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Postdoctoral positions in Theoretical and Computational Neuroscience at Yale
by McCormick, David Aug. 22, 2015

Aug. 22, 2015

POSTDOCTORAL POSITIONs in Theoretical and Computational Neuroscience The Swartz Center in Theoretical Neurobiology at Yale University invites applications for two postdoctoral positions in Theoretical and Computational Neuroscience. We seek exceptional individuals with a quantitative background who wish to gain neuroscience research experience by collaborating directly with experimental biologists. The candidates will be expected to perform computational studies relevant to one or more laboratories of the Yale Swartz Center (http://medicine.yale.edu/neurobiology/swartz/corelabs.aspx) and will be encouraged to participate in an expanding quantitative biology environment. Candidates must hold a Ph.D. or equivalent degree. Please send a Curriculum Vitae, selected reprints, and a statement of research plans including the laboratories of interest. All application materials should be sent electronically to the following e-mail address: david.mccormick(a)yale.edu<mailto:david.mccormick@yale.edu>. Applications will be reviewed as they are received, but priority will be given to those received on or before September 15th 2015. Yale University is an affirmative action/equal opportunity employer. Yale values diversity in its faculty, students, and staff and especially welcomes applications from women and underrepresented minorities. David A. McCormick Professor, Neurobiology | Yale University School of Medicine Dept. Neurobiology 333 Cedar Street | New Haven, CT 06510 | 203.785.5981 www.mccormicklab.org<http://www.mccormicklab.org> | www.neurobiology.org<http://www.neurobiology.org>

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Increased Impact Factor (2014/15) and Table of Contents Alert: Cognitive Computation journal (Springer Neuroscience, USA): Vol.7, No.4 / Aug 2015 Issue
by Dr Amir Hussain Aug. 21, 2015

