Associated Departments & Programs

The department of Computer Science has 20 full-time faculty and about 45 graduate students. Its programs are particularly strong in the areas of computer vision and robotics, knowledge representation and natural language understanding, systems software for parallel computing, and the theory of computation. It enjoys strong collaborative contacts with faculty in several other departments, and has a major involvement in the cognitive sciences at the University.
http://www.cs.rochester.edu/

The department of Linguistics operates in close cooperation with the Center for Language Sciences (CLS), which serves as the focus of a distinguished interdisciplinary community with research and teaching interests in natural language. Faculty within the Department of Linguistics have expertise in syntax, semantics, phonology, and morphology. The linguistics faculty actively participate in research and training in computational linguistics and psycholinguistics. In addition, they play a central role in teaching and advising students of linguistics and the language sciences from the following Ph.D. programs: computer science, Brain & Cognitive Sciences, and philosophy.
http://www.ling.rochester.edu/

The purpose of the Multi-University Research Group (MURI) on Complex Learning is to characterize how the adaptive plasticity of the adult brain can be optimized to accelerate the acquisition of new skills and their transfer to new situations.

The department of Music Theory at Eastman School of Music provides instruction in music theory at all degree levels. Faculty and graduate students in the department study many kinds of music from a variety of perspectives. In partnership with the Department of Brain & Cognitive Sciences, the theory department actively supports study and search in music cognition; see http://www.rochester.edu/college/mas/research/cognition.html for more details. These departments are also founding members of the Music and Sound Initiative, which sponsors interdisciplinary academic programs, courses, and research projects; see http://www.rochester.edu/college/mas/.

The Interdepartmental Graduate Program in Neuroscience draws together more than 60 faculty in nearly 15 departments in the School of Medicine and Dentistry and in the College (the Department of Brain & Cognitive Sciences is one of these). In this multi-disciplinary program, students examine the organization and function of the nervous system on several levels. The program is formally constituted to provide graduate training leading to the Ph.D. in neuroscience, but it also offers a range of activities (for example, seminars and journal clubs) which bring together neuroscientists from all of the participating departments and disciplines. (For those interested in pursuing Ph.D. studies in neuroscience at the University of Rochester, see the neuroscience programs cluster.)
http://www.urmc.rochester.edu/neuroscience/grad/

The department of Neurobiology and Anatomy, within the School of Medicine and Dentistry, maintains strong commitments to research as well as to graduate, medical, and undergraduate education. Over thirty faculty with primary and secondary appointments in the department are actively engaged in research on the structure and function of the nervous system across a variety of levels of inquiry. Areas of interest cover a broad spectrum, with a strong emphasis on the neurobiology of sensory-motor systems, neuro-engineering and computational neuroscience, and also including cell signaling and transmission, development and aging, neurobiology of disease, learning and plasticity.
http://www.urmc.rochester.edu/smd/nanat/home/index.cfm

CLS draws together faculty and students with a common interest in natural languages, including an understanding of the linguistic structure, processing and production, and acquisition of both spoken and signed languages. Members of the Center come from four departments in the University and employ the methods of behavioral research, theoretical linguistics, computational modeling, philosophical analysis, and neurolinguistic studies to investigate how languages of the world are formed, processed, and learned.
http://www.bcs.rochester.edu/cls/

CVS promotes research on vision by bringing together scientists from a variety of disciplines. Members of the Center, drawn from five departments within the University, employ a variety of approaches (psychophysical, computational, physiological, anatomical, optical, and clinical) to study a range of problems, including the optical limits on visual performance, the neural analysis of spatiotemporal and chromatic information, cortical mechanisms of motion perception, the neural control of eye movements, and visuo-motor coordination.
http://www.cvs.rochester.edu

The Schmitt Program on Integrative Brain Research brings together our own faculty, fellows and students with scientists in the department of Neurobiology and Anatomy and the Center for Aging and Developmental Biology who share an interest in learning, plasticity, and memory.
http://www.urmc.rochester.edu/smd/nanat/schmitt/