From antonior at neuron.ffclrp.usp.br Thu Jun 2 10:32:45 2005 From: antonior at neuron.ffclrp.usp.br (Antonio Roque) Date: Thu, 02 Jun 2005 11:32:45 -0300 Subject: Connectionists: 1st Latin American School on Computational Neuroscience In-Reply-To: <200502161030.39696.oreilly@psych.colorado.edu> References: <200502161030.39696.oreilly@psych.colorado.edu> Message-ID: <429F188D.5010406@neuron.ffclrp.usp.br> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Announcing the I Latin American School on Computational Neuroscience LASCON 2006 http://neuron.ffclrp.usp.br/lascon/home.htm January 15-28 2006 University of Sao Paulo Ribeirao Preto, SP Brazil Faculty David Beeman, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO, USA James Bower, University of Texas, San Antonio, TX, USA Kim Blackwell, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, USA Michael Hines, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA Michael Hasselmo, Boston University, Boston, MA, USA Dieter Jaeger, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, USA Roland Koberle, University of Sao Paulo, Sao Carlos, SP, Brazil Marcelo Mazza, University of Sao Paulo, Ribeirao Preto, SP, Brazil Rodrigo Oliveira, University of Sao Paulo, Ribeirao Preto, SP, Brazil Reynaldo Pinto, University of Sao Paulo, Sao Paulo, SP, Brazil Arnd Roth, University College, London, UK Michael Vanier, CALTECH, Pasadena, CA, USA Charles Wilson, University of Texas, San Antonio, TX, USA Organizer Antonio Roque, University of Sao Paulo, Ribeirao Preto, SP, Brazil Co-organizer Rodrigo Oliveira, University of Sao Paulo, Ribeirao Preto, SP, Brazil Scientific Committee David Beeman, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO, USA James Bower, University of Texas, San Antonio, TX, USA Rodrigo Oliveira, University of Sao Paulo, Ribeirao Preto, SP, Brazil Rodrigo Oliveira, University of Sao Paulo, Ribeirao Preto, SP, Brazil Deadline for student application: September 9, 2005 (Friday) The I Latin American School on Computational Neuroscience (LASCON 2006) aims at introducing advanced undergraduate and graduate students to the use of methods for detailed modeling of neurons and neural circuits, based on the Hodgkin-Huxley formalism, the cable equation and the compartmental modeling technique. The use of these methods will be illustrated with the development and investigation of numerical simulations with the programs GENESIS and NEURON. The school is divided in two weeks, the first one for theoretical lectures and hands on tutorials, and the second one for invited lectures and the development of project works by the students. Students will follow a highly demanding schedule of morning lectures followed by afternoon and evening computational laboratory sessions. The School will be held at the campus of the University of S?o Paulo at Ribeir?o Preto (a city about 313 km north of Sao Paulo). Course applicants should be fluent in English (written/spoken) and have a solid background in life and/or hard sciences (some experience in computer programming is also desirable). Applications are welcome and should be made by using the application form on the school web page (http://neuron.ffclrp.usp.br/lascon/home.htm). The number of students is limited to 20 and priority will be given to students from Latin American countries. Under exceptional circumstances, students from other areas of the world could be accepted as well. Costs for accommodation and meals will be covered by the school organization. In exceptional cases, limited funding is available to partly cover travel expenses. More information on the school can be found at http://neuron.ffclrp.usp.br/lascon/home.htm ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- Dr. Ant?nio Carlos Roque Associate Professor Departamento de F?sica e Matem?tica FFCLRP, Universidade de S?o Paulo 14040-901 Ribeir?o Preto-SP Brazil Tels: +55 16 602-3768 (office); +55 16 602-3859 (lab) FAX: +55 16 633-9949 E-mail: antonior at neuron.ffclrp.usp.br URL: http://neuron.ffclrp.usp.br From brian.lindsley at oregonstate.edu Wed Jun 1 13:44:38 2005 From: brian.lindsley at oregonstate.edu (Lindsley, Brian) Date: Wed, 1 Jun 2005 10:44:38 -0700 Subject: Connectionists: RESEARCH ASSOCIATE - OREGON STATE UNIVERSITY Message-ID: <7FD26F7931D4E94CA14BBD2038DD6D2FBBCBB2@mtbaker.nws.oregonstate.edu> POSITION ANNOUNCEMENT Oregon State University School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Research Associate Position The School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science invites applications for a full-time Research Associate (post-doctoral researcher) with an anticipated start date of July 1, 2005. This position will play a central role in the research and development of several exciting, federally-funded research projects. The duties and responsibilities of this position are the following: (a) Plan, carry out, and publish research on machine learning and intelligent user interfaces. (b) Implement prototype systems and perform experiments to evaluate them. (c) Supervise graduate and undergraduate students in their research. (d) Prepare and deliver talks and progress reports to funding agencies and scientific meetings. (e) Write grant proposals and attend funding agency meetings to obtain continuing funding for the project. Salary is competitive, and benefits package includes several options for health/dental/life insurance, retirement, as well as a program of reduced tuition for employee or dependants (some restrictions apply). This is a fixed-term, 12-month position, with reappointment at the discretion of the hiring official, and contingent on the availability of funding. Qualifications Required qualifications include: PhD in computer science or a related field, strong mathematical background, significant research experience, evidenced by at least two research publications in machine learning, probabilistic reasoning, knowledge representation and reasoning, search, intelligent use interfaces, or intelligent personal assistants. Experience in at least two of the following areas - knowledge representation frameworks (logical and/or probabilistic), experience with reasoning methods (logical and/or probabilistic), experience with experimental machine learning research. Excellent written and spoken communication skills, excellent programming and software engineering skills, excitement about computer science research, and the ability to manage graduate and undergraduate students working on research projects. A demonstrable commitment to promoting and enhancing diversity is preferred. Research Group Oregon State is a leader in machine learning and intelligent user interfaces. The machine learning faculty include Tom Dietterich, Alan Fern, Xiaoli Fern, Prasad Tadepalli, and Weng-Keen Wong. The intelligent user interface faculty include Jon Herlocker, Margaret Burnett, Martin Erwig, Mike Bailey, and Ron Metoyer. These two groups have a combined staff of 3 postdocs and 2 software developers and substantial funding from NSF and DARPA. Current projects include the DARPA-funded CALO effort to build an integrated AI system for the computer desktop, the NSF-funded TaskTracer project for supporting multi-tasking knowledge workers, and the DARPA-funded Real World Learning initiative in Knowledge-Intensive Learning. Future research directions will likely focus on "transfer learning" across multiple tasks, multiple people, and multiple organizations. University and Community OSU is one of only two American universities to hold the Land Grant, Sea Grant, Sun Grant, and Space Grant designation and is a Carnegie Doctoral/Research-Extensive university. OSU is located in Corvallis, a community of 53,000 people situated in the Willamette Valley between Portland and Eugene. Ocean beaches, lakes, rivers, forests, high desert, the rugged Cascade and Coast Ranges, and the urban amenities of the Portland metropolitan area are all within a 100-mile drive of Corvallis. Approximately 15,700 undergraduate and 3,400 graduate students are enrolled at OSU, including 2,600 U.S. students of color and 950 international students. The university has an institution-wide commitment to diversity, multiculturalism, and community. We actively engage in recruiting and retaining a diverse workforce and student body that includes members of historically underrepresented groups. We strive to build and sustain a welcoming and supportive campus environment. OSU provides outstanding leadership opportunities for people interested in promoting and enhancing diversity, nurturing creativity, and building community. To Apply For full consideration, please send the following materials by June 10, 2005 (hard copies only, no faxes or emails): * letter of application, describing your research interests, and qualifications for this position; * copies of any relevant research publications (or pointers to such on the web); * a CV including the names, addresses, and telephone numbers of three professional references, to: Research Assistant Search Committee/TD School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Oregon State University 220 Owen Hall Corvallis, OR 97331 Oregon State University is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employer From myosioka at brain.riken.go.jp Thu Jun 2 09:55:17 2005 From: myosioka at brain.riken.go.jp (Masahiko Yoshioka) Date: Thu, 02 Jun 2005 22:55:17 +0900 (JST) Subject: Connectionists: Synchronization in gap-junction-coupled neurons Message-ID: <20050602.225517.28796926.myosioka@brain.riken.go.jp> Dear all, We would like to announce another new paper on theoretical study of spike synchronization in neural networks. In this paper we employ the chaos synchronization theory to analyze stability of synchronization in gap-junction-coupled neurons. We hope that the present study on gap junctions and our previous study on chemical synapses (http://arxiv.org/abs/nlin.PS/0504057) contribute together to a deeper understanding of various synchronization phenomena in a large population of neurons. "Chaos synchronization in gap-junction-coupled neurons" M. Yoshioka, Phys. Rev. E, in press. http://arxiv.org/abs/nlin.CD/0505054 Depending on temperature the modified Hodgkin-Huxley (MHH) equations exhibit a variety of dynamical behavior including intrinsic chaotic firing. We analyze synchronization in a large ensemble of MHH neurons that are interconnected with gap junctions. By evaluating tangential Lyapunov exponents we clarify whether synchronous state of neurons is chaotic or periodic. Then, we evaluate transversal Lyapunov exponents to elucidate if this synchronous state is stable against infinitesimal perturbations. Our analysis elucidates that with weak gap junctions, stability of synchronization of MHH neurons shows rather complicated change with temperature. We, however, find that with strong gap junctions, synchronous state is stable over the wide range of temperature irrespective of whether synchronous state is chaotic or periodic. It turns out that strong gap junctions realize the robust synchronization mechanism, which well explains synchronization in interneurons in the real nervous system. Best regards, Masahiko Yoshioka Brain Science Institute The Institute of Physical and Chemical Research (RIKEN) From oreilly at psych.colorado.edu Thu Jun 2 17:21:31 2005 From: oreilly at psych.colorado.edu (Randall C. O'Reilly) Date: Thu, 2 Jun 2005 15:21:31 -0600 Subject: Connectionists: Call for Abstracts: CCN/NIMH Dynamical Neuroscience Conference Message-ID: <200506021521.31698.oreilly@psych.colorado.edu> ~ CALL-FOR-ABSTRACTS ~ 1ST ANNUAL CONFERENCE ON COMPUTATIONAL COGNITIVE NEUROSCIENCE and NIMH DYNAMICAL NEUROSCIENCE SATELLITE SYMPOSIUM of the Annual Meeting of the Society for Neuroscience, Washington DC Thu-Fri November 10 & 11, 2005 WWW.CCNCONFERENCE.ORG ______________________________________________________________________ Deadline for submissions: August 1, 2005 Meeting Registration and Abstract Submission are processed on-line at: http://www.cmpinc.net/dynamical/ There are two categories of submissions: * Poster only * Short talk (15 min), with accompanying poster Abstracts should be limited to 250 words. Women and underrepresented minorities are especially encouraged to apply. Reviewing for posters will be light and only to ensure appropriateness to the meeting. Talks will be selected on the basis of research quality, relevance to conference theme, and expected accessibility in a talk format. Notification of acceptance will be made by September 1, 2005. ______________________________________________________________________ Conference information: This is the inaugural meeting of what will be a rotating satellite with other meetings, such as (tentative list): CNS (Cognitive Neuroscience Society), HBM (Organization for Human Brain Mapping), CogSci (Cognitive Science Society), Psychonomic Society, NIPS (Neural Information Processing Systems Foundation), and COSYNE (Computational and Systems Neuroscience)). Featured Keynote Speakers: James L. McClelland, Carnegie Mellon University Title: Principles of Cognitive and Neural Processing Daniel M. Wolpert, University College London/University of Cambridge Title: Probabilistic Models of Sensorimotor Control Discussion-Focused Symposia: Decision Making Chair: Michael Shadlen, University of Washington Speakers: Carlos Brody, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Yael Niv, Hebrew University (invited) Leo Sugrue, Stanford University (invited) Developmental Disorders Chair: Michael Thomas, University of London Speakers: Marc Joanisse, University of Western Ontario Fred Dick, University of London April Benasich, Rutgers University Category Learning Chair: Brad Love, University of Texas Speakers: Greg Ashby, UC Santa Barbara Paul Reber, Northwestern University Episodic Memory: Interactions of the prefrontal cortex and hippocampal formation involved in episodic and working memory Chair: Michael Hasselmo, Boston University Speakers: Kenneth Norman, Princeton University Charan Ranganath, UC, Davis Chantal Stern, Boston University ______________________________________________________________________ BACKGROUND: The field of cognitive neuroscience has flourished due to advances using multiple methodologies such as anatomy, physiology, imaging, and behavior. Given the progress that has been made in each of these areas, the time is ripe for strong theoretical frameworks that can relate different levels of analysis, moving beyond basic brain/behavior correlations. The emerging field of Computational Cognitive Neuroscience (CCN) is ideally suited to help fill this need through the use of mathematical analysis and explicit computational models that bridge the gap between biological mechanisms and cognitive function. This meeting focuses on research at the intersection of neuroscience, cognitive psychology, and computational modeling, where neuroscience-based computational models are used to simulate and understand cognitive functions such as perception, attention, learning and memory, language, and higher-level cognitive functions. CCN research benefits greatly from collaboration with various non-modeling researchers for developing and interpreting relevant empirical data. A major goal for this conference is to create fruitful opportunities for modelers and non-modelers to interact. ______________________________________________________________________ PLANNING COMMITTEE: Todd Braver, Washington University, St Louis Carlos Brody, Cold Spring Harbor Jonathan Cohen, Princeton University Dennis Glanzman, NIMH Yuko Munakata, University of Colorado, Boulder David Noelle, Vanderbilt University Randall O'Reilly, University of Colorado, Boulder (Chair) For more information and to sign up for the mailing list visit: WWW.CCNCONFERENCE.ORG ______________________________________________________________________ From DGB at CDRH.FDA.GOV Fri Jun 3 10:43:32 2005 From: DGB at CDRH.FDA.GOV (Brown, David G.) Date: Fri, 3 Jun 2005 10:43:32 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: Invitation to Participate--IJCNN 2005 Montreal Message-ID: <60E5EBF1DFB4EC498E0ACAE75A49F8ED035DB852@drm558.cdrh.fda.gov> Invitation to Participate -- IJCNN 2005 Montreal The countdown to IJCNN 2005 has begun--plenary speakers have signed on, paper acceptances have been mailed out, the program has been developed, and registration is underway. The 2005 International Joint Conference on Neural Networks is being held in Montreal Canada from July 31 to August 4. Cosponsored by INNS and the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society and supported by several universities and private companies, IJCNN'05 promises to be a tremendously exciting meeting with a wide range of tutorials, regular and special sessions, and post-conference workshops (on August 5). Plenary speakers include Pierre Baldi, Mitsuo Kawato, Frank Lewis, Michael Petrides, and Carver Mead. Sixteen different tutorials are being offered on July 31 as the Conference opens, and nearly six hundred papers will be presented, covering the full breadth of artificial and natural neural intelligence topics. Register on-line now to ensure your place in IJCNN 2005. Check in to the web site http://www.ijcnn.org/ for further details--including Conference and hotel registration and the Conference program. Montreal is the place to be this July 31-August 5. See you there! David David G. Brown, Ph.D. Director, Division of Imaging and Applied Mathematics Center for Devices and Rad. Health (HFZ-140) 12720 Twinbrook Pkwy. Rockville, MD 20852 301-443-3314 ext. 133 301-443-9101 fax From sfr at unipg.it Thu Jun 2 05:30:35 2005 From: sfr at unipg.it (Simone G.O. FIORI) Date: Thu, 02 Jun 2005 11:30:35 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: On