News

Meredith Whittaker, is the Co-founder and co-director of the AI Now Institute, Minderoo Research Professor at NYU, and Founder of Google's Open Research Group. The talk is taking place via Zoom on February 12 at 12:00 PM.

Kasia Bieszczad, Rutgers Center of Cognitive Science - New Brunswick, (RuCCS) EC member and Assistant Professor of Psychology awarded a $1.7M grant by the NIDCD for her project "Molecular Epigenetic Mechanisms that Transform the Auditory System for Learning and Memory." The aim of this project is to investigate epigenetic neural mechanisms which can ensure meaningful sounds are faithfully and adaptively represented in the adult auditory brain. Bieszczad's proposal was scored in the 4th percentile by the NIDCD.  

Kristin Dana (RuCCS EC member, ECE Professor) is the PI for the proposal awarded the grant Socially Cognizant Robotics for a Technology Enhanced Society (SOCRATES). The SOCRATES grant proposal was completed by Dana alongside her team of co-PIs, senior personnel, and an external evaluator:

• Kostas Bekris (Computer Science/RuCCS EC, co-PI)
• Clinton Andrews (Planning and Public Policy, co-PI)
• Jacob Feldman (Psychology/RuCCS EC, Cognitive Science, co-PI)
• Jingang Yi (Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, co-PI)
• Pernille Hemmer (Psychology/RuCCS EC, Cognitive Science, senior personnel)
• Aaron Mazzeo (Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, senior personnel)
• Hal Salzman (Planning and Public Policy, senior personnel)
• Matthew Stone (Computer Science/RuCCS EC, senior personnel)
• Kathy Haynie (External evaluator on STEM education)

The objective of the grant is to create a new vehicle for graduate training and research that integrates technology domains of robotics, machine learning, and computer vision with social and behavioral sciences including psychology, cognitive science, and urban policy planning.

Read the article on Rutgers Today for more on the story. For more info on the NSF grant read here.

Professor John McGann has been announced as the new Director of the Center for Cognitive Science at Rutgers University-New Brunswick (RuCCS).

Professor McGann earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Psychology, followed by a doctorate in neuroscience, all from Yale University. He came to Rutgers in 2009 as an Assistant Professor in the Behavioral & Systems Neuroscience section of the Psychology Department, where he established the McGann Laboratory on the Neurobiology of Sensory Cognition. He was tenured in 2013, promoted to full Professor in 2019, serves as Director of RuCCS as of July 1, 2020. 

Professor McGann’s research has leveraged breakthrough neural imaging technologies to explore how the mammalian brain uses its learned expectations about the world when interpreting sensory input. In particular, he studies the human and rodent olfactory system, which exhibits dramatic neuroplasticity in both the nose and the brain when predictive relationships between odors and other events are inferred. Along the way he has become a prominent expert on smell itself, most prominently for arguing that humans have a much better sense of smell than is widely believed (see his paper in the journal Science here). Dr. McGann’s research has been funded by grants from the National Institute on Deafness and other Communication Disorders (NIDCD) and the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). He recently completed a term as Chair of the NIH’s Communication Disorders Review Committee.

Professor McGann has received awards from the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, and the Association for Chemoreception Sciences. He has also been recognized by the Rutgers School of Arts and Sciences for his Distinguished Contributions to Undergraduate Education. In non-pandemic times he gives lectures around the world on olfaction and cognition. 

The Rutgers Center for Cognitive Science is a preeminent institution for the interdisciplinary study of the human mind. Faculty are drawn from philosophy, psychology, linguistics, computer science, neuroscience, and engineering departments based on a shared passion for rigorous exploration of cognition in all its forms and applications.