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Blue Mountains Child MEG Workshop

On 28th-30th August 2010, CLaS hosted an informal workshop on Child MEG Research at Wentworth Falls in the Blue Mountains. Three special guests attended the workshop: Professor Ovid Tzeng, Professor Denise Wu, and Vigo Hsu, a writer/editor for Scientific American in Taiwan. On both Saturday and Sunday, Pei-Shu Tsai presented the findings and analysis of the research she has conducted during her year-long stay with us. Pei-Shu is a pre-doctoral fellow from Taiwan. This was followed by informal discussion on both days. On the 29th and 30th of August, Vigo Hsu, the reporter/editor from Scientific American in Taiwan held extensive interviews with Professor Stephen Crain. Ms. Hsu toured the MEG facilities in Lane Cove Road on the 30th to get an in-depth understanding of the facility as well as to take photos and gather materials for the article she is writing on “The Minds of Babies”. A number of PhD students from CLaS and MACCS attended the workshop, as did Dr Drew Khlentzos from the Psychology Department at the University of New England, who generously provided accommodation for the guests.

 

Successful ARC Center of Excellence bid

Our bid for the 2010 ARC Centre of Excellence application, with Prof Stephen Crain as proposed Centre Director has been successful, and the Centre will receive $21 million of funding over the next 7 years, beginning January 2011. This is a fantastic achievement on Stephen’s part and we can look ahead and start exciting Linguistics-based research and development for Macquarie University Centre for Language Sciences in particular and the Department of Linguistics in generally. 

 

The ARC Centre of Excellence in Cognition and its Disorders involves numerous researchers from within Macquarie University and from outside. A total of eight Linguistics staff members, including Stephen (as Director), Katherine Demuth and Rosalind Thornton (as chief investigators), and a further five staff as associate investigators (Linda Cupples, Felicity Cox, Elisabeth Harrison, Robert Mannell, and Catherine McMahon). In addition, from CLaS we have Prof Lyndsey Nickels as chief investigator and Prof Mark Johnson as associate investigator. Prof Bill Thompsom (Psychology) is also a chief investigator.

 

To celebrate the occasion Linguistics Department and CLaS organized a lunch for all Linguistics Department staff on 30th July 2010 (Friday) at the Building X5B Staff Room. Invited guests included Prof. Jim Piper, (DVC, Research), Prof Janet Greeley (Executive Dean of Faculty of Human Sciences) and Mr Colm Halbert (Research Manager for Faculty of Human Sciences).

 

Grant secured to hold the proposed Harvard-Australia Workshop -- LANGUAGE, LEARNING and LOGIC in July 2011

ClaS has also been successful in securing a grant to co-sponsor a conference with Harvard University faculty called Language, Learning and Logic. The proposed Harvard/Australian Workshop is tentatively scheduled to be held at MQ in July 2011. The Local Organizing Committee was Professor Stephen Crain and Professor Mark Johnson from CLaS, as well as Dr Drew Khlentzos (UNE, Psychology). The Harvard organizers are Professor Gennaro Chierchia and Professor James Huang, both from Linguistics. Harvard and MQ each contirbuted $25,000 USD towards the workshop. We will keep you posted on the development of the above workshop.

 

ARC Center of Excellence bid

CLaS has been instrumental in supporting the submission by Macquarie University for an ARC Centre of Excellence in Cognition and its Disorders. This submission follows the short listing by ARC of the team’s Expression of Interest. Stephen Crain (CLaS Director) is the proposed CoE Director.

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Macquarie University will be the Administering organization of the Centre, with two main collaborating organizations, the University of Western Australia, and the University of New South Wales. Australian partner organizations include The University of Sydney & the University of New England) and overseas partnering organisations include the Institute of Education, London, Cardiff University, MRC Cognition & Brain Sciences Unit, The University of Kansas, The University of Oxford, University of Auckland, University of Hong Kong, & University of York. The ARC Centre of Excellence for Cognition and its Disorders will advance theory and research in three areas of cognitive science: models of cognitive disorders, the treatment of cognitive disorders, and the neural basis of cognition and its disorders. The Centre’s research programs will focus on five key domains of cognition, to be investigated individually and collectively: language, memory, person perception, belief formation, and reading. The Centre’s interdisciplinary research teams will investigate basic questions in cognitive science, and will implement intervention programs that will inform educational policy and practice, with considerable potential impact for the health and social well-being of Australia.