differential-geometrical methods in neural network learning Message-ID: <1.5.4.32.20050602093035.01733d78@unipg.it> Dear Colleagues, the following 3 preprints, related to differential- geometrical methods for neural network learning, are available on the internet. ========================================================= *Title: Formulation and Integration of Learning Differential Equations on the Stiefel Manifold *Author: Simone Fiori, University of Perugia (Italy) *Journal: IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks (IEEE-TNN) *Abstract: The present Letter aims at illustrating the relevance of numerical integration of learning differential equations on differential manifolds. In particular, the task of learning with orthonormality constraints is dealt with, which is naturally formulated as an optimization task with the compact Stiefel manifold as neural parameter space. Intrinsic properties of the derived learning algorithms, such as stability and constraints preservation, are illustrated through experiments on minor and independent component analysis. *Keywords: Unsupervised neural network learning; Differential Geometry; Riemannian manifold; Riemannian gradient; Geodesics. *Source: http://www.unipg.it/sfr/publications/TNN05.pdf ========================================================= *Title: Quasi-Geodesic Neural Learning Algorithms over the Orthogonal Group: A Tutorial *Author: Simone Fiori, University of Perugia (Italy) *Journal: Journal of Machine Learning Research (JMLR) *Abstract: The aim of this contribution is to present a tutorial on learning algorithms for a single neural layer whose connection matrix belongs to the orthogonal group. The algorithms exploit geodesics appropriately connected as piece-wise approximate integrals of the exact differential learning equation. The considered learning equations essentially arise from the Riemannian-gradient- based optimization theory with deterministic and diffusion- type gradient. The paper aims specifically at reviewing the relevant mathematics (and at presenting it in as much transparent way as possible in order to make it accessible to Readers that do not possess a background in differential geometry), at bringing together modern optimization methods on manifolds and at comparing the different algorithms on a common machine learning problem. As a numerical case-study, we consider an application to non-negative independent component analysis, although it should be recognized that Riemannian gradient methods are general-purpose algorithms, by no means limited to ICA-related applications. *Keywords: Differential geometry; Diffusion-type gradient; Lie groups; Non-negative independent component analysis; Riemannian gradient. *Source: http://www.jmlr.org/papers/volume6/fiori05a/fiori05a.pdf ======================================================== *Title: Editorial: Special issue on ''Geometrical Methods in Neural Networks and Learning'' *Authors: Simone Fiori, University of Perugia (Italy) Shun-ichi Amari, Brain Science Institute (RIKEN, Japan) *Journal: Neurocomputing *Source: http://www.unipg.it/sfr/publications/editorial_si_nng.pdf ================================================= | Simone FIORI (Elec.Eng., Ph.D.) | | * Faculty of Engineering - Perugia University * | | * Polo Didattico e Scientifico del Ternano * | | Loc. Pentima bassa, 21 - I-05100 TERNI (Italy) | | eMail: fiori at unipg.it - Fax: +39 0744 492925 | | Web: http://www.unipg.it/sfr/ | ================================================= From ishikawa at brain.kyutech.ac.jp Fri Jun 3 02:42:46 2005 From: ishikawa at brain.kyutech.ac.jp (Masumi Ishikawa) Date: Fri, 03 Jun 2005 15:42:46 +0900 Subject: Connectionists: Call for Papers(BrainIT2005) Message-ID: <6.0.0.20.2.20050603153704.02893120@mail.brain.kyutech.ac.jp> ==================================================== We apologize if you receive multiple copies of this email. Please distribute this announcement to all interested parties. ==================================================== BrainIT2005 CALL FOR PAPERS The second international conference, BrainIT 2005, will be held in Kitakyushu, Japan, on October 7-9, 2005, in order to establish the foundations of the Brain-Inspired Information Technology. All working at the frontiers of Brain Science to Information Technology including Robotics are invited to participate in the second international conference, BrainIT 2005. At this conference, we will organize a special session on "Decision and Behavioral Choice Organized by Natural and Artificial Brain" in addition to invited papers from a wide range of fields from Brain Science to Information Technology. Invited Speakers Edmund T. Rolls (Oxford University, UK) Rolf Pfeifer (University of Zurich, Switzerland) Mandyam V. Srinivasan (Australian National University, Australia) Kenji Doya (Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology, Japan) Joshua I. Gold (University of Pennsylvania, USA) Walter J. Freeman (University of California, Berkeley, USA) Andreas Konig (Technische Univ. Kaiserslautern, Germany) Shu-Rong Wang (Institute of Biophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China) Samuel Kaski (Helsinki University of Technology, Finland) Important Dates Abstract (for presentation) Submission Deadline: July 25, 2005 Notification of Acceptance: August 31, 2005 Pre-registration Deadline: September 9, 2005 Paper (for Edited Book) Submission Deadline: October 31, 2005 Scope and Topics BrainIT 2005 solicits experimental, computational, theoretical as well as engineering papers relating the topics in the following non-exhaustive, non-exclusive categories and keywords. Categories and Keywords: 1. Vision system 2. Other sensory systems 3. Cognition 4. Emotion 5. Learning and Memory 6. Behavior 7. Motor controls 8. Languages 9. Dynamics 10. Neural computation 11. Neural networks 12. Brain-inspired intelligent machines Papers that bridge brain science and information technology are especially welcome. Regular papers may include speculative discussions on Brain-Inspired Information Technology. BrainIT 2005 is open to all working at the frontiers of Brain Science to Information Technology (modeling and hardware realization) and provides the opportunity for presenting and discussing ideas that pave the way for the new field, Brain-Inspired Information Technology. Instructions for Authors Authors are requested to submit a 1-page A4-sized abstract by e-mail attachment as a PDF file to brian-it at lsse.kyutech.ac.jp. Each abstract will be independently reviewed by two reviewers. For further information, please refer to the web site. Registration Registration is free of charge. However, we recommend your early registration as the number of abstract books and other materials may be limited. # Registration Site will open by July 2005. Sponsors * "World of brain computing interwoven out of animals and robots": The 21st Century Center of Excellence Program of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, Japan * Kyushu Institute of Technology * Kitakyushu Foundation for the Advancement of Industry, Science and Technology (FAIS) Secretariat: Tetsuo FURUKAWA, PhD, Associate Professor Phone: +81-93-695-6124, Fax: +81-93-695-6134 E-mail: brain-it at lsse.kyutech.ac.jp For further information, please visit our web site: http://conf.lsse.kyutech.ac.jp/~brain-it/ Masumi Ishikawa Department of Brain Science and Engineering Graduate School of Life Science and Systems Engineering Kyushu Institute of Technology 2-4 Hibikino, Wakamatsu, Kitakyushu 808-0196, Japan Tel and Fax: +81-93-695-6106 Email: ishikawa at brain.kyutech.ac.jp URL: http://www.brain.kyutech.ac.jp/~ishikawa URL: http://www.lsse.kyutech.ac.jp/ From notify at teuscher.ch Mon Jun 6 12:06:54 2005 From: notify at teuscher.ch (Christof Teuscher) Date: Mon, 6 Jun 2005 09:06:54 -0700 Subject: Connectionists: Bio-ADIT 2006 | Call for Papers Message-ID: <7DE6C3AC-DB23-4312-89E8-D919DDDB6CF6@teuscher.ch> **************************************************************** Bio-ADIT 2006 | Second Call for Papers **************************************************************** The Second International Workshop on Biologically Inspired Approaches to Advanced Information Technology January 26 - 27, 2006 Senri Life Science Center, Osaka, Japan Web site: http://www.ist.osaka-u.ac.jp/bio-adit2006 Sponsored by - The 21st Century Center of Excellence Program of The Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and - Technology (MEXT), Japan, under the Program Title "Opening Up New Information Technologies for Building a Networked Symbiosis Environment" Biologically inspired approaches have already proved successful in achieving major breakthroughs in a wide variety of problems in information technology (IT). A more recent trend is to explore the applicability of bio-inspired approaches to the development of self-organizing, evolving, adaptive and autonomous information technologies, which will meet the requirements of next-generation information systems, such as diversity, scalability, robustness, and resilience. These new technologies will become a base on which to build a networked symbiotic environment for pleasant, symbiotic society of human beings in the 21st century. Bio-ADIT 2006 follows the success of the first workshop Bio-ADIT 2004 held at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland in January 2004. The workshop is intended to provide an effective forum for original research results in the field of bio- inspired approaches to advanced information technologies. It will also serve to foster the connection between biological paradigms and solutions to building the next-generation information systems. SCOPE: The primary focus of the workshop is on new and original research results in the areas of information systems inspired by biology. We invite you to submit papers that present novel, challenging, and innovative results. The topics include all aspects of bio-inspired information technologies in networks, distributed/parallel systems, hardware (including robotics) and software. We also encourage you to submit papers dealing with: - Self-organizing, self-repairing, self-replicating and self-stabilizing systems - Evolving and adapting systems - Autonomous and evolutionary software and robotic systems - Scalable, robust and resilient systems - Complex biosystems - Gene, protein and metabolic networks - Symbiosis networks - Synthetic biology for IT evolution SUBMISSION OF PAPERS: Authors are invited to submit complete and original papers. Papers submitted should not have been previously published in any forum, nor be under review for any journal or other conference. All submitted papers will be refereed for quality, correctness, originality and relevance. All accepted papers will be published in official proceedings with an ISBN number by a major international publisher, and be available at the conference. Manuscripts should include an abstract and be limited to 16 pages in single spaced and single column format. Submissions should include the title, author(s), author's affiliation, e-mail address, fax number and postal address. In the case of multiple authors, an indication of which author is responsible for correspondence and preparing the camera ready paper should also be included. Electronic submission is strongly encouraged. Preferred file formats are PDF (.pdf) or Postscript (.ps). Visit our Web site at http://www.ist.osaka-u.ac.jp/bio-adit2006 for more information. Please contact Dr. Masuzawa if you have to submit hard copies. Manuscripts should be submitted by July 31, 2005 through the Bio-ADIT Web site. Please contact the technical program co-chairs for any questions: Professor Auke Jan Ijspeert School of Computer and Communication Sciences Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Lausanne (EPFL) CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland Tel: +41-21-693-2658 Fax: +41-21-693-3705 E-mail: Auke.Ijspeert at epfl.ch Professor Toshimitsu Masuzawa Graduate School of Information Science and Technology Osaka University 1-3 Machikaneyama, Toyonaka, Osaka 560-8531, Japan Tel: +81-6-6850-6580 Fax: +81-6-6850-6582 E-mail: masuzawa at ist.osaka-u.ac.jp IMPORTANT DATES: Paper submission deadline : July 31, 2005 Notification of acceptance : October 1, 2005 Camera ready papers due : October 20, 2005 STUDENT TRAVEL GRANTS: A limited number of travel grants will be provided for students attending Bio-ADIT 2006. Details of how to apply for a student travel grant will be posted on the workshop Web site. EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE: General Co-Chairs: - Daniel Mange (EPFL, Switzerland) - Shojiro Nishio (Osaka University, Japan) Technical Program Committee Co-Chairs: - Auke Jan Ijspeert (EPFL, Switzerland) - Toshimitsu Masuzawa (Osaka University, Japan) Special Session Program Chair: - Hiroshi Shimizu (Osaka University, Japan) Finance Chair: - Toru Fujiwara (Osaka University, Japan) Publicity Co-chairs: - Christof Teuscher (UCSD, USA) - Yoshinori Takeuchi (Osaka University, Japan) Internet Chair: - Hideki Tode (Osaka University, Japan) Publications Chair - Shinji Kusumoto (Osaka University, Japan) Local Arrangement Chair: - Tatsuhiro Tsuchiya (Osaka University, Japan) TECHNICAL PROGRAM COMMITTEE: Co-Chairs: - Auke Jan Ijspeert (EPFL, Switzerland) - Toshimitsu Masuzawa (Osaka University, Japan) Members (Tentative): - Luc Berthouze (AIST, Japan) - Marco Dorigo (Universite Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium) - Raphael Holzer (EPFL, Switzerland) - Koh Hosoda (Osaka University, Japan) - Katsuo Inoue (Osaka University, Japan) - Laurent Itti (University of Southern California, USA) - Satoshi Kurihara (Osaka University, Japan) - Anders Lansner (Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden) - Vincent Lepetit (EPFL, Switzerland) - James C. Liao (UCLA, USA) - Wolfgang Maass (Graz University of Technology, Austria) - Alberto Montresor (University of Bologna, Italy) - Masayuki Murata (Osaka University, Japan) - Mitsuyuki Nakao (Tohoku University, Japan) - Chrystopher L. Nehaniv (University of Hertfordshire, UK) - Masahiro Okamoto (Kyushu University, Japan) - Takao Onoye (Osaka University, Japan) - Ezequiel Di Paolo (University of Sussex, UK) - Rolf Pfeifer (University of Zurich, Switzerland) - Giovanna Di Marzo Serugendo (University of Geneva, Switzerland) - Hiroshi Shimizu (Osaka University, Japan) - Gregory Stephanopoulos (MIT, USA) - Tim Taylor (University of Edinburgh, UK) - Gianluca Tempesti (EPFL, Switzerland) - Daniel Thalmann (EPFL, Switzerland) - Tatsuhiro Tsuchiya (Osaka University, Japan) - Sethu Vijayakumar (University of Edinburgh, UK) - Koichi Wada (Nagoya Institute of Technology, Japan) - Naoki Wakamiya (Osaka University, Japan) - Hans V. Westerhoff (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands) - Masafumi Yamashita (Kyushu University, Japan) - Xin Yao (University of Birmingham, UK) - Tom Ziemke (University of Skovde, Sweden) Bio-ADIT STEERING COMMITTEE: Chair: - Hideo Miyahara (Osaka University, Japan) Members: - Albert-Laszlo Barabasi (University of Notre Dame, USA) - Auke Jan Ijspeert (EPFL, Switzerland) - Daniel Mange (EPFL, Switzerland) - Masayuki Murata (Osaka University, Japan) - Shojiro Nishio (Osaka University, Japan) - Hiroshi Shimizu (Osaka University, Japan) - Hans V. Westerhoff (Free University, The Netherlands) -- Christof Teuscher, PhD University of California, San Diego (UCSD) http://www.teuscher.ch From ckiw at inf.ed.ac.uk Tue Jun 7 05:54:00 2005 From: ckiw at inf.ed.ac.uk (Chris Williams) Date: Tue, 7 Jun 2005 10:54:00 +0100 (BST) Subject: Connectionists: UAI 2005: 26-29 July in Edinburgh, UK Message-ID: ******************************************************************** THE TWENTY-FIRST INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON UNCERTAINTY IN ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (UAI-05) CALL FOR PARTICIPATION July 26-29, 2005 Edinburgh, Scotland ACCOMODATION BOOKING DEADLINE 13TH JUNE ********************************************************************* The Twenty First International Conference on Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence (UAI-05) will be held in Edinburgh, Scotland on July 26-29, 2005 at the University of Edinburgh. UAI is collocated with IJCAI-05 which starts immediately after on July 29th. More details about conference program, including information about the invited talks, tutorials, and technical papers are available on the conference website http://www.cs.toronto.edu/uai2005/. ================== REGISTRATION INFO ================== The registration fee is $400 ($300 for students). To register, follow the instructions on the registration site: http://pos.brightdoc.com/uai2005 =================== ACCOMMODATIONS INFO =================== Edinburgh, Scotland's capital city, is one of the greenest and architecturally most beautiful cities in Northern Europe. It is rich in architecture, social, cultural, learning and sporting facilities. Please note that the UAI conference is taking place just before the festivals start in the peak tourist season. We *STRONGLY* advise attendees to book flights and hotels as soon as possible. Accommodation is booked via the Edinburgh Conference Bureau, which can only guarantee accommodation bookings made before 13th June 2005. Fahiem Bacchus, Max Chickering, Tommi Jaakkola, and Chris Williams Conference Organizers UAI 2005 From dayan at gatsby.ucl.ac.uk Wed Jun 8 08:36:01 2005 From: dayan at gatsby.ucl.ac.uk (Peter Dayan) Date: Wed, 8 Jun 2005 13:36:01 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: Behavioral and Brain Functions In-Reply-To: <20050608085329.GB16153@flies.gatsby.ucl.ac.uk> References: <50907.193.217.174.139.1114196535.squirrel@webmail.uio.no> <20050422195120.GA28336@flies.gatsby.ucl.ac.uk> <20050607155808.GB5355@flies.gatsby.ucl.ac.uk> <50732.193.217.174.139.1118220211.squirrel@webmail.uio.no> <20050608085329.GB16153@flies.gatsby.ucl.ac.uk> Message-ID: <20050608123601.GE16153@flies.gatsby.ucl.ac.uk> Behavioral and Brain Functions is a new, open access journal from biomedcentral, edited by Terje Sagvolden. I enclose his invitation to submit articles -- the journal's website is: http://www.behavioralandbrainfunctions.com/ -------------------------------------------------------- Dear Colleague, Behavioural and Brain Functions has now been launched and I would like to invite you to submit your next manuscript. Behavioural and Brain Functions is an Open Access, peer-reviewed, online journal. We publish original human and animal research, reviews and data modeling. We consider manuscripts in all areas of neurobiology and behavior, giving priority to research that combines both domains. Information about the journal is available at www.behavioralandbrainfunctions.com. Behavioral and Brain Functions is an interdisciplinary journal that will cover developments in human and animal behavioral science, neuroscience, neuropsychology, cognitive psychology, neurobiology, linguistics, computer science, and philosophy. The journal will consider the following types of article: research, book reviews, commentaries, debate articles, hypotheses, methodology articles, reviews, short reports and study protocols. The journal is freely available (at www.behavioralandbrainfunctions.com) and a number of articles has already been published. Further information about the journal and its publisher is available from the website. Yours sincerely, Terje Sagvolden Editor-in-Chief, Behavioural and Brain Functions From brian.lindsley at oregonstate.edu Mon Jun 13 18:32:24 2005 From: brian.lindsley at oregonstate.edu (Lindsley, Brian) Date: Mon, 13 Jun 2005 15:32:24 -0700 Subject: Connectionists: EECS RESEARCH ASSOCIATE - OREGON STATE UNIVERSITY - deadline extended Message-ID: <7FD26F7931D4E94CA14BBD2038DD6D2FC70767@mtbaker.nws.oregonstate.edu> POSITION ANNOUNCEMENT Oregon State University School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Research Associate Position The School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science invites applications for a full-time Research Associate (post-doctoral researcher) with an anticipated start date of July 1, 2005. This position will play a central role in the research and development of several exciting, federally-funded research projects. The duties and responsibilities of this position are the following: (a) Plan, carry out, and publish research on machine learning and intelligent user interfaces. (b) Implement prototype systems and perform experiments to evaluate them. (c) Supervise graduate and undergraduate students in their research. (d) Prepare and deliver talks and progress reports to funding agencies and scientific meetings. (e) Write grant proposals and attend funding agency meetings to obtain continuing funding for the project. Salary is competitive, and benefits package includes several options for health/dental/life insurance, retirement, as well as a program of reduced tuition for employee or dependants (some restrictions apply). This is a fixed-term, 12-month position, with reappointment at the discretion of the hiring official, and contingent on the availability of funding. Qualifications Required qualifications include: PhD in computer science or a related field, strong mathematical background, significant research experience, evidenced by at least two research publications in machine learning, probabilistic reasoning, knowledge representation and reasoning, search, intelligent use interfaces, or intelligent personal assistants. Experience in at least two of the following areas - knowledge representation frameworks (logical and/or probabilistic), experience with reasoning methods (logical and/or probabilistic), experience with experimental machine learning research. Excellent written and spoken communication skills, excellent programming and software engineering skills, excitement about computer science research, and the ability to manage graduate and undergraduate students working on research projects. A demonstrable commitment to promoting and enhancing diversity is preferred. Research Group Oregon State is a leader in machine learning and intelligent user interfaces. The machine learning faculty include Tom Dietterich, Alan Fern, Xiaoli Fern, Prasad Tadepalli, and Weng-Keen Wong. The intelligent user interface faculty include Jon Herlocker, Margaret Burnett, Martin Erwig, Mike Bailey, and Ron Metoyer. These two groups have a combined staff of 3 postdocs and 2 software developers and substantial funding from NSF and DARPA. Current projects include the DARPA-funded CALO effort to build an integrated AI system for the computer desktop, the NSF-funded TaskTracer project for supporting multi-tasking knowledge workers, and the DARPA-funded Real World Learning initiative in Knowledge-Intensive Learning. Future research directions will likely focus on "transfer learning" across multiple tasks, multiple people, and multiple organizations. University and Community OSU is one of only two American universities to hold the Land Grant, Sea Grant, Sun Grant, and Space Grant designation and is a Carnegie Doctoral/Research-Extensive university. OSU is located in Corvallis, a community of 53,000 people situated in the Willamette Valley between Portland and Eugene. Ocean beaches, lakes, rivers, forests, high desert, the rugged Cascade and Coast Ranges, and the urban amenities of the Portland metropolitan area are all within a 100-mile drive of Corvallis. Approximately 15,700 undergraduate and 3,400 graduate students are enrolled at OSU, including 2,600 U.S. students of color and 950 international students. The university has an institution-wide commitment to diversity, multiculturalism, and community. We actively engage in recruiting and retaining a diverse workforce and student body that includes members of historically underrepresented groups. We strive to build and sustain a welcoming and supportive campus environment. OSU provides outstanding leadership opportunities for people interested in promoting and enhancing diversity, nurturing creativity, and building community. To Apply For full consideration, please send the following materials by June 30, 2005 (hard copies only, no faxes or emails): * letter of application, describing your research interests, and qualifications for this position; * copies of any relevant research publications (or pointers to such on the web); * a CV including the names, addresses, and telephone numbers of three professional references, to: Research Assistant Search Committee/TD School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Oregon State University 220 Owen Hall Corvallis, OR 97331 Oregon State University is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employer From drh at ecs.soton.ac.uk Mon Jun 13 12:04:26 2005 From: drh at ecs.soton.ac.uk (David R. Hardoon) Date: Mon, 13 Jun 2005 17:04:26 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: PASCAL Network Workshops Message-ID: <770F908A-9393-45CA-B410-46A7AF7FC982@ecs.soton.ac.uk> Apologies for multiple copies recieved. We are pleased to announce two PASCAL workshops that will run back to back at Cumberland Lodge, Windsor Great Park, UK: July 4-5th: Statistics and Optimization of Clustering Workshop, see http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~drh/SOCW/ for description and programme July 6-7th: Principled methods of trading exploration and exploitation, see http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~drh/PMTEEW/ for description and programme Note that registration should be made by 27th June, see http:// www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~drh/PMTEEW/TradingRegForm.pdf Hope to see you there! David R. Hardoon on behalf of all the organisers. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- "Who dares... wins" David R. Hardoon drh at ecs.soton.ac.uk Image, Speech, and Intelligent Systems Research Group School of Electronics & Computer Science University of Southampton Office: +44 23 8059 4882 Fax: +44 23 8059 4498 Mobile: +44 79 6763 4954 http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~drh/ From meeden at cs.swarthmore.edu Mon Jun 13 12:51:18 2005 From: meeden at cs.swarthmore.edu (Lisa Meeden) Date: Mon, 13 Jun 2005 12:51:18 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Connectionists: CFP Special Issue of Connection Science on Developmental Robotics Message-ID: Connection Science Journal http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/titles/09540091.asp Call for Papers: Due September 15, 2005 A Special Issue on Developmental Robotics Guest Editors Douglas Blank Lisa Meeden Developmental robotics is a new approach that focuses on the autonomous self-organization of general-purpose control systems. It takes its inspiration from developmental psychology and developmental neuroscience. Developmental robotics is a move away from task-specific methodologies where a robot is designed to solve a particular pre-defined task (such as path planning to a goal location). This new approach explores the kinds of behaviors that a robot can discover through self-motivated actions based on its own physical morphology and the dynamic structure of its environment. Initially a developmental system might bootstrap itself with some innate knowledge, but with experience could create more complex representations and behaviors. Developmental robotics is different from many learning and evolutionary systems in that the reinforcement signal, teacher target, or fitness function comes from within the system. In this manner, these systems are designed to rely more on mechanisms such as intrinsic motivation or homeostasis. We invite contributions on architectures for developmental robotics, examples of developmental behavior in robots, as well as features or mechanisms of developmental processing including, but not limited to: self-organization, self-exploration, self-motivation, categorization, value systems, and anticipation-driven learning. For more information on developmental robotics see: http://DevelopmentalRobotics.org Submission Instructions and Deadlines Papers should follow the Connection Science guidelines: http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/authors/ccosauth.asp Papers should be emailed as a PDF attachment to dblank at cs.brynmawr.edu and meeden at cs.swarthmore.edu, the guest editors. September 15, 2005 Papers due October 15, 2005 Reviews returned to authors November 15, 2005 Final versions of papers due The special issue will be published in the first quarter of 2006. From p.berkes at biologie.hu-berlin.de Mon Jun 13 07:56:28 2005 From: p.berkes at biologie.hu-berlin.de (p.berkes@biologie.hu-berlin.de) Date: Mon, 13 Jun 2005 13:56:28 +0200 (CEST) Subject: Connectionists: ANN: MDP 1.1.0 Message-ID: MDP 1.1.0 --------- http://mdp-toolkit.sourceforge.net/ Modular toolkit for Data Processing (MDP) is a Python library to perform data processing. Already implemented algorithms include: Principal Component Analysis (PCA), Independent Component Analysis (ICA), Slow Feature Analysis (SFA), and Growing Neural Gas (GNG). MDP allows to combine different algorithms and other data processing elements (nodes) into data processing sequences (flows). Moreover, it provides a framework that makes the implementation of new algorithms easy and intuitive. MDP supports the most common numerical extensions to Python, currently Numeric, Numarray, SciPy. When used together with SciPy and the symeig package, MDP gives to the scientific programmer the full power of well-known C and FORTRAN data processing libraries. MDP helps the programmer to exploit Python object oriented design with C and FORTRAN efficiency. MDP has been written for research in neuroscience, but it has been designed to be helpful in any context where trainable data processing algorithms are used. Its simplicity on the user side together with the reusability of the implemented nodes could make it also a valid educational tool. Requirements: * Python >= 2.3 * one of the following Python numerical extensions: Numeric, Numarray, or SciPy. For optimal performance we recommend to use SciPy with LAPACK and ATLAS libraries, and to install the symeig module. (sorry for multiple posting) -- Pietro Berkes Institute for Theoretical Biology Humboldt-Universitaet zu Berlin Invalidenstrasse, 43 D-10115 Berlin, Germany http://itb.biologie.hu-berlin.de/~berkes From jf218 at cam.ac.uk Tue Jun 14 16:31:14 2005 From: jf218 at cam.ac.uk (Dr J. Feng) Date: 14 Jun 2005 21:31:14 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: 12 posts (from lecturer to professor at the Centre for System Biology) Message-ID: Dear All, We have 12 posts open at System Biology Centre, Warwick University. Please see http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/services/personnel/jobsintro/academic/ for details. Computational Neuroscience is one of the two areas (the other is Microbiology) the Centre will focus on. with best regards Jianfeng Professor JF Feng Centre for Scientific Computing and Computer Science Warwick University UK http://www.dcs.warwick.ac.uk/~feng From michael at chaos.gwdg.de Wed Jun 15 19:07:53 2005 From: michael at chaos.gwdg.de (Michael Herrmann) Date: Thu, 16 Jun 2005 01:07:53 +0200 (CEST) Subject: Connectionists: Tutorial course on Computational Neuroscience Message-ID: Applications are invited for a tutorial course on COMPUTATIONAL NEUROSCIENCE at Goettingen, Germany September 20 - 24, 2005 organized by J. M. Herrmann, S. Treue and T. Geisel The course is intended to provide graduate students and young researchers from all parts of neuroscience with working knowledge of theoretical and computational methods in neuroscience and to acquaint them with recent developments in this field. The course includes tutorials and lectures on the following topics: Misha Tsodyks (Rehovot) "Dynamic synaptic transmission in neocortical circuits" Michael Rudolph (Gif-sur-Yvette) "Neuronal dynamics in the active brain" Richard Kempter (Berlin) "Learning, memory, and plasticity in the hippocampus" Florentin Woergoetter (Stirling) "Learning and plasticity in behaving systems" Stefan Treue (Goettingen) "Mechanisms and models of visual attention" The course takes place at the Department of Nonlinear Dynamics of the Max-Planck Institute for Dynamics and Selforganization, Bunsenstr. 10, D-37073 Goettingen. A course fee of 100 Euro includes participation in the tutorials, study materials, and part of the social events. The number of participants is limited to about 30. Course language is English. To apply please fill in the application form at: www.chaos.gwdg.de/~michael/CNS_course_2005/ by July 24, 2005. For further information please contact: cns-course at chaos.gwdg.de ********************************************************************* * Dr. J. Michael Herrmann Georg August University Goettingen * * Tel. : +49 (0)551 5176424 Institute for Nonlinear Dynamics * * Fax : +49 (0)551 5176439 Bunsenstr. 10, D-37073 Goettingen * * EMail: michael at chaos.gwdg.de http://www.chaos.gwdg.de * ********************************************************************* From hitzler at aifb.uni-karlsruhe.de Thu Jun 16 05:59:58 2005 From: hitzler at aifb.uni-karlsruhe.de (Pascal Hitzler) Date: Thu, 16 Jun 2005 11:59:58 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: NeSy'05 at IJCAI-05: Call for Participation Message-ID: <42B14D9E.4060908@aifb.uni-karlsruhe.de> [Apologies for crosspostings] Call for Participation Workshop on Neural-Symbolic Learning and Reasoning (NeSy'05) at IJCAI-05, Edinburgh, Scotland, July 31st, 2005 ------------------------------------------------------------ Artificial Intelligence researchers continue to face huge challenges in their quest to develop truly intelligent systems. The recent developments in the field of neural-symbolic integration bring an opportunity to integrate well-founded symbolic artificial intelligence with robust neural computing machinery to help tackle some of these challenges. The Workshop on Neural-Symbolic Learning and Reasoning is intended to create an atmosphere of exchange of ideas, providing a forum for the presentation and discussion of the key topics related to neural-symbolic integration. Topics of interest include: * The representation of symbolic knowledge by connectionist systems; * Integrated neural-symbolic learning approaches; * Extraction of symbolic knowledge from trained neural networks; * Integrated neural-symbolic reasoning; * Biological inspiration for neural-symbolic integration; * Applications in robotics, semantic web, engineering, bioinformatics, etc. Preliminary Programme --------------------- 9.15 Opening 9.30 - 10.30 Keynote: Ron Sun coffee break 11.00 - 11.15 (position paper) Pascal Hitzler, Sebastian Bader, Artur Garcez: Ontology Learning as a Use-Case for Neural-Symbolic Integration. 11.20 - 11.45 Ernesto Burattini, Edoardo Datteri, Guglielmo Tamburrini: Neuro-symbolic programs for robots. 11.50 - 12.15 Laurent Orseau: The Principle of Presence: A Heuristic for Growing Knowledge Structured Neural Networks. lunch break 13.45 - 14.10 Yuuya Sugita, Jun Tani: Learning Segmentation of Behavior to Situated Combinatorial Semantics. 14.15 - 14.40 Sebastian Bader, Pascal Hitzler, Andras Witzel: Integrating First-Order Logic Programs and Connectionist Systems - A Constructive Approach. 14.45 - 15.00 (position paper) Li Su, Howard Bowman, Brad Wyble: Symbolic Encoding of Neural Networks using Communicating Automata with Applications to Verification of Neural Network Based Controllers. coffee break 15:30 - 15.45 (position paper) Henrik Jacobsson, Tom Ziemke: Rethinking Rule Extraction from Recurrent Neural Networks. 