Machine Learning List: Vol. 15, No. 7 Saturday, May 10, 2003 Contents Calls for Papers and Other Meeting Announcements NIPS*2003 Call for Papers NIPS*2003 Call for Workshop Proposals NIPS*2003 Call for Demonstrations Workshop on Collectives & the Design of Complex Systems... CFP: Computational Approaches in Proteomics CFP: IEEE IRI'03 CEC'03 Call for Papers CFP: Evolutionary Computation & Games, CEC 2003 Special Session 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 ads are usually no more than a few full-screens so they should fit naturally. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Sebastian Thrun Subject: NIPS*2003 Call for Papers Date: Sun, 27 Apr 2003 15:01:09 -0400 ------------------------------------------------------------ CALL FOR PAPERS Neural Information Processing Systems, Natural and Synthetic Monday, December 8 - Saturday December 13, 2003 Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada www.nips.cc ------------------------------------------------------------ Submissions are solicited for the seventeenth meeting of an interdisciplinary conference which brings together researchers interested in all aspects of neural and statistical computation. The conference will include invited talks as well as oral and poster presentations of refereed papers. It is single track and highly selective. Preceding the main conference will be one day of tutorials (December 8), and following it will be two days of workshops at Whistler/Blackcomb ski resort (December 12-13). INVITED SPEAKERS: Anders Dale, Harvard University: Relating Brain Imaging Signals to Biophysical Models of Neuronal Circuits; Paul Ekman, UC San Francisco: About Face: What We Have Learned Through Measuring Facial Movements; Michale Fee, Bell Labs, Lucent Technologies: Time and Sequence in the Brain: Insights from a Songbird; Marc Mezard, Universite de Paris Sud: Analytic and Algorithmic Solutions of Random Satisfiability Problems; Elissa Newport, University of Rochester, Statistical Language Learning in Human Infants and Adults; David Salesin, University of Washington and Microsoft Research: The Need for Machine Learning in Computer Graphics. TUTORIAL SPEAKERS: Stephen Boyd, Stanford University: Convex Optimization and Applications; David Karger, MIT: Algorithmic Tools Applied to Learning and Inference Problems; Daniel Lee, University of Pennsylvania: Learning in Sensorimotor Systems; David Lowe, University of British Columbia: Real-time Object Recognition using Invariant Local Image Features; Klaus-Robert Mueller, Fraunhofer FIRST: Towards Brain Computer Interfacing; Zach Mainen, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory: Neural Coding and the Olfactory System; SUBMISSIONS: Papers are solicited in all areas of neural and statistical computation, including (but not limited to) the following: o Algorithms and Architectures: statistical learning algorithms, neural networks, kernel methods, graphical models, Gaussian processes, independent component analysis, model selection, combinatorial optimization. o Applications: innovative applications or fielded systems that use machine learning, including systems for time series prediction, bioinformatics, text/web analysis, multimedia processing, and robotics. o Brain Imaging: neuroimaging, cognitive neuroscience, EEG (electroencephalogram), ERP (event related potentials), MEG (magnetoencephalogram), fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging), brain mapping, brain segmentation. o Cognitive Science and Artificial Intelligence: theoretical, computational, or experimental studies of perception, psychophysics, human or animal learning, memory, reasoning, problem solving, language, and neuropsychology. o Control and Reinforcement Learning: decision and control, exploration, planning, navigation, Markov decision processes, game-playing, multi-agent coordination, computational models of classical and operant conditioning. o Emerging Technologies: analog and digital VLSI, neuromorphic engineering, computational sensors and actuators, microrobotics, bioMEMS, neural prostheses, photonics, molecular and quantum computing. o Learning Theory: generalization and regularization, information theory, statistical physics of learning, Bayesian methods, approximation bounds, online learning and dynamics. o Neuroscience: theoretical and experimental studies of processing and transmission of information in biological neurons and networks, including spike train generation, synaptic modulation, plasticity and adaptation. o Speech and Signal Processing: recognition, coding, synthesis, denoising, segmentation, source separation, auditory perception, psychoacoustics, dynamical systems, recurrent