IGERT: The Dynamics of Communication in Context

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This Integrative Graduate Education and Research Training (IGERT) award supports a multidisciplinary graduate training program at the University of Pennsylvania designed to integrate the computational, cognitive and neuroscientific study of communication and communication systems, be they characterized as human-linguistic, animal or machine. The primary purpose is to create a new breed of communication scientists capable of integrating theoretical issues, methods, and formalisms that are currently distributed across graduate programs as diverse as anthropology, biology, computer science and engineering, linguistics, neuroscience, philosophy, and psychology. The intellectual merit consists of the two interrelated research themes that will unite and guide graduate training. The first theme emphasizes communication as a dynamical process, one that unfolds along multiple time scales varying from milliseconds (as in planning and understanding speech) to centuries (as in evolving dialects, languages, and systems of animal communication). The second theme emphasizes communication as a context-sensitive process, where contexts range from the physical setting and communicative history of a specific conversation, to the linguistic, social and technological assumptions of social groups. Trainees will be co-advised by a multidisciplinary faculty team and will commit to a five-year graduate training program, consisting of: (1) core disciplinary training in one of the current graduate programs above; (2) one-year cross-disciplinary training in a chosen second discipline, including completion of a publishable research project; (3) participation in a weekly interdisciplinary research meeting throughout the 5-year program; and (4) completion of an advanced course in the mathematical foundations of communication specifically designed for this program. Broader impacts of this program include applications in industry, technology, and clinical settings. IGERT is an NSF-wide program intended to meet the challenges of educating U.S. Ph.D. scientists and engineers with the interdisciplinary background, deep knowledge in a chosen discipline, and the technical, professional, and personal skills needed for the career demands of the future. The program is intended to catalyze a cultural change in graduate education by establishing innovative new models for graduate education and training in a fertile environment for collaborative research that transcends traditional disciplinary boundaries.