Research/art/teacher profile of a person
Name and surname:
doc. RNDr. Martin Takáč, PhD.
Document type:
Research/art/teacher profile of a person
The name of the university:
Comenius University Bratislava
The seat of the university:
Šafárikovo námestie 6, 818 06 Bratislava

I. - Basic information

I.1 - Surname
Takáč
I.2 - Name
Martin
I.3 - Degrees
doc. RNDr. PhD.
I.4 - Year of birth
1973
I.5 - Name of the workplace
Faculty of Mathematics, Physics and Informatics, Comenius University in Bratislava
I.6 - Address of the workplace
Mlynská dolina, 84248 Bratislava
I.7 - Position
Associate Professor
I.8 - E-mail address
martin.takac@fmph.uniba.sk
I.9 - Hyperlink to the entry of a person in the Register of university staff
https://www.portalvs.sk/regzam/detail/4753
I.10 - Name of the study field in which a person works at the university
computer science
I.11 - ORCID iD
0000-0002-3956-962X

II. - Higher education and further qualification growth

II.1 - First degree of higher education
II.2 - Second degree of higher education
II.a - Name of the university or institution
Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, Comenius University in Bratislava
II.b - Year
1997
II.c - Study field and programme
computer science, artificial intelligence
II.3 - Third degree of higher education
II.a - Name of the university or institution
Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, Comenius University in Bratislava
II.b - Year
2008
II.c - Study field and programme
applied informatics
II.4 - Associate professor
II.a - Name of the university or institution
Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, Comenius University in Bratislava
II.b - Year
2017
II.c - Study field and programme
computer science
II.5 - Professor
II.6 - Doctor of Science (DrSc.)

III. - Current and previous employment

III.a - Occupation-position III.b - Institution III.c - Duration
Associate Professor Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, Comenius University in Bratislava since 2017
Assistant Professor Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, Comenius University in Bratislava since 1999
Postdoctoral researcher University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand 2009-11, 2014-17
system administrator Faculty of Arts, Comenius University in Bratislava 1997-99

IV. - Development of pedagogical, professional, language, digital and other skills

IV.a - Activity description, course name, other IV.b - Name of the institution IV.c - Year
State exam of English Faculty of Arts, Comenius University in Bratislava 1994

V. - Overview of activities within the teaching career at the university

V.1 - Overview of the profile courses taught in the current academic year according to study programmes
V.1.a - Name of the profile course V.1.b - Study programme V.1.c - Degree V.1.d - Field of study
Introduction to Cognitive Science mIKV - Cognitive Science 2 computer science
Science, Technology and Humanity: Opportunities and Risks mIKV - Cognitive Science 2 computer science
Pedagogical communication Teacher Training Foundations 2 Teacher Training and Education Science
V.2 - Overview of the responsibility for the delivery, development and quality assurance of the study programme or its part at the university in the current academic year
V.3 - Overview of the responsibility for the development and quality of the field of habilitation procedure and inaugural procedure in the current academic year
V.4 - Overview of supervised final theses
V.4.1 - Number of currently supervised theses
V.4.a - Bachelor's (first degree)
0
V.4.b - Diploma (second degree)
3
V.4.c - Dissertation (third degree)
3
V.4.2 - Number of defended theses
V.4.a - Bachelor's (first degree)
7
V.4.b - Diploma (second degree)
33
V.4.c - Dissertation (third degree)
1
V.5 - Overview of other courses taught in the current academic year according to study programmes
V.5.a - Name of the course V.5.b - Study programme V.5.c - Degree V.5.d - Field of study
Cognitive Semantics and Cognitive Theories of Representation mIKV - Cognitive Science 2 computer science
Qualitative modeling and simulation Applied Informatics 2 computer science
Pedagogical communication Theory of Informatics Education 3 Teacher Training and Education Science

