The CogSci BLR 2023 Meet-up is a one of its kind local two-day event that will be conducted in Bengaluru, India in conjunction with the annual conference of Cognitive Science Society: CogSci2023 scheduled to place in Sydney, Australia this year. We aim to bring together passionate researchers, professionals, and enthusiasts in the field of cognitive science & allied sciences. This event serves as a platform for professionals and academics to exchange ideas, discuss cutting-edge research, and explore the multidisciplinary nature of cognitive science in and around India. Furthermore, we believe that this event would be a stepping stone in diversifying the area of research and academia by providing a forum for underrepresented academics on the Indian Subcontinent.
Expert Speakers
Dr. Madhavi Rangaswamy
(In-person)
Dr. Madhavi Rangaswamy completed her postgraduate training in Neurophysiology and her PhD in Mental Health & Neurosciences from NIMHANS, Bangalore in the year 2000. Her primary field of interest is Human Electrophysiology and Cognitive Neuroscience. She has completed postdoctoral work at Henri Begleiter Neurodynamics Laboratory, Department of Psychiatry, SUNY Downstate Medical Center, Brooklyn NY and was an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry until 2013. She has also trained at a fellowship program in fMRI at MGH, Harvard, USA. She has co-written three NIH grants that were successful funded and is an Associate Editor at Frontiers for Cognitive Neuroscience. She has published over 50 research articles in journals and books and her work is widely cited. Presently, Dr Madhavi Rangaswamy is a Professor at the Department of Psychology at CHRIST (Deemed to be University) since 2014 and she teaches topics in cognitive neuroscience and behaviour, alongside being the Co-ordinator of Cognition, Affect and Behavior (CAB) Lab. She has been involved in research funded by DST-CSRI, MRC-ICMR funded cVEDA project (2016 – 2019) which was one of the largest Indian studies on psychiatric vulnerabilities.
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Research interests: (1) Brain dysfunction in Alcoholism and related disorders, (2) understanding risk taking and impulsivity and their effects on brain function in offspring of alcoholics and (3) Genetic correlates of vulnerability to Alcoholism
Dr. Vishnu Sreekumar
(Online)
Dr. Vishnu is a cognitive neuroscientist and directs the Memory and Neurodynamics (MANDA) lab at IIIT Hyderabad which (1) uses extended-reality techniques to study human memory and event cognition in naturalistic settings; (2) investigates the role of language in memory and employs natural language processing tools applied to narrative texts and other documents to understand human memory; and (3) analyzes open datasets of neural recordings to provide neural tests of theories of human memory.He completed his Ph.D from Ohio State Univeristy, Columbus, OH. He enjoys thinking about human behavior and the brains and environments that enable it, with a special focus on the dynamics of this complex system.
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Research interests: Cognitive neuroscience, memory and learning, dynamical systems
Dr. SP Arun
(In-person)
SP Arun received his B.Tech from IIT Bombay, and MS & PhD from Johns Hopkins University, all in Electrical Engineering. He completed his postdoctoral research at Carnegie Mellon University and joined as faculty at the Centre for Neuroscience, Indian Institute of Science (IISc Bangalore). All along the way, he read too much science fiction for his own good, got fascinated by why robots still cannot solve the most basic tasks that our brains solve so effortlessly, and began studying sensation and perception in the brain. His lab, the Vision Lab @IISc, studies how the brain solves vision by investigating behavior and brain imaging in humans, by investigating behavior and neural activity in monkeys and by comparing vision in brains and machine algorithms.
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Research interests: Visual perception, object recognition
Dr. K.M. Sharika
(Online)
Dr. K.M. Sharika is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Cognitive
Science at IIT Kanpur. She received her undergraduate degree in
Biochemistry from Sri Venkateswara College, University of Delhi. She went on to do her Master's and then PhD in Neuroscience at National Brain Research Centre, Gurgaon. She did her post-doctoral work with Dr. Michael Platt, first at Duke University and then at University of Pennsylvania, USA. In her research at the Social and Affective Cognition Lab, Sharika is interested in understanding the neural mechanisms underlying social and affective cognition, combining behavioral, physiological, pharmacological & computational approaches. She is a recipient of the DBT Ramalingaswami Re-Entry fellowship.
