Assignment 2

Explore the website of the Institute of Congitive Science (ICS)
at: http://ics.colorado.edu/

articulate one question for the guest lecturer about ICS at CU Boulder or about Cognitive Science as a Research Discipline in General

insert your answer below as follows:

your name — followed by your question

Dola Saha - Can you discuss current research issues in Cognitive Science?

Mohammad Al-Mutawa - Could you mention some of the main achievements of ICS?

Nwanua Elumeze - what have been some of the challenges, from the administrative point of view, of recruiting and keeping ICS fellows, whose primary responsibilities as faculty lie in "traditional" departments? This tends to be a serious challenge for inter-disciplinary programs, so what is unique about the ICS that ameliorates this issue?

Kyuhan Koh - I wonder what the best way is to train engineers or engineering major students not to
think like an engineer but a cognitive scientist. I mean how the Institute of Cognitive
Science discipline engineers as cognitive scientists. click here for expanded version of the question

Michael Otte - Given your experience working in an interdisciplinary field, do you find that most of your colleagues tend to have skill sets that bridge the gap between the different composite fields, or that this bridge is more often created through collaboration between two or more individuals–each having skills defined by their own unique area of expertise?

Paul Marshall - What are some of the difficulties you encounter when trying to communicate and collaborate across such a wide variety of fields? For example, how might a computer scientist and philosopher "speak the same language" and be able to effectively collaborate on cognitive science issues?

Jeffrey LaMarche - Having different points of view and multiple resources are benefits I can see from working in such a large interdisciplinary field, but what other benefits have been discovered and were any of them surprising?

David Gnabasik - Why do you think the words "imagine" or "imagination" do not exist in the entire ICS web site, particularly in the "Technical Reports" pages? Is cognitive science able to define the term "scientific imagination"?

Saroch Panichsakul - Artificial Intelligence and cognitive science have gained popularity in academic and research community for years. In your opinion, when will this type of research have a breakthrough and substantially benefit a real world application? How special ICS at CU-Boulder is in order to significantly impact the research community?

Lee Becker - What do the majority of people working in cognitive science believe about the prospect of being able to truly unravel the underlying mechanisms of the mind? Is this just a pipe dream or is it achievable?

Shumin Wu - What are the computing challenges faced by the cognitive science field (how does a "traditional" computer scientist contribute in the field)? How do "traditional" AI research (that may not mirror a biological cognitive model) interact with research directions in cognitive science?

Yifei Jiang - What's the most exciting achievement in the cognitive science so far? And how many approaches are there to the study of cognitive science? Which one is the most achievable?

John Michalakes - What are the fundamental scientific questions in cognitive science and how does the study of natural cognition complement or constrain synthetic approaches to these questions?

Rhonda Hoenigman - The ICS website mentions that the institute is known for theory development and applying those theories to real-world applications. What are a few recent theories that have been developed and how have they been applied to real-world applications?

Jinho Choi - The goals for 'Machine Learning' in Computer Science and 'Learning' in general are supposedly the same, but means to approach are so much different. I believe that studies in the interdisciplinary areas (besides Computer Science) can help to develop algorithms for machine learnings as well. If my belief is correct, could you show us some examples?

Yuli Liang - In my impression, a computerized model based on the Cognitive Psychology is trying to mimic or find the rule of human mind. Since the thought is from the human brain, is there any example that the cognitive model solved a realistic biological/medical problem for human brain?

Jane Meyers - Aside from attending the semi-monthly ICS colloquium lectures, what other activities could we participate in that would expose us to the interdisciplinary work going on between cognitive and computer science?

Keith Maull - What are the top 3 challenges in advancing effective utilization information? With ubiquitous real-time information access (ambient findability) an emerging reality, what new challenges will cognitive science research face in making human decision making and knowledge building more effective?

Joel Pfeiffer - What do you think will be the biggest breakthrough in the next 15-20 years in cognitive science?

Ashok Basawapatna- Can you give us in-depth examples of ICS research projects so we can get a better idea of the extent Cognitive Science must intersect with a given discipline in order to be applicable for a joint Ph.D. under ICS? Also if you have time talk about the required 30 hours of coursework and the extent that may or may not lengthen the time it would take to obtain a Ph.D.

Soumya Ghosh - Working in computer vision i have seen numerous examples of computer scientists trying out biologically inspired models for image segmentation, object recognition etc. I was wondering if there are any specific instances where the reverse is true. That is, have there been specific cases where seemingly artificial models suggested by the Machine Learning/vision community, have been adapted by cognitive science researchers to explain observed phenomena.

Dan Knights - In his non-technical book, "On Intelligence," Jeff Hawkins claims to present the most complete and holistic functional model of the brain to date. It is an interesting read, and definitely thought-provoking, but is it actually innovative?

Holger Dick - It seemed to me that most CS professors are specialized in HCI and other human-focused activities rather than the "computer side" of AI or other more technical, "traditional" CS topics. As the ICS should bring together people with different point of views, shouldn't more people with seemingly unrelated interest get involved to prevent "group think", i.e. the ICS people feel that they are interdisciplinary but work in fact just in a new, intelectually not less restricted discipline?

Caleb Phillips - To what extent are cognitive scientists interested in dealing with "abnormal" cognitive issues, for instance, designing systems for people with cognitive impairments and learning disabilities. Is this seen as a driving motivation in the field, or just an interesting aside.

Last modified 2 October 2007 at 1:29 pm by gerhard