University Briefs

The U.K’s Economic and Social Research Council announced last month the creation of the Human Communication Research Centre at the Universities of Edinburgh and Glasgow. It will be the first Interdisciplinary Research Centre that the council has located in Scotland, and will unite studies in psychology, linguistics, computer science, and artificial intelligence, says University of Edinburgh psychologist Keith Stenning. The goal will be to understand how people process language. And one major focus of the center will be the examination of human-computer interaction—an area of study that is expected to garner industry interest and support. “The center wants to conduct basic research that is relevant to [companies’] applications,” says Stenning. A director for the center has yet to be announced. The project expects to employ 25 scientists at first—about half to be drawn from existing university faculty and half consisting of newly hired postdocs—then double in size within a few ...