networks, Markov models. o Visual Processing: image processing and coding, segmentation, object detection and recognition, motion detection and tracking, visual psychophysics, visual scene analysis and interpretation. o Demonstrations: Authors wishing to submit to the demonstration track should consult the conference web site. REVIEW CRITERIA: Submissions will be refereed on the basis of technical quality, novelty, significance, and clarity. Authors new to NIPS are particularly encouraged to submit. There will be an opportunity after the meeting to revise accepted manuscripts. PAPER FORMAT: Submissions may be up to eight pages in length, including figures and references, using a font no smaller than 10 point. Text is to be confined within a 8.25in by 5in rectangle. Submissions violating these guidelines will not be considered. Templates will be posted at the NIPS Website nips.cc. SUBMISSION INSTRUCTIONS: NIPS accepts only electronic submissions in postscript and PDF format. The conference web site will accept electronic submissions from May 19, 2003 until midnight, June 6, 2003, Pacific daylight time. For further details, please refer to http://www.nips.cc . PAPERS MUST BE RECEIVED BY JUNE 6, 2003 ------------------------------ From: Sebastian Thrun Subject: NIPS*2003 Call for Workshop Proposals Date: Sun, 27 Apr 2003 15:01:09 -0400 ------------------------------------------------------------ CALL FOR WORKSHOP PROPOSALS Neural Information Processing Systems, Natural and Synthetic NIPS*2003 Post-Conference Workshops, December 12 and 13, 2003 Whistler/Blackcomb Resort, BC, Canada www.nips.cc ------------------------------------------------------------ Following the regular program of the Neural Information Processing Systems 2003 conference in Vancouver, BC, Canada, workshops on various current topics in neural information processing will be held on December 12 and 13, 2003, in Whistler, BC, Canada. We invite researchers interested in chairing one of these workshops to submit workshop proposals. The goal of the workshops is to provide an informal forum for researchers to discuss important research questions and challenges. Controversial issues, open problems, and comparisons of competing approaches are encouraged and preferred as workshop topics. Representation of alternative viewpoints and panel-style discussions are particularly encouraged. Workshop topics include, but are not limited to, the following: Active Learning, Attention, Audition, Bayesian Networks, Bayesian Statistics, Benchmarking, Bioinformatics, Brain Imaging, Computational Complexity, Control, Genetic Algorithms, Graphical Models, Hippocampus and Memory, Human-Computer Interfaces, Hybrid Supervised/Unsupervised Learning, Implementations, Independent Component Analysis, Kernel Methods, Mean-Field Methods, Music, Network Dynamics, Neural Coding, Neural Plasticity, On-Line Learning, Optimization, Recurrent Nets, Robot Learning, Rule Extraction, Self-Organization, Sensory Biophysics, Signal Processing, Spike Timing, Support Vector Machines, Speech, Time Series, Topological Maps, and Vision. Detailed descriptions of previous workshops may be found at http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/project/nips-6/nips2002/nips-papers.html. There will be six hours of workshop meetings per day, split into morning and afternoon sessions, with free time in between for ongoing individual exchange or outdoor activities. Selected workshops may be invited to submit proceedings for publication in the post-NIPS workshops monographs series published by the MIT Press. Workshop organizers have several responsibilities including: o Coordinating workshop participation and content, which includes arranging short informal presentations by experts, arranging for expert commentators to sit on a discussion panel, formulating a set of discussion topics, etc. o Moderating the discussion, and reporting its findings and conclusions to the group during evening plenary sessions o Writing a brief summary and/or coordinating submitted material for post-conference electronic dissemination. Interested parties must submit a proposal for a workshop via email by August 1, 2003. Proposals should include title, description of what the workshop is to address and accomplish, proposed workshop length (1 or 2 days), planned format (e.g., lectures, group discussions, panel discussion, combinations of the above, etc.), and proposed speakers. Names of potential invitees should be given where possible. Preference will be given to workshops that reserve a significant portion of time for open discussion or panel discussion, as opposed to pure "mini-conference" format. An example format is: o Tutorial lecture