T

he Department of Language Science will host a week-long Summer School on Computational Cognitive Modeling for Language, to be held August 1-5, 2022 at UC Irvine. This summer school is for postdocs, graduate students, advanced undergraduate students, and other researchers in cognitive science, linguistics, and related fields. We will immerse students for five days in four daily tutorials:

1) Computational modeling of phonetic learning and adaptation using probabilistic inference approaches, 
2) Bayesian models of pragmatic language use, 
3) Computational models of online language processing using information theory, and 
4) Modern neural-network-based machine learning as applied to natural language in the field of natural language processing (NLP).

We will teach the theory behind these approaches as well as the practicalities of applying and testing them using datasets and experiments. Students will complete conceptual and/or programming exercises in class.  

Important Dates 

Application deadline - May 23, 2022
Application results announced - June 1, 2022
Summer School - August 1-5, 2022

Tutorials

All students will participate in four tutorials, led by our own faculty:

- Computational Models of Learning and Adaptation 
- Probabilistic Language Understanding 
- Information-Theoretic Models of Language Processing 
- Machine Learning Models for Natural Language Processing 

Invited Speakers

We will also have a series of evening talks and panel discussions with leaders in the field, talking about controversial questions and potential directions for the field of computational cognitive science.

Funding

The Department of Language Science will provide funding up to $500 for students' travel to and from Irvine, and will provide them with lodging in UC Irvine's campus housing for the duration of the summer school.

Application Information

The summer school is open to postdocs, graduate students, advanced undergraduate students, and other researchers in cognitive science, linguistics, and related fields. Courses will be taught using either Python, R, or WebPPL. We do not assume knowledge of any of these languages, but we do assume basic programming proficiency in some language coming into the summer school. If you do not have any programming background, please work through Lectures 1-6 of the MIT Introduction to Computer Science and Programming in Python Course.

The application form is available here.