Welcome to SLAC (Science of Learning & Art of Communication).

The National Science Foundation has awarded our interdisciplinary group of UConn researchers a five-year grant, “The science of learning, from neurobiology to real-world application: A problem-based approach.” We aim to develop transformative models for graduate education in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields, training 50 students (including 25 Ph.D. fellows).The “Science of Learning and Art of Communication,” or SLAC, draws on subfields of cognitive science and neuroscience: genetics, behavioral neuroscience, linguistics, education, psychology, and speech-language-hearing sciences. See more

We would like to begin by acknowledging that the land on which we gather is the territory of the Mohegan, Mashantucket Pequot, Eastern Pequot, Schaghticoke, Golden Hill Paugussett,  Nipmuc, and Lenape Peoples, who have stewarded this land throughout the generations.  We thank them for their strength and resilience in protecting this land, and aspire to uphold our responsibilities according to their example.  From https://nacp.uconn.edu/land-acknowledgement/

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Welcome new SLAC Fellow and Associate Trainees 2021-2022 and 2022-2023

Nathan Lautz (21-22), Hannah Mechtenberg (21-22), Oliver McNeil (21-22), Maddie Quam (21-22), Caitrin Hall (21-22), Kelsey Davinson (21-22), Renee Chasse (21-22) and Cynthia Boo (21-22)

Anne Marie Crinnion (22-23), Naomi Sellers (22-23), Shawn Cummings (22-23), Kaya LeGrand (22-23), Hayes Brenner (22-23), Kristin Simmers (22-23), Susan Tilbury (22-23), and Gray Thomas (22-23)

 

Events

  1. May 18 RIP Talk - Palko12:00pm
  2. May 19 20th Annual Neuroscience Retreat 9:00am
  3. May 24 Doctoral Dissertation Oral Defense Of Xiao Yang1:00pm
  4. May 25 RIP Talk - Ragan12:00pm
  5. May 26 RIP Talk - Yao11:00am
  6. Jun 1 Frontiers In Playful Learning12:00am
  7. Jun 1 RIP Talk - Vedantham12:00pm
  8. Jun 2 Frontiers In Playful Learning12:00am
  9. Jun 2 RIP Talk - Xing11:00am
  10. Jun 3 Frontiers In Playful Learning12:00am
  11. Jun 7 Doctoral Dissertation Oral Defense Of Thomas J. McKenna3:00pm
  12. Jun 8 RIP Talk - Ramasamy12:00pm
  13. Jun 9 RIP Talk - Zong11:00am
  14. Jun 11 Renzulli Free Online Learning11:00am
  15. Jun 15 RIP Talk - Benoit12:00pm
  16. Jun 16 RIP Talk - Sutter11:00am

Happenings

Congratulations to Ido Davidesco, the first faculty member from the Neag School of Education to earn CAREER funding.
Congratulations to Oliver Lasnick who received a score at the 2nd percentile on his NIH F31 predoctoral award.  
Congratulations to Jim Magnuson for the UConn Today article on Jim's NSF-supported work on automatic speech recognition.  
Congratulations to Sahil Luthra who just received the Society for the Neurobiology of Language 2021 Dissertation Award!  He’s off for a postdoc at CMU.  More information on his work is here.
Congratulations to Fumiko Hoeft for being the winner of this year’s CLAS Innovative Scholarship Award for her blending of basic research with outreach and public engagement
Congratulations to Emily Myers for being promoted to Professor 
Congratulations to Eiling Yee for being promoted to Associate Professor with tenure
Congratulations to Stormy Chamberlain for being a keynote presenter at INSAR 2021
Congratulations to Jim Magnuson, Jay Rueckl, and Monty Escabi just received a Notice of Award from NSF for a new 3-year, $500K grant on deep learning an speech recognition.
Congratulations to Eiling Yee for being awarded funds from the President’s Commitment to Community Initiative for her proposal “Diversifying the pipeline: Potential doctoral student mentoring network.
Congratulations to Fumiko Hoeft on the award from the Tremaine Foundation to supplement her NSF grant on preventing the academic slide during COVID.
Congratulations to Fumiko Hoeft, Devin Kearns and Roeland Hancock, for their plan to move to large scale evaluation of their free app for school readiness and dyslexia screening in 4- to 8-yr-olds.  Information about the A.P.P.R.I.S.E. project is here.
Congratulations to Eiling Yee on her award from the Scholarship Facilitation Fund for research on Conceptual Convergence in the Context of COVID-19.
Congratulations to Megan Chiovaro, with her work on collective intelligence in bees (Adv: Paxton).  This was featured in UConn Today.
Congratulations to Noelle Wig, who just had her first authored paper published!  Ms. Wig’s publication is entitled “Matching the Mismatch: The interaction between perceptual and conceptual cues in bilinguals’ speech perception”.
Congratulations to Letty Naigles and Bede Agocha for the grant from CLAS to develop a new course called “Language and Racism,” which is a collaboration between the Cognitive Science program and the Africana Studies Institute.
Congratulations to Nicole Landi who received a new NIH R01 grant “Effectiveness and Predictors of Response for a Technology-based Reading Intervention in the Home,” with co-PI Mike Milham and investigators Fumiko Hoeft and Ken Pugh.
Congratulations to Alex Paxton, who with J. Dixon have an article in UConn Today, which summarizes a recent paper of theirs in PNAS (with Wim Pouw and Steven Harrison):
Congratulations to Alex Paxton who received a Scholarship Facilitation Fund award for her application “Ad hoc Efforts for Advancing Data Science Education.”
Congratulations to Fumiko Hoeft who received a $3.5M grant to the UCSF Dyslexia Center and will develop a subcontract from UCSF to UConn
Congratulations to Eiling Yee for her paper in Psychological Science - see article about it in UConn Today
Congratulations to Fumiko Hoeft for her NSF Award “Assessing and preventing the detrimental impact of literacy acquisition during COVID-19-related school closure" - see article in UConn Today
Congratulations to Stormy Chamberlain on her 3M NIH Prader-Willi grant
Congratulations to Betsy McCoach on her National Center for Research on Gifted Education grant
Congratulations to Ashley Parker on her prestigious award from the American Speech Language Hearing Foundation -- The Student Research Grant in Audiology. The title of the project is “The Inner-Ear protein Prestin as a Biomarker of Hearing Loss."

 

Check out SLAC Publications

 

 

 

Spring 2022 SLAC Courses

Courses in bold are required for current SLAC cohort, other courses are optional.  Please note that an email is forthcoming with Outreach requirement options for Spring 2022.

  • LING 5010 or PSYC 5500 Research Seminar in Language and Cognition, Rachel Theodore & William Snyder,  Talk-Shop, Mondays 12:20-1:10, Bous A106, 1 credit
  • PSYC 5170-002  SLAC professional development), Betsy McCoach and Rachel Theodore, Thursdays, 4PM, Virtual, 1 credit
  • LING 6798-004 Special Topics in Linguistics (SLAC Practicum Seminar), William Snyder, Fridays 9-12, , MCHU 306, 3 credits
  • PSYC 5170-008 Science Outreach, Fumiko Hoeft & Nathan Lautz will co-teach; for SLAC, Thurs 1:30-2:30, BOUS 160, 1 credit

Other courses available:

  • PSYC 5170-007 Neuroimaging: Neuromodulation methods, Fumiko Hoeft, Thurs 9:30-10:30, BOUS 160, 1 credit
  • PSYC 5170-006 Grant Writing, Fumiko Hoeft, Thurs 11:15-12:15 , BOUS 160, 1 credit
See Curriculum for more information

 

SLAC Brochure

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