- Comp-neuro - lists.cnsorg.org

NEURON course discounts extended

by Ted Carnevale

The early registration discounts for this year's NEURON summer courses were supposed to end on Monday, April 20, but we have been able to arrange to continue them until Friday, May 15. NEURON Fundamentals June 20-23 addresses all aspects of using NEURON to model individual neurons, and also introduces parallel simulation and the fundamentals of modeling networks. Includes a healthy serving of Python. Parallel Simulation with NEURON June 24-26 is for users who are already familiar with NEURON and need to create models that will run on parallel hardware. Pays special attention to powerful strategies and idioms for implementing and managing models, measuring and improving performance, and debugging. Each day includes a block of time for working on your own code with expert help close at hand. For more information, including course fees and the registration form, see http://www.neuron.yale.edu/neuron/static/courses/nscsd2015/nscsd2015.html --Ted

April 22, 2015

POSTDOCTORAL RESEARCHER IN SYSTEMS NEUROSCIENCE

by Santamaria, Cookie

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.

April 22, 2015

RLDM2015: Early registration deadline (April 28th) fast approaching

by Yael Niv

The 2nd Multidisciplinary Conference on Reinforcement Learning and Decision Making (RLDM2015) www.rldm.org June 7-10, The University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada ====================================================== Registration for RLDM2015 is now open at http://rldm.org/rldm2015/registration/ Early registration deadline: April 28th, 11:59PM EST (less than a week from today) Early registration fees are $480 CAD (Canadian dollars) for regular registration and $250 CAD for student/postdoc for meeting + tutorials, or somewhat less for meeting only. Late registration is considerably more expensive so please register early! Registration fees include three light breakfasts and all coffee breaks, two lunches, and one banquet dinner. RLDM2015 Invited speakers: http://rldm.org/rldm2015/invited-speakers2015/ RLDM2015 Tutorials: http://rldm.org/rldm2015/tutorials/ To ensure that you receive future announcements about RLDM2015 please join our mailing list at http://tinyurl.com/RLDMlist (you must log in to google to see the “join list” button, and choose “all email” from the options at the bottom).

April 22, 2015

CFP for BigData2015: International Conference in Mauritius

by Grace Allas

*** CALL FOR PAPERS *** http://sdiwc.net/conferences/bigdata2015/ The Second International Conference on Data Mining, Internet Computing, and Big Data (BigData2015) University of Mauritius, Le Reduit, Moka, Mauritius June 29 – July 01, 2015 All registered papers will be included in SDIWC Digital Library. ========================================================== The conference aims to enable researchers build connections between different digital applications. The event will be held over three days, with presentations delivered by researchers from the international community, including presentations from keynote speakers and state-of-the-art lectures. RESEARCH TOPICS ARE NOT LIMITED TO: * Data Mining Tasks & Algorithms Explorative and visual data mining Mining text and semi-structured data Multimedia mining (audio/video) Segmentation/Clustering/Association Web mining Artificial neural networks Link and sequence analysis Evolutionary computation/meta heuristics * Data Mining Integration & Process Distributed and grid based data mining Metadata and ontologies Mining large scale data Attribute discretization and encoding Feature selection and transformation Model interpretation Data cleaning and preparation * Data Mining Applications Bioinformatics Business/Corporate/Industrial Data Mining Credit Scoring Data Mining in Logistics Database Marketing Direct Marketing Engineering Mining Medicine Data Mining Military Data Mining Security Data Mining Social Science Mining Time series analysis and visualization Anomaly detection Association rule learning Classification Cloud based infrastructure (applications, storage and resources) Cluster analysis Crowd-sourcing Data fusion and integration Data-mining grids Distributed databases Distributed file systems Ensemble learning Genetic algorithms Machine learning Massively parallel-processing (MPP) databases Natural language processing Neural networks Pattern recognition Predictive modelling * Internet Computing Design and analysis of internet protocols and engineering Digital libraries/digital image collections Electronic commerce and internet Grid based computing and internet tools Internet and emerging technologies Internet and video technologies Internet applications and appliances Internet banking systems Internet based decision support systems Internet law and compliance Internet security and trust Markup Languages Metacomputing Mobile computing and the internet Network architectures and network computing Novel Java applications on internet Quality of service Search engines Social networks The WWW and intranets The internet and Cloud computing Web based computing Web interfaces to databases Web site design and coordination Search-based applications Sentiment analysis Signal processing Simulation Supervised and unsupervised learning ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ IMPORTANT DATES: Submission Deadline : May 29, 2015 Notification of Acceptance : 2 - 4 weeks from the submission date Camera Ready Submission : Open from now until June 09, 2015 Registration Date : Open from now until June 09, 2015 Conference Dates : June 29 - July 01, 2015 Researchers are encouraged to submit their work electronically. All papers will be fully refereed by a minimum of two specialized referees. Before final acceptance, all referees comments must be considered. Paper Submission: hhttp:// sdiwc.net/conferences/bigdata2015/paper-submission/ Write us for more details: bigdata15(a)sdiwc.net

April 22, 2015

SAND7 Announcement

by Barbara Dorney

> > The seventh international workshop on Statistical Analysis of Neural Data > (SAND7) will take place May 27-29, 2015, in Pittsburgh, PA. > SOME TRAVEL SUPPORT REMAINS AVAILABLE > There will be talks by senior investigators and junior investigators. > http://sand.stat.cmu.edu <http://sand.stat.cmu.edu/> > There will also be a poster session, to which all participants are > invited to contribute. > Talks and posters may involve new methodology, investigation of > existing methods, or > application of state-of-the-art analytical techniques. > Here are the confirmed keynote speakers: > Marlene Cohen (University of Pittsburgh) > Adrienne Fairhall (University of Washington) > Michael Miller (Johns Hopkins) > Mark Schnitzer (Stanford) > Sebastian Seung (Princeton) > Matt Wilson (MIT) > This workshop series is concerned with analysis of neural signals > from various sources, > including EEG, fMRI, MEG, 2-Photon, and extracellular recordings. It > aims to define > important problems in neuronal data analysis and useful strategies > for attacking them; > foster communication between experimental neuroscientists and those > trained in statisti- > cal and computational methods encourage young researchers, including > graduate students, > to present their work; and expose young researchers to important > challenges and oppor- > tunities in this interdisciplinary domain, while providing a small > meeting atmosphere to > facilitate the interaction of young researchers with senior colleagues. > The organizers are Emery Brown, Elizabeth Buffalo, Rob Kass, Liam > Paninski, Sri Sarma and Jonathan Victor.

April 22, 2015

CFP: IEEE SDRANCAN-2015 with IEEE GLOBECOM 2015, San Diego, CA, USA, Dec 6 - 10, 2015.

by Sandra Sendra

[Apologies, if you receive multiple copies due to cross posting] *CALL FOR PAPERS* *IEEE International Workshop on Advances in Software Defined Radio Access Networks and Context-aware Cognitive Networks 2015 (IEEE SDRANCAN-2015)* in conjunction with IEEE GLOBECOM 2015, San Diego, CA, USA, Dec 6 - 10, 2015. URL: http://ieee-sdrancan-2015.cwins.org/ *OVERVIEW* Future generation wireless systems will require a paradigm shift in how they are networked, organized, configured, optimized, and recovered automatically based on their operating situations. With the emergence of Software Defined Access Networks and Context-Aware Cognitive Networks (SDRANCAN), wireless users could get seamless wireless connectivity and services regardless of the frequency bands that they are using as a backhaul. Context-Aware cognitive networks provides dynamic adaptive services and applications for wireless users through automatic configuration of devices and their parameters, systems, and services based on the users? contexts. We believe that this workshop is important for future wireless networks and will help to bridge the gap between traditional wireless networks and future wireless networks through both software defined access networks and context-aware cognitive networks. SDRANCAN-2015 will serve as a forum for researchers from academia, government and industries to exchange ideas, present new results and provide future visions on these topics. Original technical papers on the advances in Software Defined Access Networks and Context-Aware Cognitive Networks as well as those that describe practical deployment and implementation experiences are solicited for presentation and publication. *TOPICS OF INTEREST* Topics of interest include but not limited to: Fundamental limits Network architecture Wireless virtualization Network virtualization Software defined networks Cloud-based and/or wired infrastructure Cognitive vehicular ad hoc networks Network visualization Secrecy capacity and rate-equivocation of wireless channels. Admission control in heterogeneous networks Security and Network coding Storage and processing Quality-of-service Smart protocols Case studies and testbeds Cognitive and context aware cyber physical systems Mobile and vehicular networks Data dissemination techniques in context-aware systems Trust, security and privacy issues Socio-economic models Self-organization, Self-configuration, Self-optimization and Self recovery Biological-inspired networking Parameter estimation for adaptation of wireless communication systems Network economics and game theory Interference mitigation and awareness OpenFlow Networking Cognitive networks The workshop accepts only novel, previously unpublished papers. All submissions should be written in English with a maximum paper length of six (6) printed pages (10-point font) including figures without incurring additional page charges (maximum 1 additional page with over-length page charge if accepted) http://globecom2015.ieee-globecom.org/authors *- General Chairs -* Jaime Lloret Mauri, Polytechnic Univ. of Valencia, Spain Danda B. Rawat, Georgia Southern University, USA *- Publicity Chair -* Sandra Sendra, Polytechnic University of Valencia, Spain Al-Sakib Khan Pathan, International Islamic University Malaysia, Malaysia *- Technical Program Committee -* Venkatesan Ekambaram, Qualcomm, USA Bhed B. Bista, Iwate Prefectural University, Japan Sachin Shetty, Tennessee State University, USA Gongjun Yan, University of Southern Indiana, USA Sabu M. Thampi, IIITM-K, India Rajesh K. Sharma, Ilmenau Univ. of Technology, Germany ChunSheng Xin, Old Dominion University, USA Al-Sakib Khan Pathan, IIUM, Malaysia Chandra Bajracharya, Georgia Southern University, USA Javier Aguiar, University of Valladolid, Spain Carlos Baladron, University of Valladolid, Spain Kayhan Zrar Ghafoor, Univ. Teknologi Malaysia, Malaysia Sandra Sendra, Polytechnic University of Valencia, Spain Joel Rodrigues, University of Beira Interior, Portugal =================================================== ===================================================

April 21, 2015

Neural Coding, Computation and Dynamics (NCCD)

by Peter Latham

August 30 - September 2, 2015 Bilbao, Spain http://www.gatsby.ucl.ac.uk/nccd/nccd15/ Second call, and registration is now open!!! The goal of this workshop is to bring together experimentalists and theoreticians who seek to understand how circuit dynamics underlies representation and function in the nervous system, and to foster real discussion. This year the workshop will focus on the interplay between excitation (E) and inhibition (I) in cortical circuits. The balance between E and I, an idea proposed twenty years ago to account for the stochastic nature of cortical activity, has been seminal in the understanding of basic principles of neural network dynamics. We are seeking talks that, building on this paradigm, present recent findings on topics such as neuronal variability and stochastic dynamics, the role of the different subtypes of interneurons,plasticity and structure in EI networks, brain state and network dynamics, etc. The workshop will be limited to about 70 people, the hope being to foster real interaction and discussion. Thanks to a very generous grant from the Gatsby Charitable Foundation, we will have a limited number of travel grants (10-15) for students and postdocs. Details will follow shortly. Important dates: May 15: Abstracts due (there will be posters and contributed talks) May 31: Early registration due Confirmed invited speakers Dean Buonomano, University of California at Los Angeles Jess Cardin, Yale School of Medicine Brent Doiron, University of Pittsburgh Mike Hausser, UCL Carl Petersen, Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne Karel Svoboda, Janelia Farm Tim Vogels, University of Oxford Fred Wolf, University of Gottingen Best, Peter Latham Jaime de la Rocha Maneesh Sahani Goncalves Co-organizers

April 21, 2015

[meetings] CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS- Workshop: Embodied sensorimotor interaction: from locomotion to collective behavior at SWARM2015

by Poramate Manoonpong

CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS- Workshop: Embodied sensorimotor interaction: from locomotion to collective behavior at SWARM2015 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Wednesday, October 28 (full-day), Kyoto University, Japan Deadline for poster abstract submission: June 30, 2015 Notification of acceptance: July 31, 2015 Workshop Overview ------------------ Animals show fascinating adaptive and versatile abilities. For example, they can move around and at the same time avoid obstacles in order to successfully navigate through their complex cluttered environment for finding their food source. While moving, they can also adapt their locomotion to deal with unknown situations. Furthermore, they can interact with each other to form collective behavior for anti-predator, enhanced foraging, and even increased locomotion efficiency. These complex achievements emerge from tightly as well as loosely coupled interactions between many ingredients including biomechanics (i.e., morphology, muscles, and materials), sensory feedback, centralized/decentralized mechanisms, and communication. Developing these key ingredients and implementing them in artificial systems to approach the level of performance of living creatures remains a grand challenge. To address these issues, our workshop at SWARM 2015 (http://www.ohk.hiroshima-u.ac.jp/SWARM2015/) "Embodied sensorimotor interaction: from locomotion to collective behavior" will bring together leading experts, working in the domains of bio-inspired robotics, swarm robotics, modular robotics, embodied AI, evolutionary robotics, and computational neuroscience, to present their recent developments on robot locomotion and collective behavior and discuss future directions to overcome this challenge. The full-day workshop is composed of the following parts: 1) Invited talks by experts from swarm robotics, bio-inspired locomotion control, and embodied AI, 2) poster presentations, 3) Discussion and future steps We are also pleased to invite contributions in the form of 1 page conf. style abstract http://www.ohk.hiroshima-u.ac.jp/SWARM2015/ on (but are not limited to) the following topics. The selected contributions will be presented in a form of a poster during the workshop. We particularly encourage young scientists to contribute and attend, even presenting their research at an early stage an engage in discussions. We also welcome live demonstrations on robot locomotion and collective behavior. Submissions have to be sent to poma(a)mmmi.sdu.dk<mailto:poma@mmmi.sdu.dk> in PDF format. One author per accepted workshop contribution (poster, demo) and attendee are required to register (http://www.ohk.hiroshima-u.ac.jp/SWARM2015/) The Workshop topics include (but are not limited to) the following: ------------------ - Bio-inspired robotics (e.g., walking robots, flying robots, etc.), - Locomotion control, - Collective behavior control, - Swarm and self-organizing systems (e.g., modular robots) ===================== Tentative List of Speakers: · Dario Floreano (Laboratory of Intelligent Systems, EPFL, Switzerland) · John Hallam (Centre for BioRobotics, The Maersk Mc-Kinney Moller Institute, SDU, Denmark) · Kasper Støy (IT University of Copenhagen, Denmark) · André Seyfarth (Locomotion Laboratory, TU Darmstadt, Germany) · Koh Hosoda (Dept. of Adaptive Machine Systems, Grad. school of Engineering, Osaka University, Japan) · Yulia Sandamirskaya (Institute for Neural Computation, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany) · Shinya Aoi (Dept. of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Graduate School of Engineering, Kyoto University, Japan) · Yuichi Ambe (Dept. of Mechanical Engineering and Science, Graduate School of Engineering, Kyoto University, Japan) · Poramate Manoonpong (Embodied AI & Neurorobotics Lab, Centre for BioRobotics, The Maersk Mc-Kinney Moller Institute, SDU, Denmark) ===================== We hope that you will be able to attend and look forward to seeing you in Kyoto, Japan! The workshop organizers: Florentin Wörgötter, Poramate Manoonpong, Yuichi Ambe, Shinya Aoi

