IIT Mandi iHub, HCL foundation organise winter school on cognitive modeling

NEW DELHI: Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Mandi- iHub, a technology innovation hub and HCL Foundation organised the fourth edition of winter school on cognitive modelling in hybrid mode at the Institute's campus.

The winter school was a three-day event where speakers from IIT Mandi, IIT Delhi, IIT Roorkee along with international speakers from the University of Groningen, Stanford University, University of Waterloo, and Carnegie Mellon University trained students on practice in cognitive modelling. The event was sponsored by Hospimedica group of companies, New Delhi.

The primary objective of this event was to provide a forum to train students, researchers and industry professionals in the area of cognitive modelling, expose participants to state-of-the-art models in basic and applied domains and involve international researchers to present their work at the event.

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The winter school had sessions on understanding various tools used in the creation of cognitive models including Nengo (neural simulator), PyIBL (used to model human decisions from experience), functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and neurocognitive modeling. Other sessions discussed topics like stroke diagnosis, drift-diffusion models, introduction to PRIMs, and deep learning models on EEG analysis, among others.

The event provided a platform for expert speakers from different parts of the world to come together and share their knowledge with the participants in both offline and online modes. This allowed the participants to directly approach experts in the field. This year, over 75 participants joined the event from all across India. Among the speakers, Marieke van Vugt from the University of Groningen attended the winter school in person at the IIT Mandi campus while others joined virtually.

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Speaking during the event, IIT Mandi, associate professor, S chool of Computing and Electrical Engineering, Varun Dutt, said: “ This 4th edition of Winter School was like a dream come true as it provided participants the diverse knowledge in areas like the drift-diffusion models, mindfulness, meditation, neuro-scientific aspects of the brain, and topics like ACT-R (adaptive control of thought—rational) and their application in real life. These topics are important for cognitive science and human-computer interaction areas.”