VI. - Overview of the research/artistic/other outputs

VI.1 - Overview of the research/artistic/other outputs and the corresponding citations
VI.1.1 - Number of the research/artistic/other outputs
VI.1.a - Overall
93
VI.1.b - Over the last six years
26
VI.1.2 - Number of the research/artistic/other outputs registered in the Web of Science or Scopus databases
VI.1.a - Overall
25
VI.1.b - Over the last six years
11
VI.1.3 - Number of citations corresponding to the research/artistic/other outputs
VI.1.a - Overall
101
VI.1.b - Over the last six years
55
VI.1.4 - Number of citations registered in the Web of Science or Scopus databases
VI.1.a - Overall
62
VI.1.b - Over the last six years
45
VI.1.5 - Number of invited lectures at the international, national level
VI.1.a - Overall
22
VI.1.b - Over the last six years
15
VI.2 - The most significant research/artistic/other outputs
1

Takáč, Martin, Benušková, Lubica, Knott, Alistair: Mapping sensorimotor sequences to word sequences: A connectionist model of language acquisition and sentence generation. In: Cognition. - Vol. 125, No. 2 (2012), p. 288-308.

2

Takáč, Martin, Knott, Alistair: Roles for event representations in sensorimotor experience, memory formation, and language processing. In: Topics in Cognitive Science. - Vol. 13, No. 1 (2021), p. 187-205.

3

Takáč, Martin, Knott, Alistair: A neural network model of episode representations in working memory. In: Cognitive Computation. - Vol. 7, No. 5 (2015), p. 509-525.

4

Takáč, Martin, Knott, Alistair, Stokes, Stephanie: What can Neighbourhood Density effects tell us about word learning? Insights from a connectionist model of vocabulary development. In: Journal of Child Language. - Vol. 44, No. 2 (2017), p. 346-379.

5

Sagar, M., Moser, A., Henderson, A., Morrison, S., Pages, N., Nejati, A., Yeh, W.-T., Conder, J., Knott, A., Jawed, K., Takac, M.: A platform for holistic embodied models of infant cognition, and its use in a model of event processing. IEEE Transactions on Cognitive and Developmental Systems, 2023, 15(4), pp. 1916–1927

VI.3 - The most significant research/artistic/other outputs over the last six years
1

Takáč, Martin, Knott, Alistair: Roles for event representations in sensorimotor experience, memory formation, and language processing. In: Topics in Cognitive Science. - Vol. 13, No. 1 (2021), p. 187-205.

2

Sagar, M., Moser, A., Henderson, A., Morrison, S., Pages, N., Nejati, A., Yeh, W.-T., Conder, J., Knott, A., Jawed, K., Takac, M.: A platform for holistic embodied models of infant cognition, and its use in a model of event processing. IEEE Transactions on Cognitive and Developmental Systems, 2023, 15(4), pp. 1916–1927

3

Sagar, M., Henderson, A., Takac, M., Morrison, S., Knott, A., Moser, A., Yeh, W.-T., Pages, N., Jawed, K.: Deconstructing and reconstructing turn-taking in caregiver-infant interactions: a platform for embodied models of early cooperation. Journal of the Royal Society of New Zealand 53(1). 148-168. 2023.

4

Fandl, M., Takáč, M.: Towards a Model of Associative Memory with Learned Distributed Representations. In Wand, M., Malinovská, K., Schmidhuber, J., Tetko, I.V. (eds.), Artificial Neural Networks and Machine Learning – ICANN 2024. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 15016, Springer, Cham. 226-241. 2024.

5

Knott, A., Sagar, M., Takac, M.: The ethics of interaction with neurorobotic agents: a case study with BabyX. AI and Ethics 2(1). 115-128. 2022

VI.4 - The most significant citations corresponding to the research/artistic/other outputs
1

VI.2.1, Frank, S. L. - Bod, R. - Christiansen, M. H.: How hierarchical is language use?. In: Proceedings of the Royal Society B-Biological Sciences, Vol. 279, No. 1747, 2012, p. 4522-4531

2

VI.2.1, Hinaut, X. - Petit, M. - Pointeau, G. - Dominey, P. F.: Exploring the acquisition and production of grammatical constructions through human-robot interaction with echo state networks. In: Frontiers in Neurorobotics, Vol. 8, 2014,Art. No. 16, p. 1-17

3

VI.2.2, Hebblewhite, A. - Hohwy, J. - Drummond, T. W.: Events and Machine Learning. In: Topics in Cognitive Science, Vol. 13, No. 1, 2021, p. 243-247

