By now, most people have probably interacted with conversational agents through a device, a chatbot or an interactive voice response like when you are told to hold on the call when placing a call to a bank. Conversational agents, also known as dialogue systems, have risen in popularity over the past few years through the...
Blog
The Marseille Event
Between June 21st and 24th the second COBRA training event took place—which we affectionately insist on referring to as the Marseille event, even though it once again could not take place physically, now at Aix-Marseille University. Most of the event was dedicated to courses given by COBRA’s senior researchers. In his lectures Computational Models of...
Art+Neuroscience Collaboration: Large-Scale Experiments Outside the Lab
Imagine looking at someone, a friend, a loved one or a stranger, and seeing the glow that grows as a function of how strongly your brains’ activity synchronizes. This is what nearly 5000 people experienced thanks to one talented research group and an artist. Finding original ways to solve scientific questions can result in elegant...
Data Visualisation: what should we learn from accessibility and data journalism
A Short Introduction to Social Robotics: The Perfect Platform for Interdisciplinary Research
Social Robots have been one of the focal points of science fiction movies for many years now, a famous example being the robot named “Sonny” in the movie I, Robot. It was not long ago when a Humanoid robot Sophia was awarded a Saudi Arabian citizenship and became the first robot to receive citizenship of...
From Industry to Industrial PhD
If you are someone in industry and are curious about pursuing a PhD, I hope this post encourages you to apply for a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Early Stage Research (ESR) position and learn why this may be a good fit for you. My journey During the pandemic, I left my family and friends, resigned from my...
Postgraduate Research Symposium on Linguistics, Language and Speech
The Faculty of Humanities (FH) of the Hong Kong Polytechnic University is excited to announce the Research Symposium on Linguistics, Language, and Speech (PRSLLS) to be held online on 18-19 June 2021. The Call for Abstracts is open! Deadline: 19 April 2021. The symposium will provide an inter-institutional forum for postgraduate research students from different...
Neurolinguistics by Dr. Kristof Strijkers
Dr. Kristof Strijkers is a researcher in the Laboratoire Parole et Langage (LPL) at Aix-Marseille University (AMU). During the first CoBra training event, Dr. Strijkers gave three lectures on Neurolinguistics, exploring the brain regions enabling human language. If it was usually considered that certain brain regions are specifically dedicated to language functions, Dr. Strijkers introduced...
Why conversation is so easy: A series of lectures by Prof. Martin Pickering
Gender in science by Dr. Susanne Fuchs
What is gender and how can we measure it? Is science sexist? During the first Cobra training event Dr. Susanne Fuchs discussed questions such as these in her lecture series titled ‘Gender in Science’. What is gender? Dr. Susanne Fuchs began her presentation by highlighting perhaps the most important fact about gender: it is not...