In The News

Elizabeth Torres, Associate Professor of Psychology, on Autism Diagnosis Test Improvements

 See the source image   See the source image   See the source image   

Read the journal by Torres, Richa Rai (Rutgers), Sejal Mistry (Rutgers), and Brenda Gupta (Montclair) here

Dr. Elizabeth Torres, associate professor of psychology in Rutgers’ School of Arts and Sciences, and director of The New Jersey Autism Center of Excellence had an article about her notable research on the inadequacies of autism testing featured in Rutgers Today. See the full article for more information about the inconsistencies in a broadly used autism test.

“The ADOS [Autism Diagnostic Observational Schedule] test informs and steers much of the science of autism, and it has done great work thus far... however, social interactions are much too complex and fast to be captured by the naked eye, particularly when the grader is biased to look for specific signs and to expect specific behaviors.”

The researchers suggest combining clinical observations with data from wearable biosensors, such as smartwatches, smartphones and other off-the-shelf technology. Autism researchers should aim for tests that capture the accelerated rate of change of neurodevelopment to help develop treatments that slow down the aging of the nervous system.

 

RuCCs Post-Doc Assistant Professor Ryan Rhodes talks to Fresno State about Chukchansi language

 

With a limited number of native speakers left, the Chukchansi tribe partnered with the Fresno State Linguistics Department to keep their language alive. It was a partnership that started over ten years ago to save the Chukchansi Indians' native language.

No one had ever written down Chukchansi," said former Fresno State student, Ryan Rhodes. "There's a couple of stories or something, but there's no grammar, so if the last three speakers disappear, we'll never know how it worked. Something that will be around so when there's no more speakers the language doesn't disappear, so dictionary, grammar, stories, language and all that kind of stuff."

Read more about it here

RuCCs Sara Pixley received the 2019 faculty mentorship award for her contribution to the FIGS program

 

FIGS Breakfast Sara Pixley

 Sara and her mentee Yoni Friedman (Cog. Sci. club president) at the presentations

 

Dr. Sara Pixley was Cognitive Science club president Yoni Friedman's mentor and received an awarded for her contribution to the FIGS program. 

First-Year Interest Group Seminars (FIGS) were established at Rutgers University to help incoming students discover professional fields and learn more about their campus community. These one credit courses have students explore a specific topical area and take advantage of resources and opportunities and gain insight to academic success and professional development. FIGS classes are taught by Peer Instructors (juniors and seniors) who share their experiences with first-years.

 

Dimitris Metaxas [RuCCs affiliate] to present at NeurIPS [AI/ML Conference]

 

 

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RuCCs affiliate, Dimitri Metaxas, and colleagues are presenting on kernel methods for node representation at this years Neural Information Processing Systems conference held in Vancouver.

More details about the conference below!

 

Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS) is a multi-track machine learning and computational neuroscience conference that includes invited talks, demonstrations, symposia and oral and poster presentations of refereed papers.

 

The 33rd annual NeurIPS Conference brings together researchers from all fields engaged in fundamental  work in Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence to enjoy a week of talks, panels, workshops, demonstrations, and competitions.

Now in its second year, The NeurIPS EXPO presents work in AI ML done in an industrial setting. The EXPO offers a unique opportunity for a firsthand perspective on how industry is translating the power of the tools developed in this field. As a bridge between academia and industry, the NeurIPS EXPO is the premier forum for issues in AI ML in a real-world setting. 

This year, NeurIPS is supporting the creation of Meetups, distributed gatherings streaming the talks in other cities  focused on furthering the impact of the information being shared at the conference. 

 

SCHEDULE: 

12/08: NeurIPS Expo

12/09: Tutorials

12/10-12/12: Conference & Demonstrations

12/13-12/14: Workshops & Competitions

SNARL- Kristen Syrett was featured in a podcast!

SNARL post also features Prof. Kristen Syrett-- and for a different reason! She was recently interviewed for an episode of In Plain Language (a really wonderful podcast on speech and language), which just aired last week. 


But more importantly, a HUGE congratulations to Kristen for being chosen to receive the LSA Linguistic Service Award-- we're so glad to see all your hard work being recognized!


For more information about Kristen's episode and the podcast itself, please take a look at the SNARL post linked below. 


https://sites.rutgers.edu/lgsa/kristen-syrett-in-podcast/  


If you want to skip that step and head directly to the episode (which is free to listen to, by the way!), here's the link for that:


https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/how-is-the-internet-changing-language-for-kids/id1480751230?i=1000456793140  


It's a really cool episode, so please give it a listen!