DAAD German-Arabic Research Partnerships: Establishment of a Research Group and Cognition Lab (JESICS)

Basic data for this project

Type of project: Own resources project
Duration: 01/01/2015 - 31/12/2018

Description

The goal of this project is threefold: (1) to form a research group specialized incognitive science, (2) to start a seeding project that develops a cognitively inspired computational model to understand drawn sketches, and (3) to establish an equipped cognition lab in Egypt for exploratory and interdisciplinary studies. The first target is to establish a research group that specializes on examining problemsolving capabilities of cognitive beings and model such capabilities within artificialintelligent frameworks. "The Joint Exploratory Society for Interdisciplinary and ComputationalStudies" (JESICS) is proposed as the first kernel society of its kind allover Egypt. Thegroup aims to study and solve fundamental cognition problems, where methodologiesfrom both natural and human sciences are typically employed. This will be triggered through a seeding project that develops an AI competencemodel for the recognition, classification, memorization and retrieval of "sketches".The development will focus on modeling that is guided by both (1) cognitive principlesin analogical reasoning, and (2) protocols and lab experiments that involve humanparticipants. The work will obtain experimental results to enhance the computationalmodeling of the human ability to operate with sketches. Within the same context of this proposal, we propose to establish a cognition lab inEgypt, which will be equipped with the modern devices needed to carry out thegroup's sort of experiments and running the related human protocols. As a fledgling group, JESICS' vision is "to migrate the German example of developingcognitive science as an interdisciplinary field of study to Egypt with the help of Germanrole models." Its mission is "to maintain an active research and educational societythat fosters the advancement in cognitive science, and embraces moderninterdisciplinary studies by performing theoretical and applied research that equipsyoung researchers with the skills needed to enter a variety of job markets at an earlystage."

Keywords: German-Arabic Partnership; Cognitive Science; Egypt