April 19, 2015

Invitation: IEEE HealthCom 2015

by Jun Suzuki

17th IEEE International Conference on e-Health Networking, Application & Services (HealthCom 2015) October 14 - 17, 2015 Boston, MA, USA http://www.ieee-healthcom.org CALL FOR PAPERS IEEE HealthCom 2015 is fully sponsored by the IEEE Communications Society. It aims at bringing together interested parties from around the world working in the healthcare field to exchange ideas, discuss innovative and emerging solutions, and develop collaborations. eHealth is defined as the cost-effective and secure use of information and communications technologies in support of health and the related fields, including health-care related services, surveillance, literature, education, knowledge and research, both at the local site and at a distance. It will make personalized medicine possible and affordable in the near future. The adoption of e-Health technologies in medical fields creates huge opportunities; however, a number of challenges still need to be addressed to build reliable, secure, and efficient networks or platforms with great flexibility. Prospective authors are cordially invited to submit their original contributions covering completed or ongoing work related to the e-Health area. The topics include but are not limited to: Medical, Biomedical and Health Informatics * Electronic medical records and electronic prescription * Data preprocessing, cleansing, management and mining * Data quality assessment and improvement * Medical imaging * Computer-aided detection, hypothesis generation and diagnosis * Evidence-based medicine * Evolutionary and longitudinal patient and disease models * Clinical workflow * Medication adherence and health monitoring * Smart health and big data Devices * High-confidence medical devices * Integration of medical devices with e-Health * Medical devices interoperability * Wearable devices * In/on/around-body sensors and actuators * Biosensors at the micro/nano-scale * Smart garments/textiles * Wireless energy transfer * Energy harvesting Communications and Networking * Communication/network infrastructures, architectures and protocols for e-Health * Antennas and propagation * Proximity-based communication, group communication and social networks * Power-efficient communication * Ultra wideband communication * Delay-tolerant, fault-tolerant and reliable communication * Cognitive communication for medical bands * In-hospital networking, body area networking and cloud-integrated networking * Software-defined networks and network management * Nanoscale/molecular communications * Network coding and error detection/correction * Middleware for e-Health Signal/Data Processing and Systems * Context awareness and situation awareness * Image/video processing and computer/robot vision * Internet of things, ambient intelligence and pervasive computing * Motion detection and activity recognition * Augmented reality and human-computer interaction * User modeling and personalization * Robotics for e-Health * Computing/storage infrastructures for e-Health such as clouds and virtualization * Software, systems and performance engineering for e-Health Services and Applications * e-Health services/applications for physical and mental health; for example, in acute care, chronic care, mental health care, biomedical engineering, rehabilitation, prosthetics, elderly/nursing care, smart homes and hospitals, and rural/wilderness practice. * e-Health services/applications for sports and exercise; for example, in training prescription and feedback, concussion detection/monitoring, life-logging and fitness monitoring. * e-Health services/applications for public health; for example, disease prevention, pandemic preparedness, epidemiological interventions and smart cities. * e-Health services/applications for extreme environments; for example, in fire fighting, disaster response, evacuation assistance, medical triage, space travel/exploration, deep diving and deep sea exploration. * Quality of experience (QoE) with e-Health services/applications. * Security, privacy and trust for e-Health services/applications * Emerging cloud-based services/applications including health clouds/grids PAPER SUBMISSION Perspective authors are invited to submit their papers, up to 6 pages each, in the IEEE paper template. Please visit http://www.ieee-healthcom.org/ for detailed submission instructions. Papers will be reviewed with the standard reviewing procedure (with at least 3 independent anonymous reviews). IMPORTANT DATES Paper Submission Due: May 15, 2015 Notification of Acceptance: July 5, 2015 Camera ready Papers: August 30, 2015 PUBLICATION All accepted papers will be published by IEEE and and indexed by IEEExplore (http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/) Selected papers will be considered for publication in leading journals such as: * International Journal on E-Health and Medical Communications * IEEE Transactions on NanoBioScience * EAI Transactions on Body Area Networks * Wiley Security and Communication Networks Journal ORGANIZATIONAL COMMITTEE General Chairs: Junichi Suzuki, University of Massachusetts Boston, USA Joel Rodrigues, Institute for Telecommunications/University of Beira Interior, Portugal TPC Chairs: Honggang Wang, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, USA Min Chen, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, China Nazim Agoulmine, University of Evry Val d'Essonne, France IEEE Healthcom Steering Committee Joel Rodrigues (Chair), IT/Univ. of Beira Interior, Portugal Pradeep Ray, Univ. of New South Wales, Australia Norbert Noury, University of Lyon, France Augusto Venâncio Neto, Federal Univ. of Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil/Instituto de Telecomunicações, Portugal Nazim Agoulmine, Université Evry Val Essonne, France Operations Chairs Douglas Dow, Wentworth Institute of Technology, USA Jones Yu, Wentworth Institute of Technology, USA Publication Chair Norbert Noury, Universite de Lyon, France Tutorial Chair Stefan Covaci, Technical University of Berlin, Germany Special Tracks Chair Sana Ullah, Polytechnic Institute of Porto, Portugal Workshops Chair Christopher Thuemmler, Edinburgh Napier University Registration Chair Xinming Huang, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, USA Publicity chairs Jiaqi Gong, University of Virginia, USA Pawel Swiatek, Wroclaw University of Technology Jianli Pan, University of Missouri, St. Louis, USA Web Chair Yutaka Okaie, Osaka University Zhaoyang Zhang, UMass Dartmouth Treasurer Bruce Worthman, IEEE Communications Society, USA Conference Manager Bridget Erlikh, IEEE Communications Society, USA Branding and Graphic Design Max Loskutnikov, IEEE Communications Society, USA -- Jun Suzuki Associate Professor of Computer Science University of Massachusetts, Boston jxs(a)cs.umb.edu http://www.cs.umb.edu/~jxs/ http://dssg.cs.umb.edu/ @JunSuzukiBoston

April 18, 2015

PhD Studentships City University London

by Alonso, Eduardo

Dear all, City University London is advertising PhD studentships (£16,000 per year plus full tuition waiver). Details on how to apply can be found at http://www.city.ac.uk/citygraduateschool/fees-and-funding/university-doctor… If you are interested in applying in the area of computational neuroscience, please contact Eduardo Alonso (E.Alonso(a)city.ac.uk) Deadline for submission is 25th May. Best, --------------- Dr Eduardo Alonso Reader in Computing Deputy Head of Department Department of Computer Science City University London London EC1V 0HB E.Alonso(a)city.ac.uk tel: +44 20 7040 4049 fax: +44 20 7040 0244 http://www.city.ac.uk/people/academics/eduardo-alonso http://www.cal-r.org

April 18, 2015

IJCAI’15 Workshop on Sensitivity Analysis and Robustness in Probabilistic Graphical Models (3rd CfP)

by Alessandro Antonucci

IJCAI’15 Workshop on Sensitivity Analysis and Robustness in Probabilistic Graphical Models Buenos Aires, July 25-27, 2015 - http://ipg.idsia.ch/wijcai15/ THIRD CALL FOR PAPERS Papers will be published in a volume of the JMLR Workshop and Conference Proceedings series. (http://jmlr.csail.mit.edu/proceedings) [SCOPE] Probabilistic graphical models are important tools in machine learning and artificial intelligence for reasoning with uncertainty. They provide means to represent large multivariate domains compactly and to perform sophisticated learning and reasoning efficiently. Examples of probabilistic graphical models are Bayesian networks, Markov Random fields, chain and factor graphs, Gaussian graphical models, to name but a few. The quantification of these models usually requires sharp (i.e., precise) assessments of the model local potentials and might be subject to robustness issues. For instance, perturbations of some parameter values may lead to different decisions from those which would be achieved by the unperturbed model, suggesting that decisions are not reliable. Reliability might also be in question because of missing data and assumptions behind the process. The workshop invites submissions of papers on all aspects of sensitivity analysis and robustness in probabilistic graphical models. Contributions may have a theoretical focus and/or an applied focus. A non-exhaustive list of topics follows. - Local and/or global sensitivity analysis. - Parameter-based and/or decision-based sensitivity analysis. - Design of robust learning, inference and/or decision making approaches. - Robust analysis and design of robustness measurements. - Extensions of probabilistic graphical models. - Reliable qualitative learning and reasoning. - Robust treatment of missing data. - Imprecise probability and other theories related to sensitivity analysis. - Computational complexity, exact and approximate algorithms. Papers about more general robust multivariate models based on independence or othr structural judgements are also welcome. [SUBMISSIONS] Each submission will be reviewed by peers using a double-blind process (please use the third person in self citations and take all necessary care not to identify yourselves). Accepted papers will be published electronically in a volume of the JMLR Workshop and Conference Proceedings series. There will be no rebuttal phase, but contributions considered worth publishing and needing substantial revision might be subject to a second round of reviewing/evaluation. All accepted papers will be presented at the workshop. At least one of the paper's authors should register and attend the workshop to present the work. Submissions must be formatted according to style and template files available for the Journal of Machine Learning Research (JMLR) Workshop and Conference Proceedings - two-column version. The files are available at http://ipg.idsia.ch/wijcai15/sarpgm15.tar.gz. Papers (including figures, tables, references, etc) are expected to have between 6 and 10 pages. [IMPORTANT DATES] Apr 27, 2015 - Deadline for submissions of contributions May 20, 2015 - Workshop paper acceptance notification May 30, 2015 - Deadline for workshop camera-ready copy (in case of minor revision; contributions needing major revision might need additional time - this will be arranged case by case) [PC MEMBERS] Alessandro Antonucci*, IDSIA, Switzerland. Alessio Benavoli, IDSIA, Switzerland. Cassio P. de Campos*, Queen's University Belfast, UK. Arthur Choi, University of California, Los Angeles, USA. Giorgio Corani*, IDSIA, Switzerland. Fabio Cozman, University of Sao Paulo, Brazil. Adnan Darwiche, University of California, Los Angeles, USA. Sebastien Destercke, Univ. de Technologie de Compiegne, France. Marek Druzdzel, University of Pittsburgh, USA. Johan Kwisthout, Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands. Agnieszka Onisko, Bialystok University of Technology, Poland. Denis Maua, University of Sao Paulo, Brazil. Serafin Moral, Universidad de Granada, Spain. Silja Renooij, Universiteit Utrecht, The Netherlands. Matthias Troffaes, University of Durham, UK. (*: Workshop organizers.) More details about the submission procedure are available online. http://ipg.idsia.ch/wijcai15/ ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ (We apologize in case you receive multiple copies of this announcement, but yet we hope to reach the greatest possible number of people. Finding a trade-off is not an easy task.) -- _________________________________ Alessandro Antonucci IDSIA Dalle Molle Institute for Artificial Intelligence Via Cantonale (Galleria 2) CH-6928, Manno-Lugano, CH mail: alessandro(a)idsia.ch skype: alessandro.antonucci tel: +41 916108515 web: www.idsia.ch/~alessandro _________________________________

April 18, 2015

Journal of Mathematical Neuroscience - recent articles

by Stephen Coombes

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/ : A Mathematical Model of a Midbrain Dopamine Neuron Identifies Two Slow Variables Likely Responsible for Bursts Evoked by SK Channel Antagonists and Terminated by Depolarization Block Yu N and Canavier CC http://www.mathematical-neuroscience.com/content/5/1/5 Path Integral Methods for Stochastic Differential Equations Chow CC and Buice MA http://www.mathematical-neuroscience.com/content/5/1/8 A Formalism for Evaluating Analytically the Cross-Correlation Structure of a Firing-Rate Network Model Fasoli D, Faugeras O and Panzeri S http://www.mathematical-neuroscience.com/content/5/1/6 Modeling Focal Epileptic Activity in the Wilson–Cowan Model with Depolarization Block Meijer HGE, Eissa TL, Kiewiet B, Neuman JF, Schevon CA, Emerson RG, Goodman RR, McKhann GM et al. http://www.mathematical-neuroscience.com/content/5/1/7 Noise-Induced Precursors of State Transitions in the Stochastic Wilson–Cowan Model Negahbani E, Steyn-Ross DA, Steyn-Ross ML, Wilson MT and Sleigh JW http://www.mathematical-neuroscience.com/content/5/1/9 and see also the recent Special Issue on Uncertainty and the Brain 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.

