Machine Learning List: Vol. 14, No. 1 Monday, Feb 4, 2002 Contents Calls for Papers and Meeting Announcements Special issue of JMLR on variable/feature selection ECML/PKDD-01 Call for Tutorials and Workshops ANTS'2002: Call for Papers SBRN 2002 - PRELIMINARY CFP IWLCS-2002 CFP: Conference on INDUCTIVE MODELLING ICIM'2002 ACL-02 Workshop CFP: Morphological and Phonological Learning ACL-02 Workshop CFP: Unsupervised Lexical Acquisition CFP: The 6th International Colloquium on Grammatical Inference Call for Papers: JMLR Special Issue on Machine Learning Methods for Text and Images ICSLP 2002: Call for papers Special Session on NOISE ROBUST RECOG MLJ Special Issue on Meta-learning CFP Creative Systems [ECAI'02 Workshop] CFP - KDMCD'2002 EPSRC/BBSRC International Workshop Biologically-Inspired Robotics Job Announcements Computer Science Faculty Positions at Univ of Vermont Job Opening: IT R&D at Swiss Life Postdoc / phd positions Postdoc in Bayesian modeling, MCMC, bioinformatics The Machine Learning List is moderated. Contributions should be relevant to the scientific study of machine learning. Please send submissions for distribution to: ml@isle.org. For requests to be added, removed, or to change your email address, send email to: ml-request@isle.org. In general, submissions should be no more than a few full-screens of text. For meeting announcements, highlight the conference or workshop web page and give a summary description of the goals of the event. Information such as the list of program committee members, talk schedules, and registration forms are unnecessary and should not be included. Job adds are usually no more than a few full-screens so they should fit naturally. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Calls for Papers and Meeting Announcements ------------------------------ From: Isabelle Guyon Subject: Special issue of JMLR on variable/feature selection Date: Fri, 04 Jan 2002 10:22:33 -0800 Special Issue of JMLR on Variable and Feature Selection Guest Editors: Isabelle Guyon and André Elisseeff Submission deadline: May 15, 2002 The Journal of Machine Learning Research invites authors to submit papers for the Special Issue on Variable and Feature Selection. This special issue follows the NIPS 2001 workshop on the same topic, but is open also to contributions that were not presented in it. A special volume will be published for this issue. The call for papers can be found at: http://www.clopinet.com/isabelle/Projects/NIPS2001/call-for-papers.html If you have a potential interest in publishing in this special issue, please email Isabelle Guyon (isabelle@clopinet.com) as this will facilitate planning the issue. ------------------------------ From: Hendrik Blockeel Subject: ECML/PKDD-01 Call for Tutorials and Workshops Date: Tue, 8 Jan 2002 19:21:09 +0100 (MET) The 13th European Conference on Machine Learning (ECML'02) and The 6th European Conference on Principles and Practice of Knowledge Discovery in Databases (PKDD-02) 19-23 August 2002, Helsinki, Finland JOINT CALL FOR TUTORIALS AND WORKSHOPS With this call we are inviting proposals for tutorials and workshops to be held during the conference week of ECML/PKDD 2002. These tutorials and workshops will be freely accessible to participants of the joint conference. They will take place on August 19 and 20, before the start of the main conference. Workshops and workshop/tutorial combinations (see below) will last for a full day, while tutorials will be half-day events. We currently foresee up to 6 tutorials, 6 workshops, and 2 workshop/tutorial combinations. However, these numbers are subject to change. Workshops provide organizers and participants an opportunity to discuss current topics in machine learning and/or data mining in a small and interactive atmosphere. Thus, any topic that is of current interest to a sufficient number of participants from the two communities could be the focus of a workshop. Workshops can choose to concentrate in-depth on research topics, but can also be devoted to application issues, or to questions concerning the economic and social aspects of machine learning and data mining. Tutorials should provide an introduction and/or a review of the state-of-the-art of a topic that is of interest to attendants of a machine learning or a data mining conference. These could be on particular research topics within the two fields, but could also be on topics from other research fields if the proposal makes