Dear colleagues, as part of the creation of a developmental/epigenetic robotics group in INRIA Bordeaux, an open postdoc position has just become available. This position would last one year, start in december or january, be located in Bordeaux and supervised by myself. There are four possible topics: 1) development of advanced curiosity-driven learning algorithms and experiments on robots, 2) development of techniques for achieving naturally and intuitively joint attention between a robot and a human, 3) modeling of developmental mechanisms for language acquisition in robots and human, 4) user/human factor studies in entertainment-robot teaching/taming interactions. The constraint is that candidatures must be done ASAP. Candidates are expected to have already produced international level publications in relevant journals and conferences during their PhD, and are also expected to have had a significant experience of practical computational experiments in robotics, machine learning or interaction design (except for the user studies prosposal). Potential interested candidates can send me an email for further information, Best regards, Pierre-Yves Oudeyer http://www.csl.sony.fr/~py email: py@csl.sony.fr From lucas.paletta at joanneum.at Thu Oct 25 13:37:09 2007 From: lucas.paletta at joanneum.at (Paletta, Lucas) Date: Thu Oct 25 16:42:24 2007 Subject: [Comp-neuro] CfP: Intl. Workshop on Attention in Cognitive Systems - WAPCV 2008 Message-ID: <3477C5E5CA395A4F897F6E3D5DE8091A0540D15D@RZJC2EX.jr1.local> -------------------------------------------------- CALL FOR PAPERS 5th International Workshop on ATTENTION IN COGNITIVE SYSTEMS WAPCV 2008 May 12, 2008, Santorini, Greece http://icvs2008.info/Workshops.htm --------------------------------------------------- associated with ICVS 2008 http://icvs2008.info/ SCOPE The capacity to attend to the relevant has been part of AI systems since the early days of the discipline. Currently, with respect to the design and computational modeling of artificial cognitive systems, selective attention has again become a focus of research, and one sees it important for the organization of behaviors, for control and interfacing between sensory and cognitive information processing, and for the understanding of individual and social cognition in humanoid artifacts. While visual cognition obviously plays a central role in human perception, findings from neuroscience and cognitive psychology have informed us on the perception-action nature of cognition. In particular, the embodiment in sensory-motor intelligence requires a continuous spatio-temporal interplay between interpretations from various perceptual modalities and the corresponding control of motor activities. In addition, the process of selecting information from the incoming sensory stream, in tune with contextual processing on a current task and global goals, becomes a challenging control issue within the viewpoint of focused attention. Seemingly attention systems must operate at many levels and not only at interfaces between a bottom-up driven world interpretation and top-down driven information selection. One may consider selective attention as part of the core of artificial cognitive systems. These insights have already produced paradigmatic changes in several AI-related disciplines, such as, in the design of behavior based robotics and the computational modeling of animats. Within the context of the engineering domain, the development of enabling technologies such as autonomous robotic systems, miniaturized mobile - even wearable - sensors, and ambient intelligence systems involves the real-time analysis of enormous quantities of data. These data have to be processed in an intelligent way to provide "on time delivery" of the required relevant information. Knowledge has to be applied about what needs to be attended to, and when, and what to do in a meaningful sequence, in correspondence with visual feedback. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following: ** Techniques, modelling, and concepts: Computational architectures for attention Biologically inspired attention Attentive control of robot systems Aspects of attention in cognitive psychology, neuroscience, and philosophy Attention and control of machine vision processes Attention in object recognition and detection Attention and contextual modelling Attention in multimodal information fusion Attention in affordance perception Performance measures for attention enabled artificial systems Machine learning and feature selection in robot perception Decision making and attention Robust statistical techniques for attention Perceptual organisation Evolutionary aspects of attention ** Application related topics of interest: Attentive multimodal interfaces Attentive robotic systems Autonomous intelligent systems Mobile Mapping systems Video surveillance Video