nicholas@cogsci.ed.ac.uk (Nicholas Chater) (04/18/91)
The Joint Councils Cognitive Science/HCI Initiative have awarded a Research Studentship at the Department of Psychology, University of Edinburgh. There are two topic areas in which applications will primarily considered: perceptual/motor control, supervised by Dr John Wann; and networks which learn to respond to structure in time-varying signals, supervised by Dr Nick Chater and Dr David Willshaw. This posting is to advertise this second option. The project The student would be involved with ongoing work at Edinburgh in developing neural network algorithms which learn the structure of time-varying signals. Recent work has focussed on developing ``predictive recoding'' algorithms which allow recodings of input to be learnt which reveal the underlying structure of a sequence. The application of such methods to existing corpora of real linguistic material to extract phonological and higher level regularities may also form part of the research project. Of course, this is all inevitably provisional, and a prospective student would be encouraged to provide their own input and ideas. Edinburgh has a very large population of neural network researchers, a post-graduate lecture course on neural networks run by Dr Willshaw, and a weekly interdisciplinary ``Connectionist Workshop''. Candidates should possess or be about to obtain a relevant degree. Candidates need not have direct experience of neural networks or computing, although this is an advantage, but must be keen to develop the required skills and work in an interdisciplinary context. If you have any queries about the project, contact: Nick Chater University of Edinburgh Department of Psychology 7, George Square Edinburgh EH8 9JZ 031 650 3432 (direct) e-mail: nicholas@cogsci.ed.ac.uk For an application form and more information on post-graduate study in Edinburgh, contact: Dr Morag Donaldson Post-Graduate Admissions University of Edinburgh Department of Psychology 7, George Square Edinburgh EH8 9JZ There is no fixed closing date, but competition for Cognitive Science/HCI studentships is usually quite strong, so early application is advised, if possible.