IGERT: Integrating New Technologies with Cognitive Neuroscience

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This Integrative Graduate Education and Research Training (IGERT) project will develop new directions for an existing cross-disciplinary training program offered by the Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition (CNBC) at Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh. Eleven doctoral programs are formally affiliated with the program, which trains young scientists in interdisciplinary approaches to understanding how cognitive processes arise from neural mechanisms. One half of the new initiative concerns new technologies for experimental neuroscience, e.g., optical, magnetic resonance, and magnetoencephalographic approaches to functional brain imaging, and analysis of neuronal population activity patterns using advanced statistical and data visualization algorithms. The complementary half concerns the applications of systems and cognitive neuroscience to technology development, in areas such as neural prostheses, neural control, and cognitive robotics. The most successful aspects of the current CNBC IGERT program will be retained: a common core curriculum, use of multiple advisors from different disciplines, and a competitive proposal process for selecting students for funding.The project will train a new breed of scientists to achieve the fullest possible integration of new technologies into cognitive and systems neuroscience research. It will also complement a new initiative at Carnegie Mellon, in collaboration with Spelman College, to establish undergraduate courses in cognitive robotics at several historically black colleges and universities, thereby increasing the pool of minority applicants to graduate programs such as the CNBC program. 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.