Aug. 21, 2015

Dear Colleagues: (with advance apologies for any cross-postings) We are delighted to announce the publication of Volume 7, No.4 / Aug 2015 Issue, of Springer's Cognitive Computation journal - www.springer.com/12559 ================================================================ Important News: Increased Impact Factor & Six bi-monthly Journal Issues from 2015! ================================================================ As you will know, Cognitive Computation was selected for coverage in Thomson Reuter’s products and services in 2011. Beginning with V.1 (1) 2009, this publication is now indexed and abstracted in: ♦ Science Citation Index Expanded (also known as SciSearch®) ♦ Journal Citation Reports/Science Edition ♦ Current Contents®/Engineering Computing and Technology ♦ Neuroscience Citation Index® Cognitive Computation received its first Impact Factor (IF) of 1.0 in 2011 The IF for 2014 has increased to 1.44 (Thomson Reuters Journal Citation Reports® 2014) Many congratulations to the editors, reviewers and authors! Want to be part of the growing success? Visit the journal homepage (http:// springer.com/12559) for instructions on submitting your research. ================================= Quarterly to Bi-monthly Issues, from 2015!! ================================= Due to continuously growing number of high quality submissions, the number of Issues has increased from four (quarterly Issues) to six (bi-monthly Issues) each year, starting Feb 2015! ================================================================= The August 2015 Issue comprises an invited paper by Alessandro Vinciarelli and Anna Esposito, et al. titled: Open Challenges in Modelling, Analysis and Synthesis of Human Behaviour in Human–Human and Human–Machine Interactions. This is followed by six regular papers. The full listing of published articles (Table of Contents) for this August 2015 Issue can be viewed here (and also at the end of this message, followed by an overview of the previous Issues/Archive listings): http://link.springer.com/journal/12559/7/4/ <http://link.springer.com/journal/12559/6/4/> A list of the journal's most downloaded articles (which can always be read for FREE) can be found here: http://www.springer .com/biomed/neuroscience/journal/12559?hideChart=1#realtime Other 'Online First' published articles not yet in a print issue can be viewed here: http://www.springerlink.com/content/121361/?Content+Status=Accepted All previous Volumes and Issues of the journal can be viewed here: http://link.springer.com/journal/volumesAndIssues/12559 ============================================ Reminder: Cognitive Computation "LinkedIn" Group: ============================================ To further strengthen the bonds amongst the interdisciplinary audience of Cognitive Computation, we have set-up a "Cognitive Computation LinkedIn group", which has over 800 members already! We warmly invite you to join us at: http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=3155048 For further information on the journal and to sign up for electronic "Table of Contents alerts" please visit the Cognitive Computation homepage: http://www.springer.com/12559 or follow us on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/CognComput for the latest On-line First Issues. For any questions with regards to LinkedIn and/or Twitter, please contact Springer's Publishing Editor: Marleen Moore: Marleen.Moore(a)springer.com Finally, we would like to invite you to submit short or regular papers describing original research or timely review of important areas - our aim is to peer review all papers within approximately six-eight weeks of receipt. We also welcome relevant high quality proposals for Special Issues - four are already planned for 2015-16 (including for the 7th international BICS'2015 Conference at Hefei, China, 11-13 Dec 2015, see: http://cs.stir.ac.uk/events/bics2015 - for CFPs of other Special Issues, see: http://www.springer.com/biomed/neuroscience/journal/12559?detailsPage=press ) With our very best wishes to all aspiring readers and authors of Cognitive Computation, Professor Amir Hussain, PhD (Editor-in-Chief: Cognitive Computation) E-mail: ahu(a)cs.stir.ac.uk (University of Stirling, Scotland, UK) Professor Igor Aleksander, PhD (Honorary Editor-in-Chief: Cognitive Computation) (Imperial College, London, UK) http://www.springer.com/12559 NEW: Open Access Springer/BMC journal: Big Data Analytics ( http://www.bdataanalytics.com/) - Now accepting submissions! NEW: Springer Series on Socio-Affective Computing: http://www.springer.com/series/13199 Also consider your work for related Book Series: SpringerBriefs on Cognitive Computation: http://www.springer.com/series/10374 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Table of Contents Alert -- Cognitive Computation Vol 7 No 4, August 2015 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Open Challenges in Modelling, Analysis and Synthesis of Human Behaviour in Human–Human and Human–Machine Interactions Alessandro Vinciarelli, Anna Esposito, Elisabeth André, Francesca Bonin, Mohamed Chetouani, Jeffrey F. Cohn, Marco Cristani, Ferdinand Fuhrmann, Elmer Gilmartin, Zakia Hammal, Dirk Heylen, Rene Kaiser, Maria Koutsombogera, Alexandros Potamianos, Steve Renals, Giuseppe Riccardi and Albert Ali Salah http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12559-015-9326-z Towards Autonomous Robots Via an Incremental Clustering and Associative Learning Architecture Matthias U. Keysermann, Patrícia A. Vargas http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12559-014-9311-y Visual Attention Model Based Vehicle Target Detection in Synthetic Aperture Radar Images: A Novel Approach Fei Gao, Ye Zhang, Jun Wang, Jinping Sun, Erfu Yang, Amir Hussain http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12559-014-9312-x Correlation Coefficients of Hesitant Fuzzy Sets and Their Application Based on Fuzzy Measures Fanyong Meng, Xiaohong Chen http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12559-014-9313-9 An Arterial Traffic Signal Control System Based on a Novel Intersections Model and Improved Hill Climbing Algorithm Fuyang Chen, Li Wang, Bin Jiang, Changyun Wen http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12559-014-9314-8 Convergence Analysis of a New Self Organizing Map Based Optimization (SOMO) Algorithm Atlas Khan, Li Zheng Xue, Wu Wei, YanPeng Qu, Amir Hussain, Ricardo Z. N. Vencio http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12559-014-9315-7 Concept-Level Sentiment Analysis with Dependency-Based Semantic Parsing: A Novel Approach Basant Agarwal, Soujanya Poria, Namita Mittal, Alexander Gelbukh, Amir Hussain