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GRADUATE TRAINING IN THE
DEPARTMENT OF COGNITIVE AND NEURAL SYSTEMS (CNS)
AT BOSTON UNIVERSITY
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The Boston University Department of Cognitive and Neural Systems offers
comprehensive graduate training in the neural and computational
principles, mechanisms, and architectures that underlie human and animal
behavior, and the application of neural network architectures to the
solution of technological problems.
The brochure may also be viewed on line at:
http://www.cns.bu.edu/brochure/
and application forms at:
http://www.bu.edu/cas/graduate/application.
<http://www.bu.edu/cas/graduate/application.html> html
<http://www.bu.edu/cas/graduate/application.html> Applications for Fall
2002 admission and financial aid are now being accepted for both the MA
and PhD degree programs.
To obtain a brochure describing the CNS Program and a set of application
materials, write, telephone, or fax:
DEPARTMENT OF COGNITIVE AND NEURAL SYSTEMS
Boston University
677 Beacon Street
Boston, MA 02215
617/353-9481 (phone)
617/353-7755 (fax)
or send via email your full name and mailing address to the attention of
Mr. Robin Amos at:
Applications for admission and financial aid should be received by the
Graduate School Admissions Office no later than January 15. Late
applications will be considered until May 1; after that date
applications will be considered only as special cases.
Applicants are required to submit undergraduate (and, if applicable,
graduate) transcripts, three letters of recommendation, and Graduate
Record Examination (GRE) scores. The Advanced Test should be in the
candidate's area of departmental specialization. GRE scores may be
waived for MA candidates and, in exceptional cases, for PhD candidates,
but absence of these scores will decrease an applicant's chances for
admission and financial aid.
Non-degree students may also enroll in CNS courses on a part-time basis.
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Description of the CNS Department:
The Department of Cognitive and Neural Systems (CNS) provides advanced
training and research experience for graduate students and qualified
undergraduates interested in the neural and computational principles,
mechanisms, and architectures that underlie human and animal behavior,
and the application of neural network architectures to the solution of
technological problems. The department's training and research focus on
two broad questions. The first question is: How does the brain control
behavior? This is a modern form of the Mind/Body Problem. The second
question is: How can technology emulate biological intelligence? This
question needs to be answered to develop intelligent technologies that
are well suited to human societies. These goals are symbiotic because
brains are unparalleled in their ability to intelligently adapt on their
own to complex and novel environments. Models of how the brain
accomplishes this are developed through systematic empirical,
mathematical, and computational analysis in the department. Autonomous
adaptation to a changing world is also needed to solve many of the
outstanding problems in technology, and the biological models have
inspired qualitatively new designs for applications. During the past
decade, CNS has led the way in developing biological models that can
quantitatively simulate the dynamics of identified brain cells in
identified neural circuits, and the behaviors that they control. This
new level of understanding is leading to comparable advances in
intelligent technology.
CNS is a graduate department that is devoted to the interdisciplinary
training of graduate students. The department awards MA, PhD, and BA/MA
degrees. Its students are trained in a broad range of areas concerning
computational neuroscience, cognitive science, and neuromorphic systems.
The biological training includes study of the brain mechanisms of vision
and visual object recognition; audition, speech, and language
understanding; recognition learning, categorization, and long-term
memory; cognitive information processing; self-organization and
development, navigation, planning, and spatial orientation; cooperative
and competitive network dynamics and short-term memory; reinforcement
and motivation; attention; adaptive sensory-motor planning, control, and
robotics; biological rhythms; consciousness; mental disorders; and the
mathematical and computational methods needed to support advanced
modeling research and applications. Technological training includes
methods and applications in image processing, multiple types of signal
processing, adaptive pattern recognition and prediction, information
fusion, and intelligent control and robotics.