providing background and introducing terminology relevant to the topic. o Two short lectures introducing different approaches, alternating with discussions after each lecture. o Discussion or panel presentation. o Short talks or panels alternating with discussion and question/answer sessions. o General discussion and wrap-up. We suggest that organizers allocate at least 50% of the workshop schedule to questions, discussion, and breaks. Past experience suggests that workshops otherwise degrade into mini-conferences as talks begin to run over. For the same reason, we strongly recommend that each workshop include no more than 12 talks per day. The proposal should motivate why the topic is of interest, why it should be discussed, and who the targeted group of participants is. It also should include a brief resume of the prospective workshop chair with a list of publications to establish scholarship in the field. We encourage workshops that build, continue, or arise from one or more workshops from previous years. Please mention any such connections. NIPS does not provide travel funding for workshop speakers. In the past, some workshops have sought and received funding from external sources to bring in outside speakers. In addition, the organizers of each accepted workshop can name up to four people (six people for 2-day workshops) to receive discounted registration for the workshop program. Submissions should include the name, address, email address, phone and fax numbers for all organizers. If there is more than one organizer, please designate one organizer as the primary contact. Proposals should be emailed as plain text to: nips-workshop-proposal@bcs.rochester.edu Please do not use attachments, Microsoft Word, postscript, html, or pdf files. Questions may be addressed to: nips-workshop-admin@bcs.rochester.edu Information about the main conference and the workshop program can be found at http://nips.cc/ Robert A. Jacobs, University of Rochester Satinder Singh, University of Michigan NIPS*2003 Workshops Co-Chairs PROPOSALS MUST BE RECEIVED BY AUGUST 1, 2003 ------------------------------ From: Sebastian Thrun Subject: NIPS*2003 Call for Demonstrations Date: Sun, 27 Apr 2003 15:01:09 -0400 ------------------------------------------------------------ CALL FOR DEMONSTRATIONS Neural Information Processing Systems, Natural and Synthetic Monday, December 8 - Saturday December 13, 2003 Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada www.nips.cc ------------------------------------------------------------ Based on the success in 2002, the Neural Information Processing Systems conference will once again include a separate track for demonstrations. The demonstrations will take place in parallel with the poster sessions at the NIPS*2003 conference. Example areas of interest for the demonstrations track include, but are by no means limited to the following: o Analog and digital VLSI o Neuromorphic Engineering o Computational sensors and actuators o Robotics o bioMEMS (microelectromechanical systems) o Biomedical instrumentation o Neural prostheses o Photonics o Real-time multimedia systems o Large-scale neural emulators o Software demonstrations of novel algorithms NIPS is an interdisciplinary conference, which attracts cognitive scientists, computer scientists, engineers, neuroscientists, physicists, statisticians, and mathematicians interested in all aspects of neural and statistical processing and computation. The demonstration track enables researchers to highlight scientific advances, systems, and technologies in ways that go beyond conventional poster presentations. It will provide a unique forum for demonstrating advanced technologies (hardware and software), and fostering the direct exchange of knowledge. We hope that this track will stimulate interactions between researchers from different fields (for example, roboticists and neuromorphic engineers) and encourage new collaboration between researchers in theoretical fields and those in more applied fields. Submissions accepted in the demonstrations track will be published on the NIPS web site, but will not appear in printed proceedings. However, submitting your work to the demonstration track by no means precludes the submission of a companion paper to the regular NIPS conference. In fact, joint submissions are very much encouraged. We also encourage authors submitting demonstrations to consider organizing a workshop at NIPS*2003. Note that the deadline for paper submissions is July 1, 2003, and for demonstration and workshop proposals the submission deadline is August 1, 2003. Please see http://nips.cc for further details. There will be a separate room for these demonstrations