15.50 - 16.15 Jens Lehmann, Sebastian Bader, Pascal Hitzler: Extracting Reduced Logic Programs from Artificial Neural Networks. 16.20 - 17.20 Keynote: Steffen Hlldobler: Logic Programs and Connectionist Systems. 17.30 Closing Workshop Organisers ------------------- Artur d'Avila Garcez (City University London, UK) Jeff Elman (University of California, San Diego, USA) Pascal Hitzler (AIFB, University of Karlsruhe, Germany) Programme Committee ------------------- Artur d'Avila Garcez (City University London, UK) Howard Blair (Syracuse University, USA) Jeff Elman (University of California San Diego, USA) Dov Gabbay (Kings College London, UK) Marco Gori (University of Siena, Italy) Barbara Hammer (University of Osnabrck, Germany) Pascal Hitzler (University Karlsruhe, Germany) Steffen Hlldobler (TU Dresden, Germany) Luis Lamb (Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil) John Lloyd (The Australian National University, Australia) Asim Roy (Arizona State University, USA) Antony K. Seda (University College Cork, Ireland) Jude Shavlik (University of Wisconsin, USA) Rudi Setiono (National University, Singapore) Alessandro Sperduti (University of Padova, Italy) Stefan Wermter (University of Sunderland, UK) Gerson Zaverucha (UFRJ, Brazil) Keynote speakers ---------------- Steffen Hlldobler (TU Dresden, Germany) Ron Sun (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, USA) Additional Information ---------------------- General questions concerning the workshop should be addressed to nesy at soi.city.ac.uk Workshop website: http://www.neural-symbolic.org/NeSy05/ -- Dr. Pascal Hitzler Institute AIFB, University of Karlsruhe, 76128 Karlsruhe email: hitzler at aifb.uni-karlsruhe.de fax: +49 721 608 6580 web: http://www.pascal-hitzler.de phone: +49 721 608 4751 http://www.neural-symbolic.org From sml at essex.ac.uk Thu Jun 16 10:12:20 2005 From: sml at essex.ac.uk (Lucas, Simon M) Date: Thu, 16 Jun 2005 15:12:20 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: Neural network format survey Message-ID: Dear All, I'm conducting a survey to find out more about the formats you use (if any) to publish and exchange neural network instances. The purpose of this, amongst other things, is to help to decide on a format for possible forthcoming neural network (and perhaps other learnable model) design competitions (for example, a possible objective would be to find the best pure neural network Go player). I note that the predicitive model markup language can describe neural networks: http://www.dmg.org/v3-0/NeuralNetwork.html though it's not clear to me whether this is widely used in practice. Please respond to me by email: sml at essex.ac.uk If there are sufficient responses, I'll post a summary to this list in a few weeks time. Best regards, Simon Lucas -------------------------------------------------- Dr. Simon Lucas Department of Computer Science University of Essex Colchester CO4 3SQ United Kingdom Email: sml at essex.ac.uk http://cswww.essex.ac.uk/staff/lucas/lucas.htm -------------------------------------------------- From t.heskes at science.ru.nl Tue Jun 21 04:47:08 2005 From: t.heskes at science.ru.nl (Tom Heskes) Date: Tue, 21 Jun 2005 10:47:08 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: junior researcher Message-ID: <42B7D40C.7070605@science.ru.nl> [with apologies for cross-posting] Marie Curie junior research fellow on Artificial Intelligence at the Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands A junior research position is available at the Institute of Computing and Information Sciences, Radboud University Nijmegen. The junior researcher will work on the Marie Curie project "Artificial Intelligence for Industrial Applications", a collaboration between the bearing manufacturer SKF and ten different research groups throughout Europe. The position is for three years and aims towards a PhD. The fellowship is governed by the format of the Marie Curie Early Stage Training programme, which excludes (in this case) Dutch candidates and prefers residents of the European union and associated countries. Candidates should have a degree in computer science, mathematics, physics, mechanical engineering, artificial intelligence or a related study and have to be fluent in English. For more information, see http://www.cs.ru.nl/~tomh/ai4ia_vacancy.html or contact Tom Heskes at tomh at cs.ru.nl. From emipar at tsc.uc3m.es Wed Jun 22 11:09:29 2005 From: emipar at tsc.uc3m.es (Emilio Parrado-Hernandez) Date: Wed, 22 Jun 2005 17:09:29 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: CFP: JMLR special topic on Machine Learning and Large Scale Optimization Message-ID: <42B97F29.5020806@tsc.uc3m.es> -- ==================================================== Emilio Parrado-Hernandez Visiting Lecturer Department of Signal Processing and Communications, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid Avenida de la Universidad 30, 28911 Leganes, Spain Phone: +34 91 6248738 Fax: +34 91 6248749 ==================================================== -------------- next part -------------- An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: cfp_ascii.txt Url: https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/20050623/87032c8c/cfp_ascii.txt From mvanross at inf.ed.ac.uk Fri Jun 24 06:36:26 2005 From: mvanross at inf.ed.ac.uk (Mark van Rossum) Date: Fri, 24 Jun 2005 11:36:26 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: Postdoctoral fellowship in Computational Neuroscience Message-ID: <1119609386.5182.68.camel@localhost> Postdoctoral Fellowship in Computational Neuroscience We invite applications for a 5 years EPSRC funded postdoctoral fellowship to work on theoretical and computational models of neural information processing and plasticity in the neocortex. Applicants should have a strong background in mathematics, physics, computer science, or computational neuroscience and have a commitment to a future research career in neuroscience. Prior biological or neuroscience training is not required. The fellowship allows for top class research in a stimulating environment. The project involves a large number of labs in the UK working together to understand cortical computation and its functional circuitry. With regular meetings and collaborations, it brings together cortical modellers and physiologists from the UK and abroad. The Edinburgh component of this work will supervised by David Willshaw and Mark van Rossum of the Institute for Adaptive and Neural Computation, School of Informatics. Edinburgh is one of the leading centres in the UK for Comp Neuroscience. The institute hosts the EPSRC/MRC Doctoral Training Centre in Neuroinformatics. It provides a large, active community in computational neuroscience with strong links with the neuroscience research groups in Edinburgh and the wider area. Edinburgh has been voted as 'best place to live in Britain'. The expected starting data is late summer. The maximal duration is five years. To apply please go to www.jobs.ed.ac.uk, vacancy ref. 3004670, and click on further information for information where to send your application. Inquiries can be addressed to Mark van Rossum, mvanross at inf.ed.ac.uk Weblinks: www.anc.ed.ac.uk, www.anc.ed.ac.uk/neuroinformatics, www.anc.ed.ac.uk/~david/, homepages.inf.ed.ac.uk/mvanross, From wduch at phys.uni.torun.pl Mon Jun 27 14:58:42 2005 From: wduch at phys.uni.torun.pl (Wlodzislaw Duch) Date: Mon, 27 Jun 2005 20:58:42 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: ICANN 2005 "Building A Brain" and other workshops Message-ID: <20050627185841.19F0AA310B@nobel.phys.uni.torun.pl> ICANN 2005 Workshops - calls for papers Full-day workshop will be held at the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Torun on Thursday, Sept. 15th, after the main ICANN'2005 conference. http://www.ibspan.waw.pl/ICANN-2005/ Calls for papers for the Bioinformatics Workshop, Neuroinformatics Workshop and the Biomimetic Workshop are at: http://www.ibspan.waw.pl/ICANN-2005/workshops.html An additional "Building A Brain" Workshop, organized by John G. Taylor (KCL London) and Wlodek Duch (NCU Torun/NTU Singapore), has just been announced. In recent years several projects aiming at a very large scale simulation of brain functions, neocortex, or even the whole brain, have been formulated. They range from detailed models of single cortical columns, through simulation of the whole cortex, to models of the brain based on some specific ideas, such as the Artificial Brain Architecture and Cognitive Control Understanding System (ABACCUS) proposed recently. This workshop aims at discusions of the weak and strong points of these various proposals. Transportation by buses from Warsaw to Torun on Wednesday evening will be arranged. For this extra day we plan to have separate volumes of the Springer Studies in Computational Intelligence focused on a single topic; special issues of journals may also be arranged by workshop organizers. The 25 Euro registartion fee includes transportation, lunch and workshop publication costs. We are looking forward to see you in Torun, a beautiful medieval town in central Poland that is on the UNESCO World Cultural and Natural Heritage list, see: http://www.torun.pl/portal/main/index_en.php Wlodzislaw Duch, general co-chair of the ICANN'2005. Google: Duch From t.heskes at science.ru.nl Wed Jun 29 05:13:40 2005 From: t.heskes at science.ru.nl (Tom Heskes) Date: Wed, 29 Jun 2005 11:13:40 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: two postdoc positions on BCI Message-ID: <42C26644.8050508@science.ru.nl> [with apologies for cross-posting] Two postdoc positions on Brain Computer Interfacing at the Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands Two postdoc positions are available at the Institute of Computing and Information Sciences and F.C. Donders Centre for Cognitive Neuroimaging, both at the Radboud University Nijmegen. The postdocs will work on the STW project "Bayesian brain computer interfacing - interpretation of patient intentions from single-trial EEG". Project leaders are Tom Heskes and Ole Jensen. The positions are for three years ("machine learning") and two years ("source modeling/adaptive filtering"), both with possible extension of another year. The preferred starting date is September 1, 2005. Candidates should have a PhD degree in computer science, mathematics, physics, artificial intelligence, cognitive science or a related study, with a strong background in signal processing/machine learning. For more information, see http://www.cs.ru.nl/~tomh/bci_vacancies.html or contact us at tomh at cs.ru.nl or ole.jensen at fcdonders.ru.nl. From BGabrys at bournemouth.ac.uk Thu Jun 30 11:59:02 2005 From: BGabrys at bournemouth.ac.uk (Bogdan Gabrys) Date: Thu, 30 Jun 2005 16:59:02 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: PhD Studentship: multiple classifier and prediction systems Message-ID: <5DA146E1E559B341A0C85AB49E01F22205F7D3DD@tamar.bournemouth.ac.uk> EPSRC/BT funded Industrial CASE Studentship Computational Intelligence Research Group (CIRG) School of Design, Engineering and Computing, Bournemouth University, United Kingdom Applications are invited for a 3 year PhD research studentship to work on a project entitled "High Performance Fusion Systems" which is jointly funded by EPSRC and British Telecommunications plc (BT) under the EPSRC CASE scheme. The proposed research project will investigate and develop various approaches for highly efficient multiple classifier (prediction) systems composed of actively generated, well performing and decorrelated classifiers (predictors). The emphasis will be put on the automatic avoidance of data overfitting accompanied by complexity and reliability control appropriate for potential industrial applications. Combination, aggregation and fusion of information are major problems for all kinds of knowledge-based systems, from image processing to decision making, from pattern recognition to automatic learning. Various statistical, machine learning and hybrid intelligent techniques will be used for processing and modelling of imperfect data and information. The student will be joining a Computational Intelligence Research Group and will be primarily based in the School of Design, Engineering & Computing in Bournemouth but will also spend up to 3 months in each year of the project duration at the BT research labs in Ipswich. The studentship carries a remuneration of ?12000 pa tax-free and payment of tuition fees at home/EU rate. The successful applicant will need to have a permanent residency status in the UK. Applicants should have a strong mathematical background and hold a first or upper second class honours degree or equivalent in computer science, mathematics, physics, engineering, statistics or a similar discipline. Additionally the candidate should have strong programming experience using any or combination of C, C++, Matlab or Java. Knowledge of ORACLE and/or Access will be an advantage. For further details please contact Prof. Bogdan Gabrys, e-mail: bgabrys at bournemouth.ac.uk. Interested candidates should send a letter of application and a detailed CV with the names and addresses of two referees to: Prof. Bogdan Gabrys, Computational Intelligence Research Group, School of DEC, Bournemouth University, Poole House, Talbot Campus, Poole, BH12 5BB, UK. The applications can be also sent by e-mail. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Prof Bogdan Gabrys Computational Intelligence Research Group School of Design, Engineering & Computing Bournemouth University, Poole House Talbot Campus, Fern Barrow Poole, BH12 5BB United Kingdom Tel: +44 (0)1202 595298 Fax: +44 (0) 1202 595314 E-mail: bgabrys at bournemouth.ac.uk WWW: http://dec.bournemouth.ac.uk/staff/bgabrys/ --------------------------------------------------------------------------- From bower at uthscsa.edu Thu Jun 30 16:27:42 2005 From: bower at uthscsa.edu (Jim Bower) Date: Thu, 30 Jun 2005 15:27:42 -0500 Subject: Connectionists: Postdoctoral Neuroengineering position on Cape Cod Message-ID: Postdoctoral position in neurobiology / engineering in Woods Hole A 4-year DARPA research project, funded annually, to steer the behavior of sharks in the natural environment through stimulation of selected sensory brain areas. Expertise in brain stimulation, multi-electrode recording and neural data analysis most desirable. Interfacing with wireless data transmission and stereotactic electrode positioning. Send applications and inquiries to Jelle Atema, PhD Professor Boston University Marine Program Marine Biological Laboratory Woods Hole, MA 02543 Boston University is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer From schwenk at limsi.fr Thu Jun 30 08:03:40 2005 From: schwenk at limsi.fr (Holger Schwenk) Date: Thu, 30 Jun 2005 14:03:40 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: Machine learning and speech recogniton, PhD and postdoc at LIMSI, Paris Message-ID: <42C3DF9C.4060403@limsi.fr> New learning algorithms for large vocabulary Speech Recognition PhD and postdoc positions at LIMSI-CNRS, Orsay, France The speech processing group at LIMSI-CNRS in Orsay (near Paris) has a long experience in conducting research in all aspects of speech processing. We have developed large vocabulary speech recognizers for broadcast news and conversation speech in several languages (English, French, German, Spanish, Chinese, Arabic, ...). We are currently involved in several national and international projects, in particular the integrated European projects TC-STAR and CHIL. Funding for a 3 year PhD and a 1 year position (renewable) is available. Support for conference travel is provided. We are in particular interested in candidates working on the application of new promising learning algorithms from the general machine learning community to large vocabulary speech recognition. When large amounts of acoustic training data are available (>500h), it seems suboptimal to train the acoustic models directly on all the data. We want to explore alternative ways to take better advantage of the available resources, e.g. adaptive data selection, resampling techniques or mixture models. It is also common to combine several speech recognizers using system combination (rover and consensus network combination). These multiple systems are usually build in an ad-hoc way and it would be better to train explicitly systems that combine well. This could be done by boosting-like methods that construct sequentially classifiers in function of the errors of the preceding ones. Another topic of interest are continuous space language models. We want to investigate different alternative probability estimators and techniques for unsupervised language model adaptation. A large Linux cluster is available to support compute extensive research. The candidate for the PhD position should hold a master in Computer Science, Electric Engineering or equivalent with experience in the following areas: large vocabulary continuous speech recognition, machine learning, neural networks and statistics. Good programming skills in C and working experience on Linux machines is a necessary condition. The candidate for the postdoc position is expected to have an established research record in the same areas. The positions are available immediately. Application should be sent to Holger Schwenk (schwenk at limsi.fr) or Jean-Luc Gauvain (gauvain at limsi.fr) with a detailed CV, list of followed classes (for the PhD position), list of publications (for the postdoc position), and letters of recommendation or name of references. From antonior at