The greatest beneficiaries of the Centre’s research and intervention programs will be health care, education and social welfare in Australia. The programs will directly inform the diagnosis and treatment of a range of cognitive disorders, including dyslexia, language impairment, autism, dementia and schizophrenia. Research will be aimed at alleviating the high social cost of such cognitive disorders by improving diagnosis and by developing more effective interventions. The Centre will conduct large scale multi-site studies of cognitive disorders, which would otherwise be virtually impossible. Finally, the Centre will further enhance Australia’s international reputation in the study of cognition and its disorders.

Harvard-Australia Workshop Proposal -- LANGUAGE, LEARNING and LOGIC

ClaS members Professor Mark Johnson and Professor Stephen Crain (Director of CLaS) have submitted a grant to co-sponsor a conference with Harvard University faculty called Language, Learning and Logic. Macquarie University would be the host Australian university.

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This proposed workshop aims at making an important step in furthering the interdisciplinary study of issues that lie at the intersection of logic, language and learning. The three themes of the conference would be Language and learning, Logic and language, & Learning and logic. The proposed workshop will span five days (Mon to Fri). If funded, this workshop would feature influential scholars from Harvard and from several Australian universities. In addition, one morning during the workshop week would be reserved for poster presentations by students and postdocs from the Australian Universities that are represented at the workshop. Input from workshop presenters and attendees will be a valuable experience for the younger generation of researchers.

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TermFinder: Winner of 2009 Macquarie University ‘s Innovation Award for Learning and Teaching

The TermFinder project was featured on the ABC's Science Show in 2008, and won the Macquarie University's Innovation Award for Learning and Teaching in 2009.

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TermFinder is a collaborative project between dictionary researchers/members of CLaS and University teaching staff in Linguistics and other disciplines. The aim is to help beginning students with the technical jargon challenges them in many first-year units in science and social science. To date, TermFinder includes termbanks for Biology, Statistics and Accounting students, and termbanks in Geology and Neuropsychology are under development. TermFinder offers definitions of terms in plain English, and presents examples of their use from unit reading materials. Pronunciations of the term in isolation and in the context of a phrase or sentence are also supplied, as well as diagrams and illustrations. Translation equivalents for the term are provided in some other languages, e.g. Chinese, to help international students.

 

The TermFinder team is led by Pam Peters, with participating colleagues from CLaS and Linguistics (Claudia Oliveira, Alan Jones, Jan Tent, Adam Smith, Yasmin Funk), from LTC (Theresa Winchester-Seeto), from Statistics (Peter Petocz, Jenny Middledorp, Kehui Luo), from Accounting (Alan Kilgore, Fred Wang), from Biology (David Raftos). TermFinder was supported by a University Flagship Grant (2006-7). It has since benefited by a Vice-Chancellor's grant (2007-9) and a CLaS postdoctoral fellowship (2007-9), with additional funding from the Faculty of Human Sciences, the Faculty of Business and Economics, and the Faculty of Science.

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Beijing Language and Cultural University’s President visits MQ

In November 2007, Macquarie University and Beijing Language and Cultural University (BLCU) signed a MoU as part of an existing collaborative exchange project.

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Stephen Crain (Director of CLaS) and Dr Rosalind Thornton (Executive Member of CLaS) from the Dept of Linguistics have been invited to lecture at BLCU from 13th – 23rd April 2009 as visiting professors. In April 2008, Dr Rosalind Thornton was appointed visiting professor at BLCU, and she and Prof Crain gave a series of lectures on research methodology (Thornton) and linguistic theory (Crain) at the Beijing Language and Culture University. As an outcome of this research collaboration, Prof Stephen Crain and Dr Rosalind Thornton, along with Professor Liqun Gao (BLCU), and Professor Thomas Hun-tak Lee (Chinese University of Hong Kong) were successful in securing a National Philosophy and Social Science Foundation Grant of China (09BYY022): "Semantic Acquisition in Chinese and English: A Cross-linguistic Comparison of Children's Understanding of Logical Words".

