Reporter Volume 25, No.26 April 28, 1994

By ELLEN GOLDBAUM
News Bureau Staff
Hundreds of professors, researchers and students working in a new
discipline called cognitive science, will be living at UB this summer,
attending classes, workshops and lectures. The university will be host
to a major, first-of-its-kind international event when the First
International Summer Institute in Cognitive Science is held from July
5-30 on the North Campus.
Until now, most cognitive scientists, explorers of the human mind
drawn from the ranks of many social, health and technical sciences,
have never had an opportunity to formally learn about other, related
areas in the discipline. 
"This is an historic opportunity to bring about a convergence of all
the different approaches to studying how the mind works," said Leonard
Talmy, the center's director and a professor of linguistics at UB.
Hosted by UB's Center for Cognitive Science, the institute will
provide all levels of researchers, from students to senior professors,
and industrial and government scientists, the chance to take
intensive, introductory and advanced courses in the field from world
experts.
"We want to provide people with a full grounding in cognitive
science," explained Robert D. Van Valin, Jr., chair of linguistics at
UB and a co-director of the institute. He noted that cognitive science
as a field is now at the level that linguistics was at in the 1950s.
Cognitive scientists, who study intelligent processes in both humans
and machines, come from numerous traditional disciplines, such as
linguistics, psychology, computer science, anthropology and
philosophy.
 Institute courses will meet every day, with guest speakers delivering
lectures in the evenings. Workshops on cognitive science research will
be held during the final week.
In addition to UB, institutions to be represented by lecturers will
include Harvard University, Rutgers University, Stanford University,
University of California, Berkeley, Max Planck Institute for
Psycholinguistics, McGill University and Massachusetts Institute of
Technology. Speakers also will represent Apple Computer and Xerox
PARC. Among he subjects to be covered: "Foundations of Cognitive
Science," "Cognitive Science in the Workplace," "Reasoning in
Artificial Intelligence," "Language Disorders in Children" and
"Neuropsychology of Vision." There are 34 courses being offered.
The Institute has received funding from Calspan Corp. and Apple
Computer, as well as from several departments at UB. Additional
funding is being sought to support scholarships and cover basic
expenses.