Program in Neuroscience and Cognitive Science

NACS News

May 09, 2008 Kaiwen He Awarded Wylie Fellowship
The Fellowship includes a $10,000 stipend, $800 towards the cost of health insurance, and tuition remission for one semester to allow recipients to devote their full attention to their dissertation. Congratulations Kaiwen!

April 21, 2008 NACS Faculty Featured in University's Research Publication
The Division of Research at the University of Maryland is featuring several NACS faculty members in this month's issue of its IMPACT research publication. read more >

April 14, 2008 NACS Computational Neuroscience Search Candidate Talks
The NACS Program is conducting a search to hire a new faculty member in computational neuroscience. The fourth of the five candidates--Jonathan Pillow from the Royal Society and Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit--will give a talk on Thursday, April 17, at noon in Room 2460 in the A. V. Williams Building. read more >

April 11, 2008 Congrats to Anu Goel for passing her dissertation defense!
Anubhuthi Goel has successfully defended her dissertation and will receive her Ph.D. in May, 2008. The title of her dissertation is "Cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying homeostatic synaptic plasticity." Anu is advised by Dr. Hey-Kyoung Lee.

April 10, 2008 Congrats to Ron Goodman for passing his dissertation defense!
Ron Goodman has successfully defended his dissertation and will receive his Ph.D. in May, 2008. The title of his dissertation is "Performance Under Pressure: Examination of Relevant Neurobiological and Genetic Influence." Ron is advised by Dr. Brad Hatfield.

April 10, 2008 NACS Computational Neuroscience Search Candidate Talks
The NACS Program is conducting a search to hire a new faculty member in computational neuroscience. The third of the five candidates--Daniel Butts from Cornell University--will give a talk on Thursday, April 10, at noon in Room 1208 in the Biology-Psychology Building. read more >

March 28, 2008 NACS Computational Neuroscience Search Candidate Talks
The NACS Program is conducting a search to hire a new faculty member in computational neuroscience. The second of the five candidates--Wilson Truccolo from Brown University--will give a talk on Wednesday, April 2, at noon in Room 3302 in the School of Public Health. read more >

March 26, 2008 Congrats to Feng Rong for passing his dissertation defense!
Feng Rong has successfully defended his dissertation and will receive his Ph.D. in May, 2008. The title of his dissertation is "Memory-related cognitive modulation of human auditory cortex: Magnetoencephalography-based validation of a computational model." Feng is advised by Dr. Jose Contreras-Vidal.

March 25, 2008 NACS Computational Neuroscience Search Candidate Talks
The NACS Program is conducting a search to hire a new faculty member in computational neuroscience. The first of the five candidates--Angela Yu from Princeton University--will give a talk on Wednesday, March 26, at noon in room 1142 Biology-Psychology Building. read more >

March 18, 2008 Mardi Byerly, NACS Ph.D. 2008, Awarded Minority Supplement
Mardi Byerly, a postdoctoral scholar in the Department of Neuroscience at Johns Hopkins University, was awarded a minority supplement for 3 years from the National Eye Institute. Congratulations, Mardi!

January 04, 2008 Beth Stevens, NACS Ph.D. 2000, makes significant discovery!
Beth Stevens--NACS alumni and a postdoctoral scholar in the laboratory of Dr. Ben Barres at Stanford University--and team have discovered that the immune system may target some brain synapses. The paper announcing this finding appeared in the December 14 issue of the journal Cell. read more >

December 31, 2007 Job Announcement: Computational Neuroscience
NACS is seeking a tenure-track faculty member at the assistant professor level. Computational neuroscientists working in any areas including sensory and motor physiology, analysis of control systems, and cognitive neuroscience will be considered. read more >

December 01, 2007 Congrats to Mardi Byerly for passing her dissertation defense!
Mardi Byerly has successfully defended her dissertation and will receive her Ph.D. in December, 2007. The title of her dissertation is "Identification of novel mechanisms in the hypothalamus linked to adiposity," and she is advised by Dr. Tom Porter.

