[visionlist] Summer semester short course on "Understanding biological vision" in Beijing, July 1-12 2013

There will be a 2-week summer semester short course on "Understanding
biological vision, theory, data, and models" July 1-12, in Tsinghua
University, Beijing. This course will be mainly taught by Li Zhaoping
(see www.cs.ucl.ac.uk/staff/Zhaopoing.Li/). See
http://cns.med.tsinghua.edu.cn/summercourse2013/ for more details.

What:

This course is the updated version of the course last summer. It
introduces neural mechanisms and cognitive behaviors in biological
vision (particularly human or primate vision). It emphasizes
understanding the principles behind biological vision, and introduces
computational models. The predictions of the theories and models are
compared with or tested by experimental (physiological/psychological)
data. The topics includes visual encoding (neural mechanisms,
principles, and their modeling), visual attentional selection (neural
mechanisms, cognitive phenomena, models/theories and their experimental
tests), and (more briefly) visual perception/recognition (mechanism,
phenomena, models, and perspectives).

Course materials will be based on detailed lecture notes provided by the
lecturers. This website gives a draft course syllabus. This website
gives a glimpse of some likely topics in the course. Lectures will be
mainly in English (Chinese explanations/answers to questions will be
available when requested).

Where:

The lectures will be in Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, and exact
classroom will be announced later

When:

During every weekday in July 1-12, 2013, about 3 hours (usually spread
out throughout the day) will be devoted to formal lectures/tutorials.
Additional activities, such as discussions, seminars, exercise/homework
workshops, will be organized informally based on the feedback and
requests from students attending the course.

Lecture time: Every Monday – Friday, July 1-12th.

Lecture 1: 9:30-10:20
Lecture 2: 10:40-11:30
Lecture 3: 16:00 – 16:50

Homework club/seminar/tutorial time: 1:30 pm – 3:30 pm

There can also be other self-organized time for further study.

Who:

The course is organized by Li Zhaoping (the main lecturer) , and
Tsinghua University Medical school. There may be additional invited
lecturers to be announced later.

Intended students/course pre-requisite:

Students should have learned linear algebra, probability theory and
statistical methods. Students should know how to do programming. It will
be useful to learn MATLAB programming ahead of the course. Knowledge in
biology, neuroscience, and psychology is not necessary but are helpful.
Skills in differential equations, dynamic systems, signal processing are
a plus, but much of the course can be learned without these skills
before the start of the course. This course is suitable for students
with physical science background (physics/engineering/math/computer
science) interested in biological visual mechanisms, principles, and
phenomena (e.g., those with computer vision background are suitable). It
is also suitable for those with biological vision science background to
learn computational approaches.

Who can take the course:

Tsinghua University students can take the course for credit. Extra
seating space in the lecture room can accommodate students from outside
Tsinghua university to take (or audit) the course without credit (from
Tsinghua University). For organizational purpose, each non-Tsinghua
student must register (please click here to register) to be admitted.
If the number of non-Tsinghua registrants exceeds spare seating
capacity, the non-Tsinghua (registered) registrants will be selected
based on their registration date (first come first serve) and the match
between the student's interest/background skills and the course
content. The selection/admission decision is solely by the course
organizer and administration.

Payment:

Each registered student from outside Tsinghua will be informed within 3
weeks of the registration whether there is a seat for him/her for the
course, and if there is a seat, then the registrant should pay a
registration fee (about 300 RMB or 50 US dollars for students, and 500
RMB or 85 US dollars for non-students, payment method and deadline will
be given) to be admitted to the course. No seat will be reserved for
the registrant if the fee is not paid within the time period specified
in the
payment method. The registration fee is for administrative uses, and is
not refundable. This course does not arrange travel, board, and
accommodations for the participants. This link (link) provides some
information about travel and accommodation. Students from overseas are
likely to need visa to enter China, please check Chinese consulate in
your country for information. Because the course will last only two
weeks, a tourist visa is recommended.


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