The foundation of this broad training is the unique interdisciplinary
curriculum of seventeen interdisciplinary graduate courses that have
been developed at CNS. Each of these courses integrates the
psychological, neurobiological, mathematical, and computational
information needed to theoretically investigate fundamental issues
concerning mind and brain processes and the applications of artificial
neural networks and hybrid systems to technology. A student's curriculum
is tailored to his or her career goals with an academic and a research
adviser. In addition to taking interdisciplinary courses within CNS,
students develop important disciplinary expertise by also taking courses
in departments such as biology, computer science, engineering,
mathematics, and psychology. In addition to these formal courses,
students work individually with one or more research advisors to learn
how to do advanced interdisciplinary research in their chosen research
areas. As a result of this breadth and depth of training, CNS students
have succeeded in finding excellent jobs in both academic and
technological areas after graduation.
The CNS Department interacts with colleagues in several Boston
University research centers or groups, and with Boston-area scientists
collaborating with these centers. The units most closely linked to the
department are the Center for Adaptive Systems and the CNS Technology
Laboratory. Students interested in neural network hardware can work with
researchers in CNS and at the College of Engineering. Other research
resources include the campus-wide Program in Neuroscience, which
includes distinguished research groups in cognitive neuroscience,
neurophysiology, neuroanatomy, neuropharmacology, and neural modeling
across the Charles River Campus and the Medical School; in sensory
robotics, biomedical engineering, computer and systems engineering, and
neuromuscular research within the College of Engineering; in dynamical
systems within the Mathematics Department; in theoretical computer
science within the Computer Science Department ; and in biophysics and
computational physics within the Physics Department. Key colleagues in
these units hold joint appointments in CNS in order to expedite training
and research interactions with CNS core faculty and students.
In addition to its basic research and training program, the department
organizes an active colloquium series, various research and seminar
series, and international conferences and symposia, to bring
distinguished scientists from experimental, theoretical, and
technological disciplines to the department.
The department is housed in its own four-story building, which includes
ample space for faculty and student offices and laboratories
(computational neuroscience, visual psychophysics, psychoacoustics,
speech and language, sensory-motor control, neurobotics, computer
vision), as well as an auditorium, classroom, seminar rooms, a library,
and a faculty-student lounge. The department has a powerful computer
network for carrying out large-scale simulations of behavioral and brain
models and applications.
Below are listed departmental faculty, courses and labs.
FACULTY AND STAFF OF THE DEPARTMENT OF COGNITIVE AND NEURAL SYSTEMS
AND CENTER FOR ADAPTIVE SYSTEMS
Jelle Atema
Professor of Biology
Director, Boston University Marine Program (BUMP)
PhD, University of Michigan
Sensory physiology and behavior
Helen Barbas
Professor, Department of Health Sciences, Sargent College
PhD, Physiology/Neurophysiology, McGill University
Organization of the prefrontal cortex, evolution of the neocortex
Jacob Beck
Research Professor of Cognitive and Neural Systems
PhD, Psychology, Cornell University
Visual perception, psychophysics, computational models of vision
Neil Bomberger
Research Associate, CNS Technology Laboratory, Department of Cognitive
and Neural Systems
PhD, Cognitive and Neural Systems, Boston University
Daniel H. Bullock
Associate Professor of Cognitive and Neural Systems, and Psychology
PhD, Experimental Psychology, Stanford University
Sensory-motor performance and learning, voluntary control of action,
serial order and timing, cognitive development
Val Bykoski
Research Associate, CNS Technology Laboratory, Department of Cognitive
and Neural Systems
PhD, Applied Mathematics and Physics, The Russian Academy, Moscow, Russia
Gail A. Carpenter
Professor of Cognitive and Neural Systems and Mathematics
Director of Graduate Studies, Department of Cognitive and Neural Systems
