Curriculum vitae
Norbert Kopčo
Institute of Computer Science
Faculty of Science
P. J. Šafárik University
Jesenná 5
04001 Košice
Slovakia
NAME
TITLE
Norbert Kopčo
Research Scientist / Associate Professor
eRA COMMONS USER NAME
EDUCATION/TRAINING (Begin with baccalaureate or other initial professional education, such as nursing, and include postdoctoral training.)
DEGREE
(if applicable)
YEAR(s)
Dipl.Ing.(MSc)
1996
Boston University
Boston University
Ph.D.
Post-doc
2003
2003-10
Dartmouth College
Post-doc
2005-06
Post-doc
Habilitation
(Assoc. Prof.)
2006-10
INSTITUTION AND LOCATION
Technical University of Kosice, Slovakia
Duke University
Charles University, Prague
2010
FIELD OF STUDY
Electr.Eng. & Comp.Science
(major Artificial Intelligence)
Cognitive & Neural Systems
Auditory Neuroscience
Behavioral and Cognitive
Neuroscience
Cognitive Neuroscience
Medical Informatics, 1st
Medical Faculty
A. Positions and Honors
Positions and Employment
1996
Student Intern, Universität Kaiserslautern and TechMath GmbH, Germany
1996-97 Teaching and Research Assistant, TU Kosice
1998
Teaching Assistant, CNS Dept, Boston University
1999-02 Research Assistant, CNS Dept, Boston University
2003-11 Odborny asistent (Lecturer), Dept Cybernetics & AI, TU Kosice
2003-08 Visiting Postdoctoral Researcher, Auditory Neuroscience Lab, CNS Dept, Boston University
2005-06 Visiting Postdoctoral Researcher, Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, Dept. of Psychological and
Brian Sciences, Dartmouth College
2006-08 Visiting Postdoctoral Researcher, Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, Dept. of Psychology and
Neuroscience, Duke University
2008
Visiting Researcher, Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory, Dept. of Medical Sciences, University of
Sydney
2009
Visiting Researcher, Sensory Learning Laboratory, Dept. of Psychology, U of California, Riverside
2010Visiting Researcher, CompNet: Center for Computational Neuroscience, Boston University
2011Visiting Scientist, Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Harvard Med School-Mass Gen Hosp
2012Research Scientist / Associate Professor, Faculty of Science, Šafárik University, Košice
Other Experience and Professional Memberships
2000Acoustical Society of America
2001-05 Association for Research in Otolaryngology
2000-02 International Neural Network Society
2000,02 Scientific conference committee member: 1st and 2nd International Symposium on
Computational Intelligence, Kosice, Slovakia, 2000 and 2002
2000Ad Hoc Reviewer: see list of journals below
2008
PhD dissertation committee, Masaryk University, Faculty of Social Sciences, Dept. of Psychology
Honors
1996
1996-97
1997-02
Award for Top 1% of Dipl. Ing. graduation class, Faculty of EE&CS, TU Kosice.
Open Society Foundation scholarship for PhD students in Slovakia
Fulbright Scholarship, Boston University
1997
1998
2002
2004
2005
2007
2007
2008
Presidential University Graduate Fellowship, Boston University
Best Teaching Assistant in the CNS Dept., Boston University
Fellow, NATO Advanced Science Institute “Dynamics of Speech Production and
Perception”, Il Ciocco, Italy
Fellow, Gordon Research Conference on Sensory neural coding in natural environments,
Oxford, UK
Fellow, Summer Institute in Cognitive Neuroscience at Dartmouth College
ICA-ASA Young Scientist Grant, 19th International Congress on Acoustics, Madrid, Spain
Jan Hus Foundation’s Peter Fedor Fund award for interdisciplinary research.
Human Frontier Science Program short-term fellowship. University of Sydney.
B. Selected peer-reviewed publications (in chronological order).
1. Shinn-Cunningham BG, SG Santarelli, and N Kopčo (2000) "Tori of confusion: Binaural cues for sources
within reach of a listener," J Acoust Soc Am, 107(3), 1627-1636.
2. Shinn-Cunningham BG, J Schickler, N Kopčo, and RY Litovsky (2001) "Spatial Unmasking of Nearby
Speech Sources in a Simulated Anechoic Environment", J Acoust Soc Am, 110(2), 1118-1129.
3. Kopčo N and BG Shinn-Cunningham (2003) “Spatial unmasking of nearby pure-tone targets in a simulated
anechoic environment,” J Acoust Soc Am, 114, 2856-2870.
