Schedule

7-8 June, 2021

USS21

Monday, 7 June

Time (EDT) Session Speaker(s) Title Links
13:00 - 13:15 Opening remarks YouTube
13:15 - 14:15 Keynote talk Pim Haselager
Unifying AI & Neuroscience: A great idea! But to what purpose?
  • The combination of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Neuroscience (NS) has great promise. It can lead to various practical applications in a wide variety of fields, ranging from micro-targeted marketing to clinical therapy and law. At the same time, the combined power of AI and NS leads to serious questions about what it is that we would like to achieve and why. It also leads to questions about how we can exert meaningful human control over the ensuing technologies. This is especially urgent given the many challenges humanity is facing this century, from inequity to ecology. It seems fair to say that our current ways to address these challenges have not been, to put it mildly, particularly successful. AI and NS enable us to see our human strengths and weaknesses with greater clarity, and build more effective technology accordingly. But the potentially exploitative power of this combination of sciences does present us with the challenge to apply it wisely. I will suggest that we are in need of a more profound reflection on what our sciences show us about ourselves, what our technology enables us to do with that, and what, apparently, we aim to do with those insights and applications.
 YouTube
14:20 - 14:50 Lightning talks Selection of presentations by participants YouTube
14:50 - 15:10 Lightning talks Q&A + Social
15:05 - 15:10 Active break Caelan Taylor
15:10 - 15:15 Go to Crowdcast
15:15 - 16:15 Keynote talk Megan Peters
Linking metacognition and consciousness with computational models
  • Few people tackle the neural or computational basis of qualitative experience (Frith, 2019). Why? One major reason is that science and philosophy have both struggled to propose how we might even begin to start studying it. Here I propose that metacognitive computations, and the subjective feelings that go along with them, give us a solid starting point. Specifically, perceptual metacognition possesses unique properties that provide a powerful and unique opportunity for studying the neural and computational correlates of subjective experience. I will describe these properties, and discuss how computational models of metacognition can be used to an empirically-tractable early step in identifying the generative process that constructs qualitative experience, drawing on empirical data. By applying decades of developments in computational cognitive science and formal computational model comparisons to the specific properties of perceptual metacognition, we may reveal new and exciting insights about how the brain constructs subjective conscious experiences and the nature of those experiences themselves.
 YouTube
16:15 - 16:25 Social break
16:20 - 16:25 Active break Caelan Taylor
16:25 - 16:30 Go to Crowdcast
16:30 - 17:15 Panel discussion Stefanie Blain-Moraes , Megan Peters , Pim Haselager , Irina Rish YouTube
17:15 - 17:30 Closing remarks YouTube

Tuesday, 8 June

Time (EDT) Session Mentor(s) Title Links
13:00 - 13:15 Opening remarks
13:15 - 14:00 Round table Marie-Ève Vautrin-Nadeau , Robin Renault , Aislinn Sandre Round table on mental health
13:15 - 14:00 Focused discussion Guillaume Lajoie
Machine learning and Neuroscience
  • A panel discussion with Dr. Pouya Bashinvan, Dr. Irina Rish and Dr. Danilo Bzdok about (1) deep network models of neural circuits (2) ML for large data analysis and (3) ANN to explore neuroscience ideas unattainable by experiments.
14:00 - 14:15 Social break
14:15 - 15:00 Workshop Andréanne Proulx , Samuel Guay
First steps into Open Science [Slides]
  • This workshop aims to introduce the broad concept that is open science from a global perspective. We will touch on three core aspects that open science is based on, namely processes (e.g., collaboration, reproducibility), Products (e.g., Open Data, Open Materials), and Values (e.g., freedom, equity). We will then showcase some tools and state-of-the-art examples of openness from the Neuro-AI field. If time permits, we will end the workshop by collaboratively (yes, all of us!) creating a Neuro-AI open science student guide.
  • This workshop aims to introduce the broad concept that is open science from a global perspective. We will touch on three core aspects that open science is based on, namely processes (e.g., collaboration, reproducibility), Products (e.g., Open Data, Open Materials), and Values (e.g., freedom, equity). We will then showcase some tools and state-of-the-art examples of openness from the Neuro-AI field. If time permits, we will end the workshop by collaboratively (yes, all of us!) creating a Neuro-AI open science student guide.
14:15 - 15:00 Focused discussion Thomas R. Shultz Memory and Learning
15:00 - 15:05 Social break
15:05 - 15:10 Active break Caelan Taylor
15:10 - 15:15 Go to the next session
15:15 - 16:00 Workshop Madeleine Elise Nadler
Developing, Disseminating, and Diversifying Knowledge: An Introduction to Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) in Academia [Slides]
  • This workshop is designed for new students as well as those with no background in Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI). The workshop aims to help develop awareness of EDI concepts and issues in Academia. Participants will be introduced to basics of EDI in both theory and reality with relation to data-driven research as well as current events.
15:15 - 16:00 Focused discussion Paul Cisek Decision Making
16:00 - 16:15 Closing remarks
16:15 - 16:45 Social + Talent Show