PhD, Mathematics, University of Wisconsin, Madison
Learning and memory, synaptic processes, pattern recognition, remote
sensing, medical database analysis, machine learning, differential equations
Michael A. Cohen
Associate Professor of Cognitive and Neural Systems and Computer Science
PhD, Psychology, Harvard University
Speech and language processing, measurement theory, neural modeling,
dynamical systems, cardiovascular oscillations physiology and time series
H. Steven Colburn
Professor of Biomedical Engineering
PhD, Electrical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Audition, binaural interaction, auditory virtual environments, signal
processing models of hearing
Howard Eichenbaum
Professor of Psychology
PhD, Psychology, University of Michigan
Neurophysiological studies of how the hippocampal system mediates
declarative memory
William D. Eldred III
Professor of Biology
PhD, University of Colorado, Health Science Center
Visual neuralbiology
David Fay
Research Associate, Department of Cognitive and Neural Systems
Assistant Director, CNS Technology Laboratory
MA, Cognitive and Neural Systems, Boston University
John C. Fiala
Research Assistant Professor of Biology
PhD, Cognitive and Neural Systems, Boston University
Synaptic plasticity, dendrite anatomy and pathology, motor learning,
robotics, neuroinformatics
Jean Berko Gleason
Professor of Psychology
PhD, Harvard University
Psycholinguistics
Sucharita Gopal
Associate Professor of Geography
PhD, University of California at Santa Barbara
Neural networks, computational modeling of behavior, geographical
information systems, fuzzy sets, and
spatial cognition
Stephen Grossberg
Wang Professor of Cognitive and Neural Systems
Professor of Mathematics, Psychology, and Biomedical Engineering
Chairman, Department of Cognitive and Neural Systems
Director, Center for Adaptive Systems
PhD, Mathematics, Rockefeller University
Vision, audition, language, learning and memory, reward and motivation,
cognition, development,
sensory-motor control, mental disorders, applications
Frank Guenther
Associate Professor of Cognitive and Neural Systems
PhD, Cognitive and Neural Systems, Boston University
MSE, Electrical Engineering, Princeton University
Speech production, speech perception, biological sensory-motor control
and functional brain imaging
Catherine L. Harris
Assistant Professor of Psychology
PhD, Cognitive Science and Psychology, University of California at San Diego
Visual word recognition, psycholinguistics, cognitive semantics, second
language acquisition,
computational models of cognition
Michael E. Hasselmo
Associate Professor of Psychology
Director of Graduate Studies, Psychology Department
PhD, Experimental Psychology, Oxford University
Computational modeling and experimental testing of neuromodulatory
mechanisms involved in encoding,
retrieval and consolidation
Allyn Hubbard
Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering
PhD, Electrical Engineering, University of Wisconsin
Peripheral auditory system (experimental and modeling), chip design
spanning the range from
straightforward digital applications to exotic sub-threshold analog
circuits that emulate the
functionality of the visual and auditory periphery, BCS/FCS, the
mammalian cochlea in silicon and MEMS,
and drug discovery on silicon
Richard Ivey
Research Associate, CNS Technology Laboratory, Department of Cognitive
and Neural Systems
MA, Cognitive and Neural Systems, Boston University
Thomas G. Kincaid
Professor of Electrical, Computer and Systems Engineering, College of
Engineering
PhD, Electrical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Signal and image processing, neural networks, non-destructive testing
Mark Kon
Professor of Mathematics
PhD, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Neural network theory, complexity theory, wavelet theory, mathematical
physics
Nancy Kopell
Professor of Mathematics
PhD, Mathematics, University of California at Berkeley
Dynamics of networks of neurons
Jacqueline A. Liederman
Associate Professor of Psychology
PhD, Psychology, University of Rochester
Dynamics of interhemispheric cooperation; prenatal correlates of
neurodevelopmental disorders
Ennio Mingolla
Professor of Cognitive and Neural Systems and Psychology
PhD, Psychology, University of Connecticut
Visual perception, mathematical modeling of visual processes
Joseph Perkell
Adjunct Professor of Cognitive and Neural Systems
Senior Research Scientist, Research Lab of Electronics and Department of