 

The collaboration between MQ and BLCU was further strengthened by a recent visit by BLCU President, Prof Cui Xiliang and a delegation consisting of Prof Ning Tizhiong, (BLCU Dean of Foreign Language College) and Prof Chen Xi (BLCU Director of the Office of Office of International Cooperation and Exchange) to Macquarie University on 9th – 10th August 2009. The visiting delegation was hosted to a dinner on 9th August 2009 at Stephen & Rosalind’s residence. On 10th August, President Cui’s delegation signed various agreements on student exchanges with Macquarie University and the delegation was given a tour of MQ research facilities and visited the KIT-MQ Brain Research Lab at Lane Cove Road.

Hearing Hub - Higher Education Endowment Fund (HEEF)

In October 2008, CLaS and MACCS held a media event October 3rd, which resulted in six special television reports on channels 2, 7 and 9 and Sky News in Sydney, some distributed to affiliate stations. There were also four newspaper articles written about the new child MEG system. On October 7th, CLaS director Crain and research member MacMahon met at the KIT Applied Electronics Laboratory in Tokyo, to discuss a third MEG system designed for the rehabilitation of recipients of cochlear implants. The meeting was with two representatives from Cochlear Ltd (Jim Patrick, VP of Cochlear) and two representatives from KIT (including Professor Hisashi Kado). CLaS played a critical role in the University’s plan to create a Hearing Hub.

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OMP led the submissions process for the successful funding application from the Higher Education Endowment Fund (HEEF) and now lead the design and project management process as Owner's Representative. The project is likely to have a capital cost of around $140 million and is planned to be completed by mid to late 2012.

The Australian Hearing Hub will be a unique, world-class facility purpose-designed to understand hearing and related speech and language disorders.

It will bring together the University's internationally leading research teams (Language Sciences and Cognitive Sciences), clinical research/professional training teams (Audiology and Speech Language Pathology), and, potentially, major government research organisations such as Australian Hearing with the National Acoustic Laboratories, research and implantation teams from Australia's leading hearing technology company (Cochlear Ltd), and major not-for-profit organisations offering clinical and related social services for hearing disorders, like Royal Institute for Deaf and Blind Children and The Shepherd Centre.

The Hearing Hub will also be the Sydney node of the HEARing CRC (which itself has 5 core and 24 supporting organisations from across Australia).

The Hearing Hub will provide additional teaching and learning scope for students in Hearing, Audiology and language sciences.

Together with Cochlear Global Headquarters, the Hearing Hub will help to make Macquarie University a true global leader for hearing and related disorders.

The Hearing Hub will enable ground breaking advances in mapping brain/hearing function, understanding auditory processing, assessing auditory system disorders, developing hearing aid and implant technologies and improving strategies for rehabilitation and learning to hear.

One in six Australians have hearing loss and thus the Hearing Hub has enormous potential to advance research of benefit to the Australian community. It will deliver the highest level of excellence in research, education and training outcomes, building capacity through new staff and increased numbers of students attracted to the University and by way of collaboration with the partner organisations.

MoU signing between Macquarie University and Beijing Language and Culture University (BLCU), November 5th, 2008

November 2008. A formal singing ceremony will take place between Macquarie University and Beijing Language and Culture University (BLCU) at Macquarie University on November 5th, 2008. For the benefit of MQ researchers and the delegation from BLCU, CLaS is sponsoring a three-hour workshop on November 3rd, with 12 invited speakers, MQ PhD students and academic staff from Linguistics and MACCS. Each presenter will give a brief talk, in both Mandarin and in English. The workshop is entitled “Glimpses of linguistic research on Chinese.”

Recruitment of Core Researchers

CLaS has recruited two distinguished academics from Brown University as core researchers to Macquarie University, they are:

  • Prof Mark Johnson (Computing)
  • Prof Katherine Demuth (Ling)

 

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