Call for Applications to the 2025 NEUROMORPHIC COGNITION ENGINEERING WORKSHOP

We are accepting applications to the 2025 Telluride Neuromorphic Cognition Engineering Workshop. The Workshop has taken place annually since 1995. It has been influential in shaping the field of neuromorphic engineering and serving as a forum connecting disciplines such as artificial intelligence, neuroscience, cognitive science, machine learning, robotics, computer vision, signal processing, and electrical engineering. 

Details of this year’s workshop are at https://sites.google.com/view/telluride-2025/home

IMPORTANT DATES FOR APPLICATION 

• Application Website Opens - 10. February, 2025

• Application Website Closes - 10. March, 2025

• Notification of Acceptance - 24. March, 2024

WORKSHOP GOALS:

Neuromorphic engineers design and fabricate artificial neural systems whose organizing principles are based on those of biological nervous systems. Over the past 30+ years, the neuromorphic engineering research community focused on the understanding of low-level sensory processing and systems infrastructure; efforts are now expanding to apply this knowledge and infrastructure to addressing higher-level problems in perception, cognition, and learning. In this 3-week intensive workshop, the mission is to promote interaction between senior and junior researchers; to educate new members of the community; to introduce new enabling fields and applications to the community; to promote ongoing collaborative activities emerging from the Workshop, and to promote a self-sustaining research field. 

FORMAT:

The three week summer workshop will include background lectures on systems and cognitive neuroscience (in particular sensory processing, learning and memory, motor systems, and attention), practical tutorials on emerging hardware, mobile robots, machine learning and AI, hands-on projects, and special interest groups. Participants are required to take part and possibly complete at least one of the proposed projects. They are furthermore encouraged to become involved in as many of the other activities proposed as interest and time allow. There will be two lectures in the morning that cover issues that are important to the community in general. Most of these lectures will be tutorials rather than detailed reports of current research. Invited speakers will give these lectures. Projects and interest groups meet in the afternoons and after dinner. The workshop focuses on topics related to perception, action, and cognition; and projects this year will focus on developments in robotics, learning, audiomotor processing, and computational/experimental aspects of systems that can accomplish goals with limited human intervention. 

2025 TOPIC AREAS:

The four topic areas for this year's workshop are:

1. AUD25: Auditory Decoding 

TA Leaders: Claire Pelofi (NYU) and Malcolm Slaney (Stanford) 

2. LT25:  Language and thought

TA Leaders: Steve Abreu (University of Groningen), Nicole Dumont (Univ. of Waterloo) 

3. NIC25: Neuromorphic integrated circuits
   TA Leaders: Jason Eshraghian (UC Santa Cruz), Shantanu Chakrabartty (WashU), Andreas Andreou (Johns Hopkins) 

4. NPC25: Neural perception and control  

TA Leaders: Michael Furlong (National Research Council of Canada, Univ. of Waterloo), ReJ aka Renaldas Zioma (Independent Researcher) 

Details on the topic areas can be found at

https://sites.google.com/view/telluride-2025/topic-areas-2025 

LOCATION AND ARRANGEMENTS:

The Workshop will take place in the small town of Telluride, 2667m (9000 ft) high in southwest Colorado, about 6 6-hour drive from Denver (350 miles). There is a Telluride airport and several small airports (e.g., Montrose) close to Telluride. All facilities within the High School building are fully accessible to participants with disabilities. Participants will be housed in condominiums within walking distance of the school. Participants are expected to share condominiums.

The workshop is intended to be very informal and hands-on. Participants are not required to have previous experience in mixed signal VLSI circuit design, computational or machine vision, systems-level neurophysiology, or brain modeling at the systems level. However, we strongly encourage active researchers with relevant backgrounds from academia, industry, and national laboratories to apply, in particular, if they are prepared to work on specific projects, talk about their work, or bring demonstrations to Telluride (e.g., robots, chips, software). Wireless internet access will be provided. Technical staff present throughout the Workshop will assist with software and hardware issues. We encourage participants to bring along their personal laptops and relevant hardware.

No cars are required. Given the town's small size, we recommend that you do not rent a car. Beautiful mountains surround Telluride, so we recommend bringing hiking boots, warm clothes, rain gear, and a backpack; the town park has a swimming pool, beach volleyball, and tennis courts.

Unless otherwise arranged with one of the organizers, we expect participants to stay for the entire duration of this three-week workshop.

FINANCIAL ARRANGEMENTS:

Unless otherwise requested, the workshop will cover your accommodations and facilities costs for the 3 week duration as part of the registration fees. 

Registration Fees: The registration fee is 2000 USD; it partially covers the workshop cost of lodging and facilities for the 3-week workshop. The fees are expected from all participants at the time of acceptance. Each participant is responsible for their own travel to and from the workshop.

We will award five scholarships for the registration fees (2000 USD)  funded by our NSF grant. Applicants are encouraged to indicate any financial need in their application. 

Accommodations: The registration fee provides a bed in a shared condominium, typically a shared room in a condo with other workshop participants and faculty. Upgrades to a private room or condo will cost extra and will be based on availability. Note that Telluride is very expensive, and workshop housing is strictly limited to what the workshop has contracted. 

The 2025 Workshop on Neuromorphic Engineering is sponsored by the National Science Foundation and is supported by the Institute of Neuromorphic Engineering, University of Maryland - College Park, Institute for Neuroinformatics – University of Zurich and ETH Zurich, Johns Hopkins University, Boston 

University, University of Western Sydney, the Salk Institute, Zurich University of Applied Sciences and private sponsorship of Tobi Delbruck and Renaldas Zioma.

Who is eligible to apply?

Applicants should be at the level of graduate (PhD) students or above (i.e. postdoctoral fellows, faculty, research and engineering staff, and equivalent positions in industry and national laboratories). We encourage women and minority candidates to apply.

Anyone interested in proposing or discussing specific projects should contact the appropriate topic leaders directly.

HOW TO APPLY:

The application website is at https://academicjobsonline.org/ajo/jobs/29701 .

Application information needed:

1. Contact email address.

2. First name, Last name, Affiliation, valid e-mail address.

3. Curriculum Vitae (two pages maximum)

4. Maximum one-page (minimal font size 11) summary of background and interests relevant to the workshop, including ideas for workshop projects and which topic areas you would most likely join. Please be concise and to the point, use AI tools sparingly, and don’t be wordy.  

5. Two letters of recommendation: brief, few-paragraph text-only support letters are preferred. The letters should be uploaded directly by the referees.  

Selection Criteria:

The organizing committee will evaluate applications according to the merits of the applicant's scientific qualifications and background, the strength of the proposed alignment to one or more topic areas, and the extent to which the applicant contributes a unique voice to a collaborative community committed to diverse viewpoints in all forms, including gender, race, affiliations, seniority, etc. Due to high interest in the workshop, we expect a competitive selection process, so please highlight in your application any information that clarifies how you can uniquely contribute to the success of our workshop and the neuromorphic research community.

Applicants will be notified by E-mail.

Questions can be addressed to Yulia Sandamirskaya (yulia.sandamirskaya@zhaw.ch) and Claire Pelofi (claire.pelofi@gmail.com).