Estes Fund Supports Training in Mathematical, Computational Modeling

The William K. and Katherine W. Estes Fund has awarded grants for three programs offering advanced training in mathematical and computational modeling for psychological science. The Estes Fund, which is overseen by APS and the Psychonomic Society, invited proposals for summer school or workshop programs providing training on topics or methods in an area of rapid recent progress that may aim to serve trainees as well as established researchers.

The three funded programs are:

• “Contemporary Neural Network Models: Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, and Cognition” — James L. McClelland, a cognitive psychologist at Stanford University, will organize a five-day workshop examining contemporary neural networks, machine learning, artificial intelligence, and cognition. The workshop will take place on August 8–9, 2016, in Philadelphia.
• “Computational and Mathematical Modelling of Cognition” — Stephan Lewandowsky, a cognitive scientist and professor of psychology at the School of Experimental Psychology at the University of Bristol, United Kingdom, will serve as the lead organizer of a 12-day summer school project in Bolzano, Italy, on computational and mathematical modeling of cognition. This summer program will take place on July 12–24, 2016.
• “Neuroscience and Cognition” — Andrew Heathcote, a cognitive scientist at the University of Tasmania and Newcastle in Australia, is the lead organizer for a five-day workshop on cognition and neuroscience, which aims to analyze data brought by workshop attendees, perform model-based analysis, and develop new mathematical models for cognitive processing architectures. This 5-day workshop will take place on November 7–11, 2016, in Boston in conjunction with the Psychonomic Society’s 57th Annual Meeting.

The Estes Fund was created to extend the legacy of Bill Estes, who served as the Founding Editor of Psychological Science and who established a long legacy of psychological science research through his contributions to and advancements in the field.

The Fund supports a variety of activities aimed at strengthening methodology in mathematical, quantitative, and experimental psychology and related areas, including the annual Estes Fund talk at the APS Convention. The 2016 lecture, “Translating Clark Hull’s Learning Theory into Estes’ Statistical Theory: A 60-Year Retrospective,” will be presented by Gordon Bower. Past lectures have included “This Is Your Mind on Technology” in 2015 and “From Principles of Cognitive Science to MOOCs” in 2014.

The Estes Fund is overseen by Steering Committee members Jeffrey Zacks, Washington University in St. Louis, Chair; Roberta Klatzky, Carnegie Mellon University; Gordon D. Logan, Vanderbilt University; and Janet Metcalfe, Columbia University. The committee has reissued the Request for Proposals and the next deadline is September 1, 2017.