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[publication and call for dialog] IEEE CIS Newsletter on Autonomous Mental Development, Spring 2015
by Pierre-Yves Oudeyer July 31, 2015

July 31, 2015

Dear colleagues, I am happy to announce the release of the latest issue of the IEEE CIS Newsletter on Autonomous Mental Development (open access). This is the biannual newsletter of the computational developmental sciences and developmental robotics community, studying mechanisms of lifelong learning and development in machines and humans. It is available at: https://flowers.inria.fr/AMDNL-V12-N1.pdf Featuring dialog: === “Will social robots need to be consciously aware?” === Dialog Initiated by Janet Wiles, with responses from Axel Cleeremans, Yasuko Kitano, Cornelius Weber and Stefan Wermter, Justin Hart and Brian Scassellati, Juyang Weng, Guy Hoffman and Moran Cerf. Several dimensions of the question stand out. First, as we are very far from understanding what “consciousness” is, it appears that building robots capable of various forms of self- and other- awareness, and importantly how they can develop progressively these capabilities, can be very useful in the quest to unveil the underlying mechanisms. Second, as consciousness is a multiscale complex systems, multiple approaches and perspectives need to be taken in this process of robot building. Third, when one looks at applications, it is the function, and not the nature, of consciousness which becomes the relevant angle of analysis, and several ethical questions arise. Call for new dialog: === "Representational redescription: the next challenge?" === New dialog initiated by Stéphane Doncieux It has long been known in AI that having a good representation is key for machines to solve complex problems. However, so far good representations have been pre-programmed by engineers. What technical approaches could we imagine to allow machines to select, and even more important to find, new spaces of representations? Are techniques like deep learning general enough for realising such a challenge for lifelong learning robots? Do we need other approaches such as Darwinian mechanisms operating in the brain, like in neural Darwinism? Those of you interested in reacting to this dialogue initiation are welcome to submit a response by October 30th, 2015. length of each response must be between 600 and 800 words including references (contact pierre-yves.oudeyer(a)inria.fr) You will also find news about the latest activities of the AMD Technical Committee and the ICDL-Epirob 2015 conference, and a call for candidates to become the new editor of the newsletter. As I have been editor of the newsletter for around 8 years, and I have now the AMD TC Chair duty, it is now time for other ideas and energies to take the lead of the newsletter. I take this opportunity to thank Fabien Benureau for his help as editorial assistant. Let me remind you that previous issues of the newsletter are all open-access and available at: http://www.cse.msu.edu/amdtc/amdnl/ I wish you a stimulating reading! Best regards, Pierre-Yves Oudeyer, Editor of the IEEE CIS Newsletter on Autonomous Mental Development Chair of the IEEE CIS AMD Technical Committee on AMD Research director, Inria Head of Flower project-team Inria and Ensta ParisTech, France http://www.pyoudeyer.com https://flowers.inria.fr http://www.poppy-project.org

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Call for participation: SASO'15, 21-25 September, MIT, Cambridge, Massachusetts
by F. Armetta July 29, 2015

July 29, 2015

(Please accept our apologies if you receive multiple copies of this call) ***************************************************************************************** CALL FOR PARTICIPATION The Ninth IEEE International Conference on Self-Adaptive and Self-Organizing Systems (SASO 2015) MIT, Cambridge, Massachusetts; 21-25 September 2015 https://saso2015.mit.edu/ Part of FAS* -- Foundation and Applications of Self-* Computing Conferences Co-located with: The International Conference on Cloud and Autonomic Computing (CAC 2015) The 15th IEEE Peer-to-Peer Computing Conference (P2P 2015) ***************************************************************************************** GREATLY REDUCED HOTEL RATES AVAILABLE TILL AUGUST 21! The 2015 edition of the SASO conference series will be held in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and hosted by MIT in the week of September 21 to September 25, 2015. The aim of the Self-Adaptive and Self-Organizing systems conference series (SASO) is to provide a forum for the foundations of a principled approach to engineering systems, networks and services based on self-adaptation and self-organization. The ninth edition of the SASO conference embraces the inter-disciplinarity and the scientific, empirical and application dimensions of self-* systems; it thus aims to attract participants with different backgrounds, to foster cross-pollination between research fields, and to expose and discuss innovative theories, design principles, frameworks, methodologies, tools, and applications. -------------------- Registration -------------------- The Early Registration deadline is September 4, 2015. Deadline for reduced hotel rates is August 21, 2015. Registration is available at: https://saso2015.mit.edu/registration A single registration fee includes access to the main conference, tutorials, workshops, and the doctoral symposium. Moreover, it includes a conference kit with electronic proceedings, all coffee breaks, lunches, free entrance to the Welcome Reception and Conference Dinner. -------------------- Technical Program -------------------- We are happy to announce that we will be able to offer six keynotes together with CAC and P2P, including among others: * Albert-László Barabási, Center for Complex Network Research - Barabási Lab, Northeastern University Physics Department * Yang-Yu Liu, Harvard Medical School * Azer Bestavros, Boston University * Ozalp Babaoglu, University of Bologna. Full papers: * An Approach to Robust Resource Allocation in Large-Scale Systems of Systems * Multi-satellite mission planning using a self-adaptive multi-agent system * Distributed Recovery for Enterprise Services * Self-organising Zooms for Decentralised Redundancy Management in Visual Sensor Networks * Active Learning for Efficient Sampling of Control Models of Collectives * Distributed Current Flow Betweenness Centrality * Multi-agent Self-organization and Reorganization to Adapt M2M Infrastructures * Darwin in Smart Power Grids - Evolutionary Game Theory for Analyzing Self-Organization in Demand-Side Aggregation * A Generic Social Capital Framework for Optimising Self-Organised Collective Action * Foraging-inspired Self-organisation for Terrain Exploration with Failure-prone Agents * Efficient Engineering of Complex Self-Organizing Systems by Self-Stabilising Fields * PeerMatcher: Decentralized Partnership Formation * Combining Conflicting Environmental and Task Requirements in Evolutionary Robotics * Self-managed sensor network scheduling using Bayesian dynamic linear models Short papers: * A Mutual Influence Detection Algorithm for Systems with Local Performance Measurement * Value-Sensitive Design of Self-Organisation * Ashbian homeostasis as non-autonomous adaptation * Reciprocal Agents for Self-Organization in Large-Scale Allocation Problems Posters: * Social Amoeba Dictyostelium Discoideum As an Inspiration for Swarm Robotics * Creating Complex Applications Via Self-Adapting Autonomous Agents in an Intelligent System Framework * Self-directed weight management by feedback from a self-adaptive metabolic health monitoring system * Cyber-Physical-Social System Self-Organization: Ontology-Based Multi-Level Approach and Case Study * Citizen-driven flood mapping in Jakarta - A self-organising socio-technical system * Hierarchical Service-Oriented Architecture for Development of Autonomic Systems * Sustainable Safety in Mobile Multi-Robot Systems via Collective Adaptation * Towards a spatial language for run-time assessments in self-organizing systems Demo: * Towards Self-Adaptation on Real-World Hardware: a Preliminary Lightweight Programming Framework In addition, six workshops are planned to be available to conference attendees free of charge: * 3rd Workshop on Fundamentals of Collective Adaptive Systems (FoCAS) http://focas.eu/saso-2015/ * 2nd Workshop on Quality Assurance for Self-Adaptive, Self-Organising Systems (QA4SASO) http://qa4saso.isse.de * 1st Workshop on Spatial and COllective PErvasive Computing Systems (SCOPES) http://www.spatial-computing.org/scopes * 9th Workshop on Dynamic Software Product Lines (DSPL) http://www.lero.ie/dspl2015 * Workshop on Diagnosing, Reacting, Evading And Manoeuvring (DREAM) http://www.dollabs.com/saso2015ahansdreamworkshop * 3rd Workshop on Self-Adaptive and Self-Organising Socio-Technical Systems (SASO^ST) http://sasost.isse.de Several tutorials, including: * "Enabling Software-Defined Federations using CometCloud". Organizers: Javier Diaz-Montes, Manish Parashar (Rutgers University) * "Fundamentals of Autonomic Cloud Security". Organizer: Salim Hariri (University of Arizona) Doctoral symposium, including research ideas on: * Cross layer Anomaly based intrusion detection system * Testing Self-Organizing, Adaptive Systems * Incentive Mechanisms for Social Computing * Quality trade-offs in self-protecting systems * Network Attack Detection and Mitigation * Multi-Agent Collaboration in Distributed Self-Adaptive Systems * Keynote by Dr. Jeremy Pitt (Imperial College London): "How To Get a PhD in Self-Organizing Systems" The detailed program of scientific papers and posters is available at: https://saso2015.mit.edu/accepted-papers -------------------- Social events -------------------- Welcome Reception at the MIT Museum (Tuesday) http://web.mit.edu/museum/ Dinner Cruise in Boston Bay (Wednesday) -------------------- Venue and accommodation -------------------- The conference will take place at the Boston Marriott Cambridge Hotel at the edge of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. There are special rates available for participants. For more information, please refer to http://saso2015.mit.edu/venue Greatly reduced rates for rooms at the conference hotel are available until August 21. Details are available at http://saso2015.mit.edu/venue Hotels near the venue may be found at the MIT Institute Events site: http://web.mit.edu/institute-events/visitor/stay.html --------------------- Organisation --------------------- General Chairs Howard E Shrobe, MIT CSAIL, Cambridge, MA, USA Julie A McCann, Imperial College London, UK Programme Chairs Gregory Sullivan, Draper Labs, Cambridge, MA, USA Emma Hart, Director CEC, Edingurgh Napier University, Edinburgh, Scotland Jan-Philipp Steghöfer, University of Gothenburg and Chalmers Technical University, Gothenburg, Sweden Local Arrangements Chair Paul Robertson, Dynamic Object Labs, Lexington, MA, USA

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Four faculty positions in statistics and stochastics
by Robert Rosenbaum July 27, 2015

July 27, 2015

The Department of Applied and Computational Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Notre Dame is seeking applications for a total of four faculty positions, three in statistics and one in stochastics. Ideally, one of the statistics positions will be at the post-tenure level (associate or full professor) and the remainder will be tenure track (assistant professor). The department is highly supportive of collaborative and interdisciplinary research and encourages applications from computational neuroscientists. Feel free to contact me (Robert.Rosenbaum(a)nd.edu) with general questions about the department, etc. Applicants for the post-tenure job are invited to contact the chair, Andrew Sommese (sommese(a)nd.edu) For more information and to apply, see here for statistics: http://apply.interfolio.com/30595 and here for stochastics: http://apply.interfolio.com/30609 — Robert Rosenbaum Assistant Professor Department of Applied and Computational Mathematics and Statistics University of Notre Dame

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IEEE Computational Intelligence Magazine (CIM) Special Issue: “Model Complexity, Regularization and Sparsity”
by Giacomo Boracchi July 26, 2015

July 26, 2015

*Call for Papers* *IEEE Computational Intelligence Magazine* *Special Issue on “Model Complexity, Regularization and Sparsity”* http://home.deib.polimi.it/boracchi/events/ModelComplexity.html *Aims and Scope* The effective management of solution complexity is one of the most important issues in addressing Computational Intelligence problems. Regularization techniques control model complexity by taking advantage of some prior information regarding the problem at hand, represented as penalty expressions that impose these properties on the solution. Over the past few years, one of the most prominent and successful types of regularization has been based on the *sparsity* prior, which promotes solutions that can be expressed as a linear combination of a few atoms belonging to a *dictionary*. Sparsity can in some sense be considered a “measure of simplicity“ and, as such, is compatible with many nature-inspired principles of Computational Intelligence. Nowadays, sparsity has become one of the leading approaches for learning adaptive representations for both descriptive and discriminative tasks, and has been shown to be particularly effective when dealing with structured, complex and high-dimensional data. Regularization, including sparsity and other priors to control the model complexity, is often the key ingredient in the successful solution of difficult problems; it is therefore not surprising that these aspects have also recently gained a lot of attention in big-data processing, due to unprecedented challenges associated with the need to handle massive datastreams that are possibly high-dimensional and organized in complex structures. This special issue aims at presenting the most relevant regularization techniques and approaches to control model complexity in Computational Intelligence. Submissions of papers presenting regularization methods for Neural Networks, Evolutionary Computation or Fuzzy Systems, are welcome. Submissions of papers presenting advanced regularization techniques in specific, but relevant, application fields such as data/datastream-mining, classification, big-data analytics, image/signal analysis, natural-language processing, are also encouraged. *Topics of Interest* · Regularization methods for big and high-dimensional data; · Regularization methods for supervised and unsupervised learning; · Regularization methods for ill-posed problems in Computational Intelligence; · Techniques to control model complexity; · Sparse representations in Computational Intelligence; · Managing model complexity in data analytics; · Effective priors for solving Computational Intelligence problems; · Multiple prior integration; · Regularization in kernel methods and support vector machines. *Important Dates* · 22nd January, 2016: Submission of Manuscripts · 30th March, 2016: Notification of Review Results · 30th April, 2016: Submission of Revised Manuscripts · 15th June, 2016: Submission of Final Manuscripts · November, 2016: Special Issue Publication *Submission Process* The maximum length for the manuscript is typically 20 pages in single column with double-spacing, including figures and references. Authors of papers should specify in the first page of their manuscripts the corresponding author’s contact and up to 5 keywords. Additional information about submission guidelines and information for authors is provided at the IEEE CIM website. <http://cis.ieee.org/ieee-computational-intelligence-magazine/134-ieee-compu…> Submission instructions can be found at http://home.deib.polimi.it/boracchi/events/ModelComplexity.html <https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=ieeecim1116> *Guest Editors* *Prof. Cesare Alippi,* Dipartimento di Elettronica, Informazione e Biongegneria, Politecnico di Milano, via Ponzio 34/5, Milano, 20133, Italy email: cesare.alippi(a)polimi.it *Dr. Giacomo Boracchi*, Dipartimento di Elettronica, Informazione e Biongegneria, Politecnico di Milano, via Ponzio 34/5, Milano, 20133, Italy email: giacomo.boracchi(a)polimi.it *Dr. Brendt Wohlberg*, Theoretical Division, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos NM 87545, USA email: brendt(a)lanl.gov -- Giacomo Boracchi, PhD DEIB - Dipartimento di Elettronica, Informazione e Bioingegneria Politecnico di Milano Via Ponzio, 34/5 20133 Milano, Italy. Tel. +39 02 2399 3467 http://home.dei.polimi.it/boracchi/

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Special Issue on Applications of Operations Research in Neuroscience -- Deadline Extension to October 1.
by Ruben Tikidji-Hamburyan July 24, 2015

