Jim Davies is an American/Canadian

cognitive scientist Cognitive science is the interdisciplinary, scientific study of the mind and its processes. It examines the nature, the tasks, and the functions of cognition (in a broad sense). Mental faculties of concern to cognitive scientists include percep ...

, 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 university in Oswego, New York. It has a total student population of 6,756 and the campus size is 700 acres. SUNY Oswego offers more than 120 undergraduate, graduate ...

, 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, GT, and simply Tech or the Institute) is a public university, public research university and Institute of technology (United States), institute of technology in Atlanta, ...

. He is a full

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

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 university, 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 se ...

Ottawa, Ontario Ottawa is the capital city of Canada. It is located in the southern Ontario, southern portion of the province of Ontario, at the confluence of the Ottawa River and the Rideau River. Ottawa borders Gatineau, Gatineau, Quebec, and forms the cor ...

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

analogy Analogy is a comparison or correspondence between two things (or two groups of things) because of a third element that they are considered to share. In logic, it is an inference or an argument from one particular to another particular, as oppose ...

, and

imagination Imagination is the production of sensations, feelings and thoughts informing oneself. These experiences can be re-creations of past experiences, such as vivid memories with imagined changes, or completely invented and possibly fantastic scenes ...

Biography

Jim Davies was born in

Glens Falls, New York Glens Falls is a City (New York), city in Warren County, New York, Warren County, New York, United States and is the central city of the Glens Falls, New York metropolitan area, Glens Falls Metropolitan Statistical Area. The population was 14,83 ...

. 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 Laboratory, laboratories of the United States Department of Energy National Laboratories, United States Department of Energy ...

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. She is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. She has been a foreign member of the Royal Ne ...

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

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

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. He was also involved in

improv Improv may refer to: *Improvisation, an act of spontaneous invention **Improvisational theatre (includes improvisational comedy) **Musical improvisation Musical improvisation (also known as musical extemporization) is the creative activity of im ...

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 () is a visual art related to writing. It is the design and execution of lettering with a pen, ink brush, or other writing instruments. Contemporary calligraphic practice can be defined as "the art of giving form to signs in an e ...

and

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

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 1999 ...

'': 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)