The Connecticut Institute for the Brain and Cognitive Sciences (CT IBACS) is inviting applications to its Graduate Fellowship Program.

These summer fellowships are intended for graduate students working on topics with relevance (broadly construed) to the Brain and Cognitive Sciences. IBACS Graduate Fellows attend a short grant-writing workshop and will be expected to submit an application to the NSF GRFP, NRSA (pre- or post-doctoral fellowship), or equivalent, in the Fall.

Deadline for receipt of applications is Friday, December 3rd, 2021.

Graduate students who are not US citizens are eligible to apply and are expected to work with their advisor to develop an external research proposal if they are not eligible for graduate fellowships. Students who were fellows in summer 2020 may apply if they submitted the external grant proposal they developed last year and it was not funded, with the expectation that they will revise their previous grant or develop a new one.

Please refer to the full details here.

The Cognitive Science Colloquium Series is proud to present Dr. Lewis Gordon, Ph.D.

Department Head of Philosophy at UConn

Friday, April 2^nd, 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).

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 

Applications are invited for a fully funded post-doctoral research fellow position in the lab under the direction of Dr. Setoh Peipei (Nanyang Technological University, Psychology Program). Our research focuses on social cognitive development in infants and young children. The current research area of focus is on Singaporean children and adults’ intelligence stereotypes of different gender and racial groups. Information about the lab’s research is available at https://blogs.ntu.edu.sg/babylab

The research fellow will be expected to participate at all levels of the projects. The responsibilities include:

·       Conducting studies with children and adults in the laboratory, as well as offsite (e.g., schools, afterschool care, libraries, science centre in Singapore)

·       Recruiting, training and supervising undergraduate research assistants and graduate students

·       Performing various research duties (e.g., stimuli design and creation, managing the lab’s IRB protocol, database management, data processing)

·       Academic activities (manuscript preparation, presentation of findings in national and international conferences, grant writing)

·       Working with local partners (e.g., schools, afterschool care, science centre) to recruit participants and organize offsite data collection

·       Providing general support to researchers in the lab

Required qualifications:

·       Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology, Education, or a related field

·       Experience working with young children in research/school settings

·       Research experience in early cognitive development/ stereotypes/ education pedagogies

·       Proficiency with Stata, and/or R

·       Ability to work independently, keen attention to detail

·       Strong organizational, managerial, and problem-solving skills

·       Candidate should be willing to make a 2-3-year commitment

Preferred qualifications:

·       Experience with eye-tracking

·       Ability to interact with a diverse population of participants

About Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

A research-intensive public university, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) has 33,000 undergraduate and postgraduate students in the Engineering, Business, Science, Humanities, Arts, & Social Sciences, and Graduate colleges. It also has a medical school, the Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine, set up jointly with Imperial College London.

Young and research-intensive, NTU is the fastest-rising university in the world’s Top 50 and ranked 11th globally. NTU is also placed 1st amongst the world’s best young universities. The University’s main campus is frequently listed among the Top 15 most beautiful university campuses in the world and it has 57 Green Mark-certified (equivalent to LEED-certified) building projects, of which 95% are certified Green Mark Platinum. Apart from its main campus, NTU also has a campus in Novena, Singapore’s healthcare district.

For more information, visit www.ntu.edu.sg.

If you are interested, please email psetoh@ntu.edu.sg with the following documents:

·       A cover letter describing your research experience, relevant skills, and career goals

·       A current curriculum vitae with complete list of publications

Please arrange for three referees to submit a confidential report on academic standing and research directly to psetoh@ntu.edu.sg. In the subject line of the email please state Research Fellowship Application. For best consideration, please apply by 1^st October 2020. Early January 2021 start date preferred. A two-year commitment is also preferred.

I will be happy to discuss further by email or via zoom.

Peipei Setoh, PhD

Assistant Professor

Psychology Program, Nanyang Technological University

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