July 24, 2015

Dear Colleagues, [We apologize if you have received multiple copies of this message] We would like to draw your attention to the special volume on "Applications of Operations Research for Neuroscience" in the Annals of Operations Research. We cordially invite researchers in neuroscience who use operations research methods and related mathematical fields to contribute to this special issue. Recent technological and theoretical advances offer promising opportunities for better understanding of the nervous system at the quantitative level. New optogenetic, in vitro and in vivo multielectrode recording, neuroimaging, brain imaging, and other modern techniques provide high-quality data that can be used in elucidating the fundamental mechanisms of information processing in neural system. The rapidly growing pool of experimental data has triggered the development of new mathematical models, which can provide new insights into the functioning of the nervous system at various scales ranging from that of molecular biology to that of the organizational principles of behavior and cognition. Sophisticated analyses of intracellular signalling or dynamics in heterogeneous neural networks, conditional behavior or connections of brain regions in decision-making lead to theoretical problems addressed by operations research. The special volume will cover a broad range of topics in the field of neuroscience, which use operations research approaches and methods. Potential topics include, but are not limited to, the following areas of neuroscience: * intracellular signaling and regulation * synaptic plasticity * dynamics in heterogeneous neural networks * intelligent systems and control * perceptual, cognitive and behavioral functions * learning and memory * spatio-temporal network analysis * combinatorial optimization * signal and information processing * neuroimaging and functional brain imaging processing * computational modelling and simulation The use of methods from modern operations research is a prerequisite for any paper submitted to this special volume to enter the reviewing process. Extended submission deadline of full papers: October 1, 2015. Submission Details: The format of manuscripts for the Annals of Operations Research as well as guidelines can be found on the web page of Springer, the publisher of the journal: http://www.springer.com/business/operations+research/journal/10479 Authors should submit a cover letter mentioning that the paper is for a special volume, along with and a manuscript via the journal's online submission site: http://www.editorialmanager.com/anor More details can be found in the Call for Paper attached to this e-mail. Annals of Operations Research is abstracted and indexed in the following databases: Science Citation Index, Science Citation Index Expanded (SciSearch), Journal Citation Reports/Science Edition, SCOPUS, INSPEC, Zentralblatt Math, Google Scholar, EBSCO, CSA, ProQuest, ABS Academic Journal Quality Guide, Academic OneFile, Academic Search, Computer Abstracts International Database, Computer Science Index, CSA Environmental Sciences, Current Contents/Engineering, Computing and Technology, DBLP, ECONIS, Expanded Academic, International Abstracts in Operations Research, Mathematical Reviews, OCLC, SCImago, STMA-Z, Summon by ProQuest. Please consider sharing this call for papers with any researchers who might be interested in contributing. On behalf of special volume guest editors, Ruben Tikidji-Hamburyan ------- Ruben Tikidji-Hamburyan,Ph.D. Department of Cell Biology and Anatomy Health Sciences Center Louisiana State University New Orleans, LA, 70112

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Summerschool on Neurocomputational Models of Speech Processing in Aachen, Germany
by Kröger, Bernd Joachim July 24, 2015

July 24, 2015

Dear comp-neuro Please forward: Summerschool: Neurocomputational Models of Speech Processing 14th to 18th of September 2015 Topic: Constructing a Neurocomputational Model of Speech Processing Date: Starting 14th of September for one week Location: RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany Costs: Accomodation at RWTH Aachen University Guest House: round about 80€ (Single or Double) per day. Food: round about 30€ per day. Workshop is free. Accomodation and food will be arranged by Bernd Kröger www.SpeechTrainer.eu. Please contact bkroeger(a)ukaachen.de Next airport to Aachen, Germany: Duesseldorf International Airport, Germany Planned scedule: 1st day: 9-12am: Lecture (Bernd Kröger www.SpeechTrainer.eu) Introduction to Neurocomputational Models of Speech Production including learning szenarios occurring in speech acquisition. Afternoon 2-5pm: Discussion and computer exercises in NENGO www.nengo.ca or other neural processing toolboxes 2nd day: 9-12am: Lecture (Bernd Kröger www.SpeechTrainer.eu) Introduction to Neurocomputational Models of Speech Perception and Comprehension Afternoon 2-5pm: Discussion and Computer exercises in NENGO www.nengo.ca and other Neural Processing Toolboxes 3rd day: 9-12am: Lecture (Bernd Kröger www.SpeechTrainer.eu) Introduction to a physiological and acoustic model of speech production (www.VocalTractLab.de) Afternoon 2-5pm: How to integrate VocalTractLab into an Neurocomputational Model of Speech Processing 4th and 5th day: 9am-5pm: Programming exercises and introduction to available speech data bases) Summerschool takes place with more than 5 üarticipants -- Prof. Dr. Bernd J. Kröger Department of Phoniatrics, Pedaudiology, and Communication Disorders Medical School, RWTH Aachen University, Pauwelsstraße 30, D-52074 Aachen, Germany Email: bernd.kroeger(a)rwth-aachen.de Homepage: www.speechtrainer.eu

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Postdoc and graduate student positions in computational neuroscience and machine learning
by Jakob Macke July 24, 2015

July 24, 2015

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[Last CFP] Extended paper submission deadline to August 16 2015
by Teng Teck Hou July 24, 2015

July 24, 2015

(We apologize for multiples copies) - Please distribute this CFP among your colleagues and students IEEE Conference on Evolving and Adaptive Intelligence Systems - EAIS 2015 Douai, France, December 13, 2015 http://conference.mines-douai.fr/eais2015/ The paper submission deadline is extended to August 16, 2015 (Hard deadline, no more extension) * IMPORTANT DATES * ---------------------------------------------------------------- Paper Submission Due: Extended to August 16, 2015 (Hard deadline, no more extension) Notification of Acceptance: October 1st, 2015 Camera-Ready Papers Due: November 1st, 2015 Registration Deadline: November 1st, 2015 All accepted papers will be published in the conference Proceedings and submitted to IEEE for inclusion to IEEE Xplore. Authors of selected papers will be invited to submit extended versions for possible inclusion in a special issue of the journal Evolving Systems (Springer). It is our pleasure to announce the two keynotes "Real Time Data Mining" and "Active online learning". The social program includes a visit to the prestigious museum of Le Louvre-Lens. A tour will be organized in "La Grande Galerie" exhibition space where you could discover some of the greatest masterpieces and the greatest artists of the Louvre museum. In addition, you will have the opportunity to enjoy the hospitality and cultural heritage of Douai (City town belfry historical building designated by UNESCO as World Heritage Site, the Chartreuse museum, the Northern French Cuisine ). * CONTEXT * ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- IEEE EAIS 2015 will be held in Douai, a beautiful city located in the north of France close to Brussels and Paris. IEEE EAIS 2015 will provide a friendly atmosphere and will be a leading international forum focusing on the discussion of recent advances, the exchange of recent innovations, and the outline of open important future challenges in the area of Evolving and Adaptive Intelligent Systems. Over the past decade, this area has emerged to play an important role on a broad international level in todays real-world applications, especially those ones with high complexity and dynamics change. Its embedded modeling and learning methodologies are able to cope with real-time demands, changing operation conditions, varying environmental influences, human behaviors, knowledge expansion scenarios, and drifts in on-line data streams. EAIS 2015 is an IEEE sponsored conference which is organized by the IEEE Technical Committee on Evolving and Adaptive Intelligent Systems, SMC Society. EAIS conference series has a history starting in 2006 in Lake District, England. It was held after that in Germany, USA, France, Spain, Singapore and Austria. Authors of accepted papers will be invited to submit extended versions for a possible inclusion in a special issue of the journal Evolving Systems (Springer). * AREAS OF INTEREST * ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- Areas of interest include, but are not limited to: Basic Methodologies Evolving Soft Computing Techniques Evolving Fuzzy Systems Evolving Rule-Based Classifiers Evolving Neuro-Fuzzy Systems Adaptive Evolving Neural Networks On-line Genetic and Evolutionary Algorithms Data Stream Mining Incremental and Evolving Clustering Approaches Adaptive Pattern Recognition Incremental and Evolving ML Classifiers Adaptive Statistical Techniques Evolving Decision Systems Advanced Concepts Drifts and Shifts in Data Streams Stability, Robustness, Convergence in Evolving Systems On-line Feature Selection and Dimension Reduction On-line Active and Semi-supervised Learning On-line Complexity Reduction Computational Aspects Interpretability Issues Incremental Adaptive Ensemble Methods On-line Bagging and Boosting Self-monitoring Evolving Systems Human-Machine Interaction Issues Hybrid Modeling Transfer Learning Reservoir Computing Real-world Applications EIS for On-Line Modeling and System Identification EIS for Time Series Prediction EIS for Data Stream Mining and Adaptive Knowledge Discovery EIS in Robotics, Intelligent Transport and Advanced Manufacturing EIS in Advanced Communications and Multi-Media Applications EIS in Bioinformatics and Medicine EIS in On-line Quality Control and Fault Diagnosis EIS in Condition Monitoring Systems EIS in Adaptive Evolving Controller Design EIS in User Activities Recognition EIS in Huge Database and Web Mining EIS in Visual Inspection and Image Classification EIS in Cloud Computing EIS in Multiple Sensor Networks EIS in Query Systems and Social Networks * SUBMISSION REQUIREMENTS * --------------------------------------------------- Full papers - max. 8 pages IEEE style (double-column). Short Papers - max. 4 pages IEEE style (double-column). * INTERNATIONAL PROGRAMME COMMITTEE * ------------------------------------------------------------------ Plamen Angelov, Lancaster University, UK Dimitar Filev, Ford Motor Co., USA Nikola Kasabov, AUT, New Zealand * ORGANIZING PROGRAMME COMMITTEE * ------------------------------------------------------------ Chair: Moamar Sayed-Mouchaweh, Mines Douai, Institut Mines-Télécom, France Co-chair: Stéphane Lecoeuche, Mines Douai, Institut Mines-Télécom, France Publication Chairs: José A. Iglesias, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain Edwin Lughofer, Johannes Kepler University of Linz, Austria Local Arrangement Chair: Anthony Fleury, Mines Douai, Institut Mines-Télécom, France Muriel Morgan, Mines Douai, Institut Mines-Télécom, France Web & Publicity Chairs: Teck-Hou Teng, School of Computer Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore Mihaly Petreczky, Mines Douai, Institut Mines-Télécom, France Vincent Lecocq, Mines Douai, Institut Mines-Télécom, France Houari * SPONSORED BY * ------------------------------------------------------------------------- IEEE Systems, Man & Cybernetics Society. * ORGANIZED BY * ------------------------------------------------------------------------- IEEE Systems, Man & Cybernetics Society Technical Committee on Evolving Intelligent Systems Ecole des Mines de Douai, Département Informatique et Automatique, France ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------

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CARLsim 3.0.2 released
by Michael Beyeler July 23, 2015

July 23, 2015

Dear colleagues, Many of you may be interested in our latest software release of the CARLsim simulator. CARLsim is an efficient, easy-to-use, GPU-accelerated library for simulating large-scale spiking neural network (SNN) models with a high degree of biological detail. Software and documentation can be found at: http://www.socsci.uci.edu/~jkrichma/CARLsim This release is in conjunction with our latest publications, which highlight CARLsim’s latest features. * Beyeler, M., Carlson, K.D., Chou, T.S., Krichmar, J.L., Dutt, N., (2015) CARLsim 3: A User-Friendly and Highly Optimized Library for the Creation of Neurobiologically Detailed Spiking Neural Networks. Paper presented at: International Joint Conference on Neural Networks (Killarney, Ireland). * Beyeler, M., Richert, M., Dutt, N.D., and Krichmar, J.L. (2014). Efficient Spiking Neural Network Model of Pattern Motion Selectivity in Visual Cortex. Neuroinformatics. * Carlson, K.D., Nageswaran, J.M., Dutt, N., and Krichmar, J.L. (2014). An efficient automated parameter tuning framework for spiking neural networks. Frontiers in Neuroscience 8. * Carlson, K.D., Richert, M., Dutt, N., and Krichmar, J.L. (2013). Biologically Plausible Models of Homeostasis and STDP: Stability and Learning in Spiking Neural Networks. Paper presented at: International Joint Conference on Neural Networks (Dallas, TX). If you have recently used CARLsim in one of your scientific publications, let us know so that we can add your paper to the list. CARLsim 3.0.2 Release Highlights --------------------------------------------- * improved platform compatibility (Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows) * real-time and offline data analysis tools * an automated parameter tuning interface that utilizes evolutionary algorithms to construct functional SNNs * an expanded STDP implementation, which includes dopaminergic neuromodulation * an exhaustive User Guide and Tutorials * much improved code base, which includes a test suite for functional code verification Best regards from the CARLsim team, Michael Beyeler Kristofor Carlson Ting-Shuo Chou Nikil Dutt Jeff Krichmar -- Michael Beyeler Ph.D. Candidate Cognitive Anteater Robotics Lab (CARL) 2236 Cognitive & Behavioral Science Gateway University of California, Irvine Irvine, CA 92697-5100, USA http://sites.uci.edu/mbeyeler

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PhD position announcement in computational neuroscience
by Mike X Cohen July 22, 2015

July 22, 2015

Mike X Cohen and Paul Tiesinga are searching for a PhD Candidate to work on a project entitled “Midfrontal Cortex Theta Oscillations: Causes and Consequences”. This project is funded by the European Research Council and is hosted by the Donders Centre for Neuroscience. Theta-band oscillations (~6 Hz) in the medial prefrontal cortex are a signature of several important cognitive functions, including behaviour monitoring, action adjustments and feedback-driven learning. Although this consistent finding has emerged in several species including humans, monkeys, and rats, little is known about the microcircuits in the medial prefrontal cortex that generate theta oscillations and the role of those oscillations in the neural computations underlying cognitive control functions. In this project, we aim to gain more insight into these processes by employing biophysically-informed computational models to simulate the genesis and significance of midfrontal theta for coordinating local and long-range network dynamics. Empirical experiments in humans and rodents may be incorporated into the research in order to test/refine the models. Please see http://www.ru.nl/overons/werken-radboud/details/details_vacature_0/?recid=5… for additional details. -- Mike X Cohen, PhD mikexcohen.com

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Bernstein Conference: Early registration ends on July 24, 2015
by Seeger, Simone July 22, 2015

July 22, 2015

BERNSTEIN CONFERENCE 2015 in Heidelberg Early registration ends on July 24, 2015! Please register here<https://mi3.lambdalogic.de/forms/Bernstein2015.do>. *************************************************************************** Satellite Workshops<http://www.nncn.de/en/bernstein-conference/2015/satellite-workshops> September 14, 2015 Main Conference<http://www.nncn.de/en/bernstein-conference/2015/program> September 15-17, 2015 *************************************************************************** The Bernstein Conference has become the largest annual Computational Neuroscience Conference in Europe and now regularly attracts more than 500 international participants. This year, the Conference is organized by the Bernstein Center Heidelberg-Mannheim and will take place in Heidelberg on September 15-17, 2015. In addition, there will be a series of pre-conference satellite workshops on September 14, 2015. The Bernstein Conference is a single-track conference, covering all aspects of Computational Neuroscience and Neurotechnology, and sessions for poster presentations are an integral part of the conference. The Bernstein conference will also feature a series of satellite workshops on September 14, 2015. The goal is to provide an informal forum for the discussion of timely research questions and challenges. For more information on the conference, please visit: http://www.bernstein-conference.de<https://mail.zi-mannheim.de/OWA/redir.aspx?C=mYOXLQcyKEWWGs2ITdwALYoLj0aoVt…> CONFERENCE DATE AND VENUE: Satellite Workshops September 14, 2015 Main Conference September 15-17, 2015 Venue: Neue Universität, Grabengasse 3-5, 69117 Heidelberg, Germany PHD STUDENT EVENT: September 17-18, 2015 ORGANIZING COMMITTEE: Peter Bastian Andreas Draguhn Daniel Durstewitz Martin Gerchen Joachim Hass Elke Jochum Peter Kirsch Andreas Meyer-Lindenberg Christoph Schuster Simone Seeger We look forward to seeing you in Heidelberg in September! *** Simone Seeger, M.A. Administration Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience Zentralinstitut für Seelische Gesundheit Postfach 12 21 20, 68072 Mannheim J5, 68159 Mannheim Telefon: 0621/1703-1326 oder 06221/54-8310 Fax: 0621/1703-2915 E-Mail: Simone.Seeger(a)zi-mannheim.de<mailto:Simone.Seeger@zi-mannheim.de> Internet: http://www.bccn-heidelberg-mannheim.de<http://www.bccn-heidelberg-mannheim.de/>

