Defining Cognitive Science Speaker Series kicks off with Bernhard Riecke
December 2010: Join us on January 19 as the first of our Spring 2011 Defining Cognitive Science speakers, Bernhard Riecke, talks about real and virtual environments, and the complicated issues that arise when trying to equate these two realities. To read Dr. Riecke's talk abstract and details about upcoming Spring 2011 talks, see our speaker series page. A PDF poster with a talk abstract is available here.
New Director of the Cognitive Science Program
September 2010: The Cognitive Science Program is please to welcome Steve DiPaola as the new Program Director. Dr. DiPaola is an artist and scientist interested in cognitive, character and expression based artificial intelligence, interaction and computer graphics. Steve's work exploring Rembrandt's innovative painting techniques -- and their capacity to guide a viewer's eyes through a painting -- was recently featured on the Discovery Channel's Daily Planet. Visit Dr. DiPaola's website to learn more about his art and research at dipaola.org.
The Cognitive Science Program invites Canada Research Chair candidates to Simon Fraser University
March 2009: The Cognitive Science Program has invited four candidates for the Tier One Canada Research Chair in Cognitive Science position at Simon Fraser University to participate in a seminar series to be held in March and April 2009. To read more about the candidates and their talks, visit the CRC Search Colloquium page.
Brain Imaging Technologies and Applications
January 2009: The Cognitive Science Program is pleased to welcome Dr. Urs Ribary for this special event on brain imaging. The event will be held on January 28 at 2:30 in the new Student Central (top floor of MBC). All students are welcome to join. Find out more here.
Canada Research Chair in Cognitive Science
November 2008: The Cognitive Science Program is now hiring for a Canada Research Chair in Cognitive Science. Find out more about Canada Research Chair positions at http://www.chairs.gc.ca. See our Job Opportunities Page for more information and a job description.
COGS Student Association holds next General Meeting Nov 18 @ 6:00pm
November 2008: The Cognitive Science Student Association will be holding their next general meeting on Tuesday November 18 at 6:00 pm in the Highland Pub. Food/drink will be provided. No RSVP necessary!
Cognitive Science Celebrates Latest Alumnus
October 2008: Rahul Bader convocated this semester, achieving a degree in Music and a degree in Cognitive Science. The Cognitive Science Program had a chance to speak to Rahul about his experience at SFU, what caught his interest in Cognitive Science, and how he finds the two fields -- cognition and music -- related. Read Rahul's interview.
COGS Student Association holds next General Meeting Nov 6 @ 2:00pm
November 2008: The Cognitive Science Student Association will be holding their second general meeting on Thursday, Nov 6 at 2:00 in the Cognitive Science Lab, RCB 7406. We strongly encourage new students to come out because many of our current students will be graduating. Come take part! Bring your ideas, create projects, plan (or just attend!) events, meet new students, ask some soon-to-be graduated students about their experience getting a COGS degree, and help support Cognitive Science on campus.
COGS Student Association holds first Fall 2008 General Meeting Sept 30 @ 12:30pm
September 2008: The Cognitive Science Student Association will be holding their first general meeting, which will include elections for the executive, on Tuesday, Sept 30 at 12:30 in the Cognitive Science Lab, RCB 7406. Contact last-year's pres Kim at cogs-pres@sfu.ca for more information if you want to know more about executive positions or what COGS does. The current executive strongly encourages new students to come out because many of the current students will be graduating -- and it would be unfortunate if COGS were left with no more student association! Even if you aren't interested in running for the exec positions, we would love to see some new faces come out.
Faris Chebib Leads COGS 100 Team at Terry Fox Run
September 2008: The Terry Fox foundation helps fund cancer research around the world. Terry Fox's legacy began at Simon Fraser University and continues to this day every year with the Terry Fox run. His legacy has reached many people, including Faris Chebib, a student in the field of cognitive science. Join the COGS 100 class and Faris Chebib as they make the walk/run on September 25, 2008. You can sign up at this page, and join the "Cogs 100" team.
Fall 2008 Speaker Series Begins
September 2008: Defining Cognitive Science, the SFU Cognitive Science Program's bi-weekly speaker series featuring research in cognitive science from SFU faculty and our community colleagues, begins on Wednesday, October 1. Our first speaker will be Steve DiPaola, from the School of Interactive Arts and Technology, with a talk called "Computationally modeling artistic creative processes using cognitive and AI approaches." Our talks are held in room RCB 6152 and feature a half-hour talk followed by a discussion. Refreshments are provided. See our speaker series page for information about upcoming talks.
Courses Available Fall 2008
July 2008: Planning your major, and want to know what you should take in the Fall? See Fall 2008 Course Offerings for information about the fall courses being offered that are included in the COGS minor, major, and honours.
COGS Students Receive NSERC Grants to Fund Research
June 2008: Kim Meier, Calen Walshe, and Ulric Wong are all students working in the Cognitive Science Lab with grants from the National Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada. See what they’re working on.
Open House 2008
May 2008: On Saturday, May 31, the Cognitive Science Program joined hundreds of programs, departments, clubs, volunteers, and performers to make SFU’s 2008 Open House a tremendous success. Thousands of high school students, undergraduates, parents, and children attended this year’s event, which featured an Education Fair, geared toward prospective students, and a Discovery Trail, aimed to expose the community to SFU’s courses, programs, and research. In keeping with the event’s carnival theme, the Cognitive Science Program offered the midway game Brain Toss, while Linguistics showcased their research with a Funhouse, and Philosophy tested attendees with reasoning quizzes. See our image gallery for a recap of the event.
