From zhangj.ntu at gmail.com Mon Apr 1 11:12:39 2013 From: zhangj.ntu at gmail.com (Jie Zhang) Date: Mon, 1 Apr 2013 23:12:39 +0800 Subject: Connectionists: Research fellow position in the area of Machine Learning and Transfer Learning Message-ID: Research Fellow position is available for 2-3 years at the School of Computer Engineering (http://www.ntu.edu.sg/SCE) and Nanyang Business School (http://www.nbs.ntu.edu.sg), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, starting in early 2013. You will be conducting research in the area of machine learning. Specifically, you will be designing effective classification and transfer learning methods, and applying them to real-world problems such as detection of frauds in firms. The salary is highly competitive. Requirements include: (1) PhD degree in CS or a related discipline; (2) Sufficient experience in machine learning related research, and experience in transfer learning is an asset; (3) Excellent English writing skills. If interested, please send a detailed CV to: zhangj AT ntu.edu.sg -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hugo.larochelle at usherbrooke.ca Mon Apr 1 16:07:30 2013 From: hugo.larochelle at usherbrooke.ca (Hugo Larochelle) Date: Mon, 1 Apr 2013 16:07:30 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: 2nd CfP: ACL-Workshop on Continuous Vector Space Models and their Compositionality (CVSC) Message-ID: <2B96D82F-7527-4DB5-8656-BF3E69B0D28D@usherbrooke.ca> *********************************************************************************************** One day Workshop on Continuous Vector Space Models and their Compositionality (CVSC) Co-located with ACL 2013, Sofia, Bulgaria August 9, 2013 Submission deadline: April 26, 2013. https://sites.google.com/site/cvscworkshop/ *********************************************************************************************** Second Call for Papers (Apologies for multiple postings) In recent years, there has been a growing interest in algorithms that learn and use continuous representations for words, phrases, or documents in many natural language processing applications. Among many others, two influential proposals illustrate this trend: latent Dirichlet allocation and neural network based language models. These approaches are motivated by improving the generalization power of the discrete standard models, by dealing with the data sparsity issue and by efficiently handling a wide context. Despite the success of single word vector space models, they are limited since they do not capture compositionality. This prevents them from gaining a deeper understanding of the semantics of longer phrases or sentences. Another different trend of research on continuous vector space models belongs to the family of spectral methods. The motivation in that context is that working in a continuous space allows for the design of algorithms that are not plagued with the local minima issues that discrete latent space models tend to suffer from. In this workshop, we invite submissions of papers on continuous vector space models for natural language processing. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to: * learning algorithms for continuous vector space models, * their compositionality, * their use in NLP applications, * spectral learning for NLP, * neural networks for NLP, * latent Dirichlet allocation and other continuous representations of documents * tensor models * distributed semantic representations INVITED SPEAKERS There will be two invited speakers Mirella Lapata and Xavier Carreras, and a panel discussion lead by Chris Manning. SUBMISSION INFORMATION Authors should submit a full paper of up to 8 pages in electronic, PDF format, with up to 2 additional pages for references. The reported research should be substantially original. The papers will be presented orally or as posters. All submissions must be in PDF format and must follow the ACL 2013 formatting requirements (available at the ACL 2013 website). We strongly advise the use of the provided LaTeX template files. Reviewing will be double-blind, and thus no author information should be included in the papers; self-reference should be avoided as well. Submissions must be made through the Softconf website set up for this workshop: https://www.softconf.com/acl2013/CVSC2013/ Accepted papers will appear in the workshop proceedings, where no distinction will be made between papers presented orally or as posters. IMPORTANT DATES 26 April 2013 : Submission deadline 24 May 2013 : Notification of acceptance 7 June 2013 : Camera-ready deadline 9 August 2013 : Workshop PROGRAM COMMITTEE Yoshua Bengio (Universit? de Montr?al, Canada) Antoine Bordes (Universit? Technologique de Compi?gne, France) L?on Bottou (Microsoft Research, USA) Xavier Carreras (Universitat Polit?cnica de Catalunya, Spain) Shay Cohen (Columbia University, USA) Michael Collins (Columbia University, USA) Ronan Collobert (IDIAP Research Institute, Switzerland) Kevin Duh (University of Washington, USA) Dean Foster (University of Pennsylvania, USA) Mirella Lapata (University of Edinburgh, UK) Percy Liang (Stanford University, USA) Andriy Mnih (Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit, England) John Platt (Microsoft Research, USA) Holger Schwenk (Universit? du Maine, France) Jason Weston (Google, USA) Guillaume Wisniewski (LIMSI-CNRS/Universit? Paris-Sud, France) WORKSHOP ORGANIZERS Alexandre Allauzen (LIMSI-CNRS/Universit? Paris-Sud, France) Hugo Larochelle (Universit? de Sherbrooke, Canada ) Chris Manning (Stanford University, USA) Richard Socher (Stanford University, USA ) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kirsch at bcf.uni-freiburg.de Mon Apr 1 16:19:35 2013 From: kirsch at bcf.uni-freiburg.de (Janina Kirsch) Date: Mon, 1 Apr 2013 22:19:35 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: Two Postdoc-Positions at the Bernstein Center Freiburg - Computational Neuroscience & Neurotechnology Message-ID: <02f601ce2f16$3af53ee0$b0dfbca0$@bcf.uni-freiburg.de> We are inviting applications for two Postdoctoral positions (one each in computational and experimental neuroscience) at the Bernstein Center Freiburg, University of Freiburg, Germany for research on - Models of neuronal dynamics in brain diseases, and - Interaction of neuronal populations in epilepsy and dystonia within the new "Trinational Initiative on Brain Diseases" aimed at strengthening the research of neurological diseases from the perspective of theoretical neuroscience. This initiative brings together theoretical and experimental neuroscientists from Freiburg, Strasbourg (France) and Basel (Switzerland) to investigate the neuronal networks involved in brain diseases. [more info.: http://www.bcf.uni-freiburg.de/news/publications/20130220-tiger/] The main goal of these projects is to understand neural mechanisms that lead to disease related aberrant neuronal activity dynamics. To this end we combine computational models biological neuronal networks and experimental measure of neuronal activity dynamics in animal models. For the computational neuroscience post-doc position we invite applications from candidates with a PhD degree in Mathematics, Physics and electrical engineering or computational neuroscience. For the experimental neuroscience post-doc position we invite applications from candidates with a PhD degree in neuroscience and preferably with an experience in in vivo extracellular electrophysiology. The two post-doctoral fellows will work in close collaboration. The postdoctoral researcher will be part of the research groups of Prof. Ulrich Egert and Dr. Arvind Kumar and will work in the Bernstein Center Freiburg/Institute of Microsystems Technik (IMTEK) and will participate in the postdoc program of the BCF. [ http://www.bcf.uni-freiburg.de/teaching-and-training/postdoc-program] The post-doc salary will be according to TV-L E-13 - the standard German pay-scale for postdoc positions. Application: 1. Please send your CV, a two page description of your current research, scientific interests and goals by April 30, 2013 to the following address: postdoc.program at bcf.uni-freiburg.de 2. Furthermore, please download our reference report form forward it to at least 2 referees and ask them to provide their letter of recommendation on this form. http://material.bcf.uni-freiburg.de/tmp/Reference-report-form_BCF.doc ------ The Bernstein Center Freiburg is an interdisciplinary research facility comprising of young researchers from mathematics, physics, electrical engineering and biology. The research at the BCF ranges from mathematical-theoretical approaches on the function and dynamics of neuronal networks over neuroanatomy and experimentally driven neurophysiology up to the development of technologies for medical application. For more info: http://www.bcf.uni-freiburg.de/ http://www.bcf.uni-freiburg.de/teaching-and-training/postdoc-program Contact: Prof. Dr. Ulrich Egert and Bernstein Center Freiburg Institute of Microsystems Technology, University of Freiburg, Germany ulrich.egert at imtek.uni-freiburg.de Dr. Arvind Kumar Bernstein Center Freiburg Faculty of Biology University of Freiburg, Germany arvind.kumar at biologie.uni-freiburg.de -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jeffclune at uwyo.edu Mon Apr 1 17:07:48 2013 From: jeffclune at uwyo.edu (Jeff Clune) Date: Mon, 1 Apr 2013 15:07:48 -0600 Subject: Connectionists: New paper on why modules evolve, and how to evolve modular neural networks In-Reply-To: <88928e4b65904f81adb251bc80f76e2b@ponyexpress-ht5.uwyo.edu> References: <70D7BAED-6D38-4506-BE10-F1A463AC74BA@uwyo.edu> <73054C4A-084D-40A9-B33A-15E2A38D53A8@uwyo.edu> <88928e4b65904f81adb251bc80f76e2b@ponyexpress-ht5.uwyo.edu> Message-ID: Dear John Weng, Our paper on the evolutionary origins of modularity focuses on modularity in biological networks in general, not just neural networks. The dynamics you describe are not relevant to all biological networks (e.g. metabolic networks, genetic regulatory networks, protein-protein interaction networks, etc.). However, we are particularly interested in the evolution of neural modularity, and neural networks have more obvious connection costs than many biological networks, so we do think our paper sheds light on the origins of neural modularity as well. On that front, while I of course agree that each connection in a complex neural wiring diagrams is not genetically specified, genes ultimately encode the rules that govern neural development. Evolution may thus favor modularity via selection for certain types of developmental programs (e.g. those that tend to produce fewer, shorter connections). Just because development plays a substantial role does not mean that genes do not as well. One can easily imagine selection for developmental programs that lead to fully connected neural networks, but that did not occur in nature. A major force that prevented that from happening is likely the many different costs that would be incurred for all those connections (including the cranial space to house them). Our work suggests that minimizing connection costs leads to modularity; that minimization could be accomplished via genetically-encoded developmental rules. I think our results are thus complementary with work investigating how neural development is biased towards creating modular connectivity patterns, and may even suggest a reason why there was selection for such developmental biases in the first place. Best regards, Jeff Clune Assistant Professor Computer Science University of Wyoming jeffclune at uwyo.edu jeffclune.com On Mar 30, 2013, at 1:21 PM, Juyang Weng wrote: > Dear Jeff Clune: > > Thank you for pointing to the URL. I quote some statements below in two paragraphs. Although I agree that the genome has made a "best guess" when a zygote forms, it is simple-minded to attribute the modularity of the brain, even at the birth time, primarily to "evolution of modularity" as you put it. In other words, unlike the zygote, the brain of a new born is no longer simply the "best guess" of the genome. The body of the new born has played a fundamental role in the formation of the modularity inside the newborn's brain. Namely, the "emergence" or development, is the key process for brain's modularity in the newborn and of course also in the later life. > If you have a chance to read our computational model of the DEVELOPMENT of a brain-inspired network DN, at least computationally DN does not need to attribute its emergence of modularity to anything other than a set of cell mechanisms. This is because of the cell-centered role of the genes, known as genomic equivalence. For example, each cell grows and connects according to signals from other cells in its neighborhood (not primarily genes!). Many biological experiments have shown how autonomous cells (whose properties are > to some degree genome specified) communicate to migrate, differentiate, form tissues (e.g., cortex), and connect. In our DN model, such cell behaviors give rise to surprising brain-like capabilities when sensory and motor signals are present. > By attention to "emergence" in the paragraphs I quoted below. > -John > "The existence of modules is recognized at all levels of the biological hierarchy. In order to understand what modules are, why and how they emerge and how they change, it would be necessary to start a joint effort by researchers in different disciplines (evolutionary and developmental biology, comparative anatomy, physiology, neuro- and cognitive science). This is made difficult by disciplinary specialization. [...] we claim that, because of the strong similarities in the intellectual agenda of artificial life and evolutionary biology and of their common grounding in Darwinian evolutionary theory, a close interaction between the two fields could easily take place. Moreover, by considering that artificial neural networks draw an inspiration from neuro- and cognitive science, an artificial life approach to the problem could theoretically enlarge the field of investigation." (Calabretta et al., 1998) > > A general definition of modularity and nonmodularity in neural networks can be the following: ?modular systems can be defined as systems made up of structurally and/or functionally distinct parts. While non-modular systems are internally homogeneous, modular systems are segmented into modules, i.e., portions of a system having a structure and/or function different from the structure or function of other portions of the system. [...] In a nonmodular architecture one and the same connection weight may be involved in two or more tasks. In a modular architecture each weight is always involved in a single task: Modules are sets of ?proprietary? connections that are only used to accomplish a single task.? (Calabretta & Parisi, 2005, Fig. 14.4; see also Calabretta et al., 2003). > > On 3/29/13 8:30 PM, Jeff Clune wrote: >> Hello Christos, >> >> Rafael Calabretta keeps a list of papers on the subject of the evolution of modularity. >> >> http://gral.ip.rm.cnr.it/rcalabretta/modularity.html >> >> I like your idea of a wiki too. It could be a great resource for the field. We could even start fleshing out this page, which is currently nearly empty: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modularity_(biology) >> >> PS. Thanks to everyone who has participated in the discussion of our paper The Evolutionary Origins of Modularity. Some of the papers that have been mentioned we reference in our paper, and others are new to us. We have enjoyed learning about the various different studies and opinions on this subject, and look forward to more great work to come. >> >> >> Best regards, >> Jeff Clune >> >> Assistant Professor >> Computer Science >> University of Wyoming >> jeffclune at uwyo.edu >> jeffclune.com >> >> On Mar 29, 2013, at 3:31 PM, Christos Dimitrakakis wrote: >> >>> Dear all, >>> >>> Is there no survey or taxonomy that discusses this line of work in one >>> place? >>> If not, I have a suggestion. Why not start up a wiki to begin with? That >>> would also be of tremendous aid to any newcomers. >>> >>> Best, >>> Christos >>> >>> -- >>> Dr. Christos Dimitrakakis >>> http://lia.epfl.ch/People/dimitrak/ >>> >> > > -- > -- > Juyang (John) Weng, Professor > Department of Computer Science and Engineering > MSU Cognitive Science Program and MSU Neuroscience Program > 428 S Shaw Ln Rm 3115 > Michigan State University > East Lansing, MI 48824 USA > Tel: 517-353-4388 > Fax: 517-432-1061 > Email: weng at cse.msu.edu > URL: http://www.cse.msu.edu/~weng/ > ---------------------------------------------- > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From weng at cse.msu.edu Mon Apr 1 18:57:02 2013 From: weng at cse.msu.edu (Juyang Weng) Date: Mon, 01 Apr 2013 18:57:02 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: New paper on why modules evolve, and how to evolve modular neural networks In-Reply-To: References: <70D7BAED-6D38-4506-BE10-F1A463AC74BA@uwyo.edu> <73054C4A-084D-40A9-B33A-15E2A38D53A8@uwyo.edu> <88928e4b65904f81adb251bc80f76e2b@ponyexpress-ht5.uwyo.edu> Message-ID: <515A10BE.3040409@cse.msu.edu> Dear Jeff Clune: Thank you for your email. Since this subject seems to be interesting to many people on this list, I take the liberty of giving the list a CC. Those who do not like to read can simply delete. Many people told me that they like this type of discussion, in addition to many announcements. The definition of modularity you quoted (from Calabretta & Parisi , 2005) is "In a modular architecture each weight is always involved in a single task: Modules are sets of ?proprietary? connections that are only used to accomplish a single task.? The above seems to be grossly wrong according to known biological mechanisms of a cell. It is well known that each area (e.g., each Bodmann area in the brain) and any set of connections in the brain are ALL involved in many many tasks. Why? I give an intuitive explanation. (a) Every receptor in the retina (or every pixel in a camera) is involved in many many tasks. E.g., it can be the projection of a part of a human face now, but next it is the projection of a part of a bush. (b) Every muscle (effector) in the body is involved in many many tasks. For example, consider a motor neuron that drives a muscle in your upper left arm. Then this neuron is involved in many many tasks that the left arm performs (e.g., dancing, working, fighting, exercising). (c) Since every neurons inside the brain serves for the connections among receptors and effectors (according to the DN theory) among other services (e.g., neuromodulation), the above two reasons have determined that there exists no neuron in the brain, or any set of neurons in the brain, that is "only used to accomplish a single task". In other words, the well-accepted theory of modularity, at least as defined above, is fundamentally wrong. The main reason for this mistake seems to be a lack of computational understanding of biological cell mechanisms and how individual and autonomous cells communicate with one another. This process of autonomous communications seems to be sufficient to give rise to impressive array of brain functions. This rise is in the absence of any "central controller". The automata theory in computer science has been used to explain how, although the DN theory is very different from the traditional symbolic automata theory. -John On 4/1/13 5:07 PM, Jeff Clune wrote: > Dear John Weng, > > Our paper on the evolutionary origins of modularity focuses on > modularity in biological networks in general, not just neural > networks. The dynamics you describe are not relevant to all biological > networks (e.g. metabolic networks, genetic regulatory networks, > protein-protein interaction networks, etc.). However, we are > particularly interested in the evolution of neural modularity, and > neural networks have more obvious connection costs than many > biological networks, so we do think our paper sheds light on the > origins of neural modularity as well. > > On that front, while I of course agree that each connection in a > complex neural wiring diagrams is not genetically specified, genes > ultimately encode the rules that govern neural development. Evolution > may thus favor modularity via selection for certain types of > developmental programs (e.g. those that tend to produce fewer, shorter > connections). Just because development plays a substantial role does > not mean that genes do not as well. One can easily imagine selection > for developmental programs that lead to fully connected neural > networks, but that did not occur in nature. A major force > that prevented that from happening is likely the many different costs > that would be incurred for all those connections (including the > cranial space to house them). Our work suggests that minimizing > connection costs leads to modularity; that minimization could be > accomplished via genetically-encoded developmental rules. > > I think our results are thus complementary with work investigating how > neural development is biased towards creating modular connectivity > patterns, and may even suggest a reason why there was selection for > such developmental biases in the first place. > > > Best regards, > *Jeff Clune* > > Assistant Professor > Computer Science > University of Wyoming > jeffclune at uwyo.edu > jeffclune.com > > On Mar 30, 2013, at 1:21 PM, Juyang Weng > wrote: > >> Dear Jeff Clune: >> >> Thank you for pointing to the URL. I quote some statements below in >> two paragraphs. Although I agree that the genome has made a "best >> guess" when a zygote forms, it is simple-minded to attribute the >> modularity of the brain, even at the birth time, primarily to >> "evolution of modularity" as you put it. In other words, unlike the >> zygote, the brain of a new born is no longer simply the "best guess" >> of the genome. The body of the new born has played a fundamental >> role in the formation of the modularity inside the newborn's brain. >> Namely, the "emergence" or development, is the key process for >> brain's modularity in the newborn and of course also in the later life. >> >> If you have a chance to read our computational model of the >> DEVELOPMENT of a brain-inspired network DN, at least computationally >> DN does not need to attribute its emergence of modularity to anything >> other than a set of cell mechanisms. This is because of the >> cell-centered role of the genes, known as genomic equivalence. For >> example, each cell grows and connects according to signals from other >> cells in its neighborhood (not primarily genes!). Many biological >> experiments have shown how autonomous cells (whose properties are >> to some degree genome specified) communicate to migrate, >> differentiate, form tissues (e.g., cortex), and connect. In our DN >> model, such cell behaviors give rise to surprising brain-like >> capabilities when sensory and motor signals are present. >> >> By attention to "emergence" in the paragraphs I quoted below. >> >> -John >> >> "The existence of modules is recognized at all levels of the >> biological hierarchy. In order to understand what modules are, why >> and how they emerge and how they change, it would be necessary to >> start a joint effort by researchers in different disciplines >> (evolutionary and developmental biology, comparative anatomy, >> physiology, neuro- and cognitive science). This is made difficult by >> disciplinary specialization. [...] we claim that, because of the >> strong similarities in the intellectual agenda of artificial life and >> evolutionary biology and of their common grounding in Darwinian >> evolutionary theory, a close interaction between the two fields could >> easily take place. Moreover, by considering that artificial neural >> networks draw an inspiration from neuro- and cognitive science, an >> artificial life approach to the problem could theoretically enlarge >> the field of investigation." (Calabretta /et al./, 1998 >> ) >> >> *A general definition of modularity and nonmodularity in neural >> networks can be the following*: ?modular systems can be defined as >> systems made up of structurally and/or functionally distinct parts. >> While non-modular systems are internally homogeneous, modular systems >> are segmented into modules, i.e., portions of a system having a >> structure and/or function different from the structure or function of >> other portions of the system. [...] In a /nonmodular/ architecture >> one and the same connection weight may be involved in two or more >> tasks. In a /modular/ architecture each weight is always involved in >> a single task: /Modules are sets of ?proprietary? connections that >> are only used to accomplish a single task./? (Calabretta & Parisi >> , 2005, >> Fig. 14.4; see also Calabretta /et al./, 2003 >> ). >> >> On 3/29/13 8:30 PM, Jeff Clune wrote: >>> Hello Christos, >>> >>> Rafael Calabretta keeps a list of papers on the subject of the >>> evolution of modularity. >>> >>> http://gral.ip.rm.cnr.it/rcalabretta/modularity.html >>> >>> I like your idea of a wiki too. It could be a great resource for the >>> field. We could even start fleshing out this page, which is >>> currently nearly empty: >>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modularity_(biology) >>> >>> >>> PS. Thanks to everyone who has participated in the discussion of our >>> paper The Evolutionary Origins of Modularity. Some of the papers >>> that have been mentioned we reference in our paper, and others are >>> new to us. We have enjoyed learning about the various different >>> studies and opinions on this subject, and look forward to more great >>> work to come. >>> >>> >>> Best regards, >>> *Jeff Clune* >>> >>> Assistant Professor >>> Computer Science >>> University of Wyoming >>> jeffclune at uwyo.edu >>> jeffclune.com >>> >>> On Mar 29, 2013, at 3:31 PM, Christos Dimitrakakis >>> >> > wrote: >>> >>>> Dear all, >>>> >>>> Is there no survey or taxonomy that discusses this line of work in one >>>> place? >>>> If not, I have a suggestion. Why not start up a wiki to begin with? >>>> That >>>> would also be of tremendous aid to any newcomers. >>>> >>>> Best, >>>> Christos >>>> >>>> -- >>>> Dr. Christos Dimitrakakis >>>> http://lia.epfl.ch/People/dimitrak/ >>>> >>> >> >> -- >> -- >> Juyang (John) Weng, Professor >> Department of Computer Science and Engineering >> MSU Cognitive Science Program and MSU Neuroscience Program >> 428 S Shaw Ln Rm 3115 >> Michigan State University >> East Lansing, MI 48824 USA >> Tel: 517-353-4388 >> Fax: 517-432-1061 >> Email:weng at cse.msu.edu >> URL:http://www.cse.msu.edu/~weng/ >> ---------------------------------------------- >> > -- -- Juyang (John) Weng, Professor Department of Computer Science and Engineering MSU Cognitive Science Program and MSU Neuroscience Program 428 S Shaw Ln Rm 3115 Michigan State University East Lansing, MI 48824 USA Tel: 517-353-4388 Fax: 517-432-1061 Email: weng at cse.msu.edu URL: http://www.cse.msu.edu/~weng/ ---------------------------------------------- -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jeffclune at uwyo.edu Mon Apr 1 22:00:25 2013 From: jeffclune at uwyo.edu (Jeff Clune) Date: Mon, 1 Apr 2013 20:00:25 -0600 Subject: Connectionists: New paper on why modules evolve, and how to evolve modular neural networks In-Reply-To: References: <70D7BAED-6D38-4506-BE10-F1A463AC74BA@uwyo.edu> <73054C4A-084D-40A9-B33A-15E2A38D53A8@uwyo.edu> <88928e4b65904f81adb251bc80f76e2b@ponyexpress-ht5.uwyo.edu> Message-ID: <0979A2E9-A48E-4FB9-A03E-2632974F4FEE@uwyo.edu> Dear John Weng, The modularity definition you quote is not our definition of modularity. I'm not sure why you think it is, as ours is quite different and we do not cite Calabretta & Parisi, 2005. Please read our paper to understand the notion of modularity we cite, describe, and investigate. Here is the PDF: http://jeffclune.com/publications/2013-CluneEtAl-EvolutionaryOriginsModularity-RoyalSociety.pdf A relevant snippet from the first paragraph: "Networks are modular if they contain highly connected clusters of nodes that are sparsely connected to nodes in other clusters [4,8,9]." 4. Wagner GP, Pavlicev M, Cheverud JM. 2007 The road to modularity. Nat. Rev. Genet. 8, 921 ? 931. (doi:10.1038/nrg2267) 8. Lipson H, 2007 Principles of modularity, regularity, and hierarchy for scalable systems. J. Biol. Phys. Chem. 7, 125 ? 128. 9. Striedter G. 2005 Principles of brain evolution. Sunderland, MA: Sinauer Associates. Best regards, Jeff Clune Assistant Professor Computer Science University of Wyoming jeffclune at uwyo.edu jeffclune.com On Apr 1, 2013, at 4:57 PM, Juyang Weng wrote: > Dear Jeff Clune: > > Thank you for your email. Since this subject seems to be interesting to many people on this list, I take the liberty of giving the list a CC. Those who do not like to read can simply delete. Many people told me that they like this type of discussion, in addition to many announcements. > > The definition of modularity you quoted (from Calabretta & Parisi, 2005) is > "In a modular architecture each weight is always involved in a single task: Modules are sets of ?proprietary? connections that are only used to accomplish a single task.? > > The above seems to be grossly wrong according to known biological mechanisms of a cell. It is well known that each area (e.g., each Bodmann area in the brain) and any set of connections in the brain are ALL involved in many many tasks. > > Why? I give an intuitive explanation. > > (a) Every receptor in the retina (or every pixel in a camera) is involved in many many tasks. E.g., it can > be the projection of a part of a human face now, but next it is the projection of a part of a bush. > > (b) Every muscle (effector) in the body is involved in many many tasks. For example, consider a motor neuron that drives a muscle in your upper left arm. Then this neuron is involved in many many tasks that the left arm performs (e.g., dancing, working, fighting, exercising). > > (c) Since every neurons inside the brain serves for the connections among receptors and effectors (according to the DN theory) among other services (e.g., neuromodulation), the above two reasons have determined that there exists no neuron in the brain, or any set of neurons in the brain, that is "only used to accomplish a single task". > > In other words, the well-accepted theory of modularity, at least as defined above, is fundamentally wrong. The main reason for this mistake seems to be a lack of computational understanding of biological cell mechanisms and how individual and autonomous cells communicate with one another. This process of autonomous communications seems to be sufficient to give rise to impressive array of brain functions. > This rise is in the absence of any "central controller". The automata theory in computer science has been used to explain how, although the DN theory is very different from the traditional symbolic automata theory. > > -John > > On 4/1/13 5:07 PM, Jeff Clune wrote: >> Dear John Weng, >> >> Our paper on the evolutionary origins of modularity focuses on modularity in biological networks in general, not just neural networks. The dynamics you describe are not relevant to all biological networks (e.g. metabolic networks, genetic regulatory networks, protein-protein interaction networks, etc.). However, we are particularly interested in the evolution of neural modularity, and neural networks have more obvious connection costs than many biological networks, so we do think our paper sheds light on the origins of neural modularity as well. >> >> On that front, while I of course agree that each connection in a complex neural wiring diagrams is not genetically specified, genes ultimately encode the rules that govern neural development. Evolution may thus favor modularity via selection for certain types of developmental programs (e.g. those that tend to produce fewer, shorter connections). Just because development plays a substantial role does not mean that genes do not as well. One can easily imagine selection for developmental programs that lead to fully connected neural networks, but that did not occur in nature. A major force that prevented that from happening is likely the many different costs that would be incurred for all those connections (including the cranial space to house them). Our work suggests that minimizing connection costs leads to modularity; that minimization could be accomplished via genetically-encoded developmental rules. >> >> I think our results are thus complementary with work investigating how neural development is biased towards creating modular connectivity patterns, and may even suggest a reason why there was selection for such developmental biases in the first place. >> >> >> Best regards, >> Jeff Clune >> >> Assistant Professor >> Computer Science >> University of Wyoming >> jeffclune at uwyo.edu >> jeffclune.com >> >> On Mar 30, 2013, at 1:21 PM, Juyang Weng wrote: >> >>> Dear Jeff Clune: >>> >>> Thank you for pointing to the URL. I quote some statements below in two paragraphs. Although I agree that the genome has made a "best guess" when a zygote forms, it is simple-minded to attribute the modularity of the brain, even at the birth time, primarily to "evolution of modularity" as you put it. In other words, unlike the zygote, the brain of a new born is no longer simply the "best guess" of the genome. The body of the new born has played a fundamental role in the formation of the modularity inside the newborn's brain. Namely, the "emergence" or development, is the key process for brain's modularity in the newborn and of course also in the later life. >>> If you have a chance to read our computational model of the DEVELOPMENT of a brain-inspired network DN, at least computationally DN does not need to attribute its emergence of modularity to anything other than a set of cell mechanisms. This is because of the cell-centered role of the genes, known as genomic equivalence. For example, each cell grows and connects according to signals from other cells in its neighborhood (not primarily genes!). Many biological experiments have shown how autonomous cells (whose properties are >>> to some degree genome specified) communicate to migrate, differentiate, form tissues (e.g., cortex), and connect. In our DN model, such cell behaviors give rise to surprising brain-like capabilities when sensory and motor signals are present. >>> By attention to "emergence" in the paragraphs I quoted below. >>> -John >>> "The existence of modules is recognized at all levels of the biological hierarchy. In order to understand what modules are, why and how they emerge and how they change, it would be necessary to start a joint effort by researchers in different disciplines (evolutionary and developmental biology, comparative anatomy, physiology, neuro- and cognitive science). This is made difficult by disciplinary specialization. [...] we claim that, because of the strong similarities in the intellectual agenda of artificial life and evolutionary biology and of their common grounding in Darwinian evolutionary theory, a close interaction between the two fields could easily take place. Moreover, by considering that artificial neural networks draw an inspiration from neuro- and cognitive science, an artificial life approach to the problem could theoretically enlarge the field of investigation." (Calabretta et al., 1998) >>> >>> A general definition of modularity and nonmodularity in neural networks can be the following: ?modular systems can be defined as systems made up of structurally and/or functionally distinct parts. While non-modular systems are internally homogeneous, modular systems are segmented into modules, i.e., portions of a system having a structure and/or function different from the structure or function of other portions of the system. [...] In a nonmodular architecture one and the same connection weight may be involved in two or more tasks. In a modular architecture each weight is always involved in a single task: Modules are sets of ?proprietary? connections that are only used to accomplish a single task.? (Calabretta & Parisi, 2005, Fig. 14.4; see also Calabretta et al., 2003). >>> >>> On 3/29/13 8:30 PM, Jeff Clune wrote: >>>> Hello Christos, >>>> >>>> Rafael Calabretta keeps a list of papers on the subject of the evolution of modularity. >>>> >>>> http://gral.ip.rm.cnr.it/rcalabretta/modularity.html >>>> >>>> I like your idea of a wiki too. It could be a great resource for the field. We could even start fleshing out this page, which is currently nearly empty: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modularity_(biology) >>>> >>>> PS. Thanks to everyone who has participated in the discussion of our paper The Evolutionary Origins of Modularity. Some of the papers that have been mentioned we reference in our paper, and others are new to us. We have enjoyed learning about the various different studies and opinions on this subject, and look forward to more great work to come. >>>> >>>> >>>> Best regards, >>>> Jeff Clune >>>> >>>> Assistant Professor >>>> Computer Science >>>> University of Wyoming >>>> jeffclune at uwyo.edu >>>> jeffclune.com >>>> >>>> On Mar 29, 2013, at 3:31 PM, Christos Dimitrakakis wrote: >>>> >>>>> Dear all, >>>>> >>>>> Is there no survey or taxonomy that discusses this line of work in one >>>>> place? >>>>> If not, I have a suggestion. Why not start up a wiki to begin with? That >>>>> would also be of tremendous aid to any newcomers. >>>>> >>>>> Best, >>>>> Christos >>>>> >>>>> -- >>>>> Dr. Christos Dimitrakakis >>>>> http://lia.epfl.ch/People/dimitrak/ >>>>> >>>> >>> >>> -- >>> -- >>> Juyang (John) Weng, Professor >>> Department of Computer Science and Engineering >>> MSU Cognitive Science Program and MSU Neuroscience Program >>> 428 S Shaw Ln Rm 3115 >>> Michigan State University >>> East Lansing, MI 48824 USA >>> Tel: 517-353-4388 >>> Fax: 517-432-1061 >>> Email: weng at cse.msu.edu >>> URL: http://www.cse.msu.edu/~weng/ >>> ---------------------------------------------- >>> >> > > -- > -- > Juyang (John) Weng, Professor > Department of Computer Science and Engineering > MSU Cognitive Science Program and MSU Neuroscience Program > 428 S Shaw Ln Rm 3115 > Michigan State University > East Lansing, MI 48824 USA > Tel: 517-353-4388 > Fax: 517-432-1061 > Email: weng at cse.msu.edu > URL: http://www.cse.msu.edu/~weng/ > ---------------------------------------------- > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From weng at cse.msu.edu Tue Apr 2 10:42:33 2013 From: weng at cse.msu.edu (Juyang Weng) Date: Tue, 02 Apr 2013 10:42:33 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: New paper on why modules evolve, and how to evolve modular neural networks In-Reply-To: <0979A2E9-A48E-4FB9-A03E-2632974F4FEE@uwyo.edu> References: <70D7BAED-6D38-4506-BE10-F1A463AC74BA@uwyo.edu> <73054C4A-084D-40A9-B33A-15E2A38D53A8@uwyo.edu> <88928e4b65904f81adb251bc80f76e2b@ponyexpress-ht5.uwyo.edu> <0979A2E9-A48E-4FB9-A03E-2632974F4FEE@uwyo.edu> Message-ID: <515AEE59.8010305@cse.msu.edu> > "Networks are modular if they contain highly connected clusters of nodes that are sparsely connected to nodes in other clusters [4,8,9]." Then, it should not be called modularity. Almost all networks have this property, except for some trivial ones. Where are the boundaries of your modules? -John On 4/1/13 10:00 PM, Jeff Clune wrote: > Dear John Weng, > > The modularity definition you quote is not our definition of > modularity. I'm not sure why you think it is, as ours is quite > different and we do not cite Calabretta & Parisi, 2005. Please read > our paper to understand the notion of modularity we cite, describe, > and investigate. > > Here is the PDF: > http://jeffclune.com/publications/2013-CluneEtAl-EvolutionaryOriginsModularity-RoyalSociety.pdf > > A relevant snippet from the first paragraph: "Networks are modular if > they contain highly connected clusters of nodes that are sparsely > connected to nodes in other clusters [4,8,9]." > > 4. Wagner GP, Pavlicev M, Cheverud JM. 2007 The road to > modularity. Nat. Rev. Genet. 8, 921 ? 931. (doi:10.1038/nrg2267) > 8. Lipson H, 2007 Principles of modularity, regularity, and hierarchy > for scalable systems. J. Biol. Phys. Chem. 7, 125 ? 128. > 9. Striedter G. 2005 Principles of brain evolution. Sunderland, MA: > Sinauer Associates. > > > > Best regards, > *Jeff Clune* > > Assistant Professor > Computer Science > University of Wyoming > jeffclune at uwyo.edu > jeffclune.com > > On Apr 1, 2013, at 4:57 PM, Juyang Weng > wrote: > >> Dear Jeff Clune: >> >> Thank you for your email. Since this subject seems to be interesting >> to many people on this list, I take the liberty of giving the list a >> CC. Those who do not like to read can simply delete. Many people >> told me that they like this type of discussion, in addition to many >> announcements. >> >> The definition of modularity you quoted (from Calabretta & Parisi >> , 2005) is >> "In a modular architecture each weight is always involved in a single >> task: Modules are sets of ?proprietary? connections that are only >> used to accomplish a single task.? >> >> The above seems to be grossly wrong according to known biological >> mechanisms of a cell. It is well known that each area (e.g., each >> Bodmann area in the brain) and any set of connections in the brain >> are ALL involved in many many tasks. >> >> Why? I give an intuitive explanation. >> >> (a) Every receptor in the retina (or every pixel in a camera) is >> involved in many many tasks. E.g., it can >> be the projection of a part of a human face now, but next it is the >> projection of a part of a bush. >> >> (b) Every muscle (effector) in the body is involved in many many >> tasks. For example, consider a motor neuron that drives a muscle in >> your upper left arm. Then this neuron is involved in many many tasks >> that the left arm performs (e.g., dancing, working, fighting, >> exercising). >> >> (c) Since every neurons inside the brain serves for the connections >> among receptors and effectors (according to the DN theory) among >> other services (e.g., neuromodulation), the above two reasons have >> determined that there exists no neuron in the brain, or any set of >> neurons in the brain, that is "only used to accomplish a single task". >> >> In other words, the well-accepted theory of modularity, at least as >> defined above, is fundamentally wrong. The main reason for this >> mistake seems to be a lack of computational understanding of >> biological cell mechanisms and how individual and autonomous cells >> communicate with one another. This process of autonomous >> communications seems to be sufficient to give rise to impressive >> array of brain functions. >> This rise is in the absence of any "central controller". The >> automata theory in computer science has been used to explain how, >> although the DN theory is very different from the traditional >> symbolic automata theory. >> >> -John >> >> On 4/1/13 5:07 PM, Jeff Clune wrote: >>> Dear John Weng, >>> >>> Our paper on the evolutionary origins of modularity focuses on >>> modularity in biological networks in general, not just neural >>> networks. The dynamics you describe are not relevant to all >>> biological networks (e.g. metabolic networks, genetic regulatory >>> networks, protein-protein interaction networks, etc.). However, we >>> are particularly interested in the evolution of neural modularity, >>> and neural networks have more obvious connection costs than many >>> biological networks, so we do think our paper sheds light on the >>> origins of neural modularity as well. >>> >>> On that front, while I of course agree that each connection in a >>> complex neural wiring diagrams is not genetically specified, genes >>> ultimately encode the rules that govern neural development. >>> Evolution may thus favor modularity via selection for certain types >>> of developmental programs (e.g. those that tend to produce fewer, >>> shorter connections). Just because development plays a substantial >>> role does not mean that genes do not as well. One can easily imagine >>> selection for developmental programs that lead to fully connected >>> neural networks, but that did not occur in nature. A major force >>> that prevented that from happening is likely the many different >>> costs that would be incurred for all those connections >>> (including the cranial space to house them). Our work suggests that >>> minimizing connection costs leads to modularity; that minimization >>> could be accomplished via genetically-encoded developmental rules. >>> >>> I think our results are thus complementary with work investigating >>> how neural development is biased towards creating modular >>> connectivity patterns, and may even suggest a reason why there was >>> selection for such developmental biases in the first place. >>> >>> >>> Best regards, >>> *Jeff Clune* >>> >>> Assistant Professor >>> Computer Science >>> University of Wyoming >>> jeffclune at uwyo.edu >>> jeffclune.com >>> >>> On Mar 30, 2013, at 1:21 PM, Juyang Weng >> > wrote: >>> >>>> Dear Jeff Clune: >>>> >>>> Thank you for pointing to the URL. I quote some statements below >>>> in two paragraphs. Although I agree that the genome has made a >>>> "best guess" when a zygote forms, it is simple-minded to attribute >>>> the modularity of the brain, even at the birth time, primarily to >>>> "evolution of modularity" as you put it. In other words, unlike the >>>> zygote, the brain of a new born is no longer simply the "best >>>> guess" of the genome. The body of the new born has played a >>>> fundamental role in the formation of the modularity inside the >>>> newborn's brain. Namely, the "emergence" or development, is the >>>> key process for brain's modularity in the newborn and of course >>>> also in the later life. >>>> >>>> If you have a chance to read our computational model of the >>>> DEVELOPMENT of a brain-inspired network DN, at least >>>> computationally DN does not need to attribute its emergence of >>>> modularity to anything other than a set of cell mechanisms. This >>>> is because of the cell-centered role of the genes, known as genomic >>>> equivalence. For example, each cell grows and connects according >>>> to signals from other cells in its neighborhood (not primarily >>>> genes!). Many biological experiments have shown how autonomous >>>> cells (whose properties are >>>> to some degree genome specified) communicate to migrate, >>>> differentiate, form tissues (e.g., cortex), and connect. In our DN >>>> model, such cell behaviors give rise to surprising brain-like >>>> capabilities when sensory and motor signals are present. >>>> >>>> By attention to "emergence" in the paragraphs I quoted below. >>>> >>>> -John >>>> >>>> "The existence of modules is recognized at all levels of the >>>> biological hierarchy. In order to understand what modules are, why >>>> and how they emerge and how they change, it would be necessary to >>>> start a joint effort by researchers in different disciplines >>>> (evolutionary and developmental biology, comparative anatomy, >>>> physiology, neuro- and cognitive science). This is made difficult >>>> by disciplinary specialization. [...] we claim that, because of the >>>> strong similarities in the intellectual agenda of artificial life >>>> and evolutionary biology and of their common grounding in Darwinian >>>> evolutionary theory, a close interaction between the two fields >>>> could easily take place. Moreover, by considering that artificial >>>> neural networks draw an inspiration from neuro- and cognitive >>>> science, an artificial life approach to the problem could >>>> theoretically enlarge the field of investigation." (Calabretta /et >>>> al./, 1998 >>>> ) >>>> >>>> *A general definition of modularity and nonmodularity in neural >>>> networks can be the following*: ?modular systems can be defined as >>>> systems made up of structurally and/or functionally distinct parts. >>>> While non-modular systems are internally homogeneous, modular >>>> systems are segmented into modules, i.e., portions of a system >>>> having a structure and/or function different from the structure or >>>> function of other portions of the system. [...] In a /nonmodular/ >>>> architecture one and the same connection weight may be involved in >>>> two or more tasks. In a /modular/ architecture each weight is >>>> always involved in a single task: /Modules are sets of >>>> ?proprietary? connections that are only used to accomplish a single >>>> task./? (Calabretta & Parisi >>>> , >>>> 2005, Fig. 14.4; see also Calabretta /et al./, 2003 >>>> ). >>>> >>>> On 3/29/13 8:30 PM, Jeff Clune wrote: >>>>> Hello Christos, >>>>> >>>>> Rafael Calabretta keeps a list of papers on the subject of the >>>>> evolution of modularity. >>>>> >>>>> http://gral.ip.rm.cnr.it/rcalabretta/modularity.html >>>>> >>>>> I like your idea of a wiki too. It could be a great resource for >>>>> the field. We could even start fleshing out this page, which is >>>>> currently nearly empty: >>>>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modularity_(biology) >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> PS. Thanks to everyone who has participated in the discussion of >>>>> our paper The Evolutionary Origins of Modularity. Some of the >>>>> papers that have been mentioned we reference in our paper, and >>>>> others are new to us. We have enjoyed learning about the various >>>>> different studies and opinions on this subject, and look forward >>>>> to more great work to come. >>>>> >>>>> >>>>> Best regards, >>>>> *Jeff Clune* >>>>> >>>>> Assistant Professor >>>>> Computer Science >>>>> University of Wyoming >>>>> jeffclune at uwyo.edu >>>>> jeffclune.com >>>>> >>>>> On Mar 29, 2013, at 3:31 PM, Christos Dimitrakakis >>>>> >>>> > wrote: >>>>> >>>>>> Dear all, >>>>>> >>>>>> Is there no survey or taxonomy that discusses this line of work >>>>>> in one >>>>>> place? >>>>>> If not, I have a suggestion. Why not start up a wiki to begin >>>>>> with? That >>>>>> would also be of tremendous aid to any newcomers. >>>>>> >>>>>> Best, >>>>>> Christos >>>>>> >>>>>> -- >>>>>> Dr. Christos Dimitrakakis >>>>>> http://lia.epfl.ch/People/dimitrak/ >>>>>> >>>>> >>>> >>>> -- >>>> -- >>>> Juyang (John) Weng, Professor >>>> Department of Computer Science and Engineering >>>> MSU Cognitive Science Program and MSU Neuroscience Program >>>> 428 S Shaw Ln Rm 3115 >>>> Michigan State University >>>> East Lansing, MI 48824 USA >>>> Tel: 517-353-4388 >>>> Fax: 517-432-1061 >>>> Email:weng at cse.msu.edu >>>> URL:http://www.cse.msu.edu/~weng/ >>>> ---------------------------------------------- >>>> >>> >> >> -- >> -- >> Juyang (John) Weng, Professor >> Department of Computer Science and Engineering >> MSU Cognitive Science Program and MSU Neuroscience Program >> 428 S Shaw Ln Rm 3115 >> Michigan State University >> East Lansing, MI 48824 USA >> Tel: 517-353-4388 >> Fax: 517-432-1061 >> Email:weng at cse.msu.edu >> URL:http://www.cse.msu.edu/~weng/ >> ---------------------------------------------- >> > -- -- Juyang (John) Weng, Professor Department of Computer Science and Engineering MSU Cognitive Science Program and MSU Neuroscience Program 428 S Shaw Ln Rm 3115 Michigan State University East Lansing, MI 48824 USA Tel: 517-353-4388 Fax: 517-432-1061 Email: weng at cse.msu.edu URL: http://www.cse.msu.edu/~weng/ ---------------------------------------------- -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From retienne at jhu.edu Tue Apr 2 10:38:10 2013 From: retienne at jhu.edu (retienne) Date: Tue, 02 Apr 2013 10:38:10 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: Deadline Approaching: Telluride 2013 Call for Participation - April 15th, 2013 Message-ID: <515AED52.5030601@jhu.edu> *------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 2013 Neuromorphic Cognition Engineering Workshop* */Telluride, Colorado, June 30^th - July 20^th , 2013/* *CALL FOR APPLICATIONS: Deadline is April 15th, 2013* NEUROMORPHIC COGNITION ENGINEERING WORKSHOP www.ine-web.org Sunday June 30th- Saturday July 20th, 2013, Telluride, Colorado We invite applications for a three-week summer workshop that will be held in Telluride, Colorado. Sunday June 30th- Saturday July 20th, 2013. The application deadline is *Monday, April 15th* and application instructions are described at the bottom of this document. The 2013 Workshop and Summer School on Neuromorphic Engineering is sponsored by the National Science Foundation, Institute of Neuromorphic Engineering, Qualcomm Corporation, The EU-Collaborative Convergent Science Network (CNS-II), , University of Maryland - College Park, Institute for Neuroinformatics - University and ETH Zurich, Georgia Institute of Technology, Johns Hopkins University, Boston University, University of Western Sydney and the Salk Institute. *Directors:* Cornelia Fermuller, University of Maryland, College Park Ralph Etienne-Cummings, Johns Hopkins University Shih-Chii Liu, Institute of Neuroinformatics, UNI/ETH Zurich Timothy Horiuchi, University of Maryland, College Park *Workshop Advisory Board:* Andreas ANDREOU (The Johns Hopkins University) Andre van SCHAIK (University Western Sydney) Avis COHEN (University of Maryland) Barbara SHINN-CUNNINGHAM (Boston University) Giacomo INDIVERI (Institute of Neuroinformatics, UNI/ETH Zurich, Switzerland) Jonathan TAPSON (University Western Sydney, Australia) Malcolm SLANEY (Microsoft Research) Paul HASLER (Georgia Institute of Technology) Rodney DOUGLAS (Institute of Neuroinformatics, UNI/ETH Zurich, Switzerland) Shihab SHAMMA (University of Maryland) Tobi Delbruck (Institute for Neuroinformatics, Zurich) *Previous year workshop can be found at:* http://ine-web.org/workshops/workshops-overview/index.html and last year's wiki is https://neuromorphs.net . *GOALS:* Neuromorphic engineers design and fabricate artificial neural systems whose organizing principles are based on those of biological nervous systems. Over the past 18 years, this research community has focused on the understanding of low-level sensory processing and systems infrastructure; efforts are now expanding to apply this knowledge and infrastructure to addressing higher-level problems in perception, cognition, and learning. In this 3-week intensive workshop and through the Institute for Neuromorphic Engineering (INE), the mission is to promote interaction between senior and junior researchers; to educate new members of the community; to introduce new enabling fields and applications to the community; to promote on-going collaborative activities emerging from the Workshop, and to promote a self-sustaining research field. *FORMAT:* The three week summer workshop will include background lectures on systems and cognitive neuroscience (in particular sensory processing, learning and memory, motor systems and attention), practical tutorials on emerging hardware design, mobile robots, hands-on projects, and special interest groups. Participants are required to take part and possibly complete at least one of the projects proposed. They are furthermore encouraged to become involved in as many of the other activities proposed as interest and time allow. There will be two lectures in the morning that cover issues that are important to the community in general. Because of the diverse range of backgrounds among the participants, some of these lectures will be tutorials, rather than detailed reports of current research. These lectures will be given by invited speakers. Projects and interest groups meet in the late afternoons, and after dinner. In the early afternoon there will be tutorials on a wide spectrum of topics, including analog VLSI, mobile robotics, vision and auditory systems, central-pattern-generators, selective attention mechanisms, cognitive systems, etc. *2013 TOPIC AREAS:* *1) Human Cognition: Decoding Perceived, Attended, Imagined Acoustic Events and Human-Robot Interfaces* Project Leaders: Shihab Shamma (UM-College Park), Malcolm Slaney (Microsoft), Barbara Shinn-Cunningham (Boston U), Edward Lalor (Trinity College, Dublin) Featuring: Chris Assad (NASA -- JPL) *2) Recognizing Manipulation Actions in Cluttered Environments from Vision and Sound* Project leaders: Cornelia Ferm?ller (UM-College Park), Andreas Andreou (JHU) Featuring: Bert Shi (HKUST, Hong Kong) and Ryad Benosman (UPMC, Paris) * 3) Dendritic Computation in Neurons and Engineered Devices* Project Leaders: Klaus M. Stiefel (UWS, Australia), Jonathan Tapson (UWS, Australia) *4) Universal Neuromorphic Systems and Sensors for Real-Time Mobile Robotics* Project Leaders: Jorg Conradt (TUM, Munich), Francesco Galluppi (U. Manchester, UK), Shih-Chii Liu (INI-ETH, Zurich) and Ralph Etienne-Cummings (JHU) Featuring: Bert Shi (HKUST, Hong Kong) and Ryad Benosman (UPMC, Paris) *5) Emerging Technology and Discussion Group: * *Cognitive Computing with Emerging Nanodevices* Group Leaders: Omid Kavehei (U. Melbourne, Australia), Tara Julia Hamilton (UNSW, Australia) *6) Terry Sejnowski (Salk Institute) -- Computational Neuroscience (invitational mini-workshop)* *LOCATION AND ARRANGEMENTS:* The summer school will take place in the small town of Telluride, 9000 feet high in southwest Colorado, about 6 hours drive away from Denver (350 miles). Great Lakes Aviation and America West Express airlines provide daily flights directly into Telluride. All facilities within the beautifully renovated public school building are fully accessible to participants with disabilities. Participants will be housed in ski condominiums, within walking distance of the school. Participants are expected to share condominiums. The workshop is intended to be very informal and hands-on. Participants are not required to have had previous experience in analog VLSI circuit design, computational or machine vision, systems level neurophysiology or modeling the brain at the systems level. However, we strongly encourage active researchers with relevant backgrounds from academia, industry and national laboratories to apply, in particular if they are prepared to work on specific projects, talk about their own work or bring demonstrations to Telluride (e.g. robots, chips, software). Wireless internet access will be provided. Technical staff present throughout the workshops will assist with software and hardware issues. We will have a network of PCs running LINUX and Microsoft Windows for the workshop projects. We encourage participants to bring along their personal laptop. No cars are required. Given the small size of the town, we recommend that you do not rent a car. Bring hiking boots, warm clothes, rain gear, and a backpack, since Telluride is surrounded by beautiful mountains. Unless otherwise arranged with one of the organizers, we expect participants to stay for the entire duration of this three week workshop. *FINANCIAL ARRANGEMENTS:* Notification of acceptances will be mailed out around the April 30^th , 2013.The Workshop covers all your accommodations and facilities costs for the 3 weeks duration. You are responsible for your own travel to the Workshop, however, sponsored fellowships will be available as described below to further subsidize your cost. Registration Fees:For expenses not covered by federal funds, a Workshop registration fee is required. The fee is $1250 per participant for the 3-week Workshop.This is expected from all participants at the time of acceptance. Accommodations:The cost of a shared condominium, typically a bedroom in a shared condo for senior participants or a shared room for students, will be covered for all academic participants.Upgrades to a private rooms or condos will cost extra. Participants from National Laboratories and Industry are expected to pay for these condominiums. Fellowships:This year we will offer two Fellowships to subsidize your costs: 1)Qualcomm Corporation Fellowship:Three non-corporate participants will have their accommodation and registration fees ($2750) directly covered by Qualcomm, and will be reimbursed for travel costs up to $500. Additional generous funding from Qualcomm will provide $5000 to help organize and stage the Workshop. 2)EU-CSNII Fellowship (http://csnetwork.eu/) which is funded by the 7th Research Framework Program FP7-ICT-CSNII-601167:The top 8 EU applicants will be reimbursed for their registration fees ($1250), subsistence/travel subsidy (up to Euro 2000) and accommodations cost ($1500). The registration and accommodations costs will go directly to the INE (the INE will reimburse the participant's registration fees after receipt from CSNII), while the subsistence/travel reimbursement will be provided directly to the participants by the CSNII at the University of Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain. *HOW TO APPLY:* Applicants should be at the level of graduate students or above (i.e. postdoctoral fellows, faculty, research and engineering staff and the equivalent positions in industry and national laboratories). We actively encourage women and minority candidates to apply. Anyone interested in proposing or discussing specific projects should contact the appropriate topic leaders directly. The application website is (after February 15th, 2013): http://ine-web.org/telluride-conference-2013/apply-info Application information needed: * contact email address * First name, Last name, Affiliation, valid e-mail address. * Curriculum Vitae (a short version, please). * One page summary of background and interests relevant to the workshop, including possible ideas for workshop projects. Please indicate which topic areas you would most likely join. * Two letters of recommendation (uploaded directly by references). Applicants will be notified by e-mail. 15^th February, 2013 - Applications accepted on website 15^th April, 2013 - Applications Due 30^th April, 2013 - Notification of Acceptance -- ------------------------------------------------- Ralph Etienne-Cummings Professor Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering The Johns Hopkins University 105 Barton Hall 3400 N. Charles Street Baltimore, MD 21218 Tel: (410) 516 3494 Fax: (410) 516 2939 Email:retienne at jhu.edu URL:http://etienne.ece.jhu.edu/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pierre-yves.oudeyer at inria.fr Tue Apr 2 05:27:55 2013 From: pierre-yves.oudeyer at inria.fr (Pierre-Yves Oudeyer) Date: Tue, 2 Apr 2013 11:27:55 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: [CFP] IEEE TAMD, Special issue on Human Behaviour Understanding and Developmental Robotics, Deadline 30th April Message-ID: <6392F1D8-D4F7-44E1-A040-F7609983E4B0@inria.fr> IEEE Transactions on Autonomous Mental Development Special Issue on Behavior Understanding and Developmental Robotics Call for Papers We solicit papers that inspect scientific, technological and application challenges that arise from the mutual interaction of developmental robotics and computational human behavior understanding. While some of the existing techniques of multimodal behavior analysis and modeling can be readily re-used for robots, novel scientific and technological challenges arise when one aims to achieve human behavior understanding in the context of natural and life-long human-robot interaction. We seek contributions that deal with the two sides of this problem: 1- Behavior analysis for developmental robotics: Robots need to be capable to learn dynamically and incrementally how to interpret, and thus understand multimodal human behavior. This includes for example learning the meaning of new linguistic constructs used by a human, learning to interpret the emotional state of particular users from para-linguistic or non-verbal behavior, characterizing properties of the interaction or learning to guess the intention, and potentially the structure of goals of a human based on its overt behavior. Furthermore, robots need in particular to be capable of learning new tasks through interaction with humans, for example using imitation learning or learning by demonstration. This heavily involves the capacity for learning how to decode teaching behavior, including linguistic and non-linguistic cues, feedback and guidance provided by humans, as well as inferring reusable primitives in human behavior. 2- Behavior analysis through developmental robotics: Developmental social robots can offer stimulating opportunities for improving scientific understanding of human behavior, and especially to allow a deeper analysis of the semantics and structure of human behavior. Humans tend to interpret the meaning and the structure of other's behaviors in terms of their own action repertoire, which acts as a strong helping prior for this complex inference problem. Since robots are also embodied and have an action repertoire, this can be used leveraged as an experimental and theoretical tool to investigate human behavior, and in particular, the development and change of behavior over time. Topics include the following, among others: Adaptive human-robot interaction Action and language understanding Sensing human behavior Incremental learning of human behavior Learning by demonstration Intrinsic motivation Robotic platforms for behavior analysis Multimodal interaction Human-robot games Semiotics for robots Social and affective signals Imitation Contributions can exemplify diverse approaches to behavior analysis, but the relevance to developmental robotics should be clear and explicitly argumented. In particular, it should involve one of the following: 1) incremental and developmental learning techniques, 2) techniques that allow adapting to changes in human behavior, 3) techniques that study evolution and change in human behavior. Interested parties are encouraged to contact the editors with questions about the suitability of a manuscript. Editors: ? Albert Ali Salah, Bogazi?i University, salah at boun.edu.tr ? Pierre-Yves Oudeyer, INRIA, pierre-yves.oudeyer at inria.fr ? ?etin Meri?li, Carnegie Mellon University, cetin at cmu.edu ? Javier Ruiz-del-Solar, Universidad de Chile, jruizd at ing.uchile.cl Three kinds of submissions are possible: ? Regular papers, up to 15 double column pages, should describe new empirical findings that utilize innovative methodological and/or analytic techniques. ? Correspondence papers, up to 8 double column pages, can focus on a limited set of relevant aspects in depth. ? Survey papers, describing classes of behavior analysis approaches in developmental robotics. Before submitting a survey paper, the authors should contact the guest editors. Instructions for authors: http://cis.ieee.org/ieee-transactions-on-autonomous-mental-development.html We are accepting submissions through Manuscript Central at http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/tamd-ieee (please select ?Human Behavior Understanding? as the submission type) When submitting your manuscript, please also cc it to the editors. Timeline: 30 April 2013: Deadline for paper submission 15 July 2013: Notification of the first round of review results 15 October 2013: Final version 20 October 2013: Electronic publication December 2013: Printed publication -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From wsenn at cns.unibe.ch Tue Apr 2 11:04:23 2013 From: wsenn at cns.unibe.ch (Walter Senn) Date: Tue, 02 Apr 2013 17:04:23 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: Biological Cybernetics: vol 107, number 2 --- Table of Content Message-ID: <515AF377.8040200@cns.unibe.ch> Biological Cybernetics: vol 107, number 2 --- Table of Content Original papers: "Synchronization regulation in a model of coupled neural masses" Zhen Ma, Weidong Zhou, Shujuan Geng, Qi Yuan & Xueli Li http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00422-012-0541-3 "A saliency-based bottom-up visual attention model for dynamic scenes analysis" David F. Ramirez-Moreno, Odelia Schwartz & Juan F. Ramirez-Villegas http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00422-012-0542-2 "Asymmetry in neural fields: a spatiotemporal encoding mechanism" Mauricio Cerda & Bernard Girau http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00422-012-0544-0 "Instantaneous kinematic phase reflects neuromechanical response to lateral perturbations of running cockroaches" Shai Revzen, Samuel A. Burden, Talia Y. Moore, Jean-Michel Mongeau & Robert J. Full http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00422-012-0545-z "Contributions of phase resetting and interlimb coordination to the adaptive control of hindlimb obstacle avoidance during locomotion in rats: a simulation study" Shinya Aoi, Takahiro Kondo, Naohiro Hayashi, Dai Yanagihara, Sho Aoki, Hiroshi Yamaura, Naomichi Ogihara, Tetsuro Funato, Nozomi Tomita, Kei Senda & Kazuo Tsuchiya http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00422-013-0546-6 "Measuring frequency domain granger causality for multiple blocks of interacting time series" Luca Faes & Giandomenico Nollo http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00422-013-0547-5 "Evidence of muscle synergies during human grasping" Claudio Castellini & Patrick van der Smagt http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00422-013-0548-4 "Fuzzy ART-based place recognition for visual loop closure detection" Karima Rebai, Ouahiba Azouaoui & Nouara Achour http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00422-012-0539-x Erratum "Erratum to: Fuzzy ART-based place recognition for visual loop closure detection" Karima Rebai, Ouahiba Azouaoui & Nouara Achour http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00422-013-0550-x ---- Biological Cybernetics, all issues: http://www.springerlink.com/content/100465/ From thomas at ist.hokudai.ac.jp Tue Apr 2 17:19:56 2013 From: thomas at ist.hokudai.ac.jp (Thomas Zeugmann) Date: Wed, 3 Apr 2013 06:19:56 +0900 (JST) Subject: Connectionists: Please post: CFP ICALP Sattelite Workshop on Learning Theory and Complexity Message-ID: <47608.212.145.140.51.1364937596.squirrel@www-alg.ist.hokudai.ac.jp> Dear Colleagues, please find enclosed a short information concerning the Call For PAPERS for the ICALP 2013 Satellite Workshop on Learning Theory and Complexity which will be held in Riga, Latvia, Sunday, at July 7, 2013. The Submission Deadline is APRIL 10, 2013 For all details please visit: http://www-alg.ist.hokudai.ac.jp/~thomas/LTC With kindest regards, Thomas Zeugmann (Workshop Chair) P.S. I apologize if you receive this mail more than once. From fjaekel at uos.de Wed Apr 3 07:09:13 2013 From: fjaekel at uos.de (Frank =?ISO-8859-1?Q?J=E4kel?=) Date: Wed, 03 Apr 2013 13:09:13 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: OCCAM 2013 (2nd Call) Message-ID: <1364987353.17692.14.camel@birke.ikw.Uni-Osnabrueck.DE> Dear Colleague, we would like to invite you to register for the 3rd +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Osnabrueck Computational Cognition Alliance Meeting (OCCAM 2013) on "The Brain as a Self-Organized Dynamical System" May 29-31, 2013. