2011/WorkshopSchedule

2011 Workshop Schedule

An unconventional schedule, for an unconventional workshop... (why is it so?)

This is a first tentative schedule of the topics that will be addressed. The schedule will evolve and change on daily basis. Afternoons and evenings will get populated with work-group meeting times during the workshop (see last year's schedule to see how dense it will be).

  • Session chairs: read this carefully.
  • Click the link on each day, for notes on the discussionP
  • Use this page to reserve the main lecture room in the afternoons for your work-group.

Mon, May 2 - From cortical development to neuromorphic cognition

7:30-9:00 Breakfast

9:00-9:20 Welcome and introduction (Giacomo Indiveri)

Morning session chairs: Giacomo Indiveri, Rodney Douglas, Christoph von der Malsburg

9:20-10:15 The final frontier: neuromorphic cognition (James T. Kirk aka Rodney Douglas)

10:15-10:45 Coffee break

10:45-12:00 Cortical development (Henry Kennedy, Colette Dehay, Ken Knoblauch, Borys Wrobel)

12:45-14:00 Lunch

Afternoon session chairs: Kevin Gurney, Rodney Douglas, Nathan Lepora

14:00-15:45 Understanding cortico-basal ganglia interactions

16:15-18:00 Workgroups and hands-on projects organizational meeting

19:00-19:30 Tour of the lab-space (Disco)

20:00-21:30 Dinner


Tue, May 3 - From cortical circuits to cognition in the auditory system

7:30-9:00 Breakfast

Morning session chairs: Georg Klump, Kevan Martin, Shihab Shamma, Susan Denham

9:00-10:15 Background and open issues (3 to 4 short presentations)

10:15-10:45 Coffee break

10:45-12:00 Open discussion: Point of view from participants and hands-on project proposals

12:45-14:00 Lunch

13:30-15:30 Intro meeting, Modeling cerebral cortex development, location: main lecture room (Sala Rosa)

14:00-15:30 Joint intro meeting, Real-Time Biologically Realistic Neuromorphic Attention, Real-Time spiking I/O for on-chip neural application, Robotic Implementation of Object-Based Visual Attention, Asynchronous communication infrastructures, location: Globe Room

15:30-17:00 Joint intro meeting, Classification using spiking hardware, Reservoir computing in neuromorphic VLSI hardware, Thalamo-Cortical models on neuromorphic VLSI, Finite State Machines in VLSI Spiking Neurons, location: Disco

16:00-17:00 Tutorial: Controllability (J.J. Slotine), location: main lecture room (Sala Rosa)

17:00-19:00 Sport/Social break

17:30-19:00 Fun with Kung Fu, by the sea

19:00-20:00 Joint intro Meeting, Neural circuits for multi-modal competition and WTA and cortical computation discussion, location: lecture room behind TV room, main floor of hotel

20:00-21:30 Dinner

21:30-22:30 Intro to the hands-on project in Modeling cerebral cortex development, location: Disco

21:30-23:00 Robotic Implementation of Object-Based Visual Attention, location: Globe room


Wed, May 4 - Reinforcement learning and decision making in real-time behaving systems

6:45-8:00 Fun with Kung Fu, by the sea

7:30-9:00 Breakfast

Morning session chairs: Gianluca Baldassarre, Juergen Schmidhuber, Jorg Conradt, Marco Mirolli, Ernst Niebur

9:00-10:15 Background and open issues (3 to 4 short presentations)

10:15-10:45 Coffee break

10:45-12:00 Open discussion: Point of view from participants and hands-on project proposals

12:45-14:00 Lunch

13:30-15:30 Joint project discussions: Event based processing, Spike-based robotics, Kinect, and Bayesian tracking, location: main lecture room (Sala Rosa).

15:30-17:00 Joint intro meeting, Classification using spiking hardware, Reservoir computing in neuromorphic VLSI hardware, Thalamo-Cortical models on neuromorphic VLSI, Finite State Machines in VLSI Spiking Neurons, location: Disco

15:00-16:00 intro meeting, Learning to recognize visual stimuli with neuromorphic attractor networks, location: Disco

15:30-19:00 First session, Climbing location: lobby. Those wishing to join later (e.g. 17:00) should follow the road to Capo Caccia/ Grotte di Nettuno as far as the branch to the scenic overlook (signposted "Falesia di Arrampicata"), then follow the path from the first major bend in the branch road to the scramble down to the cliffs.

