Cognitive science

Study mode:On campus Study type:Full-time Languages: English
Local:$ 277 Foreign:$ 515  
StudyQA ranking:2943 Duration:2 years

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Students complete 1,100 hours of coursework taught by France’s leading experts. To provide students direct immersion in research, the program includes the opportunity to complete several internships with one of 40 partnering research teams located in the greater Paris region.

The goal of the CogMaster program is not to educate generalists fluent in all of the cognitive sciences, but rather to educate scientists with solid footing in their field of specialization.

Above all, the Master’s in Cognitive Science is an education in research, equipping students for a career as a researcher or research professor. With its rigorous teaching standards and solid footing in national and international research, the program provides students with everything they need to advance to an academic position with a university. The field is nonetheless highly competitive, and students must be aware that the job market in cognitive science remains narrow in Europe, and, furthermore, that universities continue to be structured in a manner that maintains the traditional separation between disciplines.

The CogMaster program is not yet in a position to grant funding to students who wish to continue on to a research dissertation, but the leadership team is always available to provide information to students about existing opportunities for funding.

Given the intense nature of the work that goes into a dissertation, all students are discouraged from embarking on a dissertation without having secured a stipend. Students are highly encouraged to start looking very early (toward the end of the first semester of the M2 year) for dissertation funding, keeping a close eye on calls for proposals so as not to miss submission deadlines, most of which fall during the month of March.

A Master’s in Cognitive Science does not limit one’s opportunities to an academic career alone, with no other options. Exposure to research experience in a state-of-the-art cognitive science lab can prove a valuable asset in many fields, from applied research in the private sector (robotics, human machine interfaces, technologies for learning) to biomedical research, medical imaging, and healthcare services (rehabilitation). Students must nonetheless be aware that the links between cognitive science and its applications in public and private research remain in their infancy in Europe. The current momentum within the cognitive science field nonetheless promises further development of this interface.

During the M1 year, the majority of classes focus on the student’s initial discipline, to solidify fundamentals. The remainder of first year courses cover core curriculum in methodology and include an intensive introduction to the concepts and tools required in the remaining areas of cognitive science. Students also complete specialized internships and mini internships during their first year, at partner laboratories of the CogMaster program.

The program’s fundamentals, covering 5 academic areas, are taught in partnership with other university programs affiliated with the CogMaster:

  • Theoretical and Experimental Linguistics and Logic with ENS and Paris VIII.
  • Mathematical Modeling, Physics and Informatics with Paris V and ENS-Cachan.
  • Cognitive Neuroscience with ENS and Paris VI.
  • Philosophy and Social Science with EHESS, ENS and Paris IV.
  • Experimental Psychology with Paris V.

At the close of the M1 year, students are expected to have honed their skills in the field of their major to a level equivalent to a single-field M1 program level. Students additionally are expected to have assimilated the concepts, methods and key questions of cognitive science, and to have solid knowledge of the bibliographical sources in this arena. Finally, students are expected to have acquired the skills necessary for conducting critical analysis of existing literature, to prepare a cohesive research project in preparation for applying for the second year of the Master’s (M2).

In the M2 year, students are exposed to current research in cognitive science, and must perform research at a partnering laboratory. The study of cognitive science is an intellectual pursuit of significant scope. Our program does not claim to cover all possible approaches. Rather, we have opted to focus on fields represented by local expertise, and to select a small number of areas in which students can benefit from the necessary close supervision and guidance provided by the scientific laboratories that host the program, all of which are among the world’s best.

This necessary honing of the program is nonetheless supplemented by our international network of European partners, which provides CogMaster students exposure to supplementary education in areas not covered.

The scope of the CogMaster program therefore mirrors the strengths and expertise of the program’s affiliated laboratories. The program is structured around five main themes: Social cognition, upper cognitive functions, genetics, development and plasticity, language and communication, perception and action. Through these themes, students gain access to truly multidisciplinary credit hours (U.E.) and exposure to 3 or even 4 different teaching methodologies around a same topic of study.

At the close of the M2 year, students should be capable of successfully conducting an original and integrative research project in cognitive science. This includes the capacity to formulate a problem set, explore that problem set against existing literature, develop an experimental or theoretical approach for solving the problem set, analyze results obtained, and compare results to published papers in that area. Students will also be required to draft a technical report along the lines of a scientific publication, and to clearly and concisely defend the report in public.

This program is intended for students who have received a Bachelor’s in a field of cognitive science: psychology, biology, linguistics, philosophy, informatics. The program is also open to medical students and engineering students from France’s Grandes Écoles.

Students are expected to have a keen capacity for assimilating knowledge and for investing the individual work necessary to become conversant in fields they do not yet know. Apart from the qualities required for any type of research work (attention to detail, meticulousness, skepticism, curiosity, independence, initiative), students must have solid oral and written communications skills.

Why CogMaster?

CogMaster provides a rather unique training opportunity in Cognitive Science in Europe. It rests on a very successful 20 years teaching experience within the Paris research community, which stabilized in an integrative training program open to students with very diverse scientific backgrounds. It draws resources from some of the best Parisian universities and deploys 1100 hours of teaching provided by the best specialist of the field in France. It provides a hands-on research training program through direct immersion into some of 40 internationaly recognized research teams in the Paris area. Cogmaster training rests on five principles:

  1. Strong mono-disciplinary foundation. Our program reinforces the teaching in the student's main disciplinary sector through a selection of the courses provided by our 4 partners which are mostly relevant to cognitive science.
  2. Strong methodological training. We provide courses in some of the basic methodological and conceptual tools used in cognitive science (experimental design, statistics, brain imagery methodologies, programming,  etc.).
  3. Introduction to interdisciplinary integration. We provide in the second year several  interdisciplinary tutorials on research questions where multidisciplinary integration has taken place or is currently emerging.
  4. Direct immersion in research. Second year students are integrated in a research team throughout the year. First year students can conduct short or long internships in the labs. Students are trained to do oral and written scientific reports.
  5. Flexibility. Each student is assigned a personal tutor who helps with selecting among the large offer of monodisciplinary and interdisciplinary courses which are available through the Master and it's partners, and design the particular cursus optimal for his or her scientific project. 
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