Sunday June 29th - Saturday July 19th, 2014, Telluride, Colorado
We invite applications for a three-week summer workshop that will be held in Telluride, Colorado.Sunday June 29th - Saturday July 19th, 2014. The application deadline is Wednesday, April 2nd and application instructions are described at the bottom of this document.
This is the 20th Anniversary of the Workshop, and ~25 years since the conception of the "Meadian" version of Neuromorphic Engineering. Hence, we plan a celebratory Workshop, where some of the originators and benefactors of the field will participate in discussions of the successes and challenges over the past 25 years and prognosticate the potential contributions for the next 25 years. The 2014 Workshop and Summer School on Neuromorphic Engineering is sponsored by the National Science Foundation, Institute of Neuromorphic Engineering, Qualcomm Corporation, The EU-Collaborative Convergent Science Network (CNS-II), University of Maryland - College Park, Institute for Neuroinformatics – University of Zurich and ETH Zurich, Georgia Institute of Technology, Johns Hopkins University, Boston University, University of Western Sydney and the Salk Institute.
Directors: Cornelia Fermuller, University of Maryland, College Park Ralph Etienne-Cummings, Johns Hopkins University Shih-Chii Liu, Institute of Neuroinformatics, UNI/ETH Zurich, Switzerland Timothy Horiuchi, University of Maryland, College Park
Workshop Advisory Board: Andreas Andreou, Johns Hopkins University Andre van Schaik, University Western Sydney, Australia Avis Cohen, University of Maryland Barbara Shinn-Cunningham, Boston University Giacomo Indiveri, Institute of Neuroinformatics, Uni/Eth Zurich, Switzerland Jonathan Tapson, University Western Sydney, Australia Malcolm Slaney, Microsoft Research Jennifer Hasler, Georgia Institute of Technology Rodney Douglas, Institute of Neuroinformatics, Uni/Eth Zurich, Switzerland Shihab Shamma, University of Maryland Tobi Delbruck, Institute of Neuroinformatics, Uni/Eth Zurich, Switzerland
GOALS: Neuromorphic engineers design and fabricate artificial neural systems whose organizing principles are based on those of biological nervous systems. Over the past 18 years, this research community has focused on the understanding of low-level sensory processing and systems infrastructure; efforts are now expanding to apply this knowledge and infrastructure to addressing higher-level problems in perception, cognition, and learning. In this 3-week intensive workshop and through the Institute for Neuromorphic Engineering (INE), the mission is to promote interaction between senior and junior researchers; to educate new members of the community; to introduce new enabling fields and applications to the community; to promote on-going collaborative activities emerging from the Workshop, and to promote a self-sustaining research field.
FORMAT: The three week summer workshop will include background lectures on systems and cognitive neuroscience (in particular sensory processing, learning and memory, motor systems and attention), practical tutorials on emerging hardware design, mobile robots, hands-on projects, and special interest groups. Participants are required to take part and possibly complete at least one of the projects proposed. They are furthermore encouraged to become involved in as many of the other activities proposed as interest and time allow. There will be two lectures in the morning that cover issues that are important to the community in general. Because of the diverse range of backgrounds among the participants, some of these lectures will be tutorials, rather than detailed reports of current research. These lectures will be given by invited speakers. Projects and interest groups meet in the late afternoons, and after dinner. In the early afternoon there will be tutorials on a wide spectrum of topics, including analog VLSI, mobile robotics, vision and auditory systems, central-pattern-generators, selective attention mechanisms, cognitive systems, etc.
