Connectionists: NIPS 2006 workshop on UserAdaptive Systems

[Theocharous, Georgios]

Call for participation:

 

User Adaptive Systems

NIPS 2006 workshop

Whistler Canada: December 8th, 2006

 

(The deadline for abstract submission is Nov.15, 2006)

 

http://www.ece.mcgill.ca/~shie/UserAdaptiveSystems.html

 

 

 

 

Overview: 

 

Systems that adapt to their users have the potential to

tailor the system behavior to the specific needs and preferences of

their users. The purpose of this workshop is to bring together

researchers from academia and industry to summarize previous work;

evaluate the need for user adaptive systems; and discuss the main

difficulties that arise in designing and implementing such

systems. The workshop will allow people working on different types of

user adaptive systems to exchange ideas and to learn from each other's

experience.

 

The interaction with human users is at the core of many important

systems. Improving this interaction and adapting to the specific user

needs and preferences may result in better computing on several

levels. It can lead to more usable and friendlier interfaces; improved

performance as perceived by the user; adequate prioritization of

tasks; and many others advantages. The range of applications is vast:

health care for the elderly, determining user satisfaction for PCs,

adaptive power management of laptops, improving driving experience,

and better personalization in online shops to name a few.

 

It is our belief that the relevance of machine learning as a field

will be measured by its effect on modern technology. Adapting the

behavior of a system to its user is a need that arises in a diverse

range of applications. The workshop will focus on the methodology of

user adaptive systems; it will explore the current state-of-the-art,

and will offer a place for researchers from academia and industry to

exchange ideas and formulate common goals.

 

 

 

 

Workshop Goals: 

 

User adaptive systems learn and monitor user activity. These systems

take actions based on user activity, explicit feedback, and implicit

feedback signals. The goal of the workshop is to summarize the

state-of-the-art in user adaptive systems. At the end of this workshop

we would like to: 

 

1. Summarize previous work on topics such as user monitoring, activity

   inference and preference elicitations.

 

2. Evaluate the need for such systems.

 

3. Discuss the main difficulties such as learning user activity

   models, computing control policies using the user activity models,

   multi-constraint optimization, evaluating control policies, etc.

 

 

 

 

Schedule: 

 

The morning session will consist of several invited lectures

by prominent researchers in academia and industry. Confirmed speakers

are: 

 

1. Tanzeem Choudhury 

2. Thomas Dietterich 

3. Samuel Kaski

 

The afternoon session will be shared by a panel discussion and by

several short presentations.  We solicit 15-20 minutes presentations

that: 

 

1. Describe a system that uses machine learning techniques to adapt to

   a user.

 

2. Describe a challenging domain involving adaptation to human users.

 

3. Highlight a particular aspect of user adaptive systems that

   warrants further discussion.

 

Please send a one page description of your presentation to

shie.mannor AT mcgill.ca by November 15.

 

 

 

 

Organizers:

 

Shie Mannor (McGill University)

Georgios Theocharous (Intel)