Mark Blair is a cognitive scientist who studies the core of human nature: how we make sense out of our world. The world is infinitely complex and divisible, and Blair studies how we simplify it and form conceptual chunks in our minds that are meaningful to us. He studies how people’s “first impressions” of the world affect how they form new knowledge, learn new concepts, and make new memories. There are, of course, tremendous individual differences in how people do this, but Blair and his colleagues have discovered generalities that add to many scientific theories of the human mind. Where there are general ‘laws of thought’, Blair tries to model them on a computer to simulate exactly which parameters account for all the different ways people understand the world. He considers a scientific mentor and runs SFU’s first Cognitive Science Lab, where many local students and scholars from around the world collaborate in research. [visit website]

 

 

 

 

When there is a pattern emerging from data in molecular biology, Veronica Dahl wants to know about it. The computing scientist at SFU uses AI and computational theories of language to understand data about human genetic makeup.  Dahl studies how to link up certain patterns and find relevant connections.  “The amount of information from molecular biology is growing by the hour,” she says.  “It is a huge data processing problem.” Her work begins by trying to find formulations/descriptions of languages which are executable efficiently on computers.  Her textbook Logic Grammars began to be used in human genome labs around the world, because the genetic code is a sort of language - it is structured and formalizable.  Classical AI and modern computational linguistics allow her and her colleagues to simplify the copious amounts of data and find useful descriptions - a sort of “information discovery”.  Her interest in this area began in a project with Agriculture Canada where she helped plant pathologists automate a classification scheme for diseased plants.  She continues to work on information discovery from data published in molecular biology journals and was recently awarded research money and the title “Chair of Excellence” from the European Commission to continue to do research in molecular biology, AI, language and logic. [visit website]

 

 

 

 

 

Steve DiPaola directs iVizLab, a research lab that strives to make computational systems bend more to the human experience by incorporating biological, cognitive and behavior knowledge models. Much of the labs work is creating computation models of expression, emotion, behavior and creativity. He is most known for his AI based computational creativity (darwinsgaze.com) and 3D facial expression systems. He came to SFU from Stanford Univ. and before that NYIT Computer Graphics Lab, an early pioneering lab in high-end graphics. He has held leadership positions at Electronic Arts, Saatchi Innovation and consulted for HP, and the Institute for the Future. His computer based art has been exhibited internationally including NYC’s AIR and Tibor de Nagy galleries, Whitney Museum, MIT Museum, Cambridge Univ’s Kings Art Centre and the Smithsonian. His science work has been published in over 50 peer reviewed publications and showcased in the journal Nature. [visit website]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bob Hadley is a computing scientist who studies models of brain function. He advocates a hybrid approach between neural-network modelling and classical models of cognition, one that achieves greater specificity than old-fashioned A.I.   He believes that substantial progress can be made modelling human cognition with a functional modularity where the modules communicate and interact in pathways that more closely resemble traditional computer architecture. [visit website]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Phil Hanson is a philosopher whose main research interests fall within the areas of analytic epistemology, metaphysics, and philosophy of mind. Some philosophers of mind have hoped to reconcile a pretheoretic conception of our mental lives - subjective consciousness in particular - with a robustly scientific outlook, by explaining our mental lives as 'emergent' from our physical natures.  Hanson used to be numbered among these, but has recently become skeptical.  He now focuses on particular understandings of emergence and whether they conflict with a robustly scientific outlook or else lack the wherewithal to help explain the nature of the mental. [visit website]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nancy Hedberg studies language as essentially a mental phenomenon, and thus sees it as a window into the inner workings of the human mind.  She studies functional syntax within the popular structural theory of language inspired by Noam Chomsky in the 1950s.  Specifically, Hedberg is concerned with aspects of human language that bear meaning – the meaning of certain sentence structures, referring expressions, and the vocal inflections we use.  Her ongoing work is in collaboration with Juan Sosa, studying the vocal inflections speakers use when asking questions. What is unique to her and Sosa's research is that they use data from spoken speech, instead of the written sentences, which most syntacticians use. [visit website]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ray Jennings is a cognitive scientist at SFU who studies the biological bases of language. Unlike many philosophers or psychologists, Jennings studies language as it is used in the real world, instead of studying it as an abstract property of the mind.  His approach has yielded a detailed theory of language acquisition, transmission, and change.  Part of his motivation is to show where the ambiguity in modern language comes from - particularly in the language of philosophy.  He points out that philosophers have traditionally been concerned with concepts that are difficult to define - like justice, love, knowledge, and morality - without considering where the semantic difficulty comes from.  “The conventional wisdom in philosophy has been ‘if we talk about something long enough, we’ll eventually figure out what it is that we’re talking about.’  That hasn’t worked in any other discipline, so I don’t know why they think it will work in philosophy.”  A tenured professor, Jennings has worked with students in the cognitive science program on research in corpus linguistics and neurobiological modelling. [visit website]

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fred Popowich's research covers all four corners of cognitive science at SFU: computing science, linguistics, psychology, and philosophy. He works on AI systems that can process, reproduce and recognize various aspects of human language.  Such systems draw heavily from themes in linguistics and philosophy, and test current theories of speech perception as they become implemented on computers.  Some of those data structures have been used in advances in artificial intelligence and also have high psychological plausibility - a rich example of the interplay between human and technological research that defines cognitive science.  Popowich's systems have been used in computer translation software, interactive voice response systems, and web Q&A engines. [visit website]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Anoop Sarkar is a computing scientist who specializes in machine learning, artificial intelligence, and language processing. He studies computational restrictions on how humans produce and understand language, and looks for ways to implement them on computers.  For example, certain descriptions of syntax are easily computable but do not match the way native speakers produce language.  Sarkar studies the syntactic restrictions that do mesh with native speakers' abilities.  So far, his work has been applied in software that does translation and in software that automatically abstracts information from text. He is currently working on algorithms for semi-supervised language learning, where the computer has only partial knowledge of the right and wrong answers. [visit website]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Profile coming soon

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The central theme of Yue Wang's Language and Brain Lab is how higher cognitive abilities - like language, music, and mathematics - integrate and interconnect in the brain. Wang was trained as a phonetician and became interested in how hearing the sounds of language affects the brain.  She currently studies second-language learning in adults, combining neuroimaging methods and behavioural training.  For example, she has trained adults on the tonal sounds of another language and then measured with precision how their increased perceptual ability is implemented in the brain.  Her lab is equipped with a new EEG system and she is affiliated with fMRI research labs in other parts of the world. Members of her lab have gone on to positions in language teaching, speech therapy, and audiology. [visit website]

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wyn Roberts founded the cognitive science program more than 30 years ago with a simple question: What is language?  The question drew interest from the entire Computing Science faculty (which had two professors at the time), as well as philosophers and psychologists who specialized in language.  Together the group made interesting connections between human languages, programming languages, computational theories, and theories of the mind.  The Philosophy-Linguistics-Psychology joint major program began to draw an elite group of students and young faculty members, and when the university sponsored a conference in 1980, the name Cognitive Science stuck.  Dr. Roberts says the program was meant to offer students a unified experience at a subject that is otherwise scattered across academic departments.  Now an emeritus professor in the Department of Linguistics, Dr. Roberts enjoys his retirement and enjoys hearing from former students.  [visit website]