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CFP: ICDM Workshop HealthMining 2015 and HISS Special Issue (Deadline extended: Aug 3, 2015)
by william July 21, 2015

July 21, 2015

[Please accept our apologies if you receive multiple copies of this email] CALL FOR PAPERS (Submission Deadline Extended: >>>Aug 3<<<, 2015) HEALTHMINING 2015 - The ICDM Workshop on Data Mining and Decision Analytics on Public Health and Wellness (URL: http://www.comp.hkbu.edu.hk/~healthmining2015/) In conjunction with the IEEE International Conference on Data Mining (ICDM 2015) >>> SPECIAL ISSUE <<< Selected papers of the workshop will be invited for revision to be included in a special issue to be published in Health Information Science and Systems (URL: http://www.hissjournal.com/) AIMS and SCOPE For many years, data mining and decision analytics techniques have already been extensively applied to various domains, such as smart environments, social networks, marketing, and web technology. The focus of this workshop is mainly on the issues and challenges of data mining techniques with the purpose of improving human well-being and quality of life. It is expected that the workshop may increase the diversity of application areas that can benefit from data mining. At the same time, it is also desirable that the discussion and vision of this workshop would also offer further insights into, as well as new tools for, the issues of data collection, processing, system modeling, simulation and optimization arising from various public health topics. The objective of this workshop is to serve as a venue for researchers to discuss how data mining and analytics methods can contribute to improving public health quality in clinical, medical/biomedical, and healthcare systems in smart ways, including evidence-based medicine, personalized treatment and healthcare, assistive technology and active surveillance and control of diseases. In addition to mining statistical regularities, associations, or causalities from large-scale health-related datasets, it would be more desirable to further investigate how the results can effectively and efficiently support decision-making, system modeling, optimization, and simulation in various healthcare systems. TOPICS OF INTEREST - Large-scale data acquisition and management issues for public health - Social and other network-based analysis for public health - Medical big data mining and innovative applications - Mining risk patterns in medical data - Mental and physical health data integration - Biomarker discovery and biomedical data mining - Clinical data mining for practice knowledge building - Data mining from clinical decision-making, and practitioner reflection - Data mining from genetic data of diseases - Data mining for disease profiling and personalized treatment - Data mining for (active) syndromic surveillance - Data mining for infectious/chronic disease epidemiology and control - Data mining for exploring hidden patterns in clinical systems - Data mining for medical/biomedical, and healthcare systems - Data mining for assistive environments - Data modeling and information management forpervasive assistive environments - Data mining and knowledge modeling for wellness - Spatiotemporal data exploration and mining of diseases - Unstructured data mining in medicine and healthcare - Semantic data mining in medicine and healthcare - Scalable data integration in medicine and healthcare - Evidence-based decision-support systems - Healthcare knowledge abstraction, classification, and summarization - Healthcare knowledge computerization, execution, inference, and representation IMPORTANT DATES - Paper Submission Due: >>>Aug 3<<<, 2015 - Paper Notification Date: Sep 1, 2015 - Workshop Date: Nov 13, 2015 ORGANIZING COMMITTEE - William K. Cheung, Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong - Jiming Liu, Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong - Parisa Rashidi, University of Florida, USA - Fei Wang, University of Connecticut, USA Department of Computer Science: http://www.comp.hkbu.edu.hk HKBU Faculty of Science: http://www.sci.hkbu.edu.hk Disclaimer: http://www.comp.hkbu.edu.hk/disclaimer

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Journal of Mathematical Neuroscience - recent articles
by Stephen Coombes July 20, 2015

July 20, 2015

Dear all, The Journal of Mathematical Neuroscience publishes research articles on the mathematical modeling and analysis of all areas of neuroscience. The current list of journal articles is available at http://www.mathematical-neuroscience.com/ : Conditions for Multi-functionality in a Rhythm Generating Network Inspired by Turtle Scratching Snyder AC and Rubin JE http://www.mathematical-neuroscience.com/content/5/1/15 The Minimal k-Core Problem for Modeling k-Assemblies Wood CI and Hicks IV http://www.mathematical-neuroscience.com/content/5/1/14 Stochastic Synchronization in Purkinje Cells with Feedforward Inhibition Could Be Studied with Equivalent Phase-Response Curves Verduzco-Flores S http://www.mathematical-neuroscience.com/content/5/1/13 Orientation Maps in V1 and Non-Euclidean Geometry Afgoustidis A http://www.mathematical-neuroscience.com/content/5/1/12 On the Effects on Cortical Spontaneous Activity of the Symmetries of the Network of Pinwheels in Visual Area V1 Veltz R, Chossat P and Faugeras O http://www.mathematical-neuroscience.com/content/5/1/11 and see also the recent Special Issue on Stochastic Network Models in Neuroscience http://www.mathematical-neuroscience.com/series/SNMN<http://www.mathematical-neuroscience.com/series/UB> All articles are Open Access. Best regards, Steve ------------------------------------------------------- Stephen Coombes Professor of Applied Mathematics School of Mathematical Sciences Nottingham, UK Tel: 0115 846 7836 http://www.maths.nott.ac.uk/~sc/ ------------------------------------------------------- This message and any attachment are intended solely for the addressee and may contain confidential information. If you have received this message in error, please send it back to me, and immediately delete it. Please do not use, copy or disclose the information contained in this message or in any attachment. Any views or opinions expressed by the author of this email do not necessarily reflect the views of the University of Nottingham. This message has been checked for viruses but the contents of an attachment may still contain software viruses which could damage your computer system, you are advised to perform your own checks. Email communications with the University of Nottingham may be monitored as permitted by UK legislation.

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WORKHOP Nonlinear Dynamics in Computational Neuroscience, Turin 7-9 sept 2015
by Alessandro Torcini July 19, 2015

July 19, 2015

Deadline 30th August: Nonlinear Dynamics in Computational Neuroscience: from Physics and Biology to ICT to be held on September 07-09, 2015 in Turin, Italy Organizers: Fernando Corinto (Politecnico di Torino, Turin, Italy) and Alessandro Torcini (ISC-CNR, Florence, Italy) More information on the workshop can be found in the web page: http://www.neuro-eng-comp.polito.it/workshop/ Confirmed invited speakers include Cristina Becchio (University of Turin, Italy) Ruben Moreno Bote (CIBERSAM - Barcelona, Spain) George Bourianov (Intel/University of Texas at Austin, USA) Emilio Carbone (University of Turin, Italy) Stephen Coombes (University of Nottingham, UK) Steve Furber (The University of Manchester, UK) Julius Georgiou (University of Cyprus, Cyprus) Viktor Jirsa (INSERM - Marseille, France) Luke P. Lee (UC Berkeley, USA) Stefano Luccioli (ISC CNR - Florence, Italy) Maurizio Mattia (ISS - Roma, Italy) Benedetto Sacchetti (University of Turin, Italy) Maria Sanchez-Vives (IDIBAPS - Barcelona, Spain) Ronald Tetzlaff (TU Dresden, Germany) The poster can be downloaded from here http://goo.gl/CDY0Eg The workshop is kindly supported by the: SICC - Italian Society for Chaos and Complexity, IEEE CASS Outreach 2015 Initiative, CRT Foundation, Marie Curie Initial Training project NETT - Neural Engineering Transformative Technologies, Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Italy)

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Postdoctoral Position in Computational Neuroscience at IUPUI
by Yaroslav Molkov July 16, 2015

July 16, 2015

A postdoctoral/research associate position in computational neuroscience for the duration of up to two years is available in the externally funded project focusing on multiscale computational modeling of motor control mechanisms, involving interactions between basal ganglia, thalamus, cerebellum, cortex, and spinal cord in connection with realistic simulation of pathological changes in motor control during Huntington’s disease. This collaborative project is performed jointly by the groups of Drs. Ilya Rybak (Dept. of Neurobiology and Anatomy, Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA, USA) and Yaroslav Molkov (Dept. of Mathematical Science, Indiana University – Purdue University, Indianapolis, IN, USA). Applicants must have a PhD degree in Neuroscience, Applied Mathematics, Physics, or a related discipline, a *strong research record*, and excellent C++ programming skills. Previous experience in computational neuronal modeling is a plus. Interested candidates are encouraged to contact Dr. Molkov ( ymolkov(a)iupui.edu) by email. To apply, please send an email along with (1) curriculum vitae; (2) a cover letter describing previous research experience and interests; (3) the names and contact information of three references. I will be available to answer questions and discuss this job opportunity with potential candidates at the CNS’2015 meeting in Prague, Czech Republic (July 18-23). Please email me to arrange a meeting. ================================= Yaroslav Molkov, Ph.D. Assistant Professor Indiana University - Purdue University at Indianapolis Department of Mathematical Sciences 402 N. Blackford St, LD 270, Indianapolis, IN 46202 Office: LD 224U Phone: (317) 274-6934 Fax: (317) 274-3460 Email: ymolkov(a)iupui.edu

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Postdoc in Computational Visual Neuroscience (Alicante-Valencia, SPAIN)
by Jesus Malo Lopez July 16, 2015

July 16, 2015

The Neuroscience Institute of Alicante (CSIC) and the Universitat de Valencia are involved on a multiyear project to study neural computation and coding in visual cortex. We have an opening for a 3 year postdoc position to model information processing in the retina-cortex pathway. Job title: "The human camera: compressive sensing in brain networks and decoding from neural responses" (see additional information about the project at http://isp.uv.es/bmi.html ) Applications are invited for the above position to work with Dr. Luis Martinez (Neuroscience Institute of Alicante, CSIC, http://thevisualanalogylab.wix.com/valab) and Dr. Jesús Malo (Image & Signal Processing Lab, Universitat de Valencia, http://isp.uv.es ). The aim of this work is understanding dimensionality reduction in the retina-cortex bottleneck and enabling image reconstruction from actual neural recordings at cortical level. The "Human Camera" could be seen as a new Brain Machine Interface for image transmission in which the nontrivial/adaptive feature extraction stage is done by a brain instead of by the conventional compression algorithm. The input signal should be reconstructed from the neural signal at the receiver. Candidates must be in possession of a doctoral degree in computational neuroscience, machine learning, physics, mathematics or engineering. Preference will be given to candidates with experience and genuine interest in vision science phenomena and models. Work will be developed both at the Neuroscience Institute of Alicante and at the Universitat de València, with strong collaboration between the experimental and theoretical members of the team. Salary: according to CSIC Postdoc scales including social security, health insurance benefits, and travel money. Contact: Please email jesus.malo(a)uv.es or luis.m.martinez.otero(a)gmail.com for any queries about the position.

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Special Issue on Emerging Spatial Competences: From Machine Perception to Sensorimotor Intelligence
by Agostino Gibaldi July 15, 2015

July 15, 2015

APOLOGIES FOR CROSS-POSTING. Dear Researcher, we are very glad to inform you that the Special Issue “Emerging Spatial Competences: From Machine Perception to Sensorimotor Intelligence” (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/09218890) has been published on the Robotics and Autonomous System Journal (http://www.journals.elsevier.com/robotics-and-autonomous-systems) The aim of this special issue is to survey a state of the art of methodologies, concepts, algorithms and techniques that would serve as bricks on which to build and develop artificial agents with such a spatial competence; perceptual and cognitive understanding of space should emerge from sensorimotor exercise. The Special Issue includes 13 papers (acceptance rate 40%) plus the editorial: Emerging spatial competences: From machine perception to sensorimotor intelligence Agostino Gibaldi, Silvio P. Sabatini, Sylvain Argentieri, Zhengping Ji Self-calibrating smooth pursuit through active efficient coding C. Teulière, S. Forestier, L. Lonini, C. Zhang, Y. Zhao, B. Shi, J. Triesch Learning the visual–oculomotor transformation: Effects on saccade control and space representation Marco Antonelli, Angel J. Duran, Eris Chinellato, Angel P. del Pobil Autonomous learning of disparity–vergence behavior through distributed coding and population reward: Basic mechanisms and real-world conditioning on a robot stereo head Agostino Gibaldi, Andrea Canessa, Fabio Solari, Silvio P. Sabatini A developmental where–what network for concurrent and interactive visual attention and recognition Zhengping Ji, Juyang Weng Learning agent’s spatial configuration from sensorimotor invariants Alban Laflaquière, J. Kevin O’Regan, Sylvain Argentieri, Bruno Gas, Alexander V. Terekhov Trainable sensorimotor mapping in a neuromorphic robot Jörg Conradt, Francesco Galluppi, Terrence C. Stewart Cortically inspired sensor fusion network for mobile robot egomotion estimation Cristian Axenie, Jörg Conradt Deep unsupervised network for multimodal perception, representation and classification Alain Droniou, Serena Ivaldi, Olivier Sigaud Support relation analysis and decision making for safe robotic manipulation tasks Rasoul Mojtahedzadeh, Abdelbaki Bouguerra, Erik Schaffernicht, Achim J. Lilienthal Model-free incremental learning of the semantics of manipulation actions Eren Erdal Aksoy, Minija Tamosiunaite, Florentin Wörgötter Human motion based intent recognition using a deep dynamic neural model Zhibin Yu, Minho Lee Hybrid learning model and MMSVM classification for on-line visual imitation of a human with 3-D motions Chih-Lyang Hwang, Bo-Lin Chen, Hsing-Hao Huang, Huei-Ting Syu Interfacing robotic tactile sensation with human vibrotactile perception for digit recognition Anwesha Khasnobish, Shreyasi Datta, Dwaipayan Sardar, D.N. Tibarewala, Amit Konar Cordially, the Guest Editors: Agostino Gibaldi and Silvio P. Sabatini Department of Informatics, Bioengineering, Robotics and System Engineering PSPC Lab (www.pspc.unige.it) University of Genoa, Italy Sylvain Argentieri Institute for Intelligent Systems and Robotics (ISIR), Sorbonne Universités, UPMC University, Paris 06, France Zhengping Ji Advanced Image Research Laboratory (AIRL), Samsung, Pasadena, CA, USA

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Software for Non-parametric directionality analysis
by David Halliday July 14, 2015