4

VI.2.2, Kuperberg, G. R.: Tea With Milk? A Hierarchical Generative Framework of Sequential Event Comprehension. In: Topics in Cognitive Science, Vol. 13, No. 1, 2021, p. 256-298

5

VI.2.3, Sylvester, J. - Reggia, J.: Engineering neural systems for high-level problem solving. In: Neural Networks, Vol. 79, 2016, p. 37-52

VI.5 - Participation in conducting (leading) the most important research projects or art projects over the last six years
1

2022-25: TERAIS: Towards Excellent Robotics and Artificial Intelligence at a Slovak university (EU Twinning project, budget 1.5M EUR, WP leader)

2

2022-26: MIMEDIS: The impact of media discourse on attitudes towards migration, migrants and migration policy in Slovakia. APVV-21-0114 (deputy PI).


3

2023-25: Computational modelling of early development of social skills in human-robot interaction. VEGA 1/0373/23 (deputy PI).


4

2018-20: Learning of a robotic system in a human-robot interaction. VEGA 1/0796/18 (deputy-PI)

VII. - Overview of organizational experience related to higher education and research/artistic/other activities

VII.a - Activity, position VII.b - Name of the institution, board VII.c - Duration
Membership in professional organizations Consortium MEi:CogSci (Middle European interdisciplinary master’s programme in Cognitive Science) 2007-08, 2011-now
Membership in professional organizations Slovak Society for Cognitive Science (chairman since 2024) since 2015
Membership in editorial boards of journals - associate editor International Journal of Agent Technologies and Systems (IJATS) 2009-18
Membership in professional organizations Standing Committee on Ethics and Regulation of Artificial Intelligence at the Ministry of Investments, Regional Development and Informatization of the Slovak Republic since 2021
Membership in professional organizations External Advisory Board of the FP7 EU Man4Gen project “Manual Operation for 4th Generation Airliners - cognitive aspects of aviation safety" 2012-15
Membership in professional organizations Ethics committee for research involving human subjects, FMFI UK since 2021
Membership in professional organizations Ethics Board of Comenius University in Bratislava since 2021
Member of scientific board AIslovakIA - National platform for the AI development in Slovakia since 2021
Member of the editorial boards of scientific conferences International Conference on Artificial Neural Networks (ICANN) 2020-21
Member of the editorial boards of scientific conferences Cognition and Artificial Life (KUZ) 2014, 2016-now

VIII. - Overview of international mobilities and visits oriented on education and research/artistic/other activities in the given field of study

VIII.a - Name of the institution VIII.b - Address of the institution VIII.c - Duration (indicate the duration of stay) VIII.d - Mobility scheme, employment contract, other (describe)
University of Otago, Department of Computer Science Dunedin, New Zealand February 2009 - June 2011 Build IT scholarship, postdoctoral researcher
University of Otago, Department of Computer Science Dunedin, New Zealand February 2014 - February 2017 Marsden grant, Royal Society of New Zealand, postdoctoral researcher
Oxford University, Oxford Baby Lab Oxford, UK May 2014 research visit funded by University of Otago, New Zealand
University of Tartu Tartu, Estonia 27.-29.4. 2022 Erasmus+, workshop "AI Ethics" ENLIGHT
University of the Basque Country San Sebastian, Spain 21.-24.3.2023 Erasmus+, workshop "AI Ethics" ENLIGHT
National University of Ireland, Galway Galway, Ireland 8.-11.4. 2025 Erasmus+, workshop "AI Ethics" ENLIGHT

IX. - Other relevant facts

IX.a - If relevant, other activities related to higher education or research/artistic/other activities are mentioned

He is a student tutor, host coordinator, alumni coordinator, member of the committee for state exams, and member of the study program board, in cognitive science at FMFI UK. He is a guarantor of course block Humanities at FMFI UK. He was awarded Peter Fedor's Prize (2012) for excellent results in computational modeling of language acquisition and evolution. Rector's Award for Diploma thesis - Martin Macko (2008): Kvalitatívne usudzovanie v ekonómii, Dean's Award for Diploma thesis - Dana Retová (2008): Analysis of conceptual metaphors of selected emotions in Slovak language.