Brain and Cognitive Sciences,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
PhD, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Motor control of speech production
Adam Reeves
Adjunct Professor of Cognitive and Neural Systems
Professor of Psychology, Northeastern University
PhD, Psychology, City University of New York
Psychophysics, cognitive psychology, vision
Michele Rucci
Assistant Professor of Cognitive and Neural Systems
PhD, Scuola Superiore S.-Anna, Pisa, Italy
Vision, sensory-motor control and learning, and computational neuroscience
Elliot Saltzman
Associate Professor of Physical Therapy, Sargent College
Research Scientist, Haskins Laboratories, New Haven, CT
Assistant Professor in Residence, Department of Psychology and Center
for the
Ecological Study of Perception and Action, University of Connecticut,
Storrs, CT
PhD, Developmental Psychology, University of Minnesota
Modeling and experimental studies of human sensorimotor control and
coordination of the limbs and speech
articulators, focusing on issues of timing in skilled activities
Robert Savoy
Adjunct Associate Professor of Cognitive and Neural Systems
Scientist, Rowland Institute for Science
Experimental Psychologist, Massachusetts General Hospital
PhD, Experimental Psychology, Harvard University
Computational neuroscience; visual psychophysics of color, form, and
motion perception
Teaching about functional MRI and other brain mapping methods
Eric Schwartz
Professor of Cognitive and Neural Systems; Electrical, Computer and
Systems Engineering; and Anatomy and Neurobiology
PhD, High Energy Physics, Columbia University
Computational neuroscience, machine vision, neuroanatomy, neural modeling
Robert Sekuler
Adjunct Professor of Cognitive and Neural Systems
Research Professor of Biomedical Engineering, College of Engineering,
BioMolecular Engineering Research Center
Frances and Louis H. Salvage Professor of Psychology, Brandeis University
Consultant in neurosurgery, Boston Children's Hospital
PhD, Psychology, Brown University
Visual motion, brain imaging, relation of visual perception, memory, and
movement
Barbara Shinn-Cunningham
Assistant Professor of Cognitive and Neural Systems and Biomedical
Engineering
PhD, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Massachusetts
Institute of Technology
Psychoacoustics, audition, auditory localization, binaural hearing,
sensorimotor adaptation,
mathematical models of human performance
David Somers
Assistant Professor of Psychology
PhD, Cognitive and Neural Systems, Boston University
Functional MRI, psychophysical, and computational investigations of
visual perception and attention
Chantal E. Stern
Assistant Professor of Psychology and Program in Neuroscience, Boston
University
Assistant in Neuroscience, MGH-NMR Center and Harvard Medical School
PhD, Experimental Psychology, Oxford University
Functional neuroimaging studies (fMRI and MEG) of learning and memory
Malvin C. Teich
Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Biomedical
Engineering, and Physics
PhD, Cornell University
Quantum optics and imaging, photonics, wavelets and fractal stochastic
processes, biological signal
processing and information transmission
Lucia Vaina
Professor of Biomedical Engineering
Research Professor of Neurology, School of Medicine
PhD, Sorbonne (France); Dres Science, National Politechnique Institute,
Toulouse (France)
Computational visual neuroscience, biological and computational
learning, functional and structural
neuroimaging
Takeo Watanabe
Associate Professor of Psychology
PhD, Behavioral Sciences, University of Tokyo
Perception of objects and motion and effects of attention on perception
using psychophysics and brain
imaging (f-MRI)
Allen Waxman
Research Professor of Cognitive and Neural Systems
Director, CNS Technology Laboratory
Senior Staff Scientist, MIT Lincoln Laboratory
PhD, Astrophysics, University of Chicago
Visual system modeling, multisensor fusion, image mining, parallel
computing, and advanced visualization
Jeremy Wolfe
Adjunct Associate Professor of Cognitive and Neural Systems
Associate Professor of Ophthalmology, Harvard Medical School
Psychophysicist, Brigham & Women's Hospital, Surgery Department
Director of Psychophysical Studies, Center for Clinical Cataract Research
PhD, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Visual attention, pre-attentive and attentive object representation
Curtis Woodcock
Professor of Geography
Chairman, Department of Geography