2014 TOPIC AREAS: Human Auditory Cognition: Acoustic Priming, Imagination and Attention. Project Leaders: Shihab Shamma (UM-College Park), Malcolm Slaney (Microsoft), Edward Lalor (Trinity College, Dublin), Barbara Shinn-Cunningham (Boston U) Motion and Action Processing on Wearable Devices Project Leaders: Michael Pfeiffer (INI-UZH), Ryad Benosman (UPMC, Paris), Garrick Orchard (NUS, Singapore), and Cornelia Fermüller (UMCP) Planning with Dynamic Neural Fields: from Sensorimotor Dynamics to Large-Scale behavioral Search Project Leaders: Yulia Sandamirskaya (RUB, Bochum) and Erik Billing (U. Skovde) Neuromorphic Olympics Project Leaders: Jorg Conradt (TUM, Munich) and Terry Stewart (U. Waterloo) Embodied Neuromorphic Real-World Architectures of Perception, Cognition and Action Project Leaders: Andreas Andreou (JHU) and Paul Verschure (UPF, Barcelona) Terry Sejnowski (Salk Institute) – Computational Neuroscience (invitational mini-workshop)
LOCATION AND ARRANGEMENTS: The summer school will take place in the small town of Telluride, 9000 feet high in southwest Colorado, about 6 hours drive away from Denver (350 miles). Great Lakes Aviation and America West Express airlines provide daily flights directly into Telluride. All facilities within the beautifully renovated public school building are fully accessible to participants with disabilities. Participants will be housed in ski condominiums, within walking distance of the school. Participants are expected to share condominiums.
The workshop is intended to be very informal and hands-on. Participants are not required to have had previous experience in analog VLSI circuit design, computational or machine vision, systems level neurophysiology or modeling the brain at the systems level. However, we strongly encourage active researchers with relevant backgrounds from academia, industry and national laboratories to apply, in particular if they are prepared to work on specific projects, talk about their own work or bring demonstrations to Telluride (e.g. robots, chips, software). Wireless internet access will be provided. Technical staff present throughout the workshops will assist with software and hardware issues. We will have a network of PCs running LINUX and Microsoft Windows for the workshop projects. We encourage participants to bring along their personal laptop.
No cars are required. Given the small size of the town, we recommend that you do not rent a car. Bring hiking boots, warm clothes, rain gear, and a backpack, since Telluride is surrounded by beautiful mountains.
Unless otherwise arranged with one of the organizers, we expect participants to stay for the entire duration of this three week workshop.
FINANCIAL ARRANGEMENTS: Notification of acceptances will be mailed out around the April 15th, 2014. The Workshop covers all your accommodations and facilities costs for the 3 weeks duration. You are responsible for your own travel to the Workshop, however, sponsored fellowships will be available as described below to further subsidize your cost.
Registration Fees: For expenses not covered by federal funds, a Workshop registration fee is required. The fee is $1250 per participant for the 3-week Workshop. This is expected from all participants at the time of acceptance. Accommodations: The cost of a shared condominium, typically a bedroom in a shared condo for senior participants or a shared room for students, will be covered for all academic participants. Upgrades to a private rooms or condos will cost extra. Participants from National Laboratories and Industry are expected to pay for these condominiums.
Fellowships: This year we will offer two Fellowships to subsidize your costs: Qualcomm Corporation Fellowship: Three non-corporate participants will have their accommodation and registration fees ($2750) directly covered by Qualcomm, and will be reimbursed for travel costs up to $500. Additional generous funding from Qualcomm will provide $5000 to help organize and stage the Workshop. EU-CSNII Fellowship (http://csnetwork.eu/) which is funded by the 7th Research Framework Program FP7-ICT-CSNII-601167: The top 8 EU applicants will be reimbursed for their registration fees ($1250), subsistence/travel subsidy (up to Euro 2000) and accommodations cost ($1500). The registration and accommodation costs will go directly to the INE (the INE will reimburse the participant’s registration fees after receipt from CSNII), while the subsistence/travel reimbursement will be provided directly to the participants by the CSNII at the University of Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain. HOW TO APPLY: Applicants should be at the level of graduate students or above (i.e. postdoctoral fellows, faculty, research and engineering staff and the equivalent positions in industry and national laboratories). We actively encourage women and minority candidates to apply.
Anyone interested in proposing or discussing specific projects should contact the appropriate topic leaders directly.
Contact email address. First name, Last name, Affiliation, valid e-mail address. Curriculum Vitae (a short version, please). One page summary of background and interests relevant to the workshop, including possible ideas for workshop projects. Please indicate which topic areas you would most likely join. Two letters of recommendation (uploaded directly by references). Applicants will be notified by e-mail. 7th February, 2014 - Applications accepted on website 2nd April, 2014 - Applications Due 15th April, 2014 - Notification of Acceptance