workshop participants

DIETRICH STOUT  |  Emory University   [organizer]  

Director, Center for Mind, Brain, and Culture

Professor, Department of Anthropology


I am nominally an archaeologist but I have much broader interests in the evolution of the human brain, cognition, and culture that have led me to collaborate with cognitive and motor neuroscientists, comparative psychologists, bioengineers, and more. For example, see my recent theory piece on “The cognitive science of technology” in Trends in Cognitive Sciences, in which I propose a perceptual-motor 

hypothesis for the evolution of technological cognition. ...


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ROBERT LIU  |  Emory University

Associate Director, Center for Mind, Brain, and Culture
Professor, Department of Biology


My fascination with neuroscience started when a professor pointed out that everything I perceive, think or do arises because of neurons somewhere in my brain firing. Curious to know more, I turned my physics training towards neuroscience in my postdoc, and became interested in how the perception-action cycle functions in natural social behaviors sculpted by evolution. My lab uses rodent models to get at neurophysiological and neuromodulatory mechanisms underlying prosocial social interactions, taking a predisposition and plasticity perspective to get at how the brain is responding at any moment in time. As the nature of human (and bot) social interactions evolve with new technologies, I am curious to learn how this may subsequently impact our brains.


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LOUISE BARRETT  |  University of Lethbridge, UK

Professor
Department of Psychology


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GORDON BERMAN  |  Emory University

Associate Professor
Department of Biology
Physics Graduate Program Member


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JOSH BONGARD  |  University of Vermont

Professor
Department of Computer Science
College of Engineering and Mathematical Science




PAUL CISEK  |  University of Montreal, CA

Associate Professor
Faculty of Medicine

Department of Neurosciences 


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DANIEL DILKS  |  Emory University

Associate Professor
Department of Psychology


We can recognize a person, place, or thing within a fraction of a second, even if we have never seen that particular person, place, or thing before. The cognitive and neural mechanisms underlying this remarkable ability are not well understood, and current computer vision algorithms still lag behind human performance. One promising strategy to understand human visual recognition is to characterize the neural system that accomplishes it. Thus, my research program aims to understand the neural mechanisms involved in visually recognizing people, places, and objects.  


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GREG DOWNEY  |  Macquarie University, AU

Professor, Interim Dean
Faculty of Arts

Center for Elite Performance Expertise and Training


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ALDO FAISEL  |  Imperial College London / University of Bayreuth, UK 

Professor
AI & Neuroscience
Dept. of Computing and Dept. of Bioengineering

Director, Brain & Behavior Lab


Chair in Digital Healthcare



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MADELEINE HACKNEY  |  Emory University

Associate Professor
Department of Medicine, Division of Geriatrics and Gerontology


Dr. Madeleine E. Hackney, Ph.D, holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Dance Performance from New York University, Tisch School of the Arts, and a Ph.D. in Movement Science from Washington University in St. Louis. She is a tenured Associate professor of Medicine, in the Emory University School of Medicine, Department of Medicine, division of Geriatrics and Gerontology, a Research Health Scientist at the Atlanta VA Center for Visual and Neurocognitive Rehabilitation and an Investigator with the Birmingham/Atlanta VA Geriatric Research Education and Clinical Center. In 2022, she became an inaugural Research fellow for the Emory University Science Gallery Atlanta.


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CRAIG HADLEY  |  Emory University 

Professor
Department of Anthropology


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ROBERT HAMPTON  |  Emory University

Professor
Department of Psychology


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TRISHA KESAR  |  Emory University

Associate Professor
Department of Rehabilitation Medicine


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MANUELA MANETTA  |  Emory University

Assistant Teaching Professor
Department of Mathematics


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MADHUR MANGALAM  |  University of Nebraska, Omaha

Assistant Professor
Division of Biomechanics and Research Development, Department of Biomechanics,
and Center for Research in Human Movement Variability


I am a life scientist, ethologist, experimental psychologist, and neurophysiologist by training—in that order with my Bachelor’s, Master’s, Ph.D., and Postdoctoral training, with much of my work focused on deciphering the “choreography” (aka., complex patterns in temporal structure) of physiological fluctuations associated with complex behaviors and functions. However, I have much broader interests in the philosophy of statistics, the process of scientific investigation, nonlinearity in micro and meta processes that have fueled my collaborations with philosophers of science, statistical physicists, experimental psychologists, and physiologists, among other musketeers. 


