During the final CogNovo workshop Frank Loesche has been voted as "Best Collaborator". Out of the 25 nominated interdisciplinary research fellows from the Arts, Psychology, Robotics, Linguistics, and Philosophy Frank received the majority of votes from all his colleagues who were entitled to vote. His PhD research project "Unconscious Creativity: The Eureka Moment" is situated within multiple disciplines which is also reflected in his supervisory team from three different schools and three different faculties within Plymouth University. Having a diverse professional background himself, Frank's supervisory team consists of Dr Guido Bugmann (DOS, School of Computing, Electronics and Mathematics), Dr Jeremy Goslin (School of Psychology), and Dr Katharine Willis (School of Architecture, Design and Environment). In addition, a decade of professional experience in the semiconductor industry as well as in software and game development, helped him to identify potential partners and shaping collaborations, he claims.
The final workshop week also included a vote for the "Best Poster". Out of the 25 fellows, external collaborators, speakers and workshop attendees, Raluca Briazu received the majority of votes with Kathryn Francis receiving the "Runner-Up" prize. Raluca's poster described multiple studies from her PhD research project "The Role of Counterfactual Thinking in Deception", bringing together the previously unassociated phenomena of mental time travel and deception. Kathryn's poster described her PhD project "Moral Cognition: An interdisciplinary investigation of judgment versus action" that incorporates Virtual Reality (VR) simulations of real-time moral dilemmas; revealing the disparity between saying and doing within a moral framework.
The prize was awarded as part of the CogNovo workshop "The Neural Basis for Creativity", a week long event held in Plymouth from 25 to 29 of April 2016. Speakers like John-Dylan Haynes, Paul Thagard, Rodrigo Quiroga, Arthur I. Miller, Annie Cattrell, Anna Abrahams, Nicola Clayton, Clive Wilkins, Margaret A. Boden, Rex Jung, and John Kounios presented their work and led interactive discussions with the research community and the CogNovo research fellows in particular. During the poster presentations of the CogNovo research fellows the guests engaged with the PhD candidates in interesting discussions which continued in numerous social events. Many speakers stayed for the whole week, learned about CogNovo and formed working relationships that will hopefully outlast not just the workshop but also the whole doctoral training programme.
CogNovo is an innovative doctoral training programme funded by the Marie-Skłodowska-Curie actions and Plymouth University involving 25 PhD candidates from 15 different countries located in Plymouth (UK) and a supporting network of more than 50 supervisors from universities and companies all over the world.