17:00-19:00 Sport/Social break

19:00-20:00 Multi-Modal WTA workgroup kickoff meeting, location: Lecture room behind TV room, hotel main floor

19:00-20:00 Workgroup meeting, The Bayesian Retina, location: Globe Room

20:00-21:30 Dinner

21:30-23:00 Robotic Implementation of Object-Based Visual Attention, location: Globe room

21:30-23:00 Workgroup introductory meeting: Parameter and state estimations of neuron data, location: main Seminar Room (Sala Rosa)

22:00-23:00 Modeling cerebral cortex development, location: Disco


Thu, May 5 - Spike based learning and inference

7:30-9:00 Breakfast

Morning session chairs: Leslie Smith, Michael Pfeiffer, Giacomo Indiveri, Stefano Fusi, Matthew Cook

9:00-10:15 Background and open issues (3 to 4 short presentations)

10:15-10:45 Coffee break

10:45-12:00 Open discussion: Point of view from participants and hands-on project proposals

12:45-14:00 Lunch

13:30-17:00 Hands-on projects and discussion meetings

13:30-14:30 Discussion group on Modeling cerebral cortex development, location: main lecture room (Sala Rosa)

13:30-14:30 Workgroup meeting "Bayesian Retina" in Globe room

14:00-15:00 Neural circuits for multi-modal competition workgroup meeting. Location: lecture room behind TV room, main floor of hotel

15:00-17:00 WTA and cortical computation discussion group, location: lecture room behind TV room, main floor of hotel

14:00-17:00 First meeting of FACETS/BrainScaleS hardware workgroup. We will give an overview of our hardware and explain and demonstrate several models running on it. We will end with a PyNN tutorial for those who are actually interested in running their own models in Neuron / Nest / BSSHW / Spinnaker / ... Afterwards, we will challenge you with a small modeling exercise in PyNN, so bring along your laptops and we will help you with everything else you need. (Disco)

14:30-17:00 Brian tutorial. We will first give an introduction to our simulation tool, and (same as above) "bring along your laptops and we will help you with everything else you need". Localisation: main lecture room (Sala Rosa).

16:00-17:00 Hardware coordination meeting of Real-time Attention work group

17:00-19:00 Sport/Social break

17:00-18:30 swimming/snorkeling: 500m across the bay if conditions permit

17:30-19:00 Fun with Kung Fu, by the sea

19:00-20:00 1st meeting of discussion workgroup, Memristive Synapses, location: lecture room behind TV room, main floor of hotel.

19:00-20:00 Meeting of discussion workgroup, Self-Organisation: main Seminar Room (Sala Rosa)

20:00-21:30 Dinner

21:00-22:00 Kinect tutorial and project meeting, location: disco.

21:30-23:00 Joint meeting, Classification using spiking hardware, Reservoir computing in neuromorphic VLSI hardware, Thalamo-Cortical models on neuromorphic VLSI, Finite State Machines in VLSI Spiking Neurons, location: Disco

22:30-00:00 wine11 Wine Tasting - Wines: Local Wines from Sella&Mosca Vineyard near Alghero - Location: outside disco (bad weather: globe room)


Fri, May 6 - Spike based signal processing and event based sensory systems

7:30-9:00 Breakfast

Morning session chairs: Aurel A. Lazar, Romain Brette, Tobi Delbruck, Shih-Chii Liu, Chiara Bartolozzi, Ryad Benosman

9:00-10:15 Background and open issues (3 to 4 short presentations)

10:15-10:45 Coffee break

10:45-12:00 Open discussion: Point of view from participants and hands-on project proposals

12:45-14:00 Lunch

14:00-17:00 Hands-on projects and discussion meetings

13:30-15:30 Combined project discussions for Event based processing, Spike-based robotics, Kinect, and Bayesian tracking (wiki:2011/ebp11 wiki:2011/jaer11 wiki:2011/spikingrobots11 wiki:2011/kinect11,wiki:2011/bayret11?) - location: main lecture room (Sala Rosa).

14:00-15:00 Real-Time Biologically Realistic Neuromorphic Attention - Software - Globe Room

14:00-15:00 Robotic implementation of object-based visual attention - Globe Room

15:00-16:00 Attention models for biology and technology - Globe Room

15:30-16:30 Parameter and state estimations of neuron data, location: main Seminar Room (Sala Rosa)

15:30-16:30 Automatic image segmentation on immunostained images - Globe Room

16:00-17:00 Multi-modal WTA matlab hacking session. Location: old lecture room behind TV room

16:00-19:30 Second session, Climbing location: lobby. Those wishing to join later (e.g. 17:00) should follow the road to Capo Caccia/ Grotte di Nettuno as far as the branch to the scenic overlook (signposted "Falesia di Arrampicata"), then follow the path from the first major bend in the branch road to the scramble down to the cliffs.