clear why this is considered to be an important topic for researchers from other areas. A tutorial must be broad enough to cover a research area in which there is a significant publication activity in the community. Presentations that focus on the presenters' own research results or commercial presentations are not eligible. As workshops and tutorial are in a sense complementary, we also welcome proposals for combined tutorial-workshop events. The general idea is that the tutorial gives an introduction to the field of the workshop, making the workshop accessible to a broader audience. For practical information on the workshops and tutorials, and for details on the submission procedure, please refer to the detailed call for workshops and tutorials that is available at http://ecmlpkdd.cs.helsinki.fi/cfwt.html. TIMETABLE 1. 3. 2002 Workshop/tutorial proposal deadline 15. 3. 2002 Workshop/tutorial acceptance notification 1. 4. 2002 Workshop CFP's for web 8. 4. 2002 Tutorial summary for web 24. 5. 2002 WS paper submission deadline 14. 6. 2002 WS paper acceptance notification 1. 7. 2002 WS paper camera-ready deadline 12. 7. 2002 Workshop proceedings (camera- and web-ready) Tutorial notes (camera- and web-ready) ------------------------------ From: Marco Dorigo Subject: ANTS'2002: Call for Papers Date: Thu, 10 Jan 2002 18:44:48 +0100 (CET) ANTS'2002 - From Ant Colonies to Artificial Ants: Third International Workshop on Ant Algorithms Brussels, Belgium, September 11-14, 2002 CALL FOR PAPERS (up-to-date information on the workshop is maintained on the web at http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~ants/ants2002/) SCOPE OF THE WORKSHOP The behavior of social insects in general, and of ant colonies in particular, has long since fascinated both the scientist and the layman. Researchers in ethology and animal behavior have proposed many models to explain interesting aspects of social insect behavior such as self-organization and shape-formation. Recently, ant algorithms have been proposed as a novel computational model that replaces the traditional emphasis on control, preprogramming, and centralization with designs featuring autonomy, emergence, and distributed functioning. These designs are proving flexible and robust, they are able to adapt quickly to changing environments and they continue functioning when individual elements fail. A particularly successful research direction in ant algorithms, known as "Ant Colony Optimization", is dedicated to their application to discrete optimization problems. Ant colony optimization has been applied successfully to a large number of difficult combinatorial problems including the traveling salesman problem, the quadratic assignment problem, scheduling problems, etc., as well as to routing in telecommunication networks. ANTS'2002 is the third edition of the only event entirely devoted to ant algorithms and to ant colony optimization. Also of great interest to the workshop are models of ant colony behavior which could stimulate new algorithmic approaches. The workshop will give researchers in both real ant behavior and in ant colony optimization an opportunity to meet, to present their latest research, and to discuss current developments and applications. The three-day workshop will be held in Brussels, Belgium, September 12-14, 2002. In the late afternoon of September 11th there will also be a tutorial on ant algorithms. IMPORTANT DATES Submission deadline April 14th, 2002 Notification of acceptance May 31st, 2002 Camera ready copy June 16th, 2002 Tutorial Sep 11th, 2002 Workshop Sep 12-14, 2002 ------------------------------ From: "Marcilio C. Pereira de Souto" Subject: SBRN 2002 - PRELIMINARY CFP Date: Fri, 11 Jan 2002 15:29:26 -0200 (EDT) PRELIMINARY CALL FOR PAPERS SBRN'2002 - VII BRAZILIAN SYMPOSIUM ON NEURAL NETWORKS (http://www.cin.ufpe.br/~sbiarn02) Recife, November 11-14, 2002 The biannual Brazilian Symposium on Artificial Neural Networks (SBRN) - of which this is the 7th event - is a forum dedicated to Neural Networks (NNs) and other models of computational intelligence. The emphasis of the Symposium will be on original theories and novel applications of these computational models. The Symposium welcomes paper submissions from researchers, practitioners, and students worldwide. The proceedings will be published by the IEEE Computer Society. Selected, extended, and revised papers from SBRN'2002 will be also considered for publication