In The News
RuCCS Executive Council Member Kasia Bieszczad awarded $1.7M Grant from The National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders for project on auditory systems
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RuCCS Affiliate and Assistant Professor of Psychology Kasia Bieszczad was awarded a $1.7M grant through the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD) for her project, "Molecular Epigenetic Mechanisms that Transform the Auditory System for Learning and Memory." The project aims to investigate epigenetic neural mechanisms that can ensure meaningful sounds are faithfully and adaptively represented in the adult auditory brain. The NIDCD scored Bieszczad's proposal in the 4th percentile.
RuCCS Executive Council Member Kristen Syrett awarded $267K National Science Foundation Grant for Cognitive Science project
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RuCCS Affiliate and Associate Professor of Linguistics Kristen Syrett was awarded a $267K grant through the National Science Foundation (NSF) Linguistics Program in the Division of Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences. The grant goes towards funding Syrett's project entitled "Cross-categorical context dependence: Bridging developmental, experimental, and theoretical perspectives" starting January 2021 for three years.
RuCCS Director John McGann quoted in New York Times and New Yorker articles
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Within the span of one week, RuCCS Director John McGann was mentioned and cited in two New York
Times and New Yorker articles on the topic of sense of smell! One feature article in the NYT, "What Can Covid-19 Teach Us About the Mysteries of Smell?" quotes McGann's research on the myth of poor
sense of smell in humans via his 2017 paper, "Poor human olfaction is a 19th-century myth." The
other New Yorker article, "How to Make Sense of Scents," refers to this same paper and even dubs it
a "provocative" piece for "suggest[ing] that [humans are] better smellers than we’ve gotten credit for."
RuCCS alumna Malihe Alikhani awarded Google Grant: exploreCSR
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Congratulations to RuCCS alumna Malihe Alikhani on receiving a Google exploreCSR Grant! The grant will be used to encourage computing research among underrepresented groups. Alikhani is is now an Assistant Professor at the School of Computing and Information at the University of Pittsburgh. She states, "We will hold workshops and mentoring sessions to empower students to create technologies that best serve their communities and help them succeed in research and graduate studies by fostering an engaging and supportive community and helping them learn practical skills."
Philosophy Graduate Student Carolina Flores' paper "Delusional Evidence-Responsiveness" forthcoming in Synthese
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Graduate Certificate Student Carolina Flores' paper "Delusional Evidence-Responsiveness" is forthcoming
in an edition of the scholarly paper Synthese. In the paper, Flores argues that delusions are evidence-responsive and looks at consequences for long-standing debates on the nature of delusions and at ethical and treatment implications. Flores notes, "Though delusions may seem like a niche topic, I hope that some
of what I say here is helpful for thinking about conspiracy theories, ideological beliefs, and other cases of irrational or evidence-resistant belief." Read the full abstract on Synthese here.