Machine Learning List: Vol. 15, No. 23 Sunday, December 28, 2003 Contents Calls for Papers/Participation CfP 2nd Int'l German Conf. on Multi-Agent System Technologies Int'l Conf. on Autonomic Computing (ICAC-04) - Call for Tutorials Loft 2004 CFP GECCO-2004 Workshop: Adaptaion, Approximation, and Learning... CFP: Self-organization in Representations for EAs, GECCO WS... MobiQuitous 2004 - Call for Papers CFP: AAAI-04 Workshop on Challenges in Game AI First IFIP Conf. on AI Applications and Innovations ECML/PKDD 2004: Call for Papers ECML/PKDD 2004: Call for Tutorials and Workshops PAIS CFP KDD-2004 First Call for Papers CFP: Special Issue on "Autonomic Computing and Automation ESSLLI 2004 Workshop CfP: NLP for Multimedia Applications CATALOG '04: first CFP (corrected dates) KDD-2004: CALL FOR WORKSHOP PROPOSALS CFP: Biological Appl. of Genetic and Evol. Computation (BioGEC) Other Meeting Announcements E-CAP2004_ITALY Deadline extension Jan 7 EXTENDED DEADLINE FUSION 2004 Career Opportunities POSITION ANNOUNCEMENT Jobs at Amazon.com in Seattle Graduate assistantships available Miscellaneous Announcements ML Thesis wins 2003 ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award JMLR: Special Issue on Independent Components Analysis 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. To keep mailings to a manageable size, please keep submissions brief. For meeting announcements, do highlight the meeting Web site and the goals of the event but omit information such as the program committee and talk schedules. Also, only first calls for papers/participation and brief change of deadline announcements will be included. The ML List moderator reserves the right to omit/edit submissions to meet these criteria. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Rainer Unland Subject: CfP 2nd Int'l German Conf. on Multi-Agent System Technologies Date: Sat, 13 Dec 2003 19:10:16 +0100 SECOND INTERNATIONAL GERMAN CONFERENCE ON MULTI-AGENT SYSTEM TECHNOLOGIES (ATES'04) September 29 - 30, 2004 Erfurt, Germany, Fair and Convention Center http://www.gi-vki.de/MATES04/ IMPORTANT DATES Submission of papers: May, 21, 2004 Submission of tutorial proposals: June 18, 2004 Submission of exhibit/demo proposals: July 9, 2004 Notification of authors: June 21, 2004 Camera-ready papers: July 9, 2004 AIMS & SCOPE The German conference on Multi-agent system TEchnologieS (MATES) provides an interdisciplinary forum for researchers, users (members of business and industry) and developers, to present and discuss latest advances in research work, as well as prototyped or fielded systems of intelligent agents. The conference covers the whole range from theory to application of agent- and multi-agent technologies in order to promote theory and application of agents and multi-agent systems. The conference features an exhibition of practical applications with an advanced concept of agency, as well as introductory and expert keynotes/tutorials on practical aspects of agent-based computing. For the second time the German special interest group on Distributed Artificial Intelligence jointly with the steering committee of MATES organizes this international conference in order to promote theory and application of agents and multi-agent systems. Building on the sequence of agent-related events in Germany in the past such as VDI 1998 (Chemnitz), VertIS 2001 (Bamberg), and KI 2002 (Aachen), the MATES conference series now is exclusively devoted to agents and multi-agent systems, and the cross-fertilization between agent theory and application. MATES’04 is conducted as an integral part of the fifth international conference NetObject Days 2004 in an exciting joint event. conference language is English. Moreover, it is co-located with other agent-related events, especially the 8th International Woprkshop on Cooperative Information Agents (CIA) 2004 (http://www.dfki.de/~klusch/cia2004/index.html), and the autumn FIPA (Foundation of Intelligent Physical Agents (www.FIPA.org)) meeting. Finally, it is intended to exhibit and present the most relevant agent and real-world agent-based applications. TOPICS OF INTEREST The topics of interest for MATES'04 include, but are not limited to: Agent architectures and multi-agent platforms Agents for e-business and e-government Agents in novel applications, e.g. bioinformatics and the semantic web Agent to non-agent interoperability, mobile agents, agent-based services Agent-oriented software engineering Autonomous robots and robot teams Coordination, collaboration, and agent communication languages Interface agents, believable agents and user modelling Modelling of teams, groups, and organizations Commitment, delegation, responsibility, and obligations in artificial and hybrid societies Semantic of the dynamics of organizational models Roles and structures, adaptive learning and cognition in organizational models Multi-agent learning and planning Negotiation, auctions, argumentation, and conflict resolution Robustness, fault tolerance, scalability and performance measurement Social simulation and cognitive modelling with agents Standards for agents and multi-agent systems EXHIBITION & COURSES Integral part of the technical program will be an exhibition of a variety of tools for the development, especially agent platforms, and prototypes of all kinds of practical applications of agent and multi-agent technology at the conference venue. Introductory and advanced courses given by experts in the field will particularly focus on practical aspects of agent technology including the engineering and effective use of software agents and multi-agent systems in industrial applications in different domains. Those who wish to present a course should specify the topic, contents, and length of their course. PROCEEDINGS The proceedings of MATES'04 will be published as a volume in the Springer series of Lecture Notes on Artificial Intelligence (LNAI). SUBMISSION DETAILS For preparation of papers to be submitted please follow the instructions for authors available at the Springer LNCS Web page: http://www.springer.de/comp/lncs/authors.html. For those not using the Springer LNCS style files: The paper must be formatted in A4 size using 10 point Times. (If Times is not available, please use one of the similar fonts widely used in phototypesetting.) Printing area should be 12.2 x 19.3 cm, and the interline distance should be arranged in such a way that some 42 to 45 lines occur on a full-text page. The length of each paper including figures and references should not exceed 12 pages. All papers must be written in English and submitted either in postscript or PDF format. Papers that have been accepted or are under review by other conferences, workshops, or journals are not eligible for submission. Submissions not conforming to the above requirements may be rejected without review. In case you submit a postscript file please check whether it is printable on a standard postscript-level-2 printer. You may submit your paper via E-Mail to MATES04.submission@gi-vki.de (strongly preferred; please send zipped PS, PDF or WinWord files only) or by normal mail: In that case, please send 5 copies (unstapled pages) of your contribution to European region: Ingo J. Timm University of Bremen, Center for Computing Technologies (TZI), P.O.Box 33 04 40, 28334 Bremen, Germany American/Australasian/Asian region: Jörg Denzinger University of Calgary, 2500 University Drive NW, Calgary, Alberta, Canada T2N 1N4 CONTACT (America/ Australia/Asia and general inquiries) Jörg Denzinger University of Calgary, Canada Phone: 1-403-220-5574 Fax: 1-403-284-4707 denzinge@cpsc.ucalgary.ca http://www.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/~denzinge (Europe and exhibits inquiries) Ingo J. Timm University of Bremen, Germany Phone: +49-421-2189740 Fax: +49-421-2187196 itimm@acm.org http://www.tzi.de/~inti (tutorials inquiries) Gabriela Lindemann Humboldt University Berlin, Germany Phone: +49-30-20933170 Fax: +49-30-20933168 lindeman@informatik.hu-berlin.de http://www.ki.informatik.hu-berlin.de/~lindeman CONTACT (workshops inquiries) Rainer Unland University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany Phone: +49-201-1833421 Fax: : +49-201-1832419 unlandr@informatik.uni-essen.de ------------------------------ From: "Jayaprakash, Madhu K" Subject: Int'l Conf. on Autonomic Computing (ICAC-04) - Call for Tutorials Date: Mon, 15 Dec 2003 13:57:45 -0800 Call For Tutorials International Conference on Autonomic Computing (ICAC-04) http://www.autonomic-conference.org In conjunction with the 13th International World Wide Web Conference Sheraton Hotel, New York, NY, May 17-18, 2004 OVERVIEW & GOALS The International Conference on Autonomic Computing (ICAC-04) is a forum for researchers, engineers, application & service developers and users to present their latest advances in the field of autonomic computing. An integral part of this conference will be tutorials conducted by industry & academia professionals. We are actively seeking proposals for half or full day tutorials on any area of interest to the autonomic computing community to be held in conjunction with ICAC-04. As this is the first conference in a series, we would like to focus on more introductory tutorials catering to a more general audience. