From: "Shihab A. Shamma" <sas@Glue.umd.edu>
"NEUROMORPHIC ENGINEERING WORKSHOP"
JUNE 27 - JULY 17, 1999
TELLURIDE, COLORADO
Deadline for application is February 1, 1999.
Avis COHEN (University of Maryland)
Rodney DOUGLAS (University of Zurich and ETH, Zurich/Switzerland)
Christof KOCH (California Institute of Technology)
Terrence SEJNOWSKI (Salk Institute and UCSD)
Shihab SHAMMA (University of Maryland)
We invite applications for a three week summer workshop that will be held in Telluride, Colorado from Sunday, June 27 to Saturday, July 17, 1999.
The 1998 summer workshop on "Neuromorphic Engineering", sponsored
by the National Science Foundation, the Gatsby Foundation,
NASA, the Office for Naval Research, and by the "Center for
Neuromorphic Systems Engineering" at the
California Institute of Technology, was an exciting
event and a
great success. A detailed report
on the workshop
is available at
http://www.klab.caltech.edu/~timmer/telluride.html
( or in Europe: http://www.ini.unizh.ch:80/telluride98/).
We strongly encourage interested parties to browse through these reports
and photo albums.
GOALS:
Carver Mead introduced the term "Neuromorphic Engineering" for a new field based on the design and fabrication of artificial neural systems, such as vision systems, head-eye systems, and roving robots, whose architecture and design principles are based on those of biological nervous systems. The goal of this workshop is to bring together young investigators and more established researchers from academia with their counterparts in industry and national laboratories, working on both neurobiological as well as engineering aspects of sensory systems and sensory-motor integration. The focus of the workshop will be on "active" participation, with demonstration systems and hands-on-experience for all participants.
Neuromorphic engineering has a wide range of applications from nonlinear adaptive control of complex systems to the design of smart sensors. Many of the fundamental principles in this field, such as the use of learning methods and the design of parallel hardware, are inspired by biological systems. However, existing applications are modest and the challenge of scaling up from small artificial neural networks and designing completely autonomous systems at the levels achieved by biological systems lies ahead. The assumption underlying this three week workshop is that the next generation of neuromorphic systems would benefit from closer attention to the principles found through experimental and theoretical studies of real biological nervous systems as whole systems.
FORMAT:
The three week summer workshop will include background lectures systems neuroscience (in particular, sensory processing at peripheral and central levels, motor control of locomotion and oculor-motor function, attention and learning) practical tutorials on analog VLSI design, small mobile robots (Khoalas), hands-on projects, and special interest groups. Participants are required to take part and possibly complete at least one of the projects proposed (soon to be defined). 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, the majority of these lectures will be tutorials, rather than detailed reports of current research. These lectures will be given by invited speakers. Participants will be free to explore and play with whatever they choose in the afternoon. Projects and interest groups meet in the late afternoons, and after dinner.
The analog VLSI practical tutorials will cover all aspects of analog VLSI design, simulation, layout, and testing over the workshop of the three weeks. The first week covers basics of transistors, simple circuit design and simulation. This material is intended for participants who have no experience with analog VLSI. The second week will focus on design frames for silicon retinas, from the silicon compilation and layout of on-chip video scanners, to building the peripheral boards necessary for interfacing analog VLSI retinas to video output monitors. Retina chips will be provided. The third week will feature sessions on floating gates, including lectures on the physics of tunneling and injection, and on inter-chip communication systems. We will also feature a tutorial on the use of small, mobile robots, focussing on Khoala's, as an ideal platform for vision, auditory and sensory-motor circuits.
Projects that are carried out during the workshop will be centered
in a number of groups, including active vision,
audition, olfaction, motor control, central
pattern generator, robotics, multichip
communication, analog VLSI and learning.
The "active perception" project group will emphasize vision and human sensory-motor coordination. Issues to be covered will include spatial localization and constancy, attention, motor planning, eye movements, and the use of visual motion information for motor control. Demonstrations will include a robot head active vision system consisting of a three degree-of-freedom binocular camera system that is fully programmable.
The "central pattern generator" group will focus on small walking and undulating robots. It will look at characteristics and sources of parts for building robots, play with working examples of legged and segmented robots, and discuss CPG's and theories of nonlinear oscillators for locomotion. It will also explore the use of simple analog VLSI sensors for autonomous robots.
The "robotics" group will use rovers and working digital vision boards as well as other possible sensors to investigate issues of sensorimotor integration, navigation and learning.
The "audition" group aims to develop biologically plausible algorithms and aVLSI implementations of specific auditory tasks such as source localization and tracking, and sound pattern recognition. Projects will be integrated with visual and motor tasks in the context of a robot platform.
The "multichip communication" project group will use existing interchip communication interfaces to program small networks of artificial neurons to exhibit particular behaviors such as amplification, oscillation, and associative memory. Issues in multichip communication will be discussed.
LOCATION AND ARRANGEMENTS:
The workshop will take place at the Telluride Elementary School located in the small town of Telluride, 9000 feet high in Southwest Colorado, about 6 hours away from Denver (350 miles). Continental and United 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. No cars are required. Bring hiking boots, warm clothes and a backpack, since Telluride is surrounded by beautiful mountains.
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).
Internet access will be provided. Technical staff present throughout the workshops will assist with software and hardware issues. We will have a network of SUN workstations running UNIX, MACs and PCs running LINUX and Windows95.
Unless otherwise arranged with one of the organizers, we expect participants to stay for the duration of this three week workshop.
FINANCIAL ARRANGEMENT:
We have several funding requests pending to pay for most of the costs associated with this workshop.
Different from previous years, after notification of acceptances have been mailed out around March 15., 1999, participants are expected to pay a $275.- workshop fee. In case of real hardship, this can be waived.
Shared condominiums will be provided for all academic participants at no cost to them. We expect participant from National Laboratories and Industry to pay for these modestly priced condominiums.
We expect to have funds to reimburse a small number of participants for up to travel (up to $500 for domestic travel and up to $800 for overseas travel). Please specify on the application whether such financial help is needed.
HOW TO APPLY:
The deadline for receipt of applications is February 1., 1999.
Applicants should be at the level of
graduate students or above (i.e. post-doctoral fellows, faculty,
research and engineering staff and the equivalent positions
in industry and national laboratories). We actively encourage
qualified women and minority candidates to apply.
Application should include:
1. Name, address, telephone, e-mail, FAX, and minority status (optional).
2. Curriculum Vitae.
3. One page summary of background and interests relevant to the workshop.
4. Description of special equipment needed for demonstrations that
could be
brought to the workshop.
5. Two letters of recommendation
Complete applications should be sent to:
Prof. Terrence Sejnowski
The Salk Institute
10010 North Torrey Pines Road
San Diego, CA 92037
email: terry@salk.edu
FAX: (619) 587 0417
Applicants will be notified around March 15. 1999.
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