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ List of invited speakers: Elizabeth Buffalo, Emory University* Sen Cheng, Ruhr-Universitaet Bochum* Gabriel Curio, Charite* Mathew Diamond, SISSA* Markus Diesmann, Forschungszentrum J?lich* Daniel Durstewitz, Zentralinstitut fuer Seelische Gesundheit* Udo Ernst, Universitaet Bremen* Christoph Kayser, University of Glasgow* Jason Kerr, MPI for Biological Cybernetics* Peter K?nig, Universitaet Osnabrueck* Eve Marder, Brandeis University* Hava Siegelmann, University of Massachusetts Tatjana Tchumatchenko, MPI for Brain Resarch* (* confirmed) The workshop will take place in Osnabrueck, Germany, and will be hosted by the Institute of Cognitive Science (University of Osnabrueck). Details can be found below and on the following webpage: http://www.occam-os.de The registration deadline is April 10, 2013 (first come first served). The registration fee is 100,- Euros. This fee covers the workshop attendance incl. coffee, buffet on the first day, and the conference lunch on the last day. The goal of the OCCAM workshop series is to foster our understanding of mechanisms and principles of information processing in self-organized hierarchical and recurrent systems. Our knowledge of such systems is still very limited despite being a focus of research for many years. The OCCAM workshop series aims at understanding the principles of information processing with a particular focus on 3 major topics: 1. Neural coding and representation in hierarchical systems 2. Self-organisation in dynamical systems 3. Mechanisms for probabilistic inference The OCCAM 2013 theme is: "The Brain as a Self-Organized Dynamical System" There will also be a poster session where conference participants will have the opportunity to present their work. Best regards, Frank Jaekel, Peter K?nig, Gordon Pipa (Organizing committee) -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: smime.p7s Type: application/x-pkcs7-signature Size: 6204 bytes Desc: not available URL: From ted.carnevale at yale.edu Wed Apr 3 09:16:52 2013 From: ted.carnevale at yale.edu (Ted Carnevale) Date: Wed, 03 Apr 2013 09:16:52 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: NEURON 7.3 release, and a new Programmer's Reference Message-ID: <515C2BC4.9010705@yale.edu> 1. The latest standard distribution of NEURON is version 7.3, which is now availiable from http://www.neuron.yale.edu/neuron/download In addition to lots of internal bug fixes and performance enhancements over prior versions, NEURON 7.3 has many new features that users will find helpful. Below are just a few examples; for a more complete list see http://www.neuron.yale.edu/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=2793 2. We are transitioning from the old Programmer's Reference (the "Quick Index", "index", and "contents" links at http://www.neuron.yale.edu/neuron/static/docs/help/contents.html) which is no longer being updated. For the most up-to-date documentation on NEURON, see the _new_ Programmer's Reference-- home page http://www.neuron.yale.edu/neuron/static/new_doc/index.html alphabetical index http://www.neuron.yale.edu/neuron/static/new_doc/genindex.html ========================== New features in NEURON 7.3 ========================== Model specification * Reaction diffusion in one dimension can now be specified using Python classes and methods described in the new Programmer's Reference under Programmatic Model Specification / Basic Reaction-Diffusion. This is a very active area in NEURON development, and we are working to extend this to two- and three-dimensional reaction-diffusion. Previously it was necessary to use NMODL for reaction-diffusion. We expect that interpreter-based specification of reaction-diffusion will eventually replace this application of NMODL. hoc * PtrVector is a new hoc class that implements fast scatter/gather from a Vector to other hoc variables. NEURON+Python * The NEURON+Python help system has been much expanded so that the same information used to generate the Programmer's Reference is immediately available from within a live NEURON session. Network models and parallel simulations * NEURON now offers the Random123 pseudorandom sequence generator, which uses 4 integers to define the random sequence. This is an excellent random number generator for parallel problems, even better than MCellRan4. * Inter-host communication can now use the ParallelContext.py_alltoall() to send distinct arbitrary Python objects to all the other ranks. NEURON Installers * A single OS X version of NEURON works for lion and mountain lion, regardless of whether OpenMPI and/or Python has been installed. * A 64bit version of NEURON is available for MSWin. Items of particular interest to developers * The nonvint_block_supervisor is an API to NEURON's internal algorithms that allows new equations, currents, and conductances to be introduced by Python and solved by fixed step and adaptive integration. * LinearMechanism has been extended to allow a Python callable as an optional first argument that can change the b and g terms in equations of the form c*dy/dt + g*y = b. This makes it possible for b to become essentially a nonlinear function of t and y, i.e. allows LinearMechanism to be used with nonlinear equations. * neuron.nrn_dll() gives Python access to the C-language internals of NEURON. This makes all internal NEURON functions, variables, etc., available through a ctypes object. From jlam at bccn-tuebingen.de Wed Apr 3 12:18:13 2013 From: jlam at bccn-tuebingen.de (Judith Lam) Date: Wed, 03 Apr 2013 18:18:13 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: Bernstein Conference 2013 - Call for Abstracts Message-ID: <515C5645.4020201@bccn-tuebingen.de> Call for Abstracts: Bernstein Conference 2013 Deadline of abstract submission: May 31, 2013 ************************************************************** Workshops September 24-25, 2013 Main Conference September 25-27, 2013 ************************************************************** The Bernstein Conference on Computational Neuroscience started out as the annual meeting of the Bernstein Network (www.nncn.de) and has become the largest European Conference in Computational Neuroscience in recent years. This year, the Conference is organized by the Bernstein Center Tuebingen and will take place September 25-27, 2013. In addition, there will be a series of pre-conference workshops on September 24-25, 2013. The Bernstein Conference is a single-track conference, covering all aspects of Computational Neuroscience and Neurotechnology, and sessions for poster presentations are an integral part of the conference. We now invite the *submission of abstracts for poster presentations* from all relevant areas. Due to space limitations we will accept 250 abstracts for posters which will be presented in two sessions on Wednesday and Thursday evening. Additionally, a small number of abstracts will be selected for contributed talks. Accepted abstracts will be published online and will be citable via Digital Object Identifiers (DOI). DETAILS FOR ABSTRACT SUBMISSION: For abstract submission visit: http://www.bernstein-conference.de/abstracts Deadline: May 31, 2013 CONFERENCE DATE AND VENUE: Workshops September 24-25, 2013, Brechtbau, Wilhelmstr. 50, Tuebingen, Germany Main Conference September 25-27, 2013, Neue Aula, Geschwister Scholl Platz, Tuebingen, Germany For more information on the conference, please visit the website: http://www.bernstein-conference.de PhD STUDENT SYMPOSIUM: September 28, 2013 PROGRAM COMMITTEE: Matthias Bethge, Michael Black, Michael Brecht, Jakob Macke, Anthony Movshon, Felix Wichmann, Fred Wolf ORGANIZING COMMITTEE: Matthias Bethge (General Chair) Judith Lam, Jakob Macke, Felix Wichman We look forward to seeing you in Tuebingen in September! -- -- Judith Lam Executive Coordinator Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience T?bingen Eberhard Karls University of T?bingen Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics http://www.bccn-tuebingen.de/about-bccn/contact.html Otfried-M?ller-Str. 25, 72076 T?bingen Tel: +49 7071 29 89019 Fax: +49 7071 29 25015 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From achler at gmail.com Wed Apr 3 14:41:56 2013 From: achler at gmail.com (Tsvi Achler) Date: Wed, 3 Apr 2013 11:41:56 -0700 Subject: Connectionists: New paper on why modules evolve, and how to evolve modular neural networks In-Reply-To: <515AEE59.8010305@cse.msu.edu> References: <70D7BAED-6D38-4506-BE10-F1A463AC74BA@uwyo.edu> <73054C4A-084D-40A9-B33A-15E2A38D53A8@uwyo.edu> <88928e4b65904f81adb251bc80f76e2b@ponyexpress-ht5.uwyo.edu> <0979A2E9-A48E-4FB9-A03E-2632974F4FEE@uwyo.edu> <515AEE59.8010305@cse.msu.edu> Message-ID: The definitions of modularity as stated have some room for ambiguity. To be able to discuss these ideas in a common language it is important to have the definitions be crystal clear. I think it would be a good to open up a discussion to settle on a common definition of modularity. I suggest a definition based on fixed points of networks. Fixed points are solutions of the network and ultimately the reason for the networks. In supervised networks the fixed points are designed to be an optimized cluster, average, or ideal data points learned through training. In unsupervised networks the fixed points are the basis functions learned . The actual origin (or purpose) of the fixed points do not matter in the test. The test is: if two networks can be separated from a single network and their combined fixed points remain the same then they are modular. If the fixed points change, they are not. -Tsvi -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From s.crone at lancaster.ac.uk Tue Apr 2 10:07:06 2013 From: s.crone at lancaster.ac.uk (DMIN13 Programme Chair) Date: Tue, 2 Apr 2013 15:07:06 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: Data Mining Call for papers - 9th International Conference on Data Mining (DMIN'13) Message-ID: <877769a86e65434a.nhcws6ws@lancaster.ac.uk> FINAL Call for papers ============================================================ DMIN'13 The 2013 International Conference on Data Mining July 22-25, 2013, Las Vegas, USA http://www.dmin-2013.com ============================================================ Paper Submission Deadline (extended): April 6, 2013 UPDATE on DMIN proceedings INDEXING: --> The proceedings/books of DMIN'13 have been evaluated for inclusion into science citation index / SCI databases. We are happy --> to report that so far, the evaluation board of science citation index databases have APPROVED the indexing, integrating, and --> inclusion of DMIN into relevant Elsevier indexing databases (Elsevier indexing databases include, among others: Scopus, --> www.info.scopus.com; SCI Compendex, Engineering Village, www.ei.org; EMBASE, www.info.embase.com; and others). --> In addition, proceedings will be indexed by a number of other science citation databases that track citation frequency/data for each paper. You are invited to submit a full paper for consideration. All accepted papers will be published in printed conference books/proceedings (ISBN) and will also be made available online. The proceedings will be indexed in science citation databases that track citation frequency/data for each paper. Like prior years, extended versions of selected papers will appear in journals and edited research books (publishers include: Springer, Elsevier, BMC, and others). In addition to the above, we have arranged two new book series; one with Elsevier publishers (Transactions on Computer Science and Applied Computing) and another with Springer publishers (Transactions of Computational Science and Computational Intelligence). After the conference, a significant number of authors of accepted papers of our congress, will be given the opportunity to submit the extended version of their papers for publication in these books. The web sites for the two book series will be made available after the logistics are finalized between our committee and the publishers (both book series projects have been approved.) We anticipate having between 10 to 20 books a year in each of these book series projects. Each book in each series will be subject to Elsevier and Springer science indexing products (which includes: Scopus, Ei village, SCI, ...). DMIN'13 is composed of a number of tracks, including: tutorials, sessions, workshops, posters, and panel discussions. The conference will be held July 22-25, 2013, Las Vegas, USA. SCOPE: Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following: + Data Mining Tasks - Regression/Classification - Time series forecasting - Segmentation/Clustering/Association - Deviation and outlier detection - Explorative and visual data mining - Web mining - Mining text and semi-structured data - Temporal and spatial data mining - Multimedia mining (audio/video) - Others + Data Mining Algorithms - Artificial neural networks - Fuzzy logic and rough sets - Decision trees/rule learners - Support vector machines - Evolutionary computation/meta heuristics - Statistical methods - Collaborative filtering - Case based reasoning - Link and sequence analysis - Ensembles/committee approaches - Others + Data Mining Integration - Mining large scale data - Distributed and grid based data mining - Data and knowledge representation - Data warehousing and OLAP integration - Integration of prior/domain knowledge - Metadata and ontologies - Agent technologies for data mining - Legal and social aspects of data mining - Others + Data Mining Process - Data cleaning and preparation - Feature selection and transformation - Attribute discretisation and encoding - Sampling and rebalancing - Missing value imputation - Model selection/assessment and comparison - Induction principles - Model interpretation - Others + Data Mining Applications - Bioinformatics/Medicine - Business/Industrial - Engineering - Military/Security - Social science - Others + Data Mining Software We particularly encourage submissions of industrial applications and case studies from practitioners. These will not be evaluated using solely theoretical research criteria, but will take general interest and presentation stringer into consideration. + Alternative and additional examples of possible topics include: Data Mining for Business Intelligence; Emerging technologies in data mining; Computational performance issues in data mining; Data mining in usability; Advanced prediction modelling using data mining; Data mining and national security; Data mining tools; Data analysis; Data preparation techniques (selection, transformation, and preprocessing); Information extraction methodologies; Clustering algorithms used in data mining; Genetic algorithms and categorization techniques used in data mining; Data and information integration; Microarray design and analysis; Privacy-preserving data mining; Active data mining; Statistical methods used in data mining; Multidimensional data; Automatic data cleaning; Data visualization; Theory and practice (knowledge representation and discovery); Knowledge Discovery in Databases (KDD); Uncertainty management; Data reduction methods; Data engineering; Content mining; Indexing schemes; Information retrieval; Metadata use and management; Multidimensional query languages and query; Multimedia information systems; Search engine query processing; Pattern mining; Applications (examples: data mining in education, marketing, finance and financial services, business applications, medicine, bioinformatics, biological sciences, science and technology, industry and government, ...). IMPORTANT DATES: April 6, 2013: Submission of full papers (about 7 pages) April 27, 2013: Notification of acceptance (+/- two days) May 14, 2013: Final papers + Copyright + Registration July 22-25, 2013: The 2013 International Conference on Data Mining (DMIN'13) CO-SPONSORS: Currently being prepared - The Academic Sponsors of the last offering of DMIN (2012) included research labs and centers affiliated with: University of Minnesota, USA; Argonne National Laboratory, Illinois, USA; George Mason University, Virginia, USA; Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA; North Carolina A & T State University, USA; Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Massachusetts, USA; Texas A&M University, USA; UMIT, Institute of Bioinformatics and Translational Research, Austria; University of Iowa, USA; Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia; Medical Image HPC and Informatics Lab, Iowa, USA; P3P8PCTD80452 and many others. Sponsors At-Large included (corporate, associations, organizations): Intel Corporation; Super Micro Computer, Inc., California, USA; Altera Corporation; The International Council on Medical and Care Compunetics; International Society of Intelligent Biological Medicine; US Chapter of World Academy of Science; High Performance Computing for Nanotechnology; Luna Innovations; World Academy of Biomedical Sciences and Technologies; Manx Telecom; Computer Science Research, Education, and Applications Press; HoIP Telecom; Hodges Health; Leading Knowledge; OMG; Science Publications and others. SUBMISSION OF REGULAR PAPERS: Prospective authors are invited to submit their papers by uploading them to the evaluation web site at: http://dmin.confmaster.net/pages/login.php?Conf=DMIN . Detailed information can be found on http://www.dmin-2013.com . Submissions must be uploaded by March 18, 2013 and must be in either MS doc or pdf formats (about 7 pages including all figures, tables, and references - single space, font size of 10 to 12). All reasonable typesetting formats are acceptable (later, the authors of accepted papers will be asked to follow a particular typesetting format to prepare their final papers for publication.) Papers must not have been previously published or currently submitted for publication elsewhere. The first page of the paper should include: title of the paper, name, affiliation, postal address, and email address for each author. The first page should also identify the name of the Contact Author and a maximum of 5 topical keywords that would best represent the content of the paper. The name of the conference (ie, DMIN) must also be stated on the first page of the paper as well as a 100 to 150-word abstract. The length of the final/Camera-Ready papers (if accepted) will be limited to 7 (two-column IEEE style) pages. Each paper will be peer-reviewed by two experts in the field for originality, significance, clarity, impact, and soundness. In cases of contradictory recommendations, a member of the conference program committee would be charged to make the final decision (accept/reject); often, this would involve seeking help from additional referees. Papers whose authors include a member of the conference program committee will be evaluated using the double-blinded review process. (Essay/philosophical papers will not be refereed but may be considered for discussion/panels). The proceedings will be published in printed conference books (ISBN) and will also be made available online. The proceedings will be indexed in science citation databases that track citation frequency/data for each published paper. Science citation databases include: Inspec / IET / The Institute for Engineering & Technology; The French National Center for Scientific Research, CNRS, INIST databases, PASCAL (accessable from INIST, Datastar, Dialog, EBSCO, OVID, Questel.Orbit, Qwam, and STN International); and others. Though, there is no guarantee that the proceedings will also be included in SCI EI Compendex/Elsevier indexings; in the past, the proceedings were included in these databases. Therefore, we will also be sending the proceedings for indexing procedures to SCI EI Compendex/Elsevier. The printed proceedings/books will be available for distribution on site at the conference. In addition to the above, we have arranged two new book series; one with Elsevier publishers (Transactions on Computer Science and Applied Computing) and another with Springer publishers (Transactions of Computational Science and Computational Intelligence). After the conference, a significant number of authors of accepted papers of our congress, will be given the opportunity to submit the extended version of their papers for publication in these books. We anticipate having between 10 to 20 books a year in each of these book series projects. Each book in each series will be subject to Elsevier and Springer science indexing products (which includes: Scopus, Ei village, SCI, ...). SUBMISSION OF POSTER PAPERS: Poster papers can be 2 pages long. Authors are to follow the same instructions that appear above (see, SUBMISSION OF REGULAR PAPERS) except for the submission is limited to 2 pages. On the first page, the author should state that "This paper is being submitted as a poster". Poster papers (if accepted) will be published if and only the author of the accepted paper wishes to do so. MEMBERS OF PROGRAM AND ORGANIZING COMMITTEES: The 2013 Program Committee for DMIN conference is currently being compiled. Many who have already joined the committees are renowned leaders, scholars, researchers, scientists and practitioners of the highest ranks; many are directors of research labs., fellows of various societies, heads/chairs of departments, program directors of research funding agencies, as well as deans. Program Committee members are expected to have established a strong and documented research track record. Those interested in joining the Program Committee should email programme-chair at dmin-2013.com the following information for consideration/evaluation: Name, affiliation and position, complete mailing address, email address, a one-page biography that includes research expertise in the field of data mining. GENERAL INFORMATION: DMIN is an international conference that serves researchers, scholars, professionals, students, and academicians who are looking to both foster working relationships and gain access to the latest research results. It is being held jointly (same location and dates) with a number of other research conferences; namely, The 2013 World Congress in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, and Applied Computing (WORLDCOMP). The Congress is the largest annual gathering of researchers in computer science, computer engineering and applied computing. We anticipate to have 2,100 or more attendees from over 85 countries. The 2013 Congress will be composed of research presentations, keynote lectures, invited presentations, tutorials, panel discussions, and poster presentations. In recent past, keynote/tutorial/panel speakers have included: Prof. David A. Patterson (pioneer, architecture, U. of California, Berkeley), Dr. K. Eric Drexler (known as Father of Nanotechnology), Prof. John H. Holland (known as Father of Genetic Algorithms; U. of Michigan), Prof. Ian Foster (known as Father of Grid Computing; U. of Chicago & ANL), Prof. Ruzena Bajcsy (pioneer, VR, U. of California, Berkeley), Prof. Barry Vercoe (Founding member of MIT Media Lab, MIT), Dr. Jim Gettys (known as X-man, developer of X Window System, xhost; OLPC), Prof. John Koza (known as Father of Genetic Programming, Stanford U.), Prof. Brian D. Athey (NIH Program Director, U. of Michigan), Prof. Viktor K. Prasanna (pioneer, U. of Southern California), Dr. Jose L. Munoz (NSF Program Director and Consultant), Prof. Jun Liu (pioneer, Broad Institute of MIT & Harvard U.), Prof. Lotfi A. Zadeh (Father of Fuzzy Logic), Dr. Firouz Naderi (Head, NASA Mars Exploration Program/2000-2005 and Associate