Events
9/2/21: IBACS Large Seed Grant Application Now Open!
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. Note that funding is primarily intended to cover direct research costs such as supplies, participant fees, or per diems, as well as student support. The review criteria promote innovative, novel, and collaborative projects in the field of brain and cognitive sciences that require expertise across laboratories and traditional disciplinary boundaries. Postdocs can also apply, with a faculty mentor as co-PI. We have further expanded this year’s seed grant solicitation to include COVID recovery. This addition in scope is intended to provide funds to recover or restart relevant projects that were interrupted due to COVID-19. Full details on the seed grant program, including applications (letter of intent and full seed app), allowable costs, please check our website.
Applications for small grants (less than $10,000) can be submitted at any time; applications in excess of $10,000 (but no more than $25,000) should be submitted by October 1st.
Please submit letters of intent as soon as possible, but at least 2 weeks prior to the seed grant application deadline (by 9/17/21), to allow time for review and feedback.
The Institute also invites applications for affiliate memberships.
Any questions should be directed to the Institute Coordinator, Crystal Mills at crystal.mills@uconn.edu or (860) 486-4937.
9/2/21: IBACS Undergrad Award Application Now Open!
IBACS is happy to announce another year of the undergraduate research grant program!
The application period for the Fall 2021/Spring 2022 research grant program opens today, September 1st, 2021, and the deadline for applications will be 11:59 pm on Monday, February 21st, 2022. Note that the academic year applications will now be reviewed on a rolling basis and awards will be made until funds are exhausted, or up until the application deadline. In other words, apply early!
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. Once the applicant lists the faculty advisor of the project in the form, an email will be sent to the faculty member with directions for how to submit the letter. 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 is 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.
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 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.
Recipients cannot apply for another grant within the same academic year, however, are eligible for the summer research grant program, provided that they are still a UConn student at the time. Please note that the application period for the summer research grant program will open on February 21st, 2022, and the deadline for applications will be 11:59 pm on March 14th, 2022.
The IBACS undergraduate award academic year applications are reviewed based on the following criteria:
- The project description is well written and clearly explains the project.
- The project clearly focuses on a research area associated with the IBACS mission.
- The budget is itemized, appropriate to the project described, and reports the total cost of the project (even if it exceeds the funding requested).
- The advisor is familiar with the student’s project and rates the student’s work to date highly.
- Where project applications are equally meritorious, the reviewers will take note of how the student’s project will contribute to the advisor’s research goals.
- The student and his/her project meet the eligibility criteria.
- The student has secured research compliance approval(s) if necessary for the project. No award will be issued until documentation of approval(s) is received.
IBACS Fall 2021/Spring 2022 Application: https://quest.uconn.edu/prog/ibacs_undergraduate_research_grant_-_fall_2021spring_2022
Please visit our website for more information and contact our Institute Coordinator, Crystal Mills at crystal.mills@uconn.edu or (860) 486-4937 if you have any questions.
CogSci Colloquium: Dr. Lewis Gordon on 4/2/21
The Cognitive Science Colloquium Series is proud to present Dr. Lewis Gordon, Ph.D.
Department Head of Philosophy at UConn
Friday, April 2nd, 4pm, virtually on Zoom
REGISTER HERE (required)
Talk Title: “The Colonization and Decolonization of Disciplines, Especially in the Human Sciences”
Bio: Lewis R. Gordon is Professor and Head of the Department of Philosophy at UCONN-Storrs; Honorary President of the Global Center for Advanced Studies; Visiting Professor at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa; and Honorary Professor in the Unit for the Humanities at Rhodes University, South Africa. He previously taught at Brown University, where he founded the Department of Africana Studies, and Temple University, where was the Laura H. Carnell Professor of Philosophy and founder of the Center for Afro-Jewish Studies and the Institute for the Study of Race and Social Thought. He co-edits with Jane Anna Gordon the journal Philosophy and Global Affairs, the Rowman & Littlefield book series Global Critical Caribbean Thought, and, with Rozena Maart, Epifania Amoo-Adare, and Sayan Dey, the Routledge-India book series Academics, Politics and Society in the Post-Covid World. He is the author of many books, including Freedom, Justice, and Decolonization (Routledge, 2021) and the forthcoming 论哲学、去殖民化与种族 (“On Philosophy, Decolonization, and Race”), trans. Li Beilei (Wuhan, China: Wuhan University Press, fall 2021) and Fear of Black Consciousness (Farrar, Straus and Giroux in the USA and Penguin Book in the UK; German translation, Ullstein Verlag in Germany; Portuguese translation, Todavia in Brazil, forthcoming 2022).
CogSci Colloquium: Iris Berent on 9/25
The Cognitive Science Colloquium Series is proud to present Iris Berent, Ph.D.
Professor in the Department of Psychology at Northeastern University
Friday, September 25th, 4pm, virtually via Zoom
Dr. Berent will provide a talk entitled “How we reason about innateness”
Abstract: Few questions in science are as controversial as the origins of knowledge. Whether ideas (propositional attitudes, e.g., “objects are cohesive”) are innate or acquired has been debated for centuries. Here, I ask whether our difficulties with innate ideas could be grounded in human cognition itself.
I first demonstrate that people are systematically biased against the possibility that ideas are innate. They consider epistemic traits (specifically, ideas, as opposed to horizontal faculties, such as attention) as less likely to be innate compared to non-epistemic traits (sensorimotor or emotive)— those of humans, birds and aliens, and they maintain this belief despite explicit evidence suggesting that the traits in question are in fact innate.