in a special issue of the International Journal of Neural Systems and of the International Journal of Computational Intelligence and Applications. SBRN'2002 will be held in conjunction with the XVI Brazilian Symposium on Artificial Intelligence (http://www.cin.ufpe.br/~sbiarn02) (SBIA). SBIA has its main focus on symbolic AI. Crossfertilization of these fields will be strongly encouraged. Both Symposiums will feature keynote speeches and tutorials by world-leading researchers. The deadline for submissions is April 15, 2002. More details on paper submission and conference registration will be coming soon. DEADLINES: Submission: 15 April 2002 Acceptance: 17 June 2002 Camera-ready: 22 August 2002 ------------------------------ From: Wolfgang.Stolzmann@daimlerchrysler.com Subject: IWLCS-2002 Date: Mon, 14 Jan 2002 11:25:14 +0100 CALL FOR PAPERS Fifth International Workshop on Learning Classifier Systems (IWLCS-2002) 7-8 September 2002 Granada, Spain http://www.learning-classifier-systems.org/iwlcs2002/ to be held during the Seventh International Conference on Parallel Problem Solving from Nature (PPSN VII) http://ppsn2002.ugr.es/ PAPER SUBMISSION: Submissions are invited that discuss recent developments in learning classifier systems research. All submitted papers will be peer reviewed by at least two members of the program committee. All accepted papers must be presented at the workshop by at least one of the authors and will be published in post-workshop proceedings. Papers should not be longer than twenty pages (Springer LNCS/LNAI style), including title page, figures, and bibliography. For submission of longer papers please contact the members of the organizing committee. It is planed to publish the post-workshop proceedings in the Springer LNCS/LNAI series.Formatting instructions can be found at http://www.springer.de/comp/lncs/authors.html. SUBMISSION DEADLINE is May 1, 2002 . ------------------------------ From: Gregory Ivakhnenko Subject: CFP: Conference on INDUCTIVE MODELLING ICIM'2002 Date: Thu, 17 Jan 2002 19:51:33 +0200 CONFERENCE ANNOUNCEMENT and CALL FOR PAPERS I International Conference on INDUCTIVE MODELLING ICIM'2002 May 20-25, 2002 Lviv, Ukraine http://www.niss.gov.ua/Center/ICIM/ Submission deadline: February 20, 2002 The I International Conference on Inductive Modelling (ICIM-2002) will present the latest high-quality results in the growing field of inductive methods in data mining and forecasting, pattern recognition and parallel computing. Inductive modelling is an important area, based on sorting methods of artificial intelligence problems solution. The aim of the Conference is to bring together leading scientists, researchers and experts from different areas, who can make significant contribution to development and better understanding of inductive modelling methods. IMPORTANT DATES Submission deadline 20.02.2002 Acceptance notification 15.03.2002 Sending of invitations 10.04.2002 Conference 20.05.2002 For the latest information, please visit the web site, http://www.niss.gov.ua/Center/ICIM/ ------------------------------ From: Priscilla Rasmussen Subject: ACL-02 Workshop CFP: Morphological and Phonological Learning Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2002 16:52:39 EST Workshop on Morphological and Phonological Learning Philadelphia, PA 12 July 2001 Sixth Meeting of the ACL Special Interest Group in Computational Phonology in cooperation with ACL Special Interest Group in Natural Language Learning MOTIVATION Two groups of researchers are converging on the need to construct morphologies and phonologies of low density languages. Natural language engineers hope to develop machine translation, speech recognition, and other NLP technologies for these languages. Meanwhile, linguists and native speakers want to document the languages for scientific or humanitarian reasons. (This need is often expressed concerning endangered languages, but is not restricted to that situation.) This convergence of interests makes it an opportune time to meet to discuss ways to analyze the morphology and phonology of a language (or a group of related languages) more quickly (and perhaps more accurately) than traditional methods have allowed. Techniques for morphology and phonology learning may vary in the amount of human involvement they require. At one end of the spectrum are tools intended to help a native speaker (perhaps with the aid of a linguist) describe his or her own