In The News

The John Templeton Foundation has extended the Geography of Philosophy Project through December 2022 as it was initially intended to end in May of 2021. Along with the extension is the additional funding of nearly $547K to continue project efforts during the pandemic. "The Project PIs—Clark Barrett, Edouard Machery, and Steve Stich [of Rutgers University]—and the international Team Leaders are enormously grateful to the John Templeton Foundation President, Heather Templeton Dill, and to the...

Sara Pixley, Executive Director at RuCCS, is one of the recipients of the grants as the Co-Principal Investigator for "Artificial Intelligence, Pandemics, and Mental Health." The project was granted a social science research award by Rutgers University Center for COVID-19 Response and Pandemic Preparedness. The center encouraged biomedical and social science researchers at Rutgers to research COVID-19 and its impacts in September for eligibility in the grant opportunity. A total of 35 projects...

The Journal of Illusion launched in October under Editor-in-Chief Akiyoshi Kitaoka of Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto, Japan and is open for submissions. Papathomas is a Senior Editor for the journal alongside ten other professors. Along with this, Professor Papathomas plans to continue collaborative research project across two sites (Rutgers, Rochester) with Rutgers University Behavioral Health Care's Dr. Steven Silverstein on the correlation between performance in depth-inversion illusions...

The grant is awarded to use RuCCS' technology at Schools to teach children how to be social using virtual environments. It is in partnership with Silas solutions, an award-winning, NSF and Microsoft funded local company catering solutions for social-emotional learning to over 45 schools across NJ, and many others in other states. Our research brings new methods, especially for social distancing times.

Victoria Abraira, RuCCS affiliate and professor in the Department of Cell Biology and Neuroscience, lends her expertise for a story in the Daily Beast that explores the impact of the coronavirus on our sense of touch. Read this intriguing piece and learn why Abraira says that "touch should be studied in the same rigorous way as the other senses." Abraira was featured on CBC Radio earlier this year and is also a recipient of several awards including NIH KO1 and Pew Scholars Program in the...

Congratulations to Frances Egan, professor of philosophy at Rutgers University and the 2020 recipient of the Jean Nicod Prize! This prize is awarded annually in Paris to "a leading philosopher of mind or philosophically oriented cognitive scientist." As the Jean Nicod Lecturer, Professor Egan will begin giving her lectures in Paris, France in 2021. Egan is the fourth member of Rutgers University to receive this esteemed award, alongside Jerry Fodor, the first winner in 1993, Zenon Pylyshyn in...

Congratulations to Susanna Schellenberg, Professor of Philosophy and Cog Sci at RU, who has recently been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship! This prestigious grant is awarded annually by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the arts." Currently, Schellenberg is working on a book on the neural basis of perception along with a project regarding biased algorithms in AI.

Pooja shares some words on her new position as the Cognitive Science Club President: "I’m super excited for the Cognitive Science Club this year - our incoming executive board members are extremely brilliant and passionate about making this club grow even more. During quarantine, we’ve had online guest-speaker meetings and we have plans to continue to be active in the summer, something we’ve never done before! This school year, we have plans to not only have guest-speaker events, but also to...

Seeing the World Anew Through the Lens of Social and Behavioral Sciences at Rutgers David Vicario was interviewed on how Social and Behavioral Science expanded his horizons and why students are drawn to the departments and programs within SBS. Q: What are some of your priorities for the division? A: I am interested in programs that will increase interaction among the departments and lead to interdisciplinary education opportunities. We have already been working to identify common themes. I...

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...

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...

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...

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.  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...

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...

It is with great pleasure to announce Julien Musolino's interview with Vogue Portugal. Attached is the cover photo and the interview [in Portuguese]. Some rough translations are posted below:  They are more and more, and these, where I include myself, no longer have the petulant boldness to say 'doesn't exist and that's it'. Is there absolutely conclusive evidence of all that might have to do with the soul? No. But it is good to refer to one of the fundamental laws of science, which for many of...

 First presented in 2007, this award honors members of the LSA who have performed distinguished service to the Society. The organizers of PUMP, working in collaboration with COSWL and conference sponsors in linguistics, have provided an invaluable service to linguists seeking short-term mentoring relationships. In just two years, PUMP has served 379 linguists at 15 conferences and Institutes. The volunteer organizers have donated many hours of time and effort to outreach and coordination, including...

The award, entitled "Linguistic cues and speaker goals in the question/answer exchange" is under the direction of PI Kristen Syrett, and Co-PI Morgan Moyer, and lasts from 9/1/2019 to 2/28/21. Morgan and Dr. Syrett also recently published a WIREs Cognitive Science primer called "The semantics of questions," which introduces cognitive scientists to the interesting and complex issues inherent to this topic, and is the first official peer-reviewed article linked to Morgan's dissertation work. 

Konstantinos Michmizos wins the Rutgers Vice Chancellor for Research and Innovation Grant for the proposal entitled "Translating Biological to Artificial Intelligence." This is the second Award received within 6 months, in collaboration with leaders in experimental neuroscience: Cheryl Dreyfus, Zhiping Pang (Rutgers Medical School), and Bonnie Firestein (SAS Cell Biology and Neuroscience.)  Prevailing over a century, the neuronal paradigm of studying the brain has left us with limitations in both...

Victoria Abraira, an assistant professor in Rutgers Cell Biology and Neuroscience was selected as a 2019 Pew Scholar in the Biomedical Sciences by the Pew Charitable Trusts. The Pew Scholars Program in the Biomedical Sciences provides funding to young investigators of outstanding promise in science relevant to the advancement of human health. The program makes grants to selected academic institutions to support the independent research of outstanding individuals who are in their first few...