4. Lane CC, Kopčo N, Delgutte B, Shinn-Cunningham BG and Colburn HS (2004) “A cat's cocktail party:
Psychophysical, neurophysiological and computational studies of spatial release from masking.” In:
Auditory signal processing: Physiology, psychoacoustics, and models. (Pressnitzer, D., de Cheveigné, A,
McAdams, S., and Collet, L., eds), pp 327-333, Springer, New York.
5. Kopčo N and GA Carpenter (2004) PointMap: A Real-Time Memory-Based Learning System with On-line
and Post-Training Pruning, International Journal of Hybrid Intelligent Systems, 1, 57-71
6. BG Shinn-Cunningham, N Kopčo, and T Martin (2005). Localizing nearby sound sources in a classroom:
binaural room impulse responses, Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 117, 3100-3115.
7. N Kopčo, V Best, and BG Shinn-Cunningham (2007). Sound localization with a preceding distractor,
Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 121, 420-432.
8. Kopco, N and BG Shinn-Cunningham (2008). “Influences of modulation and spatial separation on detection
of a masked broadband target,” Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 124, 2236-2250.
9. Best, V, Ozmeral, EJ, Kopco, N, and BG Shinn-Cunningham (2008) Object continuity enhances selective
auditory attention. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA. 105, 13174-13178.
10. Kopčo N, Lin, I-F. Shinn-Cunningham B, Groh JM (2009) " Reference frame of the ventriloquism
aftereffect", Journal of Neuroscience. 29(44):13809-13814.
11. N Kopčo, V Best, S Carlile (2010) Speech localization in a multitalker mixture. Journal of the Acoustical
Society of America, 127, 1450-1457.
12. V Best, BG Shinn-Cunningham, EJ Ozmeral, N Kopčo (2010) Exploring the benefit of auditory spatial
continuity. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America JASA-EL, 127 (6), EL258-EL264.
13. V Best, S Carlile, N Kopčo, A van Schaik (2011) Localization in speech mixtures by listeners with hearing
loss. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America JASA-EL, 129 (5), EL210-EL215
14. Kopčo N and BG Shinn-Cunningham (2011) “Effect of stimulus spectrum on distance perception for nearby
sources,” J Acoust Soc Am, 130(3), 1530-1541.
15. Kopco N, Huang S, Belliveau JW, Raij T, Tengshe C, Ahveninen J (2012). Neuronal Representations of
Distance in Human Auditory Cortex. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of USA, 109 (27),
11019-11024.
C. Research Support
Ongoing Research Support
1. 7th Framework Program of the European Union, Marie Curie Program Grant # 247543 “Learn 2 Hear &
See - Perceptual, Contextual, and Cross-modal Learning in Hearing and Vision" (PI & coordinator)
2010-2013
2. Science Grant Agency of the Slovak Republic grant 1/0492/12 “Computational models and analytical
tools for spatial hearing research” 2012-14 (PI and coordinator)
3. National Stipend Program of the Ministry of Education of the Slovak Republic (2012): Grant for a
collaboration with Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, on research entitled
““Representation of sound-source distance in human auditory cortex””
Completed Research Support
1. Cultural and Educational Grant Agency of the Slovak Republic grant KEGA 3/7300/09 (2009-2011):
Cognitive Science – Central-European interdisciplinary Master’s program (program coordinator
University of Vienna, Slovak coordinator – Comenius University in Bratislava, co-PI NK).
2. NIH Fogarty International Center (2007-2010): Contextual plasticity in spatial auditory maps (Foreign
Country Partner responsible for project proposal and execution: Norbert Kopco; formal Principal
Investigator responsible for administration: Barbara Shinn-Cunningham)
3. National Stipend Program of the Ministry of Education of the Slovak Republic (2009): Grant for a
collaboration with University of California, Riverside, on research entitled “Crossmodal influences in
perceptual learning”