http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12559-014-9316-6 -------------------------------------------------------- Previous Issues/Archive: Overview: -------------------------------------------------------- All previous Volumes and Issues can be viewed here: http://link.springer.com/journal/volumesAndIssues/12559 Alternatively, the full listing of the Inaugural Vol. 1, No. 1 / March 2009, can be viewed here (which included invited authoritative reviews by leading researchers in their areas - including keynote papers from London University's John Taylor, Igor Aleksander and Stanford University's James McClelland, and invited papers from Ron Sun, Pentti Haikonen, Geoff Underwood, Kevin Gurney, Claudius Gross, Anil Seth and Tom Ziemke): http://www.springerlink.com/content/1866-9956/1/1/ The full listing of Vol. 1, No. 2 / June 2009, can be viewed here (which included invited reviews and original research contributions from leading researchers, including Rodney Douglas, Giacomo Indiveri, Jurgen Schmidhuber, Thomas Wennekers, Pentti Kanerva and Friedemann Pulvermuller): http://www.springerlink.com/content/1866-9956/1/2/ The full listing of Vol.1, No. 3 / Sep 2009, can be viewed here: http://www.springerlink.com/content/1866-9956/1/3/ The full listing of Vol. 1, No. 4 / Dec 2009, can be viewed here: http://www.springerlink.com/content/1866-9956/1/4/ The full listing of Vol.2, No. 1 / March 2010, can be viewed here: http://www.springerlink.com/content/1866-9956/2/1/ The full listing of Vol.2, No. 2 / June 2010, can be viewed here: http://www.springerlink.com/content/1866-9956/2/2/ The full listing of Vol.2, No. 3 / Aug 2010, can be viewed here: http://www.springerlink.com/content/1866-9956/2/3/ The full listing of Vol.2, No. 4 / Dec 2010, can be viewed here: http://www.springerlink.com/content/1866-9956/2/4/ The full listing of Vol.3, No.1 / Mar 2011 (Special Issue on: Saliency, Attention, Active Visual Search and Picture Scanning, edited by John Taylor and Vassilis Cutsuridis), can be viewed here: http://www.springerlink.com/content/1866-9956/3/1/ The Guest Editorial can be viewed here: http://www.springerlink.com/content/hu2245056415633l/ The full listing of Vol.3, No.2 / June 2011 can be viewed here: http://www.springerlink.com/content/1866-9956/3/2/ The full listing of Vol. 3, No. 3 / Sep 2011 (Special Issue on: Cognitive Behavioural Systems, Guest Edited by: Anna Esposito, Alessandro Vinciarelli, Simon Haykin, Amir Hussain and Marcos Faundez-Zanuy), can be viewed here: http://www.springerlink.com/content/1866-9956/3/3/ The Guest Editorial for the special issue can be viewed here: http://www.springerlink.com/content/h4718567520t2h84/ The full listing of Vol. 3, No. 4 / Dec 2011 can be viewed here: http://www.springerlink.com/content/1866-9956/3/4/ The full listing of Vol. 4, No.1 / Mar 2012 can be viewed here: http://www.springerlink.com/content/1866-9956/4/1/ The full listing of Vol. 4, No.2 / June 2012 can be viewed here: http://www.springerlink.com/content/1866-9956/4/2/ The full listing of Vol. 4, No.3 / Sep 2012 (Special Issue on: Computational Creativity, Intelligence and Autonomy, Edited by: J. Mark Bishop and Yasemin J. Erden) can be viewed here: http://www.springerlink.com/content/1866-9956/4/3/ The full listing of Vol. 4, No.4 / Dec 2012 (Special Issue titled: "Cognitive & Emotional Information Processing", Edited by: Stefano Squartini, Björn Schuller and Amir Hussain, which is followed by a number of regular papers), can be viewed here: http://link.springer.com/journal/12559/4/4/page/1 The full listing of Vol. 5, No.1 / March 2013 Special Issue titled: Computational Intelligence and Applications Guest Editors: Zhigang Zeng & Haibo He, which is followed by a number of regular papers), can be viewed here: http://link.springer.com/journal/12559/5/1/page/1 The full listing of Vol. 5, No.2 / June 2013 Special Issue titled: Advances on Brain Inspired Computing, Guest Editors: Stefano Squartini, Sanqing Hu & Qingshan Liu, which is followed by a number of regular papers), can be viewed here: http://link.springer.com/journal/12559/5/2/page/1 The full listing of Vol. 5, No.3 / Sep 2013 Special Issue titled: In Memory of John G Taylor: A Polymath Scholar, Guest Editors: Vassilis Cutsuridis & Amir Hussain, which is followed by a number of regular papers), can be viewed here: http://link.springer.com/journal/12559/5/3/page/1 The full listing of Vol. 5, No.4 / Dec 2013, which includes regular papers (including an invited paper by Professor Ron Sun, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, USA, titled: Moral Judgment, Human Motivation, and Neural Networks), and a Special Issue titled: Advanced Cognitive Systems Based on Nonlinear Analysis. Guest Editors: Carlos M. Travieso and Jesús B. Alonso, can be viewed here: http://link.springer.com/journal/12559/5/4/page/1 The full listing of Vol. 6, No.1 / Mar 2014, can be viewed here: http://link.springer.com/journal/12559/6/1/page/1 The full listing of Vol. 6, No.2 / June 2014, can be viewed here: http://link.springer.com/journal/12559/6/2/page/1 The full listing of Vol. 6, No.3 / Sep 2014, can be viewed here: http://link.springer.com/journal/12559/6/3/page/1 The full listing of Vol. 6, No.4 / Dec 2014 (Special Issue on Modeling emotion, behaviour and context in socially believable robots and ICT interfaces, Guest Editors: Anna Esposito, Leopoldina Fortunati, and Giuseppe Lugano) can be viewed here: http://link.springer.com/journal/12559/6/4/page/1 The full listing of Vol. 7, No.1 / Feb 2015 can be viewed here: http://link.springer.com/journal/12559/7/1/ (with the first six papers part of a Special Issue on "Neural Signal Processing", Guest Edited by: Jordi Sole´-Casals, Francois-Benoit Vialatte, Justin Dauwels. The Guest Editorial titled: "Alternative Techniques of Neural Signal Processing in Neuroengineering" is available (for free download) here: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12559-015-9317-0) The full listing of Vol. 7, No. 2 / April 2015, can be viewed here: http://link.springer.com/journal/12559/7/2/ This comprises a Special Issue on "Sentic Computing", Guest Edited by: E. Cambria and A. Hussain. The Guest Editorial titled: "Sentic Computing" is available (for free download) here: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12559-015-9325-0 The full listing of Vol. 7, No. 3 / June 2015, can be viewed here: http://link.springer.com/journal/12559/7/3/ ________________________________ -- The University is ranked in the QS World Rankings of the top 5% of universities in the world (QS World University Rankings, 2014) The University of Stirling is a charity registered in Scotland, number SC 011159.

