It seems that as summer comes near, and people start thinking about
where to work next academic year, ECCO is again in an expansion
phase: I received several promising applications from people wishing
to make a PhD/PostDoc in our center. As always, the biggest problem
will be to find: 1) funding; 2) office space.
As to funding, the applicants themselves seem eager to explore
different avenues. Otherwise, the general ECCO policy applies: money
that becomes available for ECCO projects in general (e.g. FWO or GOA)
will go in priority to the people who joined ECCO first, but haven't
yet found funding for themselves. The present "waiting list" is:
Laetitia, Erden and Dirk.
Concerning office space, I am trying to argue with the director of
CLEA that ECCO should be entitled to one floor of the CLEA house,
i.e. about 6 people, but even if that succeeds, it won't be enough
for long. Therefore, our priority should be to find office space
wherever it may be available on campus! So please, continue to
explore all possibilities... I'll inquire about our pending official
recognition, and once that is done, I'll contact the rector or
vice-rector research to tell them about our requirements. But since
space is so tight at the VUB, I doubt whether an ideal solution will
come about, and we may have to scatter around the campus.
Now on to an overview of the potential new members:
<>G. Nagarjuna is a cognitive scientist from India whom I met 10
years ago at the "Evolution of Complexity" symposium I organized. He
will come to work in ECCO in July and August as a visiting research,
on metasystem transitions in life and cognition. He is still looking
for free or inexpensive accomodation during that period. Any
suggestions?
Lito Kyritsi is a Greek bio-informatics researcher who would like to
work part-time in ECCO on a PhD about a systems/complexity model of
cancer. She will present her project at the seminar this week.
Steve Edgerton is a Belgian-British health researcher who would like
to make a PhD on an evolutionary theory of health and quality of
life. He will come to ECCO on the day of Lito's seminar to discuss
possibilities with me and Jan Bernheim.
Tom Erez is an Israeli mathematician/complexity scientist, an
acquaintance of Carlos, who would like to make a PhD on his Postext
system of bootstrapping knowledge representation. He will probably
visit us on 21-24 june, and give a seminar then.
Prabakaran Sudhakaran is a young Indian molecular biologist, who
should finish his PhD on molecular psychiatry in Cambridge University
in September. He is interested to come for a PostDoc stay in ECCO to
work on self-organization in the brain and society, and is exploring
funding opportunities.
Edward Bandiouk is a Russian/American computer scientist, interested
to make a PhD on cybernetics and global brain technologies.
Livio Noto is an Italian communication scientist interested to make a
PhD on memetics, but I haven't heard from him recently.
--
Francis Heylighen
Evolution, Complexity and Cognition group
Free University of Brussels
http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/HEYL.html