neuron.ffclrp.usp.br Thu Jun 2 10:32:45 2005 From: antonior at neuron.ffclrp.usp.br (Antonio Roque) Date: Thu, 02 Jun 2005 11:32:45 -0300 Subject: Connectionists: 1st Latin American School on Computational Neuroscience In-Reply-To: <200502161030.39696.oreilly@psych.colorado.edu> References: <200502161030.39696.oreilly@psych.colorado.edu> Message-ID: <429F188D.5010406@neuron.ffclrp.usp.br> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Announcing the I Latin American School on Computational Neuroscience LASCON 2006 http://neuron.ffclrp.usp.br/lascon/home.htm January 15-28 2006 University of Sao Paulo Ribeirao Preto, SP Brazil Faculty David Beeman, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO, USA James Bower, University of Texas, San Antonio, TX, USA Kim Blackwell, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, USA Michael Hines, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA Michael Hasselmo, Boston University, Boston, MA, USA Dieter Jaeger, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, USA Roland Koberle, University of Sao Paulo, Sao Carlos, SP, Brazil Marcelo Mazza, University of Sao Paulo, Ribeirao Preto, SP, Brazil Rodrigo Oliveira, University of Sao Paulo, Ribeirao Preto, SP, Brazil Reynaldo Pinto, University of Sao Paulo, Sao Paulo, SP, Brazil Arnd Roth, University College, London, UK Michael Vanier, CALTECH, Pasadena, CA, USA Charles Wilson, University of Texas, San Antonio, TX, USA Organizer Antonio Roque, University of Sao Paulo, Ribeirao Preto, SP, Brazil Co-organizer Rodrigo Oliveira, University of Sao Paulo, Ribeirao Preto, SP, Brazil Scientific Committee David Beeman, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO, USA James Bower, University of Texas, San Antonio, TX, USA Rodrigo Oliveira, University of Sao Paulo, Ribeirao Preto, SP, Brazil Rodrigo Oliveira, University of Sao Paulo, Ribeirao Preto, SP, Brazil Deadline for student application: September 9, 2005 (Friday) The I Latin American School on Computational Neuroscience (LASCON 2006) aims at introducing advanced undergraduate and graduate students to the use of methods for detailed modeling of neurons and neural circuits, based on the Hodgkin-Huxley formalism, the cable equation and the compartmental modeling technique. The use of these methods will be illustrated with the development and investigation of numerical simulations with the programs GENESIS and NEURON. The school is divided in two weeks, the first one for theoretical lectures and hands on tutorials, and the second one for invited lectures and the development of project works by the students. Students will follow a highly demanding schedule of morning lectures followed by afternoon and evening computational laboratory sessions. The School will be held at the campus of the University of S?o Paulo at Ribeir?o Preto (a city about 313 km north of Sao Paulo). Course applicants should be fluent in English (written/spoken) and have a solid background in life and/or hard sciences (some experience in computer programming is also desirable). Applications are welcome and should be made by using the application form on the school web page (http://neuron.ffclrp.usp.br/lascon/home.htm). The number of students is limited to 20 and priority will be given to students from Latin American countries. Under exceptional circumstances, students from other areas of the world could be accepted as well. Costs for accommodation and meals will be covered by the school organization. In exceptional cases, limited funding is available to partly cover travel expenses. More information on the school can be found at http://neuron.ffclrp.usp.br/lascon/home.htm ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- Dr. Ant?nio Carlos Roque Associate Professor Departamento de F?sica e Matem?tica FFCLRP, Universidade de S?o Paulo 14040-901 Ribeir?o Preto-SP Brazil Tels: +55 16 602-3768 (office); +55 16 602-3859 (lab) FAX: +55 16 633-9949 E-mail: antonior at neuron.ffclrp.usp.br URL: http://neuron.ffclrp.usp.br From brian.lindsley at oregonstate.edu Wed Jun 1 13:44:38 2005 From: brian.lindsley at oregonstate.edu (Lindsley, Brian) Date: Wed, 1 Jun 2005 10:44:38 -0700 Subject: Connectionists: RESEARCH ASSOCIATE - OREGON STATE UNIVERSITY Message-ID: <7FD26F7931D4E94CA14BBD2038DD6D2FBBCBB2@mtbaker.nws.oregonstate.edu> POSITION ANNOUNCEMENT Oregon State University School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Research Associate Position The School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science invites applications for a full-time Research Associate (post-doctoral researcher) with an anticipated start date of July 1, 2005. This position will play a central role in the research and development of several exciting, federally-funded research projects. The duties and responsibilities of this position are the following: (a) Plan, carry out, and publish research on machine learning and intelligent user interfaces. (b) Implement prototype systems and perform experiments to evaluate them. (c) Supervise graduate and undergraduate students in their research. (d) Prepare and deliver talks and progress reports to funding agencies and scientific meetings. (e) Write grant proposals and attend funding agency meetings to obtain continuing funding for the project. Salary is competitive, and benefits package includes several options for health/dental/life insurance, retirement, as well as a program of reduced tuition for employee or dependants (some restrictions apply). This is a fixed-term, 12-month position, with reappointment at the discretion of the hiring official, and contingent on the availability of funding. Qualifications Required qualifications include: PhD in computer science or a related field, strong mathematical background, significant research experience, evidenced by at least two research publications in machine learning, probabilistic reasoning, knowledge representation and reasoning, search, intelligent use interfaces, or intelligent personal assistants. Experience in at least two of the following areas - knowledge representation frameworks (logical and/or probabilistic), experience with reasoning methods (logical and/or probabilistic), experience with experimental machine learning research. Excellent written and spoken communication skills, excellent programming and software engineering skills, excitement about computer science research, and the ability to manage graduate and undergraduate students working on research projects. A demonstrable commitment to promoting and enhancing diversity is preferred. Research Group Oregon State is a leader in machine learning and intelligent user interfaces. The machine learning faculty include Tom Dietterich, Alan Fern, Xiaoli Fern, Prasad Tadepalli, and Weng-Keen Wong. The intelligent user interface faculty include Jon Herlocker, Margaret Burnett, Martin Erwig, Mike Bailey, and Ron Metoyer. These two groups have a combined staff of 3 postdocs and 2 software developers and substantial funding from NSF and DARPA. Current projects include the DARPA-funded CALO effort to build an integrated AI system for the computer desktop, the NSF-funded TaskTracer project for supporting multi-tasking knowledge workers, and the DARPA-funded Real World Learning initiative in Knowledge-Intensive Learning. Future research directions will likely focus on "transfer learning" across multiple tasks, multiple people, and multiple organizations. University and Community OSU is one of only two American universities to hold the Land Grant, Sea Grant, Sun Grant, and Space Grant designation and is a Carnegie Doctoral/Research-Extensive university. OSU is located in Corvallis, a community of 53,000 people situated in the Willamette Valley between Portland and Eugene. Ocean beaches, lakes, rivers, forests, high desert, the rugged Cascade and Coast Ranges, and the urban amenities of the Portland metropolitan area are all within a 100-mile drive of Corvallis. Approximately 15,700 undergraduate and 3,400 graduate students are enrolled at OSU, including 2,600 U.S. students of color and 950 international students. The university has an institution-wide commitment to diversity, multiculturalism, and community. We actively engage in recruiting and retaining a diverse workforce and student body that includes members of historically underrepresented groups. We strive to build and sustain a welcoming and supportive campus environment. OSU provides outstanding leadership opportunities for people interested in promoting and enhancing diversity, nurturing creativity, and building community. To Apply For full consideration, please send the following materials by June 10, 2005 (hard copies only, no faxes or emails): * letter of application, describing your research interests, and qualifications for this position; * copies of any relevant research publications (or pointers to such on the web); * a CV including the names, addresses, and telephone numbers of three professional references, to: Research Assistant Search Committee/TD School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Oregon State University 220 Owen Hall Corvallis, OR 97331 Oregon State University is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employer From myosioka at brain.riken.go.jp Thu Jun 2 09:55:17 2005 From: myosioka at brain.riken.go.jp (Masahiko Yoshioka) Date: Thu, 02 Jun 2005 22:55:17 +0900 (JST) Subject: Connectionists: Synchronization in gap-junction-coupled neurons Message-ID: <20050602.225517.28796926.myosioka@brain.riken.go.jp> Dear all, We would like to announce another new paper on theoretical study of spike synchronization in neural networks. In this paper we employ the chaos synchronization theory to analyze stability of synchronization in gap-junction-coupled neurons. We hope that the present study on gap junctions and our previous study on chemical synapses (http://arxiv.org/abs/nlin.PS/0504057) contribute together to a deeper understanding of various synchronization phenomena in a large population of neurons. "Chaos synchronization in gap-junction-coupled neurons" M. Yoshioka, Phys. Rev. E, in press. http://arxiv.org/abs/nlin.CD/0505054 Depending on temperature the modified Hodgkin-Huxley (MHH) equations exhibit a variety of dynamical behavior including intrinsic chaotic firing. We analyze synchronization in a large ensemble of MHH neurons that are interconnected with gap junctions. By evaluating tangential Lyapunov exponents we clarify whether synchronous state of neurons is chaotic or periodic. Then, we evaluate transversal Lyapunov exponents to elucidate if this synchronous state is stable against infinitesimal perturbations. Our analysis elucidates that with weak gap junctions, stability of synchronization of MHH neurons shows rather complicated change with temperature. We, however, find that with strong gap junctions, synchronous state is stable over the wide range of temperature irrespective of whether synchronous state is chaotic or periodic. It turns out that strong gap junctions realize the robust synchronization mechanism, which well explains synchronization in interneurons in the real nervous system. Best regards, Masahiko Yoshioka Brain Science Institute The Institute of Physical and Chemical Research (RIKEN) From oreilly at psych.colorado.edu Thu Jun 2 17:21:31 2005 From: oreilly at psych.colorado.edu (Randall C. O'Reilly) Date: Thu, 2 Jun 2005 15:21:31 -0600 Subject: Connectionists: Call for Abstracts: CCN/NIMH Dynamical Neuroscience Conference Message-ID: <200506021521.31698.oreilly@psych.colorado.edu> ~ CALL-FOR-ABSTRACTS ~ 1ST ANNUAL CONFERENCE ON COMPUTATIONAL COGNITIVE NEUROSCIENCE and NIMH DYNAMICAL NEUROSCIENCE SATELLITE SYMPOSIUM of the Annual Meeting of the Society for Neuroscience, Washington DC Thu-Fri November 10 & 11, 2005 WWW.CCNCONFERENCE.ORG ______________________________________________________________________ Deadline for submissions: August 1, 2005 Meeting Registration and Abstract Submission are processed on-line at: http://www.cmpinc.net/dynamical/ There are two categories of submissions: * Poster only * Short talk (15 min), with accompanying poster Abstracts should be limited to 250 words. Women and underrepresented minorities are especially encouraged to apply. Reviewing for posters will be light and only to ensure appropriateness to the meeting. Talks will be selected on the basis of research quality, relevance to conference theme, and expected accessibility in a talk format. Notification of acceptance will be made by September 1, 2005. ______________________________________________________________________ Conference information: This is the inaugural meeting of what will be a rotating satellite with other meetings, such as (tentative list): CNS (Cognitive Neuroscience Society), HBM (Organization for Human Brain Mapping), CogSci (Cognitive Science Society), Psychonomic Society, NIPS (Neural Information Processing Systems Foundation), and COSYNE (Computational and Systems Neuroscience)). Featured Keynote Speakers: James L. McClelland, Carnegie Mellon University Title: Principles of Cognitive and Neural Processing Daniel M. Wolpert, University College London/University of Cambridge Title: Probabilistic Models of Sensorimotor Control Discussion-Focused Symposia: Decision Making Chair: Michael Shadlen, University of Washington Speakers: Carlos Brody, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Yael Niv, Hebrew University (invited) Leo Sugrue, Stanford University (invited) Developmental Disorders Chair: Michael Thomas, University of London Speakers: Marc Joanisse, University of Western Ontario Fred Dick, University of London April Benasich, Rutgers University Category Learning Chair: Brad Love, University of Texas Speakers: Greg Ashby, UC Santa Barbara Paul Reber, Northwestern University Episodic Memory: Interactions of the prefrontal cortex and hippocampal formation involved in episodic and working memory Chair: Michael Hasselmo, Boston University Speakers: Kenneth Norman, Princeton University Charan Ranganath, UC, Davis Chantal Stern, Boston University ______________________________________________________________________ BACKGROUND: The field of cognitive neuroscience has flourished due to advances using multiple methodologies such as anatomy, physiology, imaging, and behavior. Given the progress that has been made in each of these areas, the time is ripe for strong theoretical frameworks that can relate different levels of analysis, moving beyond basic brain/behavior correlations. The emerging field of Computational Cognitive Neuroscience (CCN) is ideally suited to help fill this need through the use of mathematical analysis and explicit computational models that bridge the gap between biological mechanisms and cognitive function. This meeting focuses on research at the intersection of neuroscience, cognitive psychology, and computational modeling, where neuroscience-based computational models are used to simulate and understand cognitive functions such as perception, attention, learning and memory, language, and higher-level cognitive functions. CCN research benefits greatly from collaboration with various non-modeling researchers for developing and interpreting relevant empirical data. A major goal for this conference is to create fruitful opportunities for modelers and non-modelers to interact. ______________________________________________________________________ PLANNING COMMITTEE: Todd Braver, Washington University, St Louis Carlos Brody, Cold Spring Harbor Jonathan Cohen, Princeton University Dennis Glanzman, NIMH Yuko Munakata, University of Colorado, Boulder David Noelle, Vanderbilt University Randall O'Reilly, University of Colorado, Boulder (Chair) For more information and to sign up for the mailing list visit: WWW.CCNCONFERENCE.ORG ______________________________________________________________________ From DGB at CDRH.FDA.GOV Fri Jun 3 10:43:32 2005 From: DGB at CDRH.FDA.GOV (Brown, David G.) Date: Fri, 3 Jun 2005 10:43:32 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: Invitation to Participate--IJCNN 2005 Montreal Message-ID: <60E5EBF1DFB4EC498E0ACAE75A49F8ED035DB852@drm558.cdrh.fda.gov> Invitation to Participate -- IJCNN 2005 Montreal The countdown to IJCNN 2005 has begun--plenary speakers have signed on, paper acceptances have been mailed out, the program has been developed, and registration is underway. The 2005 International Joint Conference on Neural Networks is being held in Montreal Canada from July 31 to August 4. Cosponsored by INNS and the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society and supported by several universities and private companies, IJCNN'05 promises to be a tremendously exciting meeting with a wide range of tutorials, regular and special sessions, and post-conference workshops (on August 5). Plenary speakers include Pierre Baldi, Mitsuo Kawato, Frank Lewis, Michael Petrides, and Carver Mead. Sixteen different tutorials are being offered on July 31 as the Conference opens, and nearly six hundred papers will be presented, covering the full breadth of artificial and natural neural intelligence topics. Register on-line now to ensure your place in IJCNN 2005. Check in to the web site http://www.ijcnn.org/ for further details--including Conference and hotel registration and the Conference program. Montreal is the place to be this July 31-August 5. See you there! David David G. Brown, Ph.D. Director, Division of Imaging and Applied Mathematics Center for Devices and Rad. Health (HFZ-140) 12720 Twinbrook Pkwy. Rockville, MD 20852 301-443-3314 ext. 133 301-443-9101 fax From sfr at unipg.it Thu Jun 2 05:30:35 2005 From: sfr at unipg.it (Simone G.O. FIORI) Date: Thu, 02 Jun 2005 11:30:35 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: On differential-geometrical methods