At the Rutgers Center for Cognitive Science (RuCCS), we seek to understand the mind, brain, and behavior through interdisciplinary research grounded in computational methods; to educate, mentor, and advise emerging scholars; and to foster engagement with the broader community. Our mission is to promote excellence in interdisciplinary research, to train and educate future generations of researchers and leaders, and to engage stakeholders to ensure the long-lasting impact of our research.
Researchers from several disciplines, most notably Computer Science, Linguistics, Philosophy, and Psychology come together at RuCCS to develop, advance, and teach theories, and gather, interpret, and present empirial evidence that bears on cognition and the mind from an interdisciplinary perspective.
Through our undergraduate major and minor, RU undergraduates have the opportunity to learn about and participate in outstanding research with leaders in the field. Through our Graduate Certificate in Cognitive Science, we provide doctoral students the opportunity to learn about areas outside their specialization, and to conduct research with a faculty member outside their home department.
Established in 1991, a primary goal of RuCCS has always been to foster research concerned with the nature of certain symbolic processes that are constitutive of intelligent performance. The approach in cognitive science, in contrast with the approach taken by other investigators interested in similar issues, is essentially computational. The goal is to understand such aspects of intelligent performance as perception, language processing, planning, problem-solving, reasoning, and learning, in terms of the computational processes that underwrite these skills, as well as the computational mechanisms (be they silicon hardware, or neural tissue) that may instantiate them. Our pursuit is essentially multi- and inter-disciplinary and involves techniques and knowledge drawn from experimental psychology, computer science, neuroscience, philosophy, linguistics, mathematics, and engineering.
RuCCS is has an Executive Committee composed of faculty researchers who are experts in their disciplines. They provide experiential learning activities for undergraduate and graduate students and high quality advising, and play an active role in crafting the undergraduate curriculum and maintaining a thriving intellectual research life in the Center.