Graduate Student Seminars
An important aspect of building an interdisciplinary student community is to promote a common understanding of how different groups approach the question of mind, brain and behavior. What is the intellectual framework that evolutionary scientists use to study behavior? What kind of questions can we presently ask about the mind within linguistics or psychology? What tools or strategies are used by neurophysiologists to identify the mechanisms of brain function? To this end, the Mind/Brain/Behavior Initiative is currently holding biweekly seminars that provide a common forum for graduate students from different departments at Harvard University. Each session features a brief presentation led by a graduate student from one of the main participating programs within MBB, focusing on one of the following views of mind, brain and behavior. See Graduate Steering Committee.
The seminars are held at 6:00 p.m. on Wednesdays at in room 469 of The Science Center, 1 Oxford St. in Cambridge. Dinner and refreshments are served before each presentation. All graduate students are welcome to attend. For a list of past seminars, click here.
MBB Spring 2008 Graduate Student Seminar Series
- February 27 – Navigating Interdisciplinary Research as a Graduate Student (*details below)
MBB graduate students - March 5 – "Achieving socially optimal behavior despite selfishness"
Ruggiero Cavallo - Department of Computer Science - March 19 – "Broad- & narrow-sense phonology in evolutionary perspective"
Bridget Samuels - Department of Linguistics - April 9 – "Comparing Music and Language Cognition: The View from Production"
Aaron Berkowitz - Department of Music - April 23 – "The reading brain - Insights into the underlying neural network from single word reading studies"
Matthias Faeth - Mind, Brain, and Education program, GSE - April 30 – Navigating Interdisciplinary Research after Graduate School (*details below)
MBB faculty and post-docs
**Special Seminars: Navigating Interdisciplinary Research (February 27 & April 30, 6pm)
*Navigating Interdisciplinary Research as a Graduate Student (February 27)
Have you thought about doing interdisciplinary research as a graduate
student? Have you wondered if this is the right time to do it? Come
hear previous MBB grant recipients talk and answer questions about
their experiences working in different labs, navigating relationships
with multiple advisors, and taking time away from their home
department to pursue new techniques. Panel members include Jake Beck
(Philosophy), Peter Blake (GSE), Joanna Christodoulou (GSE), and
Malathi Thothathiri (Psychology). This session may be especially
useful for students interested in applying for MBB grants.
*Navigating Interdisciplinary Research after Graduate School (April 30)
You have your Ph.D. in one field, but you are interested in pursuing
interdisciplinary questions; so, how do you do it? Do you pursue a
post-doc in another field? How do you get your foot in the door? Do
you try to find an "interdisciplinary" post-doc? How is an
inter-disciplinary background received on the job market? How do you
get funding? Come hear faculty members Joshua Greene (Psychology),
Venkatesh Murthy (MCB), and Jenny Thomson (GSE), as well as MBB
post-docs Kristin Shutts (Harvard Psychology & Children's Hospital)
and Ansgar Endress (Harvard Psychology & Linguistics), talk and
answer questions about their different career trajectories and the
choices they have made.