April 17, 2015

NEURAL COMPUTATION - May 1, 2015

by Terry Sejnowski

Neural Computation - Volume 27, Number 5 - May 1, 2015 Available online for download now: http://www.mitpressjournals.org/toc/neco/27/5 ----- Article Self-Organization of Control Circuits for Invariant Fiber Projections Tomas Fernandes, Christoph von der Malsburg Letters A Computationally-efficient Method for Incorporating Spike Waveform Information Into Decoding Algorithms Valerie Ventura, Sonia Todorova Coding Accuracy Is Not Fully Determined by the Neuronal Model Lubomir Kostal, Petr Lansky Solving Stereo Transparency With an Extended Coarse-to-fine Disparity Energy Model Zhe Li, Ning Qian Simultaneous Multi-Channel Signal Transfers Via Chaos in a Recurrent Neural Network Ken-ichiro Soma, Ryota Mori, Ryuichi Sato, Noriyuki Furumai, and Shigetoshi Nara Input Anticipating Critical Reservoirs Show Power Law Forgetting of Unexpected Input Events Norbert Michael Mayer Learning Dynamics of a Single Polar Variable Complex-Valued Neuron Tohru Nitta On-line EM With Weight-Based Forgetting Enric Celaya, Alejandro Agostini ------------ ON-LINE -- http://www.mitpressjournals.org/neuralcomp SUBSCRIPTIONS - 2015 - VOLUME 27 - 12 ISSUES Student/Retired $75 Individual $134 Institution $1,075 MIT Press Journals, One Rogers Street, Cambridge, MA 02142-1209 Tel: (617) 253-2889 FAX: (617) 577-1545 journals-cs(a)mit.edu ------------

April 17, 2015

Data Scientist - Healthcare

by Purushothaman, Gopathy

Several Data Scientist positions are available in a large, publically-traded healthcare organization. Data Scientists will work with the business to understand business problems, analyze relevant data, interpret the results, and provide reports. Knowledge areas include, but are not limited to, Root cause identification, Clustering, Regression, Supervised and unsupervised Machine learning, Hypothesis testing etc. Should exhibit strong passion for empirical research and for answering hard questions with data. Drive the collection of new data and the refinement of existing data source. Ability to communicate complex quantitative analysis in a clear, precise, and actionable manner. M.S. or Ph.D. in a Math or Statistical field, or 4+ years’ experience in a relevant role. Will have experience solving analytical problems using quantitative approach. Coach other team members as appropriate, within area of expertise. Required skills: R, Matlab, SAS, or other statistical/scientific computing applications/platforms; SQL, scripting and programming languages. Email resumes to: Gopathy Purushothaman Ph.D. Data Scientist Parallon Business Performance Group 6640 Carothers Parkway Franklin, TN 37067 Gopathy.purushothaman(a)parallon.com<mailto:Gopathy.purushothaman@parallon.com> www.parallon.com<http://www.parallon.com>

April 16, 2015

Call for contributions: AI/Neuroengineering for biomedical applications: monitoring, signal processing, disease identification and diagnostic aspects

by Shyam Diwakar

Dear Colleagues, Sorry for cross-posting this CFP. Bentham Science is calling for a special issue: AI/Neuroengineering for biomedical applications: monitoring, signal processing, disease identification and diagnostic aspects . This special issue on “AI/Neuroengineering for biomedical applications: monitoring, signal processing, disease identification and diagnosis aspects” aims to overview the state of knowledge and applicability of current studies, and new proposed ideas in the form of original research articles and review papers that include, but are not limited to: • Mathematical and statistical methods in modelling single neuron and circuit functions • Biological cybernetics, medical image and signal processing, cascade models for intelligent devices. • Artificial intelligence for biomedical signal and image processing and disease diagnosis • Computational neuroscience and computational cognitive science • Biomedical instrumentation: intelligent methods for software and hardware • Human machine interfaces • Neural rehabilitation engineering • Machine learning, machine learning in conventional and big data models, algorithms, case studies and role of data in biomedicine • Mobile and wearable computing in biomedical engineering • Emerging biomedical technologies Manuscript deadline: July 15, 2015 See http://benthamscience.com/journal-files/special-issue-details/NBE-SII201502… http://benthamscience.com/journal/index.php?journalID=nbe#top Lead guest editor: Eldon Rene (e.raj(a)unesco-ihe.org) Thank you. Best regards, shyam -- Prof. Shyam Diwakar, Ph.D. Computational Neuroscience Lab, Amrita School of Biotechnology Faculty Fellow - Amrita Center for International Programs Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham (Amrita University) Amritapuri, Clappana P.O. Kollam, India. Pin: 690525 Ph:+91-476-2803116 Fax:+91-476-2899722 http://www.amrita.edu/compneuro

April 16, 2015

Abstract submission extended for IWSP7: Epilepsy Mechanisms, Models, Prediction & Control

by Levin Kuhlmann

Due to numerous requests the abstract submission deadline for IWSP7: Epilepsy Mechanisms, Models, Prediction and Control has been extended to April 30 2015. For more details visit the conference website at http://www.iwsp7.org and/or read below. The 7th International Workshop on Seizure Prediction (IWSP7: Epilepsy Mechanisms, Models, Prediction & Control) will bring together world leading epileptologists, engineers, physicists, mathematicians, neurosurgeons and neuroscientists to focus on epilepsy research in Melbourne Australia from 3-6 August 2015. Invited Speakers Samuel Berkovic, University of Melbourne, Australia (Genetics and individual-specific nature of epilepsy) Sydney Cash, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, USA (Cortical physiology and epilepsy) Antonio Dourado, University of Coimbra, Portugal (Seizure Prediction and the EPILEPSIAE project) Bin He, University of Minnesota, USA (EEG-based imaging to localise seizure and high frequency activity) Louis Lemieux, University College London, UK (Multi-modal imaging of human epileptic zone and networks) Liset Menendez de la Prida, Instituto Cajal - CSIC, Spain (Sources of functional heterogeneity in the cellular activity of hippocampal microcircuits in temporal lobe epilepsy) Martha Morrell, Stanford University, Neuropace, USA (Responsive seizure control and its clinical implications) Philippe Ryvlin, Lyon University, France (Vagal nerve stimulation and seizure prediction) Bjoern Schelter, University of Aberdeen, UK (Recent advances in data-based modelling and their role in epilepsy research) Steven Schiff, Penn State University, USA (Unification of spikes, seizures and spreading depression) Piotr Suffczynski, University of Warsaw, Poland (Modelling of neuronal and ionic dynamics during ictogenesis) John Terry, University of Exeter, UK (Modelling multiscale brain networks: seizure initiation, evolution and prediction) Gregory Worrell, Mayo Clinic, USA (Forecasting epileptic seizures in dogs) Extended Abstract submission deadline: 30th April 2015. Notification of acceptance: 31st May 2015. Early bird registration: full: AU$465; Student/Early Career Researcher: AU$165. Early bird registration deadline: 30th June 2015. Standard registration: full: AU$565; Student/Early Career Researcher: AU$265. Over 30 generous travel stipends will be awarded to participants submitting the best abstracts as determined by the IWSP7 Scientific Advisory Board. The majority will be awarded to undergraduate or postgraduate students and early career researchers (people who completed their PhD within the period of the 3 years preceding 3rd August 2015). The best abstracts will also be selected for talks by the IWSP7 Scientific Advisory Board. Topics for abstracts include, but are not limited to: seizure prediction, detection and control; seizure mechanisms, animal models and human neurophysiology; neuroimaging of epilepsy/seizure localisation; computational modelling of epilepsy; epilepsy networks; high frequency oscillations; model-based estimation, statistical signal processing or control theory applied to epilepsy. The best work presented at IWSP7 will be invited to appear in a special issue in the International Journal of Neural Systems (Impact factor 6.056). The call for papers can be downloaded from the IWSP7 website. There will also be two A$500 prizes for the best posters at the conference. For information on the preliminary conference program, and how to submit abstracts and register visit: http://www.iwsp7.org Please forward this notice to anyone that you think might be interested. Or post the conference poster around your department. The poster can be obtained at the link: http://www.iwsp7.org/flyers/IWSP7_Call_for_Abstracts.pdf We would also like to draw your attention to two partner events: Melbourne Epilepsy which brings together Melbourne's best epilepsy researchers and will overlap at the same venue with IWSP7 on August 6th, and finish by 1pm on August 7th. Attendance is free for IWSP7 registrants. Swinburne Brain Imaging Symposium 2015: Principles and Applications of Magnetoencephalography is a meeting on MEG and neuroimaging occurring in Melbourne in the week preceding IWSP7 from June 29-30 2015. http://www.research.swinburne.edu.au/our-research/events/neuroimaging-sympo… We look forward to seeing you at IWSP7! On behalf of the local organizing committee Levin Kuhlmann, PhD David B. Grayden, PhD Mark J. Cook, MD Anthony N. Burkitt, PhD Dean R. Freestone, PhD Tatiana Kameneva, PhD Alan Lai, PhD Elma O'Sullivan-Greene, PhD Andre Peterson, BSc (hons) Email: organizingcommittee(a)iwsp7.org<mailto:organizingcommittee@iwsp7.org>

April 16, 2015

PhD fellowship: A window into the human mind - deadline for application April 23rd 2015

by Arnaud Delorme

We are searching for a PhD candidate from the EU (due to grant restrictions) with a master degree in physics/engineering, computer sciences or neuroscience and an interest in human/brain machine interfaces. The subject of the thesis is linked to the difficulties for human operator to control/monitor highly automated system. This performance problem remains difficult to characterize. In this project, analyzing brain activity in supervisory task, we aim to identify the neuro-functional correlates of this performance problem. The goal is to better understand how human operators interact highly automated system and make recommendation for the design of highly automated system or imagine brain computer interface to help the interaction between humans and machines. This project will be co-directed by two researchers in interdisciplinary fields, Bruno Berberian who is expert in human control of highly automated systems and Arnaud Delorme who is expert in mind wandering and EEG signal processing. The location of the PhD will be Salon de Provence in the south of France primarily and secondarily in Toulouse in the south east of France. If you are from the EU and are interested, please send your CV, two contacts for reference, a motivation letter (max one page) and reference letters (optional) to Bruno Berberian <Bruno.Berberian(a)onera.fr> before April 23rd, 2015. Please group all documents into one PDF for easier processing.

April 14, 2015

Registration deadline extension: Open Source Brain 2015: Building and sharing standardised neuronal models

by Padraig Gleeson

***Deadline for registration extended to 22nd April*** The third annual Open Source Brain Workshop takes place May 12-14th 2015, Alghero, Sardinia. http://opensourcebrain.org/docs/Help/Meetings#OSB_2015 The Open Source Brain initiative aims to encourage collaborative, open source model development in computational neuroscience and is primarily supported by the Wellcome Trust. As with past OSB meetings <http://www.opensourcebrain.org/docs#Meetings> this workshop will bring together experimentalists, theoreticians and tool developers who are interested in creating open, community developed models of neuronal systems. Researchers interested in building and sharing models of any brain region and from any species are welcome to attend the meeting. There will be presentations on the latest developments and functionality of the OSB resource and associated technologies including NeuroML and LEMS. There will also be a special focus session on Wed 13th May on creating and sharing experimentally constrained models of the hippocampus. Confirmed speakers: *Giorgio Ascoli*, Krasnow Institute, George Mason University, USA *Tiago Branco*, MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge, UK *Claudia Clopath*, Imperial College London, UK *Michael Hines*, Yale University, USA *Peter Jonas*, Institute of Science and Technology, Austria *Julija Krupic*, O'Keefe Group, University College London, UK *Artur Luczak*, University of Lethbridge, Canada *Troy Margrie*, MRC National Institute for Medical Research, London, UK *Michele Migliore*, National Research Council, Italy & Yale University School of Medicine, USA *Yiota Poirazi*, Institute of Molecular Biology & Biotechnology, Foundation for Research & Technology Hellas, Greece *Martin Pyka*, University of Bochum, Germany *Stefan Remy*, German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases, Bonn, Germany *Nelson Spruston*, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Janelia Farm Research Campus, Virginia, USA Full details of the workshop can be found here: http://opensourcebrain.org/docs/Help/Meetings#OSB_2015. The meeting is free to attend, but registration is required (deadline April 22nd). The OSB 2015 organising committee ----------------------------------------------------- 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 -----------------------------------------------------

April 14, 2015

Workshop: Living systems, from interaction patterns to critical behavior.

by suweis infn

Workshop: Living systems, from interaction patterns to critical behavior Venezia, San Servolo Island 16-19 September 2015 http://www.pd.infn.it/~maritan/SanServolo/index.html <http://www.pd.infn.it/~maritan/SanServolo/index.html> *** DEADLINE FOR APPLICATION: June 15, 2015 **** Recent availability of large volumes of ecological and biological data spanning a wide range of scales, made it evident that, despite their diversity, living systems are characterized by patterns/regularities repeated from microscopic to global scales. This workshop aims to explore how these recurrent phenomena emerge as the result of concerted interactions among their constituent elements (e.g. species, or genes), using a combination of approaches inspired by statistical mechanics, network analysis and the theory of complex systems. The aim of the workshop is to introduce students and young researchers with strong background in quantitative sciences to methods and ideas used to describe such complex systems. The range of topics covered at the workshop is very broad, ranging from genomics to ecology, with the ultimate goal of identifying similarities and differences of complex biological systems operating at different scales. Fee* 150 euro. (*) We will grants 3 fee waivers to support the attendance of PhD students and Junior Post Doctoral researchers (no more than two years from their PhD completion). Prospective participants who are eligible should accompany send an email to the Organizing Committee (LIPh.unipd(a)gmail.com <mailto:LIPh.unipd@gmail.com>) requiring the fee waiver, providing the CV and a motivation letter. The acceptance will be notified together with the admission to the school. LECTURERS Sergey Maslov Kim Sneppen Antonio Celani Amos Maritan Stefano Allesina Joshua Weitz Speakers (Confirmed) Andrea Rinaldo Jayanth Banavar Henrik Jensen Flavio Seno Paolo De los Rios Achille Giacometti Guido Tiana Marco Cosentino Lagomarsino Sandro Azaele PROGRAM The workshop will present a wide-range of interdisciplinary problems using creative approaches grounded in statistical physics. In particular there will be three main sections: Bio, Bio2Eco (e.g. bacteria) and Eco. In each section it will be given a series of lectures and seminars. Follow update via Twitter: @Liph_lab For details see: http://www.pd.infn.it/~maritan/SanServolo/index.html <http://www.pd.infn.it/~maritan/SanServolo/index.html> On September 19 afternoon, we will organise a guided Tour in Venice that will conclude with the Social Dinner. ORGANIZING COMMITTEE Antonio Trovato University of Padova http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Antonio_Trovato2 <http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Antonio_Trovato2> Samir Suweis University of Padova http://www.pd.infn.it/~maritan/people/Samir/samir.html <http://www.pd.infn.it/~maritan/people/Samir/samir.html> Jacopo Grilli University of Chicago http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Jacopo_Grilli <http://www.researchgate.net/profile/Jacopo_Grilli> For more information and application: e-mail: liph.unipd(a)gmail.com <mailto:liph.unipd@gmail.com> Sponsored by the University of Padova, Department of Physics and Astronomy - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Samir Suweis, Ph.D. impactstory.org/SamirSuweis <https://impactstory.org/SamirSuweis> @SamirSuweis Post-Doc Researcher LIPh Lab, Physics Department, University of Padova Tel: +39 047 827 72 51 www.pd.infn.it/~maritan/people/Samir/samir.htm

