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I'm applying for Master's in Computer Science programs with the goal of gaining research experience and moving into the field of Cognitive Science to one day get my PhD.

I'm trying to find labs and professors right now that conduct computational cognitive science research, my interests right now are pretty broad, but I'm looking in general for Artificial Intelligence related research that leverages insights from psychology and neurology in order to develop more efficient algorithms. My interests are also pretty broad in the field of Computational Cognitive science because its really important to me right now to make sure I find a good advisor/ professor to work under while I develop what my more specific interests are.

Can anyone give me some names of labs or professors to look into? Or where would be good places to look for such labs? Its really overwhelming because many of these labs that I've found (for example, from this site) seem to be in departments such as Psychology and Neuroscience, I'm not sure if I should just be looking for labs that fall under the Computer Science department since that is what I will be under, also I noticed a lot of the labs have mostly Psych or Neuro students as well as opposed to CS, not sure if that means that lab doesn't tend to accept CS students? I was wondering if anyone can give me advice about how to best find research labs that fit this interdisciplinary theme that would accept computer science students to work under? Just looking for some guidance if any former or current graduate students who came from a Computer Science background about which labs offer Computational Cognitive Science focused themes.

Thanks so much!

tldr; Need computational cognitive science labs/ professors/ resources for a prospective Master's student with a Computer Science background looking to move more into Cognitive science.

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    $\begingroup$ Let me verify whether I understood you correctly: you want a MSc in computer science and a PhD in cognitive science? I have no clue, but that sounds difficult as you would have no or limited knowledge of cognitive science. Or, the important bit is you want to do AI (which you can do with a degree in computer science)? $\endgroup$
    – Steven Jeuris ♦
    Oct 23, 2019 at 8:45

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The field you're talking about is probably computational neuroscience. In general, the advice I would give is that the department you are in doesn't much matter. There are people who study neuroscience that are in engineering, comp. sci, psychology, whatever. I know University of Chicago has an entire program in Computational Neuroscience. Probably the best thing to do is look up research in good journals (Neuron, Nature Neuroscience, Journal of Neuroscience, to name a few) and start popping off emails to professors. Most won't care that you have no background in biology or psychology, you can learn that on the way.

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    $\begingroup$ I agree. Also there many different types of computational neuroscience from molecular (proteins, cells...), networks (population coding, CNN...) to functional (bayesian, dynamical systems...). If you find a good program you'll have the luxury to do rotations in different labs and see which one you like best. Most universities have massively invested in the discipline recently due to the data science "revolution" in the industry. Try to find a good review paper and see which teams are working on something you find interesting. Toronto, MIT, NYU, Stanford have world-leading programs. $\endgroup$
    – user17122
    Jun 21, 2020 at 1:57

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