MARCS Monday Meeting (MMM) 26th August

MARCS Monday Meeting (MMM) Room BA-3.G.55, Bankstown campus

Join us at the next MMM featuring a talk on PowerApps by Johnson Chen and updates from International Congress of Phonetic Sciences conference attendees. This will be followed by an afternoon colloquium with invited speakers, Professor  Emily Cross and Associate Professor Richard Ramsey from the Department of Psychology (Human Neuroscience), Macquarie University.

PROGRAM

11am - MARCS Monday Meeting

Topic: Build Business Apps Fast with PowerApps
Speaker: Johnson Cheng

Abstract: PowerApps is a relatively new member of the Microsoft Office 365 suite. It can be used to build web and mobile apps for an organisation. This talk will give a brief introduction of what PowerApps can do and its limitations. We will use an example to demonstrate how to use PowerApps to build a mobile application.

Topic: Event update from the International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS) 2019 
Speakers: Dr Pelle Söderström, Dr Mark Antoniou and Juqiang Chen

12-1pm – Break

1pm – MARCS Afternoon Colloquium

Topic: Perceiving and Interacting with Social Agents: Insights from Brain and Behaviour
Speakers: Professor Emily Cross and Associate Professor Richard Ramsey

Abstract: The ability to perceive and interact with others occurs in an effortless manner, but is underpinned by complex cognitive and neural processes. In these two talks, we review recent evidence from behavioural and brain imaging studies that uncover deeper insight into social cognition and brain function. Using examples from action learning, imitation, person perception and theory of mind paradigms, as well as work comparing social perception of humans compared to robots, we highlight the importance of considering distributed and connected brain circuits when aiming to understand how we perceive and interact with others in a social world.

Biography - Professor Emily Cross:  Professor Cross completed a BA at Pomona College (USA), an MSc at the University of Otago (NZ), and a PhD at Dartmouth College (USA). Through her work in the Social Brain in Action Laboratory, she addresses how experience shapes perception and is especially interested in how we learn new skills by watching others, how action expertise is manifest in the brain, the neural foundations of art appreciation/neuroaesthetics, and our social interactions with artificial agents. Emily was an assistant professor at Radboud University Nijmegen/Donders Institute in the Netherlands (2010-2015), followed by appointments as lecturer/SL/Professor of Social Neuroscience at Bangor University (2011-2018), and moved to the University of Glasgow as a Professor of Social Robotics in 2018.

​Biography - Associate Professor Richard Ramsey: Associate Professor Ramsey completed his BSc and PhD at the University of Birmingham (UK). Originally from Leeds, West Yorkshire, he grew up with a keen interest in sport, which led him to study Sport and Exercise Sciences as an undergraduate. During his PhD, Richard became interested in the human brain and how we make sense of other people, and has since been performing research in Social and Cognitive Neuroscience. Richard is Principal Investigator at the Social Brain in Action Laboratory and has been with the School of Psychology faculty at Bangor University since 2012.

Thank you for your continued attendance at the MMM's.  Let's keep the momentum going.

MARCS staff and students are reminded that all meetings and workshops have an important role in building and maintaining the sense of community which is central to the success of MARCS as a cooperative and energetic research institute.  Your attendance is both welcomed and expected.

The zoom ID is: 627 146 998. Link to zoom https://uws.zoom.us/j/627146998