July 14, 2015

[Apologies for cross posting] MATLAB software to implement non-parametric directionality analysis for spike-train and time-series data is available for free download from the NeuroSpec archive. A user guide and demonstration scripts are included. http://www.neurospec.org/ An accompanying journal article is published in the Journal of Integrative Neuroscience: "Nonparametric directionality measures for time series and point process data", J. Integr. Neurosci., 14, 253-277 (2015). DOI: 10.1142/S0219635215300127 http://dx.doi.org/10.1142/S0219635215300127 Abstract The need to determine the directionality of interactions between neural signals is a key requirement for analysis of multichannel recordings. Approaches most commonly used are parametric, typically relying on autoregressive models. A number of concerns have been expressed regarding parametric approaches, thus there is a need to consider alternatives. We present an alternative nonparametric approach for construction of directionality measures for bivariate random processes. The method combines time and frequency domain representations of bivariate data to decompose the correlation by direction. Our framework generates two sets of complementary measures, a set of scalar measures, which decompose the total product moment correlation coefficient summatively into three terms by direction and a set of functions which decompose the coherence summatively at each frequency into three terms by direction: forward direction, reverse direction and instantaneous interaction. It can be undertaken as an addition to a standard bivariate spectral and coherence analysis, and applied to either time series or point-process (spike train) data or mixtures of the two (hybrid data). In this paper, we demonstrate application to spike train data using simulated cortical neurone networks and application to experimental data from isolated muscle spindle sensory endings subject to random efferent stimulation. - David Halliday Department of Electronics University of York YORK YO10 5DD, UK. E-Mail: david.halliday(a)york.ac.uk

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Tutorial on Interfaces in Computational Neuroscience Software
by Jochen Martin Eppler July 14, 2015

July 14, 2015

[Sorry if you receive this mail through multiple channels] This is to inform you about the CNS2015 tutorial entitled "Interfaces in Computational Neuroscience Software". In the tutorial, Jochen M. Eppler (Research Centre Jülich, Germany), Mikael Djurfeldt (INCF and KTH PDC, Sweden) and Janne Moren (OIST and RIKEN AICS, Japan) will present the combined use of the tools NEST, CSA and MUSIC. Introductory talks will explain the concepts behind the tools and libraries, while hands-on sessions will allow the participants to gather some experience with them. The software for the hands-on sessions will be provided in the form of a virtual machine image readily usable on top of your laptop. More information on the tutorial can be found on the homepage of the meeting at http://www.cnsorg.org/cns-2015-tutorials#t6 Looking forward to seeing you in Prague! Best regards, Jochen Eppler -- Dr. Jochen Martin Eppler Phone: +49 2461 61-9471 ---------------------------------- Simulation Laboratory Neuroscience Jülich Supercomputing Centre Institute for Advanced Simulation ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Forschungszentrum Juelich GmbH 52425 Juelich Sitz der Gesellschaft: Juelich Eingetragen im Handelsregister des Amtsgerichts Dueren Nr. HR B 3498 Vorsitzender des Aufsichtsrats: MinDir Dr. Karl Eugen Huthmacher Geschaeftsfuehrung: Prof. Dr.-Ing. Wolfgang Marquardt (Vorsitzender), Karsten Beneke (stellv. Vorsitzender), Prof. Dr.-Ing. Harald Bolt, Prof. Dr. Sebastian M. Schmidt ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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CFP: The First International Workshop on Computational Models of the Visual Cortex (CMVC) as part of the BICT, New York, 3-5 Dec 2015
by George Azzopardi July 14, 2015

July 14, 2015

Dear All, We are pleased to announce The First International Workshop on Computational Models of the Visual Cortex (CMVC) as part of the BICT (Bio-inspired Information and Communication Technologies) conference, which will be held in New York City, New York, 3-5 December (http://bionetics.org/2015/show/home) Background Much has been advanced since the early works of the Nobel prize winners Hubel and Wiesel about the function of neurons in the primary visual cortex of cats’ brains. That work has been the source of inspiration of abundant neurophysiological studies to unveil the functionality of neurons in different areas of visual cortex. These experiments resulted in large amounts of data, which could then be used to design computational models to behave similarly to certain neurons in visual cortex. The contribution of such models is two-fold. They contribute to the better understanding of how visual information is processed in the brain, and they also contribute for the development of more robust algorithms in computer vision applications. The aim of this workshop is to bring together recent development of computational modelling of the visual cortex of the brain: Single cell modeling. Hierarchy of visual cortex areas Feedforward, feedback and inhibitory mechanisms. The appearance of neuronal properties: sparsity and selectivity. Circuitry: hierarchical representations and connections between layers. Selecting where to look: saliency and attention. Object recognition Contour detection Stereo Learning Important Dates Full papers due: July 31, 2015 Authors Notified: August 31, 2015 Camera-ready due: September 30, 2015 Paper submission We invite you to submit regular papers (up to 8 pages each), short papers (up to 4 pages each) or poster/demo papers (up to 2 pages each) in ACM's paper template. Up to two extra pages are allowed for each paper with extra page charges. See http://bionetics.org/2015/show/initial-submission for more details. Paper Submission Only PDF format is acceptable. Papers must be submitted to EasyChair: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=cmvc2015 For more information about the CMVC workshop please visit: http://cmvc.bionetics.org/2015/show/home Sincerely yours, Antonio Rodriguez-Sanchez, PhD George Azzopardi, PhD Co-chairs of CMVC’2015

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NEURON course and NSG Workshop at SFN 2015 meeting
by Ted Carnevale July 13, 2015

July 13, 2015

Two events of particular interest to computational neuroscientists will be presented as satellite sessions to the 2015 SFN meeting in Chicago. Using NEURON to Model Cells and Networks Friday, Oct. 16 from 9 AM to 5 PM at a site in downtown Chicago This course provides a practical introduction to building and using models of neurons and networks with NEURON. Covered topics include basic concepts, workflow for building and using models, speeding up simulations with parallel hardware from multicore personal computers to massively parallel supercomputers, using Python with NEURON, and modeling reactive diffusion with the RxD class. Using the Neuroscience Gateway Portal for Parallel Simulation Saturday, Oct. 17 from 9 AM to noon at a site in downtown Chicago This workshop combines didactic presentations with hands on instruction on how to use the Neuroscience Gateway Portal (NSG) for parallel simulations. NSG eliminates most adminstrative and technical barriers to using high performance computing resources--it even gives away free CPU time. Simulators that are currently installed on NSG include NEST, PyNN, Brian, GENESIS3, NEURON, and MOOSE. Also available is FreeSurfer, a set of tools for analysis and visualization of structural and functional brain imaging data. Friday, Oct. 2, is the registration deadline for both of these events, but you should sign up early because space is limited. See https://www.neuron.yale.edu/neuron/courses for more information and links to registration forms. --Ted

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Workshop at CNS2015 on Dopamine neurons and the circuits they participate in
by Canavier, Carmen C. July 13, 2015

July 13, 2015

Title: Computational Models of Midbrain Dopamine Neurons and Dopaminergic Signaling Organizer: Carmen Canavier ccanav(a)lsuhsc.edu<mailto:ccanav@lsuhsc.edu> July 23, Prague, Room RB209 (subject to change) Description: This workshop features recent experimental and modeling work on SNc and VTA dopamine neurons in the context of addiction, Parkinson’s disease and schizophrenia. Time Speaker Title 9-9:30 Alexey Kuznetsov A model for VTA circuitry: toolbox for the study of addictions 9:30-10 Eleftheria Pissadaki From the axons of the SNc dopamine neurons to their dendritic processes: further clues to susceptibility in Parkinson's disease 10-10:30 COFFEE BREAK 10:30-11 Rebekah Evans T type calcium channels trigger a hyperpolarization induced after depolarization (HI-ADP) in SNc dopamine neurons 11-11:30 Andy Oster VTA Dopamine Neuron Dynamics: response to ramping applied currents 11:30-12:00 Carmen Canavier Dynamic Diversity of Dopamine Neurons 12:00-1:30 LUNCH BREAK 1:30-2 Guillaume Drion Potential functional implications of a hidden variability in SNc DA neuron excitability 2-2:30 Jinyoung Jang Spontaneous firing system in the midbrain dopamine neu- ron 2:30-3 Boris Gutkin VTA circuit models and nicotine/alcohol effects on DA dynamics 3-3:30 DISCUSSION AND CLOSING REMARKS

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Workshop at CNS2015: Open Collaboration in Computational Neuroscience
by Padraig Gleeson July 13, 2015

July 13, 2015

[Apology for cross-postings] Announcing a workshop at the CNS2015 meeting in Prague, Thursday July 23: Open Collaboration in Computational Neuroscience http://opensourcebrain.org/docs/Help/Meetings#CNS_2015 Building and analysing biophysically and anatomically detailed neuronal networks is a complex and time consuming task, which ideally involves researchers with a range of backgrounds and technical skills. However, most labs cannot expect to have all of these researchers present at any given time. This can lead to stalled projects, lost data and software and needless repetition of experimental and computational work. A number of initiatives have been started which address these issues. Some are creating public resources with freely available data to constrain such models. Others are using best practices from open source software development to encourage building and sharing of models in a collaborative environment. This workshop will serve as an informative introduction to these projects as well as a discussion forum for getting feedback and gathering requirements from the community for the developers of these initiatives. There are still a number of slots available for *5-10 minute lightning talks*, so if you are involved in a project in this area and wish to publicise it, please get in contact. *Confirmed speakers:* Jan Antolik (CNRS) Collaboration in neuronal modelling: model sharing, workflows and provenance Nicholas Cain (Allen Brain Institute) Resources for Open Collaboration at the Allen Brain Institute <http://www.brain-map.org/> Padraig Gleeson (University College London) NeuroML <https://neuroml.org/> & the Open Source Brain Initiative <http://opensourcebrain.org/> Adrian Quintana (University College London) Geppetto <http://www.geppetto.org/>: online visualisation & simulation for neuronal models Michael Sonntag (LMU München) The NIX Project: Comprehensive Storage of Neuroscience Data and Metadata <https://github.com/G-Node/nix> Matteo Cantarelli (MetaCell Ltd) OpenWorm <http://www.openworm.org/> Aurel A. Lazar (Columbia University) Neurokernel <http://neurokernel.github.io/>: An Open Source Platform for Emulating the Fruit Fly Brain Bill Lytton (SUNY Downstate Medical Center) ModelDB <http://senselab.med.yale.edu/ModelDB/> Eilif Muller (EPFL) Human Brain Project <https://www.humanbrainproject.eu/> resources for the integrative modelling community Shreejoy Tripathy (University of British Columbia) Open electrophysiology data and Neuroelectro.org <http://neuroelectro.org/> ----------------------------------------------------- Padraig Gleeson Room 321, Anatomy Building Department of Neuroscience, Physiology& Pharmacology University College London Gower Street London WC1E 6BT United Kingdom +44 207 679 3214 p.gleeson(a)ucl.ac.uk -----------------------------------------------------

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postdoc in computational neuroscience
by Máté Lengyel July 13, 2015

July 13, 2015

Postdoctoral Fellow in Computational Neuroscience University of Cambridge We are seeking a highly creative and motivated postdoctoral fellow (research associate or senior research associate) to work in the group of Máté Lengyel (http://learning.eng.cam.ac.uk/Public/Lengyel/) at the Computational and Biological Learning Lab, Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge to work on circuit- and systems-level of memory, in particular the interaction between recollective and familiarity-based forms of recognition memory. The project involves collaboration with Peter Dayan (Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit, UCL), and also Richard Henson (MRC Cognition and Brain Unit, Cambridge) providing direct access to relevant behavioural and imaging data. More broadly, the group studies learning and memory from computational, algorithmic/representational and neurobiological viewpoints. Computationally and algorithmically, we use ideas from Bayesian approaches to statistical inference and reinforcement learning to characterize the goals and mechanisms of learning in terms of normative principles and behavioral results. We also perform dynamical systems analyses of reduced biophysical models to understand the mapping of these mechanisms into cellular and network models. We collaborate very closely with experimental neuroscience groups, doing in vitro intracellular recordings, multi-unit recordings in behaving animals, human psychophysical, and fMRI experiments. The successful candidate will have a strong analytical background and demonstrable interest in theoretical neuroscience. They should have or be close to completion of a PhD or equivalent in computational neuroscience, physics, mathematics, computer science, machine learning or a related field. Previous experience in computational neuroscience is not required, but preference will be given to candidates with sufficient programming skills to run numerical simulations, or expertise with neural network models, analysis of dynamical systems, and Bayesian techniques. The position is funded for several years, with an initial one-year appointment and an expectation of extension to at least two years given satisfactory performance. Salary depends on experience and is in the range £28,695 - £48,743 p.a. Further information: http://www.jobs.cam.ac.uk/job/7261/ http://www.jobs.cam.ac.uk/job/7176/ For informal queries, please contact Mate Lengyel <m.lengyel(a)eng.cam.ac.uk>. Mate Lengyel -- Mate Lengyel, PhD Computational and Biological Learning Lab Cambridge University Engineering Department Trumpington Street, Cambridge CB2 1PZ, UK tel: +44 (0)1223 748 532, fax: +44 (0)1223 765 587 email: m.lengyel(a)eng.cam.ac.uk web: www.eng.cam.ac.uk/~m.lengyel

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Re: [Comp-neuro] Postdoc position in Large-scale Neuronal Ensemble Recordings in Sensori-motor Cortices in Behaving Marmosets
by Nicholas Hatsopoulos July 11, 2015

July 11, 2015

Postdoctoral Position in Large-scale Neuronal Ensemble Recordings in Sensori-motor Cortices in Behaving Marmosets A postdoctoral position is available starting in the fall of 2015 to characterize the spatio-temporal organization of sensori-motor cortical activity at multiple spatial scales associated with upper limb movements of behaving marmosets. This project involves high density multi-electrode array recordings as well as calcium fluorescence imaging from motor and somatosensory cortical sites in marmosets performing natural arm and hand movements. Facilities include a fully equipped electrophysiological laboratory with three 128-channel acquisition systems for multi-electrode recording and stimulation, calcium fluorescence imaging microscopes, and a camera-based, motion capture system. Expertise in multi-site, behavioral electrophysiology and/or calcium imaging is preferred. A strong mathematical, computational, or engineering background is also desirable. Applicants should send a CV and names and addresses of two or three references to Dr. Nicholas Hatsopoulos, Department of Organismal Biology, University of Chicago, 1027 East 57th Street, Chicago, IL 60637 or by e-mail to nicho(a)uchicago.edu<mailto:nicho@uchicago.edu>. Nicholas Hatsopoulos Professor Chair, Committee on Computational Neuroscience University of Chicago Culver Hall, Room 206 1027 East 57th street Chicago, IL 60637 773-702-5594 ________________________________

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ICDL-EpiRob 2015 - registration open
by Benjamin Rosman July 10, 2015

July 10, 2015

======================================================== REGISTRATION NOW OPEN IEEE ICDL-EPIROB 2015 The Fifth Joint IEEE International Conference on Development and Learning and on Epigenetic Robotics Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, USA August 13-16, 2015 http://www.icdl-epirob.org/ Registration is now open at: http://www.tech.plym.ac.uk/SoCCE/CRNS/icdl-epirob//2015/registration.html In addition to the main conference, we will have both a preconference workshop and tutorial: Morning: "Introduction to Brains as Emergent Turing Machines" (Juyang Weng) Afternoon: "Mechanisms of learning in social contexts" (Michael Goldstein, Chen Yu) == Conference description The past decade has seen the emergence of a new scientific field that studies how intelligent biological and artificial systems develop sensorimotor, cognitive, emotional and social abilities, over extended periods of time, through dynamic interactions with their physical and social environments. This field lies at the intersection of a number of scientific and engineering disciplines including Neuroscience, Developmental Psychology, Developmental Linguistics, Cognitive Science, Computational Neuroscience, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Robotics. Various terms have been associated with this new field such as Autonomous Mental Development, Epigenetic Robotics, Developmental Robotics, etc., and several scientific meetings have been established. The two most prominent conference series of this field, the International Conference on Development and Learning (ICDL) and the International Conference on Epigenetic Robotics (EpiRob), are now joining forces for the fifth time and invite submissions for a joint conference in 2015, to explore and extend the interdisciplinary boundaries of this field. == BABYBOT CHALLENGE We are excited to announce a new ICDL-EpiRob conference feature: the BABYBOT CHALLENGE. The goal of the challenge is to use the tools of developmental robotics to replicate and extend the key findings from one of three selected human-infant studies. These will be presented during a special session. == Keynote speakers Prof. Dare Baldwin, Dept. of Psychology, University of Oregon, USA Prof. Kerstin Dautenhahn, School of Computer Science, University of Hertfordshire, UK Prof. Asif Ghazanfar, Dept. of Psychology, Princeton University, USA == Program committee General Chairs: Matthew Schlesinger (Southern Illinois Univ.) Dima Amso (Brown University) Bridge Chairs: Jeffrey Krichmar (UC Irvine) Bertram Malle (Brown University) Program Chairs: Anne Warlaumont (UC Merced) Clemént Moulin-Frier (INRIA) Publications Chairs: Lisa Meeden (Swarthmore College) Publicity Chairs: Lola Cañamero (Univ. of Hertfordshire) Matthias Rolf (Osaka University) Benjamin Rosman (CSIR) Local chairs: David Sobel (Brown University) Thomas Serre (Brown University) Finance chairs: Clayton Morrison (University of Arizona) -- This message is subject to the CSIR's copyright terms and conditions, e-mail legal notice, and implemented Open Document Format (ODF) standard. The full disclaimer details can be found at http://www.csir.co.za/disclaimer.html. This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean. Please consider the environment before printing this email.