April 14, 2015

Opening for a computer-vision scientist with deep-learning expertise

by Reza Khorshidi

Senior Scientist - Computer Vision and Deep Learning AIG, Special Projects Lab We are looking for a computer-vision scientist to lead the development and implementation of the algorithmic core of a series of exciting new projects in AIG's Special Projects Lab (part of AIG's Global Science team). The success in this role requires the ownership of a significant new work-stream in the team focused on solving complex computer vision problems (including, but not limited to, image representation, object recognition, and caption generation), using machine learning (particularly, deep learning methods such as convolutional neural networks) and high-performance computing (including, near real-time image analysis). The success in this role require the candidate to: 1) Employ the best of computer-vision research for solving business problems - disrupting the current practice in insurance 2) Build and refine computer vision and machine learning algorithms that can find patterns in large multi-modal data (particularly, images and videos) 3) Provide the business with data-driven apps, insights and strategies 4) Participate in, lead, create cross-functional projects 5) Communicate (both oral and written) with colleagues and stakeholders (both internal and external) 6) Review, direct, guide, inspire the research of more junior scientists in the team Above all, this role will provide a unique opportunity to enjoy state-of-the-art research and development; grow and be challenged in an entrepreneurial / start-up-like division of a large company; and create game-changing products for the insurance/financial industry. The candidate must have: 1) Scientific expertise and real-world experience in deep learning (convolutional neural networks, restricted Boltzmann machines, and deep neural networks). 2) Strong background in basic machine learning and statistical modeling (e.g., classification, regression, and clustering) 3) Strong track record in related scientific fields (e.g., machine learning, computer science, engineering, statistics, and robotics) 4) Expertise in programming (e.g., C++, CUDA, Python, R and Java) and computing technologies (high-performance computing and/or big-data platforms) 5) Ability to use existing machine/deep learning libraries (e.g., Torch, Theano, Caffe, and SciKitLearn) The Ideal candidate would also have: 1) Track record in integrating machine learning with real-time computing (including mobile apps and front-end systems) 2) Experience in employing machine learning in a commercial/business setting – in collaboration with product (back-end and front-end) development teams. 3) Experience in applying machine learning (ideally, deep learning) to problems in one of the following domains: Natural language processing, signal processing, and speech processing. 4) Publication record in (and willingness to represent AIG in) scientific conferences such as NIPS, CVPR, ICML, ICCV, ECCV, ICLR, and IJCV. 5) Broad knowledge of machine learning (including topics such as graph theory, hierarchical modeling, and Bayesian inference) 6) Practical experience of modern big-data computing ecosystems such as Apache Spark 7) Proven track record in leading scientific projects In order to apply, please follow the link here <http://www.aig.com/job-search_3171_440685.html?cpUrl=https://careers.people…>. For any (informal) inquiries, please feel free to contact Hannah Gibson (hannah.gibson(a)aig.com <mailto:hannah.gibson@aig.com>). -- Reza Khorshidi, D.Phil. (Oxon) Head, Special Projects Lab | Director (EMEA), Quantitative Analytics AIG, London

April 14, 2015

Two openings for signal-processing and NLP scientists with deep-learning expertise

by Reza Khorshidi

Senior Scientists - Deep Learning and NLP / SSP AIG, Special Projects Lab We are looking for a machine-learning scientist to lead the development and implementation of the algorithmic core of a series of exciting new projects in AIG's Special Projects Lab (part of AIG's Global Science team). The success in this role requires the ownership of a significant new workstream in the team focused on solving natural language process (NLP) and/or speech and signal processing (SSP) problems (including, but not limited to, data representation and predictive modelling - particularly, using deep learning) and high-performance computing (including, near real-time data analysis). Success in this role require the candidate to: 1) Employ the best of NLP and SSP research for solving business problems - disrupting the current practice in insurance 2) Build and refine NLP/SSP and machine learning algorithms that can find patterns in large multi-modal data 3) Provide the business with data-driven apps, insights and strategies 4) Participate in, lead, create cross-functional projects 5) Communicate (both oral and written) with colleagues and stakeholders (both internal and external) 6) Review, direct, guide, inspire the research of more junior scientists in the team Above all, this role will provide a unique opportunity to enjoy state-of-the-art research and development; grow and be challenged in an entrepreneurial / startup-like division of a large company; and create game-changing products for the insurance/financial industry. The candidate must have: 1) Scientific expertise and real-world experience in deep learning (convolutional neural networks, restricted Boltzmann machines, and deep neural networks) - applied to NLP and/or SSP. 2) Strong background in basic machine learning and statistical modelling (e.g., classification, regression, and clustering) 3) Strong track record in related scientific fields (e.g., machine learning, computer science, engineering, statistics, and robotics) 4) Expertise in programming (e.g., C++, CUDA, Python, R and Java) and computing technologies (high-performance computing and/or big-data platforms) 5) Ability to use existing machine/deep learning libraries (e.g., Torch, Theano, Caffe, and SciKitLearn) The Ideal candidate would also have: 1) Track record in integrating machine learning with real-time computing (including mobile apps and front-end systems) 2) Experience in employing machine learning in a commercial/business setting – in collaboration with product (back-end and front-end) development teams. 3) Experience in applying machine learning (ideally, deep learning) to problems in more than one domain (e.g., Vision, NLP, SSP, …). 4) Impressive publication record in the top scientific journals. 5) Publication record in (and willingness to represent AIG in) scientific conferences such as NIPS, ICML, ACL, EMNLP, NAACL, EACL, COLING, SIGIR, ICCV, ECCV, ICLR, and CVPR. 6) Broad knowledge of machine learning (including topics such as graph theory, hierarchical modelling, and Bayesian inference) 7) Practical experience of modern big-data computing ecosystems such as Apache Spark 8) Proven track record in leading scientific projects In order to apply, please follow the link here <http://www.aig.com/job-search_3171_440685.html?cpUrl=https://careers.people…>. For any (informal) inquiries, please feel free to contact Hannah Gibson (hannah.gibson(a)aig.com <mailto:hannah.gibson@aig.com>). -- Reza Khorshidi, D.Phil. (Oxon) Head, Special Projects Lab | Director (EMEA), Quantitative Analytics AIG, London

April 14, 2015

PhD position, University of Genoa, Italy – "Multidimensional peripersonal space sensing"

by Silvio P. Sabatini

Applications are invited for one full-time PhD studentship (with scholarship) for a period of 3 years, at “The Physical Structure of Perception and Computation” (PSPC) lab of the Department of Informatics, Bioengineering, Robotics, and System Engineering (DIBRIS), University of Genoa, Italy. The position, starting Nov 1st 2015, is on one of the following research projects: 1/ Representing peripersonal space through sensorimotor likelihoods. The activity will focus on the design of theoretical models by converting computational approaches from engineering into cortical-like models of implicit representations of the peripersonal space. 2/ Integration of motion-in-depth multi-sensory information flows in the peripersonal space. The goal of the project is to investigate how different cross-modal information can enable arm and hand-related actions in the peripersonal space. Specifically, the focus will be on the development of a neuromorphic cognitive system for detecting/encoding motion-in-depth multimodal information flows relative to body parts. Both projects will provide the opportunity to work on neural modeling, visual psychophysics, robotics, or a combination of them. Experimental, modeling, and theoretical approaches might be pursued with a different accent according to personal attitude. Ongoing cooperation, at international level, with research groups of different disciplines, will ensure a highly interdisciplinary and stimulating environment. Successful applicants would have a good honors _Master degree_ in Engineering, Computer Science, Physics or related disciplines, strong interest in computational neuroscience, and an open mind for interdisciplinary research. Online application are available from April 13, 2015 at 12.00 noon (Italian time) to June 10, 2015 at 12.00 noon (Italian time). Full details on the call and the application procedure will soon be available at: http://www.studenti.unige.it/postlaurea/dottorati/XXXI/ENG/ and http://phd.dibris.unige.it/biorob/index.php/how-to-apply Prospective students, please contact Silvio Sabatini (silvio.sabatini(a)unige.it) providing your CV and qualifications, the name and contact details of two references, and a description of your research interests indicating which of the two positions you are interested in. DIBRIS is a unique inter-school department of the University of Genoa, bridging together researchers from the former Science and Engineering Faculties. It offers an excellent multidisciplinary, interactive and collaborative research environment combining expertise in computer vision, computational neuroscience, neuromorphic computing, robotics and mechatronics. PSPC-Lab (www.pspc.unige.it) has a long-standing expertise in visual coding and multidimensional signal representation, robot perception and computer vision. In the last five years, the lab’s research activity focused on the analysis of the structural mechanisms of visuo-spatial cognition, responsible for orienting and interacting in the 3D space. -- --------------------------------------------------------------------- Silvio P. SABATINI, PhD [PSPC Research Group] Professor of Bioengineering DIBRIS - University of Genova | e_mail:silvio.sabatini@unige.it Via Opera Pia, 11A | phone: +39 010 3532092/3532794 I-16145 Genova (ITALY) | fax: +39 010 3532289/3536533 URL:http://pspc.unige.it --------------------------------------------------------------------- "Imagination is more important than knowledge..." [Albert Einstein]

April 14, 2015

INNS-BigData 2015 San Francisco: Student Travel Awards + Deep Learning Workshop Special Registration + Paper deadline extension to 19 April, 2015.

by Asim Roy

Dear Colleagues, Please note that we have several Student Travel Awards in the $300 to $500 range. Application forms are available on our website: www.innsbigdata.org<http://www.innsbigdata.org> . The application deadline is April 30, 2015. Also note that the paper submission deadline is April 19th, 2015. We are opening up the Deep Learning Workshop to everyone with a separate registration fee. The goal of the workshop is to “exchange and ignite new ideas and techniques through open discussions and to form new directions and goals as a group.” See details on our website. There is a $2000 Elsevier Best Paper Award. Both theoretical and application papers will be considered for the award. Best regards, Asim Roy Arizona State University Tempe, AZ 85287, USA www.lifeboat.com/ex/bios.asim.roy<http://www.lifeboat.com/ex/bios.asim.roy> INNS Big Data Section: http://www.inns.org/big-data-section.

April 13, 2015

Call for Papers: Special Issue on Neuroimaging in clinical practice - towards prognosis and prediction of treatment response

by Rondina, Jane

Dear colleagues, In collaboration with Frontiers in Neuroscience and Frontiers in Neurology, section Brain Imaging Methods, we are organizing a Research Topic titled "Neuroimaging in clinical practice - towards prognosis and prediction of treatment response", hosted by Jane Rondina, Nick Ward and Geraldo Busatto. As host editor, I would like to encourage you to contribute to this topic. Please find more information about Research Topics below, including the publishing fees that apply. You can also visit the homepage we have created on the Frontiers website, which defines the focus of the topic, and where all published articles will appear. http://www.frontiersin.org/Brain_Imaging_Methods/researchtopics/Neuroimagin… Please note the submission deadline for this Research Topic: Sep 04, 2015 Should you choose to participate, please confirm by sending me a quick email (j.rondina(a)ucl.ac.uk<mailto:j.rondina@ucl.ac.uk>) and then your abstract no later than June 05, 2015 using the link above. As I am using the Frontiers system to manage this topic, please first indicate your decision to participate by clicking on one of the following links. AGREE to Participate http://www.frontiersin.org/AcceptContributor.aspx?activationkey=09bcb997-ff… DECLINE to Participate http://www.frontiersin.org/DeclineContributor.aspx?activationkey=09bcb997-f… This Research Topic is hosted in the specialty section of Brain Imaging Methods, which is a section within Frontiers in Neuroscience and Frontiers in Neurology; thus it is possible to submit through either of those journals. Let me know if you have any questions about our Research Topic. I look forward to hearing from you soon. With best regards, Jane Maryam Rondina j.rondina(a)ucl.ac.uk<mailto:j.rondina@ucl.ac.uk> Guest Associate Editor, Brain Imaging Methods www.frontiersin.org<http://www.frontiersin.org/> ABOUT FRONTIERS RESEARCH TOPICS Founded by scientists in 2007, Frontiers is a community-rooted open-access publisher, driving innovations in peer review, article-level metrics and research networking. The "Frontiers in" journal series hosts 48 journals covering more than 350 academic specialties, with a network of over 170,000 leading researchers worldwide. Frontiers is a registered member of the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (http://www.oaspa.org/member/Frontiers) and was recognized by the ALPSP Award for Innovation in Publishing in 2014. The idea behind a Frontiers Research Topic is to create a comprehensive collection of peer-reviewed articles that address a specific theme of research, as well as a forum for discussion and debate. Contributions can be articles describing original research, methods, hypothesis & theory, opinions, and more. Please see the relevant journal for a full list of accepted article types. Frontiers will also compile an e-book, as soon as all contributing articles are published, that can be used as educational material, be sent to foundations that fund your research, to journalists and press agencies, or to your professional network. E-books are free to read and download. Once published, your articles will be free to access for all readers, indexed in relevant repositories, and as an author in Frontiers, you retain the copyright to your own papers and figures.

