May 06, 2015
In early spring 2015, Professor Laura-Ann Petitto (Co-PI, NSF’s Science of Learning Center, Visual Language and Visual Learning, VL2) submitted a supplemental grant to NSF to send two students, Adam Stone and Geo Kartheiser, to be student representatives of Gallaudet’s Science of Learning Center, the Science of Learning Centers in the USA at large, and Gallaudet’s prominent advances in Educational Neuroscience—especially Gallaudet’s pioneering Ph.D. in Educational Neuroscience (PEN) program.
On April 30, 2015, the good news arrived that the grant request was awarded, co-funded by the NSF Science of Learning Program (Dr. Soo-Siang Lim, NSF Program Director and Chair of Coordinating Committee, Science of Learning Centers Program) and the NSF Office of International Science and Engineering (Dr. Akaysha C. Tang, East Asia & Pacific Program Director). Stone and Kartheiser (both second-year PEN students) will join the University of Hong Kong’s group of scientists called, The Science of Learning Initiative, headed by Professors Nancy Law and Brendan Weekes (with others), attend UHK’s Summerfest in Educational Neuroscience, learn advanced techniques in neuroimaging and neurorecording (fMRI, EEG), give several public lectures (advances in Educational Neuroscience, visual sign phonology and reading, and visual-spatial processing in young deaf visual learners), and help to advance the University of Hong Kong’s exciting new initiative to build an Educational Neuroscience fNIRS Neuroimaging Laboratory. Here, Stone and Kartheiser will contribute their outstanding expertise in fNIRS Neuroimaging by giving an intensive workshop in fNIRS methods and analyses and working to support on-site UHK scientists interested in running fNIRS studies.
Professor Petitto will also be at the University of Hong Kong at this same time as the Sin Wai-Kin Distinguished Visiting Professor, and together the Gallaudet team will be supporting UHK’s effort to establish a Science of Learning Center in Hong Kong, as well as to support other similar initiatives elsewhere in China. The ultimate goal of this larger USA-Hong Kong-China initiative is to build vital scientific bridges between Asia and the USA and to promote the establishment of new scientific exploration and discovery through synergistic international collaboration.