With everything that has been going on in the world, we’ve fallen pretty far behind in posting the latest news from the lab.

We had two students, Anco Peeters and Nick Brancazio, receive their PhDs in late May. Anco has moved to Germany, where he is now a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Ruhr-University Bochum. He is working in the research group “Constructing scenarios of the past: A new framework in episodic memory.” Though graduation was cancelled, Anco was still able to join us via zoom for a few drinks to celebrate!

Nick has taken a position as a Postdoc (Research Associate) here with the McGivern Lab at the University of Wollongong, where she is working on the Templeton World Charity Foundation grant “Agency and Intelligence in Minimal Systems” with Patrick.

On June 12 we had our second AIMS Workshop: Exploring Intelligence. Our speakers were Madeleine Beekman (University of Sydney) and Ken Cheng (Macquarie University). Madeleine told us about the mysterious learning abilities of slime moulds, and Ken gave us some insights into the building blocks of intelligence through a discussion of oscillatory systems and directed action. This was our first virtual conference and we were delighted to have an excellent turnout and fabulous discussions. We’ll have a few more of these workshops throughout the rest of the year, so be sure to follow us here or on twitter @mcgivernlab.