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VERNELLE A. A. NOEL  |  Georgia Institute of Technology

Assistant Professor

School of Architecture, College of Design



ORI OSSMY  |  Birbeck, University of London UK

Assistant Professor
Center for Brain and Cognitive Development

School of Psychology


Behavioural problem solving is ubiquitous across every age and culture—how to navigate a cluttered environment, use a tool, and so on. As our bodies, skills, and environments change, new problems emerge and require new means to solve them. With learning and development, children respond more adaptively and efficiently to environmental challenges and opportunities. With injury and aging, responses become less adaptive and efficient. The goal of my research is to understand (and intervene on) the processes that underlie changes in behavioural problem solving.


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LAURA OTIS  |  Emory University

Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor
Department of English


Trained as a neuroscientist and literary scholar, Laura Otis studies the ways that literature and science intersect. In her research, she compares scientific and literary writers’ use of language, especially creative metaphors, to describe memory, identity, communication, emotion, and thought.  ...  Otis’s current project, The Neuroscience of Craft, has brought her to the Minds in Motion workshop. This book in progress investigates the ways that fiction-writers use language to engage multiple sensory modalities and the motor system in readers and to bring fictional worlds alive in their imaginations. 


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BRENDAN OZAWA-DE SILVA  |  Emory University

Associate Teaching Professor

Center for Contemplative Science and Compassion-Based Ethics


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CHIKAKO OZAWA-DE SILVA  |  Emory University

Director of Graduate Studies

Professor
Department of Anthropology


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GORDON RAMSAY  |  Emory University

Assistant Professor
Department of Pediatrics
School of Medicine


The goal of my research is to explore the development and derailment of physical, biological, and neurophysiological mechanisms underlying vocal behavior and spoken communication from early infancy to adulthood, in order to better understand the origin of social impairments and communication disorders in individuals with autism and related neurodevelopmental disorders.


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AMANDA SECCIA  |  University of Chicago

Post-Doctoral Fellow 

Environmental Neuroscience Lab


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THAD STARNER  |  Georgia Institute of Technology

Professor
Contextual Computing Group

College of Computing


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LORI TEAGUE  |  Emory University

Associate Professor
Dance & Movement Studies Program


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LENA TING   | Emory University and Georgia Institute of Technology

McCamish Foundation Distinguished Chair

Department of Biomedical Engineering

Professor

Department of Rehabilitative Medicine, Division of Physical Therapy


Dr. Ting directs the Neuromechanical Laboratory at Emory, focusing on complex, whole body movements such as walking and balance in healthy and neurologically impaired individuals, as well as skilled movements involved in dance and sport. Her work is highly interdisciplinary, drawing from neuroscience, biomechanics, rehabilitation, computation, robotics, and physiology. Her lab has developed several computational methods to characterize and understand individual differences in movement and movement control from muscle and brain activity recordings, and how these change in neurological disorders, as well as with rehabilitation and training. 


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LEWIS A. WHEATON  |  Georgia Institute of Technology

Associate Professor
School of Biological Sciences

College of Sciences

 

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KRISTIN WILLIAMS  |  Emory University

Assistant Professor
Departement of Computer Science

 

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PHILLIP WOLFF  |  Emory University

Professor
Department of Psychology

 

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M WU  |  Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University

Graduate Student
Neuromechanics Lab

Biomedical Engineering

I am interested in how haptic communication - the use of physical contact to transmit information - facilitates collaboration between people and between a person and a robot. My research focuses on characterizing how hand contact affects walking and balance in human-human and human-robot interaction. I have developed a novel robotic device that emulates a wide range of hand interactions during walking, inspired by human-human examples like a caregiver assisting a patient and partner dancing.   


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JING XU  |  University of Georgia

Assistant Professor
Department of Kinesiology
Director, Cognition and Dexterity Laboratory


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DIMITRIS XYGALATAS  |  University of Connecticut

Associate Professor
Department of Anthropology

 

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