menu: home -- (cv) -- personal

Jonathan D. Nelson, Curriculum Vitae

---> The pdf version is my most current CV.

Computer Science and Engineering Dept., University of California, San Diego
9500 Gilman Dr., La Jolla, CA 92093-0404
office: room 4108
email: jnelson at cogsci dot ucsd dot edu

Education

Postdoc, Computational Neurobiology Laboratory, Salk Institute, 2005-2007. Mentor: Terry Sejnowski

Ph.D., Cognitive Science, University of California, San Diego, 2005
Dissertation: Optimal experimental design as a theory of perceptual and cognitive information acquisition.  (pdf 200k)
Committee: Martin I Sereno, Garrison W Cottrell, Javier R Movellan (co-chairs), Gedeon Deak, Craig McKenzie, Jochen Triesch.

M.S., Cognitive Science, University of California, San Diego, 2002.

B. A., Cognitive Science and Statistics (Magna Cum Laude), Wheaton College, 1998

Publications

Nelson, JD; McKenzie, CRM; Cottrell, GW; & Sejnowski, TJ (in preparation). Using optimal experimental design principles to investigate human search.

Nelson, JD; Sejnowski, TJ (in preparation). Neglect of subjects' beliefs can lead to the erroneous conclusion that they incorrectly weight base rates.

Nelson, JD (in press). Towards a rational theory of human information acquisition. In Oaksford, M & Chater, N (Eds.), The probabilistic mind: Prospects for rational models of cognition. Oxford: Oxford University Press. (pdf 270k) (doc 270k)

Filimon, F; Nelson, JD; Hagler, DJ; Sereno, MI (2007). Human cortical representations for reaching: mirror neurons for execution, observation, and imagery. NeuroImage, 37(4), 1315-1328.   doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2007.06.008

Nelson, JD; Cottrell, GW (2007).   A probabilistic model of eye movements in concept formation.  Neurocomputing, 70, 2256-2272. (accepted pdf 430k)   doi:10.1016/j.neucom.2006.02.026

Nelson, JD (2005). Finding useful questions: on Bayesian diagnosticity, probability, impact and information gain.  Psychological Review, 112(4), 979-999.  (pdf 400k) (supplement 150k)

McKenzie, CRM; Nelson, JD (2003). What a speaker's choice of frame reveals: Reference points, frame selection, and framing effects.  Psychonomic Bulletin and Review, 10(3), 596-602.   (pdf 180k)

Movellan, JR; Nelson, JD (2001). Probabilistic functionalism: a unifying paradigm for cognitive science. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 24(4), 690-692.   (pdf 266k)   (ps 744k)

Nelson, JD; Tenenbaum, JB; Movellan, JR (2001). Active inference in concept learning. In J. D. Moore & K. Stenning (Eds.), Proceedings of the 23rd Conference of the Cognitive Science Society, 692-697. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.   (pdf 180k)

Nelson, JD; Movellan, JR (2001) Active inference in concept learning. Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems, 13, 45-51.   (ps.gz 400k)

Published abstracts

Filimon, F., Nelson, J., & Sereno, M. (2007, May). Human fMRI of tactile spatial representations. Journal of Vision, 7(9):301, 301a, doi:10.1167/7.9.301.

Nelson, J. D., McKenzie, C., Cottrell, G., & Sejnowski, T. (2007, May). Towards a descriptive theory of value of information in categorization tasks: implications for theories of eye movement and information search. Journal of Vision, 7(9):960, 960a, doi:10.1167/7.9.960.

Nelson, J. D., & Cottrell, G. W. (2006, May). An optimal experimental design model of information acquisition on a classic concept learning task. Journal of Vision, 6(6):489, 489a, doi:10.1167/6.6.489.

Filimon, F., Nelson, J. D., & Sereno, M. I. (2006, May). Egocentric and allocentric reference frames for eye movements -- an fMRI study. Journal of Vision, 6(6):979, 979a, doi:10.1167/6.6.979.

Nelson, JD (2005, July). Intuitive experimental design: Toward a theory of questions' usefulness.   ASIC, Briancon, France.   (abstract)

Filimon, F., Nelson, J. D., & Sereno, M. I. (2005, May). Parietal cortex involvement in visually guided, non-visually guided, observed, and imagined reaching, compared to saccades. Journal of Vision, 5(8), 629a, http://journalofvision.org/5/8/629/, doi:10.1167/5.8.629. (abstract)

Nelson, JD (2004, August). Finding useful questions in a natural environment. Cognitive Science Society Conference, Chicago.  (.pdf 87k)

Nelson, JD; Cottrell, GW; Movellan, JR; Sereno, MI (2004, May). Yarbus lives: a foveated exploration of saccadic eye movement. Journal of Vision, 4(8), 741 (abstract).    Vision Science Society conference, Sarasota, Florida. (.pdf poster 55 Mb) (example foveated data).   

Nelson, JD (2003, May). When the ideal observer meets the brain: A new approach to modeling saccadic eye movement. 10th Joint Symposium on Neural Computation, UC Irvine. (abstract)

Nelson, JD; Movellan, JR (2001, May). Inference by means of uncertainty. 8th Joint Symposium on Neural Computation, Salk Institute. (abstract)

Nelson, JD; Movellan, JR (2000, May). Concept induction in the presence of uncertainty. 7th Joint Symposium on Neural Computation, University of Southern California.

