Each year in May since 1982, Western Canadian universities have jointly hosted a conference known as BASICS (Banff Annual Seminar in Cognitive Science). The 25th meeting of BASICS will be held in 2006 on Friday May 12 to Saturday May 13.
The conference will begin Friday afternoon with an invited talk at 4:30; four other talks will be presented on Saturday. There will be a poster session and reception Friday evening after dinner, and another poster session will be held Saturday before dinner. Submissions for the poster sessions are invited on any aspect of cognitive science. If you plan on presenting a poster, please list the title and authors on the registration form and send it in before April 14. (The registration form is available here; information for poster presenters is here.) Graduate and postdoctoral students are especially encouraged to present.
As in the past, the invited presentations are like colloquia and allow a scientist ample time to lay out a course of research, rather than simply to discuss the results of one or two experiments. An extensive question period and break follows each 60 minute presentation and provides sufficient time for detailed questions and discussion.
This year's conference is organized around the topic, "Visual attention: What it is and isn't." The list of speakers is:
The program for this year's conference can be found here.
BASICS will be held this year at the Inns of Banff (600 Banff Avenue). The Inns is located in the Rocky Mountain resort town of Banff and is reasonably close to local restaurants and shopping. A block of rooms at the Inns has been reserved for the conference dates under the "BASICS" name at the conference rate of $75/night (Canadian) for a single or double occupancy, excluding tax. This block of rooms will be held until April 12, 2006, although rooms may be available for some period of time after that date.
The registration fee is $70 (Canadian) for faculty and $25 (Canadian) for students. A program and additional information will be available on this site as the date of the conference approaches.
If you plan to attend the conference, please send in your registration before Friday, April 12, 2006. A form-fillable pdf version of the registration form is here; an html version is here. For room reservations, please phone the Inns of Banff (Toll free: 1-800-563-8764; Fax: 403-760-8287) which will connect you to the Banff Lodging Company. (Don't be confused; Banff Lodging Co. owns the Inns of Banff and several other Banff properties.) Be sure to mention BASICS 2006 to get the conference rate. Online room reservations at the conference rate are not currently supported. Those wishing to make accommodation arrangements at other hotels will find many to choose from within the town of Banff. (For general reservation information call: 1-800-661-1676; for Alberta Tourism information call: 1-800-661-8888; and for Banff Tourism information call 403-762-8421. Web resources can be found on our links page.)
Questions may be e-mailed to: Scott Allen.