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to: * Self-managing system components, such as storage, network, server, client, and database. Emphasis should be placed on interactions with other components, or techniques or lessons that may generalize to other components. * AI and other generic technologies for self-managing components including statistical, machine learning, and optimization techniques, planning, knowledge representation, reasoning, fault diagnosis, policies, sensing, and monitoring. * General architectures for individual components or for autonomic computing systems as a whole, based on Open Grid Services, Web Services, or more novel paradigms based on biological, economic, social, or other analogies. * Toolkits, development environments, and languages for autonomic computing. Support for building individual components of autonomic computing systems or applications. * Technologies to support inter-element interactions, such as SLAs, negotiation protocols and algorithms, and conversation support. * System-level technologies or services that entail interactions among two or more components of self-managing systems, such as dependency analysis, problem localization or remediation, workload management, provisioning, and health monitoring. * Autonomic computing systems or prototype systems that exhibit self-configuration, self-optimization, self-healing, and/or self-protection. * Human interaction with autonomic systems, including user studies, interfaces for monitoring and controlling behavior, and techniques for defining, distributing, and understanding policies. * Fundamental science of self-managing systems: understanding, controlling, or exploiting emergent behavior, theoretical investigations of coupled feedback loops, robustness, and other related topics. SUBMISSION DETAILS A tutorial proposal should contain the following information: * A brief description of the tutorial * The target audience and a description of why the tutorial topic would be of interest to a substantial part of the Autonomic Computing audience * The objectives of the tutorial * Prerequisite knowledge required in order to attend the tutorial * A detailed outline of the topics to be presented A tutorial proposal should also include names, affiliation and biographical sketches of the speaker(s). Please also state the intended length (half or full) of the tutorial, and the Audio/Video and infrastructure requirements. IMPORTANT DATES Please submit your tutorial proposal to the tutorial chair (mazin dot s dot yousif at intel dot com) no later than 11:59PM on January 30th 2004 for consideration. ------------------------------ From: Wiebe van der Hoek Subject: Loft 2004 CFP Date: Tue, 16 Dec 2003 08:45:32 +0000 (GMT) CALL FOR PAPERS: LOFT6 "Logic and the Foundations of the Theory of Games and Decisions" Leipzig (Germany), July 16 - 18, 2004 ORGANIZERS Giacomo BONANNO (University of California Davis,U.S.A.) Wiebe van der HOEK (University of Liverpool, U.K.) Pierfrancesco LA MURA (Handelshochschule, Leipzig, Germany) Arnis VILKS (Handelshochschule, Leipzig, Germany) AIMS OF THE CONFERENCE This is the sixth in a series of conferences on the applications of logical methods to foundational issues in the theory of individual and interactive decision-making. The previous five conferences took place at CIRM (Marseille, France) in January 1994 and at ICER (Torino, Italy) in December 1996, December 1998, July 2000 and July 2002. The complete programs of the last five conferences are at http://www.econ.ucdavis.edu/faculty/bonanno/LOFT.html The aim of the LOFT conferences is to promote exchange across different disciplines. Preference is given to papers which bring together the work and problems of several fields, such as game and decision theory, logic, computer science and artificial intelligence, philosophy, cognitive psychology, mathematics and mind sciences. Among the topics of particular relevance are: - Modal logic: epistemic and deontic logic, multi-agent logic, temporal logic, dynamic logic, probabilistic and multi-valued logic, logic of belief revision. - Foundations of game and decision theory: epistemic foundations of solution concepts, information processing and communication in games, belief formation and revision in games. - Learning and information-processing models: economic aspects of information processing, learning in game-theoretic contexts, inductive learning and inductive decision making. - Bounded rationality approaches to game and decision theory. SUBMISSION INFORMATION The three-day conference will include 6 invited lectures and 15 contributed papers. Potential contributors should send an extended abstract of approximately 3 pages in electronic format (pdf, dvi, MS Word or text), indicating "LOFT6 submission" in the Subject field, to: gfbonanno@ucdavis.edu The deadline for submission is March 31, 2004, and authors will be notified of acceptance decisions by May 15, 2004. Those who wish to participate in the conference without submitting a paper should express their interest to the Organizing Committee by sending an e-mail to gfbonanno@ucdavis.edu PUBLICATION OF CONTRIBUTED PAPERS Selected papers from the previous LOFT conferences were published in a volume by Kluwer Academic Press and in the following journals: Theory and Decision, Mathematical Social Sciences, Games and Economic Behavior, Bulletin of Economic Research and Research in Economics. It is the intention of the organizers to publish a selection of the papers presented at LOFT6 in a suitable platform. ------------------------------ From: Jiri Ocenasek Subject: GECCO-2004 Workshop: Adaptaion, Approximation, and Learning... Date: Wed, 17 Dec 2003 17:39:35 +0100 (MET) GECCO-2004 Workshop Call for Papers Adaptation, Approximation, and Learning in Evolutionary Computation to be held as part of the Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO) Seattle, Washington USA June 26-30, 2004 (Saturday - Wednesday) http://www.isgec.org/gecco-2004/ DESCRIPTION OF THE WORKSHOP TOPIC: The goal of introducing learning to EAs to enhance their efficiency has quite some history: In evolution strategies (ES), this form of learning is usually referred to as 'adaptation' and was developed since the beginnings of ES in the 1970's. In genetic algorithms (GA), the learning is called 'estimation of distribution' or 'learning probability distributions' and has been the subject of intensive research starting in the 1990's. Moreover, in the last years the topic of learning functions, called 'approximation', has gained increasing attention from many researchers. Although belonging to the same community, there has not been so much interaction between the researchers from the different fields to work together towards an increasing efficiency of their algorithms. However, the underlying ideas are often similar. Therefore, we propose to bring together researchers from the field of ES and GA to discuss their ideas. Under the unifying concept of learning, we hope that this exchange will result in interesting new ideas and will lead to novel, rigorous and efficient algorithms. WORKSHOP AND PAPER FORMAT: The workshop will run for half a day. The program will include: o 1-2 presentation by invited speakers o paper presentations (each about 20 minutes) o Panel discussion: "Summary and future work" Please see the GECCO 2004 paper submission details for the format of the papers. IMPORTANT DATES: March 21 Paper submission (from 4 to 10 pages, only PDF accepted). Please send your paper to Jiri Ocenasek (jirio@inf.ethz.ch). April 5 Notification of paper acceptance/rejection. April 14 Camera ready paper (only PDF accepted). June 27 Workshop in Seattle. WORKSHOP ORGANIZERS: Jiri Ocenasek, Sibylle Mueller, Stefan Kern, Nikolaus Hansen, Petros Koumoutsakos Contact person: Dr. Jiri Ocenasek Computational Lab & Institute of Computational Science Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zuerich ETH Zentrum, HRS H9 CH-8092 Zuerich Switzerland Email: jirio@inf.ethz.ch Phone: +41 1 632 6410 Fax: +41 1 632 1703 ------------------------------ From: "Ivan Garibay" Subject: CFP: Self-organization in Representations for EAs, GECCO WS... Date: Wed, 17 Dec 2003 14:26:40 -0500 Workshop Announcement and Call for Papers Self-organization in Representations for Evolutionary Algorithms: Building complexity from simplicity http://ivan.research.ucf.edu/SOEA.htm to be held as part of the Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO) Seattle, Washington USA June 26-30, 2004 (Saturday - Wednesday) http://www.isgec.org/gecco-2004/ Papers submission deadline: March 1, 2004 (email: igaribay@cs.ucf.edu) The success of evolutionary algorithms in a wide range of otherwise intractable problems has promoted its use. As evolutionary algorithms are applied to increasingly difficult problems that require increasingly complex solutions, they face a number of problems: premature convergence to suboptimal solutions, stagnation of search in large search spaces, negative epistatic effects, disruption of large building blocks, among others. Natural evolution, on the other hand, seems to not have any problem evolving strikingly complex self-organized solutions. Self-organization is present in almost every level of natural evolution: gene regulation networks, proteins interaction networks, metabolic pathways, cellular organization, etc; but it is not usually present in evolutionary algorithms. Nature evolves instructions that produce organisms by a process of self-organization. Perhaps the self-organization of genotypic instructions into phenotypes is a key missing ingredient necessary for unleashing the evolution of complex and scalable solutions with emergent phenomena such as: scale-free-ness, adaptability, innovation, evolvability, and robustness. This workshop will focus on domain-independent methods for representing complex solutions with relatively simple self-organizable building blocks. Topics of interest include (not limited to) * Models of complexity building using self-organization * Self-organized development: embryogenesis, growth * Emergent behavior in representations * Methods of fitness assignment for self-organized individuals (the price of non-programmability) * Methods of design and evaluation of self-organizable building blocks * Scalability of self-organizational processes to high complexities * Self-organization theoretical approaches: complexity, chaos, synergetics, self-organized criticality, non-equilibrium thermodynamics, etc. * Artificial self-organized systems * NFL: what can we trade to get complexity and scalability in solutions? Workshop Format This workshop seeks to bring together researchers from diverse problem domains to informally discuss issues related to the representation of complex solutions using