Director, Geographic Applications, Center for Remote Sensing
PhD, University of California, Santa Barbara
Biophysical remote sensing, particularly of forests and natural
vegetation, canopy reflectance models
and their inversion, spatial modeling, and change detection;
biogeography; spatial analysis; geographic
information systems; digital image processing
CNS DEPARTMENT COURSE OFFERINGS
CAS CN500 Computational Methods in Cognitive and Neural Systems
CAS CN510 Principles and Methods of Cognitive and Neural Modeling I
CAS CN520 Principles and Methods of Cognitive and Neural Modeling II
CAS CN530 Neural and Computational Models of Vision
CAS CN540 Neural and Computational Models of Adaptive Movement Planning
and Control
CAS CN550 Neural and Computational Models of Recognition, Memory and
Attention
CAS CN560 Neural and Computational Models of Speech Perception and
Production
CAS CN570 Neural and Computational Models of Conditioning, Reinforcement,
Motivation and Rhythm
CAS CN580 Introduction to Computational Neuroscience
GRS CN700 Computational and Mathematical Methods in Neural Modeling
GRS CN720 Neural and Computational Models of Planning and Temporal
Structure
in Behavior
GRS CN730 Models of Visual Perception
GRS CN740 Topics in Sensory-Motor Control
GRS CN760 Topics in Speech Perception and Recognition
GRS CN780 Topics in Computational Neuroscience
GRS CN810 Topics in Cognitive and Neural Systems: Visual Event Perception
GRS CN811 Topics in Cognitive and Neural Systems: Visual Perception
GRS CN911,912
Research in Neural Networks for Adaptive Pattern Recognition
GRS CN915,916
Research in Neural Networks for Vision and Image Processing
GRS CN921,922
Research in Neural Networks for Speech and Language Processing
GRS CN925,926
Research in Neural Networks for Adaptive Sensory-Motor Planning
and Control
GRS CN931,932
Research in Neural Networks for Conditioning and Reinforcement Learning
GRS CN935,936
Research in Neural Networks for Cognitive Information Processing
GRS CN941,942
Research in Nonlinear Dynamics of Neural Networks
GRS CN945,946
Research in Technological Applications of Neural Networks
GRS CN951,952
Research in Hardware Implementations of Neural Networks
CNS students also take a wide variety of courses in related departments.
In addition, students participate in a weekly colloquium series, an
informal lecture series, and student-run special interest groups, and
attend lectures and meetings throughout the Boston area; and advanced
students work in small research groups.
LABORATORY AND COMPUTER FACILITIES
The department is funded by fellowships, grants, and contracts from
federal agencies and private foundations that support research in life
sciences, mathematics, artificial intelligence, and engineering.
Facilities include laboratories for experimental research and
computational modeling in visual perception; audition, speech and
language processing; and sensory-motor control and robotics. Data
analysis and numerical simulations are carried out on a state-of-the-art
computer network comprised of Sun workstations, Silicon Graphics
workstations, Macintoshes, and PCs. A PC farm running Linux operating
systems is available as a distributed computational environment. All
students have access to X-terminals or UNIX workstation consoles, a
selection of color systems and PCs, a network of SGI machines, and
standard modeling and mathematical simulation packages such as
Mathematica, VisSim, Khoros, and Matlab.
The department maintains a core collection of books and journals, and
has access both to the Boston University libraries and to the many other
collections of the Boston Library Consortium.
In addition, several specialized facilities and software are available
for use. These include:
Active Perception Laboratory
The Active Perception Laboratory is dedicated to the investigation of
the interactions between perception and behavior. Research focuses on
the theoretical and computational analyses of the effects of motor
behavior on sensory perception and on the design of psychophysical
experiments with human subjects. The Active Perception Laboratory
includes extensive computational facilities that allow the execution of
large-scale simulations of neural systems. Additional facilities will
soon include instruments for the psychophysical investigation of eye
movements during visual analysis, including an accurate and non-invasive
eye tracker, and robotic systems for the simulation of different types
of behavior.
