Presidential Faculty Fellows/Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PFF/PECASE)

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This award provides support to Dr. Mark Gluck under the National Science Foundation's Presidential Early Career Awards for Scientists and Engineers Program (PECASE) formerly called the Presidential Faculty Fellows (PFF) Program. These programs were established at the request of the President of the United States to recognize and support the scholarly activities of some of the Nation's most outstanding science and engineering faculty members early in their careers. Awards are intended to allow the scientists to undertake self-designed, innovative research and teaching projects, to establish research and education programs, and to pursue other academic related activities. This award will allow the investigator to pursue his research interests in the area of cognitive neuroscience of human learning, using computational models of neural networks to relate brain mechanisms to emergent behaviors. The unifying theme of his research is to better understand the fundamental mechanisms and principles of learning and memory from behavioral, biological and computational points of view. During the five year grant, he will (1) study computational models of the psychobiology of learning, relating postulated brain mechanisms to emergent behaviors by studying how behavior is altered after functional mechanisms are disrupted, simulating specific kinds of brain damage; (2) study cognitive neuroscience, testing the predictions of the computational models by studying the learning capabilities of hippocampal-damaged amnesic patients, and relating their behavior to similar deficits seen in hippocampal-lesioned animals; (3) study how these memorial processes can lead to novel solutions to engineering problems and the design of artificially-intelligent learning machines. In the area of teaching and education, Dr. Gluck is (1) creating new interdisciplinary undergraduate and graduate courses; (2) creating research internships for undergraduates, especially minority students; and (3) developing a multi-campus program in Neural Computation which will provide research training and courses in computational methods for students in Psychology, Neuroscience, Biology, Biomedical Engineering, and Cognitive Science. Dr. Gluck is making major contributions to the understanding of fundamental processes of learning and memory, deriving testable quantitative and computational descriptions of these processes. His contributions, which have already been recognized in each of the fields (psychology, cognitive neuroscience, psychobiology, systems neuroscience, and computer science) which encompass his chosen field of research, will continue over the duration of this award. Also, the award will provide an opportunity for him to continue his innovative programs for undergraduate and graduate students interested in the behavioral and neural sciences.