International Research and Education Opportunities for US Graduate Students in the Cognitive Sciences

University Of California - Merced, Merced CA

Investigators

Abstract

This proposal seeks to support US graduate student participation in the 2012 annual meeting of the Cognitive Science Society in Sapporo Japan, along with research interchanges and collaborations with Japanese labs immediately subsequent to the conference. For 33 years, the Cognitive Science Society has been the premiere international organization for research in Cognitive Science. The Society brings together researchers from many fields that hold a common goal: understanding the nature of cognition as it appears in biological organisms and finds its pinnacle in humans, and as it is simulated in artificial systems. In general, the meeting provides a forum for the first communication of state-of-the-art research in cognitive science, focusing on a broad range of disciplinary and interdisciplinary topics, with representation from psychology, computer science, neuroscience, linguistics, and anthropology. Each year, the annual meeting includes a rich selection of tutorials and workshops available to students. Workshops and tutorials can be helpful in any academic discipline, but they are especially needed in cognitive science because it is very rare that students come from programs with expertise spanning the breadth of the field. Research in many areas of cognitive science has flourished over the past decade in Japan. The time is therefore ripe for fostering international, interdisciplinary research interchanges and collaborations.