The Cognitive Science Laboratory Visits the University of Washington for NOWCAM 2008
June 2008: five members of the SFU Cognitive Science Lab travelled with lead researcher Dr. Mark Blair to the 2008 Northwest Cognition and Memory conference to present recent findings from the cutting-edge eye-tracking technology used in the lab’s research. Hosted by SFU last year, this year’s meeting took place at the University of Washington in Seattle, WA with keynote speakers Tony Greenwald and Dedre Gentner. Read about their trip here.
New Directions in Cognitive Science 2008 Focuses on Visual Analytics
February 2008: This year's conference/exploratory workshop explores multiple perspectives on the role of dialog in human-computer cognitive systems, with an emphasis on the role of scientific methods in visual analytics, described as "the science of analytical reasoning facilitated by interactive, visual interfaces". Find out more about the upcoming conference.
Thinking about Working?
January 2008: Do you love cognitive science, linguistics, philosophy, or computing science? Connect yourself to SFU alumni and cognitive science-related industry professionals. Find out how your degree will take you into the workplace or on to graduate school. Read about our Panel Event on February 6.
New Interviews Posted
January 2008: New interviews from SFU Cognitive Science Alumni have been posted. Check them out!
SFU Student Wins Competition
Angelina Fabbro is a 2nd/3rd year Cognitive Science major and Computing Science Major. She and her team members, Kate Tsoukalas, Angelica Lim, and Lorin Beer, supervised by Richard Vaughn of the SFU Autonomy Lab, recently won awards for their innovative solution in the Richard Tapia Diversity in Computing Science Robotics Competition 2007 in Orlando, Florida. Click here to read Angelina’s account of the competition and why she entered.
Inside Report, Issue 1: Doug Yovanovich Begins at UCSD
September 2007: The Cognitive Science Program launches the Inside Report. Issue 1, Doug Yovanovich (SFU COGS grad) offers SFU students an inside look at his experience beginning grad school in the Department of Cognitive Science at University of California, San Diego. The Inside Report is hosted on Blogger.com so that contributors can post blog entries from anywhere in the world.
New SFU Cognitive Science Website launched, August 15th
August 2007: After a summer of hard work and dedication, the Cognitive Science communication team launches the new and improved Cognitive Science website. The new website puts more information at the fingertips of current and future students, as well as anyone wanting to learn more about the program. Features include faculty research profiles, program plans, a new wiki, and lots more.
Dr. Schulte on Man-Machine Poker Tournament, July 23, Hyatt Regency, Vancouver
July 2007: A $20,000 showdown between a poker-playing computer program and two of the world's top poker players will take place July 23 at the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence conference in Vancouver.Simon Fraser University will make one of its world-leading Cognitive Science professors available to local media to comment on the humanistic and technical angles of this poker tournament. Full story...
Cognitive Science Student Earns Distinction
The Cognitive Science program congratulates Jamie Alexandre who completed his B.A. in Cognitive Science with the second-highest cumulative GPA in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences this academic year. At a reception following convocation, the Program recognized Alexandre with an award for Outstanding Academic Achievement. Full story...
SFU researchers develop new syntactic operator
SFU cognitive scientists Jeff Pelletier, Jim Delgrande, and graduate student Matt Sunderson have come up with a more efficient way to pack information into large, computerized repositories of knowledge.
A classic problem with knowledge bases is that they have to be updated on the fly to reflect new facts and changes in the world. Sometimes, information combines in novel ways to form new beliefs, and other times, new information contradicts old information, requiring the computer to revise what it knows. Pelletier, Delgrande and Sunderson developed a syntactic operator for such systems that allows knowledge to be combined, updated, or replaced, in ways that are intuitive to everyday language users.
They presented their findings at the Florida Artificial Intelligence Research Society's 20th annual meeting in May (2007).
Professor James Hampton visits SFUCity University London’s Professor of Cognitive Psychology, Dr. James Hampton, visited SFU during the end of the Spring 2007 semester. Dr. Hampton and SFU cognitive scientist Dr. Jeff Pelletier met to collaborate on a research project being developed investigating vagueness. In addition to working on new projects, Dr. Hampton presented previous findings from his lab in a series of two talks, entitled “Imagining the impossible” and “Paleolithic ostriches and uncomfortable handmade sofas.” |
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During his first talk, Dr. Hampton discussed conceptual combinations. His studies looked at what people imagine when they are told to describe things like a shark that is also a daffodil or a bicycle that is also a stove. Dr. Hampton’s second talk focused on how the modification of a generic concept - a statement of knowledge or belief, like “birds fly,” that is not falsified by knowing about penguins, ostriches, or other counterexamples - affects the way a person perceives the likelihood of the generic statement. |
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New Courses Offered in Cognitive Science
The Cognitive Science Program has added two new courses beginning in the Fall of 2007. COGS 200: Foundations of Cognitive Science and COGS 310: Consciousness will be added to the SFU Calendar. See Course Descriptions for more information. Although these courses are a part of the cognitive science curriculum, they are open to anyone with an interest in cognitive science. Contact an advisor for more information.
COGS 300 (ST: Foundations of Cognitive Science) outline for Spring 2008.
If you have taken COGS 300 before, you CAN take different topics under COGS 300 for further credit! If you are thinking about a COGS minor, take this course this term. Contact an advisor for more info.
COGS 100 Fall 2007
Taught by Assistant Professor in Cognitive Science, Dr. Mark Blair. Did you know that COGS 100 has no prerequisites and is a breadth course (B) for all three areas: Science, Social Science and Humanities?
CMPT 150
CMPT150 is no longer needed for the Cognitive Science Major. Please see the new calendar (2006/7) for latest course checklist.