The Rumelhart Prize Reaches a Decade; $1 Million to Understand How We Understand

PORTLAND, Ore., Aug. 11 /PRNewswire/ -- The Cognitive Science Society is marking a decade of recognizing significant contemporary contributions to the theoretical foundations of human cognition with the David E. Rumelhart Prize. To date, $1 million has been awarded to researchers who have made the greatest contributions to determining how our minds work. The first 10 award recipients will participate in a symposium at "CogSci 2010: Cognition in Flux," identifying what they take to be the most important question about the mind that remains to be answered. The conference is taking place August 12 – 14 in Portland, Ore.

"This recognition of scientific accomplishment is akin to a Nobel or Pulitzer for those studying minds and how they work," said Dr. Robert Goldstone, Rumelhart Prize committee chair and director of the Cognitive Science Program at Indiana University. "We're seeing unprecedented advances in the field, and examples of the impact of cognitive science on our daily lives are all around us. How banks assess credit worthiness, funds select investments, machines assist in exploration, children learn, people interact via social media and how society handles increasing amounts of data are all aspects of the human experience influenced by cognitive science."  

Dr. James L. McClelland, Stanford University psychology professor and the 10th Rumelhart Prize recipient, is delivering the keynote address at this year's conference. McClelland and his collaborators established an alternative to the symbolic theory of mind by building computer models of learning and intelligence that are inspired by what we know about how brains work.

"It's an honor to be recognized by the Society with a prize named for David Rumelhart, an esteemed scientist with whom I closely collaborated some years back on modeling human information processing," said McClelland. "Cognitive science has achieved tremendous progress in helping to understand how we think, how we learn, how we perceive, how we communicate and how we remember. There's much more to be done, and I look forward to raising unanswered questions with my fellow Prize recipients about the supreme achievements of mind in creating magnificent works of art and achieving breakthroughs in science."

During CogSci 2010, the 11th $100,000 Rumelhart Prize recipient will be announced and introduced.

About the Cognitive Science Society

The Cognitive Science Society, Inc. is a non-profit professional organization that brings together researchers from many fields who hold a common goal: understanding the nature of the human mind. The Society promotes scientific interchange among researchers in disciplines comprising the field of Cognitive Science, including Artificial Intelligence, Linguistics, Anthropology, Psychology, Neuroscience, Philosophy and Education.

About the Rumelhart Prize

The David E. Rumelhart Prize is awarded annually to an individual or collaborative team making a significant, contemporary contribution to the theoretical foundations of human cognition. The prize is named for David E. Rumelhart, a significant contributor to the formal analysis of human cognition, working primarily within the frameworks of mathematical psychology, symbolic artificial intelligence and parallel distributed processing. It consists of a certificate, a citation of the awardee's contribution and a monetary award of $100,000. The prize is sponsored by the Robert J. Glushko and Pamela Samuelson Foundation.

SOURCE Cognitive Science Society