language. At the other end are tools for unsupervised machine learning from texts. Intermediate or hybrid approaches are also possible. Methodologies to be discussed in this workshop need not be fully general: for example, a tool might be best suited to agglutinating, fusional, or polysynthetic languages, or specialized for compounding or reduplication. The Workshop on Morphological and Phonological Learning will be held July 12 2002, immediately after the ACL-02 meetings at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia Pennsylvania, USA. More information about SIGPHON is available at http://www.cogsci.ed.ac.uk/sigphon, and about SIGNLL at http://ilk.kub.nl/~signll/. The ACL-2002 website is http://www.acl2002.org. SCHEDULE o Submission Deadline: 5 April 2002 o Notification: 25 April 2002 o Camera-ready Copy Due: 21 May 2002 o Workshop: 12 July 2002 ------------------------------ From: Priscilla Rasmussen Subject: ACL-02 Workshop CFP: Unsupervised Lexical Acquisition Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2002 17:13:01 EST AN ACL-SIGLEX WORKSHOP ON UNSUPERVISED LEXICAL ACQUISITION Friday 12 July 2002 Philadelphia Workshop website: http://research.microsoft.com/LexicalAcquisition-ACL02 ACL 2002 website: http://www.acl02.org This workshop will be a forum for the presentation of new work in the field of unsupervised or minimally supervised lexical learning, as well as an opportunity to survey the state of the art. In addition to novel approaches to the acquisition of subcategorization or translation information, we will welcome and encourage papers that address the coverage of all aspects of the lexicon, such as morphological, semantic, or collocational information, as well as the identification of out-of-vocabulary words and their lexical properties. Evaluation of systems on public domain test sets, although not required, is strongly encouraged. IMPORTANT DATES Paper submission deadline 15 March 2002 Acceptance notification 19 April 2002 Final version deadline 17 May 2002 Workshop date 12 July 2002 ------------------------------ From: "Adriaans, Pieter" Subject: CFP: The 6th International Colloquium on Grammatical Inference Date: Sun, 20 Jan 2002 20:24:51 -0000 ICGI-2002Call for Papers The 6th International Colloquium on Grammatical Inference will be held in Amsterdam, The Netherlands September 11-13th, 2002 http://www.illc.uva.nl/ICGI-2002/ DEADLINES Submission of manuscripts: April 5, 2002 Notification of acceptance: May 27th, 2002 Final version of manuscript: June 28th, 2002 Take a look at: http://www.illc.uva.nl/ICGI-2002/ See you in Amsterdam in September 2002!! ------------------------------ From: "J.S. Kandola" Subject: CFP: JMLR Special Issue on Machine Learning Methods for Text and Images Date: Mon, 21 Jan 2002 10:37:50 +0000 CALL FOR PAPERS: JMLR Special Issue on Machine Learning Methods for Text and  Images Submission Deadline: 29th March 2002 Papers are invited reporting original research on Machine Learning Methods for Text and Images. This special issue follows the NIPS 2001 workshop on the same topic, but is open also to contribution that were not presented in it. A special volume will be published for this issue. There has been much interest in information extraction from structured and semi-structured data in the machine learning community.  This has in part been driven by the large amount of unstructured and  semi-structured data available in the form of text documents, images, audio, and video files. In order to optimally utilize this data, one has to devise efficient methods and tools that extract relevant information. We invite original contributions that focus on exploring innovative and potentially groundbreaking machine learning technologies as well as on identifying key challenges in information access, such as multi-class classification, partially labeled examples and the combination of evidence from separate multimedia domains. The special issue seeks contributions applied to text and/or images. For a list of possible topics and information about the associated NIPS workshop please see http://www.cs.rhul.ac.uk/colt/JMLR.html IMPORTANT DATES: Submission Deadline: 29th March 2002 Decision:  24th June 2002 Final Papers: 24th July 2002 ------------------------------ From: Pearce David-BDP003 Subject: ICSLP 2002: CFP Special Session on NOISE ROBUST RECOG NITION Date: Wed, 23 Jan 2002 11:10:14 -0000 Call for papers Special Session on - NOISE ROBUST