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Chaired Professors in Mathematical Psychology/Cognitive Sciences at UC Irvine
by Jeff Krichmar Aug. 21, 2015

Aug. 21, 2015

Dear Comp-Neuro colleagues, The following job posting may be of interest to many of you. ---------- University of California, Irvine Chaired Professors in Mathematical Psychology/Cognitive Sciences The Department of Cognitive Sciences (www.cogsci.uci.edu) at the University of California, Irvine (UCI) invites applications for faculty positions associated with the Falmagne Endowed Chairs in Mathematical Psychology/Cognitive Sciences. Applicants should have an exemplary track record of implementing innovative mathematical approaches to important questions in psychology or cognitive science. We are especially interested in candidates at the advanced Associate or Full Professor level whose research focus is in either human cognition or visual perception, and related areas of specialization. Information about the Falmagne Endowed Chairs can be found at: http://www.cogsci.uci.edu/falmagnechairs.php. The online application includes: A cover letter, CV, research and teaching statements, 3 major publications, and contact information for 3-5 referees. Interested candidates can apply for the position at: https://recruit.ap.uci.edu/apply/JPF03041. Application review will commence on December 1, 2015 and continue until filled. The University of California, Irvine is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer advancing inclusive excellence. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, age, protected veteran status, or other protected categories covered by the UC nondiscrimination policy. ---------- Jeff Krichmar Department of Cognitive Sciences 2328 Social & Behavioral Sciences Gateway University of California, Irvine Irvine, CA 92697-5100 jkrichma(a)uci.edu http://www.socsci.uci.edu/~jkrichma

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CfP: ICLR 2016 - Conference Track
by Hugo Larochelle Aug. 20, 2015