self-organization of simple building blocks for evolutionary algorithms in particular, and the issue of building complexity from simplicity in general. We plan to have a series of short technical presentations followed by a panel discussion. We welcome technical papers describing completed or on-going research as well as position papers outlining current research issues, approaches or research agendas. We also welcome suggestions to panel discussions. Preprints will be circulated by email prior to the meeting. Workshop Submission Instructions: Please submit a 3-4 page outline of a proposed contribution via email to igaribay@cs.ucf.edu in PS or PDF format. Accepted papers will be published in the GECCO-2004 workshops proceedings. Important Dates Papers Due: March 1, 2004 Acceptance notices: March 17, 2004 Early Registration (GECCO-2004): March 19, 2004 Camera Ready: April 16, 2004 Workshop: June 27, 2004 Attendance: Open to all GECCO 2004 attendees Organizers: Ivan I. Garibay, Greg Holifield and Dr. Annie S. Wu Evolutionary Computation Laboratory - University of Central Florida For more information, comments or suggestions please email Ivan Garibay at igaribay@cs.ucf.edu or visit http://ivan.research.ucf.edu/SOEA.htm ------------------------------ From: dru.lundeng@icst.org Subject: MobiQuitous 2004 - Call for Papers Date: Thu, 18 Dec 2003 04:01:20 +0000 PRELIMINARY ANNOUNCEMENT and CALL FOR PAPERS MobiQuitous 2004 http://www.mobiquitous.org The First Annual International Conference on Mobile and Ubiquitous Systems: Networking and Services August 22-25, 2004 Boston, Massachusetts, USA (ACM sponsorship pending) The combination of mobile and ubiquitous computing is emerging as a promising new paradigm with the goal to provide computing and communication services all the time, everywhere, transparently and invisibly to the user, using devices embedded in the surrounding physical environment. In this context, the communication devices, the objects with which they interact, or both may be mobile. The implementation of such a paradigm requires advances in wireless network technologies and devices, development of infrastructures supporting cognitive environments, and discovery and identification of ubiquitous computing applications and services. The first ACM Annual International Conference on Mobile and Ubiquitous Systems: networking and services (Mobiquitous 04) will cover all these aspects, representing a forum where practitioners and researchers coming from the many areas involved in ubiquitous solutions design and deployment will be able to interact exchanging the cross-layer experiences needed to build the overall ubiquitous systems. Areas addressed by the conference include: applications, service-oriented computing, middleware, networking, agents, knowledge management and databases. PAPERS: Technical papers describing original, previously unpublished research, not currently under review by another conference or journal, are solicited. The conference is interested in contributions addressing all the areas associated with mobile and ubiquitous architectures, infrastructure and services. Technical works clearly identifying how the specific contributions fit to an overall working solution are particularly of interest. Topics include, but are not limited to, the following feature topics: * Ubiquitous architectures and systems * Wearable computing and personal area network * Wireless technologies for mobile and ubiquitous communications (Bluetooth, ZigBee, 802.15.x, WiFi) * Wireless Internet access in ubiquitous systems * Reconfigurability and personalization of wireless network * Service discovery mechanisms, knowledge discovery, matching and composition mechanisms * Wireless/mobile service management and delivery * Security, privacy and social issues of mobile and ubiquitous systems * Peer-to-peer knowledge management * Emerging industrial/business scenarios * Multimodal interfaces (speech, video kinetic, tactile) * Smart spaces * Ad hoc and sensor networking * Localization and tracking * Context and location aware application * Multimedia encoding and transcoding * Middleware services * Agent technologies in ubiquitous, wearable, and mobile systems * Hardware and software platforms for ubiquitous systems, and testbeds * User interfaces * Toolkits, development environments, and languages for ubiquitous computing * Ontologies for mobile and ubiquitous computing SUBMISSION INSTRUCTIONS: All paper submissions will be handled electronically (see the conference web page for details). Authors should prepare a Portable Document Format (PDF) or postscript version of their full paper. Papers must not exceed 8 pages double column (US Letter size, 8.5 x 11 inches) including text, figures and references. The font size must be at least 10 points. PUBLICATION: All submitted papers will be rigorously reviewed by technical program committee members. Accepted papers will be published in the conference proceedings. Papers of particular merit will be proposed for publication in the ACM/Kluwer Wireless Networks journal. TUTORIALS: Proposals for tutorials are solicited. Evaluation of tutorial proposals will be based on the expertise and experience of the instructors, and on the relevance of the subject matter. Potential instructors are requested to submit a tutorial proposal of at most 5 pages, including a biographical sketch, to the Tutorial Chair by March 1, 2004. DEMOS: Proposals for research and industrial demos are solicited. A maximum of 3 pages should be submitted which include a description of the demo and needed equipment. Proposals should be submitted to the Demo Chair, which will be announced shortly. IMPORTANT DATES Paper submission due: FEBRUARY 1 2004 Notification of acceptance: APRIL 30 2004 Camera-ready version due: MAY 15 2004 ------------------------------ From: "Dan Fu" Subject: CFP: AAAI-04 Workshop on Challenges in Game AI Date: Thu, 18 Dec 2003 14:10:15 -0500 The AAAI-04 Workshop on Challenges in Game AI Call for Participation 1 Description of the Workshop The science of game development is still in its infancy. While researchers and developers seek a better understanding and awareness of game AI problems and techniques, dialog between these two communities is limited. This workshop seeks to identify the problems currently facing game AI programmers, to explore the emerging techniques within development circles, and to highlight AI research that could be of potential use. 2 Topics The workshop will address contemporary challenges and promising directions for game AI research and development. It aims to identify practices that can advance the state of the art. Broad areas of investigation include: AI Methodologies: . Current problems and novel solutions . Impact of architecture decisions on the development process . Sharing and re-use of AI systems AI and Game Design: . Integrating designer control with autonomous system and agent behavior . Balancing the goals of smart AI and good gameplay . Making AI apparent and relevant to the player Case Studies: . Lessons learned in development practice Technical areas of interest include but are not limited to: architectures, action planning, decision-making, multiple agent coordination, dynamic gameplay generation, learning, natural language interaction, characters, emotion, interface standards, and tools. 3 Format of Workshop The workshop will combine invited talks, panels, short presentations and roundtable discussion. Those wishing to submit for the workshop should address one of the above topic(s); those wishing to attend should signal their intent. Based on papers and responses, the workshop committee will identify common ground among participants and plan accordingly. 4 Submission Requirements Papers should be between 1000 to 2500 words (about two to five pages) in length and identify positions, issues, novel solutions, or new directions. Accepted papers will be made available to all workshop participants. Submissions should be emailed as PDF or RTF. Please contact Dan Fu about other formats. If email is not possible, send three hard copies to the address below. 5 Important Dates Submission deadline: March 12, 2004 Notification date: April 23, 2004 Final date for camera-ready copy to AAAI: May 25, 2004 6 Submission Address Dan Fu Stottler Henke 951 Mariners Island Blvd, Suite 360 San Mateo, CA 94404 973-746-7032 fu@stottlerhenke.com 7 Workshop Committee . Dan Fu, Stottler Henke (co-chair), fu@stottlerhenke.com . Jeff Orkin, Monolith Productions (co-chair), jorkin@blarg.net . Robin Hunicke, Northwestern University, hunicke@cs.northwestern.edu . Craig Reynolds, Sony Computer Entertainment America, craig_reynolds@playstation.sony.com 8 Workshop URL Latest workshop information is at http://www.stottlerhenke.com/gameai ------------------------------ From: "Max Bramer" Subject: First IFIP Conf. on AI Applications and Innovations Date: Sat, 20 Dec 2003 16:38:28 -0000 AIAI 2004 First IFIP Conference on Artificial Intelligence Applications and Innovations http://www.ifiptc12.org/ Toulouse, France August, 22-27, 2004 The AIAI Conference is an integral session in the IFIP World Computer Congress program. All submissions will be reviewed by an international Program Committee. All accepted papers will appear in the official IFIP Conference Proceedings published by Kluwer Academic Publishers. AIAI will bring together researchers, engineers and practitioners. AIAI will interest researchers, IT professionals and consultants by examining technologies and applications of demonstrable value. AIAI will focus on profitable intelligent systems and technologies. Submission [1] February 9th 2004 -- Email a plain text abstract of your paper including the title, authors, abstract and email contact to: abstracts@ifiptc12.org [2] February 16, 2004 -- Submit your full paper to the conference web site: http://www.wcc2004.org/ Submitted papers must be original, unpublished, and not submitted to another journal or conference for consideration of publication. Papers must be written in