News

Hot off the Press: IBACS 2022/2023 Brain Digest

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We are excited to share the recently finalized IBACS 22/23 Brain Digest that features the Cognitive Science Program. Thank you to all of the faculty, graduate students, and undergraduate students who have contributed- especially our graduate student editors, Cynthia Boo and Lee Drown! We hope you will enjoy reading it as much as we’ve enjoyed creating it. Please email Institute Coordinator, Crystal Mills, at crystal.mills@uconn.edu if you’d like physical copies mailed to you.

IBACS-Brain-Digest_FY2023

 

Announcing *NEW* IBACS Leadership

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The IBACS executive committee is thrilled to announce the appointment of three new directors who will assume leadership of the Institute this fall. Their selection culminates from a major visioning process involving community feedback (2021-22), a University-wide request for nominations (fall 2022), a review of qualifications and candidates' willingness to serve, candidate interviews with the executive committee (winter 2023), and a final review of recommendations by the CLAS Dean Juli Wade. 

New IBACS Directors

Emily Myers, Director of Training
Professor of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences;
Professor of Psychological Sciences; Perception, Action, and Cognition Research Program

Photo of Emily Myers

Our new Director of Training will work to connect and publicize UConn’s many outstanding training programs in the brain, cognitive, and neurosciences space. Myers will work with leadership of existing programs to build strengths and optimize use of shared resources. She will coordinate with departments to support and grow opportunities for cross-training (e.g., inter- disciplinary training programs that cross over traditional degree programs). She will also manage IBACS Graduate and Undergraduate Student Summer Award programs, and work with the Director of Research to support and coordinate graduate lines (RAs) for students working in our service cores.

John Salamone, Director of Communication and Outreach
Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor of Psychological Sciences; Behavioral Neuroscience Research Program

Our new IBACS Director of Communication and Outreach will manage the outward face of IBACS, including the curation of our website/media presence – both inside and outside the University. John will work to enhance integration and cooperation among departments, programs, and centers critical to the thriving brain, cognitive, and neurosciences space at UConn. This will include improving the coordination of related talk and seminar series, ListServs, etc. Salamone will work to engage new IBACS stakeholders, and to build new interdisciplinary connections and breadth of representation within the Institute and its initiatives. 

Photo of John Salamone

Inge-Marie Eigsti, Director of Research
Professor of Psychological Sciences; Clinical Research Program

Photo of Inge-Marie Eigsti

Our new Director of Research will work to support existing and promote new interdisciplinary research in the brain, cognitive and neurosciences space. Eigsti will strive to increase external funding and sustainability of IBACS-affiliated programs and service cores. She will manage the IBACS Seed Grant Programs and work with IBACS-affiliated service cores in support of their respective missions – including a newly refurbished EEG/eye-tracking lab, and our new Science Alliance Mobile (SAM), which will bring cutting-edge mobile research facilities to new off-campus test sites and outreach locations. She will organize speaker events, and work together with the Director of Training and Director of Communication/Outreach where missions overlap.

All three directors will begin their positions in Fall 2023 and serve three-year terms.

Post-doc Position Available at the University of California San Diego

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Postdoc Position – Corey Miller Lab

 The Miller lab at the University of California San Diego [http://millerlab.ucsd.edu] is seeking highly motivated post-doctoral fellows to participate in research program aimed at elucidating the neural basis of spatial navigation and memory in primate brain.These experiments build on our recent identification of place cells and theta activity in marmoset hippocampus during free-navigation to further explicate spatial encoding and memory in the medial temporal lobe.  

 The positions are funded through a new NIH R01 grant and are available immediately. Salaries will be based on experience and the NIH post-doctoral scale.  Candidates should have a strong scientific background in systems and/or computational neuroscience.  Individuals with expertise in neurophysiological recordings in behaving animals (in primate or non-primate models), molecular technologies and/or computational analysis are particularly encouraged to apply.

For more information or to apply for the position, please contact corymiller@ucsd.edu. 

Applicants should send a CV, brief statement of interest and a list of 2 references. 

 

Announcing the Educational Playcare Fellowship

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IBACS is pleased to announce the creation of the Educational Playcare Fellowship.  This fellowship provides up to 20 weeks of free, full-time daycare to IBACS-affiliated students, to be used within the first year of their child’s life. The fellowship is intended to support students who become new parents during their graduate studies, and to facilitate their return to their studies/research.  Two fellowships will be available each year. The fellowship is made available through a generous gift from Educational Playcare.

Further details are available on the IBACS website. An article about the Fellowship appears in UConn Today.

Call for applications: IBRAiN Program

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The Connecticut Institute for the Brain and Cognitive Sciences (CT IBACS), is inviting graduate students to apply to the IBACS-BIRC Research Assistantships in Neuroimaging (IBRAiN) Program. 