and image retrieval Industrial inspection Remote sensing Medical computer vision Usability research IMPORTANT DATES Full paper submission: December 15, 2007 Notification of acceptance: January 20, 2008 Final paper submission: February 15, 2008 Workshop day: May 12, 2008 CONFERENCE CHAIRS Lucas Paletta, Joanneum Research, Austria John K. Tsotsos, York University, Canada PROGRAM COMMITTEE Leonardo Chelazzi, Univ. Verona, Italy Simone Frintrop, Univ. Bonn, Germany Fred Hamker, Univ. Muenster, Germany Dietmar Heinke, Univ. of Birmingham, UK Laurent Itti, Univ. Southern California, USA Christof Koch, CalTech, USA Eileen Kowler, Rutgers University, USA Michael Lindenbaum, Technion, Israel Larry Manevitz, Univ. Haifa, Israel B?rbel Mertsching, Univ. Paderborn, Germany Giorgio Metta, Univ. Genoa, Italy Vidhya Navalpakkam, Univ. Southern California, USA Aude Oliva, MIT, USA Kevin O'Regan, Universit? Paris 5, France Marc Pomplun, Univ. Massachusetts Boston, USA Ronald A. Rensink, Univ. British Columbia, Canada Erich Rome, Fraunhofer IAIS, Germany John G. Taylor, King's College London, UK Jochen Triesch, Frankfurt Inst. Advanced Studies, Germany Chen Yu, Univ. Indiana, USA Tom Ziemke, Univ. Sk?vde, Sweden (this list will probably be extended) INVITED TALKS - to be announced AUTHOR GUIDELINES Publication of the proceedings will be in LNCS/LNAI Springer format. Submitted papers should not exceed 14 pages in Springer format. Appropriate style files can be downloaded from http://www.springer.com/dal/home/computer/lncs (please consult instruction for authors of Springer proceedings). The organizers expect submissions in PDF format. We will perform double-blind reviews, i.e., author information must be hidden in the paper: blank author fields, no acknowledgment information, own papers should be cited only if mandatory. We will link on the homepage to electronic paper submission from 15 November 2007. Papers will be considered for review that have also been submitted to the main ICVS conference. Double submission must be indicated by authors, and the workshop organizer must be given a copy of the IJCAI reviews. In case we receive a reasonable number of high quality contributions we will consider the organization of a poster session to inform - in addition to the about all related ongoing activities in this field. PROCEEDINGS Accepted contributions will be provided on CD-ROM as hand-outs to participants at the workshop site. It is intended to publish post-conference proceedings of selected, revised and invited papers of the workshop in Springer LNAI - see LNCS 3368 about WAPCV 2004; LNAI 4840 about WAPCV 2007 in print. PREVIOUS WORKSHOPS WAPCV 2007, Hyderabad, India (IJCAI) - http://dib.joanneum.at/wapcv2007 WAPCV 2005, San Diego, USA (CVPR) - http://dib.joanneum.at/wapcv2005 WAPCV 2004, Prague, Czech Republic (ECCV) - http://dib.joanneum.at/wapcv2004 WAPCV 2003, Graz, Austria (ICVS) - http://dib.joanneum.at/wapcv2003 CONTACT Dr. Lucas Paletta JOANNEUM RESEARCH Forschungsgesellschaft mbH Institute of Digital Image Processing Wastiangasse 6, 8010 Graz, Austria Phone: +43 (316) 876 1769 Fax: +43 (316) 876 91769 E-mail: lucas.paletta@joanneum.at Web: http://dib.joanneum.at/cape Prof. John K. Tsotsos Department. of Computer Science & Engineering York University 4700 Keele St., Toronto, Ont. M3J 1P3, Canada Phone: +1 416-736-2100 - 70135 Fax: +1 416-736-5872 Email: tsotsos.cse@yorku.ca Web: http://www.cse.yorku.ca/~tsotsos/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.neuroinf.org/pipermail/comp-neuro/attachments/20071025/7356fc4f/attachment-0001.html From erik at oist.jp Fri Oct 26 08:10:50 2007 From: erik at oist.jp (Erik De Schutter) Date: Fri Oct 26 09:38:12 2007 Subject: [Comp-neuro] Positions in reaction-diffusion modeling of signaling pathways involved in synaptic plasticy Message-ID: <6BBFDFF0-556E-459F-BB60-A4EA61B30F29@oist.jp> Postdoctoral position in modeling of signaling pathways involved in synaptic plasticy A postdoctoral position is available in the Computational Neuroscience Unit of Dr. Erik De Schutter at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (http://www.irp.oist.jp/cns/) to study the signaling pathways involved in cerebellar long-term depression at the parallel fiber to Purkinje cell synapse. Main goal is to apply reaction-diffusion modeling to better understand how these signaling pathways operate under stochastic conditions in the presence of strong concentration gradients. Additional topics are inclusion of other forms of synaptic plasticity and of downstream signaling pathways in the models and to study the effect of anomalous diffusion on these pathways (Santamaria et al., Neuron 2:635-48, 2006). Candidates should have experience with modeling signaling pathways. There will be ample opportunity to interact with other modelers in the lab who are working on several Purkinje