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Postdoctoral Position in Cybersecurity, Fordham CIS
by Henry Han July 8, 2015

July 8, 2015

*Postdoctoral Position in Cybersecurity, Fordham CIS* *We invite applications for a postdoctoral researcher position in Cybersecurity in the Department of Computer and Information Science.*This position requires a Ph.D. in Computer Science or a closely related area with a specialization in cybersecurity. Those with expertise in network security, software security, cyber-physical systems, computer forensics, wireless security, biometrics-based security, e-Systems Security, and related areas of cybersecurity are encouraged to apply. This postdoctoral researcher will conduct high-quality research in cybersecurity and teach courses for MS program in Cybersecurity. The selected candidate can apply and compete for a tenure track position that will be available next year. *How to apply:* Send a detailed CV, research statement, teaching statement, and a list of info of 3-5 references with e-mail addresses in a single pdf file to xhan9(a)fordham.edu (Dr. Henry Han). Include job-code “POSTDOC-Cybersecurity” in subject line. Review of applications will begin immediately and continue until the position is filled. The Department of Computer and Information Science is currently in the process of expanding its undergraduate and graduate programs in order to serve students entering the growing fields of computer science, information science, and interdisciplinary areas. Fordham's administration is committed to increasing the department's local and national distinction in research and science education. Additional new members will join the faculty in the coming years to build upon the faculty's wide range of expertise and to serve new programs. The faculty of the Department of Computer and Information Science represent a wide range of academic backgrounds, research and professional interests. Serving undergraduate majors in computer science, information science, and interdisciplinary programs in Fordham College at Rose Hill (Bronx), Fordham College at Lincoln Center (Manhattan), and the School of Professional and Continuing Education (all 3 campuses), the department also offers an MS program in Computer Science in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and an MS in Cybersecurity in the School of Professional and Continuing Studies. An MS program in Data Analytics is in its final process of development. In the thriving metropolis of New York, these programs are ideally situated for education and productivity in the computer and information sciences and industries. The department has a rich network of professionals and organizations, including loyal alumni, throughout the Metropolitan area, and students benefit from research, internship, and career opportunities afforded by the city's vast resources. Fordham University. With over 14,500 students in its 13 schools, Fordham's Carnegie classification is Research University (High Research Activity). U.S. News & World Report currently ranks Fordham 57th nationally, placing it among the Tier 1 universities. Fordham's New York City campuses in the center of Manhattan and the Bronx avail faculty and students of extraordinary resources for education, research, and service. Fordham offers its students a highly dedicated faculty, a productive research environment, emphasis on ethics and social justice, and respect for all individuals, religions, cultures, and creeds. Fordham University is an independent, Catholic University in the Jesuit tradition that welcomes applications from men and women of all backgrounds. Fordham University is committed to excellence through diversity and welcomes candidates of all backgrounds; it is an equal opportunity employer.

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CFP: ICDM Workshop HealthMining 2015 and HISS Special Issue (Deadline: July 20, 2015)
by william July 8, 2015

July 8, 2015

[Please accept our apologies if you receive multiple copies of this email] CALL FOR PAPERS (Submission Deadline: July 20, 2015) HEALTHMINING 2015 - The ICDM Workshop on Data Mining and Decision Analytics on Public Health and Wellness (URL: http://www.comp.hkbu.edu.hk/~healthmining2015/) In conjunction with the IEEE International Conference on Data Mining (ICDM 2015) AIMS and SCOPE For many years, data mining and decision analytics techniques have already been extensively applied to various domains, such as smart environments, social networks, marketing, and web technology. The focus of this workshop is mainly on the issues and challenges of data mining techniques with the purpose of improving human well-being and quality of life. It is expected that the workshop may increase the diversity of application areas that can benefit from data mining. At the same time, it is also desirable that the discussion and vision of this workshop would also offer further insights into, as well as new tools for, the issues of data collection, processing, system modeling, simulation and optimization arising from various public health topics. The objective of this workshop is to serve as a venue for researchers to discuss how data mining and analytics methods can contribute to improving public health quality in clinical, medical/biomedical, and healthcare systems in smart ways, including evidence-based medicine, personalized treatment and healthcare, assistive technology and active surveillance and control of diseases. In addition to mining statistical regularities, associations, or causalities from large-scale health-related datasets, it would be more desirable to further investigate how the results can effectively and efficiently support decision-making, system modeling, optimization, and simulation in various healthcare systems. TOPICS OF INTEREST - Large-scale data acquisition and management issues for public health - Social and other network-based analysis for public health - Medical big data mining and innovative applications - Mining risk patterns in medical data - Mental and physical health data integration - Biomarker discovery and biomedical data mining - Clinical data mining for practice knowledge building - Data mining from clinical decision-making, and practitioner reflection - Data mining from genetic data of diseases - Data mining for disease profiling and personalized treatment - Data mining for (active) syndromic surveillance - Data mining for infectious/chronic disease epidemiology and control - Data mining for exploring hidden patterns in clinical systems - Data mining for medical/biomedical, and healthcare systems - Data mining for assistive environments - Data modeling and information management forpervasive assistive environments - Data mining and knowledge modeling for wellness - Spatiotemporal data exploration and mining of diseases - Unstructured data mining in medicine and healthcare - Semantic data mining in medicine and healthcare - Scalable data integration in medicine and healthcare - Evidence-based decision-support systems - Healthcare knowledge abstraction, classification, and summarization - Healthcare knowledge computerization, execution, inference, and representation IMPORTANT DATES - Paper Submission Due: Jul 20, 2015 - Paper Notification Date: Sep 1, 2015 - Workshop Date: Nov 13, 2015 >>> SPECIAL ISSUE <<< Selected papers of the workshop will be invited for revision to be included in a special issue to be published in Health Information Science and Systems (URL: http://www.hissjournal.com/) ORGANIZING COMMITTEE - William K. Cheung, Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong - Jiming Liu, Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong - Parisa Rashidi, University of Florida, USA - Fei Wang, University of Connecticut, USA Department of Computer Science: http://www.comp.hkbu.edu.hk HKBU Faculty of Science: http://www.sci.hkbu.edu.hk Disclaimer: http://www.comp.hkbu.edu.hk/disclaimer

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New computational challenge on Big Data and neurodegenerative diseases
by Neta Zach July 7, 2015

July 7, 2015

Prize4Life, Sage Bionetworks and DREAM are proud to announce the launch of The DREAM ALS Stratification Prize4Life Challenge <https://www.synapse.org/#!Synapse:syn2873386/wiki/>. The prize, is a computational challenge inviting bioinformatics, statisticians, computation geeks and math geniuses to work on the PRO-ACT database and identify meaningful subgroups of ALS patients. The challenge offers a $28000 prize and journal partnership with Nature Biotechnology. You can read more about it here <http://www.jpost.com/Business-and-Innovation/Health-and-Science/Israel-base…> or join our Webinar about it on Wednesday <https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/2656120293543998721> July 8 at 11am EST. While most ALS patients die with 3-5 years, but some patients, like Stephen Hawking, survive much longer. What differentiates the Stephen Hawkings from the Lou Gehrigs? Is ALs one disease or several sub-disease? the challenge invite participants to devleop algorithms that can stratify the ALS patient population into meaningful subgroups with distinct features. You can read more about it here <http://www.jpost.com/Business-and-Innovation/Health-and-Science/Israel-base…> . A previous Challenge, the ALS Prediction Prize <http://www.innocentive.com/prize4life-announces-50000-als-prediction-prize-…> which ran in 2012, using only a small subset of the full database, led to the creation of solutions that are able to reduce by 20% the number of patients needed for effective ALS clinical trials, a millions of dollars reduction in the costs of each future ALS clinical trials and are used by several drug companies. Furthermore, the Challenge’s winning algorithms identified novel features of ALS pathology that are predictive of disease progression. The Challenge summary was published in Nature biotechnology <http://www.nature.com/nbt/journal/v33/n1/full/nbt.3051.html> and were also covered by Science News <http://news.sciencemag.org/brain-behavior/2014/11/crowdsourcing-project-pre…> , Science Translational Medicine <http://stm.sciencemag.org/content/6/264/264ec204.full> and a News and views piece in Nature biotechnology <http://www.nature.com/nbt/journal/v33/n1/full/nbt.3118.html>. The ALS Stratification Challenge aims to go beyond the prediction prize and bring us one step closer to personalized medicine- to accurately and effectively identify meaningful subgroups of diverse ALS patients and the predictive models and features specific to these subgroups. Winners will win $28000 and the winning submissions with be published with a journal partnership from Nature Biotechnology. You can read more- and Join!- here <https://www.synapse.org/#!Synapse:syn2873386/wiki/> Neta Zach, PhD | Chief Scientific Officer

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PhD positions at LMU Munich
by Stefan Glasauer July 6, 2015

July 6, 2015

Two PhD positions are available at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU) München for a fixed term of 36 months, starting 1st September 2015. Both positions are linked to the research projects “Dynamic prior and contextual calibration”, which is a part of the newly funded German research group “active perception”. The project aims to uncover the mechanism underlying dynamic contextual calibration in multimodal environments, and to develop a general Bayesian framework describing the prior updating mechanisms in contextual calibration. In particular, we plan to focus on central tendency effects (for a review, see Shi, Church & Meck, 2013, Petzschner & Glasauer, 2015) in multimodal magnitude estimation. The project is expected to establish a general computational framework to examine whether the brain uses multiple modality-specific priors or an amodal prior in contextual calibration, and how the brain resolves inconsistencies among priors, as well as how action priors are taken into consideration in magnitude estimation. Successful candidates should have an excellent M.Sc. degree, or equivalent (or be currently working towards one) in a field of cognitive or computational neuroscience. Computational modeling and programming skills in MATLAB and R are essential. Good verbal and written communication skills in English, interest and some experience in multi-disciplinary research are highly desirable. Successful candidates will be paid according to German salary scale 65% TVL-13. One candidate will work in Department of Psychology, LMU under the supervision of Zhuanghua Shi, and the other candidate in the Center for Sensorimotor Research, LMU under the supervision of Stefan Glasauer. Applicants should send a completed application form along with a cover letter detailing their research experience and interests, a CV and two academic references electronically to either Zhuanghua Shi (shi(a)psy.lmu.de) or Stefan Glasauer (s.glasauer(a)lrz.uni-muenchen.de) The closing date for applications is August 1st, 2015. Shortlisted candidates will be invited for interview at the beginning of August. We regret that we may not be able to respond to all applications. Applicants who have not received an offer by the end of August 2015 should consider their application has been unsuccessful on this occasion. LMU Munich is an equal opportunity employer. Applications of women and disabled persons – given similar qualification – are preferred. Applicants with children are welcome. Part-time employment is possible in principle. ------------- Dr. Zhuanghua Shi Experimental Psychology, Department Psychologie LMU München Tel: (+49) 89 2180 5213 Fax: (+49) 89 2180 5211 Lab: http://www.psy.lmu.de/exp/mlab/

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Event-Driven Retina IC Designer Position
by bernabe July 6, 2015

July 6, 2015

Apologies for Cross-Posting --------------------------- The Sevilla Microelectronics Institute (www.imse-cnm.csic.es) from the Spanish Research Council (www.csic.es) is seeking a post-doc (or highly experienced researcher) with strong analog IC design experience, preferably in vision sensors (but not mandatory). The work to be carried out will be in collaboration with French company Chronocam (http://www.chronocam.com) with the goal of developing new generations of Event-Driven Dynamic Vision Sensors. Salary is negotiable depending on experience and qualifications. Contract is for one year, extensible to two. Later on, if progress is satisfactory, the contract could be extended further or the candidate could be incorporated into Chronocam's staff. Interested candidates please contact directly bernabe(a)imse-cnm.csic.es. -- -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bernabe Linares-Barranco, PhD, IEEE Fellow Full Professor (Profesor de Investigacion) CSIC Instituto Microelectronica Sevilla (IMSE) Phone: 34-954-466643/66 National Microelectronics Center, CNM-CSIC Fax: 34-954-466600 Av. Americo Vespucio s/n E-mail: Bernabe.Linares(AT)imse-cnm.csic.es 41092 Sevilla, SPAIN URL: http://www.imse-cnm.csic.es/~bernabe -------------------------------------------------------------------------

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Post-doc in multimodal neuroimaging in Munich, Germany
by Igor Yakushev July 5, 2015

July 5, 2015

A postdoctoral position is available immediately in the Neuroimaging group (Head: Dr. Igor Yakushev) at the Department of Nuclear Medicine, Technische Universität München (TUM), Munich, Germany. Projects with include the modeling of cerebral networks and disease trajectories on the basis of brain images, as obtained using PET (amyloid, FDG), DTI, and fMRI. The group's clinical focus is neurodegenerative disorders, in particular Alzheimer’s disease. Existing data sets will provide the basis for prompt data analysis and publications. The research group is integrated into the TUM Neuroimaging Center, which possesses a broad methodological and thematic expertise: http://www.tumnic.mri.tum.de/tumnic/index.html The Dept. of Nuclear Medicine offers exciting opportunities for neuroimaging research in an interdisciplinary environment and access to state-of-the-art technology including a hybrid PET/MR scanner. You should hold a PhD or equivalent degree in a relevant discipline (e.g., computer sciences, engineering, physics, mathematics, neuroscience, medicine). Experience in image analysis tools (SPM, FSL, FreeSurfer) is desirable. Solid knowledge of programming (Matlab, Java) and statistics (SPSS, SAS, R) is advantageous. Salary is according to TV-L. The position is limited for two years, with a possibility of extension. Applications will be considered until the position has been filled. Interested researchers should submit their applications including CV, two recommendation letters (or names and contact details of personal references), and a brief letter of motivation to Dr. Yakushev at igor.yakushev(a)lrz.tum.de

