A main area of focus in cognitive science is on fundamental research concerned with understanding the nature of the cognitive processor -- of the architecture of the mind. This research, which involves both theoretical and empirical studies, is concerned with such issues as the processor's resource limits, its memory structures, the forms of representation(s) it uses, the basic operations it makes available, the discipline of sequential and/or parallel execution it permits, restrictions on interprocess communication, decomposition of the processors into modular components, and so on. These are all questions that concern the architecture of the cognitive processor, including its perceptual, memory, reasoning, and motor control capacities.
Affiliated Labs and Research Groups:
- [Dr. Kostas Bekris] PRACSYS Lab
- [Dr. Ahmed Elgammal] The Art and Artificial Intelligence Lab
- [Dr. Jacob Feldman] Visual Cognition Laboratory (VCL)
- [Dr. Stephen Hanson] Rutgers University Brain Imaging Center (RUBIC)
- [Dr. Pernille Hemmer] Priors and Memory (PRIME) Lab
- [Dr. Eileen Kowler] Perceptual Science
- [Dr. Alan Leslie] Cognitive Development Lab (CDL)
- [Dr. John McGann] The McGann Laboratory on the Neurobiology of Sensory Cognition
- [Dr. Konstantinos Michmizos] Computational Brain Lab (COMBRA)
- [Dr. Thomas Papathomas] Lab of Vision Research
- [Dr. Vladimir Pavlovic] Sequence Analysis and Modeling Lab (SEQAMLAB)
- [Dr. Susana Schellenberg] Mind Research Group
- [Dr. Manish Singh] Perceptual Science
- [Dr. Stephen Stich] Research Group on Evolution and Higher Cognition
- [Dr. Matthew Stone] The VILLAGE (Vision, Interaction, Language, Logic and Graphics Environment Lab)
- [Dr. Elizabeth Torres] Sensory Motor Integration Lab (SMIL)
Meet Our Core Faculty:
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Thomas Papathomas
Visual perception of motion, stereo (depth), and texture, and the development of neurophysiologically plausible computational models.
Email: papathom@ruccs.rutgers.edu
Info Page | Personal Website | Laboratory of Vision Research (LVR) Website
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Kostas Bekris
Motion and task planning for autonomous robots; Integration of perception and planning for manipulating and interacting with the physical world; Coordination of multiple physical agents, including human-robot interaction.
Email: kostas.bekris@cs.rutgers.edu
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Ahmed Elgammal
Computer Vision and Machine Learning; statistical models for learning visual manifolds of objects; computational models for recognition of articulated objects; computational art history.
Email: elgammal@cs.rutgers.edu
Info Page | Personal Website | The Art and Artificial Intelligence Lab Website
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Konstantinos Michmizos
Basic Research: Computational Modeling of Sensorimotor Behavior, Psychophysics, Functional Neuroimaging
Applied research: Rehabilitation Games for children with disabilities, Robotic Neurorehabilitation
Email: konstantinos.michmizos@cs.rutgers.edu
Info Page | Personal Website | Computational Brain Lab (COMBRA) Website
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Vladimir Pavlovic
Vladimir's research interests include Bayesian system modeling, time-series analysis, and statistical computer vision. More recently, his research has focused on modeling of human emotions and affect, as well as design of fast, robust, face tracking and identification systems. He is also interested in modeling and analysis of human crowd behavior from the perspective of distributed sensing and decision making systems.
Email: vladimir@cs.rutgers.edu
Info Page | Sequence Analysis and Modeling Lab (SEQAMLAB) Website
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Matthew Stone
Reasoning systems for natural language generation and human-computer interaction; formal models of plans, context and mutual knowledge, and linguistic meaning and interpretation.
Email: mdstone@rutgers.edu
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Bruce Tesar
Computational models of language learning, phonology, Optimality Theory, the role of linguistics within cognitive science.
Email: tesar@rutgers.edu
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Ernest Lepore
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Brian McLaughlin
Faculty Director
The nature of cognitive architecture, including the connectionism/classicism debate; psychosemantics and the theory of meaning for mental representations.
Email: brianmc@philosophy.rutgers.edu
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Paul Pietroski
What are meanings? How are they related to concepts, grammatical structure, logical structure, and truth?
Email: paul.pietroski@rutgers.edu
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Susana Schellenberg
Perceptual content and mental content more generally, attention, perceptual evidence, the relationship between the phenomenological and epistemological role of perceptual experience, the situation-dependency of perceptual experience, imagination, mental capacities.
Email: susanna.schellenberg@rutgers.edu
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Stephen Stich
Nature and viability of commonsense (or "folk") psychology, moral cognition & moral reasoning and rationality.
Email: sstich@ruccs.rutgers.edu
Info Page | Personal Website | Research Group on Evolution and Higher Cognition (RGEHC) Website
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Jacob Feldman
Formal, computational and empirical studies of categorization, shape representation, grouping and perceptual inference in visual perception.
Email: jacob@ruccs.rutgers.edu
Info Page | Personal Website | Visual Cognition Lab (VCL) Website
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Pernille Hemmer
The influence of prior knowledge on memory and decision making in naturalistic environments.
Email: pernille.hemmer@rutgers.edu
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Eileen Kowler
Study of the sensory cues, spatial representations and cognitive factors that guide patterns of smooth and saccadic eye.
Email: kowler@psych.rutgers.edu
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Alan Leslie
Conceptual development and the representation of the physical world, of Agency, and of "theory of mind" in infants and preschoolers; also their impairment in autism.
Email: aleslie@ruccs.rutgers.edu
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John P. McGann
Research in my laboratory employs neurophsyiological, behavioral, and theoretical methods to explore how humans and rodent models learn information about the world and apply this knowledge to the neural processing of incoming sensory stimuli. We are also interested in how dysfunction in these processes could manifest in mental and neurological disorders.
Email: john.mcgann@rutgers.edu
Info Page | The McGann Laboratory on the Neurobiology of Sensory Cognition Website
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Melchi Michel
Study of visual search and saccadic eye movements, short-term visual memory, perceptual learning and cue integration. Formal computational and ideal observer modeling of visual tasks and of population coding in visual cortex
Email: melchi.michel@rutgers.edu
Info Page | Computational Vision & Psychophysics Lab Website
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Manish Singh
Formal and empirical study of visual object and surface representations. Part-based description of object shape; Computation of surface structure under partial occlusion and transparency; Visual attention.
Email: manish@ruccs.rutgers.edu
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Elizabeth Torres
My interest lies in the study of voluntary actions in general and the emergence of symbolic intelligence from them. In particular, I have been studying natural voluntary arm movements in the context of reaching for and grasping an object, obstacle avoidance, the acquisition and retrieval of a motor program, and more recently on the performance of a parietal patient and of patients with Parkinson's disease. I am also doing research on autism.
Email: ebtorres@psych.rutgers.edu
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Stephen Jose Hanson
Research focuses on learning, categorization, connectionist models, neural networks, cognitive, mathematical and computational modeling.
Email: jose@rubic.rutgers.edu
Info Page | Personal Website | Rutgers University Brain Imaging Center (RUBIC) Website
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Michael Lewis
Emotional development and the role of cognition. Cognition, attribution and psychopathology. Face-voice integration in ASD.
Email: lewis@rwjms.rutgers.edu