RECOGNITION - Robust Algorithms and a Comparison of their Performance on the "Aurora 2 & 3" Databases ICSLP 2002, Denver, Sept 2002 Following the success of a similar event at Eurospeech papers are invited that have performed evaluation on the Aurora 2 (Noisy TIdigits) and Aurora 3 (SpeechDat-Car subset) noisy speech databases to allow the performance of different algorithms to be compared. These databases may be purchased from ELRA and if you would like to participate it would be wise make these purchases ASAP well ahead of the submission deadline for papers of 1st May. IMPORTANT DATES: Submission of full paper for publication: 1 May 2002 (note: different from main conference) (results on Aurora databases must be included) Notification of acceptance: 10 June 2002 ICSLP Special Session: 17-20 Sept 2002 (day TBD) Please send an email to David Pearce (bdp003@email.mot.com) in advance if you intend to submit a paper so we can keep you informed of any updated information. Papers should be submitted electronically in the same way as for the main conference using the web server. ------------------------------ From: Giraud-Carrier Christophe Subject: MLJ Special Issue on Meta-learning Date: Thu, 24 Jan 2002 07:24:24 +0100 Machine Learning Journal Special Issue on Meta-Learning C. Giraud-Carrier, R. Vilalta and P. Brazdil, Guest Editors CALL FOR PAPERS MOTIVATION AND RESEARCH ISSUES The proliferation of algorithms in Machine Learning (ML) and the growing interest in Data Mining (DM) have created a need for techniques and tools that facilitate the use of ML by novice users (e.g., to select adequate algorithms for specific business problems). Such tools will facilitate the transition of ML from research labs into industry. Discovering new algorithms (or versions thereof) has occupied much of the research of the past decade with reasonable success. Despite empirical studies comparing various algorithms, however, much remains to be learned about what makes a particular algorithm work well (or not) in a particular domain. There is a need to formulate or acquire such meta-knowledge, and make consistent use of it. Although the term meta-learning has been ascribed different meanings by different researchers, for the purpose of this special issue, meta-learning is defined as any attempt to learn from the learning process itself. The goal is to understand how learning itself can become flexible and/or adaptable, taking into account the domain or task under study. All queries regarding this special issue should be directed to Christophe Giraud-Carrier (cgc@elca.ch). The SUBMISSION DEADLINE is JUNE 8, 2002. ------------------------------ From: Creative Systems Subject: CFP Creative Systems [ECAI'02 Workshop] Date: Thu, 24 Jan 2002 01:01:13 +0000 CALL FOR PAPERS 2nd. WORKSHOP ON CREATIVE SYSTEMS Approaches to Creativity in Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science 15th European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (ECAI 2002) Lyon, France, 22-23 July 2002 WEBSITE: http://creative-systems.dei.uc.pt/CS02Workshop/ The Program Committee of the 2nd Workshop on Creative Systems - Approaches to Creativity in Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science - invites submissions of technical and position papers for the workshop. The workshop will be held at Lyon, France, on 22-23 July 2002, as part of the 15th European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (ECAI 2002). The publication of the Proceedings of the Workshop is being negotiated with a publisher. IMPORTANT DATES 5th April 2002 Submission deadline 10th May 2002 Notice of Acceptance 31st May 2002 Deadline for final camera-ready copies WORKSHOP WEB SITE http://creative-systems.dei.uc.pt/CS02Workshop/ ------------------------------ From: Chabane Djeraba Subject: CFP - KDMCD'2002 Date: Thu, 24 Jan 2002 15:56:10 +0000 KDMCD'2002 International Workshop on Knowledge Discovery in Multimedia and Complex Data (KDMCD'02), Taipei, Taiwan, May 6, 2002 http://db.cs.ualberta.ca/kdmcd02/ In conjunction with the Sixth Pacific-Asia Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (PAKDD-02), Taipei, Taiwan, May 6-8 2002 http://arbor.ee.ntu.edu.tw/pakdd02/ OBJECTIVES Multimedia Data Mining, also known as Knowledge Discovery from Multimedia, is not Information Retrieval from multimedia, contrary to popular belief, but the extraction of interesting patterns and new facts from multimedia objects. Knowledge discovery in multimedia