Aug. 20, 2015

------------------------------------------------------------------- 4th International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR 2016) ------------------------------------------------------------------- Website: http://www.iclr.cc/ Submission deadline for title and abstract: November 12th, 2015 Submission deadline for arXiv paper ID: November 19th, 2015 Location: Caribe Hilton, San Juan, Puerto Rico, May 2-4, 2016 Overview -------- It is well understood that the performance of machine learning methods is heavily dependent on the choice of data representation (or features) on which they are applied. The rapidly developing field of representation learning is concerned with questions surrounding how we can best learn meaningful and useful representations of data. We take a broad view of the field, and include in it topics such as deep learning and feature learning, metric learning, kernel learning, compositional models, non-linear structured prediction, and issues regarding non-convex optimization. Despite the importance of representation learning to machine learning and to application areas such as vision, speech, audio and NLP, there was no venue for researchers who share a common interest in this topic. The goal of ICLR has been to help fill this void. A non-exhaustive list of relevant topics: - unsupervised, semi-supervised, and supervised representation learning - metric learning and kernel learning - dimensionality expansion - sparse modeling - hierarchical models - optimization for representation learning - learning representations of outputs or states - implementation issues, parallelization, software platforms, hardware - applications in vision, audio, speech, natural language processing, robotics, neuroscience, or any other field The program will include keynote presentations from invited speakers, oral presentations, and posters. As usual, ICLR will feature two tracks: a Conference Track and a Workshop Track. However, this year, conference and workshop submissions will be reviewed separately, in two different periods. This call for paper is thus only for conference contributions. Workshop submissions will be received a few months before the conference and be subject to a lighter review. A future call for papers will be sent with more details on the Workshop Track. Also, the reviewing period for conference submissions will be separated into two short rounds (normally 2 reviews in the first round, 1 review in the second round). The first round will run as usual. The second round reviews, however, in addition to evaluating the submissions, will be required to include comments on the content of the first round reviews. By asking for such comments, we hope to ensure a minimum of discussion for every paper, and favour interactions that might either identify factual errors early or reveal a clearer consensus. Note that some of the submitted papers that are not accepted to the Conference Track will be invited to be presented under the Workshop Track. ICLR Submission Instructions ---------------------------- 1. By November 12th, authors are asked to enter in openreview.net the title, abstract and author list for their paper. 2. Then, as soon as possible, authors must post on arXiv their submission: http://arxiv.org . 3. Finally, by November 19th, authors must update their submission in openreview.net with the arXiv ID of their paper. Note that there can be up to 3 days of delay between sending a manuscript on arXiv and receiving your arXiv ID. It is thus important to post your submission on arXiv early. Note also that you can always update your submission on arXiv later on, anytime during the review process. Submissions without an arXiv ID after November 19th will be automatically removed from openreview.net. For more information on paper preparation, including style files and the URL for the openreview ICLR 2016 website, please see http://www.iclr.cc/doku.php?id=iclr2016:main Submission deadline: November 12th for title and abstract, November 19th for arXiv ID. Notes: i. Regarding the conference submission's 6-9 page limits, these are really meant as guidelines and will not be strictly enforced. For example, figures should not be shrunk to illegible size to fit within the page limit. However, in order to ensure a reasonable workload for our reviewers, papers that go beyond the 9 pages should be formatted to include a 9 page submission, with supplementary material appended at the end of the manuscript and clearly marked as an appendix, which will be optionally reviewed. ii. Paper revisions will be permitted, and in fact are encouraged, in response to comments from and discussions with the reviewers (see "An Open Reviewing Paradigm" below). An Open Reviewing Paradigm -------------------------- 1. Submissions to ICLR are posted on arXiv prior to being submitted to the conference. 2. Authors submit their paper to either the ICLR conference track or workshop track via the openreview.net ICLR 2016 website. 3. After the authors have submitted their papers via openreview.net, the ICLR program committee designates anonymous reviewers as usual. 4. The submitted reviews are published without the name of the reviewer, but with an indication that they are the designated reviews. 5. Anyone can openly (non-anonymously) write and publish comments on the paper. Anyone can ask the program chairs for permission to become an anonymous designated reviewer (open bidding). The program chairs have ultimate control over the publication of each anonymous review. Open commenters will have to use their real names. 6. Authors can post comments in response to reviews and comments. They can revise the paper as many times as they want, possibly citing some of the reviews. Reviewers are expected to revise their reviews in light of paper revisions. 7. The review calendar includes a generous amount of time for discussion between the authors, anonymous reviewers, and open commentators. The goal is to improve the quality of the final submissions. 8. The ICLR program and area chairs will consider all submitted papers, comments, and reviews and will decide which papers are to be presented in the conference track, which will be invited to be presented in the workshop track, and which will not appear at ICLR. 9. Papers that are presented in the workshop track or are not accepted will be considered non-archival, and may be submitted elsewhere (modified or not), although the ICLR site will maintain the reviews, the comments, and the links to the arXiv versions. Organizers ---------- Yoshua Bengio, Université de Montreal, General Chair Yann LeCun, New York University and Facebook, General Chair Hugo Larochelle, Twitter and Université de Sherbrooke, Senior Program Chair Brian Kingsbury, IBM Watson Group, Program Chair Samy Bengio, Google, Program Chair Contact ------- The organizers can be contacted at iclr2016.programchairs(a)gmail.com

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Postdoc position in Computational Brain Modelling at Ulster University UK
by McDaid, Liam Aug. 19, 2015