and participants will have access to power strips, tables and poster boards. VCRs and monitors will also be provided on request. Participants are responsible for ensuring that their demonstration is sufficiently portable; additional hardware beyond that specified above will not be provided by NIPS but might be provided at a cost if available. SUBMISSION INSTRUCTIONS: All proposals for demonstrations will be reviewed by the Demonstrations Co-Chairs. Interested parties should submit a brief description of their proposed demonstration via email by August 1, 2003. Proposals should include a title, description of the device or system to be demonstrated, main results, novelty and significance of the work, any related publications, and estimated space requirements for the demonstration. Please include the name, address, email address, phone and fax numbers for all co-authors on the submitted work, and indicate whether a related paper has also been submitted to NIPS*2003. Proposals should be emailed to shih@ini.phys.ethz.ch, and should be in plain ascii text, postscript or pdf. Questions may also be addressed to shih@ini.phys.ethz.ch. Information about the main conference and the workshop program can be found at http://nips.cc. Shih-Chii Liu and Tobi Delbrueck, Institute of Neuroinformatics, University of Zurich, ETH Zurich NIPS*2003 Demonstrations Co-Chairs PROPOSALS MUST BE RECEIVED BY AUGUST 1, 2003 ------------------------------ From: Jane Lintott Subject: Workshop on Collectives & the Design of Complex Systems and Call for Papers Date: Mon, 28 Apr 2003 10:55:16 -0700 WORKSHOP ON COLLECTIVES AND THE DESIGN OF COMPLEX SYSTEMS AUGUST 25-28, 2003, STANFORD UNIVERSITY, Palo Alto, CA, USA The advent of extremely cheap computing is quickly leading to a world filled with large, artificial, distributed systems of self-motivated components. This is in addition to the many naturally occuring systems of this character. Very often we have performance criteria by which we rank the dynamic behavior of such systems, e.g., GDP growth in a human economy, stock price of a corporation, percentage of available free energy used by an ecosystem, total throughput in a data network, total scientific information gathered by a constellation of deployables, etc. Following up on the success of CDoCS 2002, this workshop will bring together leading researchers from the physics, economics, biology, engineering and computer science communities to help cement the foundation of the field studying such systems. This field studies two broad problems: 1) The forward problem concerns understanding the process by which the structure underlying the local interactions of a collective affects the overall performance criteria. 2) The inverse problem arises when we wish to design the structure of the system to optimize its behavior according to the pre-specified performance criteria. This workshop will contain several short courses, in addition to invited talks, contributed talks, and poster sessions generated from submitted papers. The aim of these short courses is to establish a common language and background for workshop attendees. They will cover the relationship between the study of collectives and the following more established disciplines: i) Mechanism Design/ Game theory; ii) Statistical Physics / Econophysics; iii) Optimization / Engineering design; iv) Collective Intelligence / Reinforcement Learning. It is intended that a book of the tutorials and selected works from the workshop will be published. Submissions are solicited, especially (though not exclusively) from the following fields: * Control of chaos * Nonlinear control * Nonlinear time series analysis * Computational economics * Mechanism design * (Evolutionary) Game theory * Statistical physics * Population biology * Multiagent systems * Distributed adaptive control * Reinforcement learning The due date for submissions is May 23, 2004, to one of organizers listed below. Please indicate preference for either a talk or a poster, and have submission be in either postscript of PDF format. There is no set page limit per se. For further details, refer to http://collectives.stanford.edu/cdocs03/ Kagan Tumer (kagan@ptolemy.arc.nasa.gov) David Wolpert (dhw@ptolemy.arc.nasa.gov) Ilan Kroo (kroo@stanford.edu) From: "Krzysztof (Krys) Cios" Subject: CFP: Computational Approaches in Proteomics Date: Mon, 28 Apr 2003 13:16:59 -0600 Computational Approaches in Proteomics a special issue of the IEEE Engineering in Biology and Medicine Magazine Research and overview papers are sought for the special issue dealing with the following topics: Comprehensive and accurate identification of proteins in complex mixtures Management