in neural network learning Message-ID: <1.5.4.32.20050602093035.01733d78@unipg.it> Dear Colleagues, the following 3 preprints, related to differential- geometrical methods for neural network learning, are available on the internet. ========================================================= *Title: Formulation and Integration of Learning Differential Equations on the Stiefel Manifold *Author: Simone Fiori, University of Perugia (Italy) *Journal: IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks (IEEE-TNN) *Abstract: The present Letter aims at illustrating the relevance of numerical integration of learning differential equations on differential manifolds. In particular, the task of learning with orthonormality constraints is dealt with, which is naturally formulated as an optimization task with the compact Stiefel manifold as neural parameter space. Intrinsic properties of the derived learning algorithms, such as stability and constraints preservation, are illustrated through experiments on minor and independent component analysis. *Keywords: Unsupervised neural network learning; Differential Geometry; Riemannian manifold; Riemannian gradient; Geodesics. *Source: http://www.unipg.it/sfr/publications/TNN05.pdf ========================================================= *Title: Quasi-Geodesic Neural Learning Algorithms over the Orthogonal Group: A Tutorial *Author: Simone Fiori, University of Perugia (Italy) *Journal: Journal of Machine Learning Research (JMLR) *Abstract: The aim of this contribution is to present a tutorial on learning algorithms for a single neural layer whose connection matrix belongs to the orthogonal group. The algorithms exploit geodesics appropriately connected as piece-wise approximate integrals of the exact differential learning equation. The considered learning equations essentially arise from the Riemannian-gradient- based optimization theory with deterministic and diffusion- type gradient. The paper aims specifically at reviewing the relevant mathematics (and at presenting it in as much transparent way as possible in order to make it accessible to Readers that do not possess a background in differential geometry), at bringing together modern optimization methods on manifolds and at comparing the different algorithms on a common machine learning problem. As a numerical case-study, we consider an application to non-negative independent component analysis, although it should be recognized that Riemannian gradient methods are general-purpose algorithms, by no means limited to ICA-related applications. *Keywords: Differential geometry; Diffusion-type gradient; Lie groups; Non-negative independent component analysis; Riemannian gradient. *Source: http://www.jmlr.org/papers/volume6/fiori05a/fiori05a.pdf ======================================================== *Title: Editorial: Special issue on ''Geometrical Methods in Neural Networks and Learning'' *Authors: Simone Fiori, University of Perugia (Italy) Shun-ichi Amari, Brain Science Institute (RIKEN, Japan) *Journal: Neurocomputing *Source: http://www.unipg.it/sfr/publications/editorial_si_nng.pdf ================================================= | Simone FIORI (Elec.Eng., Ph.D.) | | * Faculty of Engineering - Perugia University * | | * Polo Didattico e Scientifico del Ternano * | | Loc. Pentima bassa, 21 - I-05100 TERNI (Italy) | | eMail: fiori at unipg.it - Fax: +39 0744 492925 | | Web: http://www.unipg.it/sfr/ | ================================================= From ishikawa at brain.kyutech.ac.jp Fri Jun 3 02:42:46 2005 From: ishikawa at brain.kyutech.ac.jp (Masumi Ishikawa) Date: Fri, 03 Jun 2005 15:42:46 +0900 Subject: Connectionists: Call for Papers(BrainIT2005) Message-ID: <6.0.0.20.2.20050603153704.02893120@mail.brain.kyutech.ac.jp> ==================================================== We apologize if you receive multiple copies of this email. Please distribute this announcement to all interested parties. ==================================================== BrainIT2005 CALL FOR PAPERS The second international conference, BrainIT 2005, will be held in Kitakyushu, Japan, on October 7-9, 2005, in order to establish the foundations of the Brain-Inspired Information Technology. All working at the frontiers of Brain Science to Information Technology including Robotics are invited to participate in the second international conference, BrainIT 2005. At this conference, we will organize a special session on "Decision and Behavioral Choice Organized by Natural and Artificial Brain" in addition to invited papers from a wide range of fields from Brain Science to Information Technology. Invited Speakers Edmund T. Rolls (Oxford University, UK) Rolf Pfeifer (University of Zurich, Switzerland) Mandyam V. Srinivasan (Australian National University, Australia) Kenji Doya (Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology, Japan) Joshua I. Gold (University of Pennsylvania, USA) Walter J. Freeman (University of California, Berkeley, USA) Andreas Konig (Technische Univ. Kaiserslautern, Germany) Shu-Rong Wang (Institute of Biophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China) Samuel Kaski (Helsinki University of Technology, Finland) Important Dates Abstract (for presentation) Submission Deadline: July 25, 2005 Notification of Acceptance: August 31, 2005 Pre-registration Deadline: September 9, 2005 Paper (for Edited Book) Submission Deadline: October 31, 2005 Scope and Topics BrainIT 2005 solicits experimental, computational, theoretical as well as engineering papers relating the topics in the following non-exhaustive, non-exclusive categories and keywords. Categories and Keywords: 1. Vision system 2. Other sensory systems 3. Cognition 4. Emotion 5. Learning and Memory 6. Behavior 7. Motor controls 8. Languages 9. Dynamics 10. Neural computation 11. Neural networks 12. Brain-inspired intelligent machines Papers that bridge brain science and information technology are especially welcome. Regular papers may include speculative discussions on Brain-Inspired Information Technology. BrainIT 2005 is open to all working at the frontiers of Brain Science to Information Technology (modeling and hardware realization) and provides the opportunity for presenting and discussing ideas that pave the way for the new field, Brain-Inspired Information Technology. Instructions for Authors Authors are requested to submit a 1-page A4-sized abstract by e-mail attachment as a PDF file to brian-it at lsse.kyutech.ac.jp. Each abstract will be independently reviewed by two reviewers. For further information, please refer to the web site. Registration Registration is free of charge. However, we recommend your early registration as the number of abstract books and other materials may be limited. # Registration Site will open by July 2005. Sponsors * "World of brain computing interwoven out of animals and robots": The 21st Century Center of Excellence Program of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, Japan * Kyushu Institute of Technology * Kitakyushu Foundation for the Advancement of Industry, Science and Technology (FAIS) Secretariat: Tetsuo FURUKAWA, PhD, Associate Professor Phone: +81-93-695-6124, Fax: +81-93-695-6134 E-mail: brain-it at lsse.kyutech.ac.jp For further information, please visit our web site: http://conf.lsse.kyutech.ac.jp/~brain-it/ Masumi Ishikawa Department of Brain Science and Engineering Graduate School of Life Science and Systems Engineering Kyushu Institute of Technology 2-4 Hibikino, Wakamatsu, Kitakyushu 808-0196, Japan Tel and Fax: +81-93-695-6106 Email: ishikawa at brain.kyutech.ac.jp URL: http://www.brain.kyutech.ac.jp/~ishikawa URL: http://www.lsse.kyutech.ac.jp/ From notify at teuscher.ch Mon Jun 6 12:06:54 2005 From: notify at teuscher.ch (Christof Teuscher) Date: Mon, 6 Jun 2005 09:06:54 -0700 Subject: Connectionists: Bio-ADIT 2006 | Call for Papers Message-ID: <7DE6C3AC-DB23-4312-89E8-D919DDDB6CF6@teuscher.ch> **************************************************************** Bio-ADIT 2006 | Second Call for Papers **************************************************************** The Second International Workshop on Biologically Inspired Approaches to Advanced Information Technology January 26 - 27, 2006 Senri Life Science Center, Osaka, Japan Web site: http://www.ist.osaka-u.ac.jp/bio-adit2006 Sponsored by - The 21st Century Center of Excellence Program of The Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and - Technology (MEXT), Japan, under the Program Title "Opening Up New Information Technologies for Building a Networked Symbiosis Environment" Biologically inspired approaches have already proved successful in achieving major breakthroughs in a wide variety of problems in information technology (IT). A more recent trend is to explore the applicability of bio-inspired approaches to the development of self-organizing, evolving, adaptive and autonomous information technologies, which will meet the requirements of next-generation information systems, such as diversity, scalability, robustness, and resilience. These new technologies will become a base on which to build a networked symbiotic environment for pleasant, symbiotic society of human beings in the 21st century. Bio-ADIT 2006 follows the success of the first workshop Bio-ADIT 2004 held at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland in January 2004. The workshop is intended to provide an effective forum for original research results in the field of bio- inspired approaches to advanced information technologies. It will also serve to foster the connection between biological paradigms and solutions to building the next-generation information systems. SCOPE: The primary focus of the workshop is on new and original research results in the areas of information systems inspired by biology. We invite you to submit papers that present novel, challenging, and innovative results. The topics include all aspects of bio-inspired information technologies in networks, distributed/parallel systems, hardware (including robotics) and software. We also encourage you to submit papers dealing with: - Self-organizing, self-repairing, self-replicating and self-stabilizing systems - Evolving and adapting systems - Autonomous and evolutionary software and robotic systems - Scalable, robust and resilient systems - Complex biosystems - Gene, protein and metabolic networks - Symbiosis networks - Synthetic biology for IT evolution SUBMISSION OF PAPERS: Authors are invited to submit complete and original papers. Papers submitted should not have been previously published in any forum, nor be under review for any journal or other conference. All submitted papers will be refereed for quality, correctness, originality and relevance. All accepted papers will be published in official proceedings with an ISBN number by a major international publisher, and be available at the conference. Manuscripts should include an abstract and be limited to 16 pages in single spaced and single column format. Submissions should include the title, author(s), author's affiliation, e-mail address, fax number and postal address. In the case of multiple authors, an indication of which author is responsible for correspondence and preparing the camera ready paper should also be included. Electronic submission is strongly encouraged. Preferred file formats are PDF (.pdf) or Postscript (.ps). Visit our Web site at http://www.ist.osaka-u.ac.jp/bio-adit2006 for more information. Please contact Dr. Masuzawa if you have to submit hard copies. Manuscripts should be submitted by July 31, 2005 through the Bio-ADIT Web site. Please contact the technical program co-chairs for any questions: Professor Auke Jan Ijspeert School of Computer and Communication Sciences Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Lausanne (EPFL) CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland Tel: +41-21-693-2658 Fax: +41-21-693-3705 E-mail: Auke.Ijspeert at epfl.ch Professor Toshimitsu Masuzawa Graduate School of Information Science and Technology Osaka University 1-3 Machikaneyama, Toyonaka, Osaka 560-8531, Japan Tel: +81-6-6850-6580 Fax: +81-6-6850-6582 E-mail: masuzawa at ist.osaka-u.ac.jp IMPORTANT DATES: Paper submission deadline : July 31, 2005 Notification of acceptance : October 1, 2005 Camera ready papers due : October 20, 2005 STUDENT TRAVEL GRANTS: A limited number of travel grants will be provided for students attending Bio-ADIT 2006. Details of how to apply for a student travel grant will be posted on the workshop Web site. EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE: General Co-Chairs: - Daniel Mange (EPFL, Switzerland) - Shojiro Nishio (Osaka University, Japan) Technical Program Committee Co-Chairs: - Auke Jan Ijspeert (EPFL, Switzerland) - Toshimitsu Masuzawa (Osaka University, Japan) Special Session Program Chair: - Hiroshi Shimizu (Osaka University, Japan) Finance Chair: - Toru Fujiwara (Osaka University, Japan) Publicity Co-chairs: - Christof Teuscher (UCSD, USA) - Yoshinori Takeuchi (Osaka University, Japan) Internet Chair: - Hideki Tode (Osaka University, Japan) Publications Chair - Shinji Kusumoto (Osaka University, Japan) Local Arrangement Chair: - Tatsuhiro Tsuchiya (Osaka University, Japan) TECHNICAL PROGRAM COMMITTEE: Co-Chairs: - Auke Jan Ijspeert (EPFL, Switzerland) - Toshimitsu Masuzawa (Osaka University, Japan) Members (Tentative): - Luc Berthouze (AIST, Japan) - Marco Dorigo (Universite Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium) - Raphael Holzer (EPFL, Switzerland) - Koh Hosoda (Osaka University, Japan) - Katsuo Inoue (Osaka University, Japan) - Laurent Itti (University of Southern California, USA) - Satoshi Kurihara (Osaka University, Japan) - Anders Lansner (Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden) - Vincent Lepetit (EPFL, Switzerland) - James C. Liao (UCLA, USA) - Wolfgang Maass (Graz University of Technology, Austria) - Alberto Montresor (University of Bologna, Italy) - Masayuki Murata (Osaka University, Japan) - Mitsuyuki Nakao (Tohoku University, Japan) - Chrystopher L. Nehaniv (University of Hertfordshire, UK) - Masahiro Okamoto (Kyushu University, Japan) - Takao Onoye (Osaka University, Japan) - Ezequiel Di Paolo (University of Sussex, UK) - Rolf Pfeifer (University of Zurich, Switzerland) - Giovanna Di Marzo Serugendo (University of Geneva, Switzerland) - Hiroshi Shimizu (Osaka University, Japan) - Gregory Stephanopoulos (MIT, USA) - Tim Taylor (University of Edinburgh, UK) - Gianluca Tempesti (EPFL, Switzerland) - Daniel Thalmann (EPFL, Switzerland) - Tatsuhiro Tsuchiya (Osaka University, Japan) - Sethu Vijayakumar (University of Edinburgh, UK) - Koichi Wada (Nagoya Institute of Technology, Japan) - Naoki Wakamiya (Osaka University, Japan) - Hans V. Westerhoff (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands) - Masafumi Yamashita (Kyushu University, Japan) - Xin Yao (University of Birmingham, UK) - Tom Ziemke (University of Skovde, Sweden) Bio-ADIT STEERING COMMITTEE: Chair: - Hideo Miyahara (Osaka University, Japan) Members: - Albert-Laszlo Barabasi (University of Notre Dame, USA) - Auke Jan Ijspeert (EPFL, Switzerland) - Daniel Mange (EPFL, Switzerland) - Masayuki Murata (Osaka University, Japan) - Shojiro Nishio (Osaka University, Japan) - Hiroshi Shimizu (Osaka University, Japan) - Hans V. Westerhoff (Free University, The Netherlands) -- Christof Teuscher, PhD University of California, San Diego (UCSD) http://www.teuscher.ch From ckiw at inf.ed.ac.uk Tue Jun 7 05:54:00 2005 From: ckiw at inf.ed.ac.uk (Chris Williams) Date: Tue, 7 Jun 2005 10:54:00 +0100 (BST) Subject: Connectionists: UAI 2005: 26-29 July in Edinburgh, UK Message-ID: ******************************************************************** THE TWENTY-FIRST INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON UNCERTAINTY IN ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (UAI-05) CALL FOR PARTICIPATION July 26-29, 2005 Edinburgh, Scotland ACCOMODATION BOOKING DEADLINE 13TH JUNE ********************************************************************* The Twenty First International Conference on Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence (UAI-05) will be held in Edinburgh, Scotland on July 26-29, 2005 at the University of Edinburgh. UAI is collocated with IJCAI-05 which starts immediately after on July 29th. More details about conference program, including information about the invited talks, tutorials, and technical papers are available on the conference website http://www.cs.toronto.edu/uai2005/. ================== REGISTRATION INFO ================== The registration fee is $400 ($300 for students). To register, follow the instructions on the registration site: http://pos.brightdoc.com/uai2005 =================== ACCOMMODATIONS INFO =================== Edinburgh, Scotland's capital city, is one of the greenest and architecturally most beautiful cities in Northern Europe. It is rich in architecture, social, cultural, learning and sporting facilities. Please note that the UAI conference is taking place just before the festivals start in the peak tourist season. We *STRONGLY* advise attendees to book flights and hotels as soon as possible. Accommodation is booked via the Edinburgh Conference Bureau, which can only guarantee accommodation bookings made before 13th June 2005. Fahiem Bacchus, Max Chickering, Tommi Jaakkola, and Chris Williams Conference Organizers UAI 2005 From dayan at gatsby.ucl.ac.uk Wed Jun 8 08:36:01 2005 From: dayan at gatsby.ucl.ac.uk (Peter Dayan) Date: Wed, 8 Jun 2005 13:36:01 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: Behavioral and Brain Functions In-Reply-To: <20050608085329.GB16153@flies.gatsby.ucl.ac.uk> References: <50907.193.217.174.139.1114196535.squirrel@webmail.uio.no> <20050422195120.GA28336@flies.gatsby.ucl.ac.uk> <20050607155808.GB5355@flies.gatsby.ucl.ac.uk> <50732.193.217.174.139.1118220211.squirrel@webmail.uio.no> <20050608085329.GB16153@flies.gatsby.ucl.ac.uk> Message-ID: <20050608123601.GE16153@flies.gatsby.ucl.ac.uk> Behavioral and Brain Functions is a new, open access journal from biomedcentral, edited by Terje Sagvolden. I enclose his invitation to submit articles -- the journal's website is: http://www.behavioralandbrainfunctions.com/ -------------------------------------------------------- Dear Colleague, Behavioural and Brain Functions has now been launched and I would like to invite you to submit your next manuscript. Behavioural and Brain Functions is an Open Access, peer-reviewed, online journal. We publish original human and animal research, reviews and data modeling. We consider manuscripts in all areas of neurobiology and behavior, giving priority to research that combines both domains. Information about the journal is available at www.behavioralandbrainfunctions.com. Behavioral and Brain Functions is an interdisciplinary journal that will cover developments in human and animal behavioral science, neuroscience, neuropsychology, cognitive psychology, neurobiology, linguistics, computer science, and philosophy. The journal will consider the following types of article: research, book reviews, commentaries, debate articles, hypotheses, methodology articles, reviews, short reports and study protocols. The journal is freely available (at www.behavioralandbrainfunctions.com) and a number of articles has already been published. Further information about the journal and its publisher is available from the website. Yours sincerely, Terje Sagvolden Editor-in-Chief, Behavioural and Brain Functions From brian.lindsley at oregonstate.edu Mon Jun 13 18:32:24 2005 From: brian.lindsley at oregonstate.edu (Lindsley, Brian) Date: Mon, 13 Jun 2005 15:32:24 -0700 Subject: Connectionists: EECS RESEARCH ASSOCIATE - OREGON STATE UNIVERSITY - deadline extended Message-ID: <7FD26F7931D4E94CA14BBD2038DD6D2FC70767@mtbaker.nws.oregonstate.edu> POSITION ANNOUNCEMENT Oregon State University School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Research Associate Position The School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science invites applications for a full-time Research Associate (post-doctoral researcher) with an anticipated start date of July 1, 2005. This position will play a central role in the research and development of several exciting, federally-funded research projects. The duties and responsibilities of this position are the following: (a) Plan, carry out, and publish research on machine learning and intelligent user interfaces. (b) Implement prototype systems and perform experiments to evaluate them. (c) Supervise graduate and undergraduate students in their research. (d) Prepare and deliver talks and progress reports to funding agencies and scientific meetings. (e) Write grant proposals and attend funding agency meetings to obtain continuing funding for the project. Salary is competitive, and benefits package includes several options for health/dental/life insurance, retirement, as well as a program of reduced tuition for employee or dependants (some restrictions apply). This is a fixed-term, 12-month position, with reappointment at the discretion of the hiring official, and contingent on the availability of funding. Qualifications Required qualifications include: PhD in computer science or a related field, strong mathematical background, significant research experience, evidenced by at least two research publications in machine learning, probabilistic reasoning, knowledge representation and reasoning, search, intelligent use interfaces, or intelligent personal assistants. Experience in at least two of the following areas - knowledge representation frameworks (logical and/or probabilistic), experience with reasoning methods (logical and/or probabilistic), experience with experimental machine learning research. Excellent written and spoken communication skills, excellent programming and software engineering skills, excitement about computer science research, and the ability to manage graduate and undergraduate students working on research projects. A demonstrable commitment to promoting and enhancing diversity is preferred. Research Group Oregon State is a leader in machine learning and intelligent user interfaces. The machine learning faculty include Tom Dietterich, Alan Fern, Xiaoli Fern, Prasad Tadepalli, and Weng-Keen Wong. The intelligent user interface faculty include Jon Herlocker, Margaret Burnett, Martin Erwig, Mike Bailey, and Ron Metoyer. These two groups have a combined staff of 3 postdocs and 2 software developers and substantial funding from NSF and DARPA. Current projects include the DARPA-funded CALO effort to build an integrated AI system for the computer desktop, the NSF-funded TaskTracer project for supporting multi-tasking knowledge workers, and the DARPA-funded Real World Learning initiative in Knowledge-Intensive Learning. Future research directions will likely focus on "transfer learning" across multiple tasks, multiple people, and multiple organizations. University and Community OSU is one of only two American universities to hold the Land Grant, Sea Grant, Sun Grant, and Space Grant designation and is a Carnegie Doctoral/Research-Extensive university. OSU is located in Corvallis, a community of 53,000 people situated in the Willamette Valley between Portland and Eugene. Ocean beaches, lakes, rivers, forests, high desert, the rugged Cascade and Coast Ranges, and the urban amenities of the Portland metropolitan area are all within a 100-mile drive of Corvallis. Approximately 15,700 undergraduate and 3,400 graduate students are enrolled at OSU, including 2,600 U.S. students of color and 950 international students. The university has an institution-wide commitment to diversity, multiculturalism, and community. We actively engage in recruiting and retaining a diverse workforce and student body that includes members of historically underrepresented groups. We strive to build and sustain a welcoming and supportive campus environment. OSU provides outstanding leadership opportunities for people interested in promoting and enhancing diversity, nurturing creativity, and building community. To Apply For full consideration, please send the following materials by June 30, 2005 (hard copies only, no faxes or emails): * letter of application, describing your research interests, and qualifications for this position; * copies of any relevant research publications (or pointers to such on the web); * a CV including the names, addresses, and telephone numbers of three professional references, to: Research Assistant Search Committee/TD School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Oregon State University 220 Owen Hall Corvallis, OR 97331 Oregon State University is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employer From drh at ecs.soton.ac.uk Mon Jun 13 12:04:26 2005 From: drh at ecs.soton.ac.uk (David R. Hardoon) Date: Mon, 13 Jun 2005 17:04:26 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: PASCAL Network Workshops Message-ID: <770F908A-9393-45CA-B410-46A7AF7FC982@ecs.soton.ac.uk> Apologies for multiple copies recieved. We are pleased to announce two PASCAL workshops that will run back to back at Cumberland Lodge, Windsor Great Park, UK: July 4-5th: Statistics and Optimization of Clustering Workshop, see http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~drh/SOCW/ for description and programme July 6-7th: Principled methods of trading exploration and exploitation, see http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~drh/PMTEEW/ for description and programme Note that registration should be made by 27th June, see http:// www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~drh/PMTEEW/TradingRegForm.pdf Hope to see you there! David R. Hardoon on behalf of all the organisers. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- "Who dares... wins" David R. Hardoon drh at ecs.soton.ac.uk Image, Speech, and Intelligent Systems Research Group School of Electronics & Computer Science University of Southampton Office: +44 23 8059 4882 Fax: +44 23 8059 4498 Mobile: +44 79 6763 4954 http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~drh/ From meeden at cs.swarthmore.edu Mon Jun 13 12:51:18 2005 From: meeden at cs.swarthmore.edu (Lisa Meeden) Date: Mon, 13 Jun 2005 12:51:18 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Connectionists: CFP Special Issue of Connection Science on Developmental Robotics Message-ID: Connection Science Journal http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/titles/09540091.asp Call for Papers: Due September 15, 2005 A Special Issue on Developmental Robotics Guest Editors Douglas Blank Lisa Meeden Developmental robotics is a new approach that focuses on the autonomous self-organization of general-purpose control systems. It takes its inspiration from developmental psychology and developmental neuroscience. Developmental robotics is a move away from task-specific methodologies where a robot is designed to solve a particular pre-defined task (such as path planning to a goal location). This new approach explores the kinds of behaviors that a robot can discover through self-motivated actions based on its own physical morphology and the dynamic structure of its environment. Initially a developmental system might bootstrap itself with some innate knowledge, but with experience could create more complex representations and behaviors. Developmental robotics is different from many learning and evolutionary systems in that the reinforcement signal, teacher target, or fitness function comes from within the system. In this manner, these systems are designed to rely more on mechanisms such as intrinsic motivation or homeostasis. We invite contributions on architectures for developmental robotics, examples of developmental behavior in robots, as well as features or mechanisms of developmental processing including, but not limited to: self-organization, self-exploration, self-motivation, categorization, value systems, and anticipation-driven learning. For more information on developmental robotics see: http://DevelopmentalRobotics.org Submission Instructions and Deadlines Papers should follow the Connection Science guidelines: http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/authors/ccosauth.asp Papers should be emailed as a PDF attachment to dblank at cs.brynmawr.edu and meeden at cs.swarthmore.edu, the guest editors. September 15, 2005 Papers due October 15, 2005 Reviews returned to authors November 15, 2005 Final versions of papers due The special issue will be published in the first quarter of 2006. From p.berkes at biologie.hu-berlin.de Mon Jun 13 07:56:28 2005 From: p.berkes at biologie.hu-berlin.de (p.berkes@biologie.hu-berlin.de) Date: Mon, 13 Jun 2005 13:56:28 +0200 (CEST) Subject: Connectionists: ANN: MDP 1.1.0 Message-ID: MDP 1.1.0 --------- http://mdp-toolkit.sourceforge.net/ Modular toolkit for Data Processing (MDP) is a Python library to perform data processing. Already implemented algorithms include: Principal Component Analysis (PCA), Independent Component Analysis (ICA), Slow Feature Analysis (SFA), and Growing Neural Gas (GNG). MDP allows to combine different algorithms and other data processing elements (nodes) into data processing sequences (flows). Moreover, it provides a framework that makes the implementation of new algorithms easy and intuitive. MDP supports the most common numerical extensions to Python, currently Numeric, Numarray, SciPy. When used together with SciPy and the symeig package, MDP gives to the scientific programmer the full power of well-known C and FORTRAN data processing libraries. MDP helps the programmer to exploit Python object oriented design with C and FORTRAN efficiency. MDP has been written for research in neuroscience, but it has been designed to be helpful in any context where trainable data processing algorithms are used. Its simplicity on the user side together with the reusability of the implemented nodes could make it also a valid educational tool. Requirements: * Python >= 2.3 * one of the following Python numerical extensions: Numeric, Numarray, or SciPy. For optimal performance we recommend to use SciPy with LAPACK and ATLAS libraries, and to install the symeig module. (sorry for multiple posting) -- Pietro Berkes Institute for Theoretical Biology Humboldt-Universitaet zu Berlin Invalidenstrasse, 43 D-10115 Berlin, Germany http://itb.biologie.hu-berlin.de/~berkes From jf218 at cam.ac.uk Tue Jun 14 16:31:14 2005 From: jf218 at cam.ac.uk (Dr J. Feng) Date: 14 Jun 2005 21:31:14 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: 12 posts (from lecturer to professor at the Centre for System Biology) Message-ID: Dear All, We have 12 posts open at System Biology Centre, Warwick University. Please see http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/services/personnel/jobsintro/academic/ for details. Computational Neuroscience is one of the two areas (the other is Microbiology) the Centre will focus on. with best regards Jianfeng Professor JF Feng Centre for Scientific Computing and Computer Science Warwick University UK http://www.dcs.warwick.ac.uk/~feng From michael at chaos.gwdg.de Wed Jun 15 19:07:53 2005 From: michael at chaos.gwdg.de (Michael Herrmann) Date: Thu, 16 Jun 2005 01:07:53 +0200 (CEST) Subject: Connectionists: Tutorial course on Computational Neuroscience Message-ID: Applications are invited for a tutorial course on COMPUTATIONAL NEUROSCIENCE at Goettingen, Germany September 20 - 24, 2005 organized by J. M. Herrmann, S. Treue and T. Geisel The course is intended to provide graduate students and young researchers from all parts of neuroscience with working knowledge of theoretical and computational methods in neuroscience and to acquaint them with recent developments in this field. The course includes tutorials and lectures on the following topics: Misha Tsodyks (Rehovot) "Dynamic synaptic transmission in neocortical circuits" Michael Rudolph (Gif-sur-Yvette) "Neuronal dynamics in the active brain" Richard Kempter (Berlin) "Learning, memory, and plasticity in the hippocampus" Florentin Woergoetter (Stirling) "Learning and plasticity in behaving systems" Stefan Treue (Goettingen) "Mechanisms and models of visual attention" The course takes place at the Department of Nonlinear Dynamics of the Max-Planck Institute for Dynamics and Selforganization, Bunsenstr. 10, D-37073 Goettingen. A course fee of 100 Euro includes participation in the tutorials, study materials, and part of the social events. The number of participants is limited to about 30. Course language is English. To apply please fill in the application form at: www.chaos.gwdg.de/~michael/CNS_course_2005/ by July 24, 2005. For further information please contact: cns-course at chaos.gwdg.de ********************************************************************* * Dr. J. Michael Herrmann Georg August University Goettingen * * Tel. : +49 (0)551 5176424 Institute for Nonlinear Dynamics * * Fax : +49 (0)551 5176439 Bunsenstr. 10, D-37073 Goettingen * * EMail: michael at chaos.gwdg.de http://www.chaos.gwdg.de * ********************************************************************* From hitzler at aifb.uni-karlsruhe.de Thu Jun 16 05:59:58 2005 From: hitzler at aifb.uni-karlsruhe.de (Pascal Hitzler) Date: Thu, 16 Jun 2005 11:59:58 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: NeSy'05 at IJCAI-05: Call for Participation Message-ID: <42B14D9E.4060908@aifb.uni-karlsruhe.de> [Apologies for crosspostings] Call for Participation Workshop on Neural-Symbolic Learning and Reasoning (NeSy'05) at IJCAI-05, Edinburgh, Scotland, July 31st, 2005 ------------------------------------------------------------ Artificial Intelligence researchers continue to face huge challenges in their quest to develop truly intelligent systems. The recent developments in the field of neural-symbolic integration bring an opportunity to integrate well-founded symbolic artificial intelligence with robust neural computing machinery to help tackle some of these challenges. The Workshop on Neural-Symbolic Learning and Reasoning is intended to create an atmosphere of exchange of ideas, providing a forum for the presentation and discussion of the key topics related to neural-symbolic integration. Topics of interest include: * The representation of symbolic knowledge by connectionist systems; * Integrated neural-symbolic learning approaches; * Extraction of symbolic knowledge from trained neural networks; * Integrated neural-symbolic reasoning; * Biological inspiration for neural-symbolic integration; * Applications in robotics, semantic web, engineering, bioinformatics, etc. Preliminary Programme --------------------- 9.15 Opening 9.30 - 10.30 Keynote: Ron Sun coffee break 11.00 - 11.15 (position paper) Pascal Hitzler, Sebastian Bader, Artur Garcez: Ontology Learning as a Use-Case for Neural-Symbolic Integration. 11.20 - 11.45 Ernesto Burattini, Edoardo Datteri, Guglielmo Tamburrini: Neuro-symbolic programs for robots. 11.50 - 12.15 Laurent Orseau: The Principle of Presence: A Heuristic for Growing Knowledge Structured Neural Networks. lunch break 13.45 - 14.10 Yuuya Sugita, Jun Tani: Learning Segmentation of Behavior to Situated Combinatorial Semantics. 14.15 - 14.40 Sebastian Bader, Pascal Hitzler, Andras Witzel: Integrating First-Order Logic Programs and Connectionist Systems - A Constructive Approach. 14.45 - 15.00 (position paper) Li Su, Howard Bowman, Brad Wyble: Symbolic Encoding of Neural Networks using Communicating Automata with Applications to Verification of Neural Network Based Controllers. coffee break 15:30 - 15.45 (position paper) Henrik Jacobsson, Tom Ziemke: Rethinking Rule Extraction from Recurrent Neural Networks. 