Aug. 19, 2015

Applications are invited for the post of Research Associate (RA) in Computational Brain Modelling (Ref: 1483428) based at the Intelligent Systems Research Center, Ulster University, UK. The RA post is for a 3½ year duration and is part of a collaborative project funded by EPSRC: our partners are the Department of Electronics, University of York. The RA post holder will be part of a team that aims to develop a brain-inspired self-repairing algorithm and subsequently map this self-repairing algorithm to hardware robotic controllers at the University of York. At Ulster we have previously shown that astrocyte cells interact with neurons to detect when a fault has occurred in the connections making up a network of neurons and how this interaction can oversee a repair strategy (http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=7001695) The RA post will work primarily on the development of a computational model that captures the interactions between neurons and astrocytes, and hence the repair process, and will interact with other team members to translate the self-repair strategy to hardware computing systems and robot controllers based at the University of York. The RA post is fixed-term based at Ulster University and runs from November 2015 until April 2019. The salary for the RA post is £26,289 - £29,568 and the closing date for applications is the 4th September 2015. Further information in relation to the post can be found on the following link: https://atsv7.wcn.co.uk/search_engine/jobs.cgi?owner=5043781&ownertype=fair… or you can contact Prof. Liam McDaid at lj.mcdaid(a)ulster.ac.uk<mailto:lj.mcdaid@ulster.ac.uk> We prefer to issue and receive applications via our on-line recruitment website at www.ulster.ac.uk/jobs<http://www.ulster.ac.uk/jobs> Hard copy applications can be obtained by telephoning 028 7012 4072 ________________________________ This email and any attachments are confidential and intended solely for the use of the addressee and may contain information which is covered by legal, professional or other privilege. If you have received this email in error please notify the system manager at postmaster(a)ulster.ac.uk and delete this email immediately. Any views or opinions expressed are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of Ulster University. The University's computer systems may be monitored and communications carried out on them may be recorded to secure the effective operation of the system and for other lawful purposes. Ulster University does not guarantee that this email or any attachments are free from viruses or 100% secure. Unless expressly stated in the body of a separate attachment, the text of email is not intended to form a binding contract. Correspondence to and from the University may be subject to requests for disclosure by 3rd parties under relevant legislation. The University of Ulster was founded by Royal Charter in 1984 and is registered with company number RC000726 and VAT registered number GB672390524.The primary contact address for Ulster University in Northern Ireland is Cromore Road, Coleraine, Co. Londonderry BT52 1SA

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Phd or Post-Doc Robot Learning positions at INRIA Bordeaux
by Manuel Lopes Aug. 18, 2015

Aug. 18, 2015

To all interested, We are seeking applications for phd students (3years) and/or postdocs (2.5years) in the area of artificial intelligence and robot learning at Inria. Our interests are in developing machines that are able to learn novel skills and capable of natural and robust interaction with people. We focus our research on intelligent exploration techniques, robot learning and automatic learning of representation for artificial intelligence. One position is open to work in an international research project (with partners from Canada, Sweden, Spain, Belgium and France). The candidates will be involved in research in the areas of deep learning of action and state representations, and interactive machine learning. The candidates must have strong mathematical competences, experience in machine learning and programming proficiency (e.g. C/C++, Matlab, Python or Java). Knowledge of deep learning and/or experience with real robots is a plus. Inria is a highly reputed french national center for computer science and automation. It has more than 3000 researchers and is distributed among 8 centers. These positions are for the Flowers Team at Inria Bordeaux Sud-Ouest and will involve travelling for collaborating with the project partners. Bordeaux is a growing city with a wonderful natural landscape, a very active city life and with a booming economy. Is has a very privileged location: 3h from Paris, 2h from Toulose, 30 minutes from the sea and 2hours from the Pyreness mountains. It has very good travel connections with fast trains and international flights including low-cost companies. Interested candidates should send a detailed CV, and email addresses of three references to Manuel Lopes at manuel.lopes(a)inria.fr . Review of applications will continue until the position is filled. Desired starting date is 1 of November 2015. http://flowers.inria.fr http://3rdhandrobot.eu/ http://www.inria.fr http://www.bordeaux.fr/ --------------------------------------------------------------- Manuel Lopes - Researcher flowers.inria.fr/mlopes FLOWERS team Phone: +33524574179 INRIA Bordeaux Sud-Ouest, Bat. A29 351 Cours de la Libération 33405 Talence, Cedex, France ---------------------------------------------------------------

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MSc program in Neural Systems and Computation - University of Zurich and ETH Zurich
by Michael Pfeiffer Aug. 17, 2015

Aug. 17, 2015

We are inviting applications for the MSc program in Neural Systems and Computation, an interdisciplinary program offered as a Joint Master Program by the University of Zurich and ETH Zurich, Switzerland. The program offers a theoretical and laboratory training in neural computation and systems neuroscience. It offers hands-on knowledge of data gathering, analysis and scientific presentation. Students join an international and interdisciplinary research community with expertise in neuroinformatics, advanced experimental techniques and neuromorphic engineering. Further information can be found on our homepage http://www.nsc.uzh.ch. We offer a specialized full-time Masters program open to students with a Bachelor’s degree in the following disciplines: neurosciences, information technology, electrical engineering, biology, physics, computer sciences, chemistry, mathematics, and mechanical/chemical/control engineering. The core courses (all offered in English) provide a common foundation for students with different educational backgrounds, and cover the following: 1. Systems Neurosciences 2. Neural Computation and Theoretical Neuroscience 3. Neurotechnologies and Neuromorphic Engineering The application deadline for students starting in Spring Semester 2016 is *September 15th 2015*. Details about the application process and required documents can be found here: http://www.nsc.uzh.ch/?page_id=10 Mentors of the program are Richard Hahnloser, Kevan Martin, Daniel Kiper, Giacomo Indiveri, Ruedi Stoop, Tobi Delbruck, Shih-Chii Liu, Klaas Enno Stephan, Fritjof Helmchen, Jean-Pascal Pfister, Fatih Yanik, Michael Pfeiffer, Matthew Cook, Valerio Mante, Arko Ghosh, and Wolfger von der Behrens. The program is affiliated with the Mathematics and Natural Sciences Faculty (MNF) at the University of Zurich (UZH) and the Information Technology and Electrical Engineering Department (D-ITET) of the ETH Zurich. All applications are handled by the University of Zurich. Application documents should be sent by email to nsc(a)ini.uzh.ch. Best regards, Michael Pfeiffer -- ========================================= Dr. Michael Pfeiffer Postdoc, Program coordinator NSC Institute of Neuroinformatics University of Zurich and ETH Zurich Winterthurerstrasse 190 CH-8057 Zurich, Switzerland Tel. +41 44 635 30 45 Fax +41 44 635 30 53 pfeiffer (at) ini.phys.ethz.ch http://www.ini.uzh.ch/~pfeiffer/ =========================================