17:00-19:00 Sport/Social break

19:00-20:00 2nd meeting of discussion workgroup, Memristive Synapses, location: lecture room behind TV room, main floor of hotel.

19:00-19:30 Software infrastructure for Neuromorphic chips and AER devices - main Seminar Room (Sala Rosa)

20:00-21:30 Dinner

21:00-22:30 WTA and computation in cortex discussion group meeting, location: globe room

21:30-22:30 Chocolate Tasting: Round 1 (Dining Hall)

21:30-..... Hands-on projects and discussion meetings


Sat, May 7 - Building spike based processing systems in neuromorphic VLSI

7:30-9:00 Breakfast

Morning session chairs: paolo del giudice, André van Schaik, Giacomo Indiveri, Hasler, Elisabetta Chicca, Jonathan Tapson

9:00-10:15 Background and open issues (3 to 4 short presentations)

10:15-10:45 Coffee break

10:30-10:45 Quick recording session for Dance3 project in Disco

10:45-12:00 Open discussion: Point of view from participants and hands-on project proposals

12:45-14:00 Lunch

13:00-1400 Kalman filtering project in Globe room

14:00-14:30 Gianluca Baldassarre, Presentation The IM-CLeVeR Project. Location - Main seminar room

14:30-17:00 Presentations on the  IM-CLeVeR Spring School projects. Location - Main seminar room

14:00-17:00 FACETS/BrainScaleS hardware workgroup. Come by and run your own models on our hardware!

16:00-17:00 Neural Computation and WTA discussion group. Location: Lecture room behind TV room.

16.00-17:00 Robotic Implementation of Object-Based Visual Attention, debugging session: location: Globe room

16:00-17:00 Eye movements for learning DVS thresholds in Disco

17:00-19:00 Sport/Social break

17:30-19:30 Discover SCUBA: tentative time for a discover SCUBA session in the pool

18:00-dinner Discussion about importance of precision in neural computation - beach bar happy hour.

18:30-19-30 Slacklining: beginners and advanced are equally welcome. Location: around the trees just outside the lobby

19:00-19.59 Attention: Models for Biology and Technology workgroup. Globe Room.

19:00-19:45 Crowd-sourcing neuron annotation. Main lecture room (Sala Rosa)

20:00-21:30 Dinner

21:30-..... Hands-on projects and discussion meetings


Sun, May 8 - Free time

14:00-19:30 Main Session, Climbing location: lobby.


Mon, May 9 - Local field potentials, mean firing rates and neural representations for neuromorphic computational models

7:30-9:00 Breakfast

Morning session chairs: Alain Destexhe, paolo del giudice, Yves Fregnac

9:00-10:15 Background and open issues (3 to 4 short presentations)

10:15-10:45 Coffee break

10:45-12:00 Open discussion: Point of view from participants

12:45-14:00 Lunch

14:00-17:00 Hands-on projects and discussion meetings

14:00-15:00 Real-Time Biologically Realistic Neuromorphic Attention - Software - Globe Room

14:00-17:00 Software Infrastructure for AER Neuromorphic Systems discussion group. Hands-on the code @disco!

15:00-16:30 Parameter and state estimations of neuron data, location: main Seminar Room (Sala Rosa)

15:00-17:00 Robotic implementation of object-based visual attention, location: main Globe room

17:00-19:00 Sport/Social break

18:00-19:00 Discussion about context-dependent processing and organization of Tuesday's session, location: Beach bar

19:00-20:00 3rd meeting of discussion workgroup, Memristive Synapses, location: lecture room behind TV room, main floor of hotel.

20:00-21:30 Dinner

20:30-21:30 Status meeting and Q/A for all event-based sensory processing groups - in Sala Rosa main lecture room.

22:00- Movie in TV room, maybe Stanley Kubrick's black comedy of nuclear holocaust Dr. Strangelove with Peter Sellers playing 3 parts, the US president, Ed Teller, and a British Colonel. "We must close the mine shaft gap!" Or some other movie as audience chooses.

22:00- Poker in Globe room.