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Research interests: Social and Affective Neuroscience, Planning and Control of Action
Early Career Researcher's Spotlight Talks
Dr. Kohinoor Darda
Art in context: the impact of sociocultural information.
Dr. Kohinoor holds a PhD in Social/Cognitive Neuroscience from Bangor University, UK, and has worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Glasgow (Glasgow, UK), Macquarie University (Sydney, Australia), and University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, PA, USA). She is the founder-director of ARISA (Advancement and Research in the Sciences and Arts) Foundation (Pune, India), a not-for-profit and social work organisation that bridges the arts and sciences to advance academic research, preserve tangible and intangible cultural heritage, and promote social change.
Through her research, Kohinoor investigates how the brain and mind make sense of art and each other in the social world. She is a trained classical dancer (Bharatanatyam and Kuchipudi) and integrates her background in the arts with her interest in neuroscience in both her research and choreographic endeavours.
Outside of the dance studio and research lab, Kohinoor enjoys social interactions with fictional characters in novels, and underwater aesthetic experiences when scuba diving.
Shubham Pandey
Harnessing the power of Positive Emotions for a better Cognitive control in our daily life.
Shubham Pandey is a Research Associate at the IIT Bombay. He submitted his PhD just two months ago, where he delved into the captivating realm of emotional information and its profound impact on cognitive control. Blending a diverse academic background, Shubham possesses a Bachelor's degree in Mathematics, a Master's degree in Cognitive Science, and a PhD in Psychology. Furthermore, he boasts an extensive repertoire of programming and computational skills. Driven by a relentless curiosity, Shubham harnesses his multidisciplinary approach to unravel the intricacies of human cognition. His research interests transcend traditional boundaries, encompassing topics such as emotion contagion, emotion inference, information flow, narratives, collective memory, as well as Alzheimer's and dementia. A staunch advocate of open science practices, he consistently champions transparency and collaboration within the scientific community. Outside lab, Shubham can be found playing piano, writing blogs, and creating science content.
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Aishwarya Iyer
Open & Collaborative Science for Early Career Researchers in India
Aishwarya Iyer is the Co-Assistant Director for the Community Building & Network Expansion committee at the Psychological Science Accelerator, a global lab network of psychological scientists. She is a 1st year PhD candidate at the Dept of Psychology at Christ University, interested in how people perceive climate change as a risk and what they do to act pro-environmentally.
Schedule
All attendees, presenters and speakers are requested to strictly abide by the Code of Conduct devised and enforced by Cognitive Science Society throughout the event. Read more here.
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The countdown has begun!
Event Details
As CogSci 2023 Bengaluru Meet-up is a first of its kind event, we hope to accommodate everyone remotely and in-person as much as possible. A week before the event, the schedule will be updated for this upcoming gathering which encompasses an invited speaker's session, semi-formal blitz talks, a roundtable session, and an opportunity for networking.
Who
Where
IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT
We are delighted to inform that we are offering partial travel grant award to underrepresented students/professionals (eg: people with disabilities, individuals from the LGBTQIA+ community, lower-income backgrounds, first-gen students, coming from underrepresented regions in India) to participate in the event in-person. For more details and to apply, visit this page.
We will also be providing cash prizes and certificates to the attendee's choice best blitz presentation to the top three most voted presentations.
This meet-up is open for anyone interested in cognitive science and allied sciences. We welcome undergraduate, postgraduate students, early career researchers (PhD/Post-doc), post-bacc cognitive enthusiasts and academicians in cognitive sciences/psychology those involved in academia and in industry to join us in this vibrant hybrid event. This is a free two day event taking place hybridly.
The event will take place hybridly on 21st July 2023, Friday. The in-person event will take place in The Capitol Hotel, Bengaluru and remotely via Google Meet. On the 22nd July 2023, Saturday, the event will take place fully remotely via Google Meet. We will require RSVP for presenting and attending the meet and only those that confirm will be shared more details via email nearing the event’s date.