Day 2: First day of the workshop

Today was the first day of the workshop. It ran for most part of the day from morning 8:30 am until 9:00 pm in the night. Of course we had more than 3 hours break for lunch and dinner break.


Entrance to the Telluride Elementary School

Today I listened to some excellent line of speakers. Most of the speakers were very good in covering many interesting topics in the Neuromorphic Engineering area. Today, I enjoyed most of the talk (and surprisingly I was awake during most of the talks).

The topics that were covered today included the following ( I am also giving a grade for each of the speakers and its just my individual evaluation):

(1) Towards Neurally Integrated High Degrees of Freedom Prosthetic Limbs by Ralph Cummings from John Hopkins Univ: The talk focussed on developing Prosthetic and the principles of locomotion different animals and human beings. It was an interesting approach to develop tools/machines for disabled people. I would give him 3/5 for his talk (because I did not enjoy the second half of his talk where he rushed through the slides.

(2) Neuro-robotic Locomotion: This talk by Tony Lewis of University of Arizona gave a good perspective of robotics and various means to build robots using traditional robotic principles. Later on he shifted his focus to neurorobotic and application of neural principles for robotic construction. He was little bit vague in the second part but overall the lecture gave many good perspective on different principles of connecting robotics and neuroscience. I would give 4/5 for his talk.

(3) Locomotion by Cohen: I should have skipped this particular talk but made the mistake of sitting in this talk. I did not understand many things (nor found it interesting).

(4) Survey of Neuromorphics Engineering: Nice overview and brief survey of the development of this area. The talk was given by Shih-Chii Liu from INI, Zurich. It was interesting for its historical treatment and helped us to get a good perspective of the overall progression of this area. I would give her talk 4/5.

Overall I had a good day with many interesting insights and possibilities for many interesting works that can be carried out in this area.

Day 1: First day in telluride June 28th 2008

After a really bumpy bumpy ride from Denver to Telluride I reached telluride today afternoon. The tiny plane was more like a local taxi and there were only 12 people in it. The good thing with the plane is that every seat in the plane had a window seat. The taxi person was very kind and personally took me to couple of lodges before we found our building.

Telluride. What is it ?

Telluride is a small city in Colorado supposedly famous for its winter sking resort. Its sad that the conference is going to happen during summer. I need to come another time (not alone) to see the thrills of sking in this place. The whole town is very small and its easy to walk from one place to another. The main attractions during the summer are biking, hiking, kayaking and camping.
Also this is the only place in USA to offer free Gondola ride for around 4-5 miles (more than 30 minutes !!!) touching different villages in the area. I liked it very much because the route is very beautiful and also it is FREE for everyone. :). I also liked the place very much because it is quite small and a pretty, quite town/village.

I am feeling little bit tired (lack of good food: I just ate some grapes, one icecream and another hagen daz today).

Got to go, bye for now....(Do see some pictures of the town below...)


View of the hills from my house


The famous telluride Gondolas.

View of the hills from the School


A baby enjoying the sun and mexican food


Pictures in the telluride school lobby

Day 0: Saturday Reaching Telluride

Preparations is going on full swing. I am supposed to leave tomorrow morning for a 3 week conference/workshop. Now its 6pm and I have'nt started the packing or dont practically anything before departure.

Today morning I was thinking that I will be leaving on Sunday (29th June). Only when Manju wanted me to e-checkin (the reason to do e-checkin is another story) we realized that I am supposed to leave on Saturday and not on Sunday. How stupid of me to forget the day of my departure ? I need to improve in my ability to remember these things. Manju was not at all happy. But anyway a good leason in my life (again).