April 13, 2015

[WI-IAT 2015] IAT'15 Paper Submission Deadline extended to 15th May

by Teng Teck Hou

[Apologies if you receive this more than once] ####################################################################### CALL FOR PAPERS IEEE/WIC/ACM International Conference on Intelligent Agent Technology 2015 (IAT 2015) Big Data in Global Brain and Social Networks December 6-9, 2015 / Singapore Homepage: http://wi-iat15.ntulily.org Sponsored By: IEEE Computer Society Web Intelligence Consortium (WIC) Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Memetic Computing Society (MC) (EXTENDED FULL PAPER SUBMISSION DEADLINE: *** May 15, 2015 ***) ####################################################################### ++++++++++++++++ KEYNOTE SPEAKERS ++++++++++++++++ * Joseph Sifakis (Turing Award 2007) Professor at Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL) Director, Centre de Recherche Integrative (CRI) in Grenoble, France * Francis Heylighen Director, Global Brain Institute Professor at Free University of Brussels, Belgium * Steven E. Koonin Director, Center for Urban Science and Progress New York University, USA * Gee-Wah Ng Programme Director, DSO National Laboratories, Singapore * Sarit Kraus (AAAI, ECCAI and ACM Fellow) Professor of Computer Science, Bar-Ilan University, Israel Adjunct Professor, University of Maryland, USA * Dominik Slezak Professor at University of Warsaw, Poland Chief Scientist, Infobright Inc. ++++++++++++++++ SPECIAL SESSIONS ++++++++++++++++ * Agents in Urban Computing and Engineering Shih-Fen Cheng, Singapore Management University, Singapore * Artificial Intelligence for Aging in-Place Chunyan Miao, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore Cyril Leung, University of British Columbia, Canada The 2015 IEEE/WIC/ACM International Conference on Intelligent Agent Technology (IAT'15) will be held in Singapore on December 6-9, 2015, hosted by the Joint NTU-UBC Research Centre of Excellence in Active Living for the Elderly (LILY) at Nanyang Technological University (NTU) and the Living Analytics Research Centre at Singapore Management University (SMU). Co-located with the 2015 IEEE/WIC/ACM International Conference on Web Intelligence (WI'15), IAT'15 is sponsored by IEEE Computer Society Technical Committee on Intelligent Informatics (TCII), Web Intelligence Consortium (WIC), ACM-SIGAI, and Memetic Computing Society. IAT'15 will feature special thematic workshops, technical sessions, tutorials and panels. Conference programme will further include a welcome reception, keynotes, demos, poster sessions, and a banquet. Attendees only need one registration to attend all technical events. TOPICS AND AREAS (INCLUDE, BUT NOT LIMITED TO) * Autonomy-Oriented Computing * Agent and Multi-Agent Systems Engineering * Agent and Multi-Agent Systems Modeling * Knowledge and Information Agents * Autonomous Auction and Negotiation * Distributed Problem Solving * Cooperation & Coordination * Agent Systems Applications ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ PAPER SUBMISSION AND PUBLICATION ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ IAT'15 solicits original work submitted as a regular paper (limited to 8 pages) or as short paper (limited to 4 pages) in IEEE 2-column format. Each paper will be peer-reviewed by at least three PC members on the basis of technical quality, relevance, originality, significance and clarity. Accepted papers will be published in the conference proceedings by the IEEE Computer Society Press and indexed by EI. Selected IAT'15 papers will be further invited for expansion and publication in Web Intelligence and Agent Systems and other international Journals. +++++++++++++++++++++++++ CALL FOR TUTORIALS/PANELS +++++++++++++++++++++++++ IAT'15 solicits proposals for tutorials and panels on specific topics of interests, which will form an integral part of the conference program. Inquiries and submission of proposals should be addressed to the respective chairs. ++++++ AWARDS ++++++ Best Paper awards will be conferred at the conference on the authors of (1) the best research paper, (2) the best student paper. Application-oriented submissions will be considered for the best application paper award. +++++++++++++++ IMPORTANT DATES +++++++++++++++ Electronic Submission of Regular/Special Session Papers *** May 15, 2015 *** Tutorial Proposal Submission June 1, 2015 Workshop Paper Submission June 1, 2015 Demos and Posters Submission July 1, 2015 Notification on Conference Paper Acceptance July 1, 2015 Notification on Workshop Paper Acceptance July 15, 2015 Notification on Demo and Poster Acceptance August 1, 2015 ++++++++++++++++++++ ORGANIZING COMMITTEE ++++++++++++++++++++ General Chairs * Ah-Hwee Tan, Singapore * Yuefeng Li, Australia Program Chair * Ee-Peng Lim, Singapore Program Vice-Chairs * Atsuhiro Takasu, Japan * Hoong-Chuin Lau, Singapore * Chunyan Miao, Singapore IAT Technical PC Chairs * Sarvapali Ramchurn, UK * Anita Raja, USA * Bo An, Singapore Local Organizing Chair * Meng-Hiot Lim, Singapore * Sufen Cheong, Singapore * Di Wang, Singapore Finance Chair and CyberChair-Master * Juzhen Dong, Japan Industry and Sponsorship Chairs * Xiaoli Li, Singapore * Richi Nayak, Australia * Saurav Karmakar, India Workshop Chairs * Bryan Kian-Hsiang Low, Singapore * Einoshin Suzuki, Japan * Jason Watson, Australia Tutorial Chairs * Pradeep Reddy Varakantham, Singapore * Yue Xu, Australia Demo/Poster Chair * Zhiqi Shen, Singapore * Yiqiang Chen, China Publicity Chairs * Xiaohui Tao, Australia * Teck-Hou Teng, Singapore Panel Chairs * Hady Lauw, Singapore * Neil Yorke-Smith, Lebanon Award Chairs * Ee-Peng Lim, Singapore * Raj Sunderraman, USA Webmaster * Jun Lin, Singapore * Yilin Kang, Singapore

April 13, 2015

Theory-Experiment postdoctoral position in Paris with Shihab Shamma and Srdjan Ostojic

by Srdjan Ostojic

A theory-experiment postdoctoral position is available at Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris, on a collaborative project between the Shamma and Ostojic labs. The aim of the project is to investigate the neural bases of auditory discrimination in awake behaving ferrets by combining computational modeling, data-analysis and experimental recordings. The successful applicant will be based at the Group for Neural Theory, a highly interactive and dynamic environment situated in central Paris (see http://iec-lnc.ens.fr/group-for-neural-theory/) The Shamma lab where the neurophysiological recordings take place is located next door (http://www.iec-lsp.ens.fr/spip.php?rubrique30) The ideal candidate should be a computational neuroscientist with strong interest in experimental neuroscience, or the other way round. Starting dates are flexible. The position is for two years. Candidates should send a letter of motivation (2 pages max), the contact information of 2 or more referees and their CVs to srdjan.ostojic at ens.fr *BEFORE April 30th, 2015*. Srdjan Ostojic Group for Neural Theory Ecole Normale Superieure Paris 29, rue d'Ulm 75005 Paris, France

April 12, 2015

PhD position in closed-loop software technologies for neuroscience research

by Pablo Varona

Dear colleagues, A PhD position is available at the Biological Neurocomputation Group, Autonomous University of Madrid, Spain. This position is related to the development of software technologies for closed-loop experimental research in neuroscience. We seek a highly motivated PhD student with a Master's degree at the time of the formalization of the contract in one of the following (or related) disciplines: computer science, engineering, physics, prosthetics. Prior experience in the fields of real time software technology, C/C++ programming, control systems, electrophysiological recordings, EEG, neuroimaging, or computational neuroscience will be valuable. Enthusiasm for interdisciplinary research is required. Interested candidates, please send CV to Dr Pablo Varona: gnbuam(a)gmail.com Application procedure: applicants should send a CV and contact information for 2 references to Dr Pablo Varona (gnbuam(a)gmail.com) The deadline for applications is May 1st, 2015. http://www.ii.uam.es/~pvarona http://www.ii.uam.es/~gnb

April 10, 2015

ECMLPKDD 2015: Summer School on Data Sciences for Big Data - Resource Aware Data Mining

by ECMLPKDD 2015

>From 2nd to 5th of September 2015, the TU Dortmund University and LIAAD-INESC TEC will organize a Summer School on Data Sciences for Big Data - Resource Aware Data Mining. The School will be hosted at Faculty of Sciences, University of Porto and is collocated with <http://ecmlpkdd2015.org/> ECMLPKDD 2015 - European Conference on Machine Learning and Principles and Practice of Knowledge Discovery in Databases (http://www.ecmlpkdd2015.org/) For the summer school, world leading researchers in machine learning and data mining will give lectures on recent techniques dealing with huge amounts of data, spatio-temporal streaming data, distributed and graph data, sensors and embedded systems. The summer school is designed for Master and PhD students, and professionals who wanted to learn cutting edge techniques for data mining with constrained computational resources. For further details go to: <http://www.ecmlpkdd2015.org/summer-school/about> http://www.ecmlpkdd2015.org/summer-school/about

April 10, 2015

Fwd: Fully-funded PhD studentship

by Shufan Yang

Fully-funded PhD studentship: Neuro-inspired medical image processing based on hardware implementation. Applications are invited for a fully-funded PhD studentship (£13,750 pa for three years), to conduct research into neuro-inspired medical image processing. The project will develop new computational models of visual system for medical image processing, based on recent ideas from computer vision, spatial statistics and time-series analysis. The models will be implemented in an embedded hardware platform. All nationalities are eligible to apply, for details see: http://www.wlv.ac.uk/research/research-studentships/university-funded-phd-s… For application please follow the link below: http://www.wlv.ac.uk/research/research-studentships/university-funded-phd-s… Dr Shufan Yang Senior Lecturer in Computer Science School of Mathematics and Computer Science, Faculty of Science and Engineering, City Campus, Wolverhampton Phone: 01902 518594 EMail: s.yang(a)wlv.ac.uk Website: www.wlv.ac.uk/~in3429

April 9, 2015

NEURON Summer Course early registration discount

by Ted Carnevale

Applicants who sign up for "NEURON Fundamentals" or "Parallel Simulation with NEURON" by Monday, April 20, are eligible for an early registration discount: $150 for those who plan to stay on campus, $100 for those who make their own housing arrangements. Qualified applicants who sign up for both courses are eligible for an additional $100 discount. For more information about these courses and an online application form, see http://www.neuron.yale.edu/neuron/static/courses/nscsd2015/nscsd2015.html or contact ted dot carnevale at yale dot edu

April 9, 2015

GEM4 Meeting on Brain Mechanics

by Nathan Urban

The deadline for student applications for the 10th anniversary GEM4 involving linking biology and mechanics on Mechanobiology of the Brain is next week (April 15). The final program for this 2 week course (June 22-July 3, 2015 at Carnegie Mellon University) with lectures and labs is at http://www.ices.cmu.edu/gem4. Best wishes and thanks again. Sincerely, Philip LeDuc Jimmy Hsia Subra Suresh

April 9, 2015

Tenth Advanced Statistics and Data Mining Summer School (Madrid) - Early registration reminder

by asdm＠fi.upm.es

Dear colleagues, We would like to remind you that the early registration period for the Advanced Statistics and Data Mining Summer School is open until June 7th. The summer school will be held in Boadilla del Monte, near Madrid, from June 29th to July 10th. As in previous years, the school comprises 12 week-long courses (15 lecture hours each), given during two weeks (six courses per week). Attendees may register in each course independently. No restrictions, besides those imposed by timetables, apply on the number or choice of courses. Extended information on course programmes, price, venue, accommodation and transport is available at the school's website: http://www.dia.fi.upm.es/ASDM Please, send this information to your colleagues, students, and whoever you think may find it interesting. Best regards, Pedro Larranaga, Concha Bielza, Bojan Mihaljevic and Laura Anton-Sanchez. -- School coordinators. *** List of courses and brief description *** * Week 1 (June 29th - July 3rd, 2015) * 1st session: 9:45-12:45 Course 1: Bayesian Networks (15 h) Basics of Bayesian networks. Inference in Bayesian networks. Learning Bayesian networks from data. Real applications. Practical demonstration: GeNIe, Weka, Bayesia, R. Course 2: Time Series(15 h) Basic concepts in time series. Descriptive methods for time series. Linear models for time series. Extensions. Practical demonstration: R. 2nd session: 13:45-16:45 Course 3: Supervised Pattern Recognition (15 h) Introduction. Assessing the performance of supervised classification algorithms. Preprocessing. Classification techniques. Combining multiple classifiers. Comparing supervised classification algorithms. Course 4: Bayesian Inference (15 h) Introduction: Bayesian basics. Conjugate models. MCMC and other simulation methods. Regression and Hierarchical models. Model selection. Practical demonstration: R and WinBugs. 3rd session: 17:00 - 20:00 Course 5: Neural Networks and Deep Learning (15 h) Introduction. Training algorithms. Learning and Optimization. MLPs in practice. Deep Networks. Course 6: Unsupervised Pattern Recognition (15 h) Introduction to clustering. Data exploration and preparation. Prototype-based clustering. Density-based clustering. Graph-based clustering. Cluster evaluation. Miscellanea. Conclusions and final advise. Practical session: R. * Week 2 (July 6th - July 10th, 2015) * 1st session: 9:45-12:45 Course 7: Statistical Inference(15 h) Introduction. Some basic statistical test. Multiple testing. Introduction to bootstrap methods. Introduction to Robust Statistics. Practical demonstration: R. Course 8: Bayesian Classifiers (15 h) Discrete predictors. Gaussian Bayesian networks-based classifiers. Other Bayesian classifiers. Bayesian classifiers for: positive and unlabeled data, semi-supervised learning, data streams, temporal data. Practical session: R. 2nd session: 13:45-16:45 Course 9: Text Mining (15 h) Introduction. Fundamentals. Language Modeling. String Processing. Text Classification. Information Extraction. Practical session: GATE (optionally, python). Course 10: Feature Subset Selection (15 h) Introduction. Filter approaches. Embedded methods. Wrapper methods. Advanced topics. Practical session: R and Weka. 3rd session: 17:00-20:00 Course 11: Support Vector Machines and Convex Optimization (15 h) Introduction. SVM models. SVM learning algorithms. Convex non differentiable optimization. Course 12: Hidden Markov Models (15 h) Introduction. Discrete Hidden Markov Models. Basic algorithms for Hidden Markov Models. Semicontinuous Hidden Markov Models. Continuous Hidden Markov Models. Unit selection and clustering. Speaker and Environment Adaptation for HMMs. Other applications of HMMs. Practical session: HTK.