English; they should be at most 10 pages long in total, including bibliography, in the Kluwer format [http://www.wkap.com/ifip/styles/]. [NB: some copies of the printed IFIP brochure ask for 16 pages - that is a misprint.] Accepted papers will be presented at the conference, as either oral or poster presentations, and published in the official IFIP conference proceedings by Kluwer Academic Publishers. At least one author of each accepted paper is required to register with the conference and to present the paper. Call for Papers Deadlines: abstracts February 9, 2004; full papers February 16, 2004 AIAI focuses on real world applications; therefore authors should highlight the benefits of AI technology for industry and services. Novel approaches to solving business and industrial problems, using AI, will emerge from this conference. Papers describing advanced prototypes, systems, tools and techniques and general survey papers indicating future directions are also encouraged. Papers describing original work are invited in any of the areas listed below. Acceptance will be based on quality, relevance and originality, and, above all, on the practical value of the work. Both full research papers and professional work-in-progress reports are welcome. There will be both oral and poster presentations. Industrial Applications of Artificial Intelligence Intelligent Decision Support Systems Integration of AI with other Technologies Evaluation of AI Systems AI Languages, Programming Techniques and Tools Knowledge Acquisition Expert Knowledge-based Systems Fuzzy Logic and Plausible Inference Neural Networks Evolutionary Computation and Algorithms Speech and Natural Language Interfaces Machine Vision Intelligent Information Retrieval Genetic Algorithms Planning and Scheduling Bayesian Networks and Stochastic Reasoning Evolutionary Programming Learning and Adaptive Systems Intelligent Agents Distributed AI Algorithms, Techniques, and Applications Distributed AI Systems and Architectures Intelligent Tutoring Systems Structured and Unstructured Datamining Case-Based Reasoning Systems Hardware and Robotics Social Impact, Acceptance and Implications of AI Intelligent Systems Engineering and Design Methodologies Ontologies and Semantic Web Knowledge and Information Management Business Process Management and Enterprise Portals Organisational Memory Knowledge Systems Inter-organisational KM portals KM, E-Learning and Enterprise Portals Organisation Conference General Chairs Professor John Debenham [debenham@it.uts.edu.au] IFIP TC12 & University of Technology, Sydney Dr. Eunika Mercier-Laurent IFIP TC12 & AFIA (Association Francaise pour l'Intelligence Artificielle) Conference Program Chairs Professor Max Bramer Chair -- IFIP TC12 & University of Portsmouth Professor Vladan Devedzic [devedzic@fon.fon.bg.ac.yu] IFIP TC12 & University of Belgrade ------------------------------ From: "ECML/PKDD 2004 Announcement" Subject: ECML/PKDD 2004: Call for Papers Date: Sun, 21 Dec 2003 11:55:58 +0100 Call for Papers ECML/PKDD-2004 Pisa, Italy, September 20-24, 2004 http://ecmlpkdd.isti.cnr.it ecmlpkdd@isti.cnr.it The 15th European Conference on Machine Learning (ECML) and the 8th European Conference on Principles and Practice of Knowledge Discovery in Databases (PKDD) will be co-located in Pisa, Italy, September 20-24, 2004. The combined event will comprise presentations of contributed papers and invited speakers, a wide program of workshops and tutorials, a demo session, and a discovery challenge. Important dates - Submission deadline: Monday April 19, 2004 - Notification of acceptance: Monday June 7, 2004 - Camera-ready copies due: Monday June 28, 2004 - Conferences: Monday September 20 through Friday September 24, 2004 Paper submission High quality research contributions pertinent to any aspects of machine learning and knowledge discovery are called for, ranging from principles to practice; particular attention will be paid to papers describing innovative, challenging applications. There will be a single electronic submission procedure, where authors should indicate whether they submit their paper to ECML, PKDD, or both. In the latter case, the topic of the joint submission must be within the scope of both conferences; accepted joint submissions will be assigned to the most appropriate of the conferences. Student submissions should be clearly indicated on the submission form. All submissions will be reviewed by the respective program committees. The papers must be in English and should be formatted according to the Springer-Verlag Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence guidelines. Authors instructions and style files can be downloaded at http://www.springer.de/comp/lncs/authors.html.  The maximum length of papers is 12 pages. The proceedings of ECML and PKDD will be published as two separate volumes by Springer-Verlag in the Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence series and will be available at the conference. Simultaneous submissions to other conferences are allowed, provided this fact is clearly indicated on the submission form. Simultaneous submissions that are not clearly specified as such will be rejected. Accepted papers will appear in the ECML/PKDD conference proceedings only if they are withdrawn from proceedings of other conferences. Best Paper Awards KDNet and Kluwer will honour the best papers and the best student papers with awards. The awards will be based on the significance and originality of the contributions. ECML Call for Papers The European Conference on Machine Learning series intends to provide an international forum for the discussion of the latest high quality research results in machine learning and is the major European scientific event in the field. Submissions of papers that describe the application of machine learning methods to real-world problems are encouraged, particularly exploratory research that describes novel learning tasks and applications requiring non-standard techniques. Submissions that demonstrate both theoretical and empirical rigor are especially encouraged. Topics of interest (non-exhaustive list): - artificial neural networks - Bayesian networks - case-based reasoning - computational models of human learning - computational learning theory - cooperative learning - decision trees - discovery of scientific laws - evolutionary computation - grammatical inference - incremental induction and on-line learning - inductive logic programming - information retrieval and learning - instance based learning - kernel methods - knowledge acquisition and learning - knowledge base refinement - knowledge intensive learning - machine learning of natural language - meta learning - multi-agent learning - multi-strategy learning - planning and learning - reinforcement learning - revision and restructuring - statistical approaches - unsupervised learning - vision and learning PKDD Call for Papers Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery in Databases (KDD) is the ability to extract useful patterns from large amounts of data stored in databases, data warehouses or other information repositories. KDD is a combination of many research areas: databases, statistics, machine learning, automated scientific discovery, artificial intelligence, visualization, and high performance computing. KDD focuses on the value that is added by the creative combination of the contributing areas. The European Conference on Principles and Practice of Knowledge Discovery in Databases series intends to provide an international forum for the discussion of the latest high quality research results in KDD and is the major European scientific event in the field. Submissions are invited that describe empirical and theoretical research in all areas of KDD, as well as submissions that describe challenging applications of KDD. Topics of interest (non-exhaustive list): Algorithms and techniques - classification - clustering - frequent patterns - rule discovery - statistical techniques and mixture models - constraint-based mining - incremental algorithms - scalable algorithms - distributed and parallel algorithms - privacy preserving data mining - multi-relational data mining Data mining and databases - database integration - OLAP and data warehouse integration - data mining query languages - data mining query optimization Data pre-processing - dimensionality reduction - data reduction - discretization - uncertain and missing information handling Foundations of data mining - complexity issues - inductive databases - knowledge (pattern) representation - global vs. local patterns - logic for data mining - statistical inference and probabilistic modelling Innovative applications - mining bio-medical data - web content, structure and usage mining - semantic web mining - mining governmental data, mining for the public administration - personalization - adaptive data mining architectures - invisible data mining KDD process and process-centric data mining - models of the KDD process - standards for the KDD process - background knowledge integration - collaborative data mining - vertical data mining environments Mining different forms of data - graph, tree, sequence mining - semi-structured and XML data mining - text mining - temporal, spatial, and spatio-temporal data mining - data stream mining - multimedia mining Pattern post-processing - quality assessment - visualization - knowledge interpretation and use For more information, please visit http://ecmlpkdd.isti.cnr.it ------------------------------ From: "ECML/PKDD 2004 Announcement" Subject: ECML/PKDD 2004: Call for Tutorials and Workshops Date: Sun, 21 Dec 2003 11:57:03 +0100 The 15th European Conference on Machine Learning (ECML-04) and The 8th European Conference on Principles and Practice of Knowledge Discovery in Databases (PKDD-04) 20-24 September 2004, Pisa, Italy http://ecmlpkdd.isti.cnr.it JOINT CALL FOR TUTORIALS AND WORKSHOPS The ECML/PKDD-2004 organizing committee invites proposals for tutorials and workshops to be held on Monday and