[ACT-R-users] Reminder: Submit to AAAI Symposium on Naturally-Inspired Artificial Intelligence

[Jacob S Beal]

This is a reminder that the submission deadline for the AAAI symposium
"Naturally-Inspired Artificial Intelligence," is coming up soon, on
May 15th.  I'm enclosing a copy of the Call for Papers for the
symposium, which is running at the AAAI Fall 2008 Symposium Series in
Washington D.C. on November 7-9th.

Thanks,
-Jake Beal
(Postdoctoral Associate, MIT CSAIL, on behalf of the organizing committee)

                  CALL FOR PAPERS

            AAAI Fall 2008 Symposium on
     Naturally-Inspired Artificial Intelligence

The divide between how biological and computational systems solve
cognitive problems and adjust to novel circumstances is readily
apparent.  While animals display marked flexibility in adjusting to
new situations, our current computational approaches excel in
well-defined, formally structured domains.

We are interested in new approaches to bridging this gap.  Our
perspective is that studies of natural and artificial intelligences
can and should be mutually informative.  Even young animals solve
historically difficult computational problems, and we believe
understanding how they do this will enable the creation of more
sophisticated artificial systems.  Conversely, computational models
provide structure and insight into understanding animal learning and
cognition.  By combining biological and computational perspectives, we
expect to obtain new insights that further the classical goals of
artificial intelligence.

This symposium is intended to bring together researchers working on
models that pertain directly to both natural and machine cognition.
Particular methodology, motivation, or implementation decisions do not
constrain our interests---we expect that relevant work may touch on
themes as diverse as human experiments, neural models, engineering of
complex systems, mathematical analysis, programming language design,
and high-level cognitive models, to name only a few possibilities.  We
are interested in any work that has a clearly described relationship
between a line of investigation and the larger problem of producing
computational models that illuminate the peculiar nature and
capabilities of cognition.

Participants are invited to submit either a position paper or a brief
report on relevant work.  Topics of particular interest include, but
are not limited to:
* Approaches to attaining breadth and flexibility
* Systems or models incorporating multiple cognitive capabilities
* Applying models of natural intelligence to engineered systems, or
  vice versa
* Case histories of recent success or interesting failure in crossing
  between these fields
* Near-term tractable problems deserving of greater attention
* Experimental techniques and measurement strategies

The symposium will mix short talks from participants with extensive
discussion on the challenges of doing research relevant to both
natural and artificial systems.

Note: a related but different symposium is being run by Alexei
Samsonovich.  Our schedule will likely include a joint session,
contents to be determined.

Submissions: 
Those interested in participating in this symposium should send either
a full paper (8 pages maximum) or a position paper (1-2 pages) in AAAI
format in PDF to natural-intelligence at csail.mit.edu.  Please direct
all questions to natural-intelligence at csail.mit.edu.

Important Dates:
May 15:		Submission deadline
June 6:		Notification of acceptance
November 7-9:	Symposium held in Washington, DC

Organizers:
Dr. Jacob Beal (MIT) 
Dr. Paul Bello (ONR)
Prof. Nick Cassimatis (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute)
Prof. Michael Coen (University of Wisconsin-Madison)
Prof. Patrick Winston (MIT)