of proteomics data Analysis of protein interaction with other cellular constituents Post-translational modification analysis Structural proteomics: assigning function to sequenced proteins, defining pathways, and understanding structure-function relationships of protein targets Storing, retrieving, and manipulating sequence (1D) and structural (3D) information Comparative and Quantitative proteomics Papers should be written for the general audience to allow readers not familiar with the field to understand the problems and challenges of computational proteomics. We plan to have the special issue ready for publication in six months. Two referees will review each paper. The deadline for submission of the papers is June 1, 2003. Interested parties should contact Prof. Cios at Krys.Cios@cudenver.edu for author instructions. Guest Editors: Professors Mark Duncan and Krzysztof Cios Mark.Duncan@uchsc.edu ------------------------------ From: Shu-Ching Chen Subject: CFP: IEEE IRI'03 Date: Tue, 29 Apr 2003 23:46:31 -0400 (EDT) Call for Papers The 2003 IEEE International Conference on Information Reuse and Integration October 27-29, 2003 Las Vegas, USA http://parks.slu.edu/IRI2003/ INTRODUCTION This year's conference theme pertains to the design and realization of intelligent interfaces for computational systems. This theme was selected to reflect the importance of human factors in systems design and use. For example, natural language can serve as an effective database interface for applications where rapid feedback is important. The IEEE International Conference on Information Reuse and Integration will feature contributed as well as invited papers. Theory, speculative, and application papers are all included in this call. The focus of the conference includes, but is not limited to, the areas listed below: Agent-Based Systems Model-Based Systems Case-Based Reasoning Multimedia Systems Component-Based Design Natural Language Understanding Data Integration and Fusion Quantum Computing Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery Rule-Based Systems Decision Support Systems Soft Computing Human-Computer Interface Software Process Information Assurance Software Reuse Intellectual Property Software Testing Internet Computing Speech Recognition Knowledge Acquisition and Management INSTRUCTIONS TO AUTHORS Papers reporting original and unpublished research results pertaining to the above and related topics are solicited. Full paper manuscripts must be in English and should not exceed 8 pages (using the IEEE two-column template). Submissions should include the title, author(s), affiliation(s), e-mail address(es), tel/fax numbers, abstract, and postal address(es) on the first page. Papers should be submitted at the conference web site: http://parks.slu.edu/IRI2003. If web submission is not possible, manuscripts should be sent as an attachment via email to the Program Chair listed below on or before the deadline date of June 1, 2003. Dr. Waleed W. Smari University of Dayton Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering 300 College Park Dayton, OH 45469-0226 Waleed.Smari@notes.udayton.edu (937) 229-2795 (937) 229-4529 fax The attachment must be in .pdf (preferred) or word.doc format. The subject of the email must be "IEEE IRI 2003 Submission." Papers will be selected based on their originality, timeliness, significance, relevance, and clarity of presentation. Authors should certify that their papers represent substantially new work and are previously unpublished. Organizers of prospective special sessions, panels, and tutorials are invited to submit proposals and should contact the Program Chair directly as soon as possible, but no later than April 15, 2003. Submission implies the intent of at least one of the authors to register and present the paper, if accepted. Authors of selected papers, presented at the conference, will be invited to submit an expanded version of their paper for review for possible inclusion in the appropriate IEEE SMC Transactions. IMPORTANT DATES Special Sessions, Panels, and Tutorials Deadline: April 15, 2003 Full Paper Submission received by: June 1, 2003 Notification of Acceptance: July 31, 2003 Preregistration & Revised Camera-Ready Paper Due: September 14, 2003, Conference: October 27-29, 2003, ORGANIZING COMMITTEE Honorary General Chair Lotfi Zadeh University of California, Berkeley, USA General Chairs Stuart Rubin, SPAWAR Systems Center, USA Shu-Ching Chen, Florida International University, USA Program Chair Waleed W. Smari, University of Dayton, USA Publications Chair Atif Memon, University of Maryland-College Park, USA Publicity Chair Jacob Sukhodolsky, Saint Louis University, USA Finances Chair