4. APVV Slovak Agency for the Support of R&D 2009. Co-funding grant for 7th FP EU grants.
5. Human Frontier Science Program HFSPO ST00080/2008-C (Sept – Dec 2008) “Auditory spatial
perception in real multi-source environments: experiments and models.” Short-term fellowship for a
collaboration stay at the University of Sydney
6. Ministry of Education of the Slovak Republic supplementary grant to complement the US NIH grant
Contextual plasticity in spatial auditory maps 2008
7. Slovak Scientific Grant Agency 1/3134/06 (2006-2008): Unimodal and crossmodal control of strategic
attention: behavioral experiments and modeling (PI)
8. NSF #DGE-0411582 (09/01/2004-12/31/2005) NSF-NATO postdoctoral fellowship for researchers from
the NATO partner countries “Auditory Neuroscience - Effect of amplitude modulation on the human
ability to detect sounds masked by noise” Role: postdoctoral fellow, PI: Barbara Shinn-Cunningham
9. Slovak Scientific Grant Agency research grant #1/1059/04 (01/01/2004-12/31/2005) “Modeling
cognitive processes in biological and artificial systems” (PI)
10. US National Academy of Sciences & National Research Council (02/01/2003 - 06/30/2005). Twinning
grant for collaboration between USA and Slovakia. “Neuroscience - Computation of sound source
location in ordinary, reverberant spaces: Experiments and models” Role: Partner scientist from
Slovakia, PI: Barbara Shinn-Cunningham
D. Foreign Languages
Slovak/Czech (native), English (fluent), German (compentent), Russian (competent)
E. Research Accomplishments:
Research Experience
Postdoctoral:
My postdoctoral research includes several projects that investigate spatial hearing in humans:
1) Behavioral studies of visually induced plasticity in auditory spatial representation (the ventriloquism
effect) in humans and monkeys.
2) Importance of consistency on perceptual learning in auditory distance perception.
3) Effect of immediately preceding stimulus on localization of subsequent stimuli.
4) Interaction between modulation processing and spatial processing in detection of sounds masked
by noise.
5) Spatial release from masking of broadband chirp stimuli.
Doctoral:
My Ph.D. research was focused mainly on spatial hearing, but also included results of a project on
neural pattern recognition from machine learning point of view. It included two hearing projects: a study
on spatial unmasking of nearby pure tones masked by noise and a project on the effects of learning on
auditory localization in rooms. The pattern recognition project focused on derivation of the minimum
system with computational properties similar to the Adaptive Resonance Theory neural networks.
Besides the dissertation activities I was involved in several other projects, including distance perception
of nearby stimuli in real and simulated environments, spatial unmasking of speech masked by noise,
effect of spatial attentional cuing on azimuthal localization, and analysis and modeling of the effects of
room reverberation on the binaural cues perceived by the listener.
Predoctoral:
During my diploma (Master’s) studies and a year of Ph.D. study in Slovakia I focused on applications of
artificial neural networks to pattern recognition problems like image classification. Specifically, I worked
on a project on classification of land usage changes based on remotely sensed images.
Research Interests
My primary research interest is spatial auditory perception by humans. Specifically I am interested in binaural
hearing, speech perception, auditory attention, audio-visual (and other cross-modal) interactions, effect of
reverberation on perception, physiologically-based modeling of auditory perception, learning, adaptation and
plasticity in spatial hearing. More generally, I am interested in all aspects of human perception and cognition,
and in the underlying neural processes.
My secondary interest is in pattern recognition, specifically in statistical, neural-network, and machine-learning
methods for pattern recognition. I am studying the class of learning algorithms called memory-based learning
systems (e.g., k-Nearest Neighbor, ARTMAP), characterized by their tendency to learn categories by
remembering many individual instances representing each category.
Dissertation Thesis
Kopčo N (2003) Spatial hearing, auditory sensitivity, and pattern recognition in noisy environments, Graduate
School of Arts and Sciences, Boston University. Published by UMI. Supervisor: Barbara ShinnCunningham
Habilitation Thesis
Kopčo N (2010) Mechanizmy priestorového počutia a separácie zvukov (Mechanisms of spatial hearing and
sound segragation), Habilitation Thesis, 1st Medical Faculty, Charles University. Prague.
Invited lectures
Invited representative of Slovakia at World Science Forum, Budapest, Hungary, Nov 14-16, 2011
Kopčo N (2011). "Ako používame pozornosť a apriórne informácie pri priestorovom sluchu," (How we use
attention and a priori information in spatial hearing), invited keynote lecture at Kognice 2011, Masaryk
University, Brno, Czech Rep, 22-24 Sept, 2011.
Kopčo N (2011). “Sound Localization Strategies in Simple and Complex Environments” Invited talk in the
Active Auditory System talk series at University Oldenburg.
Kopčo, N. (2009) Visual calibration, task-specific plasticity, and uncertainty processing in sound localization.
Department of Psychology. University of California, Riverside. Sept 24, 2009.
Kopčo, N. (2008) Visually guided plasticity and attention in spatial hearing. Department of Medical Physics.