Director, Project Formulation & Strategy, Jet Propulsion Lab, CalTech/NASA; Director, NASA's JPL Solar System Exploration), Prof. David Lorge Parnas (Fellow of IEEE, ACM, RSC, CAE, GI; Dr.h.c.: ETH Zurich, Prof. Emeritus, McMaster U. and U. of Limerick), Prof. Eugene H. Spafford (Executive Director, CERIAS and Professor, Purdue University), Dr. Sandeep Chatterjee (Vice President & Chief Technology Officer, SourceTrace Systems, Inc.), Prof. Haym Hirsh (Rutgers University, New Jersey, USA and former director of Division of Information and Intelligent Systems, National Science Foundation, USA), Dr. Flavio Villanustre (Vice- President, HPCC Systems), and many other distinguished speakers. To get a feeling about the Congress's atmosphere, see the 2012 delegates photos available at: http://infinitydempsey.smugmug.com/WorldComp An important mission of the Congress is "Providing a unique platform for a diverse community of constituents composed of scholars, researchers, developers, educators, and practitioners. The Congress makes concerted effort to reach out to participants affiliated with diverse entities (such as: universities, institutions, corporations, government agencies, and research centers/labs) from all over the world. The Congress also attempts to connect participants from institutions that have teaching as their main mission with those who are affiliated with institutions that have research as their main mission. The Congress uses a quota system to achieve its institution and geography diversity objectives." One main goal of the Congress is to assemble a spectrum of affiliated research conferences, workshops, and symposiums into a coordinated research meeting held in a common place at a common time. This model facilitates communication among researchers in different fields of computer science, computer engineering, and applied computing. The Congress also encourages multi-disciplinary and inter-disciplinary research initiatives; ie, facilitating increased opportunities for cross-fertilization across sub-disciplines. MEASURABLE SCIENTIFIC IMPACT OF CONGRESS: As of December 2012, papers published in the Congress proceedings have received over 27,000 citations (includes about 2,000 self-citations). Citation data obtained from http://academic.research.microsoft.com/ . CONTACT: Inquiries should be sent to: conference-chair at dmin-2013.com =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= This email was sent to: s.crone at lancaster.ac.uk To opt out of this email list: http://world-comp.org/cgi-bin/rm/full.cgi?61393300-5F75-11DE-B947-8A1C68F8B78A From s.crone at lancaster.ac.uk Tue Apr 2 10:01:32 2013 From: s.crone at lancaster.ac.uk (DMIN13 Programme Chair) Date: Tue, 2 Apr 2013 15:01:32 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: Data Mining Call for papers - 9th International Conference on Data Mining (DMIN'13) Message-ID: <877769a86e65434a.5ztomgfm@lancaster.ac.uk> FINAL Call for papers ============================================================ DMIN'13 The 2013 International Conference on Data Mining July 22-25, 2013, Las Vegas, USA http://www.dmin-2013.com ============================================================ Paper Submission Deadline (extended): April 6, 2013 UPDATE on DMIN proceedings INDEXING: --> The proceedings/books of DMIN'13 have been evaluated for inclusion into science citation index / SCI databases. We are happy --> to report that so far, the evaluation board of science citation index databases have APPROVED the indexing, integrating, and --> inclusion of DMIN into relevant Elsevier indexing databases (Elsevier indexing databases include, among others: Scopus, --> www.info.scopus.com; SCI Compendex, Engineering Village, www.ei.org; EMBASE, www.info.embase.com; and others). --> In addition, proceedings will be indexed by a number of other science citation databases that track citation frequency/data for each paper. You are invited to submit a full paper for consideration. All accepted papers will be published in printed conference books/proceedings (ISBN) and will also be made available online. The proceedings will be indexed in science citation databases that track citation frequency/data for each paper. Like prior years, extended versions of selected papers will appear in journals and edited research books (publishers include: Springer, Elsevier, BMC, and others). In addition to the above, we have arranged two new book series; one with Elsevier publishers (Transactions on Computer Science and Applied Computing) and another with Springer publishers (Transactions of Computational Science and Computational Intelligence). After the conference, a significant number of authors of accepted papers of our congress, will be given the opportunity to submit the extended version of their papers for publication in these books. The web sites for the two book series will be made available after the logistics are finalized between our committee and the publishers (both book series projects have been approved.) We anticipate having between 10 to 20 books a year in each of these book series projects. Each book in each series will be subject to Elsevier and Springer science indexing products (which includes: Scopus, Ei village, SCI, ...). DMIN'13 is composed of a number of tracks, including: tutorials, sessions, workshops, posters, and panel discussions. The conference will be held July 22-25, 2013, Las Vegas, USA. SCOPE: Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following: + Data Mining Tasks - Regression/Classification - Time series forecasting - Segmentation/Clustering/Association - Deviation and outlier detection - Explorative and visual data mining - Web mining - Mining text and semi-structured data - Temporal and spatial data mining - Multimedia mining (audio/video) - Others + Data Mining Algorithms - Artificial neural networks - Fuzzy logic and rough sets - Decision trees/rule learners - Support vector machines - Evolutionary computation/meta heuristics - Statistical methods - Collaborative filtering - Case based reasoning - Link and sequence analysis - Ensembles/committee approaches - Others + Data Mining Integration - Mining large scale data - Distributed and grid based data mining - Data and knowledge representation - Data warehousing and OLAP integration - Integration of prior/domain knowledge - Metadata and ontologies - Agent technologies for data mining - Legal and social aspects of data mining - Others + Data Mining Process - Data cleaning and preparation - Feature selection and transformation - Attribute discretisation and encoding - Sampling and rebalancing - Missing value imputation - Model selection/assessment and comparison - Induction principles - Model interpretation - Others + Data Mining Applications - Bioinformatics/Medicine - Business/Industrial - Engineering - Military/Security - Social science - Others + Data Mining Software We particularly encourage submissions of industrial applications and case studies from practitioners. These will not be evaluated using solely theoretical research criteria, but will take general interest and presentation stringer into consideration. + Alternative and additional examples of possible topics include: Data Mining for Business Intelligence; Emerging technologies in data mining; Computational performance issues in data mining; Data mining in usability; Advanced prediction modelling using data mining; Data mining and national security; Data mining tools; Data analysis; Data preparation techniques (selection, transformation, and preprocessing); Information extraction methodologies; Clustering algorithms used in data mining; Genetic algorithms and categorization techniques used in data mining; Data and information integration; Microarray design and analysis; Privacy-preserving data mining; Active data mining; Statistical methods used in data mining; Multidimensional data; Automatic data cleaning; Data visualization; Theory and practice (knowledge representation and discovery); Knowledge Discovery in Databases (KDD); Uncertainty management; Data reduction methods; Data engineering; Content mining; Indexing schemes; Information retrieval; Metadata use and management; Multidimensional query languages and query; Multimedia information systems; Search engine query processing; Pattern mining; Applications (examples: data mining in education, marketing, finance and financial services, business applications, medicine, bioinformatics, biological sciences, science and technology, industry and government, ...). IMPORTANT DATES: April 6, 2013: Submission of full papers (about 7 pages) April 27, 2013: Notification of acceptance (+/- two days) May 14, 2013: Final papers + Copyright + Registration July 22-25, 2013: The 2013 International Conference on Data Mining (DMIN'13) CO-SPONSORS: Currently being prepared - The Academic Sponsors of the last offering of DMIN (2012) included research labs and centers affiliated with: University of Minnesota, USA; Argonne National Laboratory, Illinois, USA; George Mason University, Virginia, USA; Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA; North Carolina A & T State University, USA; Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Massachusetts, USA; Texas A&M University, USA; UMIT, Institute of Bioinformatics and Translational Research, Austria; University of Iowa, USA; Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia; Medical Image HPC and Informatics Lab, Iowa, USA; P3P8PCTD80452 and many others. Sponsors At-Large included (corporate, associations, organizations): Intel Corporation; Super Micro Computer, Inc., California, USA; Altera Corporation; The International Council on Medical and Care Compunetics; International Society of Intelligent Biological Medicine; US Chapter of World Academy of Science; High Performance Computing for Nanotechnology; Luna Innovations; World Academy of Biomedical Sciences and Technologies; Manx Telecom; Computer Science Research, Education, and Applications Press; HoIP Telecom; Hodges Health; Leading Knowledge; OMG; Science Publications and others. SUBMISSION OF REGULAR PAPERS: Prospective authors are invited to submit their papers by uploading them to the evaluation web site at: http://dmin.confmaster.net/pages/login.php?Conf=DMIN . Detailed information can be found on http://www.dmin-2013.com . Submissions must be uploaded by March 18, 2013 and must be in either MS doc or pdf formats (about 7 pages including all figures, tables, and references - single space, font size of 10 to 12). All reasonable typesetting formats are acceptable (later, the authors of accepted papers will be asked to follow a particular typesetting format to prepare their final papers for publication.) Papers must not have been previously published or currently submitted for publication elsewhere. The first page of the paper should include: title of the paper, name, affiliation, postal address, and email address for each author. The first page should also identify the name of the Contact Author and a maximum of 5 topical keywords that would best represent the content of the paper. The name of the conference (ie, DMIN) must also be stated on the first page of the paper as well as a 100 to 150-word abstract. The length of the final/Camera-Ready papers (if accepted) will be limited to 7 (two-column IEEE style) pages. Each paper will be peer-reviewed by two experts in the field for originality, significance, clarity, impact, and soundness. In cases of contradictory recommendations, a member of the conference program committee would be charged to make the final decision (accept/reject); often, this would involve seeking help from additional referees. Papers whose authors include a member of the conference program committee will be evaluated using the double-blinded review process. (Essay/philosophical papers will not be refereed but may be considered for discussion/panels). The proceedings will be published in printed conference books (ISBN) and will also be made available online. The proceedings will be indexed in science citation databases that track citation frequency/data for each published paper. Science citation databases include: Inspec / IET / The Institute for Engineering & Technology; The French National Center for Scientific Research, CNRS, INIST databases, PASCAL (accessable from INIST, Datastar, Dialog, EBSCO, OVID, Questel.Orbit, Qwam, and STN International); and others. Though, there is no guarantee that the proceedings will also be included in SCI EI Compendex/Elsevier indexings; in the past, the proceedings were included in these databases. Therefore, we will also be sending the proceedings for indexing procedures to SCI EI Compendex/Elsevier. The printed proceedings/books will be available for distribution on site at the conference. In addition to the above, we have arranged two new book series; one with Elsevier publishers (Transactions on Computer Science and Applied Computing) and another with Springer publishers (Transactions of Computational Science and Computational Intelligence). After the conference, a significant number of authors of accepted papers of our congress, will be given the opportunity to submit the extended version of their papers for publication in these books. We anticipate having between 10 to 20 books a year in each of these book series projects. Each book in each series will be subject to Elsevier and Springer science indexing products (which includes: Scopus, Ei village, SCI, ...). SUBMISSION OF POSTER PAPERS: Poster papers can be 2 pages long. Authors are to follow the same instructions that appear above (see, SUBMISSION OF REGULAR PAPERS) except for the submission is limited to 2 pages. On the first page, the author should state that "This paper is being submitted as a poster". Poster papers (if accepted) will be published if and only the author of the accepted paper wishes to do so. MEMBERS OF PROGRAM AND ORGANIZING COMMITTEES: The 2013 Program Committee for DMIN conference is currently being compiled. Many who have already joined the committees are renowned leaders, scholars, researchers, scientists and practitioners of the highest ranks; many are directors of research labs., fellows of various societies, heads/chairs of departments, program directors of research funding agencies, as well as deans. Program Committee members are expected to have established a strong and documented research track record. Those interested in joining the Program Committee should email programme-chair at dmin-2013.com the following information for consideration/evaluation: Name, affiliation and position, complete mailing address, email address, a one-page biography that includes research expertise in the field of data mining. GENERAL INFORMATION: DMIN is an international conference that serves researchers, scholars, professionals, students, and academicians who are looking to both foster working relationships and gain access to the latest research results. It is being held jointly (same location and dates) with a number of other research conferences; namely, The 2013 World Congress in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, and Applied Computing (WORLDCOMP). The Congress is the largest annual gathering of researchers in computer science, computer engineering and applied computing. We anticipate to have 2,100 or more attendees from over 85 countries. The 2013 Congress will be composed of research presentations, keynote lectures, invited presentations, tutorials, panel discussions, and poster presentations. In recent past, keynote/tutorial/panel speakers have included: Prof. David A. Patterson (pioneer, architecture, U. of California, Berkeley), Dr. K. Eric Drexler (known as Father of Nanotechnology), Prof. John H. Holland (known as Father of Genetic Algorithms; U. of Michigan), Prof. Ian Foster (known as Father of Grid Computing; U. of Chicago & ANL), Prof. Ruzena Bajcsy (pioneer, VR, U. of California, Berkeley), Prof. Barry Vercoe (Founding member of MIT Media Lab, MIT), Dr. Jim Gettys (known as X-man, developer of X Window System, xhost; OLPC), Prof. John Koza (known as Father of Genetic Programming, Stanford U.), Prof. Brian D. Athey (NIH Program Director, U. of Michigan), Prof. Viktor K. Prasanna (pioneer, U. of Southern California), Dr. Jose L. Munoz (NSF Program Director and Consultant), Prof. Jun Liu (pioneer, Broad Institute of MIT & Harvard U.), Prof. Lotfi A. Zadeh (Father of Fuzzy Logic), Dr. Firouz Naderi (Head, NASA Mars Exploration Program/2000-2005 and Associate Director, Project Formulation & Strategy, Jet Propulsion Lab, CalTech/NASA; Director, NASA's JPL Solar System Exploration), Prof. David Lorge Parnas (Fellow of IEEE, ACM, RSC, CAE, GI; Dr.h.c.: ETH Zurich, Prof. Emeritus, McMaster U. and U. of Limerick), Prof. Eugene H. Spafford (Executive Director, CERIAS and Professor, Purdue University), Dr. Sandeep Chatterjee (Vice President & Chief Technology Officer, SourceTrace Systems, Inc.), Prof. Haym Hirsh (Rutgers University, New Jersey, USA and former director of Division of Information and Intelligent Systems, National Science Foundation, USA), Dr. Flavio Villanustre (Vice- President, HPCC Systems), and many other distinguished speakers. To get a feeling about the Congress's atmosphere, see the 2012 delegates photos available at: http://infinitydempsey.smugmug.com/WorldComp An important mission of the Congress is "Providing a unique platform for a diverse community of constituents composed of scholars, researchers, developers, educators, and practitioners. The Congress makes concerted effort to reach out to participants affiliated with diverse entities (such as: universities, institutions, corporations, government agencies, and research centers/labs) from all over the world. The Congress also attempts to connect participants from institutions that have teaching as their main mission with those who are affiliated with institutions that have research as their main mission. The Congress uses a quota system to achieve its institution and geography diversity objectives." One main goal of the Congress is to assemble a spectrum of affiliated research conferences, workshops, and symposiums into a coordinated research meeting held in a common place at a common time. This model facilitates communication among researchers in different fields of computer science, computer engineering, and applied computing. The Congress also encourages multi-disciplinary and inter-disciplinary research initiatives; ie, facilitating increased opportunities for cross-fertilization across sub-disciplines. MEASURABLE SCIENTIFIC IMPACT OF CONGRESS: As of December 2012, papers published in the Congress proceedings have received over 27,000 citations (includes about 2,000 self-citations). Citation data obtained from http://academic.research.microsoft.com/ . CONTACT: Inquiries should be sent to: conference-chair at dmin-2013.com =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= This email was sent to: s.crone at lancaster.ac.uk To opt out of this email list: http://world-comp.org/cgi-bin/rm/full.cgi?61393300-5F75-11DE-B947-8A1C68F8B78A From s.crone at lancaster.ac.uk Tue Apr 2 10:07:04 2013 From: s.crone at lancaster.ac.uk (DMIN13 Programme Chair) Date: Tue, 2 Apr 2013 15:07:04 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: Data Mining Call for papers - 9th International Conference on Data Mining (DMIN'13) Message-ID: <877769a86e65434a.btecm4qn@lancaster.ac.uk> FINAL Call for papers ============================================================ DMIN'13 The 2013 International Conference on Data Mining July 22-25, 2013, Las Vegas, USA http://www.dmin-2013.com ============================================================ Paper Submission Deadline (extended): April 6, 2013 UPDATE on DMIN proceedings INDEXING: --> The proceedings/books of DMIN'13 have been evaluated for inclusion into science citation index / SCI databases. We are happy --> to report that so far, the evaluation board of science citation index databases have APPROVED the indexing, integrating, and --> inclusion of DMIN into relevant Elsevier indexing databases (Elsevier indexing databases include, among others: Scopus, --> www.info.scopus.com; SCI Compendex, Engineering Village, www.ei.org; EMBASE, www.info.embase.com; and others). --> In addition, proceedings will be indexed by a number of other science citation databases that track citation frequency/data for each paper. You are invited to submit a full paper for consideration. All accepted papers will be published in printed conference books/proceedings (ISBN) and will also be made available online. The proceedings will be indexed in science citation databases that track citation frequency/data for each paper. Like prior years, extended versions of selected papers will appear in journals and edited research books (publishers include: Springer, Elsevier, BMC, and others). In addition to the above, we have arranged two new book series; one with Elsevier publishers (Transactions on Computer Science and Applied Computing) and another with Springer publishers (Transactions of Computational Science and Computational Intelligence). After the conference, a significant number of authors of accepted papers of our congress, will be given the opportunity to submit the extended version of their papers for publication in these books. The web sites for the two book series will be made available after the logistics are finalized between our committee and the publishers (both book series projects have been approved.) We anticipate having between 10 to 20 books a year in each of these book series projects. Each book in each series will be subject to Elsevier and Springer science indexing products (which includes: Scopus, Ei village, SCI, ...). DMIN'13 is composed of a number of tracks, including: tutorials, sessions, workshops, posters, and panel discussions. The conference will be held July 22-25, 2013, Las Vegas, USA. SCOPE: Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following: + Data Mining Tasks - Regression/Classification - Time series forecasting - Segmentation/Clustering/Association - Deviation and outlier detection - Explorative and visual data mining - Web mining - Mining text and semi-structured data - Temporal and spatial data mining - Multimedia mining (audio/video) - Others + Data Mining Algorithms - Artificial neural networks - Fuzzy logic and rough sets - Decision trees/rule learners - Support vector machines - Evolutionary computation/meta heuristics - Statistical methods - Collaborative filtering - Case based reasoning - Link and sequence analysis - Ensembles/committee approaches - Others + Data Mining Integration - Mining large scale data - Distributed and grid based data mining - Data and knowledge representation - Data warehousing and OLAP integration - Integration of prior/domain knowledge - Metadata and ontologies - Agent technologies for data mining - Legal and social aspects of data mining - Others + Data Mining Process - Data cleaning and preparation - Feature selection and transformation - Attribute discretisation and encoding - Sampling and rebalancing - Missing value imputation - Model selection/assessment and comparison - Induction principles - Model interpretation - Others + Data Mining Applications - Bioinformatics/Medicine - Business/Industrial - Engineering - Military/Security - Social science - Others + Data Mining Software We particularly encourage submissions of industrial applications and case studies from practitioners. These will not be evaluated using solely theoretical research criteria, but will take general interest and presentation stringer into