cell and cerebellar related projects and with other scientists at OIST. We offer attractive financial and working conditions in an English language environment. Duration of initial appointments will depend on previous experience, appointments can last up to 4 years and start begin 2008. More information about the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology is available at http://www.oist.jp/ Send curriculum vitae, summary of research interests and experience, and the names of three referees to Dr. Erik De Schutter at erik@oist.jp --------------- Scientific programming/PhD position in stochastic reaction-diffusion modeling A scientific programming/PhD position position is available in the Computational Neuroscience Unit of Dr. Erik De Schutter at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (http://www.irp.oist.jp/ cns/) to continue programming of the STEPS software. STEPS implements stochastic reaction-diffusion modeling as C++ implementation of the Gillespie Direct Method in a tetrahedral mesh and is controlled with a Python interface (Santamaria et al., Neuron 2:635-48, 2006). Future work involves parallelization, introduction of approximate methods (tau-leaping, Langevin equation), improvement of mesh generation, etc. The candidate should have extensive programming experience, preferentially a degree in computer science, and have sufficient scientific training to understand the mathematical basis of the modeling methods used. We require an active interest in the scientific domain so that the software design can be further developed autonomously. The position can be filled either as a technician or to obtain a PhD degree in biomedical sciences. There will be ample opportunity to interact with modelers in the lab who use the STEPS other modeling software. We offer attractive financial and working conditions in an English language environment. Duration of initial appointments will depend on previous experience, appointments can last up to 4 years and start begin 2008. More information about the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology is available at http://www.oist.jp/ Send curriculum vitae, summary of research interests and experience, and the names of three referees to Dr. Erik De Schutter at erik@oist.jp From erik at oist.jp Fri Oct 26 07:59:14 2007 From: erik at oist.jp (Erik De Schutter) Date: Fri Oct 26 09:38:15 2007 Subject: [Comp-neuro] High performance biological computing workshop at OIST Message-ID: The Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology organizes a workshop on "Hardware and software for large-scale biological computing in the next decade", December 11-14, 2007, Okinawa, Japan. Speakers: Phil ANDREWS Alan GARA Robert GROSSMAN Seth Copen GOLDSTEIN Mike HINES Tetsuya SATO Felix SCHUERMANN Masakazu SEKIJIMA John SHALF Thomas STERLING Arthur TREW Tadashi WATANABE John WAWRZYNEK Full program and details can be found at http://www.irp.oist.jp/hpc- workshop/ The workshop can accept a limited number of additional non-OIST participants. These participants will not be supported by OIST: they will have to cover all costs (travel and accommodation) themselves. Free registration is required and acceptance will be confirmed by email on a first-come, first-served basis. A registration form is available on the website. From timmer at isr.umd.edu Sun Oct 28 12:59:46 2007 From: timmer at isr.umd.edu (Timmer Horiuchi) Date: Mon Oct 29 09:42:14 2007 Subject: [Comp-neuro] Univ. Maryland - Tenure-Track Faculty Position in Computational Neuroscience Message-ID: <472479B2.1010108@isr.umd.edu> University of Maryland, College Park Program in Neuroscience and Cognitive Science POSITION ANNOUNCEMENT Title: Computational Neuroscience ? Tenure-track faculty. The Neuroscience and Cognitive Science program (NACS) at the University of Maryland is seeking a new tenure-track faculty member, at the assistant professor level. Computational neuroscientists working in any areas including sensory and motor physiology, analysis of control systems, and cognitive neuroscience will be considered. The successful candidate will hold a joint appointment in both the NACS Program and an academic department. The department of tenure will depend on the research interests of the faculty member and may be in Biology, Computer Science, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Hearing and Speech Sciences, Kinesiology, Linguistics, or Psychology. NACS is a tightly integrated community of scholars focused on aspects of neuroscience and cognitive science. Many faculty also enjoy highly productive research collaborations with scientists at federal agencies in the Washington DC area such as the NIH. Responsibilities: Candidates will be expected to develop a vigorous extramurally-funded research program. Teaching duties will include a graduate-level course in computational