David W. Barnett, Saint Louis University, USA Local Arrangements Chair Gina Petonito, Western Illinois University, USA Conference Webmaster Andy Ascher, Saint Louis University, USA ------------------------------ From: "Ali Zalzala" ,"Eugene Eberbach" Subject: CEC'03 Call for Papers Date: Tue, 06 May 2003 07:12:09 -0400 -------------------------------------------- CALL FOR PARTICIPATION 2003 Congress on Evolutionary Computation Canberra, Australia, 8th - 12th December 2003 Submission deadline: 14th June 2003 The Congress on Evolutionary Computation, co-sponsored by the IEEE Neural Networks Society, the Evolutionary Programming Society, the IEAust, and the IEE, is one of the leading international conferences in the field. The 2003 Congress will be held in Canberra, Australia. It covers all topics in evolutionary computation: from combinatorial to numerical optimization, from supervised to unsupervised learning, from co-evolution to collective behaviours, from evolutionary design to evolvable hardware, from molecular to quantum computing, from ant colony to artificial ecology, etc. The emphasis of the Congress will be on original theories and novel applications of evolutionary computation techniques. The Congress welcomes paper submissions from researchers, practitioners, and students worldwide. The Congress will feature keynote speeches and tutorials by world-leading researchers. It also will include a number of special sessions and workshops on the latest hot topics. Further details on the web site: http://www.cs.adfa.edu.au/cec_2003/ -- Eugene Eberbach, CEC'03 Publicity Co-Chair for N&S America From: Alan Blair Subject: CFP: Evolutionary Computation & Games, CEC 2003 Special Session Date: Tue, 6 May 2003 10:36:20 +1000 (EST) _____________________________________________________________________ Special Session on EVOLUTIONARY COMPUTATION and GAMES www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~blair/ec_games.html at the Congress on Evolutionary Computation www.cs.adfa.edu.au/cec_2003 December 8-12, 2003 Canberra, Australia _____________________________________________________________________ Call for papers: One of the fundamental mathematical constructs is the game. Formally, two or more players (of which one may be "nature" or "environment") have resources to deploy and receive a payoff based on their deployment. Each player may desire to maximize his or her immediate payoff, long-term payoff, or may be concerned with more complex issues that relate to other players (e.g., maximize collective payoff, ensure minimizing payoff to an opponent). Evolutionary computation has proven to be an interesting and effective tool in machine learning methods to address games of many forms. These include the iterated prisoner's dilemma, standard board games, military simulations, and other instances. Evolutionary algorithms have been used to learn effective strategies against both fixed and simultaneously evolving opponents (co-evolution), in cases of complete and also incomplete, uncertain, and noisy information about the environment of the game. Many open issues have been identified, including but not limited to the selection of evolvable representations, choosing opponents effectively to promote evolutionary learning, comparison of evolution and other learning methods, and the requirements for sustaining coevolutionary arms races and open-ended evolution. The special track will entertain submissions in all areas of evolutionary computation and games. Submission: Papers should follow the formatting guidelines for CEC2003 regular papers, and should be submitted by email directly to one of the session organizers for review. Submissions should be in PDF format and should not exceed 8 pages in length. This includes all figures, tables, graphs, photos, and bibliography entries. Extra pages may be purchased at US$100 per page. Special session papers should NOT be submitted through the regular CEC2003 procedure. However, they will be treated in the same way as regular papers, and included in the conference proceedings. Please double check the printed appearance of your paper before sending it. Important Dates: Submission: 28 June, 2003 Acceptance: 9 August, 2003 Camera Ready: 9 September, 2003 Conference: 8-12 December, 2003 Organizers: Alan Blair, University of New South Wales, Australia (blair@cse.unsw.edu.au) David Fogel, Natural Selection, Inc., La Jolla, California (dfogel@natural-selection.com) Risto Miikkulainen, University of Texas at Austin (risto@cs.utexas.edu) _____________________________________________________________________ ------------------------------ End of ML-LIST Digest Vol 15, No. 7 ***********************************