November 05, 2007 Event Calendar Relaunched
NACS is pleased to announce an improved event calendar with an easier to read format. Click on "calendar view" to your right to display the new NACS calendar. To place your NACS-related seminar or event on the calendar, follow the link below to obtain the forms to submit a news item or event. read more >

November 05, 2007 Bioscience Day
Bioscience Research & Technology Review Day is a special event that features research talks, presentations, mini-symposia and demonstrations by university scientists. The program provides a unique opportunity for executives and professionals in industry and government to discover the most recent advances in bioscience and biotechnology at the University of Maryland; to promote the potential for academic-industry-government collaboration; to meet University scientists and interact with graduate student researchers; to network with colleagues who share an interest in the promotion of bioscience and the bioscience industry; and to recruit employees and investigate job opportunities. read more >

October 12, 2007 Kristina DeAngelo receives supplemental award!
Kristina DeAngelo was awarded a minority supplemental award on her advisor Bob Dooling's grant for her work on hearing loss in Zebra Finches. This funding is from the National Institute of Deafness and Other Commication Disorders (NIDCD).

October 10, 2007 Good News for Carr Lab!
Yezhong Tang, a postdoc in Catherine Carr's lab, has accepted a position at Chengdu Institute of Biology. Chengdu is a great institution and part of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Yezhong was recruited because of his long experience of working with reptiles. He will be leaving next year.

September 28, 2007 Congrats to Stacy Hobson for passing her dissertation defense!
Stacy Hobson has successfully defended her dissertation and will receive her Ph.D. in December, 2007. The title of her dissertation is "Text Summarization Evaluation: Correlating Human Performance on an Extrinsic Task with Automatic Intrinsic Metrics," and she is advised by Dr. Bonnie Dorr.

September 20, 2007 Fox 5 News Visits Woodward Lab
Fox 5 News visited the UM Infant Lab, where information is gathered about how babies learn. "If we know how knowledge unfolds and how infants come to learn and know about the world then we may be able to intervene in cases where that progression doesn't go as planned," said Amanda Woodward.

July 24, 2007 NACS Certificate Approved!
The Post-Baccalaureate Certificate in Neuroscience and Cognitive Science received final approval from Chancellor Kirwan on June 29, 2007, and will be effective Fall 2007. The Certificate will enable graduate students with an interest in neuroscience to remain in Departmental Graduate programs while displaying their knowledge of neuroscience on their transcript. read more >

June 28, 2007 Huan Luo, NACS Ph.D. 2006, has paper in Neuron
A paper entitled "Phase patterns of neuronal responses reliably discriminate speech in human auditory cortex" by Huan Luo and David Poeppel appears in Neuron (2007).

June 15, 2007 Congrats to Mr. David Boothe for passing his dissertation defense!
David Boothe has successfully defended his dissertation and will receive his Ph.D. in Summer, 2007. Mr. Boothe's dissertation title is "Natural variation in biological and simulated central pattern generators," and he is advised by Dr. Avis Cohen.

June 11, 2007 Welcome to our Summer Interns!
Eleven undergraduate students will be participating in the NACS Summer Research Internship Program June 11 - August 3, 2007. Click on the following link for the names of our summer interns and their lab placements. read more >

June 03, 2007 NACS faculty host CRCNS Principal Investigators' Meeting
From June 3 - 5, The University of Maryland hosted the 2007 Principal Investigators' Meeting of the NSF-NIH Program on Collaborative Research in Computational Neuroscience (CRCNS). The meeting was organized by Cynthia Moss (Psychology), Timothy Horiuchi (ECE) and P.S. Krishnaprasad (ECE). read more >

May 23, 2007 Chen Chiu awarded a William Hodos Dissertation Fellowship
Chen Chiu is the recipient of a William Hodos Graduate Award for the 2007-2008 academic year. This award will provide one semester of support, including a stipend of $10,000.

May 23, 2007 Ron Goodman awarded a William Hodos Dissertation Fellowship
Ron Goodman is the recipient of a William Hodos Graduate Award for the 2007-2008 academic year. This award will provide one semester of support, including a stipend of $10,000. In addition to this award, Ron will also receive an additional semester of fellowship support from the Graduate School. This fellowship will provide a stipend of $10,000 and $400 to assist with the cost of health insurance.

May 16, 2007 Congrats to Mr. Youjun Wang for passing his dissertation defense!
Youjun Wang has successfully defended his dissertation and will receive his Ph.D. in Summer, 2007. Mr. Wang's thesis title is "The pharmacology and dynamics of light induced Ca signal in Limulus ventral photoreceptors," and he is advised by Dr. Richard Payne.

May 15, 2007 NACS To Offer Undergraduate Minor
NACS has received approval to offer an undergraduate minor in Neuroscience and Cognitive Science. The minor will be available beginning Fall 2008. Check back for more details.

