Friday March 27, 2026 - 8:30 am until 4:30 pm @ USC Campus Room, Capstone House

This conference is sponsored by the USC Office of the Vice President for Research and the Institute for Mind and Brain. 

Registration and abstract submission 

This symposium is free to trainees, faculty, and staff.  A boxed lunch will be provided for the first 100 registrants. Please register for the conference and submit any abstracts before March 17, 2026.

• Registration is now closed.
• Abstract submission is now closed.

Abstract guidelines

1. Please ensure that your submission is related to human cognition or is an artwork.
2. Acceptable submissions include research or artwork abstracts. 
3. Abstract body must be within a 250 word limit.
4. The deadline to submit was extended to Tuesday March 17th (before 11:59 PM), but is now closed.
5. All posters or artwork must fit on a 4x4 ft (max) board in landscape orientation.
6. If your artwork may require any special accommodations, please contact Kasie Roark at kasie.roark@uscmed.sc.edu so we can ensure appropriate arrangements are made.

Agenda for the conference 

Start	Agenda	Title	Speaker
8:30	Coffee & Registration
9:00	Welcome	Opening Address	Rutvik Desai, PhD, Julius Fridriksson, PhD, and Thomas E. Hodges, PhD
9:15 AM	Invited speaker	Homo digitalis: My Grandfather is an Algorithm	Ezra Zubrow, PhD
9:55 AM	Invited speaker	Cognitive and Neural Mechanisms of Creative Thinking	Roger Beaty, PhD
10:40 AM	Poster Session, Lunch, and Creative Workshop	Posters: 10:40-12 pm Lunch 11-12 pm Creative workshops 10:40-12 Collective Canvas – take a prompt and add to the canvas Gallery Walk – guess on which artwork is human-made vs. AI generated Living Wall – what does creativity mean to you
12:05 PM	Invited speaker	Individual Differences, Brain Structure, and Creativity	Rex Jung, PhD
12:45 PM	Local speaker	AI and Human Creativity: Working Together	Sabrina Habib, PhD
1:25 PM	Break
1:45 PM	Local speaker	The Effect of the Musical Algorithm on Listener Cognition and Creativity	Emily Schwitzgebel, PhD
2:25 PM	Invited speaker	The End of the Cre(ai)tive World As We Know It	Jeff Charney, MA
3:10 PM	Break
3:20 PM	Panel	Creativity Across Human and Artificial Systems: Futures, Frontiers, and Open Questions	All speakers; Moderated by Julius Fridriksson, PhD
4:10 PM	Closing Remarks & Future Directions		Julius Fridriksson, PhD
4:20 PM	Human vs. Machine: “A Live Experiment in Musical Creativity	Focus: A live, experiential exploration of creativity through a musical exchange between human performers and an artificial intelligence system. Goals: To invite the audience to directly experience the similarities, differences, and tensions between human and AI-generated creativity, prompting reflection on authorship, originality, and collaboration in the future of creative expression.

Flyer