IGERT: The Dynamics of Brain-Body-Environment Systems in Behavior and Cognition

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This Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (IGERT) award supports a training program on the dynamics of brain-body-environment interaction in behavior and cognition at Indiana University. The purpose of the training program is to create a new kind of scientist with expertise in both the experimental and theoretical tools necessary to analyze intelligence as an emergent property of a complex dynamic system. The training program includes new courses, a professional development seminar, a colloquium series that provides opportunities for extended interactions between students and top researchers, research internships, and opportunities for international collaboration. The program also includes a detailed assessment plan and a summer program for undergraduates from underrepresented groups run in partnership with Indiana University Northwest, approximately 80% of whose students come from minority, first-generation college, female or low socioeconomic categories. Broader impacts of this program include recruiting new students from underrepresented groups into cognitive science and providing graduate students with the opportunity to participate in cutting-edge multidisciplinary research. All materials produced by this program will be made freely available on the web. More generally, this program will foster new kinds of discourse between the various disciplines that make up cognitive science. Finally, by placing cognition within its proper embodied and situated context, the proposed training program may impact how society fosters and measures cognitive ability. 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.