April 9, 2015

PhD or Post-Doc Position for facial expression recognition

by Fred Hamker

A PhD (E 13 TV-L, 75%) or postdoctoral (E 13 TV-L) position is available at the Technical University of Chemnitz (Germany) in the Department of Computer Science. The position is funded initially until 30.09.2017, but is renewable pending availability of future funds. Starting date is as soon as possible. The research position is focused on facial expression recognition using methods of machine learning (e.g. active appearance models, deep learning) and neuro-computational modeling (e.g. brain inspired techniques for visual object recognition). The position is funded by a grant from the Federal Ministry of Education and Research. The candidate should have good programming experience and solid english language skills. A formal job search is available in german: https://www.tu-chemnitz.de/verwaltung/personal/stellen/257030_5_Re.php Chemnitz is the third-largest city of the state of Saxony and close to scenic mountains. Major cities nearby are Leipzig and Dresden with a rich tradition of music and culture. Applications should be sent by email (preferably in PDF format) to (fred.hamker(a)informatik.tu-chemnitz.de) as soon as possible. Applications shall be sent by April 30th, but later applications will be considered until the position is filled. -------------------- Prof. Dr. Fred H Hamker Artificial Intelligence & Neuro Cognitive Systems Department of Computer Science Chemnitz University of Technology Strasse der Nationen 62 D - 09107 Chemnitz Germany Tel: +49 (0)371 531-37875 Fax: +49 (0)371 531-25739 email: fred.hamker(a)informatik.tu-chemnitz.de www: http://www.tu-chemnitz.de/informatik/KI/

April 8, 2015

7th International Summer School in Biomedical Engineering „New Instrumentation for brain measurements and stimulation“, 17th - 29th August 2015 in Lutherstadt Wittenberg, Germany

by Uwe Graichen

Dear colleagues, we are pleased to announce the 7th International Summer School in Biomedical Engineering on "New Instrumentation for brain measurements and stimulation" August, 17-29, 2015 in Lutherstadt Wittenberg, Germany. This event stands in the tradition of a series of successful summer schools on hot themes in biomedical engineering, dedicated to intense learning in the fruitful atmosphere of tight interaction between students and world-leading specialists. This year’s summer school is devoted to new hardware technologies for measuring and stimulating the brain, such as dry electroencephalography (EEG) electrodes, optically pumped magnetic field sensors, neuronal current imaging based on low-field magnetic resonance and multichannel transcranial current stimulation. In particular, the 7th International Summer School on Biomedical Engineering will focus on ways how these new technical advances may help to overcome current limitations in human neurosciences and medicine. It will cover both theoretical foundations and practical applications. We aim at a thorough understanding of the underlying mechanisms. Thus, we will develop a critical view on current applications and possible future developments. The second important aim of the summer school consists in providing contact with both leading experts in the field and other students with similar interests, thereby facilitating the exchange of ideas on latest developments in the field. Target Group: - PhD students - Advanced Master students - Researchers entering the field of brain measurement and stimulation techniques Further Information about the 7th International Summer School in Biomedical Engineering: www.iss2015.org We would be happy to receive your application. Please pass this announcement to your colleagues who might be interested. Sincerely, Jens Haueisen and Thomas Knösche

April 8, 2015

15 PhD positions for PACE, an EU funded Innovative Training Network for understanding Perception and Action in Complex Environments

by Laurent Perrinet

Dear colleagues, PACE (Perception and Action in Complex Environments) is an Innovative Training Network funded by the Marie Sklodowska-Curie program of the European Union starting on April 1st, 2015. The network involves 10 academic and private full partners, from 6 European and associated countries (France, Spain, Italy, Netherlands, UK, Israel), plus 5 associated partners (private companies and public organizations). The network gathers a broad range of expertise from experimental psychology, cognitive neurosciences, brain imaging, technology and clinical sciences as well as transferable skills. The PACE network promotes interdisciplinary research and training in the field of human movement sciences with a strong emphasis on perception-action coupling in complex environments. We focus on changes of this coupling across lifespan and in pathological diseases affecting the nervous system. The goal is to train PhD students through collaborative research projects, international courses and workshops. 15 PhD positions, starting next fall, are offered across the different network sites. You can find a short description of the proposed PhD projects at the following link: http://www.int.univ-amu.fr/IMG/pdf/PACE_Table_positions.pdf Applications are welcome immediately and until the end of May (but some specific timing constraints may be enforced in some of the partners' sites: please get more information from local contacts). You will find further general information (sections 1 to 3), eligibility and application conditions (section 4) here: http://www.int.univ-amu.fr/-ITN-Marie-Curie-network-PACE Thanks for distributing this announcement to potential condadates, Laurent -- Laurent Perrinet - INT (UMR 7289)/CNRS http://invibe.net/LaurentPerrinet

April 8, 2015

PhD positions available at the University of Genova

by Paolo Massobrio

We are seeking highly motivated candidates for two PhD positions (3 years) in Bioengineering at the Neuroengineering and Bio-Nano Technology Group (NBT <http://www.nbtunige.it/> ), University of Genova <http://www.unige.it/> , Genova, ITALY. Our labs are located in Genova <http://www.turismo.comune.genova.it/spip.php?lang=en> , a small beautiful town in northern Italy, both from historical (its historical center is the largest of Europe) and naturalistic point of view (sea and mountains coexist creating a unique landscape). Genova is only 1.30h away from Milan by train and connected by plane to Rome (1.00h), London (2h) and Paris (1.30h). The successful candidate will be involved in a research project focused on the study of the computational properties of cortical assemblies coupled to micro-electrode arrays. The two PhD projects are the following: 1. 2D and 3D neuronal networks coupled to microtransducer arrays for the development of in vitro neurotoxicity tests We are interested to investigate how computational properties emerge in 2D and 3D neuronal populations and how information processing and transmission is related to the topological properties of neuronal networks. In this project, we propose to develop a systematic and controlled experimental approach for investigating the dynamics of 2D and 3D neuronal networks coupled to innovative high-density devices by means of advanced analysis tools. We plan to extensively characterize and compare 2D and 3D neuronal cultures by means of electrical and chemical stimulation. Within this framework we seek at developing a new in vitro and automated system for neurotoxicity tests. In the last part of the project we foresee to challenge our experimental models with chemical substances and to study the electrophysiological response with respect to specific parameters (biomarkers). 2. Development of computational models of neuronal assemblies to understand their computational properties as a function of different network topologies The present project aims at investigating how to effectively interact with neuronal systems by understating the role of the network connectivity in the computational properties of small/large/interacting neuronal networks. In particular, during the three-year research project, different computational network models will be developed and investigated, in order to: i) characterize the spontaneous activity of networks of neurons with different architectures. In particular, 2D uniform/homogeneous networks, 2D interconnected networks made up of few sub-populations (from 2 up to 4), and 3D structures will be taken into account. The observed dynamics will be investigated by checking whether particular configurations may promote phenomena like synchronization, emergence of critical phenomena, interplay between structural and functional connectivity; ii) characterize the stimulus-evoked activity induced by electrical stimulation in networks of neurons with different architectures. It will be investigated whether the evoked responses (i.e., the I/O function) can be modulated by structural connectivity. Candidates must have a master degree (or equivalent) in physics, engineering, mathematics or a related field. Essential skills comprise Matlab and/or C++/C# programming, as well as experience in computational neuroscience. If you are really interested, please send your CV, the name and contact details of two references, a description of your personal qualifications, and a description of your research interests indicating which of the two positions you are interested in. Please, be sure to satisfy the aforementioned requirements (master degree and essential skills). Before the hiring, candidates will be tested to verify the effective knowledge. Important dates are: Deadline: 15th May 2015. Starting Date: 1st November 2015 For submissions and informal inquiries, please contact Paolo Massobrio (paolo.massobrio(a)unige.it <mailto:paolo.massobrio@unige.it> ) Best regards Paolo _________________________________________________ Paolo Massobrio, PhD Assistant Professor of Bioengineering Neuroengineering and Bio-Nano Technology - NBT - Lab Department of Informatics, Bioengineering, Robotics and System Engineering - DIBRIS University of Genova Via Opera Pia 11A, 16145, GENOVA, ITALY Phone: +39-010-3532761 Fax: +39-010-3532764 URL: <http://www.dibris.unige.it/> www.dibris.unige.it; <http://www.nbtunige.it/> www.nbtunige.it <http://sites.google.com/site/paolomassobrio/> http://sites.google.com/site/paolomassobrio/ E-mail: <mailto:paolo.massobrio@unige.it> paolo.massobrio(a)unige.it

April 8, 2015

programmer/data analyst position at SUNY Downstate in Brooklyn, NY

by Susana Martinez-Conde

A programmer/data-analyst position is available in the Martinez-Conde lab at SUNY Downstate, in Brooklyn, NYC (a 25-minute subway ride to Times Square). The Martinez-Conde lab (http://smc.neuralcorrelate.com) focuses on the intersection between perception, cognition, oculomotor behavior, and their neural underpinnings. Representative publications can be downloaded from http://smc.neuralcorrelate.com/publications. Candidates should have extensive programming experience in C++ and Matlab/Python, as well as a strong mathematical background as demonstrated by college transcripts. A Masters/Ph.D. in Engineering/Physics/Mathematics/Computer science/Neuroscience is preferred. Knowledge of neuroscience (or a strong desire to learn) is a plus. Foundational and translational research projects typically involve data analyses (eye movements, neural activity, perceptual reports, electrodermal activity, pupil responses, heart rate, respiration rate) and computational modeling, as well as behavioral/psychophysical and/or neurophysiological experiments. Expertise analyzing data and/or programming experiments in any of these areas is a plus. Please email CV/resume and college transcripts to Prof. Martinez-Conde (Susana.Martinez-Conde(a)downstate.edu <mailto:Susana.Martinez-Conde@downstate.edu> ). ---------------------------------------------------------------- Susana Martinez-Conde, PhD Director, Laboratory of Visual Neuroscience Division of Neurobiology Barrow Neurological Institute 350 W. Thomas Rd Phoenix AZ 85013, USA Phone: +1 (602) 406-3484 Fax: +1 (602) 406-4172 Email: smart(a)neuralcorrelate.com <mailto:smart@neuralcorrelate.com> http://smc.neuralcorrelate.com

April 7, 2015

Brown University: Computational Neuroscience Post-Doctoral Opportunity

by Stephanie Jones

Brown University: Computational Neuroscience Post-Doctoral Opportunity A NIH funded post-doctoral position is available to work with Dr. Stephanie Jones at Brown University and Dr. Matti Hamalainen at Mass. General Hospital on developing and analyzing biophysically principled computational neural models to study human MEG/EEG measured brain activity in health and disease. The post-doc hired will work among a team of researcher at Brown University, Mass. General Hospital in Boston, and Rhode Island Hospital who are advancing methods to image and interpret non-invasively measured human brain activity. Our group is integrating computational modeling, MEG/EEG, and invasive intra-operative recordings in humans to advancing methods to image and interpret non-invasively measured human brain activity in the context of sensorimotor function. Areas of study in our group include attention, perception, motor function, Parkinson’s Disease and Essential Tremor. Interested candidates should have experience in computational modeling methods and a strong quantitative and coding background. Please send a CV, statement of research interests, and three letters of recommendation to Stephanie_Jones(a)Brown.edu.

April 6, 2015

CFP: 9th International Conference on Bio-inspired Information and Communications Technologies (BICT 2015, formerly BIONETICS)

by Masafumi HASHIMOTO

CFP: 9th International Conference on Bio-inspired Information and Communications Technologies (BICT 2015, formerly BIONETICS) http://www.bionetics.org/ Paper submission deadline extended: August 3, 2015 December 3 (Thu) - December 5, 2015 (Sat) New York City, NY, USA Sponsored by European Alliance for Innovation (EAI) and Department of Biomedical Engineering at the Columbia University School of Engineering and Applied Science In-corporation with ACM (Pending) BICT 2015 aims to provide a world-leading and multidisciplinary venue for researchers and practitioners in diverse disciplines that seek the understanding of key principles, processes and mechanisms in biological systems and leverage those understandings to develop novel information and communications technologies (ICT). BICT 2015 targets two thrusts: THRUST 1: Indirect Bioinspiration (ICT designed after biological principles, processes and mechanisms). Examples include evolutionary computation, artificial gene regulatory networks, neural networks/computation, swarm intelligence, cellular automata, artificial immune systems, amorphous computing, artificial life, artificial chemistry, reaction-diffusion computing, self-organization, chaotic systems, social networks, game theory, computational epidemics, agent-based modeling, and nature-inspired models and calculi. THRUST 2: Direct Bioinspiration (ICT utilizing biological materials and systems). Examples include biosensing, molecular assembly, cellular computing, molecular computing/communication, membrane computing, bacterial computing/communication, DNA computing and memory, Physarum computing, quantum computing, biometric security/authentication, brain-computer interfaces and energy harvesting from biological sources. Expected, but not exclusive, topics are: * Signal/information processing and communication for bio-inspired ICT * Data management and analytics for bio-inspired ICT * Algorithms and their applications for bio-inspired ICT * Formal models and methods for bio-inspired ICT * Bio-inspired software and hardware systems * Modeling, simulations and empirical experiments of bio-inspired ICT * Self-* and stability properties in bio-inspired ICT * Security, robustness and resilience in bio-inspired ICT * Design, configuration, performance and management issues in bio-inspired ICT * Tools, testbeds and deployment aspects in bio-inspired ICT * Applications, experiences and standardization of bio-inspired ICT Application domains include, but not limited to, autonomic computing, bioinformatics, biomedical engineering, computer networks, computer vision, data mining, e-health, green computing and networking, grid/cloud computing, intelligent agents, mechanical engineering, nanoscale/molecular computing and communication, optimization, pervasive computing, robotics, security, social networks, software engineering and systems engineering. IMPORTANT DATES: Regular paper submission due: August 3 Short and poster/demo paper submission due: September 22 Notification for regular papers: September 21 Notification for short and poster/demo papers: October 1 Camera ready due: October 15 SPECIAL TRACKS: In addition to the regular track that covers general/mainstream topics, BICT 2015 features the following special tracks that focus on specific, emerging or underrepresented topics. * Anthropomorphic Robot and Physiological Information for Cares and Daily Communication (ARPI) * Artificial, Biological and Bio-Inspired Intelligence (ABBII) * Artificial Intelligence and Software Engineering (AISE) * Bio-inspired Algorithms and Technologies for Cyber Security and Defense Applications (DEFENSE) * Bio-Inspired Communications and Computing (BICC) * Bio-inspired Wireless Network Security (BWNS) * Biological Computing and Bio-medical Informatics (BCBI) * Biologically Inspired Computer Vision Models and Techniques (BioVis) * BioNanoNetworks: Modeling, Design, Performance and Applications (BMDPA) * Combinatorial Optimization (COP) * Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS) * Computational Intelligence on Information Security (CIIS) * Engineering Applications from Bio-Molecular Networks (EmNet) * Game Theory and its Applications (GTA) * Molecular Communication and Networking (MCN) * Modularization for Practical Software Engineering (MPSE) * Nano-networks and Communication in Bacteria Populations (NCBP) * Physarum Computing (PhysComp) * Soft Computing on Brain-Body Area (SCBBA) * Swarm Robotics (SR) * Topology-driven bio-inspired methods and models for complex systems (TOPDRIM4Bio) CO-LOCATED WORKSHOPS: * Bioinformatics 2015 * Brain-Inspired Information Communication Technologies (BIICT) * Computational Models of the Visual Cortex (CMVC): Hierarchies, Layers, Sparsity, Saliency and Attention * Int'l Workshop on Electro-Chemical Signaling in Neuron Organelles (ESNO) * The First Int'l Workshop on Combining Machine Learning and Search-BasedSoftware Engineering (MLSBSE) * Int'l Workshop on Physarum Transport Networks (PhysNet) PAPER SUBMISSION: Authors are invited 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. PUBLICATION: All accepted paper will be published through ACM Digital Library and submitted for indexing by SI, EI Compendex, Scopus, ACM DL, Google Scholar and many more. Selected papers will be considered for publication in leading journals including: * IEEE Transactions on NanoBioscience * ACM/Springer Mobile Networks and Applications * Elsevier Information and Software Technology * Elsevier Information Sciences * Springer Software Quality Journal * Elsevier Nano Communication Networks Journal * Springer Complex Adaptive Systems Modeling * Int'l Journal of Soft Computing and Networking KEYNOTE SPEAKERS: * Dmitri Chklovskii, Simons Foundation, USA * Simon Garnier, New Jersey Institute of Technology and Rutgers University, USA * Radu Marculescu, Carnegie Mellon University, USA * Bud Mishra, New York University, USA * Maurizio Porfiri, New York University, USA * Yechiam Yemini, Columbia University, USA FEATURED SPEAKERS IN CO-LOCATED WORKSHOPS: * Emanuela Merelli, University of Camerino, Italy GENERAL CHAIRS: Jun Suzuki, University of Massachusetts, Boston, USA Tadashi Nakano, Osaka University, Japan Henry Hess, Columbia University, USA PC CHAIRS: William Casey, Carnegie Mellon University, SEI, USA Adriana Compagnoni, Stevens Institute of Technology, USA Simon Garnier, New Jersey Institute of Technology and Rutgers University Mario Koeppen, Kyushu Institute of Technology, Japan