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Update 1: 2016 IEEE World Congress on Computational Intelligence
by IEEE WCCI 2016 Aug. 17, 2015

Aug. 17, 2015

Dear Colleagues, Below please find some updated information about 2016 IEEE World Congress on Computational Intelligence (IEEE WCCI 2016). 2016 IEEE World Congress on Computational Intelligence Vancouver Convention Centre, Vancouver, Canada 25-29 July 2016 www.wcci2016.org-------~*******~----------- Call for Special Sessions -------~*******~----------- Special session proposals are invited to the 2016 IEEE WCCI. Special session proposals should include the title, aim and scope (including a list of main topics), and the names of the organizers of the special session, together with a short biography of all organizers. A list of potential contributors will be very helpful. All special sessions proposals should be submitted to the Special Sessions Chairs. Click here to know more about provisionally accepted IEEE WCCI 2016 special sessions ( http://www.wcci2016.org/spsessions.php) -----~*******~------ Speakers -----~*******~------ World renowned computer scientist and computational theorist, Chair Professor at Harvard University, 2010 Turing Award winner, Professor Leslie Valiant will deliver a Keynote at IEEE WCCI 2016. The 2016 IEEE Frank Rosenblatt Award winner, Professor Ronald R. Yager (IEEE Fellow), will receive his Award and deliver a Keynote at IEEE WCCI 2016. ---------------~*******~------------------- Indexing of Conference Proceedings ---------------~*******~------------------- The IEEE WCCI conference proceedings (including previous IJCNN, FUZZ-IEEE and CEC) have been included in the IEEE Xplore and traditionally indexed by other important databases, such as Web of Knowledge ISI Thomson, SCOPUS, EI, etc. --------~****~-------- Venue Information --------~****~-------- Pinnacle Vancouver Harbourfront Hotel and Vancouver Marriot Pinnacle Downtown are the IEEE WCCI 2016 designated congress hotels. Special congress room rates are avaiable now. Make your reservations early to enjoy these special room rates (http://www.wcci2016.org/venue.php) -------~****~------- Important Dates -------~****~------- - Special Session & Workshop Proposals Deadline: 15 November 2015 - Competition & Tutorial Proposals Deadline: 15 December 2015 - *Paper Submission Deadline: 15 January 2016* - Paper Acceptance Notification Date: 15 March 2016 - Final Paper Submission & Early Registration Deadline: 15 April 2016 - IEEE WCCI 2016: 25-29 July 2016 For more information on the congress, please visit: www.wcci2016.org *Alternatively we can also be reached on the following social media platforms:* - https://www.facebook.com/WCCI2016; - https://twitter.com/wcci2016; - http://www.weibo.com/wcci2016; - http://t.qq.com/wcci2016 We look forward to welcoming you in Vancouver next year! Best wishes, KC Tan and Gary G. Yen 2016 IEEE WCCI General Co-Chairs

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High performance computing workshop at SFN 2015 Annual Meeting
by Ted Carnevale Aug. 17, 2015