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Autumn school on sensorimotor foundations of social cognition
by Alexander Maye July 3, 2015

July 3, 2015

"The sensorimotor foundations of social cognition" Autumn school Boltenhagen, Baltic Sea, Germany October 11-17, 2015 Description Sensorimotor approaches predict that social cognition does not primarily result from maintaining and running complex models of intentions and beliefs of other agents, but rather from patterns and regularities in the dynamic sensorimotor coupling between them. The school will take stock of concepts and models that follow this emerging view and illuminate them from the perspectives of relevant fields like social psychology, social cognitive neuroscience, robotics and philosophy of mind. Tangible outcomes of the school will be a set of articles on selected aspects of sensorimotor accounts of social cognition which will be authored by the participants and published in Scholarpedia (scholarpedia.org) The school will be the first in a series which is funded and organized by the EU H2020 project "Socializing sensorimotor contingencies - socSMCs" (socSMCs.eu). This year the school is organized by the Dept. of Neurophysiology at the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf (uke.de/neurophysiology). The registration fee is 300Ä and covers participation in the school, accommodation in a single room, breakfast, lunch and three dinners. A reduced fee of 200Ä is requested from participants willing to share a double room. Participants will have to cover their own travel expenses. Content The five-day school will be structured around the following themes: * Enactive and embodied views on social cognition * Non-reductionist, interaction-based approaches to social cognition * Entrainment vs. emulation and mindreading * Dynamical systems theory and social cognition * Neural mechanisms of social interaction: toward a second-person neuroscience * Mutual prediction and adaptation in social interaction * Motor resonance during human-robot interaction The school will comprise keynote lectures in the mornings and discussion groups in the afternoons which serve for in-depth discussions of topics from the keynote lectures. Results from these discussions will be summarized and structured in drafts for Scholarpedia articles. Confirmed Speakers: Luciano Fadiga, University of Ferrara and IIT Genua, Italy Tom Froese, National Autonomous University of Mexico, Mexico D.F. Mattia Gallotti, University College London, UK Peter E. Keller, University of Western Sydney, Australia Christian Keysers, Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience, Amsterdam, John A Michael, Central European University, Budapest, Hungary Albert Newen, Ruhr University Bochum, Germany Andreas Roepstorff, Aarhus University, The Netherlands Giulio Sandini, IIT Genua, Italy Cordula Vesper, Central European University, Budapest, Hungary Kai Vogeley University of Cologne, Germany Date and location The school will take place from Oct. 11-17, 2015, in Boltenhagen, a nice little beach resort at the Baltic Sea and close to Hamburg (http://www.iberotel.de/iberotel-boltenhagen-ostsee-deutschland.html) Important dates: - Application deadline: August 2, 2015 - Notification of acceptance: August 14, 2015 - Summer school: October 11-17, 2015 - Technical program: October 12-16, 2015 How to apply: The school is open to PhD students and postdocs who are working on the themes addressed. Interested participants shall submit written information on their scientific background, projects involved, and motivation to attend. Admission will be on a competitive basis. Applications should be sent via email to school2015(a)socSMCs.eu. Please state on a single page (11pt font): - Your scientific background and degree - Your motivation to come to this school - The topic of your thesis (if appropriate) - Any prior knowledge in the field Further information: The forerunner project "Extending sensorimotor contingencies to cognition - eSMCs" (2011-2014) funded previous schools in this series like "The future of the embodied mind", held 2011 in San Sebasti·n, Spain (summerschool2011.esmcs.eu), the "Barcelona cognition, brain and technology summer school" in 2012 (bcbt.upf.edu/bcbt11, co-funded) and "Embodiment and Morphological Computation", held at the University of Zurich in 2013 (www.ifi.uzh.ch/ailab/summerschool2013) For further questions, please contact us: school2015(a)socSMCs.eu. -- _____________________________________________________________________ Universitätsklinikum Hamburg-Eppendorf; Körperschaft des öffentlichen Rechts; Gerichtsstand: Hamburg | www.uke.de Vorstandsmitglieder: Prof. Dr. Burkhard Göke (Vorsitzender), Prof. Dr. Dr. Uwe Koch-Gromus, Joachim Prölß, Rainer Schoppik _____________________________________________________________________ SAVE PAPER - THINK BEFORE PRINTING

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Postdoctoral Position in Computational Neuroscience at IUPUI
by Yaroslav Molkov July 2, 2015

July 2, 2015

A postdoctoral/research associate position in computational neuroscience for the duration of up to two years is available in the externally funded project focusing on multiscale computational modeling of motor control mechanisms, involving interactions between basal ganglia, thalamus, cerebellum, cortex, and spinal cord in connection with realistic simulation of pathological changes in motor control during Huntington’s disease. This collaborative project is performed jointly by the groups of Drs. Ilya Rybak (Dept. of Neurobiology and Anatomy, Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA, USA) and Yaroslav Molkov (Dept. of Mathematical Science, Indiana University – Purdue University, Indianapolis, IN, USA). Applicants must have a PhD degree in Neuroscience, Applied Mathematics, Physics, or a related discipline, a strong research record, and excellent C++ programming skills. Previous experience in computational neuronal modeling is a plus. Interested candidates are encouraged to contact Dr. Molkov ( ymolkov(a)iupui.edu) by email. To apply, please send an email along with (1) curriculum vitae; (2) a cover letter describing previous research experience and interests; (3) the names and contact information of three references. ================================= Yaroslav Molkov, Ph.D. Assistant Professor Indiana University - Purdue University at Indianapolis Department of Mathematical Sciences 402 N. Blackford St, LD 270, Indianapolis, IN 46202 Office: LD 224U Phone: (317) 274-6934 Fax: (317) 274-3460 Email: ymolkov(a)iupui.edu

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Postdoc position in Computational Neuroscience in the Clopath lab.
by Claudia Clopath July 1, 2015

July 1, 2015

Postdoc position in Computational Neuroscience in the Clopath lab. ----------------------------------------------------- Computational Neuroscience Laboratory Headed by Dr. Claudia Clopath Department of Bioengineering Imperial College London -----------------Requirements:----------------- The Computational Neuroscience Laboratory, headed by Dr. Claudia Clopath, is looking for a talented Postdoc, interested in working in the field of computational neuroscience, specifically addressing questions of learning and memory. The perfect candidate has a strong mathematical, physical or engineering background (or equivalent), and a keen interest in biological and neural systems. A PhD in the field of computational neuroscience is a plus. PostDoc funding is secured for at least 2 years. -----------------Research topic:----------------- Learning and memory are among the most fascinating topic of neuroscience, yet our understanding of it is only at the beginning. Learning is thought to change the connections between the neurons in the brain, a process called synaptic plasticity. Using mathematical and computational tools, it is possible to model synaptic plasticity across different time scales, which helps understand how different types of memory are formed. The PostDoc candidate will be working to build those models of synaptic plasticity, and study the functional role of synaptic plasticity in artificial neural networks. ----------------- The lab:----------------------- The Computational Neuroscience Laboratory is very young and dynamic, and publishes in prestigious journals, such as Nature and Science. It is part of the Department of Bioengineering, which conducts state-of-the-art multidisciplinary research in biomechanics, neuroscience and neurotechnology. The lab is at Imperial College London, the 3rd ranked university in Europe, is in the top 10 worldwide, and is located in the city centre of London. More information can be found at: http://www.bg.ic.ac.uk/research/c.clopath/lab/ <http://www.bg.ic.ac.uk/research/c.clopath/> ----------------- How to apply:----------------- Candidates should send a single pdf file, consisting of a 1-page motivation letter and CV (including publication list) to clopathlab.imperial(a)gmail.com, with the subject containing 'Postdoc2015'. In addition, candidates should organize two letters of reference to be sent to clopathlab.imperial(a)gmail.com. The position is open until filled but the earlier applications will be considered first.

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Increased Impact Factor (2014/15) and Table of Contents Alert: Cognitive Computation journal (Springer): Vol.7, No.3 / June 2015 Issue
by Dr Amir Hussain June 30, 2015

June 30, 2015

Dear Colleagues: (with advance apologies for any cross-postings) We are delighted to announce the publication of Volume 7, No.3 / June 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 June 2015 Issue comprises two invited papers - the first by Guang-Bin Huang: "What are Extreme Learning Machines? Filling the Gap Between Frank Rosenblatt’s Dream and John von Neumann’s Puzzle", and the second by Asim Roy: "On Findings of Category and Other Concept Cells in the Brain: Some Theoretical Perspectives on Mental Representation"). These are followed by eight regular papers. The full listing of published articles (Table of Contents) for this June 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/12559/7/3/ <http://link.springer.com/journal/12559/6/3/> 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 (for CFPs, 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 3, June 2015 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- What are Extreme Learning Machines? Filling the Gap Between Frank Rosenblatt’s Dream and John von Neumann’s Puzzle Guang-Bin Huang http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12559-015-9333-0 On Findings of Category and Other Concept Cells in the Brain: Some Theoretical Perspectives on Mental Representation Asim Roy http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12559-014-9307-7 Models for Computational Emotions from Psychological Theories Using Type I Fuzzy Logic Aladdin Ayesh, William Blewitt http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12559-014-9287-7 Models for Computational Emotions from Psychological Theories Using Type-II Fuzzy Logic Aladdin Ayesh, William Blewitt http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12559-014-9286-8 Is Attentional Refreshing in Working Memory Sequential? A Computational Modeling Approach Sophie Portrat, Benoît Lemaire http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12559-014-9294-8 Uncertain Graph Classification Based on Extreme Learning Machine Donghong Han, Yachao Hu, Shuangshuang Ai, Guoren Wang http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12559-014-9295-7 Optimization of Multiuser MIMO Cooperative Spectrum Sensing in Cognitive Radio Networks Yongqiang Hei, Wentao Li, Min Li, Zhuo Qiu, Weihong Fu http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12559-014-9297-5 Word Polarity Disambiguation Using Bayesian Model and Opinion-Level Features Yunqing Xia, Erik Cambria, Amir Hussain, Huan Zhao http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12559-014-9298-4 Imbalanced Learning for Air Pollution by Meta-Cognitive Online Sequential Extreme Learning Machine Chi-Man Vong, Weng-Fai Ip, Chi-Chong Chiu, Pak-Kin Wong http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12559-014-9301-0 Daniel D. Hutto and Erik Myin: Radicalizing Enactivism: Basic Minds without Content Paulo De Jesus http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12559-014-9306-8 --------------------------------------------------------- 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 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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Reminder: Summer school on nonlinear methods, application deadline 10th of July
by Michael von Papen June 30, 2015

June 30, 2015

Dear all, This is a reminder for the upcoming Cologne Summer School on non-linear analysis methods for master's degree and PhD students. Deadline for applications is 10th of July, 2015. ------------------------------------------------------------------- Cologne Summer School 2015: *Non-Linear Methods for Complex Systems Analysis* Date: Mon-Fri 28.09-02.10.2015 Location: *University of Cologne*, Germany ------------------------------------------------------------------- This one-week summer school brings together *master's degree and PhD students from international universities* for an interdisciplinary hands-on learning experience. The workshop will introduce non-linear analysis methods using the Python toolbox pyunicorn. With the techniques presented in the summer school, such as complex networks and phase space concepts, the students will be able to characterize highly complex systems. Such systems are frequently encountered, e.g., in *biology, chemistry, economics, geoscience, neuroscience, and physics*. Lectures and computer labs will be led by Dr. Reik Donner and Marc Wiedermann from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. For the complete program visit *complexsystems.uni-koeln.de/summerschool.html*. The application deadline is 10.07.2015. The summer school is organized by the Competence Area 3: Quantitative Modeling of Complex Systems of the University of Cologne. Contact: Dr. Michael von Papen (/vonpapen(a)geo.uni-koeln.de/) ------------------------------------------------------------------- *Information* The Competence Area 3: Quantitative Modeling of Complex Systems of the University of Cologne hosts a summer school to introduce novel and groundbreaking methods for the analysis of scientific data. For this matter, we bring together master's degree and PhD students from the University of Cologne and from international universities for an interdisciplinary learning experience. The aim of the summer school is not only to teach new analysis methods, but also to foster scientific collaboration and discussion between students of different fields of study. This year, the summer school of the Competence Area 3 will introduce non-linear analysis methods to study highly complex systems, which cannot be sufficiently characterized with linear methods. Such systems are frequently encountered, e.g., in biology, chemistry, economics, geoscience, neuroscience, and physics. The one-week summer school will take place from Monday to Friday, September 28 - October 2, at the University of Cologne, Germany. The strongly interdisciplinary hands-on course consists of lectures and computer labs and will provide the students with novel analysis techniques and concepts. Amongst others, the workshop will cover topics such as detrended fluctuation analysis, complex networks, scaling analysis, synchronization, transfer entropy, and causality, which help to characterize systems that are governed by non-linear processes. The summer school is led by *Dr. Reik Donner and Marc Wiedermann* from the *Potsdam Institute of Climate Impact Research* based on their lectures at the Humboldt University, Berlin, and their popular short-courses at the European Geosciences Union General Assembly. They will introduce the Python toolbox /pyunicorn/ for non-linear analysis along with prominent examples of modern analysis frameworks highlighting the methodological variety of complex systems based data analysis (see program below). The techniques that are taught in the summer school will be illustrated by applications to real-world data from different fields of study. The course materials will be made available to the participants after the course, including example codes for the platform-independent open-source software Python and the toolbox pyunicorn. The course will be held in English. For questions, please contact Mitch von Papen (vonpapen(a)geo.uni-koeln.de) *Program* The summer school consists of approximately the same amount of lectures and computer labs. During the lectures, the basics of the analysis methods are explained. Subsequently, these methods are applied to synthetic and real-world data in computer labs. The students work on a project in small groups and present and discuss their results at the end of the workshop. The students are introduced to the concepts of several non-linear analysis methods and will gain experience in applying the toolbox pyunicorn as well as in interpreting the results. Ideally, the summer school will enable the students to use the learned techniques on their own scientific data after the summer school. The approximate schedule for the summer school is given below. Note however, that changes may occur due to group dynamics. /Monday, September 28th/ 09:00 a.m. | Lecture 1: Introduction - linear vs. non-linear methods, Stationarity, uni- and multivariate correlation analysis, classical early warning methods, non-linearity tests and surrogate data 11:00 a.m. | Lecture 2: Long-range dependence and scaling analysis, Persistence and anti-persistence, power spectrum, Hurst exponent, detrended fluctuation analysis 02:00 p.m. | Tutorial 1: Introduction to Python, Why Python in science?, important packages for scientific computing, common data types, structure of pyunicorn 04:00 p.m. | Tutorial 2: Assignment of group projects, (6 groups a 5 persons) 07:00 p.m. | Social get-together at local brewery /Tuesday, September 29th/ 09:00 a.m. | Lecture 3: Introduction to complex networks, Mathematical representation of networks, structural network characteristics, basic network models, identification of power-laws, interconnected and multi-layer networks 11:00 a.m. | Lecture 4: Inferring networks from data, Functional network analysis (correlation networks, examples from climatology, neurophysiology and economics), visibility graphs 02:00 p.m. | Tutorial 3: tbd 04:00 p.m. | Tutorial 4: tbd /Wednesday, September 30th/ 09:00 a.m. | Lecture 5: Information theory and entropy, Basic concepts, Shannon-, Renyi- and Tsallis-entropies as statistical quantifiers, Kolmogorov-Sinai (source) entropy and estimation via block entropies, order patterns and permutation entropy, mutual information, transfer entropy and causality, independent component analysis 11:00 a.m. | Lecture 6: Synchronization, Definition and types of synchronization, phase synchronization: order parameters and phase dynamics from data, generalized synchronization 02:00 p.m. | Tutorial 5: tbd 04:00 p.m. | Tutorial 6: tbd /Thursday, October 1st/ 09:00 a.m. | Lecture 7: Phase space concepts, Phase space of dynamical systems, embedding, fractal dimensions, correlation integral and relation with entropies, entropy estimates from embedded data 11:00 a.m. | Lecture 8: Recurrence analysis, Recurrence in phase space; recurrence plots, quantification analysis and networks; multivariate generalizations; applications: synchronization analysis, coupling direction 02:00 p.m. | Tutorial 7: tbd 04:00 p.m. | Tutorial 8: tbd /Friday, October 2nd/ 09:00 a.m. | Presentation and discussion of projects 1-3 from the tutorials 11:00 a.m. | Presentation and discussion of projects 4-6 from the tutorials 02:00 p.m. | Open discussion: Outlook on contemporary developments in the field 03:30 p.m. | End of day 5: Farewell -- ------------------------------------------ UNIVERSITY OF COLOGNE Institute of Geophysics & Meteorology Coordinator of Competence Area III: Quantitative Modeling of Complex Systems Dr. Michael von Papen Pohligstr. 3 (R 3.224) 50969 Cologne Tel.: +49 (0)221 470-2841 Email: vonpapen(a)geo.uni-koeln.de http://complexsystems.uni-koeln.de