May 10, 2007 NACS Professors Quinlan, Newman, & Israel granted tenure
Congrats to the following NACS faculty on their tenure promotions! Betsy Quinlan (Biology), Rochelle Newman (Hearing and Speech), and Michael Israel (English)

April 24, 2007 Christopher Glaze receives predoc traineeship from CEBH
Chris Glaze has been selected to receive an additional year of a predoctoral traineeship from the Training Program in Comparative and Evolutionary Biology of Hearing (CEBH) to work in the laboratory of Dr. Catherine Carr. The award is for $20,772 over 12 months.

April 23, 2007 David Poeppel has article in Nature Neuroscience
"The cortical organization of speech processing" by Gregory Hickok & David Poeppel appears in the Nature Neuroscience Reviews May 2007 Vol 8 No 5, p393 | doi:10.1038/nrn2113 Decades of research have not yet succeeded in definitively characterizing the neuroanatomy of speech processing. Hickok and Poeppel describe a dual-stream model of speech processing and discuss how this model can account for some of the field's paradoxical findings.

April 21, 2007 Congrats to Mr. Murat Aytekin for passing his dissertation defense!
Murat Aytekin successfully defended his dissertation and will receive his Ph.D. in May, 2007. Mr. Aytekin's thesis title is "Sound Localization by Bats," and he was advised by Dr. Cynthia Moss.

April 21, 2007 Chen Chiu awarded an Ann Wylie Dissertation Fellowship for 2007
The Fellowship includes a stipend, health insurance, and tuition remission for one semester to allow recipients to devote their full attention to their dissertation. Ms. Chiu will be honored at a May 8th reception.

April 21, 2007 Nachum Ulanovsky accepts faculty position at the Weizmann Institute
Dr. Ulanovsky will begin this fall as a Senior Scientist at the Weizmann Institute in Israel, researching Hippocampal neural activity in freely-crawling and freely-flying echolocating bats.

April 10, 2007 Jose Luis Contreras-Vidal receives funding from National Academies Keck Futures
Dr. Contreras-Vidal is a co-PI on Feedback Control for Smart Prosthetics: An Integrated Electrophysiological and Near-Infrared Methodology - $75,000 This project will produce insight into the neural mechanisms governing adaptation to sensory feedback from a prosthesis. The researchers will track brain activity while subjects perform simple object lifting tasks with a prosthesis that selectively provides tendon vibration (inducing joint motion percepts) and force feedback (unloading muscles in the upper arm). read more >

March 27, 2007 Sarah Helfinstein awarded NSF pre-doctoral fellowship
Sarah Helfinstein, a first year NACS student, was awarded a three year National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship Award. The award carries a stipend of $30,000 per year for three years and includes tuition. Dr. Nathan Fox (Human Development) is Ms. Helfinstein's advisor.

February 27, 2007 Drs. Nachum Ulanovsky and Cynthia Moss Have Nature Neuroscience Cover Story
A paper entitled, "Hippocampal cellular and network activity in freely moving echolocating bats" by Nachum Ulanovsky and Cynthia F. Moss appears in the February 2007 issue of Nature Neuroscience. read more >

February 27, 2007 The William Hodos Dissertation Fellowship
NACS is very pleased to announce the William Hodos Dissertation Fellowship, newly and aptly named. This fellowship will provide up to $15k dissertation year support for an outstanding NACS student. Contact Pam Komarek for more information: pkomarek@umd.edu or 301-405-8910.

January 26, 2007 Dr. Jose Luis Contreras-Vidal named member of NIH's Study Section
Jose L. Contreras-Vidal, associate professor of Kinesiology, has been named a member of the National Institutes of Health's Motor Function, Speech and Rehabilitation (MFSR) Study Section.

January 26, 2007 Dr. Rodolphe Gentili awarded postdoctoral fellowships from French Foundations
Dr. Rodolphe Gentili, under the direction of Associate Professor Jose L. Contreras-Vidal in the Department of Kinesiology, received postdoctoral fellowships from the Lavoiser Foundation and the Assocation Francaise Contre les Myopathies to pursue research on smart brain-computer interfaces.

January 19, 2007 Congrats to Mr. Bruce Swett for passing his dissertation defense!
Mr. Swett's thesis title is "The neural substrates of graphomotor sequence learning." He was advised by Dr. Jose Contreras-Vidal. Mr. Swett has accepted a two-year post doc position at NIDCD.