We are happy to announce the fifth year of the undergraduate research grant program that is being run by the Connecticut Institute for Brain and Cognitive Sciences (IBACS).

Fall 2019 UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH GRANT PROGRAM ANNOUNCEMENT:

The application is now open and the deadline will be 11:59 pm on Monday, October 11, 2019. The application process is being conducted in concert with the Office of Undergraduate Research (OUR). It is expected that applicants will be conducting research with IBACS faculty members, focusing on any research area associated with the IBACS mission. Faculty sponsors will need to supply a letter of recommendation. Applicants must fill out the online application, and also submit via the online application, a relatively short research plan (maximum of 6,000 characters, approximately 3 pages) and a budget that explains in detail how the funds will be spent. The application link and faculty recommendation link are listed below. It is recommended that the student first compose the research plan and budget using a word processing program, and then upload the final versions on to the website.

IBACS Fall 2019 application – https://uconn.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_bsjpFFwMySHv7OB

IBACS Faculty Recommendation – https://ugradresearch.uconn.edu/ibacs-faculty-form/

THIS PROGRAM IS NOT MEANT TO PROVIDE DIRECT FINANCIAL SUPPORT TO STUDENTS. Instead, it is meant to provide support for the research. The account will be set up with the faculty sponsor after the award is given. It is expected that there will be five awards of up to $1,000. The funding is meant to defray the research-related costs such as materials & supplies, minor equipment, software, animal or participant-related costs. The budget should reflect these expenditures.

Please remember that there will be Spring and Summer 2020 rounds as well. The same student cannot apply for both the Fall and Spring grants, but a recipient of a Fall or Spring grant is eligible for the Summer research grant program, provided that they are still a UCONN student at the time.

Post-doctoral fellow position(s) to the study of the natural visual environments of infants and young children and their implications for visual, cognitive and language development and machine learning at Indiana University.    The larger collaborative project involves analyses of the properties of a very large corpus of head camera images (500 million) collected by infants 1 to 24 months of age with respect to low, mid and higher level properties, the examination of the statistical structure of early learned visual categories (and their in-home naming by parents), the design and implementation of computational experiments using machine learning and computer vision models, as well as experiments with infants testing novel predictions from these analyses and models.  The post-doctoral fellow(s) will take part in the intellectually rich cognitive science, computational neuroscience, vision, developmental, and computer science communities at Indiana University under the Emerging Areas of Research Initiative titled Learning: Brains, Machines and Children.  Collaborators on the larger project include Linda Smith, David Crandall, Franco Pestilli, Rowan Candy, Jason Gold, and Chen Yu. 

This is an excellent opportunity for individuals with past training in one or more of the following:  infant statistical learning, infant visual development (including face and object perception), visual neuroscience, adult vision, computer vision. Other areas of training with computational and/or experimental backgrounds will be considered.

Please apply to Linda Smith, smith4@indiana.edu, with Visual Environments in the subject heading by sending a cover letter stating your interest in this project, your cv, and a research statement.  References will be requested after initial contact.

The filling of these position(s) are open in their timing; although we hope to appoint one position this fall, January or this spring are also possible start dates. 

We are happy to announce the fifth year of the undergraduate research fellowship program that is being run by the Connecticut Institute for Brain and Cognitive Sciences (IBACS).

Fall 2019 UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH PROGRAM ANNOUNCEMENT:

The opening date for submission of applications will be Monday, September 23, 2019, and the deadline will be 11:59 pm on Monday, October 11, 2019. The application process is being conducted in concert with the Office of Undergraduate Research (OUR). It is expected that applicants will be conducting research with IBACS faculty members, focusing on any research area associated with the IBACS mission. Faculty sponsors will need to supply a letter of recommendation. Applicants must fill out the online application, and also submit via the online application, a relatively short research plan (maximum of 6,000 characters, approximately 3 pages) and a budget that explains in detail how the funds will be spent. The application link and faculty recommendation link are listed below. It is recommended that the student first compose the research plan and budget using a word processing program, and then upload the final versions on to the website. Links for uploading the applications and faculty recommendations will be provided in the next announcement.

IBACS Fall 2019 application – Will become available on 9/23/19

IBACS Faculty Recommendation –Will become available on 9/23/19

THIS PROGRAM IS NOT MEANT TO PROVIDE DIRECT FINANCIAL SUPPORT TO STUDENTS. Instead, it is meant to provide support for the research. The account will be set up with the faculty sponsor after the award is given. The award will be for up to $1,000. The funding is meant to defray the research-related costs such as materials & supplies, minor equipment, software, animal or participant-related costs. The budget should reflect these expenditures.

Also, please remember that there will be Spring and Summer 2020 grants as well. The same student cannot apply for both the Fall and Spring grants, but a recipient of a Fall or Spring grant is eligible for the Summer grant program, provided that they are still a UCONN student at the time.