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Postdoctoral Positions in Computational Neuroscience at Sandia National Laboratories
by Chance, Frances S. June 29, 2015

June 29, 2015

Colleagues, We are seeking postdoctoral researchers to join an interdisciplinary research program focused on understanding neural computation at the circuit level. Example research topics of interest include computational models of visual cortex, neural circuitry underlying perception, and the neural basis of decision-making. Candidates should have a strong background in neuroscience, and an interest in understanding of relations between neuroscience, cognitive science, and computation. Experience or familiarity with related machine-learning fields is also desired. Our department is part of a highly interdisciplinary community of researchers with interests spanning systems neuroscience and brain-inspired computing, engineering, and computer science. Successful applicants will be expected to conduct high-quality research, maintain a successful publication record in peer-reviewed journals, and develop collaborations with this vibrant and growing community. This position is located at Sandia's Albuquerque, NM, USA site. To view the full job advertisement and to apply, visit http://www.sandia.gov/careers/ and click "View All Jobs". Go to the Advanced Search, then search for Job Opening ID 650197. Please contact Frances Chance (fschanc(a)sandia.gov<mailto:fschanc@sandia.gov>) or Brad Aimone (jbaimon(a)sandia.gov<mailto:jbaimon@sandia.gov>) with any questions.

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Computational Neuroscience Positions at Sandia National Laboratories
by Chance, Frances S. June 29, 2015

June 29, 2015

Colleagues, We are seeking computational neuroscientists to join an interdisciplinary research program focused on understanding neural computation at the circuit level. Preference will be given to candidates using computational approaches, broadly defined, to understand visual cortex and perception, but we welcome applicants from all areas of computational neuroscience. Example research topics of interest include computational models of visual cortex, neural circuitry underlying perception, and the neural basis of decision-making. Candidates should have a strong background in neuroscience, and an understanding of relations between neuroscience, cognitive science, and computation. Experience or familiarity with related machine-learning fields is also desired. Our department is part of a highly interdisciplinary community of researchers with interests spanning systems neuroscience and brain-inspired computing, engineering, and computer science. Successful applicants will be expected to conduct high-quality research, maintain a successful publication record in peer-reviewed journals, and develop collaborations with this vibrant and growing community. Staff members at Sandia are expected both to contribute to ongoing projects and to develop new lines of research with potential for application in solving complex problems. This position is located at Sandia's Albuquerque, NM, USA site. Multiple positions for varying levels of experience are available. For more information and to apply, visit http://www.sandia.gov/careers/ and click "View All Jobs". Go to the Advanced Search, then search for Job Opening ID 650198. For questions please contact Frances Chance (fschanc(a)sandia.gov<mailto:fschanc@sandia.gov>) or Brad Aimone (jbaimon(a)sandia.gov<mailto:jbaimon@sandia.gov>).

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Workshop on "Spike Initiation: Models & Experiments" at CNS2015 - 22/7/2015, Prague
by Giugliano Michele June 29, 2015

June 29, 2015

Apologies for cross-posting. We would like to announce the following event ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Workshop on "Spike Initiation: Models & Experiments"<http://www.namasen.net/drupal/sites/CNS2015Workshop/CNS2015_Workshop_-_Spik…> as part of the CNS2015<http://www.cnsorg.org/cns-2015-prague> programme July 22nd, 2015, Prague, Czech Republic ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The workshop gathers leading experimentalists and theoreticians to discuss a pivotal element for our quantitative understanding of neuronal excitability: the initiation of action potentials. Phenomenological, electrophysiological, and computational aspects of spike initiation will be discussed by addressing the following questions: · What models can quantitatively account for experimental observations? · How is spike initiation regulated at different time scales? · What is the role of the various ionic channels expressed in the axonal initial segment? · What is the significance of neuronal morphology and spatial distribution of channels? · What are the functional consequences of spike initiation properties? The workshop is organised as a symposium of the CNS2015 conference<http://www.cnsorg.org/cns-2015-prague> (see here<http://www.cnsorg.org/cns-2015-workshops-program>). Organizers: Romain Brette, Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris, France, Michele Giugliano, University of Antwerp (UA), Wilrijk, Belgium. Speakers: Romain Brette, Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris, France, Martina Michalikova, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany. Andreas Neef, Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization, Goettingen, Germany. Florence Cotel, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia. Michele Giugliano, University of Antwerp (UA), Wilrijk, Belgium. Maarten Kole, Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience, Amsterdam, Netherlands. Christian Pozzorini, EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland. Nadim Farzan, Federated Dept Biological Sciences, NJIT & Rutgers Univ, Newark, USA. William Spain, Washington University, Seattle, Washington, USA. Find more information online: http://www.frontiersin.org/events/Spike_Initation_Models__Experiments/3036 Michele Giugliano and Romain Brette — Michele Giugliano, PhD Dept. of Biomedical Sciences University of Antwerp Campus Drie Eiken (CDE) - D.T.657 Universiteitsplein 1, B-2610 Wilrijk (Belgium) url: http://www.uantwerpen.be/michele-giugliano

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Early bird registration extended: Swinburne Brain Imaging Symposium 2015: Principles and Applications of Magnetoencephalography
by David Liley June 29, 2015

June 29, 2015

EARLY BIRD REGISTRATION EXTENDED TO 26th July 2015 Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne, Australia, is hosting a workshop to promote the unique capabilities of magnetoencephalography for basic and clinical research and clinical decision making. Running over two days from 29 to 30 July 2015 it will feature invited talks from some of the fields most important research leaders and a MEG data analysis hands-on computer workshop. Invited Speakers: Mark Woolrich (Oxford) Krish Singh (Cardiff) Vladimir Litvak (UCL) Suresh Muthukumaraswamy (Auckland) Blake Johnson (Macquarie) In addition to the keynote speakers and computer workshop there will also be an open poster session for registrants to present their work in any of the following or related thematic areas: magnetoencephalography, electroencephalography, clinical monitoring, neuroimaging, TMS, tDCS, tACS or brain-computer interfaces Poster abstract submission deadline: CLOSED Invited Symposia & Cocktail Poster Session – 29-30 July 2015: Early bird registration: full: AU$300; Student/Post-docs: AU$80. Early bird registration deadline: 26th July 2015. Standard registration: full: AU$450; Student/Early Career Researcher: AU$120. Hands-on MEG Data analysis workshop (spaces limited to 30) – 30 July afternoon: SOLD OUT For further information on the invited speakers as well as the preliminary workshop program, and how to submit abstracts and register visit: http://www.research.swinburne.edu.au/our-research/events/neuroimaging-sympo… Please forward this notice to anyone that you think might be interested. On behalf of the organizing committee David Liley, MBChB, PhD Brian Cornwell, PhD Email: megsymposium(a)swin.edu.au<mailto:megsymposium@swin.edu.au> --------------------------- Prof David Liley Brain and Psychological Sciences Research Centre Swinburne University of Technology P.O. Box 218 Hawthorn VIC 3122 Australia ph: +61 3 9214 8812<tel:%2B61%203%209214%208812>

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Fully funded PhD position available at Ulster University (UK), in Brain-inspired Self-repairing Electronic Systems.
by Harkin, Jim June 28, 2015

June 28, 2015

A fully funded PhD position is available at the Intelligent Systems Research Center, Ulster University, UK, in Brain-inspired Self-repairing Electronic Systems. Background Applications are invited for a PhD studentship in Brain-inspired Self-repairing Electronic Systems. The proposed PhD project work is part of the recently funded 3½ year EPSRC project ‘SPANNER’ (EP/N00714X/1) which investigates the development of brain-inspired self-repairing systems, and is in collaboration with the Department of Electronics, University of York. The PhD project will build upon existing investigations at Ulster into the development of highly reliable, large-scale computing systems, where hardware building block have been developed to support brain inspired hardware architectures. In particular, at Ulster we have shown that astrocyte cells interact with neurons to detect when a fault has occurred in the connections making up a network of neurons. We have also developed computer models that demonstrate not only how faults are detected but also how the brain performs repairs. The proposed PhD project will investigate the development of a novel self-repair strategy for computing systems. The concept will explore current thinking on how the human brain performs repair using “astrocyte” cells (glia cells), and will explore how the key principle of this mechanism can be used in the context of electronic systems to provide a novel repair strategy in hardware. Currently an existing software model of a self-repairing astrocyte-neuron network is available and this will be an initial functional specification for the self-repairing hardware strategy. The key research aim is to use the software model of the astrocyte-neuron network and explore how to effectively and efficiently map it to FPGA hardware. Synapse and neuron building blocks for FPGAs have been demonstrated by the Ulster team and will be initially used in the hardware design. The research will look to optimise the FPGA implementation for scalability and this will include the design of astrocyte cells, 3-terminal synapses and interconnectivity between cells, synapses and neurons. An FPGA-based implementation of a demonstrator will be explored to showcase the levels of resilience to injected faults. The successful candidate will be located at the Intelligent Systems Research Centre on the Magee campus of the Ulster University however, aspects of the work will require short research visits to collaborate with project partners at the University of York. Requirements Candidates should hold, or expect to hold a first or upper second class honours degree in Electronic/Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science or a cognate area. Applications will be considered on a competitive basis with regard to the candidate’s qualifications, skills experience and interests. Successful candidates will enrol as of 1st October 2015, on a full-time programme of research studies leading to the award of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Award The studentship will comprise fees and an annual stipend of £14,057. It will be awarded for a period of up to three years subject to satisfactory progress and is tenable in the Faculty of Computing and Engineering. Further Information If you wish to receive further information please contact: Dr. Jim Harkin (jg.harkin(a)ulster.ac.uk<mailto:jg.harkin@ulster.ac.uk>) Procedure For more information on applying go to www.ulster.ac.uk/research<http://www.ulster.ac.uk/research> Apply online via www.ulster.ac.uk/applyonline<http://www.ulster.ac.uk/applyonline> Closing date and interviews The closing date for receipt of completed applications is 10th July 2015. Interviews will be held in July 2015. ________________________________ 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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Post-doctoral research position in vision and memory (I2R, Singapore)
by Cheston Tan June 27, 2015

June 27, 2015

We are seeking an exceptional postdoctoral researcher in visual recognition, learning and memory. The position is available immediately, at the Institute for Infocomm Research (I2R) in Singapore. The project is part of a large multidisciplinary grant (PI: Prof. Tomaso Poggio of MIT) involving multiple universities and research institutions in Singapore (SBIC/CIRC, Duke-NUS Medical School, NUS/NUH, NTU, SINAPSE). The candidate will work on visual recognition, learning and memory algorithms with a strong multidisciplinary team at I2R, and with Prof. Poggio. Collaborators include Prof. Brown Hsieh (Duke-NUS Medical School), Prof. Gabriel Kreiman (Harvard Medical School), Prof. Zhao Qi (National University of Singapore) and Dr. Demis Hassabis (Google/DeepMind). Candidates must have a PhD in computer science, neuroscience, engineering, psychology or related fields. Strong programming and quantitative skills are required. Candidates must be proficient in spoken and written English. Interest in biologically-inspired approaches preferred. The appointment will be for up to 2 years (possibly with extension), with internationally-competitive salaries and benefits. Other benefits include: - Funding for international conferences and training courses - Collaboration opportunities with an excellent network of international scientists - Opportunities for attachments at MIT and the Center for Brains, Minds and Machines (http://cbmm.mit.edu/) Interested candidates should send a CV, statement of research interests and three references to Dr. Cheston Tan (cheston(a)alum.mit.edu) Position will be open until filled; send applications sooner rather than later if interested. More information: - Dr. Cheston Tan: http://www.mit.edu/~cheston/CV_short.pdf - Dr. Lim Joo-Hwee: http://www.i2r.a-star.edu.sg/profile/dr-lim-joo-hwee - Institute for Infocomm Research: http://www.i2r.a-star.edu.sg/ - Working in Singapore: http://www.contactsingapore.sg/professionals/why_singapore/

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ICDM Workshop HealthMining 2015 and HISS Special Issue (Deadline: July 20, 2015)
by william June 27, 2015

