Updated on Jan 31, 2025

2024 Qualia Structure Summer School can be found here.

2025 QStr-IIT Summer School

 The QStr (Qualia Structure) - IIT (Integrated Information Theory) Summer School offers an exciting opportunity for students, post-doctoral fellows and junior faculty scholars from around the world to explore the intersection of qualitative aspects of consciousness (or qualia) and scientific objectivity. This event is scheduled to take place in Venice and Bertinoro, Italy from October 5 to 17, 2025. It is supported by Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International (ATR) under the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, Grant-in-Aid for Transformative Research Areas A: Qualia Structure.   The Qualia Structure project seeks to establish an interdisciplinary research program, making this summer school an exceptional opportunity for intellectual pursuit and philosophical inquiry. It is also supported by the Tiny Blue Dot Foundation, seeking to understand the nature of the Perception Box and how to expand its boundaries using neuroscience-based interventions. 

 The 2025 Edition of the School will be hosted in collaboration with the Neuroscience School of Advanced Studies (NSAS, www.neurosas.org). To scholars attending this QStr-IIT School of October 2025, the NSAS offers a 30% discount off published tuition rates to attend any NSAS Advanced Course during the years 2025 and 2026.

Island of San Servolo, Venice

Academic Center, Bertinoro

Vision and Mission

 The primary focus of the QStr-IIT Summer School is to promote an interdisciplinary research program, leveraging mathematics, physics, psychology, philosophy, cognitive science, neuroscience, medicine, therapeutics, artificial intelligence, information theory, and linguistics. Its primary goals are to develop novel approaches to understanding mind and to subject these to empirical investigations. A further goal is to help participants understand that their lived reality, their perception box, is a construct of the mind, and that its walls can be expanded to acquire a broader understanding of the world, foster compassion, and minimize suffering. The school advocates for structural approaches to qualia and aspires to lead the next generation of consciousness research.

Key Objectives

・Create lasting networks through face-to-face interactions among participants.

・Foster long-lasting collaborations to address the problem of consciousness.

・Produce outputs in formats shareable with the world, such as pre-registration of new experiments, blogs for new ideas, and YouTube videos for lectures and journals clubs.

 In this summer school, the focus is not so much on learning various concepts from the lectures. (This aspect will be covered by the pre-school lectures and journal clubs to some extent). Rather, it is active learning from discussion, presentation, writing, programming, experimenting and so on. 

 See sample outputs from the past summer school here.  

 To achieve the above goals, we invite keynote lecturers (to be announced later) from experts with diverse backgrounds in consciousness research. We aim to attract students who aspire to contribute to the understanding of consciousness. To facilitate participation, we will cover expenses during the summer school (details below) except for travel (but see also for potential opportunity). Qualia Structure is planning to organize the Summer School in 2026 and/or 2027 in Japan, possibly Hokkaido, in Japan.

Dates (2025)

・October 5-10: Island of San Servolo, Venice

・(October 11-12: Break, Change of Venue)

・October 13-17: Academic Center, Bertinoro

(tentative) Program

Potential lecture topics in Oct 6-10: (to be determined) 

Qualia Structure paradigm and its empirical research

Integrated Information Theory: basic and prospect 

Neural basis of consciousness: historical perspective to future perspective

Category theory

Philosophy 

Empirical and computational neuroscience 

Participating faculty 

[confirmed]: 

Melanie Boly (University of Wisconsin, Madison)

Matteo Grasso (University of Wisconsin, Madison)

Christof Koch (the Allen Institute, the Tiny Blue Dot Foundation) 

Masafumi Oizumi (University of Tokyo) 

Hayato Saigo (Zen University) 

Giulio Tononi (University of Wisconsin, Madison)

Naotsugu Tsuchiya (Monash University)

[tentative]

William Marshall (tentative, Brock University) 

Hedda Hassel Mørch (University of Inland Norway) 

Steve Philliips (Advanced Institute of Science and Technology)

Makiko Yamada (Quantum Science and Technology) 

[online]: pre/post-school activities

Yuko Ishihara (Ritsumeikan University) 

(Brief Bios [to be opened / updated soon as of Feb 2, 2025] ) 

Participant Selection Criteria 

See selection criteria

Timeline

・Application Form (Google Form): [Application Form Link]

・Deadline: Feb 28, 2025

・Notification of Selection Results: We aim to announce outcomes on an individual basis as soon as possible for visa processing. If you do not receive notification by Apr 30, 2025, it means that you were not selected in this round.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

FAQ about the application form will be updated.

Update 2024 Dec 23.  

Q1. Where should I stay and do during the break (Oct 11 to 12)? 

A1. We will leave it up to you where to stay, how to get to the venue, etc. Please pay for accommodation (Oct 10 to 12), food and travel by yourself.

Sponsor: 

• Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International (ATR) under Japan Society for Promotion of Science, Transformative Area (A), “Qualia Structure” 

• The Tiny Blue Dot Foundation, in Santa Monica