databases is focused on the synergy between two fields: Knowledge Discovery and Multimedia Databases. Knowledge discovery and data mining, which consist in extracting valuable and relevant knowledge from large volumes of data, have received much attention these last years. The approaches used for knowledge discovery are non-trivial and often domain specific, depending on the canonical mining primitives. The data patterns discovered are typically used in decision-making whether in business, in scientific research or other. While significant research has been done on knowledge discovery from large corpora, most of the approaches are related to numerical transactional data such as market-basket analysis, web activities, etc., thus very little has been achieved on mining multimedia data probably due to the complexity of multimedia and multimedia repositories. The aim of this workshop is to bring together experts in digital media content analysis, state-of-art data mining and knowledge discovery in multimedia database systems, knowledge engineers and domain experts from diverse applied disciplines with potential in multimedia data mining. IMPORTANT DATES Paper submission: February 15, 2002 Notification: March 1, 2002 Camera-ready: March 15, 2002 ------------------------------ From: "R.L.B. French" Subject: EPSRC/BBSRC International Workshop Biologically-Inspired Robotics Date: Fri, 25 Jan 2002 14:11:53 +0000 (GMT) EPSRC/BBSRC International Workshop Biologically-Inspired Robotics: The Legacy of W. Grey Walter 14-16 August 2002, Bristol, UK http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~rid/wgw02/home.html Biologically-inspired robots functioning in the real world can provide valuable physical models of biology, but can also provide a radical alternative to conventional methods of designing intelligent systems. The origins and history of this fascinating topic can be traced back to seminal work in the 1940's and 1950's, much of it taking place in the United Kingdom. One of the pioneers of the field was William Grey Walter, a neurophysiologist and amateur engineer who spent the majority of his working life in Bristol. He died in 1977 some time after the road accident that ultimately ended his life. Contributed papers (maximum 8 pages) are also invited from scientists and engineers keen to publicise their recent work at this high-calibre workshop. Relevant topics include (but are not limited to): Biorobotics Biologically-inspired robot architectures Artificial life and animats Artificial perception Autonomous robots Humanoid robots Learning and adaptation Evolutionary robotics Hardware for biorobotics Applications Communication and cooperation Robot-human interaction Social and collective behaviour History of cybernetics Embodiment and robotics The life and work of Grey Walter Emergence and interaction Neuroethology Philosophical issues Biological basis of intelligence Papers must be submitted electronically according to instructions on the Workshop web site (URL above). Important Dates Deadline for contributed papers: 1 May 2002 Notification of acceptance/rejection: 3 June 2002 Final submission of revised paper: 1 July 2002 Workshop: 14-16 August 2002 The workshop has been timed to fit in with SAB'02 in Edinburgh and to make attendance at both events maximally convenient. ------------------------------ Jobs ------------------------------ From: Xindong Wu Subject: Computer Science Faculty Positions at Univ of Vermont Date: Thu, 10 Jan 2002 14:43:24 -0500 (EST) University of Vermont Faculty Positions in Computer Science Position 1: Associate or Assistant Professor. Candidates in networking and systems, software engineering, programming languages, human-computer interaction or parallel/distributed computing are most sought. Candidates in any area of computer science will be considered seriously. Our faculty are involved in the forefront of research in knowledge and data engineering, software engineering, and computational sciences. We are seeking to complement and further strengthen our existing research and teaching activities in these areas. Position 2: Assistant Professor in COMPUTATIONAL BIOLOGY. A new concentration in computational biology has been established in the Colleges of Medicine, Agricultural and Life Sciences, Engineering and Mathematics, and Arts and Sciences. Candidates with research interests or experience in computational biology or bioinformatics are invited to