An unconventional interdisciplinary hands-on workshop
The neuromorphic engineering community, composed of neurbiologists, neuroscientists, computer scientists, electronic engineers, roboticists and theoreticians have been trying to understand neural processing and computation from different perspectives. During the course of this workshop each of us tries to solve the complex puzzle of the brain by identifying the relevant functions and features of each piece of the puzzle. The boundaries of the computational puzzle pieces, however, remain blurry and the puzzle itself is incomplete.
To make progress in this challenge we bring together experts from the different disciplines and organize open and frank brainstorming sessions in the mornings and hands-on hacking and experiment sessions in the afternoons. In the evenings and nights we break off to smaller focused free-form discussions or carry on until late night with the hands-on epxeriments and work-groups.
The workshop is open to everybody, but since resources are limited, we will accept only a limited number of registrations, on a first-come first-serve basis.
Workshop details
In this workshop we will host a highly interactive and open discussion forum in which power-point presentations and beamer-slides are banned. Open discussion and brain-storming sessions will be interleaved with hands-on projects and work-groups. We encourage all participants to bring to the workshop their SW/HW tools in order to propose hands-on projects.
The workshop is organized by the Institute of Neuroinformatics, University of Zurich and ETH Zurich, and by iniForum
The workshop will be held at the Hotel dei Pini, in Alghero, Sardinia, Italy. Note that room reservations for workshop participants should only be made via the workshop registration page in order to use the "full-board" option (room + breakfast + lunch + dinner) with discounted prices.
Invited discussion-leaders
As of previous years we were extremely lucky to gather world-leading experts to provide us with insights of their daily challenges and stimulate discussions on topics ranging from Development, Action & Movement to Large-scal Processing and Learning. Here is teaser for you. For more details see the schedule:
- From one cell to the brain: Henry Kennedey & Denis Jabaudon (beginning. 1st week)
- Sensing the outside world: Matthew Diamond & Adam Kepecs (mid 1st week)
- From stimuli to a concrete decision: Valerio Mante & Barry Richmond (end 1st Week)
- How to process all of this: Christian Mayr & Georg Keller (beginning 2nd Week)
- Learning stable representation of the world: Jean-Pascal Pfister & Matthew Cook (end 2nd Week)
These and many more topics and speakers are waiting for you at Capo Caccia.
Confirmed invited discussion leaders
| Name | Dates |
| Henry Kennedy | 23.04. - 05.05. |
| Ryad Benosman | 25.04. - 02.05. |
| Bruno Averbeck | 23.04. - 28.04. |
| Barry Richmond | 23.04 - 28.04. |
| Olivier Bertrand | 25.04. - 05.05. |
| Georg Keller | 30.04. - 05.05. |
| Emre Neftci | 23.04. - 05.05. |
| Chiara Bartolozzi | 23.04. - 05.05. |
| Florian Engert | 24.04. - 02.05. |
| Matthew Cook | 23.04. - 05.05. |
| Denis Jabaudon | 23.04. - 26.04. |
| Valerio Mante | 27.04. - 04.05. |
| Richard George | 30.04. - 05.05. |
| Adam Kepecs | 23.04. - 28.04. |
| Tobias Heed | 26.04. - 27.04. |
| Andre van Schaik | 23.04. - 05.05. |
| And many more... | see schedule for more details |
Workshop Schedule
The CapoCaccia Workshop schedule is typically organized around a "problem of the day" where one or moresession chairs organizes and moderates a discussion session around a theme central to the topic of this workshop.
These sessions are not 45min one-way presentations. Slides and power-point presentations are banned. Rather these sessions are frank and open discussions that sould involve all the participants, as much as possible.
We will provide flip-charts and a digitizing tablet to draw on (and eventually project pictures and data if absolutely necessary). The schedule will evolve and change very dynamically, on a daily or even hourly basis.
We will update the schedule frequently (e.g. on an hourly basis) and populate it with events, as participants volunteer to discuss about the topics listed. Please remember that this is not a talk-shop where people simply present their latest results with power-point slides.
A typical morning session day
- Breakfast (7:30 - 9:00)
- 1st morning session (9:00 - 10:30) with intro/tutorial on the "problem of the day"
- Coffee break (10:30 - 11:00)
- 2nd morning session (11:00 - 12:30) with open discussion on the "problem of the day"
- Lunch break (12:30 - 14:00)
- Afternoon session (14:00 - 17:00) with hands-on projects and work-groups
- Sports break (17:00 - 19:00)
- Evening session (19:00 - 20:00) with topic discussion-groups
- Night (from 21:30 on) with hands-on projects and work-groups
A typical afternoon session day
- Breakfast (7:30 - 9:00)
- Morning session (9:00 - 12:30) with hands-on projects and work-groups
- Lunch break (12:30 - 13:30)
- 1st afternoon session (13:30 - 15:00) with intro/tutorial on the "problem of the day"
- Coffee break (15:00 - 15:30)
- 2nd afternoon session (15:30 - 17:00) with open discussion on the "problem of the day"
- Sports break (17:00 - 19:00)
- Evening session (19:00 - 20:00) with topic discussion-groups
- Night (from 21:30 on) with hands-on projects and work-groups
The daily breaks and social events include:
- Breakfast is open from 7:30 to 9:00 every morning
- Coffee breaks are scheduled from 10:30 to 11:00 (morning session) / 15:00 to 15:30 (afternoon session)
- Lunch break is from 12:30 to 14:00
- Sports + Happy hour: from 17:00 to 19:00 participants are "forced" to take a social/sports break. As incentive, there will be a happy hour period from 18:00 to 19:00 in which the workshop will cover 2 EUR per drink (for as long as the budget lasts).
- Dinner is served from 19:30 to 21:30