Tuesday, September 20-21, immediately preceding the main ECML/PKDD-2004 conference. We invite proposals for up to six half-day tutorials and six full day workshops. Proposals for a workshop/tutorial combination are also welcome (see below). The scope of the proposal should be consistent with the conference themes as described in the ECML/PKDD-2004 Call for Papers (see URL above). Workshops provide organizers and participants with 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 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 are intended to provide independent instruction on topics from the field of machine learning or data mining. Introductions to other research domains that could fertilize the ML/DM field with new challenges or solutions are also welcome. Each tutorial should - attract a large enough audience; - be presented by highly qualified persons with a demonstrable background and teaching experience in the tutorial area; - be well-focused, so that its core content can be covered in a 3.5 hour tutorial slot (incl. a 30 minute break); - be accompanied by comprehensive notes written in clear, standard English; - cope with the wide diversity in the audience, or else be accompanied by a complete list of tutorial prerequisites; - cover the overall picture, without a bias towards the presenters' own work; - be free of commercial or sales-oriented material. As workshops and tutorials 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.isti.cnr.it/. IMPORTANT DATES - Workshop/tutorial proposal deadline: March 8, 2004 - Workshop/tutorial acceptance notification: March 22, 2004 - Workshop Call For Papers for web: April 8, 2004 - Tutorial summary for web: April 8, 2004 - Workshop paper submission deadline: June 14, 2004 - Workshop paper acceptance notification: July 5, 2004 - Workshop paper camera-ready deadline: July 12, 2004 - Workshop proceedings (camera/web-ready): July 19, 2004 - Tutorial notes (camera/web-ready): July 19, 2004 - Start conference: September 20, 2004 CONTACT INFORMATION Tutorial Chairs Katharina Morik Computer Science Department University of Dortmund Campus Süd - Baroper Straße 301, D-44227 Dortmund, Germany morik@ls8.cs.uni-dortmund.de Phone: +49 231 7555101 Fax: +49 231 7555105 Franco Turini Department of Informatics University of Pisa via F. Buonarroti, 2 I-56127 Pisa, Italy turini@di.unipi.it Phone: +39 050 2212753 Fax: +39 050 2212726 Workshop Chairs Donato Malerba Department of Informatics University of Bari via Orabona 4, I-70126 Bari, Italy malerba@di.uniba.it Phone: +39 080 5443269 Fax: +39 080 5443269 Mohammed J. Zaki Department of Computer Science Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, New York 12180-3590 USA zaki@cs.rpi.edu Phone: +1 518 2766340 Fax: +1 518 2764033 ------------------------------ From: "Padraig Cunningham" Subject: PAIS CFP Date: Sun, 21 Dec 2003 11:10:18 -0000 PAIS 2004 3rd Prestigious Applications Intelligent Systems Conference Valencia (Spain), August 25-27th, 2004 Call for Papers Submissions are invited for "Prestigious Applications of Intelligent Systems" (PAIS-2004) a sub-conference of ECAI 2004. This event is created to highlight significant successful applications of intelligent system technology. The purpose of the event is to provide a forum for industry practitioners to learn about the power and applicability of selected intelligent system techniques and share experience on the applicability, development and deployment of intelligent systems in industry. This will be the largest showcase in Europe of real applications using intelligent system technology and the ideal place to meet with those working to make successful intelligent system based applications. The Prestigious Applications of Intelligent Systems event will present papers describing successful applications of intelligent systems. Although associated with ECAI, it has a separate review process conducted by experts in the application of intelligent system technologies. Papers are selected to highlight critical areas of success (and failure) and to present the benefits and lessons of value to other developers. Submitted papers should make these points clear. Accepted papers will be published in a special section of the ECAI 2004 proceedings. Submission details are available at: http://www.dsic.upv.es/ecai2004/ Important dates: 13 Feb 2004 Deadline for PAIS papers summaries 18 Feb 2004 Deadline for papers 2 May 2004 Notification of acceptance 31 May 2004 Camera-ready copies of papers 25-27 Aug 2004 PAIS-2004, Valencia Programme Committee Chair Pádraig Cunningham, Trinity College Dublin, IRL, For more information, please visit http://www.dsic.upv.es/ecai2004/ ------------------------------ From: Xindong Wu Subject: KDD-2004 First Call for Papers Date: Mon, 22 Dec 2003 10:11:01 -0500 (EST) KDD-2004 First Call for Papers CALL FOR RESEARCH PAPERS KDD-2004 THE TENTH ACM SIGKDD INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON KNOWLEDGE DISCOVERY AND DATA MINING August 22-25, 2004 Seattle, WA, USA http://www.acm.org/sigkdd/kdd2004 or http://www.kdd2004.com IMPORTANT DATES: Submission Deadlines: Electronic Abstract Submission: Feb. 20, 2004 *at noon PST* Electronic Paper Submission: Feb. 27, 2004 *at noon PST* Submission Format: Camera-Ready (no more than 10 pages), electronic submissions *in PDF format only* Notification of acceptance/rejection: May 21, 2004 Camera-ready papers due: June 4, 2004 During the past years, the ACM SIGKDD conference has established itself as the premier international conference on knowledge discovery and data mining with an attendance of 600-900 people. To continue with this tradition, the tenth ACM SIGKDD conference will provide a forum for researchers from academia, industry, and government, developers, practitioners, and the data mining user community to share their research and experience. The SIGKDD conference will feature keynote presentations, oral paper presentations, poster presentations, workshops, tutorials, and panels, as well as the KDD Cup competition. Papers on all aspects of knowledge discovery and data mining are solicited. Areas of interest include, but are not limited to: - Applications of data mining (biomedical, e-commerce, defense) - Data and result visualization - Data mining and data warehousing - Data mining for community generation, social network analysis, and graph-structured data - Foundations of data mining - KDD framework and process - Mining data streams - Mining high-dimensional data - Mining text and semi-structured data - Multi-media data mining - Novel data mining algorithms - Spatial and temporal data mining - Security and privacy issues - Interactive and online data mining - Pre-processing and post-processing for data mining - Robust and scalable statistical methods Abstracts and full papers must be submitted electronically at the conference Web site (see URL above). Abstracts must be submitted on or before February 20, 2004, 12 noon PST (Pacific Standard Time). An abstract may not contain more than 250 words. No paper will be considered without having the abstract submitted on time. Full papers must be submitted on or before February 27, 2004, at 12 noon PST. This is a FIRM deadline. Papers must be no more than 10 pages in length, inclusive of all figures, tables, references and appendices. Papers should be submitted in ACM proceedings format (two columns, 9pt font, approx. 1in margins). Templates are available at http://www.acm.org/sigs/pubs/proceed/template.html. Papers must be submitted in PDF format. Authors are solely responsible for ensuring that their submissions display and print properly. All papers will be judged based on their technical merits, originality, relevance to KDD, and presentation clarity. Papers should describe original work that has not been published before, is not under review elsewhere, and may not be submitted elsewhere during KDD-2004's review period (specialized workshops with a limited audience excluded). A separate call is being issued for industrial/government track papers; see the conference Web site at the URL above. Reviewers can assign research track submissions to the industrial/government track and vice-versa, if they feel this to be more appropriate. Calls for workshop, tutorial and panel proposals can also be found at the conference Web site. The KDD-2004 Best Paper awards recognize the best paper in two categories: fundamental research and applications/applied research. Fundamental research papers are judged by the significance and originality of their contribution. Applications/applied research papers are judged by the practical impact and current or potential usefulness of the work. In both cases, the clarity and quality of presentation are also considered. KDD-2004 will also award scholarships to selected students to help defray the cost of participating in the conference. Details will appear on the conference Web site. For more information, visit http://www.acm.org/sigkdd/kdd2004 or http://www.kdd2004.com ------------------------------ From: "Tianfield, Huaglory" Subject: CFP: Special Issue on "Autonomic Computing and Automation Date: Mon, 22 Dec 2003 17:16:33 -0000 Call for Papers Special Issue on "Autonomic Computing and Automation" at Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence, published by Elsevier Deadline for submissions: 31 December 2003 Details are available on http://www.gcal.ac.uk/cms/research/Downloads/cfp(1).pdf Guest Editors: Professor H Tianfield, Glasgow Caledonian University, UK Professor R Unland, University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany ------------------------------ From: Declerck Subject: ESSLLI 2004 Workshop CfP: NLP for Multimedia Applications Date: Tue, 23 Dec 2003 16:41:32 +0100 CALL FOR PAPERS NLP for Multimedia Applications http://www.dfki.de/~declerck/esslli04.htm 16-20 August, Nancy organised as part of the European Summer School on Logic, Language and Information ESSLLI 2004 (http://esslli2004.loria.fr/) 9-20 August, 2004 in Nancy Workshop Organizers: Thierry Declerck (declerck@dfki.deb) Elisabeth André (andre@informatik.uni-augsburg.de) Workshop Purpose: The Workshop aims to provide a discussion platform between advanced PhD students and researchers, who are interested in the topics typically addressed at ESSLLI, and possible multimedia applications involving research results from Language Processing. The submissions should not necessarily describe achieved work, but can present advanced ideas on how to combine NLP and Multimedia applications. Workshop Topics: The workshop will explore some issues on the role natural language processing (NLP) can play within the increasing number of multimedia (MM) applications that more and more are influencing our everyday life. Multimodality can be addressed as well, as long as multimedia aspects are considered. Main questions to be addressed will be: - How to integrate multimedia input including natural language (spoken or written); - How to combine natural language with other media in order to generate high quality multimedia output; - How to make use of NL for efficient access to MM archives, Including interactive retrieval; - Multimedia segmentation, indexing, summarization, and presentation; - Multimedia and multimodal interaction; - How to extend multilingual NLP applications (like Question Answering etc) into a multi-source and multimedia setting; - Representation (and reasoning about) of multimedia/multimodal discourse and context The workshop will also investigate the type of formalisms and standards to be used for this integration task. Contributions on basic research and on running or achieved projects dealing with the topics are welcome. Papers addressing one or more of the following topics are also welcome, but there should be some clear possible relationships to NLP, including logical issues: MPEG, multimedia/multimodal content, coding schemes, metadata, knowledge representation for multimedia content (multimedia ontologies), semantic annotation of multimedia content or search, retrieval and Web applications. Submission details: Authors are invited to submit full papers describing original work or proposals on the topics mentioned above. Submissions should not exceed 8 pages and are not anonymous. The following formats are accepted: PDF or PS. Please send your submissions electronically to Thierry Declerck (declerck@dfki.de), mentioning "NLP_MM Submission" in the subject line of your mail. Your submission will be reviewed by at least two reviewers of the Programme Committee or additional reviewers. The accepted papers will appear in the workshop proceedings published by ESSLLI. The format for the final version will be following the ACL style (details on the ACL 2002 styles can be found at http://www.cs.ualberta.ca/~lindek/acl02/style/). So the submissions should ideally be conformant to this one. Workshop Format: The Workshop is part of ESSLLI and is open to all ESSLLI participants. It will consist of five 90-minute sessions held over five consecutive days in the second Week of ESSLLI. There will 2 or 3 slots for paper presentation and discussion per session. On the first day the organisers will give an introduction to the workshop topics. Important Dates: Submissions: March 5, 2004 Notification: April 19, 2004 ESSLLI early registration: May 1, 2004 Preliminary programme: April 23, 2004 Final programme: June 25, 2004 Workshop: August 16-20, 2004 Further Information: About ESSLLI: ESSLLI 2004 in Nancy About the Workshop: http://www.dfki.de/~declerck/esslli04.htm ------------------------------ From: Jonathan Ginzburg Subject: CATALOG '04: first CFP (corrected dates) Date: Fri, 26 Dec 2003 01:24:41 +0000 First Call for Papers CATALOG'04 EIGHTH WORKSHOP ON THE SEMANTICS AND PRAGMATICS OF DIALOGUE (SEMDIAL) Pompeu Fabra University Barcelona July 19-21 2004 Workshop URL: http://www.upf.edu/catalog04 Catalog'04 will be the eighth in a series of workshops that aims to bring together researchers working on the semantics and pragmatics of dialogues in fields such as artificial intelligence, formal semantics and pragmatics, computational linguistics, philosophy, and psychology. The Dial/Log conferences are always stimulating and fun and Barcelona, which will host ACL 2004 immediately following Catalog'04, is a great place to visit. Barcelona will also host, during the summer of 2004, its 'Forum 2004', a huge cultural fair full of events, exhibits, and performances (http://www.barcelona2004.org/eng/). So mark your calendar now. INVITED SPEAKERS: Massimo Poesio (University of Essex), Michael Tannenhaus (University of Rochester), Two other speakers to be announced We invite abstracts on all topics related to the semantics and pragmatics of dialogues, including, but not limited to: - models of common ground/mutual belief in communication - modelling agents' information states and how they get updated - multi-agent models and turn-taking - goals, intentions and commitments in communication - semantic interpretation in dialogues - reference in dialogues - ellipsis resolution in dialogues - dialogue and discourse structure - interpretation of questions and answers - nonlinguistic interaction in communication - natural language understanding and reasoning in spoken dialogue systems - multimodal dialogue systems - dialogue management in practical implementations - categorisation of dialogue moves or speech acts in corpora - designing and evaluating dialogue systems SUBMISSION PROCEDURE: Authors should submit an anonymous extended abstract of at most 5 single-column pages (for talks with a duration of 25' plus 10' discussion) together with a separate page specifying the authors' names, affiliation, address, and e-mail address. The abstracts should be submitted electronically (in postscript, html, ascii, or pdf format) to: Submissions have to be in English, which is the workshop language. For the accepted talks, a LaTeX style will be made available for the preparation of the final version. IMPORTANT DATES: Abstracts due: March 12, 2004 Acceptance notice: May 5, 2004 Final version due: June 5, 2004 Conference: July 19-21, 2004 ORGANIZATION: The workshop will take place at Universitat Pompeu Fabra in the city of Barcelona (exact venue to be announced). The local committee is chaired by Enric Vallduví. For more information, visit http://www.upf.edu/catalog04 ------------------------------ From: "Gabor Melli" Subject: KDD-2004: CALL FOR WORKSHOP PROPOSALS Date: Fri, 26 Dec 2003 19:01:26 -0800 CALL FOR WORKSHOP PROPOSALS KDD-2004 THE TENTH ACM SIGKDD INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON KNOWLEDGE DISCOVERY AND DATA MINING August 22-25, 2004 Seattle, WA, USA http://www.acm.org/sigkdd/kdd2004/workshops.html or http://www.kdd2004.com Workshops Chair: Myra Spiliopoulou Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg myra[AT]iti.cs.uni-magdeburg.de IMPORTANT DATES: Workshop proposals due: March 5, 2004 Notification of acceptance/rejection: March 29, 2004 The KDD-2004 organizing committee invites proposals for workshops to be held in conjunction with the conference. The purpose of a workshop is to provide participants with the opportunity to present and discuss novel research ideas on active and emerging topics of knowledge discovery and data mining. A workshop should also support the interaction and feedback among topic specialists from academia, industry and government. The organizers of approved workshops are required to announce the workshop and call for papers, gather submissions, conduct the reviewing process and decide upon the final workshop program. They must also prepare an informal set of workshop proceedings to be distributed with the registration materials at the conference. They may choose to form organizing or program committees for assistance in these tasks. PROPOSAL DETAILS Proposals should be no more than three pages in length and must include the following: # Description of the workshop topic and the associated research issues # Reasons why an ACM SIGKDD workshop on this topic should take place # Description of the anticipated target group(s) of attendees # Contact information (address, email, phone) for all organizers, and specification of a designated primary contact person The organizers are encouraged to provide the following additional information if possible: # A preliminary list of reviewers # A list of potential authors # A list of potential attendees Proposers are encouraged to have their drafts reviewed by potential workshop participants before submission. Workshop proposals should be sent per e-mail to the Workshops Chair, Myra Spiliopoulou (myra[AT]iti.cs.uni-magdeburg.de) by March 5, 2004. Submissions must be either in PDF or in ASCII format without markups. ------------------------------ From: "Jason H. Moore" Subject: CFP: Biological Appl. of Genetic and Evol. Computation (BioGEC) Date: Sat, 27 Dec 2003 15:51:48 -0600 CALL FOR PAPERS AAAI - GECCO 2004 Workshop on: Biological Applications of Genetic and Evolutionary Computation (BioGEC) http://chgr.mc.vanderbilt.edu/BioGEC/ Summary The field of Genetic and Evolutionary Computation (GEC) has greatly benefited by borrowing ideas from the biological sciences. Recently, it has become clear that GEC can help solve biological problems, and thereby "repay its debt". The third annual workshop on Biological Applications of Genetic and Evolutionary Computation (BioGEC), organized in connection with the 2004 Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO-2004) in Seattle, is intended to explore and critically evaluate the application of GEC to biological problems. Specifically, the goal is to bring biologists and computer scientists together to foster an exchange of ideas that will yield emergent properties that will move the field forward in unpredictable ways. Workshop Date and Location Sunday, June 27, 2004 (2 hours) Held as part of the Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO-2004) Seattle, Washington USA June 26-30, 2004 (Saturday - Wednesday) http://www.isgec.org/gecco-2004/ Call for Papers In order to facilitate interaction and discussion, the workshop invites papers in the form of commentaries, essays, perspectives, surveys, tutorials, and reviews that focus on ideas for discussion rather than specific research results. Investigators interested in presenting research results are encouraged to submit their papers to the GECCO track on biological applications (http://gal4.ge.uiuc.edu:8080/GECCO-2004/prog-tracks.html). Questions that might be addressed in a paper include (but are not limited to): 1) What biological problems are GEC methods well-suited for? 2) What biological problems are GEC methods not well-suited for? 3) Which of the many GEC methods should be used for a specific biological problem? 