Project Profile
Problem-centered research training: Integrating formal and empirical methods in the cognitive science of language
Johns Hopkins University
Abstract
This Integrative Graduate Education and Research Training (IGERT) award supports the establishment of a multidisciplinary graduate training program of education and research in a new paradigm of graduate education: Problem-Centered training, delimited not by the boundaries of an academic discipline, but by the demands of solving a problem. Students… more »
This Integrative Graduate Education and Research Training (IGERT) award supports the establishment of a multidisciplinary graduate training program of education and research in a new paradigm of graduate education: Problem-Centered training, delimited not by the boundaries of an academic discipline, but by the demands of solving a problem. Students are trained in a broad range of research methods derived from a diverse set of traditional disciplines.
The general problem targeted by this IGERT program is: “How does the brain achieve its function?” The program focuses on one particularly important cognitive function: language. Basic research on language has long-term implications for diagnosis and treatment of language-related neurological and learning disorders, for literacy and language education, and for digital language technologies. The computational framework of cognitive science allows the problem to be formulated more precisely: What are the representational structures, processing algorithms, and learning algorithms underlying our linguistic abilities? How are these representations and algorithms realized in the brain?
Studying with internationally recognized leaders at Johns Hopkins, IGERT trainees acquire both theoretical and empirical sophistication through a uniquely multidisciplinary range of research methods: (i) computational and mathematical modeling of language processing and learning, including symbolic methods and neural networks, in a range of linguistic formalisms; (ii) psychological experimentation on adult and infant language processing and learning; (iii) neuroimaging of brain activity during language processing; (iv) grammatical analysis of the language of adults, children, and second-language learners; (v) neuropsychology of language deficits from acquired and developmental neurological damage; and (vi) computational methods of automatic speech and language processing.
IGERT is an NSF-wide program intended to facilitate the establishment of innovative, research-based graduate programs that will train a diverse group of scientists and engineers to be well-prepared to take advantage of a broad spectrum of career options. IGERT provides doctoral institutions with an opportunity to develop new, well-focussed multidisciplinary graduate programs that transcend organizational boundaries and unite faculty from several departments or institutions to establish a highly interactive, collaborative environment for both training and research. In this second year of the program, awards are being made to twenty-one institutions for programs that collectively span all areas of science and engineering supported by NSF. This specific award is supported by funds from the Directorates for Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences, for Biological Sciences, for Computer and Information Science and Engineering, and for Education and Human Resources. « less