consideration. + Alternative and additional examples of possible topics include: Data Mining for Business Intelligence; Emerging technologies in data mining; Computational performance issues in data mining; Data mining in usability; Advanced prediction modelling using data mining; Data mining and national security; Data mining tools; Data analysis; Data preparation techniques (selection, transformation, and preprocessing); Information extraction methodologies; Clustering algorithms used in data mining; Genetic algorithms and categorization techniques used in data mining; Data and information integration; Microarray design and analysis; Privacy-preserving data mining; Active data mining; Statistical methods used in data mining; Multidimensional data; Automatic data cleaning; Data visualization; Theory and practice (knowledge representation and discovery); Knowledge Discovery in Databases (KDD); Uncertainty management; Data reduction methods; Data engineering; Content mining; Indexing schemes; Information retrieval; Metadata use and management; Multidimensional query languages and query; Multimedia information systems; Search engine query processing; Pattern mining; Applications (examples: data mining in education, marketing, finance and financial services, business applications, medicine, bioinformatics, biological sciences, science and technology, industry and government, ...). IMPORTANT DATES: April 6, 2013: Submission of full papers (about 7 pages) April 27, 2013: Notification of acceptance (+/- two days) May 14, 2013: Final papers + Copyright + Registration July 22-25, 2013: The 2013 International Conference on Data Mining (DMIN'13) CO-SPONSORS: Currently being prepared - The Academic Sponsors of the last offering of DMIN (2012) included research labs and centers affiliated with: University of Minnesota, USA; Argonne National Laboratory, Illinois, USA; George Mason University, Virginia, USA; Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA; North Carolina A & T State University, USA; Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Massachusetts, USA; Texas A&M University, USA; UMIT, Institute of Bioinformatics and Translational Research, Austria; University of Iowa, USA; Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia; Medical Image HPC and Informatics Lab, Iowa, USA; P3P8PCTD80452 and many others. Sponsors At-Large included (corporate, associations, organizations): Intel Corporation; Super Micro Computer, Inc., California, USA; Altera Corporation; The International Council on Medical and Care Compunetics; International Society of Intelligent Biological Medicine; US Chapter of World Academy of Science; High Performance Computing for Nanotechnology; Luna Innovations; World Academy of Biomedical Sciences and Technologies; Manx Telecom; Computer Science Research, Education, and Applications Press; HoIP Telecom; Hodges Health; Leading Knowledge; OMG; Science Publications and others. SUBMISSION OF REGULAR PAPERS: Prospective authors are invited to submit their papers by uploading them to the evaluation web site at: http://dmin.confmaster.net/pages/login.php?Conf=DMIN . Detailed information can be found on http://www.dmin-2013.com . Submissions must be uploaded by March 18, 2013 and must be in either MS doc or pdf formats (about 7 pages including all figures, tables, and references - single space, font size of 10 to 12). All reasonable typesetting formats are acceptable (later, the authors of accepted papers will be asked to follow a particular typesetting format to prepare their final papers for publication.) Papers must not have been previously published or currently submitted for publication elsewhere. The first page of the paper should include: title of the paper, name, affiliation, postal address, and email address for each author. The first page should also identify the name of the Contact Author and a maximum of 5 topical keywords that would best represent the content of the paper. The name of the conference (ie, DMIN) must also be stated on the first page of the paper as well as a 100 to 150-word abstract. The length of the final/Camera-Ready papers (if accepted) will be limited to 7 (two-column IEEE style) pages. Each paper will be peer-reviewed by two experts in the field for originality, significance, clarity, impact, and soundness. In cases of contradictory recommendations, a member of the conference program committee would be charged to make the final decision (accept/reject); often, this would involve seeking help from additional referees. Papers whose authors include a member of the conference program committee will be evaluated using the double-blinded review process. (Essay/philosophical papers will not be refereed but may be considered for discussion/panels). The proceedings will be published in printed conference books (ISBN) and will also be made available online. The proceedings will be indexed in science citation databases that track citation frequency/data for each published paper. Science citation databases include: Inspec / IET / The Institute for Engineering & Technology; The French National Center for Scientific Research, CNRS, INIST databases, PASCAL (accessable from INIST, Datastar, Dialog, EBSCO, OVID, Questel.Orbit, Qwam, and STN International); and others. Though, there is no guarantee that the proceedings will also be included in SCI EI Compendex/Elsevier indexings; in the past, the proceedings were included in these databases. Therefore, we will also be sending the proceedings for indexing procedures to SCI EI Compendex/Elsevier. The printed proceedings/books will be available for distribution on site at the conference. In addition to the above, we have arranged two new book series; one with Elsevier publishers (Transactions on Computer Science and Applied Computing) and another with Springer publishers (Transactions of Computational Science and Computational Intelligence). After the conference, a significant number of authors of accepted papers of our congress, will be given the opportunity to submit the extended version of their papers for publication in these books. We anticipate having between 10 to 20 books a year in each of these book series projects. Each book in each series will be subject to Elsevier and Springer science indexing products (which includes: Scopus, Ei village, SCI, ...). SUBMISSION OF POSTER PAPERS: Poster papers can be 2 pages long. Authors are to follow the same instructions that appear above (see, SUBMISSION OF REGULAR PAPERS) except for the submission is limited to 2 pages. On the first page, the author should state that "This paper is being submitted as a poster". Poster papers (if accepted) will be published if and only the author of the accepted paper wishes to do so. MEMBERS OF PROGRAM AND ORGANIZING COMMITTEES: The 2013 Program Committee for DMIN conference is currently being compiled. Many who have already joined the committees are renowned leaders, scholars, researchers, scientists and practitioners of the highest ranks; many are directors of research labs., fellows of various societies, heads/chairs of departments, program directors of research funding agencies, as well as deans. Program Committee members are expected to have established a strong and documented research track record. Those interested in joining the Program Committee should email programme-chair at dmin-2013.com the following information for consideration/evaluation: Name, affiliation and position, complete mailing address, email address, a one-page biography that includes research expertise in the field of data mining. GENERAL INFORMATION: DMIN is an international conference that serves researchers, scholars, professionals, students, and academicians who are looking to both foster working relationships and gain access to the latest research results. It is being held jointly (same location and dates) with a number of other research conferences; namely, The 2013 World Congress in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, and Applied Computing (WORLDCOMP). The Congress is the largest annual gathering of researchers in computer science, computer engineering and applied computing. We anticipate to have 2,100 or more attendees from over 85 countries. The 2013 Congress will be composed of research presentations, keynote lectures, invited presentations, tutorials, panel discussions, and poster presentations. In recent past, keynote/tutorial/panel speakers have included: Prof. David A. Patterson (pioneer, architecture, U. of California, Berkeley), Dr. K. Eric Drexler (known as Father of Nanotechnology), Prof. John H. Holland (known as Father of Genetic Algorithms; U. of Michigan), Prof. Ian Foster (known as Father of Grid Computing; U. of Chicago & ANL), Prof. Ruzena Bajcsy (pioneer, VR, U. of California, Berkeley), Prof. Barry Vercoe (Founding member of MIT Media Lab, MIT), Dr. Jim Gettys (known as X-man, developer of X Window System, xhost; OLPC), Prof. John Koza (known as Father of Genetic Programming, Stanford U.), Prof. Brian D. Athey (NIH Program Director, U. of Michigan), Prof. Viktor K. Prasanna (pioneer, U. of Southern California), Dr. Jose L. Munoz (NSF Program Director and Consultant), Prof. Jun Liu (pioneer, Broad Institute of MIT & Harvard U.), Prof. Lotfi A. Zadeh (Father of Fuzzy Logic), Dr. Firouz Naderi (Head, NASA Mars Exploration Program/2000-2005 and Associate Director, Project Formulation & Strategy, Jet Propulsion Lab, CalTech/NASA; Director, NASA's JPL Solar System Exploration), Prof. David Lorge Parnas (Fellow of IEEE, ACM, RSC, CAE, GI; Dr.h.c.: ETH Zurich, Prof. Emeritus, McMaster U. and U. of Limerick), Prof. Eugene H. Spafford (Executive Director, CERIAS and Professor, Purdue University), Dr. Sandeep Chatterjee (Vice President & Chief Technology Officer, SourceTrace Systems, Inc.), Prof. Haym Hirsh (Rutgers University, New Jersey, USA and former director of Division of Information and Intelligent Systems, National Science Foundation, USA), Dr. Flavio Villanustre (Vice- President, HPCC Systems), and many other distinguished speakers. To get a feeling about the Congress's atmosphere, see the 2012 delegates photos available at: http://infinitydempsey.smugmug.com/WorldComp An important mission of the Congress is "Providing a unique platform for a diverse community of constituents composed of scholars, researchers, developers, educators, and practitioners. The Congress makes concerted effort to reach out to participants affiliated with diverse entities (such as: universities, institutions, corporations, government agencies, and research centers/labs) from all over the world. The Congress also attempts to connect participants from institutions that have teaching as their main mission with those who are affiliated with institutions that have research as their main mission. The Congress uses a quota system to achieve its institution and geography diversity objectives." One main goal of the Congress is to assemble a spectrum of affiliated research conferences, workshops, and symposiums into a coordinated research meeting held in a common place at a common time. This model facilitates communication among researchers in different fields of computer science, computer engineering, and applied computing. The Congress also encourages multi-disciplinary and inter-disciplinary research initiatives; ie, facilitating increased opportunities for cross-fertilization across sub-disciplines. MEASURABLE SCIENTIFIC IMPACT OF CONGRESS: As of December 2012, papers published in the Congress proceedings have received over 27,000 citations (includes about 2,000 self-citations). Citation data obtained from http://academic.research.microsoft.com/ . CONTACT: Inquiries should be sent to: conference-chair at dmin-2013.com =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= This email was sent to: s.crone at lancaster.ac.uk To opt out of this email list: http://world-comp.org/cgi-bin/rm/full.cgi?61393300-5F75-11DE-B947-8A1C68F8B78A From jainv at janelia.hhmi.org Thu Apr 4 13:24:25 2013 From: jainv at janelia.hhmi.org (Jain, Viren) Date: Thu, 4 Apr 2013 17:24:25 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: Open Positions in Connectomics/Machine Learning/Deep Networks/Computer Vision Message-ID: <12CD42AE32DAF349880F19044B9D72F4AEB3A6DE@JFMB1.hhmi.org> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From francois.fleuret at idiap.ch Fri Apr 5 02:42:26 2013 From: francois.fleuret at idiap.ch (Francois Fleuret) Date: Fri, 5 Apr 2013 08:42:26 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: MASH Factory Contest Message-ID: <20830.29266.546073.810467@gargle.gargle.HOWL> Dear colleagues, We are announcing a new contest in the fields of Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence. The contest is aimed at all C++ programmers and does not require specific knowledge of either Machine Learning or Artificial Intelligence techniques in general. Prizes: to win are 3 NEXUS 7 Android Tablet (32Gb, 3G) ( + mugs, T-Shirts...) Site: http://www.mash-project.eu/wiki/index.php/Factory_Contest End of contest: June 7, 2013 Short description (please consult the site's FAQ for more details): Contestants participate by submitting *short* C++ snippets that are evaluated immediately on the site. The snippets, which we call "heuristics", should be designed to help a robot navigate a simulated 3D environment and solve a series of tasks (e.g. "Reach a red flag in a rectangular room"). A heuristic is simply a function taking as input the image corresponding to the robot's field of view, and returning values ("features"). The performance of a heuristic, or of a group of heuristics, is assessed via a separate learning algorithm trying to mimic a teacher for the tasks while using the information provided by the features. Note: Participants retain all legal rights on the submitted code snippets, but authorize their use for academic publication directly related to the contest and including proper credit attribution of the snippet's author. The MASH project is funded by the Information and Communication Technologies division of the European Commission, Cognitive Systems and Robotics unit, under the 7th Research Framework Program. The project VELASH on object detection is funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation. Best, -- Francois Fleuret http://www.idiap.ch/~fleuret/ From zivbj at cs.cmu.edu Fri Apr 5 14:55:16 2013 From: zivbj at cs.cmu.edu (Ziv Bar-Joseph) Date: Fri, 05 Apr 2013 14:55:16 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: Announcing the first workshop on Biological Distributed Algorithms (BDA 2013) Message-ID: <515F1E14.2030102@cs.cmu.edu> website: http://www.disc-conference.org/wp/bda2013/ We are excited to announce the first workshop on Biological Distributed Algorithms (BDA 2013). BDA is focused on the relationships between distributed computing and distributed biological systems, including networks in the brain. We are especially interested in analysis and case studies that combine the two. Such studies lead to better understanding of the underlying biology while at the same time developing novel computational methods which address specific distributed computing problems. BDA 2013 is collocated with the 27th **International Symposium on Distributed Computing (DISC) in Jerusalem, Israel. It will tale place on Monday, 14 October 2013. We have an exciting list of invited speakers and are also accepting submissions of extended abstracts to be presented at the meeting. The deadline for these extended abstracts is 11 July 2013. More information can be found on the workshop website listed above. We look forward to seeing you in Jerusalem, Ziv Bar-Joseph (on behalf of the organizers) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sala038 at aucklanduni.ac.nz Fri Apr 5 20:56:38 2013 From: sala038 at aucklanduni.ac.nz (shafiq burki) Date: Sat, 6 Apr 2013 13:56:38 +1300 Subject: Connectionists: CALL FOR CHAPTERS: Biologically-Inspired KDD techniques Message-ID: CALL FOR CHAPTER PROPOSALS: Proposal Submission Deadline: April 30, 2013 Biologically-Inspired Techniques for Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining Advances in Data Mining and Database Management (ADMDM) Book Series A book edited by Dr. Shafiq Alam, Dr. Yun Sing Koh, and Prof. Gillian Dobbie University of Auckland, New Zealand Website: https://conference.fos.auckland.ac.nz/bdm/biokdd/index.html To be published by IGI Global: http://bit.ly/13tKOjc *********************** Introduction *********************** Biological inspired data mining techniques have been intensively used in different data mining applications such as data clustering, classification, association rule mining, sequential pattern mining, outlier detection, feature selection and information extraction in many application areas, such as healthcare and bioinformatics. The techniques include Neural Networks, Fuzzy Systems, Genetic Algorithms, Ant Colony Optimization, Particle Swarm Optimization, Artificial Immune Systems, Culture Algorithms, Social evolution, and Artificial Bee Colony Optimization. A huge increase in the number of papers and citations in the area has been observed in the past decade, which is clear evidence of the popularity of these techniques. *********************** Objective of the Book *********************** The aim of this book is to highlight the contemporary research in the area of Biologically-Inspired techniques in different data mining domains, and the implementation of these techniques in real life data mining problems. The book will publish some of the state of the art work in this area and share the good practices that have enabled this area grow and flourish. The book will also contribute to extending the knowledge by providing quality work from established researchers that can be used by new researchers in the area. The book calls for high quality chapters outlining current research, literature surveys, theoretical and empirical studies, and other relevant work including but not limited to the following areas: 1. Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) - PSO based clustering - PSO based classification - PSO based outlier detection - PSO based feature selection 2. Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) - ACO based clustering - ACO based classification - ACO based feature selection - ACO based association rules mining - ACO based sequential patterns mining 3. Artificial Immune Systems (AIS) - Intrusion detection using AIS - Clustering using AIS - Decision support system using AIS 4. Bee Colony Optimization (BCO) - BCO for pattern matching - Clustering using BCO 5. Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) - ANN based pattern matching and discover - Classification rules discovery using ANN - Forecasting using ANN 6. Genetic Algorithms (GA?s) - Clustering, classification and parameter tuning using GA?s - GA?s based feature extraction and selection 7. Fuzzy systems (FS) - Fuzzy clustering - Fuzzy classification - Fuzzy Association rules discovery ********************** Target Audience ********************** The primary target of this book is the research community in the area of computational intelligence, machine learning, and data mining. However, the book is equally of interest for other KDD areas such as data analysis and preprocessing, big data management, web mining, optimization based data mining, and recommender systems. Specifically, it will be very useful for researchers from computational intelligence and evolutionary computation to update their knowledge about different application areas of their research, experimentation, and evaluation methods in the area of KDD. ***************************** Submission Procedure ***************************** Researchers and practitioners are invited to submit on or before April 30, 2013, a 2-3 page chapter proposal clearly explaining the mission and concerns of his or her proposed chapter. Authors of accepted proposals will be notified by May 15, 2013 about the status of their proposals and sent chapter guidelines. Full chapters are expected to be submitted by August 30, 2013. All submitted chapters will be reviewed on a double-blind review basis. Contributors may also be requested to serve as reviewers for this project. Publisher This book is scheduled to be published by IGI Global (formerly Idea Group Inc.), publisher of the ?Information Science Reference? (formerly Idea Group Reference), ?Medical Information Science Reference,? ?Business Science Reference,? and ?Engineering Science Reference? imprints. For additional information regarding the publisher, please visit www.igi-global.com. This publication is anticipated to be released in 2014. Important Dates April 30, 2013: Proposal Submission Deadline May 15, 2013: Notification of Acceptance August 30, 2013: Full Chapter Submission October 30, 2013: Review Results Returned November 30, 2013: Final Chapter Submission February 15, 2014: Final Deadline ******************************************* Inquiries and submissions can be forwarded electronically (Word document) or by mail to: Dr. Shafiq Alam Department of Computer Science UNIVERSITY OF AUCKLAND Tel.: +6493737599 ext. 82128 ? Fax: +6493737453 E-mail: sala038 at aucklanduni.ac.nz ************************************ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From grlmc at urv.cat Sat Apr 6 11:32:04 2013 From: grlmc at urv.cat (GRLMC) Date: Sat, 6 Apr 2013 17:32:04 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: SSTiC 2013: 3rd registration deadline 26 April Message-ID: *To be removed from our mailing list, please respond to this message with UNSUBSCRIBE in the subject* ********************************************************************* 2013 INTERNATIONAL SUMMER SCHOOL ON TRENDS IN COMPUTING SSTiC 2013 Tarragona, Spain July 22-26, 2013 Organized by Rovira i Virgili University http://grammars.grlmc.com/SSTiC2013/ ********************************************************************* +++ 3rd registration deadline: April 26 +++ AIM: SSTiC 2013 will be an open forum for the convergence of top class well recognized computer scientists and people at the beginning of their research career (typically PhD students) as well as consolidated researchers. SSTiC 2013 will cover the whole spectrum of computer science by means of 74 six-hour courses dealing with hot topics at the frontiers of the field. By actively participating, lecturers and attendees will share the idea of scientific excellence as the main motto of their research work. ADDRESSED TO: Graduate students from around the world. There are no pre-requisites in terms of the academic degree the attendee must hold. However, since there will be several levels among the courses, in the description of some of them reference may be made to specific knowledge background. SSTiC 2013 is appropriate also for people more advanced in their career who want to keep themselves updated on developments in the field. Finally, senior researchers will find it fruitful to listen and discuss with people who are main references of the diverse branches of computing nowadays. REGIME: 8 parallel sessions will be held during the whole event. Participants will be able to freely choose the courses they will be willing to attend as well as to move from one to another. VENUE: Palau Firal i de Congressos de Tarragona Arquitecte Rovira, 2 43001 Tarragona http://www.palaucongrestgna.com COURSES AND PROFESSORS: Divyakant Agrawal (Santa Barbara) [intermediate] Scalable Data Management in Enterprise and Cloud Computing Infrastructures Shun-ichi Amari (Riken) [introductory] Information Geometry and Its Applications