April 5, 2015

CFP: ICML Stamlins 2015

by Sanmi Koyejo

(Please forgive us for cross posting - this may be of interest to some in this list) ICML Workshop on Statistics, Machine Learning and Neuroscience (Stamlins 2015) Submission Deadline: May 1, 2015 https://sites.google.com/site/stamlins2015/ Call for Papers ------------------------------------------------ In the last decade, machine learning has had a growing influence on neuroimaging data handling and analysis, making it an ubiquitous component of all kinds of data analysis procedures and software. While it is clear that machine learning has the potential to revolutionize both scientific discovery and clinical diagnosis applications, continued progress requires close collaboration between statisticians, machine learning practitioners and neuroscientists. Our workshop goals are to highlight best practices, disseminate the state of the art in high dimensional methods and related tools with a focus on application to neuroimaging data analysis, and to facilitate discussions to identify the key open problems and opportunities for machine learning in neuroscience. Topics of interest include: - exploratory and predictive modelling of high-dimensional correlated volumic data e.g. fMRI and PET with emphasis on: - applications to cognitive modelling and diagnosis - resting state analyses - interpretation and visualization of results - statistical analysis for parameter recovery - advances in scalable techniques and computational infrastructure - structured prediction problems in neuroscience e.g. multilabel classification for mental processes and network prediction. - de-noising and predictive modelling for brain-computer interfaces - source localization for EEG and MEG - deep learning and convolutional networks for neuroscience Invited Speakers ------------------------------------------------ Pradeep Ravikumar (University of Texas at Austin) Morten Mørup (Technical University of Denmark) Alexandre Gramfort (Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Télécomunications) Submissions ------------------------------------------------ We invite submissions for original papers that introduce new research developments, directions, frameworks, results, etc. in these and related areas. We also invite submissions of recently published high-quality work. Though, we note that preference will be given to original contributions. Potential participants may submit full papers (up to 8 pages in length in ICML format) or short papers (extended abstracts, 2-4 pages in length) by May 1, 2015 sent electronically via the online submission site: https://cmt.research.microsoft.com/SMLNS2015/Default.aspx Acceptance notification: May 10th, 2015 The workshop is semi-archival: materials will be published on the website with the authors permission. The authors retain the copyright and the rights to resubmit and publish at other venues. Organizing Committee ------------------------------------------------ Bertrand Thirion (Inria-CEA) Lars Kai Hansen (Technical University of Denmark) Sanmi Koyejo (Stanford University) For further information, please contact Sanmi Koyejo (sanmi(a)stanford.edu)

April 5, 2015

Call for applications: Brains for Brains Young Researchers' Computational Neuroscience Award 2015

by Kerstin Schwarzwaelder

Dear colleagues, for the sixth time, the Bernstein Association for Computational Neuroscience <http://www.nncn.de/en/bernstein-association> is announcing the "Brains for Brains Young Researchers' Computational Neuroscience Award". The call is open for researchers of any nationality who have contributed to a peer reviewed publication (as coauthor) or peer reviewed conference abstract (as first author) that was submitted before starting their doctoral studies, is written in English and was accepted or published in 2014 or 2015. The award comprises 500 € prize money, plus a travel grant of up to 2.000 € to cover a trip to Germany, including participation in the Bernstein Conference 2015 in Heidelberg (www.bernstein-conference.de) and an individually planned visit to up to two German research institutions in Computational Neuroscience. Deadline for application is May 8, 2015 (5:00 p.m. CET). Detailed information about the application procedure can be found under: www.nncn.de/en/bernstein-association/brains-for-brains-2015 For inquiries please contact info(a)bcos.uni-freiburg.de Best regards, Kerstin Schwarzwälder -- Dr. Kerstin Schwarzwälder Bernstein Coordination Site of the National Bernstein Network Computational Neuroscience Albert Ludwigs University Freiburg Hansastr. 9A 79104 Freiburg Germany phone: +49 761 203 9594 schwarzwaelder(a)bcos.uni-freiburg.de www.nncn.de

April 2, 2015

IJNS Special Issue Call for Papers for "IWSP7: Epilepsy Mechanisms, Models, Prediction & Control"

by Levin Kuhlmann

The International Journal of Neural Systems (IJNS; Impact Factor 6.056) will be publishing a special issue on work presented at the 7th International Workshop on Seizure Prediction "IWSP7: Epilepsy Mechanisms, Models, Prediction & Control" (www.iwsp7.org<http://www.iwsp7.org>) that will be held in Melbourne, Australia, during 3-6 August 2015. The IJNS Special Issue and "IWSP7: Epilepsy Mechanisms, Models, Prediction & Control" will focus on the engineering and science of epilepsy, covering basic mechanisms and imaging, computational modeling for analysis and prediction, and feedback control of epilepsy. Three key themes will be addressed. (1) Seizure prediction from months-to-years long recordings. (2) Model-based data assimilation for time series analysis, neuro-intervention, and feedback control. (3) Multi-modal neuroimaging and computational modelling to assess the spatial origin of seizures and the epileptic network at multiple scales. The following traditional IWSP themes will also be covered: automated seizure detection, prediction and control, seizure physiology mechanisms at multiple scales, high frequency oscillations, epileptic networks, and computational modeling of epilepsy. The call for papers for the special issue can be downloaded from the conference website at the following link: http://www.iwsp7.org/cfp/Epilepsy_Mechanisms_Models_Prediction_and_Control.… As described in the call for papers, invited speakers and researchers submitting the best abstracts to the IWSP7 conference will be invited to submit a manuscript by the IJNS editor-in-chief, Prof. Hojjat Adeli, and the guest editors, Dr Levin Kuhlmann, Prof. Mark J. Cook and Prof. David B. Grayden. We look forward to seeing you at IWSP7! On behalf of the local IWSP7 organizing committee Levin Kuhlmann, PhD David B. Grayden, PhD Mark J. Cook, MD Anthony N. Burkitt, PhD Dean R. Freestone, PhD Tatiana Kameneva, PhD Alan Lai, PhD Elma O'Sullivan-Greene, PhD Andre Peterson, BSc (hons) Email: organizingcommittee(a)iwsp7.org<mailto:organizingcommittee@iwsp7.org>

April 2, 2015

Postdoc positions at IBM Watson Research

by Irina Rish

Computational Biology Department at IBM T.J. Watson is looking for several postdoctoral researchers; see the job descriptions below. Job description 1: https://jobs3.netmedia1.com/cp/faces/job_summary?job_id=RES-0736440 IBM Research is undertaking a project to develop predictive models of neurological and psychiatric disease transitions based on patients’ speech samples and physiological recordings from wearable devices such as accelerometers, heart rate monitors and portable ElectroEncephaloGram (EEG) recorders. The goal of the project is to implement a high sampling frequency system monitoring easily available behavioral and physiological data, and relate these to established psychometric measures of disease, in order to provide neurologist and psychiatrists with high granularity information of the patients’ state, and actionable predictions of imminent transitions. The project will involve a tight collaboration with clinician s. Required Doctorate Degree At least 1 year experience in natural language processing or signal processing At least 1 year experience in Programming (Matlab, Python, C++) English: Intermediate Preferred At least 3 years experience in natural language processing or signal processing At least 2 years experience in Programming (Matlab, Python, C++) At least 2 years experience in psychology and psychiatry At least 2 years experience in cognitive science, big data analytics or wearable computing At least 2 years experience in machine learning English : Fluent Job description 2: https://jobs3.netmedia1.com/cp/faces/job_summary?job_id=RES-0736434 IBM Research is undertaking a project to characterize the progression of neurological diseases using multi-modal imaging techniques, combining state-of-the-art statistical learning and high-performance computing tools with physiological models and mechanistic interpretations. The ultimate goal of this project is to develop an integrative, multi-disciplinary approach to understand underpinning biological mechanisms of disease (e.g. Parkinson’s), as well as provide analytic tools with immediate clinical applicability. The project will involve a tight collaboration with neurobiology researchers and clinicians. IBM is seeking a Postdoctoral Researcher with a degree in neuroimaging, neuroscience, computer science, mathematics, physics, electrical engineering or similar fields. Candidates should have experience in high-throughput brain data modeling, machine learning for big data, computational neuroscience and neurobiology. Candidates with a background in relevant applied mathematics fields such as topological data analysis and optimization will also be considered. Required Doctorate Degree At least 1 year experience in brain imaging, analysis and modeling (magnetic resonance imaging, electroencephalography or magnetoencephalography) Basic knowledge in programming (Matlab, Python, C++) English: Intermediate Preferred At least 3 years experience in brain imaging, analysis and modeling (magnetic resonance imaging, electroencephalography or magnetoencephalography) At least 2 years experience in programming (Matlab, Python, C++) At least 3 years experience in machine learning At least 3 years experience in brain imaging At least 3 years experience in biological psychiatry English : Fluent

April 1, 2015

ANN: HoloViews 1.0 and ImaGen 2.0 released

by James A. Bednar

We are pleased to announce the first public release of HoloViews, a free Python package for scientific and engineering data visualization: http://ioam.github.io/holoviews and version 2.0 of ImaGen, a free Python package for generating two-dimensional patterns useful for vision research and computational modeling: http://ioam.github.io/imagen HoloViews provides composable, sliceable, declarative data structures for building even complex visualizations of any scientific data very easily. With HoloViews, you can see your data as publication-quality figures almost instantly, so that you can focus on the data itself, rather than on laboriously putting together your figures. Even complex multi-subfigure layouts and animations are very easily built using HoloViews. ImaGen provides highly configurable, resolution-independent input patterns, directly visualizable using HoloViews but also available without any plotting package so that they can easily be incorporated directly into your computational modeling or visual stimulus generation code. With ImaGen, any software with a Python interface can immediately support configurable streams of 0D, 1D, or 2D patterns, without any extra coding. HoloViews and ImaGen are very general tools, but they were designed to solve common problems faced by vision scientists and computational modelers. HoloViews makes it very easy to visualize data from vision research, whether it is visual patterns, neural activity patterns, or more abstract measurements or analyses. Essentially, HoloViews provides a set of general, compositional, multidimensional data structures suitable for both discrete and continuous real-world data, and pairs them with separate customizable plotting classes to visualize them without extensive coding. ImaGen 2.0 uses the continuous coordinate systems provided by HoloViews to implement flexible resolution-independent generation of streams of patterns, with parameters controlled by the user and allowing randomness or other arbitrary changes over time. These patterns can be used for visual stimulus generation, testing or training computational models, initializing connectivity in models, or any other application where random or dynamic but precisely controlled streams of patterns are needed. Features: - Freely available under a BSD license - Python 2 and 3 compatible - Minimal external dependencies -- easy to integrate into your workflow - Declarative approach provides powerful compositionality with minimal coding - Include extensive, continuously tested IPython Notebook tutorials - Easily reconfigurable using documented and validated parameters - Animations are supported natively, with no extra work - Supports reproducible research -- simple specification, archived in an IPython Notebook, providing a recipe for regenerating your results - HoloViews is one of three winners of the 2015 UK Open Source Awards To get started, check out ioam.github.io/holoviews and ioam.github.io/imagen! Jean-Luc Stevens Philipp Rudiger Christopher Ball James A. Bednar -- The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in Scotland, with registration number SC005336.