neuroscience, as well as undergraduate/graduate courses to be determined by the tenure-track department. Duties will also include student advising and administration as determined by the Director of NACS and the department of tenure. Qualifications: An earned doctorate in a discipline relevant to the candidate?s field of teaching and research is required. Candidates who integrate theoretical with experimental research are preferred. We seek candidates with demonstrated teaching and research excellence capable of maintaining an extramurally-funded research program. NACS details at www.nacs.umd.edu. Salary: Commensurate with qualifications and experience. Position available: Earliest start date is fall semester 2008. Applications: For best consideration send, by December 15, 2007, a CV, names and addresses (including emails) of three possible references, and statements of both research interests (documenting any previous extramural funding) and teaching interests to NACS Search, Neuroscience and Cognitive Science Program, 2131 Biol/Psyc Building, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742. WOMEN AND MEMBERS OF UNDER REPRESENTED MINORITIES ARE ENCOURAGED TO APPLY. THE UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND IS AN EQUAL OPPORTUNITY AFFIRMATIVE ACTION EMPLOYER. -- Timothy Horiuchi Associate Professor Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Institute for Systems Research Neuroscience and Cognitive Sciences Program University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742 (301) 405-7412 timmer@isr.umd.edu http://www.isr.umd.edu/~timmer From franco at dii.unisi.it Mon Oct 29 16:35:42 2007 From: franco at dii.unisi.it (Franco Scarselli) Date: Mon Oct 29 17:38:30 2007 Subject: [Comp-neuro] Deadline extension: NEUROCOMPUTING Special Issue on "Pattern Recognition in Graphical Domains" In-Reply-To: <46DEE0D3.7030607@dii.unisi.it> References: <46DEE0D3.7030607@dii.unisi.it> Message-ID: <4725FDCE.1080809@dii.unisi.it> ** Our apologies if you receive multiple copies of this announcement ** Following requests from prospective authors, the deadline for submissions of papers to the NEUROCOMPUTING Special Issue on "Pattern Recognition in Graphical Domains" has been extended to November 12, 2007. Please note that no additional extension can be granted. *********************************************************************** Call for Papers NEUROCOMPUTING Special Issue on PATTERN RECOGNITION IN GRAPHICAL DOMAINS Neurocomputing is seeking original and unpublished manuscripts for a Special Issue on "Pattern Recognition in Graphical Domains", scheduled for publication in June/July 2008. Traditional machine learning applications usually cope with graphs by a preprocessing procedure that transforms structured data to simpler representations. This approach relies on what is called the "feature extraction" process, but it turns out to be quite unnatural for several situations where data are intrinsically organized as graphs, i.e. relationships exist among atomic sub-entities. Unfortunately, valuable information may be lost during the preprocessing and, as a consequence, classical methods may suffer from poor performance and generalization. Therefore, recursive or nested representations, as opposed to "flat" attribute-value data organizations, seem to be more adequate for many relevant problems arising from chemistry, bioinformatics, and the World Wide Web. Recent studies on statistical pattern recognition and neural networks show possible directions to exploit structural information in problems which are inherently of sub-symbolic nature. This special issue is intended to propose a critical re-thinking of the classic learning approaches and to investigate on possible new methodologies and applications of pattern recognition in graphical domains. Submitted articles must not have been previously published and must not be currently submitted for publication elsewhere. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following: - Neural Network Models for Graphs - Support Vector Machines and Kernel Methods for Graphs - Probabilistic Models for Graphs - Statistical Relational Learning - Pattern Recognition Applications Involving Graphical Data Submission procedure: Manuscript should follow the standard guidelines of the Neurocomputing journal. Guidelines for formatting papers can be found in the Guide for Authors at http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/505628/authorinstructions Prospective authors should submit an electronic copy of their complete manuscript through the Elsevier online submission system at http://ees.elsevier.com/neucom/ by November 5, 2007. Important dates: Manuscript submission deadline: ***November 12, 2007*** First notification: January 25, 2008 Revised manuscript submission: February 29, 2008 Notification of final decision: April 11, 2008 