The Connecticut Institute for the Brain and Cognitive Sciences (CT IBACS) is pleased to announce a new call for applications to its seed grant fund. Full details (and forms for the required letter of intent) can be found on the Institute website.

 The seed fund is intended to fund activities in the Brain and Cognitive Sciences (broadly construed) that are likely to lead to applications for external funding, or which otherwise contribute to the mission of the Institute. Successful applications will typically involve collaborations that require expertise across laboratories and traditional disciplinary boundaries. The Institute does not usually fund research that might normally be considered to fall within the scope of a single lab or discipline.

Applications for small grants (<$10,000) can be submitted at any time; applications in excess of $10,000 should be submitted by October 1st. 

Please submit letters of intent as soon as possible, and at least 2 weeks prior to the seed grant application deadline, to allow time for review and feedback.

The Institute also invites applications for affiliate memberships.

The Cognitive Science Colloquium Series is proud to present Marjorie Solomon, Professor and the Oates Family Endowed Chair in Lifespan Development in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, and the MIND Institute at UC Davis

Friday, September 20th, 4pm, Oak 117

Dr. Solomon will provide a talk entitled “Executive Control in Children, Adolescents, and Adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder: Behavioral and Neural Mechanisms”

Abstract: Many individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) exhibit executive control deficits, meaning that they fail to maintain appropriate task context representations so they can inhibit impulsive responding, behave flexibly, and thereby effectively pursue their goals. Although individuals with typical development are thought to experience significant maturation of executive control processes during adolescence, those with ASD are thought to exhibit executive control impairments that persist into adolescence and young adulthood and are associated with clinically significant difficulties in social and adaptive functioning, and attention deficit, internalizing, and ASD symptoms. Given the challenges inherent in the transition to adulthood, it is critical to better understand the precise nature and development of executive control deficits in those with ASD, and their associations with behavior. This talk will briefly review behavioral and neuroimaging studies of executive control in ASD, and present new neuropsychological and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) results from the first wave of a large longitudinal cohort sequential study of individuals with ASD and typical development ages 12-22 years. We seek to clarify the neural signatures of executive control deficits in those with ASD and to investigate how the development of executive control impacts the transition to adulthood in these individuals.

If you are interested in meeting with Dr. Solomon during the day, and/or coming to dinner Friday night, please contact Dr. Naigles: letitia.naigles@uconn.edu

The Cognitive Science Colloquium Series is proud to present Mark S. Seidenberg, Vilas Research Professor and Donald O. Hebb Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison

Friday, April 26th, 4pm, Oak 117

Dr. Seidenberg will provide a talk entitled “The Science and Politics of Learning to Read”

Abstract: A remarkably high percentage of children and adults acquire only basic reading skills, causing innumerable problems for individuals and society. Low literacy has multiple causes, some of which seem intractable (e.g., poverty). I nonetheless think we could be doing much better than we are. Part of the problem is a disconnection between the cultures of science and education. Scientists know a great deal about how reading works and children learn, little of which has had any impact on teacher education or classroom practices. I’ll look at these cross-cultural differences, how they developed, and what might be done to overcome them.

If you are interested in meeting with Dr. Seidenberg, please contact Dr. Altmann: gerry.altmann@uconn.edu

The CT Institute for the Brain and Cognitive Sciences (IBACS) invites you to their annual two-day “Meet and Speak” event on May 14^th and 15^th where affiliated faculty (from the Storrs campus and UConn Health Center) will give up to 15-minute presentations describing, in accessible language, the research they have carried out, or propose carrying out, with seed funding previously awarded by IBACS. Graduate Students affiliated with the Institute will be performing short “datablitz” style presentations about their involvement in Seed Funded or related research, and posters. Morning and afternoon sessions will be held on the first floor of Oak Hall (101-107) from 9:00am-6:30pm. A program will be available shortly. 

In addition, the 2019 Meet-and-Speak will feature a film series on Tuesday evening and a Keynote speaker on Wednesday evening:

• IBACS Film Series at 4pm, May 14 in Oak Hall 101 – Please join us as we premiere a series of short films produced by Tim Miller, from the Department of Digital Media and Design, profiling scientists affiliated with the Institute. Tim will speak about the challenges of translating science into film, and each of his protagonists will speak about how the film process influenced their own thinking about how to communicate science.

• Richard Aslin, Senior Scientist at Haskins Laboratories in New Haven, CT at 5pm, May 15 in Oak Hall 101 – Title and abstract TBA. Dr. Aslin works on brain function and infant learning.

This event will provide an opportunity to learn more about the diverse research that IBACS affiliates are engaged in, and will provide a forum for cross-disciplinary networking. Lunch and other refreshments will be provided. More information about this event can be found here.

If you are interested in attending all or part of this 2-day event, please register by May 1st. Attendance at each session or each day is not required, and you will be able to specify on the registration form which sessions you can attend.