Tue, May 10 - Spike based context dependent computation and finite state machines

7:30-9:00 Breakfast

Morning session chairs: Rodney Douglas, Mattia Rigotti, Ueli Rutishauser, Emre Neftci, Angelika Steger, Jean-Jacques Slotine

9:00-10:15 Background and open issues (3 to 4 short presentations)

10:15-10:45 Coffee break

10:45-12:00 Open discussion: Point of view from participants

12:45-14:00 Lunch

14:30-16:30 FPAA hardware and tools demonstration

14:00-17:00 Hands-on projects and discussion meetings

14:30-15:30 Classification with INI hardware workgroup. Hands-on hardware.

14:30-17:00 Kinect workgroup. Data recording and classification.

15:30-16:30 Reservoir with INI hardware workgroup. Status update meeting.

15:30-19:00 Session, Climbing location: lobby.

17:00-19:00 Sport/Social break

19:00-20:00 Robotic Implementation of Object-Based Visual Attention, location: Globe room

20:00-21:30 Dinner

21:30-22:30 Chocolate Tasting: Round 2 (Dining Hall)

21:30-..... Hands-on projects and discussion meetings


Wed, May 11 - Memristors, phase-change materials and new emerging technologies for neuromorphic systems

7:30-9:00 Breakfast

Morning session chairs: bernabe linares-barranco, Mika Laiho, Martin Salinga, Karlheinz Meier, Aurel A. Lazar

9:00-10:15 Intro, Implementation and Computations

Aurel A. Lazar, "Electronic and Biological Memristors"

bernabe linares-barranco, "Implementation of Neuromorphic Architectures with Memristors"

Mika Laiho & Eero Lehtonen, "Computation with Memristors and Memcapacitors"

10:15-10:45 Coffee break

10:45-12:00 Devices and Comparison to Conventional Technology

Robert Nawrocki, "Organic Bistable Devices and Synthetic Synapses"

Martin Salinga, "Phase Change Materials"

Hasler, "Comparison against Silicon Technology"

12:45-14:00 Lunch

14:00-17:00 Hands-on projects and discussion meetings

14:30-17:00 Field-Programmable Mixed-Signal Arrays workgroup meeting Hasler, Presentation of RASP FPAAs.

16:00-17:00 Software for neuromorphic hardware discussion group: eyes-on code.

17:00-19:00 Sport/Social break

20:00-21:30 Dinner

21:00-22:30 Project progress demos in disco. Each project has 10 minutes to demo the working state of their project to everyone. We rotate between projects so that everyone can see all projects.


Thu, May 12 - Large-scale/multi-scale neural systems: past, present and future

7:30-9:00 Breakfast

Morning session chairs: Karlheinz Meier, Hasler, David Lester, Anders Lansner, Mikhail Burtsev

09:00-09:20 Karlheinz Meier - Is bigger better?

09:20-09:40 Hasler - But what for and at which price?

09:40-10.00 David Lester - The bigger the machine the greater the problems

10:00-10:20 Anders Lansner - Scaling Experiments on JUGENE

10:20-10:45 Coffee break

10:40-11.00 Mikhail Burtsev - The Cognitive Dimension of Multi-scale Systems

11:00-12:00 Continue if we did not finish before coffee - Views from participants

12:45-14:00 Lunch

14:00-16:00 Real-Time Biologically Realistic Neuromorphic Attention - Software - Globe Room

14:00-17:00 Hands-on projects and discussion meetings

14:30-15:30 Parameter and state estimations of neuron data, location: main Seminar Room (Sala Rosa)

17:00-19:00 Sport/Social break

20:00-21:30 Dinner

21:30-22:30 Chocolate Tasting: Round 3 - The "Elite" Chocolates (Dining Hall)

21:30-..... Hands-on projects and discussion meetings


Fri, May 13 - Project Presentations

7:30-9:00 Breakfast

Morning session chairs: Jorg Conradt, Matthew Cook, Giacomo Indiveri

9:00-10:15 Project presentations (Lecture Room)

10:15-10:45 Coffee break

10:45-12:00 Project presentations (Lecture Room)

12:00-12:30 Demo presentations (Globe Room)

12:45-14:00 Lunch

14:00-15:00 Demo presentations (Disco)

15:00-16:00 Final Session, Feedback

16:00-open Report and Wiki write-up

20:00-21:30 Dinner


Sat, May 14 - Report and Wiki write-up

7:30-9:00 Breakfast

9:00-10:15 Report and Wiki write-up

10:15-10:45 Coffee break

10:45-12:00 Report and Wiki write-up

12:45-14:00 Lunch

14:00-15:45 Report and Wiki write-up

16:15-18:00 Cleanup and dismantle

20:00-21:30 Dinner