How are we able to do the things we do?
That question is at the core of research project that will be undertaken by graduate students at Brown University. It’s a project made possible because of a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant secured by a team of researchers, led by Mark E. Johnson, an associate professor of cognitive and linguistic sciences. It is a project that will probe deeply into the human mind, in search of ways to mirror human behavior through high technology. It is a project aimed at adding a more human touch to the world of computers.
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“The technology is around to feed images into computers, but it is difficult for the computers to understand those images,” said Johnson. “We don’t know how to build a computer that can understand what we do. Perhaps if we can understand how human beings can do that, we can build computers that can do that better.”
The NSF grant is worth $1.7 million to Brown University and the program will run over a period of three years. It will be used to train graduate students for research into how humans and machines compute information. Brown University was selected as one of 17 NSF grant recipients from an original field of 600 applicants. Johnson said he was “quite honored” by the selection.
The scientific community at large, said Johnson, will undoubtedly follow the progress of the research.
“There is inherent scientific interest in understanding who we are and how it is we can do the things we can do so well,” said Johnson.
The grant establishes the Integrative Graduate Education and Research Training (IGERT) program for research that combines the disciplines of cognitive and linguistic sciences, applied mathematics and computer science. Through the program, students will be able to devise experiments to show how humans see the world, hear or make decisions. They will look at how mathematical models can depict these processes and study computational processes that may also carry out these tasks.
Brown University is among 17 institutions to receive IGERT grants totaling $40.5 million over five years. Johnson, the grant’s principal investigator, said that the grant will “enrich the educational experiences at Brown.”
“We expect graduate students to be going off in new directions with their research,” said Johnson.
Students are eligible for the program, titled “Learning and Action in the Face of Uncertainty: Cognitive, Computational and Statistical Approaches,” when they are accepted to any of the three departments. Students accepted into the program will receive multiyear support packages covering tuition and a stipend. The program will support the research of at least a dozen graduate students for the length of the grant or more students for shorter periods of time, said Johnson. Graduate students will be considered for the program by an admissions committee made up of representatives from all three departments.
The grant will also fund creation of a half-dozen new graduate-level courses geared toward interdisciplinary study, as well as new equipment — mainly computers — to carry out research. In addition, graduate student instruction will be enriched by two new post-doctoral scholars who perform interdisciplinary research, and a series of lectures by visiting scholars. After three years, the NSF will consider a two-year, $1 million extension in funding for the program. Additional funding will be contingent on available funds and progress of the project, according to the NSF. Brown is supporting the program by covering the cost of a portion of the students’ tuition.
A native of Sydney, Australia, Johnson has been at Brown University since 1988. This program, he said, is especially exciting. It incorporates the research and expertise of three disciplines — cognitive and linguistic sciences, applied mathematics and computer science — and brings them together. And it studies a truly fascinating subject, human beings.
“We are extremely adaptive creatures,” said Johnson. “We can deal with uncertainty in a way that is hard for computers and machines.”
Johnson is approaching the project with a sense of caution. He does not want expectations to be too high. There are no promises, he said.
“The proof of the pudding will be if we can build devicesif the science is correct, it should let us build machines that should behave in more human-like ways,” Johnson said.
It is going to be a challenge.
“We can’t yet build a robot that can walk through a simple environment like a human can,” said Johnson.
But they are going to try.