I next move to trace this bias to the collision between two principles of core cognition—Dualism and Essentialism. Dualism (Bloom, 2004) renders ideas immaterial; per Essentialism, the innate essence of living things must be material (Newman & Keil, 2008). It thus follows that epistemic traits cannot be innate. A second series of experiments tests these predictions.
These results show for the first time that people are selectively biased in reasoning about the origins of innate ideas. While these findings from adults cannot ascertain the origins of these biases, they do open up the possibility that our resistance to innate ideas could be in our nature.
I conclude by briefly considering how the dissonance between Dualism and Essentialism can further account for a wide range of other phenomena, from why we are seduced by neuroscience to why we fear the takeover of humanity by AI, and what we think happens when we die.
Please join Iris for a virtual happy hour (open to all) @ 6 PM via Zoom: https://zoom.us/j/8587400098?pwd=YmszU2h2UmxNZGJpM1ZMMGZ2c1cvQT09
Open meeting w/ all graduate students @1:30 – 2:00 PM via Zoom: https://zoom.us/j/8587400098?pwd=YmszU2h2UmxNZGJpM1ZMMGZ2c1cvQT09
CogSci Colloquium Series: Iris Berent on 9/25
The Cognitive Science Colloquium Series is proud to present Iris Berent, Ph.D.
Professor in the Department of Psychology at Northeastern University
Friday, September 25th, 4pm, virtually on Zoom (details to come)
Dr. Berent will provide a talk entitled “How we reason about innateness”
Abstract: Few questions in science are as controversial as the origins of knowledge. Whether ideas (propositional attitudes, e.g., “objects are cohesive”) are innate or acquired has been debated for centuries. Here, I ask whether our difficulties with innate ideas could be grounded in human cognition itself.
I first demonstrate that people are systematically biased against the possibility that ideas are innate. They consider epistemic traits (specifically, ideas, as opposed to horizontal faculties, such as attention) as less likely to be innate compared to non-epistemic traits (sensorimotor or emotive)— those of humans, birds and aliens, and they maintain this belief despite explicit evidence suggesting that the traits in question are in fact innate.
I next move to trace this bias to the collision between two principles of core cognition—Dualism and Essentialism. Dualism (Bloom, 2004) renders ideas immaterial; per Essentialism, the innate essence of living things must be material (Newman & Keil, 2008). It thus follows that epistemic traits cannot be innate. A second series of experiments tests these predictions.
These results show for the first time that people are selectively biased in reasoning about the origins of innate ideas. While these findings from adults cannot ascertain the origins of these biases, they do open up the possibility that our resistance to innate ideas could be in our nature.
I conclude by briefly considering how the dissonance between Dualism and Essentialism can further account for a wide range of other phenomena, from why we are seduced by neuroscience to why we fear the takeover of humanity by AI, and what we think happens when we die.
If you are interested in meeting virtually with Dr. Berent during the day on Friday, please contact Dr. Theodore: rachel.theodore@uconn.edu
IBACS Meet & Speak Registration
Expression, Language, and Music (ELM) Conference, May 13-15, 2020
Dear All,
The conference will bring together researchers from linguistics, philosophy, cognitive science, music theory, dance theory, anthropology, and neurobiology with the aim of integrating recent findings and insights from diverse perspectives concerning the significance of expression in music, dance, and language, the importance of systematic structure in these domains, and the interrelations between expressive, musical, and communicative capacities and their relevance for understanding the emergence of language (in ontogeny and phylogeny).
Our invited speakers are:
· Tecumseh Fitch (Cognitive Biology, University of Vienna)
· Kathleen Higgins (Philosophy, University of Texas, Austin)
· Ray Jackendoff (Linguistics, Tufts University)
· Jerrold Levinson (Philosophy, University of Maryland)
· Elizabeth Margulis (Music Cognition, Princeton University)
· Isabelle Peretz (Psychology, University of Montreal)
· David Poeppel (Neuroscience, NYU)
· Ljiljana Progovac (Linguistics, Wayne State University)
Both the Poster and Call for Papers/Posters are attached. Please pass on/post as appropriate. And please save the dates!
The conference website: https://elm.clas.uconn.edu
Sincerely,
Dorit Bar-On, ECOM Director
Aliyar Ozercan, ECOM Coordinator
InCHIP Virtual Meet ‘n’ Greet: UConn KIDS
For more information, please click on the poster below.
CogSci Colloquium: Aaron Shield
Friday, November 1st
Time: 4:00pm
Room: Oak Hall 117
The Cognitive Science Colloquium Series is proud to present Aaron Shield, Professor in the Department of Speech Pathology and Audiology at Miami University of Ohio.
Dr. Shield will provide a talk entitled “Insights into cognitive and linguistic processes from research on autism and sign language”
Abstract: In this talk, I will discuss how research into the signed languages of the deaf has the power to illuminate big questions about human language. By comparing spoken and signed languages, we gain a better understanding of what language is, how children learn languages, and how to best characterize and treat language disorders. In particular, I will show how research into the acquisition of American Sign Language (ASL) by deaf children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) sheds new light on various questions about acquisition, such as how children imitate linguistic forms, how children use pronouns and other words that refer to self and other, and how language exposure may affect other aspects of cognition.
Contact Inge-Marie Eigsti (inge-marie.eigsti@uconn.edu) to schedule a meeting with Prof. Shield.
Learn more about Aaron Shield.