Final manuscript due: April 25, 2008 Publication of special issue: June/July 2008 Guest Editors: Monica Bianchini Universit? di Siena Siena, Italy e-mail: monica@dii.unisi.it Franco Scarselli Universit? di Siena Siena, Italy e-mail: franco@dii.unisi.it Information on the Special Issue are also available at http://www.dii.unisi.it/~monica/NeuroSI/ From nurban at cmu.edu Wed Oct 31 00:27:16 2007 From: nurban at cmu.edu (Nathan Urban) Date: Wed Oct 31 09:47:25 2007 Subject: [Comp-neuro] PhD Program in Neural Computation at Carnegie Mellon / University of Pittsburgh Message-ID: <02d201c81b4c$68c31920$3a494b60$@edu> *************************************************************************** The Graduate Program in Neural Computation (PNC) at Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh now accepting applications. In recognition of the increased demand for computationally-oriented researchers, Carnegie Mellon University, in collaboration with the University of Pittsburgh, last year created this Ph.D. program in computational neuroscience. This program is seeking qualified applicants to begin their graduate training in the Fall of 2008. As neuroscientists have applied new technologies to acquire and analyze large data sets, and have developed new models for understanding increasingly complicated neurobiological systems, quantitative methods have become centrally important to their effort. The new graduate program takes advantage of the unusually large and highly collaborative group of faculty and students in neuroscience in the Pittsburgh community, and builds on the existing, but non-degree granting, graduate program of the Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition. Training in all areas of computational neuroscience is available with special focus on application of dynamical systems, machine learning and statistical approaches to the understanding of the brain at all levels. Details about program curriculum, training faculty and contact information are available at: http://www.cnbc.cmu.edu/GradTrain/pnc_index.shtml The online application is available at: https://applyweb.cs.cmu.edu/apply/index.php?domain=11 The deadline for applications is January 1, 2008. From jbednar at inf.ed.ac.uk Wed Oct 31 14:16:07 2007 From: jbednar at inf.ed.ac.uk (James A. Bednar) Date: Wed Oct 31 15:12:36 2007 Subject: [Comp-neuro] New Thesis -- Self-Organising Barrel Cortex Message-ID: <18216.32791.972431.82548@lodestar.inf.ed.ac.uk> Message from Stuart Wilson: Dear Colleagues, It is my pleasure to announce the availability of my MSc thesis, completed in August in the School of Informatics at the University of Edinburgh, UK, under the supervision of Dr. James A. Bednar: Self-Organisation Can Explain the Mapping of Angular Whisker Deflections in the Barrel Cortex A topographic mapping of angular whisker deflections has recently been discovered in the barrel cortex of rats (Andermann & Moore, 2006). Characteristics of this map suggest that it could emerge in post-natal development, through self-organisation under a Hebbian learning regime. This hypothesis was tested in a self-organising computational model, from which remarkably similar mappings emerge when whisker deflections are correlated during training. The model is also used to predict the disorganised mappings that might emerge from the real system when whiskers are uncorrelated, random or anti-correlated with one-another during development. URL: http://homepages.inf.ed.ac.uk/jbednar/papers/IM070505.pdf Software: (freely available; includes the complete model) http://www.topographica.org Keywords: barrel cortex, whisker, topographic map, self-organisation, self-organization, modeling, nature-nurture, development Stuart Wilson Prospective PhD student, ABRG, the University of Sheffield & ANC, the University of Edinburgh I will be attending `Barrels XX' (satellite to SfN in San Diego) this weekend to present a poster of this work, and look forward to the opportunity to discuss the ideas of the project with fellow attendees who may be interested. Please contact me if you have any questions or ideas relating to this topic. Stuart From raphael.ritz at incf.org Wed Oct 31 17:07:10 2007 From: raphael.ritz at incf.org (Raphael Ritz) Date: Fri Nov 2 09:39:38 2007 Subject: [Comp-neuro] INCF Neuroinformatics demos at SfN Message-ID: <4728A82E.50803@incf.org> The International Neuroinformatics Coordinating Facility (INCF; http://incf.org) is organizing live demonstrations of present databases, tools for visualization and analysis of neuroscience data, and environments for modeling and simulation of nervous system functions at this years Society for Neuroscience meeting in San Diego, November 3-7. The demos take place in the exhibit area at booth #4924 (this is close to the NIH booth). Detailed program and abstracts are available from http://incf.org Raphael