 

The CT Institute for the Brain and Cognitive Sciences (IBACS) is offering graduate assistantships of 10 hours per week during the Fall (2019) and Spring (2020) semesters at the Brain Imaging Research Center (BIRC). During the first year, assistants will be trained in neuroimaging methods, data science, and reproducibility. Assistants will spend the remaining allocated hours at BIRC, supporting users of BIRC facilities. This could involve helping design and implement experimental procedures for fMRI, EEG, tDCS, TMS etc., recruitment and prepping of participants, data analysis, or overseeing use of equipment by others. Applicants will be expected to commit to the full duration of the assistantship (Fall & Spring). Funds may be available during Summer 2019 to enable IBRAiN students to pursue their own research at BIRC. IBRAiN students also receive an allocation of 20 hours of MRI time to be used at BIRC during the course of the fellowship.

We anticipate three 10-hour assistantships starting Fall 2019, joining the existing IBRAiN students who have already completed their first year at BIRC and are starting their second year on the program.

 

The deadline for receipt of applications will be midnight on February 28, 2019.

 

Priority may be given to applicants whose research will involve, or has involved, neuroimaging methods (fMRI, dEEG, tDCS, or TMS), and who will incorporate these methods into their master’s or dissertation research. Subject to funding and other constraints, these assistantships could be renewed for a further year.Please refer to the full details here.

 

Students can apply both to this program and to the IBACS Graduate Fellowship program (details here).

Funded summer opportunity: Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute

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Note: ECOM Director Dorit Bar-On is among the international faculty this summer!
From Erica Cartmill, Assistant Professor at UCLA:
I am writing to share the news about an exciting funded summer opportunity for graduate students, postdocs, and early career faculty. In 2018, I launched a new summer program, the Diverse Intelligences Summer Institute (DISI for short), with my colleague Jacob Foster, a computational sociologist at UCLA. You can find more details about last summer’s DISI, as well as a short video, at www.diverseintelligencessummer.com.
The basic idea behind DISI is simple: to bring together promising graduate students, postdocs, and early career faculty interested in the study of mind, cognition, and intelligence for several weeks of transdisciplinary exploration. The first year was a great success, and we are delighted to be expanding the scope of DISI in 2019! We are increasing the number of participants, welcoming back alumni, and broadening the topics offered by faculty. We are also introducing a new “storytellers” track to host artists-in-residence at DISI. We hope that this vibrant community will work together to develop new ways of engaging with big questions about intelligence, cognition, and the mind.
We are holding the 2019 Summer Institute at the University of St Andrews, Scotland, from June 30 to July 20. As you probably know, this is a beautiful seaside location, easily accessible from Edinburgh International Airport, and a picturesque train journey North from London. We’ve already assembled an outstanding international faculty (www.diverseintelligencessummer.com/faculty), and more are yet to be added. In addition to lectures and discussions, DISI offers participants the opportunity to develop collaborative interdisciplinary research projects with support from faculty and staff.
I’ve attached a flyer advertising the Institute, and included a link to our website below. I would be grateful if you could forward this announcement to talented graduate students, postdocs, and other early career researchers who might be interested. We are also hoping to reach writers and artists of all types for our storyteller track! In both the academic and storyteller tracks, we are looking for creative, open-minded participants who want to take intellectual risks and break down disciplinary barriers in the spirit of dialogue and discovery.
 
The main application deadline is February 15. Storyteller and alumni applications will be rolling. Application portals can be found at www.diverseintelligencessummer.com/apply
If potential applicants have any questions, they can reach out to our wonderful Associate Director, Dr. Kensy Cooperrider, at disi@ucla.edu.
Thanks so much for helping us build an exciting new intellectual community!

How the Brain Controls Speech

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UConn research to better understand how the brain applies meaning to words could ultimately help people with communication disorders. (Christa Tubach/UConn Image)
UConn research to better understand how the brain applies meaning to words could ultimately help people with communication disorders. (Christa Tubach/UConn Image)

Emily Myers, assistant professor of speech, language and hearing sciences at UConn, was recently featured in an article in UConn Today regarding her recent aphasia research in collaboration with Carl Coelho and Jennifer Mozeiko. By using UConn’s powerful new fMRI scanning software, Myers has been able to identify the specific neural regions in the brain that are impacted by aphasia. This new information can help shape therapies for people with language disorders.

Click here to read more.

The Difference Between Laughing and Crying: A Multidisciplinary Effort

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Heather_Read_story_ReadandGarbuz
Undergraduate April Garbuz has learned from mentor Heather Read that it takes all kinds of scientists and engineers working together to understand how our brain functions. (Christine Buckley/UConn Photo)

Heather Read, an associate professor of psychological sciences and biomedical engineering at UConn, and undergraduate April Garbuz are working on a project concerned with how the brain’s auditory circuits react to different vocal tones, shapes, pitches, and rhythms – what people use to distinguish between laughing and crying. Successfully mapping out these areas on the brain may allow for therapies or computerized devices to help with differentiation in those who can’t do it for themselves.

Read works with co-PI Monty Escabi, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering, and notes that “It takes all kinds of scientists to do these kinds of studies, it makes for a really cool environment not just for research, but for our students to learn.”

Psychology department head Jim Green agrees, saying that this successful collaboration of faculty from different programs shows how building multidisciplinary studies leads to stronger research programs.

“Complex problems often cannot be solved by a single investigator, and brain science is a truly multidisciplinary effort,” Green says. “UConn’s current brain studies have faculty from at least seven different departments, in four colleges, working together. It’s incredibly exciting.”

Read more…