apply. Through a major Department of Energy grant that commenced in July 2000, the startup package includes summer support, seed research grant, and reduced teaching obligations. Please send a letter of interest indicating the position sought, a curriculum vitae, a statement of teaching experience and interests, a statement of research interests and aspirations to, and arrange for at least three letters of reference to be sent to Chair, Faculty Search, Position (1 or 2), Department of Computer Science, University of Vermont, Burlington, VT 05405. Complete applications received by January 21, 2002 will be fully considered. For more information about the Department and the University please see http://www.cs.uvm.edu or send email to cssearch@cs.uvm.edu. ------------------------------ From: Ulrich Reimer Subject: Job Opening: IT R&D at Swiss Life Date: Wed, 16 Jan 2002 12:25:39 +0100 Job Opening at Swiss Life's IT Research & Development Group (IT R&D) Zurich, Switzerland Swiss Life's IT R&D Group consists of seven people who are committed to excellent applied research work and to transfer research results into added value for Swiss Life. Our group is positioned in the corporate center so that our (internal) clients are within all subsidiaries and international branches of Swiss Life. Since our group is an internal service provider the responsibilites of every group member include to stay in dialog with our existing clients and to get in dialog with new clients. More information on our group can be obtained at http://research.swisslife.ch We are seeking candidates with excellent scientific qualifications who want to combine applied research with practical, development-oriented work. Candidates must be independent workers who are also team players and are comfortable taking the lead. Preferred areas for appointments include, but are not limited to: Knowledge Management / Organizational Memories Ontology Building and Maintenance Knowledge Representation and Inference Systems Intelligent Systems Information Retrieval / Text and Web Mining Natural Language Processing Applications should be sent to (preferably in electronic format): Ulrich Reimer Email: Ulrich.Reimer@swisslife.ch ------------------------------ From: Tim Pearce Subject: Postdoc / phd positions Date: Thu, 17 Jan 2002 16:29:54 -0000 Postdoctoral Research Associate in Computational Neuroscience R&AIA £17,451 to £26,229 pa Available immediately for 4 years Ref: R9398/JAU A postdoctoral researcher is required for a 4-year EC-funded project available from January 2002. The project concerns the development of biologically constrained sensory processing models for performing stereotypical moth-like chemotaxis behaviour in uncertain environments. We propose to develop biologically-inspired sensor, information processing and control systems for a c (hemosensing) unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). The cUAV will identify and track volatile compounds of different chemical composition in outdooor environments. Its olfactory and sensory-motor systems are to be inspired by the moth. This development continues our research in artificial and biological olfaction, sensory processing and analysis, neuronal models of learning, real-time behavioural control, and robotics. Fleets of cUAVs will ultimately be deployed to sense, identify, and map the airborne chemical composition of large-scale environments. The mobile robotics aspects of the project will be carried out with the assistance of an associated PhD studentship position. Further details on the project and the research teams can be found at http://www.le.ac.uk/eg/tcp1/amoth/ The project includes significant funding and opportunities for travel within Europe to visit the laboratories of the participating consortia (in Switzerland, France, and Sweden) and outside Europe to attend international scientific meetings. A strong mathematical and computer modelling background is required in order to develop a biologically constrained model of the insect antennal lobe and protocerebellum. Expertise is required in the area of neuronal modelling, although not necessarily in the area of olfaction. Good team skills are also a necessity. Informal enquiries regarding these positions and the project in general should be addressed to the project co-ordinator, Dr. T.C. Pearce, Department of Engineering, University of Leicester, Leicester LE1 7RH, United Kingdom, +44 116 223 1290, t.c.pearce@le.ac.uk