In The News
RuCCS Executive Council Member Karin Stromswold selected as a recipient of the 2022-23 Chancellor-Provost Awards for Faculty Excellence
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Congratulations to Dr. Karin Stromswold, RuCCS Executive Council Member and Professor of Psychology, has been selected as a recipient of the 2022-23 Chancellor-Provost Awards for Faculty Excellence! The awards for Distinguished Contributions to Undergraduate Education are given annually to professors and teaching assistants in the School of Arts and Sciences (SAS) to "recognize their outstanding achievements in and beyond the classroom, their engagement with their students and pedagogic communities, and their overall commitment to the undergraduate education mission."
RuCCS Affiliate and Department of Computer Science Distinguished Professor Dmitris Metaxas and his work on facial recognition was featured on ABC News.
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Nightline seeks out the expertise of Dimitris Metaxas, professor of computer science and affiliate member of Rutgers Center for Cognitive Science, for its investigative report on Madison Square Garden's use of facial recognition technology to ban attendees from events. Metaxas explains to Nightline reporters how the technology works, and then says that given the advances to cameras and computers, it's likely that facial recognition capabilities "will become cheaper and usable by anybody." For more information regarding this, check here.
RuCCS NTT Faculty Ryan Rhodes won 2nd place in the CogSci Mind Challenge hosted at the Cognitive Science Society
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Dr. Ryan Rhodes is an Assistant Teaching Professor of Center for Cognitive Science at Rutgers University. He won 2nd place in the Cognitive Science Society's CogSci Mind Challenge winning a sum of $500, in which he had to create a five-minute video addressing a key question within Cognitive Science but for an audience of non-experts, particularly high school and early college students. The question for this competition was, “Can Machines Think?” He would also like to thank his brother Alex Rhodes and two of his former students Binghui “Russell” Rang and Maxwell Domanchich for their assistance with this project. In the video, Ryan takes you on a conversational walk through many thought-provoking settings and animations. He addresses key concepts through the metaphor of the clay golem and the ability of a rock (e.i. silicon computer chips) to think. Click here to learn more about his submission.
A Rutgers researcher and RuCCS Executive Council Faculty, Jenny Wang, studies the benefits of teaching children through videos
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Jinjing Jenny Wang, is a assistant professor of cognitive psychology in the School of Arts and Sciences at Rutgers University. When Jinjing Jenny Wang embarked on a two-year study to determine whether infants experience any cognitive benefits from watching someone count out loud on screen instead of in person, she had already seen what affect such a video had on her own daughter at 10 months old. In addition, a recent study by Wang of 81 babies between 14 and 19 months old published in Developmental Psychology found the same outcome. To learn more about this study, click here.
Kristen Syrett, a professor in the Department of Linguistics and the Rutgers Center for Cognitive Science has joined the SAS Office for Undergraduate Education as an Associate Dean
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Kristen joined Rutgers in 2011, as a professor in the Department of Linguistics and the Rutgers Center for Cognitive Science. An expert in the areas of language acquisition and psycholinguistics, Kristen is the director of the Rutgers Laboratory for Developmental Language Studies, where she and her students' study how humans acquire the meaning of words. She is a strong supporter of undergraduate research and a devoted mentor to her students. Kristen received her Ph.D. from Northwestern University in linguistics with a specialization in cognitive science. She received a Rutgers University Presidential Fellowship for Teaching Excellence in 2017. Kristen has held leadership positions both at Rutgers and in her field, including as undergraduate program director in the linguistics department and as co-director of the SAS-wide Language and Social Justice Initiative. Kristen has been on the front lines in the efforts to promote inclusive language and has been frequently quoted in the news, from Forbes to NPR. Please join us in thanking them for taking on these duties and responsibilities at this crucial time.