Computer Vision/Computational Neuroscience Laboratory
The Computer Vision/Computational Neuroscience Laboratory is comprised
of an electronics workshop, including a surface-mount workstation, PCD
fabrication tools, and an Alterra EPLD design system; a light machine
shop; an active vision laboratory including actuators and video
hardware; and systems for computer aided neuroanatomy and application of
computer graphics and image processing to brain sections and MRI images.
The laboratory supports research in the areas of neural modeling,
computational neuroscience, computer vision and robotics. The major
question being address is the nature of representation of the visual
world in the brain, in terms of observable neural architectures such as
topographic mapping and columnar architecture. The application of novel
architectures for image processing for computer vision and robotics is
also a major topic of interest. Recent work in this area has included
the design and patenting of novel actuators for robotic active vision
systems, the design of real-time algorithms for use in mobile robotic
applications, and the design and construction of miniature autonomous
vehicles using space-variant active vision design principles. Recently
one such vehicle has successfully driven itself on the streets of Boston.
Neurobotics Laboratory
The Neurobotics Laboratory utilizes wheeled mobile robots to study
potential applications of neural networks in several areas, including
adaptive dynamics and kinematics, obstacle avoidance, path planning and
navigation, visual object recognition, and conditioning and motivation.
The laboratory currently has three Pioneer robots equipped with sonar
and visual sensors; one B-14 robot with a moveable camera, sonars,
infrared, and bump sensors; and two Khepera miniature robots with
infrared proximity detectors. Other platforms may be investigated in the
future.
Psychoacoustics Laboratory
The Psychoacoustics Laboratory in the Department of Cognitive and Neural
Systems (CNS) is equipped to perform both traditional psychoacoustic
experiments as well as experiments using interactive auditory
virtual-reality stimuli. The laboratory contains approximately eight PCs
(running Windows 98 and/or Linux), used both as workstations for
students and to control laboratory equipment and run experiments. The
other major equipment in the laboratory includes special-purpose signal
processing and sound generating equipment from Tucker-Davis
Technologies, electromagnetic head tracking systems, a two-channel
spectrum analyzer, and other miscellaneous equipment for producing,
measuring, analyzing, and monitoring auditory stimuli. The
Psychoacoustics Laboratory consists of three adjacent rooms in the
basement of 677 Beacon St. (the home of the CNS Department). One room
houses an 8 ft. ´ 8 ft. single-walled sound-treated booth as well as
space for students. The second room is primarily used as student
workspace for developing and debugging experiments. The third space
houses a robotic arm, capable of automatically positioning a small
acoustic speaker anywhere on the surface of a sphere of adjustable
radius, allowing automatic measurement of the signals reaching the ears
of a listener for a sound source from different positions in space,
including the effects of room reverberation.
Sensory-Motor Control Laboratory
The Sensory-Motor Control Laboratory supports experimental and
computational studies of sensory-motor control. A computer controlled
infrared WatSmart system allows measurement of large-scale (e.g.
reaching) movements, and a pressure-sensitive graphics tablet allows
studies of handwriting and other fine-scale movements. A second major
component is a helmet-mounted, video-based, eye-head tracking system
(ISCAN Corp, 1997). The latter's camera samples eye position at 240Hz
and also allows reconstruction of what subjects are attending to as they
freely scan a scene under normal lighting. Thus the system affords a
wide range of visuo-motor studies. The laboratory is connected to the
department's extensive network of Linux and Windows workstations and
Linux computational servers.
Speech and Language Laboratory
The Speech Laboratory includes facilities for analog-to-digital and
digital-to-analog software conversion. Ariel equipment allows reliable
synthesis and playback of speech waveforms. An Entropic
signal-processing package provides facilities for detailed analysis,
filtering, spectral construction, and formant tracking of the speech
waveform. Various large databases, such as TIMIT and TIdigits, are
available for testing algorithms of speech recognition. The laboratory
also contains a network of Windows-based PC computers equipped with
software for the analysis of functional magnetic resonance imaging
(fMRI) data, including region-of-interest (ROI) based analyses involving
software for the parcellation of cortical and subcortical brain regions
in structural MRI images.
