Jim Davies is an American/Canadian cognitive scientist, playwright, artist, and author. He received his bachelor's degree in philosophy from the

State University of New York at Oswego State University of New York at Oswego (SUNY Oswego or Oswego State) is a public college in the City of Oswego and Town of Oswego, New York. It has two campuses: historic lakeside campus in Oswego and Metro Center in Syracuse, New York. SUN ...

, his masters in psychology and his Ph.D. in computer science from the

Georgia Institute of Technology The Georgia Institute of Technology, commonly referred to as Georgia Tech or, in the state of Georgia, as Tech or The Institute, is a public research university and institute of technology in Atlanta, Georgia. Established in 1885, it is part of ...

. He is a full

professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an Academy, academic rank at university, universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who pr ...

of Cognitive Science at the Institute of Cognitive Science and the School of Computer Science at

Carleton University Carleton University is an English-language public research university in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. Founded in 1942 as Carleton College, the institution originally operated as a private, non-denominational evening college to serve returning World ...

in Ottawa, Ontario where he is the director of the Science of Imagination Laboratory. His research focuses on visual reasoning,

analogy Analogy (from Greek ''analogia'', "proportion", from ''ana-'' "upon, according to" lso "against", "anew"+ ''logos'' "ratio" lso "word, speech, reckoning" is a cognitive process of transferring information or meaning from a particular subject ( ...

, and

imagination Imagination is the production or simulation of novel objects, sensations, and ideas in the mind without any immediate input of the senses. Stefan Szczelkun characterises it as the forming of experiences in one's mind, which can be re-creations ...

Biography

Jim Davies was born in

Glens Falls, New York Glens Falls is a city in Warren County, New York, United States and is the central city of the Glens Falls Metropolitan Statistical Area. The population was 14,700 at the 2010 census. The name was given by Colonel Johannes Glen, the falls refe ...

. He attended Lake George High School and then majored in philosophy at the

, during which he was an exchange student in Beijing, graduating in 1993. He worked in automated text retrieval at the

Los Alamos National Laboratory Los Alamos National Laboratory (often shortened as Los Alamos and LANL) is one of the sixteen research and development laboratories of the United States Department of Energy (DOE), located a short distance northwest of Santa Fe, New Mexico, ...

under the supervision of Dr. Timothy Thomas before attending graduate school at the

, where he received his M.S. in psychology in 1997 under the advisement of Dr. Dorrit Billman. He also received his Ph.D. from Georgia Tech in 2004, under the advisement of philosopher of science

Nancy J. Nersessian Nancy J. Nersessian is the ''Regents' Professor and Professor of Cognitive Science'' at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Her work tends to be in the areas of the philosophy of science, the history of science, and the psychology of science. She ...

and artificial intelligence researcher Ashok K. Goel. He worked in

bioinformatics Bioinformatics () is an interdisciplinary field that develops methods and software tools for understanding biological data, in particular when the data sets are large and complex. As an interdisciplinary field of science, bioinformatics combi ...

as a postdoctoral fellow at Queen's University with Dr. Janice Glasgow and is currently a professor at the Department of Cognitive Science at

Research

Davies studies imagination through the use of computer simulations of visual imagination, which attempt to model the results of studies of how humans typically imagine visual scenes. In addition to his work at the Science of Imagination Laboratory, Davies is editor of the ''Cognitive Science Summary'' website and is on the editorial board of ''The Open Artificial Intelligence Journal''. He presented
TEDxCarletonU
talk on his research at Carleton on March 30, 2010 and another at Google on August 8, 2010. He has published three books of popular science: ''Riveted: The Science of Why Jokes Make Us Laugh, Movies Make Us Cry, Religion Makes Us Feel One with the Universe'' (2014)., ''Imagination: The Science of Your Mind's Greatest Power'' (2019), and ''Being the Person Your Dog Thinks You Are: The Science of a Better You (2021).

Art

Davies is also a comic improvisor, playwright and theater director. He helped found the VisionQuest theater company, cited as one of the best new theater troupes in Atlanta, and for whom he directed ''The Devil and Ben Jones''. As a playwright, his plays include ''Medea: The Fury'' and ''Read It Twice... It's Real,'' concerning falling in love with robots, was produced by the

Sock 'n' Buskin Theatre Company Carleton University is an English-language public research university in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. Founded in 1942 as Carleton College, the institution originally operated as a private, non-denominational evening college to serve returning World ...

. He was also involved in improv in Atlanta and Kingston and was in a troupe in Ottawa. His serialized fiction, ''Eve Pixiedrowner and the Micean Council,'' appears monthly in ''Altered Reality Magazine.'' Davies is also a visual artist focusing on non-orthodox

calligraphy Calligraphy (from el, link=y, καλλιγραφία) is a visual art related to writing. It is the design and execution of lettering with a pen, ink brush, or other writing instrument. Contemporary calligraphic practice can be defined as "t ...

and

Pac-Man originally called ''Puck Man'' in Japan, is a 1980 maze action video game developed and released by Namco for arcades. In North America, the game was released by Midway Manufacturing as part of its licensing agreement with Namco America. Th ...

art.

Publications

* Davies, J. (2021)
Being the Person Your Dog Thinks You Are: The Science of a Better You
* Davies, J. (2019)
Imagination: Understanding Our Mind's Greatest Power
*Davies, J. (2014)
''Riveted: The Science of Why Jokes Make Us Laugh, Movies Make Us Cry, and Religion Makes Us Feel One with the Universe''
Palgrave Macmillan. * Davies, J., Goel, A. K., & Nersessian, N. J. (2009). "A Computational Model of Visual Analogies in Design". ''

Cognitive Systems Research ''Cognitive Systems Research'' is a scientific journal that covers all topics in the study of cognitive science, both natural and artificial cognitive systems. Its founding editors-in-chief were Ron Sun, Vasant Honavar, and Gregg Oden (from 19 ...

'': Special Issue on Analogies, 10, 204—215. * Davies, J., & Goel, A. K. (2001). "Visual analogy in problem solving". ''Proceedings of the Seventeenth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence''. 377-382. Morgan Kaufmann publishers.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Davies, Jim Living people Canadian cognitive scientists Academic staff of Carleton University American dramatists and playwrights Georgia Tech alumni Year of birth missing (living people)