4) What are the successes and failures of GEC for a specific biological problem? 5) What impact has GEC had on biology/bioinformatics? 6) Should all biologists/bioinformaticists be using GEC? 7) What is the future of GEC for solving biological problems? 8) What GEC software tools are available for use by biologists/bioinformaticists? 9) What unanswered questions in GEC are relevant to solving biological problems? Presentations will be selected according to papers submitted to the workshop organizers. Criteria for selection of papers for the workshop include: 1) Paper addresses an important question on the use of GEC for solving biological problems. 2) Paper contributes to the diversity of topics covered by the workshop. 3) Paper is well-written. 4) Paper focuses on ideas for discussion and interaction rather than new research results. Accepted papers will be published in the workshop proceedings. The best papers will be invited to contribute to a special issue of the journal "Frontiers in Biosciences" (http://www.bioscience.org/) to be published summer or fall of 2004. Please send 1-10 page papers (PDF or Word) to Jason H. Moore (Moore@chgr.mc.Vanderbilt.edu) and Marylyn D. Ritchie (Ritchie@chgr.mc.Vanderbilt.edu) by Sunday, March 7, 2003. The format for manuscripts submitted to the workshop is that used for the Springer-Verlag Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS) series. Please see the GECCO-2004 website for details of the LNCS style and format (http://gal4.ge.uiuc.edu:8080/GECCO-2004/submissions.html). Important Dates March 7, 2004: papers due March 17, 2004: acceptance notices March 19, 2004: early registration for GECCO-2004 April 16, 2004: camera ready revisions due June 27, 2004: BioGEC workshop Workshop Organizers Jason H. Moore, Ph.D. Marylyn D. Ritchie, Ph.D. Moore@chgr.mc.vanderbilt.edu Ritchie@chgr.mc.vanderbilt.edu Phone:615-343-5852 Fax:615-343-8619 Surface address: Center for Human Genetics Research 519 Light Hall Vanderbilt University Nashville, TN, USA 37232-0700 ------------------------------ From: Lorenzo Magnani Subject: E-CAP2004_ITALY Deadline extension Jan 7 Date: Sat, 13 Dec 2003 18:42:04 -0800 CALL FOR PAPERS DEADLINE EXTENSION: NEW DEADLINE JAN 7, 2004 (1000 words abstract or PPT file) SEE BELOW! COMPUTING AND PHILOSOPHY E-CAP2004_ITALY Pavia, Italy, Collegio Ghislieri, June 3-5, 2004 Chair: Lorenzo Magnani http://www.unipv.it/webphilos_lab/courses/progra2.html GENERAL INFORMATION From Thursday 3 to Saturday 5 June 2004 (three days) the International European Conference ``COMPUTING AND PHILOSOPHY'' will be held at the University of Pavia (near Milan, Italy). GENERAL INFORMATION The Computational Philosophy Laboratory and the Department of Philosophy of the University of Pavia will be hosting the European Computing and Philosophy (CAP) conference from the 3rd to the 5th of June. PROGRAM The conference will deal with all aspects of the "computational turn" that is occurring within the discipline of Philosophy. We solicit papers that examine topics pertaining to computing and philosophy from the following list. RELEVANT RESEARCH AREAS We call for papers that cover topics pertaining to computing and philosophy from the following list: * Cognitive Science, Epistemology, and Metaphysics * Abductive reasoning, Scientific discovery, Creative processes * Internal and External Representations in Cognitive Science * Simulation, Embodiment, and Distributed Reasoning in Computational Models of Cognitive * Problem of Consciousness in Philosophy * New Models of Logic Software * Computer-based Learning and Teaching Strategies and Resources * Ethics and Computers * The Impact of Distance Learning on the Teaching of Philosophy * The Role of Computers as Tools for Philosophical Research SUBMISSIONS OF PAPERS The deadline for submission is 19th December 2003 - though late submissions will be considered. Authors should submit an electronic version - formatted in Microsoft Word or RTF, but also in PDF or POSTSCRIPT ( in this last case please include source - DOC, TEX, etc., file) - of an extended abstract (total word count aproximately 1000 words). The file should also contain a 300 WORD abstract that will be used for the conference web site/booklet. Contributions expressed in PPT files are also accepted along with or in place of the 1000 words abstract. not later than JANUARY 7, 2004 Please send all submissions to Prof. Magnani at the address lmagnani@cc.gatech.edu (if the previous address does not work please use lorenzo.magnani@unipv.it) For more information, visit http://www.unipv.it/webphilos_lab/courses/progra2.html ------------------------------ From: Subject: EXTENDED DEADLINE FUSION 2004 Date: Wed, 17 Dec 2003 17:13:07 +0100 EXTENDED DEADLINE: JANUARY 15, 2004 CALL FOR PAPERS - FUSION 2004 The Seventh International Conference on Information Fusion Stockholm, Sweden June 28 - July 1, 2004 Sponsored by the International Society of Information Fusion http://www.fusion2004.org The International Conference on Information Fusion is organized every year with the focus of bringing together scientists and practitioners working on methods for information fusion and management of uncertainty. In 2004 the conference is being held in Stockholm, Sweden. Authors are invited to submit papers describing theoretical, methodological or application advances in information fusion and management of uncertainty, with submission of non-traditional topics being encouraged. All accepted papers will be published in the conference proceedings, available at the conference. Tutorials will be held on June 28, with technical paper presentations on June 29 - July 1, 2004. The conference will also feature plenary talks by invited speakers. Important Dates Submission of draft papers: January 15, 2004 (EXTENDED DEADLINE) Proposals for tutorial sessions: February 1, 2004 Notification of acceptance of tutorials: February 15, 2004 Notification of acceptance of papers: March 15, 2004 Submission of final papers: May 1, 2004 Topics of Interest Topics of interest include (but are not limited to): Theoretical and technical advances: Information modeling and learning Probability and statistics Fuzzy sets and rough sets Fuzzy logic and expert systems methods Possibility theory Measure of information and uncertainty Evidence theory Belief Networks Approximate reasoning Random sets Neural networks Genetic algorithms Data analysis Artificial intelligence Logic Bayesian methods Stochastic methods Processing of imprecise information Nonlinear estimation and filtering Semiotics Optimization Evolutionary computation Machine learning Algorithms and systems: Target detection and tracking Target recognition and classification Data association Sensor registration Image or sensor data fusion Pattern recognition Clustering Classification Intelligent agents Belief updating Machine intelligence Database fusion Knowledge-based systems Data mining Sensor or resource management Valuation-based systems Integrated systems Distributed systems System design Evolutionary development of fusion systems Computer network security Algorithms and performance Hardware and software issues Belief networks Applications: Radar and communications Signal and image processing Defense systems Robotics and control Manufacturing and automation Diagnostics and fault detection Vehicles and transportation systems Navigation positioning and guidance Information Retrieval Economy business and finance Surveillance and situation assessment Remote sensing and geo-information Medicine biology and diagnostics Decision support systems Data acquisition and testing Machine vision and learning Security and safety applications Situation and threat assessment Multicriteria and Group decision making Fuzzy control Hybrid systems Image processing Pattern recognition Aggregation methods Location The conference will be held at Clarion Hotel Stockholm (www.clarionstockholm.com). It is beautifully located on Sodermalm, one of the islands forming Stockholm City. The hotel is about 3 km from the City Center and can conveniently be reached by subway. Stockholm is a historical and a cultural city. There are about 70 museums and plenty of guided tours. More information about tourism in Stockholm can be found at www.stockholmtown.com. Submission Instructions Draft Paper Submission Papers are required by the due date of January 15, 2004 for review by the technical program committee. Papers submitted for review should represent original, previously unpublished work. All papers will be submitted electronically through the Fusion 2004 web site. Each paper should be 6 to 8 pages of length, written in English; LATEX, Frame Maker and MS Word style guides will be provided on the web site. (www.fusion2004.org). Submission Process Authors should visit the conference web site and follow the instructions to submit their papers before the due date. Papers must be submitted electronically using pdf-formats. For reference, the following information must be submitted at the web site with each paper. (1) paper title and topic, (2) name of authors and affiliations (including address and email), (3) abstract of no more than 150 words. Paper Acceptance The Program Committee wishes to ensure that Fusion 2004 will be a conference of highest quality, and therefore the contributions will be thoroughly evaluated for