University of Oldenburg. May 13, 2008.
Kopčo N, S Santarelli, V Best, and B Shinn-Cunningham (2007) Simulating distance cues in virtual reverberant
environments. 19th International Congress on Acoustics, Madrid, Spain, Sept 2-7, 2007.
Kopčo, N. (2006) „Click vs. click-click vs. blink-click: Factors influencing human sound localization in the
horizontal plane,” Invited lecture at the Acoustics Research Institute, Austrian Academy of Sciences,
Vienna, Apr 2006
Kopčo N (2005) Across-frequency integration in spatial release from masking. In: Proceedings of the Forum
Acusticum conference, Budapest, 29 Aug - 2 Sept 2005
Kopčo N, M Schoolmaster, and BG Shinn-Cunningham (2004) Learning to Judge Distance of Nearby Sounds
in Reverberant and Anechoic Environments. In: Proc. Joint congress CFA/DAGA '04 22.-25.03.2004 in
Strasbourg, France.
Kopčo N (2004) Cocktail Parties for Cats and Humans: Spatial Hearing in Noisy Environments. Talks in
Cognitive Science at University of Massachusetts, Boston.
Kopčo N (2003) Spatial release from masking of chirp trains in a simulated anechoic environment. Presented
at the University of Connecticut Health Center. 7/23/03.
Kopčo N, S Constant, BG Shinn-Cunningham (2002). "Spatial unmasking of speech in simulated anechoic and
reverberant rooms," NATO Advanced Science Institute “Dynamics of Speech Production and Perception”, Il
Ciocco, Italy
F. Teaching Accomplishments:
Development and teaching of the Introduction to Neuroscience (undergraduate level) and Computational and
Cognitive Neuroscience (graduate level) courses at the Dept of Cybernetics and AI, TU Košice (20032007) and Safarik University (2011-)
Teaching assistant: Introduction to Neural Modeling II (CN520), graduate-level course in the Cognitive and
Neural Systems Dept., Boston University (Honored as the best teaching assistant of the year 1998)
Informal Teaching Activities:
Guest lecturer: teaching a lecture on the Adaptive Resonance Theory neural networks in the class
“Introduction to Neural Modeling II” at the BU Dept. of Cognitive and Neural Systems (2000-2004).
Guest lecturer: Introduction to Neural Networks undergraduate course at the Dept. of Cybernetics and AI, TU
Košice (2003)
Theses supervision and consulting:
PhD supervisor at TU Kosice: Beata Tomoriova (2008-2012): “Neural plasticity and strategic attentional control
in spatial hearing”, a UPJŠ: Ľuboš Hládek (2011-2014)
Supervision of more than ten diploma (M.Sc.) students at Dept. of EE & CS, TU Košice. Topics: auditory
perception and neural networks (2003-2012)
Consulting on two undergraduate senior project theses in the Dept of Biomedical Engineering and one Master
of Medical Sciences thesis in the BU Medical School, Boston University. Thesis Supervisor: Barbara ShinnCunningham (2000-2003)
G. Other Accomplishments:
Scientific conference committee membership:
Session chair: 151st meeting of Acoust Soc Am, Providence, RI, USA, 2006
1st and 2nd Euro-International Symposium on Computational Intelligence, Košice, Slovakia, 2000
and 2002
Research Initiatives:
Establishment of the Perception and Cognition Lab at the Technical University of Košice. This lab
integrates local researchers interested in cognition and neuroscience.
Attendance at summer schools:
NATO Advanced Science Institute “Dynamics of Speech Production and Perception”, Il Ciocco, Italy
(2002). Awarded registration grant for this conference.
Summer Institute in Cognitive Neuroscience. Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH (2005). Awarded full
scholarship (travel, accommodation, registration).
Ad hoc reviewer of journal, conference, and grant submissions:
Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, Journal of Neuroscience, Journal of Neurophysiology,
Hearing Research, PLoS One, International Conference on Auditory Display, ACM Transactions
on Applied Perception, Acoustica united with Acta Acoustica, Neural Networks, IEEE Transactions
on Neural Networks, International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, the Slovak chapter of the
Fulbright Commission, Physiological Research, Applied Psycholinguistics, Future and Emerging
Technologies Program of the European Commission’s 7th Framework Program, National Science
Foundation.
Professional Membership:
Association for Research in Otolaryngology, Society for Neuroscience, Acoustical Society of America,
(formerly International Neural Network Society)