Other presentations

Nelson, JD (2006, Jan). Optimal experimental design and human information acquisition. UCLA Psychology Dept.

Nelson, JD; Cottrell, GW (2005, Oct). A probabilistic model of eye movements in concept formation.
--Cognitive Brownbag Talk, UCSD Psychology
--PEN XI, McGill University, Montreal, Canada

Nelson, JD (2005, June). Ideal ideal observers. Annual Cognitive Neuroscience Retreat, Salk Institute.   (abstract 5 mb)

Nelson, JD (2005). Late breaking results in intuitive experimental design. Psychology Dept., UCSD. (abstract)

Nelson, JD; Cottrell, GW (2005). Eye movements for concept learning.   COGS 200 seminar, April 29, 2005.

Nelson, JD; Cottrell, GW; Filimon, F; Sejnowski, T (2005, Dec). Optimal experimental design models of naive human information acquisition. NIPS 2005, Whistler, Canada.   (abstract)

Nelson, JD; Cottrell, GW; Movellan, JR (2004). Explaining eye movements during learning as an active sampling process. International Conference on Development and Learning, Oct, 2004. (.pdf 100k)

Nelson, JD (2004) Statistical principles and intuitive experimental design. Experimental Philosophy Lab, UCSD, Oct, 2004.  (abstract)

McKenzie, CRM; Sher, S; Nelson, JD (2004). Framing effects and information leakage. Conference on individual decisions, Institute for Mathematical Behavioral Sciences, UC Irvine, May, 2004.

Nelson, JD. How should a test's usefulness be quantified-- with Bayesian diagnosticity, information gain, or probability gain? Implications for eye movement, medical decision-making, and cognitive psychological tasks.
-- Salk Institute for Neural Computation pre- and post-doc group, UCSD, Jan, 2004
-- Psychology Department, UCSD, Jan, 2004
-- Cognitive Science Department, UCSD, Jan, 2004
-- University of Auckland Psychology Department, New Zealand, Dec, 2003

Nelson, JD. When the ideal observer meets the brain: A new approach to modeling saccadic eye movement.
-- Cognitive Neuroscience Retreat, Del Mar, CA, May, 2003
-- Psychology Department, UCSD, April, 2003
-- Kutas lab talk, UCSD Cognitive Science Department, April, 2003
-- Perceptual Expertise Network 6, Boulder, Colorado, Feb, 2003

McKenzie, CRM; Nelson, JD. What a speaker's choice of frame reveals: Reference points, frame selection, and framing effects. Annual Meeting of the Psychonomic Society, Orlando, FL, Nov, 2001.

Honors and Awards

Probabilistic Models of Cognition Summer School participant, Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics, UCLA, July, 2007

NIH Postdoctoral Fellowship, 2005-2007 (NIH grant T32 MH020002-04 to T. Sejnowski)

Stanford Neuroeconomics Summer School participant, July, 2006

Okinawa Computational Neuroscience Course participant, Japan, July, 2005

NSF IGERT Predoctoral Fellowship, 2004-2005 (NSF grant DGE-0333451 to G. Cottrell)

NIH Predoctoral Fellowship, 2002-2004 (NIH grant T32 MH020002-04 to T. Sejnowski)

Pew Graduate Fellowship, 1998-2000

PEMCO Fellowship, 1998-2003

Scholastic Honor Society, Wheaton College, 1998

Chair, Cognitive Science Society of Wheaton College, 1997-1998

Professional service. Reviewer for:

Psychological Review,    
Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition,    
Neural Information Processing Systems conference,    
Cognitive Science Society conference,    
Journal of Neurophysiology,    
IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man and Cybernetics

Professional organization memberships

Cognitive Science Society,   Psychonomic Society,   Society for Neuroscience,   Vision Sciences Society

Teaching

IGERT Vision and Learning in Humans and Machines Bootcamp, 2004. Designed and mentored student project using gaze-contingent eye tracking experiment to study concept learning.

SCANS presents (COGS 91), 2003. Taught seminar course to introduce students to a variety of research agendas and applications of research in cognitive science. Had full teaching responsibility for class.

Human Development (HDP I), 2000, 2001, 2002 (supervisors: Jeff Elman, Farrel Ackerman). Developed new content, with Jeff Williams of the UCSD Biomedical Library, to introduce MedLine and PsychInfo, and a new research component of the course. Led discussion sections for 70 students. Topics included neural and visual development, social development, and gender development.

Computing (COGS 3), 1999-2001 (supervisors: Mark Wallen, Mary Boyle). Designed new course components, including lectures and assignments, to introduce DHTML technologies, and assistive technologies for the disabled. Received teaching award.
(Repetitive stress injury lecture)    (JavaScript lecture)   

Multimedia Design (COGS 187A), 1999 (supervisor: David Kirsh). Mentored student projects in Web design. Received teaching award.

Cognitive Ethnographer, Intel Architecture Labs, 1999 (supervisors: John Sherry, Brad Anders). Studied communication and workflow on the factory floor. Presented factory management with specific recommendations to improve factory efficiency and worker satisfaction.

Probability and Statistics, Wheaton College, 1998 (supervisor: Dr. Jim Mann). Led study sections, graded student work, and lectured in calculus-based mathematical statistics course.