originality, significance, clarity, and scientific soundness. Each paper will be refereed by 2 - 3 researchers. Notification of accepted papers will be made by March 15, 2004. After notification, authors must submit updated papers through the final due date of May 1, 2004. All accepted papers will be published in the conference proceedings and cd-rom, to be available at the conference. Special Sessions Proposals for special sessions are solicited. Proposers should submit a one-paragraph theme for their session plus a list of committed paper titles, paper abstracts, authors and their contact information to fusion04@foi.se by November 1, 2003 (with a target of 6 papers, and a minimum of 3 papers per special session). Notification of acceptance of special sessions will be given by November 15, 2003. Accepted special sessions will at that time be advertised on the Fusion 2004 web site. Papers intended for special sessions will need to pass the review process like all submitted papers. Thus, draft papers of accepted special sessions are to be submitted on the Fusion 2004 web site by January 15, 2004 for review by the program committee. Proposers of accepted sessions will serve as session chairs and additional reviewers for papers in their sessions. Tutorial Sessions On the first day of the conference June 28 there will be tutorial sessions on fundamentals of information fusion and its applications. Proposals for tutorial sessions are solicited. Session organizers are expected to submit a theme and schedule for their session plus a list of lecturers and their contact information to fusion04@foi.se by February 1, 2004. See the web site for additional information. Swedish Defence Research Agency International Society of Information Fusion For more information, visit http://www.fusion2004.org ------------------------------ From: Colleen Seifert Subject: POSITION ANNOUNCEMENT Date: Fri, 19 Dec 2003 12:11:15 -0500 University of Michigan Department of Psychology Decision Making The Department of Psychology, University of Michigan - Ann Arbor invites applications for a tenure-track Assistant Professor in cognitive psychology starting September 2004. Candidates with interests in decision making, including reasoning, affect, negotiations, and neural bases are encouraged to apply. We seek applicants who have a strong research program and are committed to excellent teaching. Evaluation of candidates will begin January 15, 2004, and will continue until the position is filled. Applicants should submit a cover letter, vita, three letters of recommendation, evidence of teaching excellence, and reprints to: Cognitive Search Committee, The Department of Psychology, University of Michigan, 525 East University, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1109. Women and minorities are encouraged to apply. The University of Michigan is committed to a diverse campus community through affirmative action and equal opportunity and is responsive to the needs of dual career couples. We assure reasonable accommodation under the Americans with Disabilities Act. ------------------------------ From: "Weigend, Andreas" Subject: Jobs at Amazon.com in Seattle Date: Wed, 24 Dec 2003 02:33:23 -0800 Software Development Positions at Amazon.com in Seattle, WA in Machine Learning, Statistical Analysis, Fraud Detection, Computational Marketing etc. Do you want to build quantitative models millions of people will use, based on data from the world's largest online laboratory? Are you passionate about formulating relevant questions, and producing solutions to initially ill-defined problems? Do the challenges and opportunities of terabytes of data excite you? Can you think abstractly, and apply your ideas to the real world? Can you contribute to the big picture, and are not afraid to handle the details? Amazon.com is solving incredibly interesting problems in areas including consumer behavior modeling, pricing and promotions, personalization and recommendations, reputation management, fraud detection, computational marketing, customer acquisition and retention. Emphasizing measurement and analytics, we build and automate solutions that leverage instant feedback and the Web's scale. We are looking for people with the right blend of vision, curiosity, and hands-on skills, who want to be part of a highly visible, intellectually vibrant, entrepreneurial team. Ideal candidates will have a track record of creating innovative solutions. They will typically have a graduate degree in computer science, physics, statistics, electrical engineering, bioinformatics, or another computational science. More information can be found at www.weigend.com/amazonjobs.html. If this interests you, please email your resume by January 31, 2004 directly to amazonjobs@weigend.com, clearly indicating your interests and strengths. Thank you. ------------------------------ From: Professor Ron Sun Subject: Graduate assistantships available Date: Wed, 24 Dec 2003 15:06:27 -0500 (EST) I am looking for a few Ph.D students. The Ph.D program of the Cognitive Science department at RPI is accepting applications. Graduate assistantships and other forms of financial support for graduate students are available. Prospective graduate students with interests in Cognitive Science, especially in learning and skill acquisition and in the relation between cognition and sociality, are encouraged to apply. Prospective applicants should have background in computer science (the equivalent of a BS in computer science), and have some prior exposure to artificial intelligence, connectionist models (neural networks), multi-agent systems, and other related areas. Students with a Master's degree already completed are preferred. RPI is a top-tier research university. This new department has identified the Ph.D program and research as its primary missions. The department is conducting research in a number of areas: computational cognitive modeling, human and machine learning, multi-agent interactions, neural networks and connectionist models, human and machine reasoning, artificial intelligence, cognitive engineering, and so on. See the Web page below regarding my research: http://wwww.cogsci.rpi.edu/~rsun For the application procedure, see http://www.cogsci.rpi.edu/ The application deadline is Jan.15, 2004. If you decide to apply, follow the official procedure as outlined on the Web page. Send me a short email (in plain text, ASCII) after you have completed the application. Professor Ron Sun Cognitive Science Department Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute 110 Eighth Street, Carnegie 302A Troy, NY 12180, USA phone: 518-276-3409 fax: 518-276-8268 email: rsun@rpi.edu web: http://www.cogsci.rpi.edu/~rsun ------------------------------ From: Pedro M Domingos Subject: ML Thesis wins 2003 ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award Date: Thu, 18 Dec 2003 18:40:26 -0800 The Ph.D. thesis "Learning to Map between Structured Representations of Data", by AnHai Doan, at the University of Washington, has won the 2003 ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award. The dissertation is online at http://anhai.cs.uiuc.edu/home/thesis.html ------------------------------ From: "David 'Pablo' Cohn" Subject: JMLR: Special Issue on Independent Components Analysis Date: 24 Dec 2003 11:20:04 -0800 The Journal of Machine Learning Research (www.jmlr.org) is pleased to announce publication of the Special Issue on Independent Components Analysis, guest edited by Te-Won Lee, Jean-François Cardoso, Erkki Oja and Shun-ichi Amari. This has been (by far) the largest special issue we have undertaken, covering 43 submissions and 14 accepted papers, for a total of 344 pages. We would like to thank the authors, editors, reviewers and JMLR volunteers that made it all possible. Enjoy! ------ Introduction to Special Issue on Independent Components Analysis Te-Won Lee, Jean-François Cardoso, Erkki Oja, Shun-ichi Amari pp. 1175-1176. Dependence, Correlation and Gaussianity in Independent Component Analysis Jean-François Cardoso pp. 1177-1203. Beyond Independent Components: Trees and Clusters Francis R. Bach, Michael I. Jordan pp. 1205-1233. Energy-Based Models for Sparse Overcomplete Representations Yee Whye Teh, Max Welling, Simon Osindero, Geoffrey E. Hinton pp. 1235-1260. Blind Source Separation via Generalized Eigenvalue Decomposition Lucas Parra, Paul Sajda pp. 1261-1269. ICA Using Spacings Estimates of Entropy Erik G. Learned-Miller, John W. Fisher III pp. 1271-1295. MISEP -- Linear and Nonlinear ICA Based on Mutual Information Luís B. Almeida pp. 1297-1318. Blind Separation of Post-nonlinear Mixtures using Linearizing Transformations and Temporal Decorrelation Andreas Ziehe, Motoaki Kawanabe, Stefan Harmeling, Klaus-Robert Müller pp. 1319-1338. A Multiscale Framework For Blind Separation of Linearly Mixed Signals Pavel Kisilev, Michael Zibulevsky, Yehoshua Y. Zeevi pp. 1339-1363. A Maximum Likelihood Approach to Single-channel Source Separation Gil-Jin Jang, Te-Won Lee pp. 1365-1392. Statistical Dynamics of On-line Independent Component Analysis Gleb Basalyga, Magnus Rattray pp. 1393-1410. Blind Source Recovery: A Framework in the State Space Khurram Waheed, Fathi M. Salem pp. 1411-1446. Overlearning in Marginal Distribution-Based ICA: Analysis and Solutions Jaakko Särelä, Ricardo Vigário pp. 1447-1469. ICA for Watermarking Digital Images Stéphane Bounkong, Borémi Toch, David Saad, David Lowe pp. 1471-1498. A Generative Model for Separating Illumination and Reflectance from Images Inna Stainvas, David Lowe pp. 1499-1519. These papers complete Volume 4 of the Journal of Machine Learning Research. They, and all other JMLR papers are available electronically at http://www.jmlr.org in PostScript and PDF formats. The papers of Volumes 1, 2 and 3 are also available electronically from the JMLR website, and in hardcopy from the MIT Press; please see http://mitpress.mit.edu/JMLR for details. ------------------------------ End of ML-LIST Digest Vol 15, No. 23 ************************************