15.50 - 16.15 Jens Lehmann, Sebastian Bader, Pascal Hitzler: Extracting Reduced Logic Programs from Artificial Neural Networks. 16.20 - 17.20 Keynote: Steffen Hlldobler: Logic Programs and Connectionist Systems. 17.30 Closing Workshop Organisers ------------------- Artur d'Avila Garcez (City University London, UK) Jeff Elman (University of California, San Diego, USA) Pascal Hitzler (AIFB, University of Karlsruhe, Germany) Programme Committee ------------------- Artur d'Avila Garcez (City University London, UK) Howard Blair (Syracuse University, USA) Jeff Elman (University of California San Diego, USA) Dov Gabbay (Kings College London, UK) Marco Gori (University of Siena, Italy) Barbara Hammer (University of Osnabrck, Germany) Pascal Hitzler (University Karlsruhe, Germany) Steffen Hlldobler (TU Dresden, Germany) Luis Lamb (Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil) John Lloyd (The Australian National University, Australia) Asim Roy (Arizona State University, USA) Antony K. Seda (University College Cork, Ireland) Jude Shavlik (University of Wisconsin, USA) Rudi Setiono (National University, Singapore) Alessandro Sperduti (University of Padova, Italy) Stefan Wermter (University of Sunderland, UK) Gerson Zaverucha (UFRJ, Brazil) Keynote speakers ---------------- Steffen Hlldobler (TU Dresden, Germany) Ron Sun (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, USA) Additional Information ---------------------- General questions concerning the workshop should be addressed to nesy at soi.city.ac.uk Workshop website: http://www.neural-symbolic.org/NeSy05/ -- Dr. Pascal Hitzler Institute AIFB, University of Karlsruhe, 76128 Karlsruhe email: hitzler at aifb.uni-karlsruhe.de fax: +49 721 608 6580 web: http://www.pascal-hitzler.de phone: +49 721 608 4751 http://www.neural-symbolic.org From sml at essex.ac.uk Thu Jun 16 10:12:20 2005 From: sml at essex.ac.uk (Lucas, Simon M) Date: Thu, 16 Jun 2005 15:12:20 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: Neural network format survey Message-ID: Dear All, I'm conducting a survey to find out more about the formats you use (if any) to publish and exchange neural network instances. The purpose of this, amongst other things, is to help to decide on a format for possible forthcoming neural network (and perhaps other learnable model) design competitions (for example, a possible objective would be to find the best pure neural network Go player). I note that the predicitive model markup language can describe neural networks: http://www.dmg.org/v3-0/NeuralNetwork.html though it's not clear to me whether this is widely used in practice. Please respond to me by email: sml at essex.ac.uk If there are sufficient responses, I'll post a summary to this list in a few weeks time. Best regards, Simon Lucas -------------------------------------------------- Dr. Simon Lucas Department of Computer Science University of Essex Colchester CO4 3SQ United Kingdom Email: sml at essex.ac.uk http://cswww.essex.ac.uk/staff/lucas/lucas.htm -------------------------------------------------- From t.heskes at science.ru.nl Tue Jun 21 04:47:08 2005 From: t.heskes at science.ru.nl (Tom Heskes) Date: Tue, 21 Jun 2005 10:47:08 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: junior researcher Message-ID: <42B7D40C.7070605@science.ru.nl> [with apologies for cross-posting] Marie Curie junior research fellow on Artificial Intelligence at the Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands A junior research position is available at the Institute of Computing and Information Sciences, Radboud University Nijmegen. The junior researcher will work on the Marie Curie project "Artificial Intelligence for Industrial Applications", a collaboration between the bearing manufacturer SKF and ten different research groups throughout Europe. The position is for three years and aims towards a PhD. The fellowship is governed by the format of the Marie Curie Early Stage Training programme, which excludes (in this case) Dutch candidates and prefers residents of the European union and associated countries. Candidates should have a degree in computer science, mathematics, physics, mechanical engineering, artificial intelligence or a related study and have to be fluent in English. For more information, see http://www.cs.ru.nl/~tomh/ai4ia_vacancy.html or contact Tom Heskes at tomh at cs.ru.nl. From emipar at tsc.uc3m.es Wed Jun 22 11:09:29 2005 From: emipar at tsc.uc3m.es (Emilio Parrado-Hernandez) Date: Wed, 22 Jun 2005 17:09:29 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: CFP: JMLR special topic on Machine Learning and Large Scale Optimization Message-ID: <42B97F29.5020806@tsc.uc3m.es> -- ==================================================== Emilio Parrado-Hernandez Visiting Lecturer Department of Signal Processing and Communications, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid Avenida de la Universidad 30, 28911 Leganes, Spain Phone: +34 91 6248738 Fax: +34 91 6248749 ==================================================== -------------- next part -------------- An embedded and charset-unspecified text was scrubbed... Name: cfp_ascii.txt Url: https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/private/connectionists/attachments/20050623/87032c8c/cfp_ascii-0001.txt From mvanross at inf.ed.ac.uk Fri Jun 24 06:36:26 2005 From: mvanross at inf.ed.ac.uk (Mark van Rossum) Date: Fri, 24 Jun 2005 11:36:26 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: Postdoctoral fellowship in Computational Neuroscience Message-ID: <1119609386.5182.68.camel@localhost> Postdoctoral Fellowship in Computational Neuroscience We invite applications for a 5 years EPSRC funded postdoctoral fellowship to work on theoretical and computational models of neural information processing and plasticity in the neocortex. Applicants should have a strong background in mathematics, physics, computer science, or computational neuroscience and have a commitment to a future research career in neuroscience. Prior biological or neuroscience training is not required. The fellowship allows for top class research in a stimulating environment. The project involves a large number of labs in the UK working together to understand cortical computation and its functional circuitry. With regular meetings and collaborations, it brings together cortical modellers and physiologists from the UK and abroad. The Edinburgh component of this work will supervised by David Willshaw and Mark van Rossum of the Institute for Adaptive and Neural Computation, School of Informatics. Edinburgh is one of the leading centres in the UK for Comp Neuroscience. The institute hosts the EPSRC/MRC Doctoral Training Centre in Neuroinformatics. It provides a large, active community in computational neuroscience with strong links with the neuroscience research groups in Edinburgh and the wider area. Edinburgh has been voted as 'best place to live in Britain'. The expected starting data is late summer. The maximal duration is five years. To apply please go to www.jobs.ed.ac.uk, vacancy ref. 3004670, and click on further information for information where to send your application. Inquiries can be addressed to Mark van Rossum, mvanross at inf.ed.ac.uk Weblinks: www.anc.ed.ac.uk, www.anc.ed.ac.uk/neuroinformatics, www.anc.ed.ac.uk/~david/, homepages.inf.ed.ac.uk/mvanross, From wduch at phys.uni.torun.pl Mon Jun 27 14:58:42 2005 From: wduch at phys.uni.torun.pl (Wlodzislaw Duch) Date: Mon, 27 Jun 2005 20:58:42 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: ICANN 2005 "Building A Brain" and other workshops Message-ID: <20050627185841.19F0AA310B@nobel.phys.uni.torun.pl> ICANN 2005 Workshops - calls for papers Full-day workshop will be held at the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Torun on Thursday, Sept. 15th, after the main ICANN'2005 conference. http://www.ibspan.waw.pl/ICANN-2005/ Calls for papers for the Bioinformatics Workshop, Neuroinformatics Workshop and the Biomimetic Workshop are at: http://www.ibspan.waw.pl/ICANN-2005/workshops.html An additional "Building A Brain" Workshop, organized by John G. Taylor (KCL London) and Wlodek Duch (NCU Torun/NTU Singapore), has just been announced. In recent years several projects aiming at a very large scale simulation of brain functions, neocortex, or even the whole brain, have been formulated. They range from detailed models of single cortical columns, through simulation of the whole cortex, to models of the brain based on some specific ideas, such as the Artificial Brain Architecture and Cognitive Control Understanding System (ABACCUS) proposed recently. This workshop aims at discusions of the weak and strong points of these various proposals. Transportation by buses from Warsaw to Torun on Wednesday evening will be arranged. For this extra day we plan to have separate volumes of the Springer Studies in Computational Intelligence focused on a single topic; special issues of journals may also be arranged by workshop organizers. The 25 Euro registartion fee includes transportation, lunch and workshop publication costs. We are looking forward to see you in Torun, a beautiful medieval town in central Poland that is on the UNESCO World Cultural and Natural Heritage list, see: http://www.torun.pl/portal/main/index_en.php Wlodzislaw Duch, general co-chair of the ICANN'2005. Google: Duch From t.heskes at science.ru.nl Wed Jun 29 05:13:40 2005 From: t.heskes at science.ru.nl (Tom Heskes) Date: Wed, 29 Jun 2005 11:13:40 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: two postdoc positions on BCI Message-ID: <42C26644.8050508@science.ru.nl> [with apologies for cross-posting] Two postdoc positions on Brain Computer Interfacing at the Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands Two postdoc positions are available at the Institute of Computing and Information Sciences and F.C. Donders Centre for Cognitive Neuroimaging, both at the Radboud University Nijmegen. The postdocs will work on the STW project "Bayesian brain computer interfacing - interpretation of patient intentions from single-trial EEG". Project leaders are Tom Heskes and Ole Jensen. The positions are for three years ("machine learning") and two years ("source modeling/adaptive filtering"), both with possible extension of another year. The preferred starting date is September 1, 2005. Candidates should have a PhD degree in computer science, mathematics, physics, artificial intelligence, cognitive science or a related study, with a strong background in signal processing/machine learning. For more information, see http://www.cs.ru.nl/~tomh/bci_vacancies.html or contact us at tomh at cs.ru.nl or ole.jensen at fcdonders.ru.nl. From BGabrys at bournemouth.ac.uk Thu Jun 30 11:59:02 2005 From: BGabrys at bournemouth.ac.uk (Bogdan Gabrys) Date: Thu, 30 Jun 2005 16:59:02 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: PhD Studentship: multiple classifier and prediction systems Message-ID: <5DA146E1E559B341A0C85AB49E01F22205F7D3DD@tamar.bournemouth.ac.uk> EPSRC/BT funded Industrial CASE Studentship Computational Intelligence Research Group (CIRG) School of Design, Engineering and Computing, Bournemouth University, United Kingdom Applications are invited for a 3 year PhD research studentship to work on a project entitled "High Performance Fusion Systems" which is jointly funded by EPSRC and British Telecommunications plc (BT) under the EPSRC CASE scheme. The proposed research project will investigate and develop various approaches for highly efficient multiple classifier (prediction) systems composed of actively generated, well performing and decorrelated classifiers (predictors). The emphasis will be put on the automatic avoidance of data overfitting accompanied by complexity and reliability control appropriate for potential industrial applications. Combination, aggregation and fusion of information are major problems for all kinds of knowledge-based systems, from image processing to decision making, from pattern recognition to automatic learning. Various statistical, machine learning and hybrid intelligent techniques will be used for processing and modelling of imperfect data and information. The student will be joining a Computational Intelligence Research Group and will be primarily based in the School of Design, Engineering & Computing in Bournemouth but will also spend up to 3 months in each year of the project duration at the BT research labs in Ipswich. The studentship carries a remuneration of ?12000 pa tax-free and payment of tuition fees at home/EU rate. The successful applicant will need to have a permanent residency status in the UK. Applicants should have a strong mathematical background and hold a first or upper second class honours degree or equivalent in computer science, mathematics, physics, engineering, statistics or a similar discipline. Additionally the candidate should have strong programming experience using any or combination of C, C++, Matlab or Java. Knowledge of ORACLE and/or Access will be an advantage. For further details please contact Prof. Bogdan Gabrys, e-mail: bgabrys at bournemouth.ac.uk. Interested candidates should send a letter of application and a detailed CV with the names and addresses of two referees to: Prof. Bogdan Gabrys, Computational Intelligence Research Group, School of DEC, Bournemouth University, Poole House, Talbot Campus, Poole, BH12 5BB, UK. The applications can be also sent by e-mail. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Prof Bogdan Gabrys Computational Intelligence Research Group School of Design, Engineering & Computing Bournemouth University, Poole House Talbot Campus, Fern Barrow Poole, BH12 5BB United Kingdom Tel: +44 (0)1202 595298 Fax: +44 (0) 1202 595314 E-mail: bgabrys at bournemouth.ac.uk WWW: http://dec.bournemouth.ac.uk/staff/bgabrys/ --------------------------------------------------------------------------- From bower at uthscsa.edu Thu Jun 30 16:27:42 2005 From: bower at uthscsa.edu (Jim Bower) Date: Thu, 30 Jun 2005 15:27:42 -0500 Subject: Connectionists: Postdoctoral Neuroengineering position on Cape Cod Message-ID: Postdoctoral position in neurobiology / engineering in Woods Hole A 4-year DARPA research project, funded annually, to steer the behavior of sharks in the natural environment through stimulation of selected sensory brain areas. Expertise in brain stimulation, multi-electrode recording and neural data analysis most desirable. Interfacing with wireless data transmission and stereotactic electrode positioning. Send applications and inquiries to Jelle Atema, PhD Professor Boston University Marine Program Marine Biological Laboratory Woods Hole, MA 02543 Boston University is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer From schwenk at limsi.fr Thu Jun 30 08:03:40 2005 From: schwenk at limsi.fr (Holger Schwenk) Date: Thu, 30 Jun 2005 14:03:40 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: Machine learning and speech recogniton, PhD and postdoc at LIMSI, Paris Message-ID: <42C3DF9C.4060403@limsi.fr> New learning algorithms for large vocabulary Speech Recognition PhD and postdoc positions at LIMSI-CNRS, Orsay, France The speech processing group at LIMSI-CNRS in Orsay (near Paris) has a long experience in conducting research in all aspects of speech processing. We have developed large vocabulary speech recognizers for broadcast news and conversation speech in several languages (English, French, German, Spanish, Chinese, Arabic, ...). We are currently involved in several national and international projects, in particular the integrated European projects TC-STAR and CHIL. Funding for a 3 year PhD and a 1 year position (renewable) is available. Support for conference travel is provided. We are in particular interested in candidates working on the application of new promising learning algorithms from the general machine learning community to large vocabulary speech recognition. When large amounts of acoustic training data are available (>500h), it seems suboptimal to train the acoustic models directly on all the data. We want to explore alternative ways to take better advantage of the available resources, e.g. adaptive data selection, resampling techniques or mixture models. It is also common to combine several speech recognizers using system combination (rover and consensus network combination). These multiple systems are usually build in an ad-hoc way and it would be better to train explicitly systems that combine well. This could be done by boosting-like methods that construct sequentially classifiers in function of the errors of the preceding ones. Another topic of interest are continuous space language models. We want to investigate different alternative probability estimators and techniques for unsupervised language model adaptation. A large Linux cluster is available to support compute extensive research. The candidate for the PhD position should hold a master in Computer Science, Electric Engineering or equivalent with experience in the following areas: large vocabulary continuous speech recognition, machine learning, neural networks and statistics. Good programming skills in C and working experience on Linux machines is a necessary condition. The candidate for the postdoc position is expected to have an established research record in the same areas. The positions are available immediately. Application should be sent to Holger Schwenk (schwenk at limsi.fr) or Jean-Luc Gauvain (gauvain at limsi.fr) with a detailed CV, list of followed classes (for the PhD position), list of publications (for the postdoc position), and letters of recommendation or name of references.