June 27, 2015

[Please accept our apologies if you receive multiple copies of this email] CALL FOR PAPERS HEALTHMINING 2015 - The ICDM Workshop on Data Mining and Decision Analytics on Public Health and Wellness (URL: http://www.comp.hkbu.edu.hk/~healthmining2015/) In conjunction with the IEEE International Conference on Data Mining (ICDM 2015) AIMS and SCOPE For many years, data mining and decision analytics techniques have already been extensively applied to various domains, such as smart environments, social networks, marketing, and web technology. The focus of this workshop is mainly on the issues and challenges of data mining techniques with the purpose of improving human well-being and quality of life. It is expected that the workshop may increase the diversity of application areas that can benefit from data mining. At the same time, it is also desirable that the discussion and vision of this workshop would also offer further insights into, as well as new tools for, the issues of data collection, processing, system modeling, simulation and optimization arising from various public health topics. The objective of this workshop is to serve as a venue for researchers to discuss how data mining and analytics methods can contribute to improving public health quality in clinical, medical/biomedical, and healthcare systems in smart ways, including evidence-based medicine, personalized treatment and healthcare, assistive technology and active surveillance and control of diseases. In addition to mining statistical regularities, associations, or causalities from large-scale health-related datasets, it would be more desirable to further investigate how the results can effectively and efficiently support decision-making, system modeling, optimization, and simulation in various healthcare systems. TOPICS OF INTEREST - Large-scale data acquisition and management issues for public health - Social and other network-based analysis for public health - Medical big data mining and innovative applications - Mining risk patterns in medical data - Mental and physical health data integration - Biomarker discovery and biomedical data mining - Clinical data mining for practice knowledge building - Data mining from clinical decision-making, and practitioner reflection - Data mining from genetic data of diseases - Data mining for disease profiling and personalized treatment - Data mining for (active) syndromic surveillance - Data mining for infectious/chronic disease epidemiology and control - Data mining for exploring hidden patterns in clinical systems - Data mining for medical/biomedical, and healthcare systems - Data mining for assistive environments - Data modeling and information management for pervasive assistive environments - Data mining and knowledge modeling for wellness - Spatiotemporal data exploration and mining of diseases - Unstructured data mining in medicine and healthcare - Semantic data mining in medicine and healthcare - Scalable data integration in medicine and healthcare - Evidence-based decision-support systems - Healthcare knowledge abstraction, classification, and summarization - Healthcare knowledge computerization, execution, inference, and representation >>> SPECIAL ISSUE <<< Selected papers of the workshop will be invited for revision to be included in a special issue to be published in Health Information Science and Systems (URL: http://www.hissjournal.com/) IMPORTANT DATES - Paper Submission Due: Jul 20, 2015 - Paper Notification Date: Sep 1, 2015 - Workshop Date: Nov 13, 2015 ORGANIZING COMMITTEE - William K. Cheung, Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong - Jiming Liu, Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong - Parisa Rashidi, University of Florida, USA - Fei Wang, University of Connecticut, USA -- Dr. William K. Cheung Associate Professor and Associate Head CS Dept, Hong Kong Baptist University http://www.comp.hkbu.edu.hk/~william Tel: (+852) 3411-5965 Fax: (+852) 3411-7892 "A happy heart makes the face cheerful, but heartache crushes the spirit." --- Proverbs 17:22 Department of Computer Science: http://www.comp.hkbu.edu.hk HKBU Faculty of Science: http://www.sci.hkbu.edu.hk Disclaimer: http://www.comp.hkbu.edu.hk/disclaimer Department of Computer Science: http://www.comp.hkbu.edu.hk HKBU Faculty of Science: http://www.sci.hkbu.edu.hk Disclaimer: http://www.comp.hkbu.edu.hk/disclaimer

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Fully funded PhD position in Neural Learning / Robotics / Evolutionary Neural Networks
by Andrea Soltoggio June 25, 2015

June 25, 2015

A fully funded PhD position is available at the Deep Automation, Learning and Evolution Lab at Loughborough University, UK, on the topics of Neural Learning / Robotics / Evolutionary Neural Networks. Loughborough University is ranked 11th in the 2016 UK League Table Ranking (http://www.thecompleteuniversityguide.co.uk/loughborough/performance , and is located in Loughborough, a town well connected to London by a 1h20m journey by train. Research. The focus is on developing new neural learning algorithms with possible applications to a variety of automation and machine learning problems, e.g. vision, robotics, autonomous vehicles, manufacturing technology. We seek an outstanding candidate, capable of defining their own research project and bringing novel ideas and initiatives to the lab. Working environment. The student, based at the Computer Science Department, School of Science, will have access to a number of robotic platforms, from humanoid robots, to UAVs and a number of industrial and service robots, as well as a High Performance Computing cluster and GPUs. Interdisciplinary research is encouraged across laboratories, including Aeronautical and Automotive Engineering, the Intelligent Automation Lab, and the Centre for Information Management. The research group collaborates with leading national and international industrial partners. Requirements. The ideal candidate holds (or is about to obtain) a first-class honour undergraduate/postgraduate degree (or equivalent) in Computer Science, Mathematics, Statistics, Electrical or Electronic Engineering, or has authored publications in recognised conferences/journals. Independent working skills are valued as well as the capability of working in a team. Collegiality and interpersonal skills are essential. Excellent English language skills are highly desired (see requirements here http://www.lboro.ac.uk/international/englang/index.htm) Period/Scholarship. Start: October 2015. Duration: 3 years. Scholarship: £14,057 per annum plus tuition fees at the UK/EU rate (currently £4,052 p.a.) Enquiries and applications. Interested candidates are invited to establish a preliminary contact with me (a.soltoggio(a)lboro.ac.uk<mailto:a.soltoggio@lboro.ac.uk>), possibly including a CV, the names and addresses of two referees, and a statement of research interest (maximum 300 words), before submitting the full application at http://www.lboro.ac.uk/study/apply/research/ Best regards, Andrea Soltoggio -- Dr. Andrea Soltoggio Lecturer in Artificial Intelligence Department of Computer Science and Centre for Information Management (CIM) School of Business and Economics Haslegrave Building, N.2.03 Loughborough University LE11 3TU, UK Phone: +44 (0) 1509 635748<tel:%2B44%20%280%29%201509%20635748> Email: a.soltoggio(a)lboro.ac.uk<mailto:a.soltoggio@lboro.ac.uk> Web: http://www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/compsci/staff/dr-andrea-soltoggio.html

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Job: Post-doctoral Scientist - Investigating the Feasibility of Controlling Hearing-aid Directionality Using In-Ear Electrodes to Measure Eye Position.
by Bernd Porr June 25, 2015

June 25, 2015

Dear all, this is something for somebody who has a strong background in signal processing / biomed signal processing. If interested please contact Owen Brimijoin <owen(a)ihr.gla.ac.uk>. Best /Bernd Porr -------------------------------------------------------------------- Salary: £27,084 – 29,567 Grade: MRC - 4a Contract Type: Fixed Term, 24 months Hours: Full Time Closing Date:31 July 2015 Interview Date: 26 August 2015 The successful applicant will be based at the MRC/CSO Institute of Hearing Research (IHR) in Glasgow within the Auditory Disability and Impairment group headed by Dr William Whitmer. The successful applicant will join a small group of researchers but will work most closely with Drs Owen Brimijoin (IHR), Bernd Porr (Glasgow Uni), and Graham Naylor (Oticon) on a project investigating the feasibility of using in-ear measurements of eye position to guide hearing aid directionality. The project will use electrooculograms (EOG), optical eye and head tracking, digital signal processing, microphone arrays, as well as our extensive audiological and auditory testing facilities. Your work will consist of writing signal-processing algorithms to combine the output of an EOG amplifier, gyroscopes, and other extra-cochlear signals to yield a reliable measure of eye position that can be used to aim the directional beam of an experimental hearing aid. The work will continue with implementing these algorithms in Matlab and/or C, designing experiments to test benefit, statistical analysis of results, and delivery of these results for dissemination (conference abstracts and presentations, invited lectures and seminars, and published manuscripts in specialized and generic journals). -- http://www.berndporr.me.uk http://www.linux-usb-daq.co.uk http://www.imdb.com/name/nm3293421/ +44 (0)7840 340069

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Deep Learning and Continuous Time Computing - Track at SAC 2016 - Call for Papers
by Davide Zambrano June 24, 2015

June 24, 2015

Dear all, Please consider joining our track at SAC2016. Apologies for cross posting. Best regards. ————————————————————————————————————— ACM Symposium on Applied Computing (SAC) 2016 The 31st Annual ACM Symposium on Applied Computing in Pisa, Italy, April 3 – 8, 2016. (webpage : http://www.acm.org/conferences/sac/sac2016/) Deep Learning and Continuous-Time Computing (webpage : http://event.cwi.nl/sac2016/) ————————————————————————————————————— SAC 2016: For the past thirsty years, the ACM Symposium on Applied Computing has been a primary gathering forum for applied computer scientists, computer engineers, software engineers, and application developers from around the world. SAC 2016 is sponsored by the ACM Special Interest Group on Applied Computing (SIGAPP), and will be hosted by the University of Pisa and Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna University, Italy. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is one of the objectives of Machine Learning: how to create computers capable of intelligent behavior. Deep Learning in artificial neural networks represents a remarkable step toward this direction. Current state-of-the-art AI in the form of deep neural networks has recently demonstrated breakthrough performance in various AI-cognitive tasks, from image and speech recognition to natural language generation and playing ATARI games. However, in real-world applications like video processing or robot control, a deep neural network has then to be updated continuously, causing a high computational load. Specialized acceleration hardware is being developed for deep learning in continuous-time environments. In addition, or alternatively, Spiking Neural Networks (SNNs) represent another possible solution for efficient continuous-time representation and computing in deep neural networks. This Track aims to consolidate the current state-of-the-art in deep learning, continuous-time computing, spiking neural networks and related acceleration hardware tools (such as GPUs, SpiNNaker or Neuromorphic Silicon systems) showing recent and future progresses of this rising and growing research field. ————————————————————————————————————— Topics of interests: Deep learning Continuous-time learning Spiking Neural Networks Asynchronous computation Large scale parallel simulations and computing Neuromorphic computing ————————————————————————————————————— Important Dates are published on the Conference or Track webpages. ————————————————————————————————————— Track Program Committee: Sander Bohte, CWI Amsterdam (NL) (Track Chair — email to s.m.bohte(a)cwi.nl ) Davide Zambrano, CWI Amsterdam (NL) (Track Chair — email to d.zambrano(a)cwi.nl ) Thomas Nowotny, University of Sussex (UK) Steven Furber, University of Manchester (UK) Karl Tuyls, University of Liverpool (UK) Shih-Chii Liu, University of Zurich/ETH Zurich (CH) Robert Babuska, Delft University of Technology (NL) Andre Gruning, University of Surrey (UK) Max Welling, University of Amsterdam (NL) Narayan Srinavasa, HRL Laboratories LLC (USA) Eleni Vasilaki, University of Sheffield (UK) ————————————————————————————————————— Important notice: Paper registration is required, allowing the inclusion of the paper, poster, or SRC abstract in the conference proceedings. An author or a proxy attending SAC MUST present the paper. This is a requirement for including the work in the ACM/IEEE digital library. No-show of registered papers, posters, and SRC abstracts will result in excluding them from the ACM/IEEE digital library. ————————————————————————————————————— Dr. Davide Zambrano PostDoc at CWI, Amsterdam (NL) MSc in Biomedical Eng. - PhD in Biorobotics D.Zambrano(a)cwi.nl Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI) Science Park, 123 1098 XG - Amsterdam

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Gordon Research Conference on Eye Movements
by Emilio Salinas June 24, 2015

June 24, 2015

Readers of this list may be interested in the upcoming Gordon Research Conference on Eye Movements. This year's theme, "Integrating Perception and Action for Optimal Vision", promises to provide fresh perspectives on core oculomotor issues. The meeting is meant as an immersive experience in which participants share ideas over meals and jointly participate in scheduled and unscheduled social activities. The format provides unparalleled opportunity for participants at all career stages to share their most novel findings, foster new collaborative efforts, and chart the future directions of oculomotor research. WHAT: Call for applications for the 2015 Gordon Research Conference on Eye Movements (main meeting) and Gordon Research Seminar on Eye Movements (1-day forum for students and postdocs) DEADLINE FOR APPLICATIONS: June 28th WHEN: July 26-31 (GRC), July 25-26 (GRS) WHERE: Bentley University, Waltham MA (just outside of Boston) HOW: Apply online - GRC application; GRS application DETAILS: http://www.grc.org/programs.aspx?id=14523 Emilio Salinas, on behalf of Terry Stanford & John Van Opstal (GRC Chairs) Doug Crawford & Marc Sommer (GRC Vice-chairs) Jaime Kaminer and Martin Bohlen (GRS Chairs)

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Rapid image categorization via edge co-occurrences
by James A. Bednar June 23, 2015

June 23, 2015

We are pleased to announce the publication of an open-access paper demonstrating a novel method for categorizing images using the statistics of their edge co-occurrences. The success of this low-level method in matching both correct and incorrect classifications by humans suggests a reinterpretation of longstanding claims for rapid hierarchical processing in the visual cortex. Laurent U. Perrinet Institut de Neurosciences de la Timone Aix Marseille Universite, CNRS James A. Bednar Institute for Adaptive and Neural Computation University of Edinburgh _______________________________________________________________________________ Laurent U. Perrinet and James A. Bednar. Edge co-occurrences can account for rapid categorization of natural versus animal images. Scientific Reports, Nature Publishing Group, 5:11400, 2015. http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/srep11400 Abstract: Making a judgment about the semantic category of a visual scene, such as whether it contains an animal, is typically assumed to involve high-level associative brain areas. Previous explanations require progressively analyzing the scene hierarchically at increasing levels of abstraction, from edge extraction to mid-level object recognition and then object categorization. Here we show that the statistics of edge co-occurrences alone are sufficient to perform a rough yet robust (translation, scale, and rotation invariant) scene categorization. We first extracted the edges from images using a scale-space analysis coupled with a sparse coding algorithm. We then computed association for different categories (natural, man-made, or containing an animal) by computing the statistics of edge co-occurrences. These differed strongly, with animal images having more curved configurations. We show that this geometry alone is sufficient for categorization, and that the pattern of errors made by humans is consistent with this procedure. Because these statistics could be measured as early as the primary visual cortex, the results challenge widely held assumptions about the flow of computations in the visual system. The results also suggest new algorithms for image classification and signal processing that exploit correlations between low-level structure and the underlying semantic category. -- The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in Scotland, with registration number SC005336.

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POSTDOCTORAL RESEARCHER IN SYSTEMS NEUROSCIENCE
by Santamaria, Cookie June 22, 2015

June 22, 2015

POSTDOCTORAL RESEARCHER IN SYSTEMS NEUROSCIENCE The BioCircuits Institute (BCI) and Departments of Physics, Chemistry/Biochemistry, Bioengineering, and Psychology and Neurobiology at the University of California, San Diego invite applications for a postdoctoral position in systems neuroscience, for experiments leading to the neuromorphic engineering of cognitive abilities. The ideal candidate will have experience with electrophysiology, with awake behaving animals, with neural modeling, and/or with biologically inspired integrated circuits and systems. Close interaction with other project researchers in computational and theoretical neuroscience, nonlinear dynamical systems, and neuromorphic engineering is involved. We will accept applications immediately. To be considered, please submit your complete application by Friday, 31 July 2015. We will begin making selections from the completed applications on 3 August 2015. The Committee will continue to accept and review completed applications as they are received until the position is filled. Appointments are for two years (in one-year increments) with the possibility of a third. Send your statement of qualifications and interest with curriculum vitae, your two most significant publications and three letters of reference to Tim Gentner, Henry Abarbanel, Gert Cauwenberghs, Katja Lindenberg, Mikhail Rabinovich, and Terrence Sejnowski via email to: <postdoc.muri(a)gmail.com<mailto:postdoc.muri@gmail.com>>. A Ph.D. or equivalent doctoral degree is required prior to the appointment. UCSD is an EO/AA employer.

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