James Anderson (Chapel Hill) [intermediate] Scheduling and Synchronization in Real-Time Multicore Systems Pierre Baldi (Irvine) [intermediate] Big Data Informatics Challenges and Opportunities in the Life Sciences Yoshua Bengio (Montr?al) [introductory/intermediate] Deep Learning of Representations Stephen Brewster (Glasgow) [advanced] Multimodal Human-Computer Interaction Bruno Buchberger (Linz) [introductory] Groebner Bases: An Algorithmic Method for Multivariate Polynomial Systems. Foundations and Applications Rajkumar Buyya (Melbourne) [intermediate] Cloud Computing Jan Camenisch (IBM Zurich) [intermediate] Cryptography for Privacy John M. Carroll (Penn State) [introductory] Usability Engineering and Scenario-based Design Jeffrey S. Chase (Duke) [intermediate] Trust Logic as an Enabler for Secure Federated Systems Larry S. Davis (College Park) [intermediate] Video Analysis of Human Activities Paul De Bra (Eindhoven) [intermediate] Adaptive Systems Marco Dorigo (Brussels) [introductory] An Introduction to Swarm Intelligence and Swarm Robotics Paul Dourish (Irvine) [introductory] Ubiquitous Computing in a Social Context Max J. Egenhofer (Maine) [introductory/intermediate] Qualitative Spatial Relations: Formalizations and Inferences Richard M. Fujimoto (Georgia Tech) [introductory] Parallel and Distributed Simulation David Garlan (Carnegie Mellon) [advanced] Software Architecture: Past, Present and Future Mario Gerla (Los Angeles) [intermediate] Vehicle Cloud Computing Georgios B. Giannakis (Minnesota) [advanced] Sparsity and Low Rank for Robust Data Analytics and Networking Ralph Grishman (New York) [intermediate] Information Extraction from Natural Language Mark Guzdial (Georgia Tech) [introductory] Computing Education Research: What We Know about Learning and Teaching Computer Science Francisco Herrera (Granada) [intermediate] Imbalanced Classification: Current Approaches and Open Problems Paul Hudak (Yale) [introductory] Euterpea: From Signals to Symphonies Using Haskell Syed Ali Jafar (Irvine) [intermediate] Interference Alignment Niraj K. Jha (Princeton) [intermediate] FinFET Circuit Design George Karypis (Minnesota) [introductory] Introduction to Parallel Computing: Architectures, Algorithms, and Programming Aggelos K. Katsaggelos (Northwestern) [intermediate/advanced] Sparsity-based Advances in Image Processing Arie E. Kaufman (Stony Brook) [advanced] Advances in Visualization Carl Kesselman (Southern California) [intermediate] Biomedical Informatics and Big Data Hugo Krawczyk (IBM Research) [intermediate] An Introduction to the Design and Analysis of Authenticated Key Exchange Protocols Pierre L'Ecuyer (Montr?al) [intermediate] Quasi-Monte Carlo Methods in Simulation: Theory and Practice Laks Lakshmanan (British Columbia) [intermediate/advanced] Information and Influence Spread in Social Networks Wenke Lee (Georgia Tech) [introductory] DNS-based Monitoring of Malware Activities Maurizio Lenzerini (Roma La Sapienza) [intermediate] Ontology-based Data Integration Ming C. Lin (Chapel Hill) [introductory/intermediate] Physically-based Modeling and Simulation Jane W.S. Liu (Academia Sinica) [intermediate] Critical Information and Communication Technologies for Disaster Preparedness and Response Nadia Magnenat-Thalmann (Nanyang Tech) [introductory] Modelling and Animating Virtual Humans Satoru Miyano (Tokyo) [intermediate] How to Hack Cancer Systems with Computational Methods Aloysius K. Mok (Austin) [intermediate] From Real-time Systems to Cyber-physical Systems Daniel Moss? (Pittsburgh) [intermediate] Asymmetric Multicore Management Hermann Ney (Aachen) [intermediate/advanced] Probabilistic Modelling for Natural Language Processing - with Applications to Speech Recognition, Handwriting Recognition and Machine Translation Cathleen A. Norris (North Texas) & Elliot Soloway (Ann Arbor) [introductory] Primary & Secondary Educational Computing in the Age of Mobilism Jeff Offutt (George Mason) [intermediate] Cutting Edge Research in Engineering of Web Applications David Padua (Urbana) [intermediate] Parallel Programming with Abstractions Bijan Parsia (Manchester) [introductory] The Semantic Web: Conceptual and Technical Foundations Massoud Pedram (Southern California) [intermediate] Energy Efficient Architectures and Information Processing Systems Jian Pei (Simon Fraser) [intermediate/advanced] Mining Uncertain and Probabilistic Data Charles E. Perkins (FutureWei) [intermediate/advanced] Beyond 4G Prabhakar Raghavan (Google) [introductory/intermediate] Web Search and Advertising Sudhakar M. Reddy (Iowa) [introductory] Design for Test and Test of Digital VLSI Circuits Phillip Rogaway (Davis) [introductory/intermediate] Provably Secure Symmetric Encryption Gustavo Rossi (La Plata) [intermediate] Topics in Model Driven Web Engineering Kaushik Roy (Purdue) [introductory/intermediate] Low-energy Computing Robert Sargent (Syracuse) [introductory] Validating Models Douglas C. Schmidt (Vanderbilt) [intermediate] Patterns and Frameworks for Concurrent and Networked Software Bart Selman (Cornell) [intermediate] Fast Large-scale Probabilistic and Logical Inference Methods Mubarak Shah (Central Florida) [intermediate/advanced] Visual Crowd Surveillance Ron Shamir (Tel Aviv) [introductory] Revealing Structure in Disease Regulation and Networks Micha Sharir (Tel Aviv) [introductory/intermediate] Geometric Arrangements and Incidences: Algorithms, Combinatorics, and Algebra Satinder Singh (Ann Arbor) [introductory/advanced] Reinforcement Learning: On Machines Learning to Act from Experience Dawn Xiaodong Song (Berkeley) [introductory] Selected Topics in Computer Security Daniel Thalmann (Nanyang Tech) [intermediate] Simulation of Individuals, Groups and Crowds and Their Interaction with the User Mike Thelwall (Wolverhampton) [introductory] Sentiment Strength Detection for the Social Web Julita Vassileva (Saskatchewan) [introductory/intermediate] Engaging Users in Social Computing Systems Philip Wadler (Edinburgh) [introductory] Topics in Lambda Calculus and Life Yao Wang (Polytechnic New York) [introductory/advanced] Video Compression: Fundamentals and Recent Development Gio Wiederhold (Stanford) [introductory] Software Economics: How Do the Results of the Intellectual Efforts Enter the Global Market Place Ian H. Witten (Waikato) [introductory] Data Mining Using Weka Limsoon Wong (National Singapore) [introductory/intermediate] The Use of Context in Gene Expression and Proteomic Profile Analysis Michael Wooldridge (Oxford) [introductory] Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems Ronald R. Yager (Iona) [introductory/intermediate] Fuzzy Sets and Soft Computing Philip S. Yu (Illinois Chicago) [advanced] Mining Big Data Justin Zobel (Melbourne) [introductory/intermediate] Writing and Research Skills for Computer Scientists REGISTRATION: It has to be done at http://grammars.grlmc.com/SSTiC2013/Registration.php Since a large number of attendees are expected and the capacity of the venue is limited, registration requests will be processed on a first come first served basis. The registration period will be closed when the capacity of the venue will be complete. FEES: They are the same (a flat rate) for all people by the corresponding deadline. They give the right to attend all courses. ACCOMMODATION: Information about accommodation is available on the website of the School. CERTIFICATE: Participants will be delivered a certificate of attendance. IMPORTANT DATES: Announcement of the programme: January 26, 2013 Six registration deadlines: February 26, March 26, April 26, May 26, June 26, July 26, 2013 QUESTIONS AND FURTHER INFORMATION: Lilica Voicu: florentinalilica.voicu at urv.cat POSTAL ADDRESS: SSTiC 2013 Research Group on Mathematical Linguistics (GRLMC) Rovira i Virgili University Av. Catalunya, 35 43002 Tarragona, Spain Phone: +34-977-559543 Fax: +34-977-558386 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: Ajuntament de Tarragona Diputaci? de Tarragona Universitat Rovira i Virgili From salah at boun.edu.tr Mon Apr 8 01:20:58 2013 From: salah at boun.edu.tr (Ali Salah) Date: Mon, 8 Apr 2013 08:20:58 +0300 Subject: Connectionists: CFP: 4th Int. Workshop on Human Behavior Understanding (at ACM MM) Message-ID: -------------------------------------------------------------------- Call for Papers: 4th Int. Workshop on Human Behavior Understanding (HBU'2013) to be held in conjunction with ACM Multimedia'2013, 22 October, Barcelona, Spain "Focus Theme: Interactions in arts, creativity, entertainment and edutainment" http://www.cmpe.boun.edu.tr/hbu/2013/ - apologies for cross posting - -------------------------------------------------------------------- Short Description: The Fourth Workshop on Human Behavior Understanding, organized as a satellite to ACM MM'2013, will gather researchers dealing with the problem of modeling human behavior under its multiple facets (expression of emotions, display of complex social and relational behaviors, performance of individual or joint actions, etc.), with particular attention to interactions in arts, creativity, entertainment and edutainment. Concrete examples are interactive art installations that sense and respond to their viewers in novel ways, persuasive and serious games, affect-sensing systems with educational goals, gesture-sensing tutoring systems, healthcare systems that improve the patients? physical or cognitive well-being, playful interaction settings that serve beneficial purposes, to name a few. The HBU Workshops, previously organized as satellite to ICPR, AMI, and IROS Conferences, have a unique aspect of fostering cross-pollination of different disciplines, bringing together researchers of multimedia, robotics, HCI, artificial intelligence, pattern recognition, interaction design, ambient intelligence, and psychology. The diversity of human behavior, the richness of multi-modal data that arises from its analysis, and the multitude of applications that demand rapid progress in this area ensure that the HBU Workshops provide a timely and relevant discussion and dissemination platform. Keynotes: Dr. Pushmeet Kohli, Microsoft Research Cambridge Dr. Antonio Camurri, Univ. of Genova, DIBRIS, Casa Paganini - InfoMus Research Centre Topics: The covered topics would span one or more items from each of the following topic dimensions: Human Behavior Analysis Systems ? Action and activity recognition ? Affect analysis ? Social signal processing ? Face analysis ? Gestures and haptic interaction ? Voice and speech analysis ? Learning and adaptation ? Gaze, attention and saliency Theory and Methodology of Human Interactive Behaviors ? Theoretical frameworks of behavior analysis ? Data collection, annotation, and benchmarking ? User studies and human factors ? Interaction design Interactive Applications ? Visual and digital arts ? Games and entertainment ? Healthcare and well-being ? Education ? Creativity Submissions: Submissions must represent original material. Papers are accepted for review with the understanding that the same work has been neither submitted to, nor published in, another journal or conference. All manuscripts will undergo a rigorous review process by the members of the program committee. The submissions will be up to 12 pages, Lecture Notes in Computer Science style. The proceedings of previous HBU editions were published by Springer Verlag's LNCS Series. LNCS approval is pending for HBU 2013. The papers of the workshop will also be indexed by the ACM Digital Library. You can submit a paper now at: https://www.easychair.org/account/signin.cgi?conf=hbu2013 Important Dates: June 28, 2013: Submission of full papers (23:59pm GMT) August 2, 2013: Notification of acceptance August 16, 2013: Camera-ready October 22, 2013: Workshop Journal Special Issue: There will be a post-workshop special issue at ACM Transactions on Interactive Intelligent Systems. All workshop authors will be invited to submit significantly extended and revised versions of their papers to the special issue. Contact: Contact A.A. Salah (salah at boun.edu.tr) about questions regarding HBU. Committees: Organizing Committee: Albert Ali Salah, Bogazi?i Univ., Turkey. Hayley Hung, Delft Univ. of Technology, The Netherlands. Oya Aran, Idiap Research Institute, Switzerland. Hatice Gunes, Queen Mary Univ. of London (QMUL), UK. Program Committee: Elisabeth Andre, Univ. Augsburg, Germany Nick Bryan-Kinns, Queen Mary Univ. London, UK Rafael E. Calvo, Univ. of Sydney, Australia Antonio Camurri, Univ. of Genova, Italy Jeffrey Cohn, Univ. Pittsburgh, USA Simon Colton, Imperial College London, UK Fernando de la Torre, CMU, USA Thierry Dutoit, Univ. Mons, Belgium Abdulmotaleb El Saddik, Univ. of Ottawa, Canada Jordi Gonzalez, UAB-CVC Barcelona, Spain Daniel Gonzalez-Jimenez, Gradiant, Spain Stefan G?bel, TU Darmstadt, Germany Zakia Hammal, CMU, USA Christian Jacquemin, LIMSI-CNRS, France Alejandro Jaimes, Yahoo Barcelona, Spain Dinesh Jayagopi, Idiap Research Institute, Switzerland Ben Kr?se, Univ. of Amsterdam, the Netherlands Cem Keskin, Microsoft Research Cambridge, UK Dana Kulic, Univ. of Waterloo, Canada Matei Mancas, Univ. of Mons, Belgium Louis-Philippe Morency, USC, USA Florian Mueller, RMIT, Australia Frank Nack, Univ. of Amsterdam, the Netherlands Hiroshi Okuno, Kyoto Univ., Japan Isabella Poggi, Univ. Roma Tre, Italy Thierry Pun, Univ. of Geneva, Switzerland Francis Quek, Virginia Tech, USA Ben Schouten, Eindhoven Tech. Univ., the Netherlands Bj?rn Schuller, Tech. Univ. Munich, Germany Alan Smeaton, Dublin City Univ., Ireland Koray Tahiroglu, Aalto Univ., Finland Reiner Wichert, Fraunhofer IGD, Germany Giorgios Yannakakis, Univ. of Malta, Malta -- Dr. Albert Ali Salah Bogazici University, Computer Engineering Dept. 34342 Bebek - Istanbul, Turkey Phone: +90 212 359 (7774) http://www.cmpe.boun.edu.tr/~salah/ Bogazici University, Cognitive Science MA Program http://www.cogsci.boun.edu.tr -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From ted.carnevale at yale.edu Mon Apr 8 11:56:43 2013 From: ted.carnevale at yale.edu (Ted Carnevale) Date: Mon, 08 Apr 2013 11:56:43 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: Parallelizing NEURON Models early registration deadline Message-ID: <5162E8BB.2080208@yale.edu> "Parallelizing NEURON Models" is a 5 day intensive hands-on course that is designed for NEURON users whose modeling projects involve -- simulations that take a long time -- running a large number of simulations -- simulating models that are too complex for a standalone PC or Mac This course will run from June 26-30 at the Institute for Neural Computation at UC San Diego. Participants will learn how to develop models, or revise existing models in order to take advantage of parallel hardware such as individual multicore PCs or Macs, workstation clusters, and massively parallel supercomputers. The early registration deadline for "Parallelizing NEURON Models" is Friday, April 12. Applicants who sign up and pay by that date are eligible to take this course for $1200. After Friday, the registration fee goes back up to $1350. Registration is limited, and the last day to sign up is Friday, May 24. For more information and the on-line application form, see http://www.neuron.yale.edu/neuron/static/courses/parnrn2013/parnrn2013.html or contact ted dot carnevale at yale dot edu From daniel.margulies at gmail.com Mon Apr 8 03:08:37 2013 From: daniel.margulies at gmail.com (Daniel Margulies) Date: Mon, 8 Apr 2013 09:08:37 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: Neuro Bureau Announces the BRAIN-ART COMPETITION 2013 Message-ID: * In order to recognize the beauty and creativity of artistic renderings emerging from the neuroimaging community, we are launching the third annual Brain-Art Competition. Countless hours are devoted to the creation of informative visualizations for communicating neuroscientific findings. The Brain-Art Competition aims to recognize this often unappreciated aspect of the publication process, and highlight the artistic creativity of our community. We are inviting researchers to submit their favorite unpublished works for entry. Both team and single-person entries are welcomed. The competition will have five award categories: ? Best Representation of the Human Connectome ? Best Abstract Brain Illustration ? Best Humorous Brain Illustration ? Best Video Illustration of the Brain ? Special Topic: Best Visualization of Probabilistic Connectivity The 'Special Topic' is a new addition to this year?s competition that highlights an important challenge in current connectomics research: visualizing the uncertainty of 3D connections in tractography and functional connectivity data. Submission Deadline: 11:59PM CDT, Wednesday, June 5th, 2013 Award Notification: June 17th during the Neuro Bureau gala event, held at the OHBM Annual Meeting in Seattle. For more information, check out the competition details and submission form at: www.neurobureau.org * -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From bowlby at bu.edu Mon Apr 8 12:51:45 2013 From: bowlby at bu.edu (Brian Bowlby) Date: Mon, 8 Apr 2013 12:51:45 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: Call for Registrations: 17th ICCNS conference (June 4-7, 2013) Message-ID: SEVENTEENTH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON COGNITIVE AND NEURAL SYSTEMS (ICCNS) June 4 ? 7, 2013 Boston University 677 Beacon Street Boston, Massachusetts 02215 USA http://cns.bu.edu/cns-meeting/conference.html Sponsored by the Boston University Center for Adaptive Systems, Center for Computational Neuroscience and Neural Technology (CompNet), and Center of Excellence for Learning in Education, Science, and Technology (CELEST) with financial support from the National Science Foundation This interdisciplinary conference is attended each year by approximately 300 people from 30 countries around the world. As in previous years, the conference will focus on solutions to the questions: HOW DOES THE BRAIN CONTROL BEHAVIOR? HOW CAN TECHNOLOGY EMULATE BIOLOGICAL INTELLIGENCE? The conference is aimed at researchers and students of computational neuroscience, cognitive science, neural networks, neuromorphic engineering, and artificial intelligence. It includes invited lectures and contributed lectures and posters by experts on the biology and technology of how the brain and other intelligent systems adapt to a changing world. The conference is particularly interested in exploring how the brain and biologically-inspired algorithms and systems in engineering and technology can learn. Single-track oral and poster sessions enable all presented work to be highly visible. Three-hour poster sessions with no conflicting events will be held on two of the conference days. Posters will be up all day, and can also be viewed during breaks in the talk schedule. This year's conference will include, in addition to regular invited and contributed talks and posters, two workshops on the topics: NEURAL DYNAMICS OF VALUE-BASED DECISION-MAKING AND COGNITIVE PLANNING and SOCIAL COGNITION: FROM BABIES TO ROBOTS See the url above for the complete program of invited speakers. CONFIRMED INVITED SPEAKERS Todd Braver (Washington University, St. Louis) Flexible neural mechanisms of cognitive control: Influences on reward-based decision-making Marisa Carrasco (New York University) Effects of attention on early vision Patrick Cavanagh (Universit? Paris Descartes) Common functional architecture for spatial attention and perceived location Robert Desimone [Plenary Speaker] (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) Prefrontal-visual cortex interactions in attention Asif Ghazanfar (Princeton University) Evolving and developing communication through coupled oscillations Stephen Grossberg (Boston University) Behavioral economics and neuroeconomics: Cooperation, competition, preference, and decision-making Joy Hirsch (Columbia University Medical Center) Neural circuits for conflict resolution Roberta Klatzky (Carnegie Mellon University) Multi-modal interactions within and between senses Kevin LaBar (Duke University) Neural systems for fear generalization Randi Martin (Rice University) Memory retrieval and interference during language comprehension Andrew Meltzoff (University of Washington) How to build a baby with social cognition: Accelerating learning by generalizing across self and other Javier Movellan (University of California, San Diego) Optimal control approaches to the analysis and synthesis of social behavior Mary Potter (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) Recognizing briefly presented pictures: Feedforward processing? Pieter Roelfsema (The Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience) Neuronal mechanisms for perceptual organization Daniel Salzman (Columbia University) Cognitive signals in the amygdala Daniel Schacter [Plenary Speaker] (Harvard University) Constructive memory and imagining the future Wolfram Schultz (University of Cambridge) Neuronal reward and risk signals Helen Tager-Flusberg (Boston University) Identifying early neurobiological risk markers for autism spectrum disorder in the first year of life Jan Theeuwes (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam) Prior history shapes selection James Todd (Ohio State University) The perception of 3D shape from texture Leslie Ungerleider (National Institutes of Health) Functional architecture for face processing in the primate brain Jeremy Wolfe (Harvard Medical School and Brigham & Women's Hospital) How selective and non-selective pathways contribute to visual search in scenes REGISTRATION FORM Seventeenth International Conference on Cognitive and Neural Systems June 4 ? 