WORKSHOP: Doctoral Consortium at the 2019 International Graphonomics Conference: Graphonomics and Your Brain on Art, Creativity and Innovation

University Of Houston, Houston TX

Investigators

Abstract

This is funding to provide support for a Doctoral Consortium (workshop) at the 2019 International Conference of Graphonomics and Your Brain on Art, Creativity and Innovation. The conference's goal is to identify the challenges and opportunities for engaging in convergent research at the nexus of the arts, design, science, engineering, medicine and the humanities to promote creativity and innovation leading to novel approaches to solving complex societal challenges (e.g., advancing personalized learning, enhancing virtual reality, reverse engineering the brain, engineering tools for scientific discovery, and engineering better therapies). The meeting, which will be held at Live Aqua Cancun on June 9-13, is organized by the PI (University of Houston) in collaboration with the International Graphonomics Society (IGS). The agenda is designed to summarize the state of the art, to promote audience-driven discussions whose content is provided by the participants themselves, and to facilitate collaboration, debate and interactive human-in-the-loop demonstrations using mobile brain-body imaging (MoBI) technology. To these ends, the conference will adhere to a single-track format with thematic sessions that are jointly chaired by a scientist/engineer and an artist, with no more than 4 speakers per session. Interactive demonstrations, a brain-computer interface hackathon, and Art-Sci performances that address grand challenges will add to the conference's broad impact. A special issue of the journal Brain-Computer Interfaces will promote wide dissemination of findings from the conference presentations and hackathon designs. The Doctoral Consortium will consist of several intertwined activities that will provide an opportunity for the trainees to network while exploring and developing their research interests within the context of an interdisciplinary conference, under the guidance of a distinguished group of international researchers, artists and innovators. To assure diversity, the organizers will actively recruit student participants from under-represented groups, including women and minorities, with a maximum of two students per institution (and if two then one must be a female). The Doctoral Consortium for selected graduate students and postdoctoral fellows will provide an opportunity for the participants to explore and develop their convergent research interests. It will include a special session on Brain-Machine Interfaces, a MoBI workshop, a brain-computer interface hackathon, and a poster session. The trainees will also strengthen their oral and written communication skills by serving as scribes, writing summaries of the group interactions and final group briefings during the conference. The summaries will describe the challenges addressed and outline the approach identified to solve them, including what convergent research needs to be done to understand the fundamental science behind the challenge, the proposed plan for promoting trans-disciplinary collaboration and innovation, the reasoning that went into it, and the benefits to society. The Doctoral Consortium will be fully integrated with the conference events; applicants who are selected will receive travel support (round-trip airfare and all-inclusive accommodations) as well as reduced registration. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.