Technology Laboratory
The Technology Laboratory fosters the development of neural network
models derived from basic scientific research and facilitates the
transition of the resulting technologies to software and applications.
The Technology Laboratory was established in July 2001, with a five-year
$2,500,000 grant from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research
(AFOSR), "Information Fusion for Image Analysis: Neural Models and
Technology Development." Initial applied research projects are
developing methods for multi-sensor data and information fusion,
utilizing multi-spectral and high-resolution stereo imagery from
satellites, in conjunction with simulated ELINT (emitter locator
intelligence) and GMTI (ground moving target indicator) data and
contextual terrain data. Fusion and data mining methods are being
developed in a geospatial context, building on models of opponent-color
visual processing, boundary contour system (BCS) and texture processing,
Adaptive Resonance Theory (ART) pattern learning and recognition, and
other models of associative learning and prediction. Multi-modality
presentation of fused sensor data and information to human operators is
studied in the context of a Common Operating Picture. A related defense
application is real-time 3D fusion of low-light visible, thermal
infrared, and ladar imagery, for advanced night vision systems
incorporating target learning and search. Other research topics include
multi-pass search by incorporation of feedback in the
classification-to-search pathway for fused image mining, thereby
treating classification decisions as context for further search, and
multi-spectral MRI and multi-modality medical image fusion. Associated
basic research projects are conducted within the joint context of
scientific data and technological constraints. The laboratory effort
also includes collaborative technology transfer to government
laboratories and commercial industry. Under the sponsorship of the
National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA), software for multi-sensor
image fusion and data mining is being incorporated into the commercial
software suite Imagine by ERDAS Corporation. Related efforts aim to
create a Matlab toolbox for interactive neural processing of imagery,
signals, and patterns, and technology transfer into RSI/Kodak's ENVI
software and the geospatial information software ArcGIS from ESRI
Corporation.
The Director of the Technology Laboratory, Professor Allen Waxman, and
the Assistant Director, David Fay, recently joined the CNS Department
after collaborating for twelve years at MIT Lincoln Laboratory. The
laboratory continues to grow rapidly, with three research associates,
one postdoctoral fellow, and four graduate students, as well as faculty
from CNS and the Center for Remote Sensing, currently associated with
application, implementation, and basic and applied research projects.
Dedicated equipment includes six high-end graphics PCs with dual-headed
stereo monitors, two SGI O2 workstations, a Sun UltraSparc 10
workstation, a wall-sized stereo projection display system, a large
Cybermation mobile robot, and CCD video cameras with real-time image
acquisition and processing using Genesis DSP boards from Matrox. The
Technology Laboratory occupies 1000 square feet in the CNS building,
including a "dark room" for night vision research and a well-equipped
conference room.
Visual Psychophysics Laboratory
The Visual Psychophysics Laboratory occupies an 800-square-foot suite,
including three dedicated rooms for data collection, and houses a
variety of computer controlled display platforms, including Macintosh,
Windows and Linux workstations. Ancillary resources for visual
psychophysics include a computer-controlled video camera, stereo viewing
devices, a photometer, and a variety of display-generation,
data-collection, and data-analysis software.
Affiliated Laboratories
Affiliated CAS/CNS faculty members have additional laboratories ranging
from visual and auditory psychophysics and neurophysiology, anatomy, and
neuropsychology to engineering and chip design. These facilities are
used in the context of faculty/student collaborations.
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DEPARTMENT OF COGNITIVE AND NEURAL SYSTEMS
GRADUATE TRAINING ANNOUNCEMENT
Boston University
677 Beacon Street
Boston, MA 02215
Phone: 617/353-9481
Fax: 617/353-7755
Email: inquiries@cns.bu.edu
Web: http://www.cns.bu.edu/
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