For Research Associate post, application forms and further particulars are available from the Personnel Office, tel 0116 252 5114, fax 0116 252 5140, email personnel@le.ac.uk, or via www.le.ac.uk/personnel/jobs. Closing date: 15 February 2002. PhD Studentship in Mobile Robotics A postgraduate researcher is required for a 4-year EC-funded project available from January 2002. The project concerns the development of an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) robot to perform stereotypical moth-like chemotaxis behaviour in uncertain environments. We propose to develop biologically-inspired sensor, information processing and control systems for a c (hemosensing) UAV. The cUAV will identify and track volatile compounds of different chemical composition in outdooor environments. Its olfactory and sensory-motor systems are to be inspired by the moth, which will be supported by computational neuroscience model development conducted by an associated Postdoctoral Research Associate. This development continues our research in artificial and biological olfaction, sensory processing and analysis, neuronal models of learning, real-time behavioural control, and robotics. Fleets of cUAVs will ultimately be deployed to sense, identify, and map the airborne chemical composition of large scale environments. Further details on the project and the research teams can be found at http://www.le.ac.uk/eg/tcp1/amoth/. The project includes significant funding and opportunities for travel within Europe to visit the laboratories of the participating consortia (in Switzerland, France, and Sweden) and outside Europe to attend international scientific meetings. A first degree (at the 2(i) level or higher) is required in mathematics, computer science, physics, or engineering. The student will be responsible for deploying the chemical sensors on the UAV and designing interface circuitry, assisting with construction of the UAV, programming the on board flight systems (incorporating a neuronal model), and assisting with field trials. Applicants should have a demonstrated interest in one or more of the following, UAVs, neuroscience, robotics, and/or artificial intelligence. Good team skills are essential. The studentship includes a stipend of £12,000 per year for four years and includes provision for overseas PhD fees although EU nationals may also apply. For PhD Studentship, applications and informal enquiries should be addressed to the project co-ordinator, Dr. T.C. Pearce, Department of Engineering, University of Leicester, Leicester LE1 7RH, United Kingdom, +44 116 223 1290, t.c.pearce@le.ac.uk. Closing date: 15 February 2002. ------------------------------ From: Radford Neal Subject: Postdoc in Bayesian modeling, MCMC, bioinformatics Date: Sun, 20 Jan 2002 10:09:09 -0500 Postdoctoral position in BAYESIAN MODELING, MARKOV CHAIN MONTE CARLO, BIOINFORMATICS Radford Neal, University of Toronto I am looking for a postdoc who is interested in the following areas: o Bayesian statistical modeling, especially flexible models such as those based on Dirichet process mixtures, neural networks, and Gaussian processes. o Markov chain Monte Carlo methods, either general in scope, or tailored to specific Bayesian models. o Applications of flexible models in bioinformatics, especially analysis of spectroscopic data, analysis of gene expression data from DNA microarrays, and inference for phylogenetic trees. Candidates should have a PhD in a relevant discipline (or be about to receive one), and have an excellent background in at least one of the above areas, plus a willingness and ability to learn about the others. This position is for one year, with possibility of extension to two years, starting no later than August 2002 (preferably sooner). There will be opportunities to apply for sessional teaching in Statistics or Computer Science if desired. To learn more about what is going on here, visit the Statistics site at http://utstat.utoronto.ca and the web site for the Machine Learning group (in Computer Science) at http://www.cs.utoronto.ca/learning/. For more about my personal research interests, see my web pages at http://www.cs.utoronto.ca/~radford/. Radford M. Neal radford@cs.utoronto.ca Dept. of Statistics and Dept. of Computer Science radford@utstat.utoronto.ca University of Toronto http://www.cs.utoronto.ca/~radford ------------------------------ End of ML-LIST Digest Vol 14, No. 1 ***********************************