Award Abstract #0542013
The Temporal Dynamics of Learning

NSF Org:	SBE Directorate for Social, Behavioral & Economic Sciences
Initial Amendment Date:	September 23, 2006
Latest Amendment Date:	May 7, 2009
Award Number:	0542013
Award Instrument:	Cooperative Agreement
Program Manager:	J. Steven de Belle SBE Directorate for Social, Behavioral & Economic Sciences SBE Directorate for Social, Behavioral & Economic Sciences
Start Date:	September 15, 2006
Expires:	August 31, 2011 (Estimated)
Awarded Amount to Date:	$7938236
Investigator(s):	Garrison Cottrell gary@cs.ucsd.edu (Principal Investigator) Terrence Sejnowski (Co-Principal Investigator) Javier Movellan (Co-Principal Investigator) Andrea Chiba (Co-Principal Investigator) Daniel Feldman (Co-Principal Investigator)
Sponsor:	University of California-San Diego Office of Contract & Grant Admin La Jolla, CA 92093 858/534-0246
NSF Program(s):	SLC ACTIVITIES, SCIENCE OF LEARN CTRS- CENTERS
Field Application(s):	0116000 Human Subjects
Program Reference Code(s):	OTHR, 0000
Program Element Code(s):	H395, 7704, 7279, 7278

ABSTRACT

Along with its academic and corporate partners, UCSD will establish a multidisciplinary Center to study the temporal dynamics of learning, the Dynamic Learning Center, involving investigators from fields as diverse as cognitive science, machine learning and robotics, developmental and perceptual psychology, and neuroscience. The administrative location of the Center will be at the University of California, San Diego, with partner institutions, Rutgers University and Vanderbilt University and substantive participation from investigators at UC Berkeley, Brown, CMU, CU Boulder, Pittsburgh, Queensland, the Salk Institute, San Diego State University, Victoria, and Yale.

The intellectual merit of the Center will be its focus upon the role of time and timing in learning, at multiple time scales and in multiple systems. It is clear that these levels of description cannot be understood in isolation, or from only one disciplinary approach. The team proposes to integrate work in machine learning, social robotics, the neurobiology of learning and memory, electrophysiology, brain imaging, behavior, and theoretical neuroscience in order to develop a new, integrated view of the dynamics of learning at multiple time scales. The Center will be unique in its emphasis on research networks composed of interdisciplinary teams of scientists addressing common questions in the study of time and timing in learning. The broader impact of this proposal will be first, to develop novel training activities and cyberinfrastructure in order to make truly collaborative interdisciplinary research possible; second, to work with local schools on novel educational initiatives; and third, to develop new public outreach programs. Unlike typical training programs, the training activities will be aimed at senior scientists as well as students and junior scientists; and they will involve a range of vehicles, including intensive "bootcamps," internships, and summer schools. Center scientists and select classroom teachers will educate each other in order to achieve effective translation of the science to pertinent classroom initiatives. Translation to the classroom will be facilitated by the expertise of the Center's corporate partners in educational technology. The Center will recruit new undergraduate and graduate students, with the particular goal of increasing the breadth and diversity of the student population, through partnerships with Rutgers Newark and UCSD's charter school for low-income students, The Preuss School. The Center will provide internships for high school students; intensive workshops for approximately 80 inner-city high school students in the Reach for Tomorrow program each summer, and a summer workshop for teachers. The Center's research will be disseminated to the public through the medium of The Science Network, a web-based multi-media programming platform that will be a trusted destination for those concerned with science and its impact on society.

The center mode is essential to this enterprise, given the ambitious goal of creating a new science of the temporal dynamics of learning. Answering fundamental questions in this discipline will require technological support for a large group of committed scientists and teachers to incubate ideas, share data, share research tools, and theoretical advances. The Data Sharing Facility that will enable this interaction will become a model technology and software architecture for future collaborative science.

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