Aug. 17, 2015

What: This workshop is intended for neuroscientists who are engaged in computationally intensive tasks such as large modeling projects or analysis of neuroimaging data. With support from NSF, we are developing and expanding the Neuroscience Gateway Portal (NSG, http://www.nsgportal.org/) which eliminates most administrative and technical barriers involved in using high performance computing (HPC) resources. NSG offers free computing time and has a simple user interface so you can focus on productive research. Software currently installed includes the Freesurfer Software Suite, the Virtual Brain Empirical Data Pipeline (Schirner et al., 2015), and simulators such as Brian, MOOSE, GENESIS3, NEST, NEURON, and PyNN. This workshop will combine didactic presentations by NSG's developers, discussions with experienced users, and hands on instruction in how to use the portal. Where: Downtown Chicago, site TBA. When: 9AM - Noon on Saturday, October 17, 2015. Speakers: Amit Majumdar, Subha Sivagnanam, Padraig Gleeson, Simon Rothmeier, Ted Carnevale Registration deadline: Friday, October 2, 2015 For more information see http://www.neuron.yale.edu/neuron/static/courses/nsg2015/nsg2015.html or contact Ted Carnevale [ted dot carnevale at yale dot edu] or Amit Majumdar [majumdar at sdsc dot edu] References: Schirner, M., Rothmeier, S., Jirsa, V.K., McIntosh, A.R., Ritter, P.. An automated pipeline for constructing personalized virtual brains from multimodal neuroimaging data. Neuroimage 117:343-357, 2015.

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Call for Papers: 7th International Conference on Brain Inspired Cognitive Systems (BICS), 11-13 Dec 2015, Hefei, China
by Dr Amir Hussain Aug. 16, 2015

Aug. 16, 2015

BICS'2015 Call for Papers (with journal ONLY conference proceedings - see details below!) With apologies for any cross-postings, please help circulate this CFP to friends and colleagues. Thank you in advance. BICS'2015 CFP website: http://www.cs.stir.ac.uk/events/bics2015/cfp_e.html (ALL papers accepted (after a rigorous peer-review process) for presentation at the Conference will be published in the leading ISI-SCI indexed Springer journal: Cognitive Computation (http://springer.com/12559) as a multi-part Special Issue! - for more details, see the conference website, and below) Introduction to BICS'2015: The seventh 2015 International Conference on Brain Inspired Cognitive Systems (BICS 2015) will be held on December 11-13, 2015, in Hefei, Anhui, China, as a sequel of BICS 2004 - 2013. The first BICS 2004 was held in Stirling, Scotland, UK and the last BICS 2013 was held in Beijing, China, 9-13 June 2013 (http://www.conference123.org/bics2013/) The aim of BICS 2015 is to provide a high-level international forum for scientists, engineers, and educators to present the state-of-the-art of brain inspired cognitive systems research and applications in diverse fields. The conference will feature plenary lectures given by world renowned scholars, regular sessions with broad coverage, and special sessions focusing on popular and timely topics. Proceedings Information: BICS 2015 will be unique in that there will be no conference proceedings. ALL accepted papers will be published (following a rigorous peer review process) in the leading ISI-SCI indexed Springer journal: Cognitive Computation (http://springer.com/12559) as a multi-part Special Issue. Conference Location The conference will be held in Anhui University in Hefei, China. Hefei, formerly known as Hofei, Luzhou, or Luchow, is the capital and largest city of Anhui Province in Eastern China. Hefei Xinqiao International Airport provides scheduled passenger service to major airports in China and international cities as well. Hefei plays an important role in scientific research in China. It has seven national laboratories, second only to Beijing. We would be delighted to welcome you to Hefei in December. For more details on the venue, including travel information, see: http://www.cs.stir.ac.uk/events/bics2015/venue_e.html Important Dates Full paper submission: 15 September 2015 First notification: 31 October 2015 Conference Dates: 11-13 December 2015 Revised/final manuscripts due: 31 December 2015 BICS'2015 Issue Publication Date: early 2016 Paper Submission: All prospective authors are invited to submit full-length papers (10-15 pages maximum) through the online Springer submission system (selecting the BICS2015 Special Issue), with a covering letter indicating the paper is being submitted for BICS'2015 (hhttp://www.editorialmanager.com/cogn/ <http://www.editorialmanager.com/cogn/>) - please indicate the relevant BICS Symposium name (see topics list on the Conference website). The submission of a paper implies that the paper is original and has not been submitted under review or copyright protected elsewhere. The authors of accepted papers will have an opportunity to revise their papers. If the paper is accepted, at least one of the authors listed on the paper (or his/her representative) must attend the conference and present the paper. On behalf of: BICS'2015 General co-Chairs: Professor Amir Hussain (University of Stirling, Scotland, UK) and Professor Bin Luo (Anhui University, China) and BICS'2015 Organizing Committee ( http://www.cs.stir.ac.uk/events/bics2015/committee_e.html ) For any enquiries, please email: ahu(a)cs.stir.ac.uk or luobin(a)ahu.edu.cn -- The University is ranked in the QS World Rankings of the top 5% of universities in the world (QS World University Rankings, 2014) The University of Stirling is a charity registered in Scotland, number SC 011159.

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