April 1, 2015

2015 NEURON Summer Course

by Ted Carnevale

This year's NEURON Summer Course has two components that can be taken individually or together. NEURON Fundamentals, which runs from June 20-23, presents what you need to know to use NEURON to model individual neurons and networks of neurons, and introduces parallel simulation. Parallel Simulation with NEURON, which runs from June 24-26, is for users who already know how to write hoc or Python code for NEURON, and need to create models that will run on parallel hardware. Strategies for debugging, and measuring and improving performance, receive special attention. Because of its advanced nature, each day of "Parallel Simulation" includes a block of time in which participants can work on their own projects with expert help close at hand. Registration is limited, and the registration deadline is Friday, May 29, 2015. Discounts are available for applicants who sign up for both courses and/or register by April 20, 2015. For more information see http://www.neuron.yale.edu/neuron/static/courses/nscsd2015/nscsd2015.html --Ted

March 31, 2015

BCF/NWG Course "Analysis and, Models in Neurophysiology" 2015 at the Bernstein Center Freiburg, Germany

by Birgit Ahrens

BCF/NWG Course "Analysis and Models in Neurophysiology" Sunday, October 4 - Friday, October 9, 2015 Bernstein Center Freiburg, Hansastraße 9a, 79104 Freiburg, Germany Aim of the course: The course is intended to provide advanced Diploma/Masters and PhD students, as well as young researchers from the neurosciences with approaches for the analysis of electrophysiological data and the theoretical concepts behind them. The course includes various topics such as: - Neuron Models and Point Processes (Prof. Stefan Rotter) - Local field potentials (Prof. Ulrich Egert) - Neural Coding (Dr. Robert Schmidt) - Neural Decoding (Prof. Carsten Mehring) The course will consist of lectures in the morning and matching exercises using Matlab and Mathematica in the afternoon. The participants should have a basic understanding of scientific programming. This course is designated especially for advanced diploma/master students and PhD students (preferentially in their first year). Application: Please apply by sending one pdf document containing your CV and a meaningful letter of motivation to nwg-course(a)bcf.uni-freiburg.de. The letter of motivation should refer to the following points: - Reasons for wanting to take this course - Background in mathematics - Background in scientific programming - Experience in using Matlab and Mathematica - Background in neuroscience The course is limited to 20 participants. Course fees: NWG members - 50€, others - 125€ Application deadline: June 30, 2015 More information: http://www.bcf.uni-freiburg.de/events/conferences-workshops/20151004-nwgcou… -- *-- Dr. Birgit Ahrens --* Teaching & Training Coordinator Bernstein Center Freiburg University of Freiburg Hansastr. 9a D - 79104 Freiburg Germany Phone: +49 (0) 761 203-9575 Fax: +49 (0) 761 203-9559

March 31, 2015

A "Brain Parts List" for Neurophysiologists - Neuroelectro.org

by Nathan Urban

Dear Colleagues I wanted to alert you to a new publication and an associated resource. We just published a paper entitled: Brain-wide analysis of electrophysiological diversity yields novel categorization of mammalian neuron types in the Journal of Neurophysiology. The paper is available at: http://jn.physiology.org/content/jn/early/2015/03/20/jn.00237.2015.full.pdf Also you might be interested in the associated web site: http://neuroelectro.org The paper describes an approach to collect, compile, validate and analyze data from thousands of published papers describing neurophysiological properties of many types of neurons. In addition to the analyses that we performed, we believe that the data contained in this dataset should be of interest to the broad neurophysiology and modeling community. The data set also would benefit from scientists across the country and world providing feedback, proposing extensions, reporting errors etc. We appreciate any feedback or comments. Best, Nathan Urban - CMU Shreejoy Tripathy - CMU/UBC Shawn Burton - CMU Matt Geramita - U Pittsburgh Rick Gerkin - CMU/ASU -- __________________________________ Nathan Urban, Ph.D. Interim Provost Dr. Frederick A. Schwertz Distinguished Professor of Life Sciences Professor, Department of Biological Sciences Professor, Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition Carnegie Mellon University 4400 Fifth Ave (Biological Sciences) 5000 Forbes Ave (Provost's Office) Pittsburgh PA 15213 ph. 412-268-6684 fax 412-268-2330 http://www.cmu.edu/bio/f <http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/nurban/Lab_pages/> aculty/urban.html **For scheduling, please cc Barb Diecks (bdiecks(a)andrew.cmu.edu) on any email

March 31, 2015

Programmer position at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology.

by Benjamin Torben-Nielsen

The computational neuroscience unit (De Schutter unit) at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology has an opening for a programmer / technician on a neuroinformatics project. Initial duration is one year with an option to extend. Project description: Neuronal morphologies are usually studied in isolation. However, this is in contrast to reality were neurons develop in a dense substrate and actively interact with each other and their environment. Therefore, our group recently developed a computational framework -NeuroMaC- to study how interactions between developing neurons themselves and the environment shape dendrite and axon morphologies. A fully functional prototype of NeuroMaC was implemented in Python. NeuroMaC is designed as a parallel software and implemented using the ZeroMQ messaging library for concurrency. More information about the design and future roadmap of NeuroMac can be found here: http://b-torbennielsen.home.oist.jp/neuromac/neuromac.html#design-requireme… Job description: We seek for a programmer / technician to implement a new version of NeuroMaC using state-of-the-art parallel environments to improve on scalability, execution speed and flexibility. The candidate will be working in the lab headed by Prof. Erik De Schutter and under daily supervision of Dr. Ben Torben-Nielsen. The candidate will help in the final design of the framework and has to be flexible in incorporating additional features as research continues and new requirements are identified. Qualifications: The ideal candidate has extensive experience with parallel programming. We are particularly looking for candidates with experience of (dynamic) load-balancing. Experience with meshing software is a great plus and previous experience with neuroscience is appreciated (but not necessary). * Required: - Extensive experience in developing in Linux environments - Extensive experience in parallel programming (MPI, ZMQ) - Excellent communication skills in English and communication with multi-disciplinary teams - M.Sc. in computer science / physics / computational neuroscience or similar experience * Beneficial: - Familiarity with meshing software (TetGen, gmsh, Cubit, VTK) - Experience in an academic environment - Interest in neuroscience Benefits / Offer: A competitive salary and relocation package are offered. This an ideal position to gain experience in a prominent computational neuroscience lab. Academic contributions by technicians are honoured by authorship on relevant publications. Please contact Prof. Erik De Schutter (erik(a)oist.jp) or Dr. Ben Torben-Nielsen (b.torbennielsen(a)gmail.com) for inquiries. About the workplace: The Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University (OIST) will become a model for change in education and research with the best international graduate students, working side by side with world-class faculty in modern well-equipped laboratories. Beautifully situated on the island of Okinawa, OIST relies on a cross-disciplinary approach, with an emphasis on creativity and exchange, to offer unique, individualized graduate training. OIST is a university with no departments, eliminating artificial barriers between people working in different fields, but many nationalities, with students and faculty being attracted from all over the world. Concentrating initially on Neuroscience, Molecular Sciences, Mathematical Sciences, Environmental and Ecological Sciences and Physical Sciences, OIST is bringing some of the best brains in the world to Okinawa to transform the way science and education is done in the global academic world. -- Dr. Ben Torben-Nielsen Computational Neuroscience Unit Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology

March 31, 2015

Poster submission deadline extended to the Fifth International Symposium on Biology of Decision-Making, 11-13 May 2015 @ Paris, France

by Mehdi Khamassi

[Please accept our apologies if you get multiple copies of this message] Dear colleagues, The deadline for poster submission is extended to April 15th for the Fifth International Symposium on Biology of Decision Making (SBDM) which will take place in Paris, France, on May, 11-13th 2015. Poster submission and online registration can be done on the dedicated website: http://sbdm2015.isir.upmc.fr Please circulate widely and encourage your colleagues and team members to attend. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ FIFTH SYMPOSIUM ON BIOLOGY OF DECISION MAKING (SBDM 2015) May 11-13, 2015, Paris, France Institut du Cerveau et de la Moelle Epinière, Hôpital La Pitié Salpêtrière, Paris, France. & Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris, France. & Université Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris, France. http://sbdm2015.isir.upmc.fr ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ PRESENTATION: The Fifth Symposium on Biology of Decision Making will take place on May 11-13, 2015 at the Institut du Cerveau et de la Moelle Epinière, Paris, France, with a satellite day at Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris, France. The objective of this three day symposium is to gather people from different research fields with different approaches (economics, ethology, psychiatry, neural and computational approaches) to decision-making. The symposium will be a single-track, will last for 3 days and will include 6 sessions: (#1) Beyond two: Multi-alternative and multi-attribute choices; (#2) Shaky business: Neural sources of choice variability; (#3) Looking for causality: Choice bias following brain manipulation; (#4) The dark side of choice: Delay, effort and punishment; (#5) Choosing the unknown: The route to exploration; (#6) More brains: Choice in social context. CONFIRMED SPEAKERS: Thomas Boraud (CNRS - Université Bordeaux 2, France) Colin Camerer (California Institute of Technology, USA) Peter Dayan (Gatsby Unit, University College London, UK) Mauricio Delgado (Rutgers University, USA) Sophie Deneve (CNRS - Ecole Normale Supérieure, France) Jan Drugowitsch (Université de Genève, Switzerland) Sylvie Granon (Université d'Orsay - CNRS, France) Hauke Heekeren (Freie Universität Berlin, Germany) Laurence Hunt (University College London, UK) Masud Husain (University of Oxford, UK) Quentin Huys (ETH Zurich - University of Zurich, Switzerland) Miriam Klein-Flügge (University of Oxford, UK) Brian Knutson (Stanford University, USA) Kenway Louie (New York University, USA) John O'Doherty (California Institute of Technology, USA) Mitsuhiro Okada (Keio University, Japan) Kerstin Preuschoff (University of Geneva, Switzerland) Emmanuel Procyk (CNRS - INSERM, France) Christian Ruff (University of Zurich, Switzerland) Aldo Rustichini (University of Minnesota, USA) Liane Schmidt (INSEAD, France) Christopher Summerfield (University of Oxford, UK) Mark Walton (University of Oxford, UK) Melissa Warden (Cornell University, USA) Valentin Wyart (Ecole Normale Supérieure, France) Makiko Yamada (National Institute of Radiological Sciences, Japan) IMPORTANT DATES: April 15, 2015 Extended deadline for Poster Submission April 30, 2015 Deadline for Registration May 11-13, 2015 Symposium Venue ORGANIZING COMMITTEE: Thomas Boraud (CNRS, Bordeaux, France) Sacha Bourgeois-Gironde (La Sorbonne, Paris, France) Kenji Doya (OIST, Okinawa, Japan) Mehdi Khamassi (CNRS - UPMC, Paris, France) Etienne Koechlin (CNRS - ENS, Paris, France) Mathias Pessiglione (ICM - INSERM, Paris, France) CONTACT INFORMATION : Website, registration, poster submission and detailed program: http://sbdm2015.isir.upmc.fr Contact: sbdm2015 [ at ] isir.upmc.fr / sbdm2015-registration(a)isir.upmc.fr -- Mehdi Khamassi, PhD Researcher (CNRS) Institut des Systèmes Intelligents et de Robotique (UMR7222) CNRS - Université Pierre et Marie Curie Pyramide, Tour 55 - Boîte courrier 173 4 place Jussieu, 75252 Paris Cedex 05, France tel: + 33 1 44 27 28 85 fax: +33 1 44 27 51 45 cell: +33 6 50 76 44 92 http://people.isir.upmc.fr/khamassi

March 30, 2015

2 Postdoc Positions in the Frohlich Lab (UNC - Chapel Hill)

by Frohlich, Flavio

Position 1: We are seeking to fill one postdoctoral position in slice electrophysiology in the Frohlich Lab (www.frohlichlab.org<http://www.frohlichlab.org>) at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. We are a rapidly growing lab that aims to understand how cellular and synaptic mechanisms give rise to cortical network dynamics and how these dynamics can be modulated with brain stimulation. We have received grant funding to further grow our slice electrophysiology team in the lab. In particular, we are interested in understanding the role of propagation delays in network synchronization, the study of mesoscale network events by combining optogenetic stimulation and electrophysiology, and elucidating how temporally patterned brain stimulation alters network dynamics. The successful applicant will study such synaptic and intrinsic mechanisms of cortical network dynamics with cutting-edge in vitro slice electrophysiology strategies that combine 120 channel multielectrode array (MEA) electrophysiology, dual patch-clamp, optogenetic stimulation, and real-time closed loop hybrid systems. Requirements: The successful candidate has a PhD in neuroscience or related discipline and a track record of first class science demonstrated by first-author, peer-reviewed scientific articles in the area of in vitro neurophysiology. Documented skills in whole-cell patch clamp recordings are a prerequisite; programming and data analysis skills are essential. Please send your CV and a brief statement of research interest to flavio_frohlich(a)med.unc.edu. Also, please have two letters of recommendation directly submitted to the same email address. Position 2: We are seeking to fill one postdoctoral position in human electrophysiology in the Frohlich Lab (www.frohlichlab.org<http://www.frohlichlab.org>) at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. We are a rapidly growing lab that aims to understand how cortical network dynamics emerge and how these dynamics can be modulated with brain stimulation. We have received grant funding to further grow our human electrophysiology team in the lab. In particular, we are interested in understanding how (feedback) non-invasive brain stimulation alters cortical network dynamics that mediate cognition. The successful applicant will employ tDCS/tACS, EEG, TMS, and cognitive testing for elucidating the functional role of cortical oscillations in cognition and for the development of novel strategies to enhance brain function and treat cognitive deficits in psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia and autism. Requirements: The successful candidate has a PhD in neuroscience or related discipline and a track record of first class science demonstrated by first-author, peer-reviewed scientific articles in the area of human neurophysiology. Documented skills in EEG and cognitive assays are a prerequisite; programming and data analysis skills are essential. We will provide training in non-invasive brain stimulation methods. Please send your CV and a brief statement of research interest to flavio_frohlich(a)med.unc.edu. Also, please have two letters of recommendation directly submitted to the same email address. -- Flavio Frohlich PhD Assistant Professor Departments of Psychiatry, Cell Biology and Physiology, and Biomedical Engineering Neuroscience Center School of Medicine University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

March 28, 2015