This year the invited speakers include leading researchers from the United States, Germany, Israel, New Zealand and around Australia. For the first time, the Summer School will be held at The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia. This one-week summer school was originally established at the Australian National University in 2002 and has become an annual event. This year, it will be co-sponsored by the Thinking Systems research group based at The University of Queensland. Previous responses from participants (including speakers) at this course have been overwhelmingly positive. A number of research collaborations and publications have resulted from discussions begun at previous Summer Schools.

We plan to have daily sessions of lectures, seminars and practical demonstrations, in a discussion-based, round-table environment, on the following topics:

• Principles, concepts and key experiments in animal and robot navigation.
• Sensory physiology, neurobiology, neurocomputational models, from arthropods to mammals.
• Landmark guidance, view-based homing, path integration, odometry, optic flow processing and biological compasses.
• Diverse challenges and solutions of microbial to transcontinental navigation.
• Basic and advanced topics in neuro-ethological robots.
• Animal/human field navigation experiment.

Target Audience
Final year undergraduates, honours, masters, PhD students, early post-docs from
Biology, Psychology, Robotics from
Australia, New Zealand, and other countries

Australian and Overseas Lecturers
Michael Arbib, Ken Cheng, Peter Corke, Geoff Goodhill, Justin Marshall, Jason Mattingley, Jonathan Roberts, MV Srinivasan, Nachum Ulanovsky, Janet Wiles, Roswitha Wiltschko, Wolfgang Wiltschko, Gordon Wyeth, Jochen Zeil ... and many others.

Attendance is limited. Registration is fully subsidized. Limited travel and accommodation grants are available on a competitive basis.

Application and further details:
See below or contact Dr Allen Cheung (a.cheung@uq.edu.au)
Deadline for applications: 18 September 2009

Download the flyer here

Venue:
The Summer School will take place in the Level 7 Lecture Theatre at QBI at the University of Queensland (UQ – St Lucia Campus).

For a detailed UQ map (St Lucia) with the Queensland Brain Institute (QBI, building #79), see:
http://www.uq.edu.au/maps/index.html?menu=1

For a map of the UQ (St Lucia) within Brisbane (one line):
http://maps.google.com.au/maps?hl=en&q=st+lucia+brisbane+map&um=1&ie=UTF-8&split=0&gl=au&ei=zURcSoow0JSQBe2ahOkM&sa=X&oi=geocode_result&ct=title&resnum=1

Download a map of UQ here

Getting to UQ:
For general lay-out and directions see:

Street map of Brisbane
http://www.arta.com.au/qldmaps/brisubs.html

Guide to Brisbane:
http://brisbane.citysearch.com.au/

Navigating to The Women's College...

1) Taxi (relatively expensive - around $50)

2) From the Brisbane Domestic/International Airport, take the airtrain to Park Road Station (see Airport to CBD timetable). Walk to the adjacent Boggo Road Busway to catch bus no. 139, 169 or 209 to The University of Queensland. It's a short stroll from the bus terminal (58A) along College Road to The Women's College (36H).

Airtrain timetable:
http://www.airtrain.com.au/timetable.php

Bus timetable:
http://www.translink.com.au/timetables.php?routett=university+of+queensland&mode=ALL&submitted=true

Specific buses from Boggo Road Busway to UQ:
Bus options

Navigating to QBI...

Here are instructions to get from the two most common starting points to QBI. The instructions make more sense with a map of UQ.

1) From The Women's College (36H), turn left onto College Road and follow the lake, avoiding the sleeping birds and their daily deposits. Turn right at Staff House Road and walk up about 50m, passing a small Japanese restaurant/cafe on your left (don't dawdle or you'll be late for the talks). Turn left and walk up the ramp into the Hawken Engineering Building to get some respite from the sun. Go to the end and exit towards the right, crossing Cooper Road. Continue past the gray Chemistry building on the right (68) and head towards the small Biosciences Plaza sign. Stay left of that sign [very important or you'll end up in the loading dock of QBI] and continue uphill walking under a small bridge (connects 64A and 60), up Research Road, and on your right should be the Queensland Brain Institute (79). In front is Upland Road.

2) From Chancellor's bus stop, just head towards the roundabout (the small one which does not look like a dead end) and bear left, onto Upland Road, and QBI is on your left.

Download the latest Summer School timetable here