7, 2013 Boston University 677 Beacon Street Boston, Massachusetts 02215 USA Fax: +1 617 353 7755 Mr/Ms/Dr/Prof:_____________________________________________________ Affiliation:_________________________________________________________ Address:__________________________________________________________ City, State, Postal Code:______________________________________________ Phone and Fax:_____________________________________________________ Email:____________________________________________________________ The registration fee includes a conference reception and multiple daily coffee breaks. CHECK ONE: ( ) $135 Conference (Regular) ( ) $85 Conference (Student) METHOD OF PAYMENT: [ ] Enclosed is a check made payable to "Boston University" Checks must be made payable in US dollars and issued by a US correspondent bank. Each registrant is responsible for any and all bank charges. [ ] I wish to pay by credit card (MasterCard, Visa, or Discover Card only) Name as it appears on the card:___________________________________________ Type of card: _____________________________ Expiration date:________________ Account number: _______________________________________________________ Signature:____________________________________________________________ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: brochure (04-08-13).docx Type: application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document Size: 71208 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From bernabe at imse-cnm.csic.es Wed Apr 10 08:10:20 2013 From: bernabe at imse-cnm.csic.es (bernabe) Date: Wed, 10 Apr 2013 14:10:20 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: Recent papers from the IMSE Neuromorphic Group In-Reply-To: <516548EB.8050408@imse-cnm.csic.es> References: <516548EB.8050408@imse-cnm.csic.es> Message-ID: <516556AC.9060009@imse-cnm.csic.es> We would like to bring to your attention the following three papers published recently by our group, which might be of interest to some people in this list: ? J. A. P?rez-Carrasco, B. Zhao, C. Serrano, B. Acha, T. Serrano-Gotarredona, S. Chen and B. Linares-Barranco, "Mapping from Frame-Driven to Frame-Free Event-Driven Vision Systems by Low-Rate Rate-Coding and Coincidence Processing. Application to Feed-Forward ConvNets,"/IEEE Trans. on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence/, in Press (author accepted pdf ) (Video ) ? T. Serrano-Gotarredona and B. Linares-Barranco, "A 128x128 1.5% Contrast Sensitivity 0.9% FPN 3us Latency 4mW Asynchronous Frame-Free Dynamic Vision Sensor Using Transimpedance Amplifiers,"/IEEE J. Solid-State Circuits/, vol.48, No. 3, pp. 827-838, March 2013. (author accepted pdf ) (ieeexplore ) ? T. Serrano-Gotarredona, T. Masquelier, T. Prodromakis, G. Indiveri, and B. Linares-Barranco, "STDP and STDP Variations with Memristors for Spiking Neuromorphic Learning Systems,"/Frontiers in Neuromorphic Engineering, Front. Neurosci./*7*:02. doi: 10.3389/fnins.2013.00002, 6 January 2013. (free open access link ) Feedback, comments, criticisms are greatly welcome. Best regards, Bernabe -- -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bernabe Linares-Barranco, PhD, IEEE Fellow Full Professor (Profesor de Investigacion) CSIC Instituto Microelectronica Sevilla (IMSE) Phone: 34-954-466643/66 National Microelectronics Center, CNM-CSIC Fax: 34-954-466600 Av. Americo Vespucio s/n E-mail: Bernabe.Linares(AT)imse-cnm.csic.es 41092 Sevilla, SPAIN URL:http://www.imse-cnm.csic.es/~bernabe ------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From weng at cse.msu.edu Tue Apr 9 17:42:09 2013 From: weng at cse.msu.edu (Juyang Weng) Date: Tue, 09 Apr 2013 17:42:09 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: Full paper deadline is this Sunday: BMI Summer School and ICBM Conference 2013 In-Reply-To: <51643F69.2020102@cse.msu.edu> References: <51643F69.2020102@cse.msu.edu> Message-ID: <51648B31.4090904@cse.msu.edu> This is a friendly reminder that the full paper deadline is this Sunday. The abstract deadline is a week after. If you plan to submit but need more time, please contact me. -John Brain-Mind Institute (BMI) Programs: Summer 2013 *Summer School June 17 - July 5, August 15 - August 2, 2013 International Conference on Brain-Mind (ICBM), July 27 - 28, 2013 Michigan State University , East Lansing , Michigan USA * This is the 2nd year of BMI after the successful BMI 2012. BMI 2013 has two parts, summer school and conference. *Important dates*: Full papers: by Sunday, April 14, 2013 Abstracts: by Sunday, April 21, 2013 Course applications (to get admitted so that you can register): by Sunday, April 28, 2013 Advance registration: Sunday, April 28, 2013 Call for BMI Course Applications BMI summer courses will have two 3-week sessions, the 1st session (Computational Brain-Mind, distance learning) June 17- July 5, 2013 and the 2nd session (Cognitive Science, at MSU) July 15 - August 2, 2013. * Due to the need of 6-discipline scope, the BMI courses are designed for anybody who has at least a bachelor degree, including faculty, senior researchers, post-doctoral researchers, and graduate students in any discipline. Exceptional undergraduate student can be considered on a case by case basis. * On-site participation of ICBM during the course is required for all course related activities (except BMI 871) as part of the requirements of the BMI 6DC program. * Those who pass a course will receive a certificate. Auditing without doing homework and taking exams is also welcome. * Those who do not take any BMI course can also register for only ICBM. Call for ICBM Papers and Abstracts BMI Internal Conference on Brain-Mind (ICBM) calls for papers in all subjects related to brain or mind to be presented during Saturday and Sunday. The subjects of interest include, but not limited to: 1. *Genes*: inheritance, evolution, species, environments, nature vs. nurture, and evolution vs. development. 2. *Cells*: cell models, cell learning, cell signaling, tissues, morphogenesis, and tissue development. 3. *Circuits*: features, clustering, self-organization, cortical circuits, Brodmann areas, representation, classification, and regression. 4. *Streams*: pathways, intra-modal attention, vision, audition, touch (including kinesthetics, temperature), smell, and taste. 5. *Brain ways*: neural networks, brain-mind architecture, inter-modal attention, multisensory integration, and neural modulation (punishment/serotonin/pain, reward/dopamine/pleasure/sex, novelty/acetylcholine/norepinephrine, higher emotion). 6. *Experiences/learning*: training, learning, development, interaction, performance metrics, and functions of genome. 7. *Behaviors:* actions, motor development, concept learning, abstraction, languages, decision making, reasoning, and creativity. 8. *Societies/multi-agent*: joint attention, swarm intelligence, group intelligence, genders, races, science of organization, constitutions, and laws. 9. *Diseases*: depression, ADD/ADHD, drug addiction, dyslexia, autism, schizophrenia, Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, vision loss, and hearing loss. 10. *Applications*: image analysis, computer vision, speech recognition, pattern recognition, robotics, artificial intelligence, instrumentation, and prosthetics. Accepted full papers and abstracts will be presented orally at ICBM, available online and searchable. Each paper will be maximum 8 pages. Each abstracts must be no longer than 1 page. -- -- Juyang (John) Weng, Professor Department of Computer Science and Engineering MSU Cognitive Science Program and MSU Neuroscience Program 428 S Shaw Ln Rm 3115 Michigan State University East Lansing, MI 48824 USA Tel: 517-353-4388 Fax: 517-432-1061 Email:weng at cse.msu.edu URL:http://www.cse.msu.edu/~weng/ ---------------------------------------------- -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From phkywong at ust.hk Wed Apr 10 11:15:35 2013 From: phkywong at ust.hk (WONG Michael K Y) Date: Wed, 10 Apr 2013 23:15:35 +0800 (HKT) Subject: Connectionists: Statistical Physics and Computational Neuroscience: Deadline Approaching Message-ID: <60517.143.89.19.28.1365606935.squirrel@sqmail.ust.hk> ABSTRACT SUBMISSION DEADLINE 15 APRIL APPROACHING The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology IAS Program on Statistical Physics and Computational Neuroscience IAS Workshop 2-14 July 2013 Student Conference 15-16 July 2013 StatPhysHK Conference 17-19 July 2013 Invited speakers: Guoqiang Bi (U of Science and Technology of China) Chi Keung Chan (Academica Sinica) Ying Shing Chan (University of Hong Kong) Steven Coombes (Nottingham University) Michael Crair (Yale University) Tomaki Fukai (RIKEN) David Hansel (Universit? Ren? Descartes) Jufang He (Hong Kong Polytechnic University) Yong He (Beijing Normal University) Claus Hilgetag (Hamburg University) Zhaoping Li (University College London) Marcelo Magnasco (Rockefeller University) Masato Okada (University of Tokyo) Stefano Panzeri (Italian Inst of Tech and U of Glasgow) Barry Richmond (NIMH) Thomas Trappenberg (Dalhousie University) Mark van Rossum (University of Edinburgh) Xiaoqin Wang (Johns Hopkins University) Jia Yi Zhang (Fudan University) Organizing Committee: Chair - K. Y. Michael Wong (HKUST) Co-chair - Changsong Zhou (HKBU) Emily S. C. Ching (CUHK) Gang Hu (Beijing Normal University) Jian-Dong Huang (HKU) H. Benjamin Peng (HKUST) Leihan Tang (HKBU) Si Wu (Beijing Normal University) http://ias.ust.hk/program/201307/ Abstract submission deadline: 15 April 2013 (updated) Venue: The new IAS Building Sponsors: Hong Kong Baptist University Croucher Foundation From nicosia at dmi.unict.it Tue Apr 9 13:42:11 2013 From: nicosia at dmi.unict.it (Giuseppe Nicosia) Date: Tue, 9 Apr 2013 19:42:11 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: ECAL'13 Call for Papers/Abstracts - Deadline April 15 Message-ID: [Apologies if you receive multiple copies of this announcement] [Please kindly help forward it to potentially interested attendees] ECAL'13 Call for Papers/Abstracts - Deadline April 15 ECAL 2013, European Conference on Artificial Life, an International Conference on the Designing, Programming, Evolving, Simulation and Synthesis of Natural and Artificial Living Systems 2-6 September 2013, Taormina, Italy - http://www.dmi.unict.it/ecal2013/ Paper/Abstract Submission: April 15, 2013 https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=ecal2013 Proceedings by MIT Press. Best Papers in Artificial Life Journal (TBC). * 11 Tracks ECAL Manuscripts - Main Track Track on Adaptive Living Material Technologies Track on Artificial Organs and Tissues & Organ-on-a-Chip Track on Artificial Immune, Neural and Endocrine Systems Track on Astrobiology Track on Bioinspired Robotics Track on Biologically Inspired Engineering Track on Biomimetic Microsystems Track on Evolvable Hardware, Evolutionary Electronics & BioChips Track on Programmable Nanomaterials Track on Synthetic and Systems Biochemistry and Biological Control * 8 Plenary Speakers Roberto Cingolani, IIT, Italy (confirmed) Roberto Cipolla, University of Cambridge, UK Dario Floreano, EPFL, Swiss (confirmed) Martin Hanczyc, University of Southern Denmark, Denmark (confirmed) Henrik Hautop, Lund, Denmark (confirmed) Didier Keymeulen, Caltech - JPL NASA, USA (TBC) Steve Oliver - University of Cambridge, UK (confirmed) Rolf Pfeifer, ETH, Swiss (confirmed) More Keynote Speakers to be Announced http://www.dmi.unict.it/ecal2013/keynote.php * 12 Workshops A TRUCE workshop on Unconventional Computing in 2070 Artificial Life Based Models of Higher Cognition Artificial Consciousness Artificial Life in Massive Data Flow Collective and Swarm Robotics Evolution and Development of Networks, from Systems Biology to Computational Neuroscience 2nd International Workshop on the Evolution of Physical Systems ERLARS 2013 - 6th International Workshop on Evolutionary and Reinforcement Learning for Autonomous Robot Systems Fundamentals of Collective Adaptive Systems HSB - 2nd International Workshop on Hybrid Systems and Biology Protocells: Back to the Future What Synthetic Biology can offer to Artificial Intelligence? Perspectives in the Bio-Chem-ICT and other scenarios http://www.dmi.unict.it/ecal2013/workshops.php * 5 Tutorials Cell Pathway Design for Biotechnology and Synthetic Biology Exploring Prebiotic Chemistry Spaces Designing Adaptive Humanoid Robots Through the FARSA Open-Source Framework New Generation Sequencing Data Production, Analysis, and Archiving PyCX: A Python-Based Simulation Code Repository for Complex Systems Education http://www.dmi.unict.it/ecal2013/tutorials.php We look forward to seeing you in Sicily! W: http://www.dmi.unict.it/ecal2013/ E: ecal2013 at dmi.unict.it From basab at ieee.org Wed Apr 10 05:27:37 2013 From: basab at ieee.org (Basabdatta Sen Bhattacharya) Date: Wed, 10 Apr 2013 10:27:37 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: Fwd: workshop flyer In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Hi all - please find attached herewith a flyer of a workshop that we are organising at CNS this year. Would very much appreciate if you kindly circulate in your school/department. cheers, basab --------------------------------------------------------------- Basabdatta Sen Bhattacharya, PhD Lecturer, School of Engineering ENG 321, Engineering Hub University of Lincoln Brayford Pool, Lincoln LN6 7TS United Kingdom Telephone: +44(0)1522837947 *http://staff.lincoln.ac.uk/bbhattacharya* Personal page: https://sites.google.com/site/bsenbhattacharya -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: WorkshopFlyer_180613.pdf Type: application/pdf Size: 393104 bytes Desc: not available URL: From mmaniada at ics.forth.gr Wed Apr 10 15:22:53 2013 From: mmaniada at ics.forth.gr (Michail Maniadakis) Date: Wed, 10 Apr 2013 22:22:53 +0300 Subject: Connectionists: Call For Paper Contributions - Towards embodied artificial cognition: TIME is on my side In-Reply-To: <514873DB.1050701@ics.forth.gr> References: <5135B742.1080906@ics.forth.gr> <514873DB.1050701@ics.forth.gr> Message-ID: <5165BC0D.30402@ics.forth.gr> Dear colleagues, Yoonsuck Choe, Michail Maniadakis, Marc Wittmann and Sylvie Droit-Volet in collaboration with Frontiers in Neuroscience, organize a Research Topic (a collection of papers) with title: "Towards embodied artificial cognition: TIME is on my side". You may find the relevant call-for-papers in the following linkhttp://www.frontiersin.org/Neurorobotics/researchtopics/Towards_embodied_artificial_co/1554 As host editors, we would like to encourage you to submit an article to this topic. Contributions can be articles describing original research, methods, hypothesis & theory, opinions, etc. The idea is to create an organized, comprehensive collection of several contributions, as well as a forum for discussion and debate. Once published, your articles will remain free to access for all readers, and will be indexed in PubMed and other academic archives. As an author in Frontiers, you retain the copyright to your own papers and figures. We would be delighted if you considered participating in this Research Topic. Should you choose to participate, please confirm by sending us a quick email and then your abstract no later than May 15. Please note that the deadline for the full manuscript submission is on: Oct 30, 2013 With best regards, Yoonsuck Choe, Michail Maniadakis, Marc Wittmann and Sylvie Droit-Volet, Guest Associate Editors, Frontiers in Neurorobotics -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From standage at queensu.ca Thu Apr 11 09:47:29 2013 From: standage at queensu.ca (Dominic Standage) Date: Thu, 11 Apr 2013 13:47:29 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: Trading Speed and Accuracy by Coding Time: A Coupled-circuit Cortical Model Message-ID: <25A86FE23942874DA05B4C6980672A970D8B0324@MP-DUP-MBX-01.AD.QUEENSU.CA> Dear colleagues - apologies for cross posting. A new paper on the interactions between cortical timing and decision circuitry is available at http://www.ploscompbiol.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pcbi.1003021 Standage D, You H, Wang D-H, Dorris MC (2013) Trading Speed and Accuracy by Coding Time: A Coupled-circuit Cortical Model. PLoS Comput Biol 9(4): e1003021. doi:10.1371/journal.pcbi.1003021 Abstract Our actions take place in space and time, but despite the role of time in decision theory and the growing acknowledgement that the encoding of time is crucial to behaviour, few studies have considered the interactions between neural codes for objects in space and for elapsed time during perceptual decisions. The speed-accuracy trade-off (SAT) provides a window into spatiotemporal interactions. Our hypothesis is that temporal coding determines the rate at which spatial evidence is integrated, controlling the SAT by gain modulation. Here, we propose that local cortical circuits are inherently suited to the relevant spatial and temporal coding. In simulations of an interval estimation task, we use a generic local-circuit model to encode time by 'climbing' activity, seen in cortex during tasks with a timing requirement. The model is a network of simulated pyramidal cells and inhibitory interneurons, connected by conductance synapses. A simple learning rule enables the network to quickly produce new interval estimates, which show signature characteristics of estimates by experimental subjects. Analysis of network dynamics formally characterizes this generic, local-circuit timing mechanism. In simulations of a perceptual decision task, we couple two such networks. Network function is determined only by spatial selectivity and NMDA receptor conductance strength; all other parameters are identical. To trade speed and accuracy, the timing network simply learns longer or shorter intervals, driving the rate of downstream decision processing by spatially non-selective input, an established form of gain modulation. Like the timing network's interval estimates, decision times show signature characteristics of those by experimental subjects. Overall, we propose, demonstrate and analyse a generic mechanism for timing, a generic mechanism for modulation of decision processing by temporal codes, and we make predictions for experimental verification. Dominic Standage Postdoctoral Research Fellow Department of Biomedical and Molecular Sciences / Centre for Neuroscience Studies Queen's University, Botterell Hall, Room 453 Kingston, Ontario, Canada K7L 3N6 Tel: 613 533-3256 Fax: 613 533-6880 Email: standage at queensu.ca -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From manuel.lopes at inria.fr Thu Apr 11 12:32:41 2013 From: manuel.lopes at inria.fr (Manuel Lopes) Date: Thu, 11 Apr 2013 18:32:41 +0200 (CEST) Subject: Connectionists: RSS Workshop on Active learning in robotics: Exploration, Curiosity, and Interaction In-Reply-To: <972522125.15411492.1365690273615.JavaMail.root@inria.fr> Message-ID: <577517688.15453086.1365697961907.JavaMail.root@inria.fr> Robotics Science and Systems, June 27, Berlin Workshop on Active learning in robotics: Exploration, Curiosity, and Interaction Workshop description Applications of robots are expanding at a fast rate and are expected to operate in less controllable and harder to model domains. Learning and adaptation becomes essential to deploy robots that continuously interact with the environment, acquire new data during operation and use them to improve its performance by developing new skills or improving and adapting its models. How should a robot acquire and use this stream of data? How can it close the action-perception loop to efficiently learn models and acquire skills? Researchers in robotics, statistics and machine learning have answered these questions from different perspectives and setups: active learning, submodular optimization, exploration strategies, multi-armed bandits among many others. All such approaches provide ways for the robot to choose better data to learn, reducing the time and energy used while at the same time improving generalization capabilities. The goal of this workshop is to show how formalisms developed in different communities can be applied in a multidisciplinary context as it is robotics research. It will bring together researchers to build bridges between these different perspectives and to exchange ideas about representations and methods for active learning in robotics. In addition to the classical exploration problem, the workshop will also explore connections with new trends such as using intrinsic motivation to model curiosity and drive exploration towards the acquisition of unknown skills or the development of active strategies for human-robot interaction in the context of co-working or learning from a human teacher. Keywords: Active Learning, Reinforcement Learning, Markov Decision Processes, Exploration/Exploitation, Intrinsic Motivation Call for contributions: We solicit contributed presentations in all areas of active learning applied in robotics including, but not limited to: exploration, reinforcement learning, active sensing and perception, intrinsic motivation, active manipulation, human-robot co-working. The workshop aims to foster discussion between the different active strategies. Therefore, we will accept already published materials as well as unpublished work. Contributions will be evaluated in terms of its relevance to the workshop topic. Accepted contributions will be given an oral presentation or poster (plus spotlight talk) at the workshop. Important dates: Paper Submission: May 1, 2013 Paper Notification: May 15, 2013 Workshop Dates: June 27, 2013 Submission can be done at: https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=rss13-ws-alr See webpage for more details: https://webdiis.unizar.es/~montesan/web/index.php/rss2013wsactivelearning --------------------------------------------------------------- Manuel Lopes - Researcher flowers.inria.fr/mlopes FLOWERS team Phone: +33524574179 200, avenue de la Vieille Tour 33405 Talence, Cedex, France --------------------------------------------------------------- From uri_maoz at hotmail.com Thu Apr 11 13:28:23 2013 From: uri_maoz at hotmail.com (Uri Maoz) Date: Thu, 11 Apr 2013 10:28:23 -0700 Subject: Connectionists: =?windows-1252?q?Predicting_Action_Content_On-Lin?= =?windows-1252?q?e_and_in_Real_Time_before_Action_Onset_=97_an_Intracrani?= =?windows-1252?q?al_Human_Study?= Message-ID: Hello Colleagues, My apologies for any cross postings. I would like to draw your attention to a recent publication at NIPS. It can be found at: http://nips.cc/Conferences/2012/Program/event.php?ID=3432 (the link to the full paper is at the very bottom of the page). Maoz U, Ye S, Ross I, Mamelak A and Koch C (2012) Predicting Action Content On-Line and in Real Time before Action Onset ? an Intracranial Human Study. Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems 25, MIT Press Abstract The ability to predict action content from neural signals in real time before action onset has been long sought in the neuroscientific study of decision-making, agency and volition. On-line real-time (ORT) prediction is important for understanding the relation between neural correlates of decision-making and conscious, voluntary action. Here, epilepsy patients, implanted with intracranial depth microelectrodes or subdural grid electrodes for clinical purposes, participated in a ?matching-pennies? game against either the experimenter or a computer. In each trial, subjects were given a 5s countdown, after which they had to raise their left or right hand immediately as the ?go? signal appeared on a computer screen. They won a fixed amount of money if they raised a different hand than their opponent and lost that amount otherwise. The working hypothesis of this experiment was that neural precursors of the subjects? decisions precede action onset and potentially also the awareness of the decision to move, and that these signals could be detected in intracranial local field potentials (LFP). We found that low-frequency LFP signals from a combination of 10 channels, especially bilateral anterior cingulate cortex and supplementary motor area, were predictive of the intended left-/right-hand movements before the onset of the go signal. Our ORT system predicted which hand the patient would raise 0.5s before the go signal with 68?3% accuracy in two patients. Based on these results, we constructed an ORT system that tracked up to 30 channels simultaneously, and tested it on retrospective data from 6 patients. On average, we could predict the correct hand choice in 80% of the trials, which rose to 90% correct if we let the system drop about 1/3 of the trials on which it was less confident. Our system demonstrates ? for the first time ? the feasibility of accurately predicting a binary action in real time for patients with intracranial recordings, well before the action occurs. Uri Maoz Postdoctoral Scholar Division of Biology, MC 216-76 California Institute of Technology Pasadena, CA 91125 Tel: (626) 395-8961 Email: urim at caltech.edu www.klab.caltech.edu/~urim -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mlsp at neuro.kuleuven.be Fri Apr 12 09:09:59 2013 From: mlsp at neuro.kuleuven.be (2013 IEEE International Workshop on Machine Learning fo Signal Processing) Date: Fri, 12 Apr 2013 15:09:59 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: CALL FOR PAPERS - 2013 IEEE International Workshop on MACHINE LEARNING FOR SIGNAL, PROCESSING Message-ID: <516807A7.6010006@neuro.kuleuven.be> Call for Papers 2013 IEEE International Workshop on MACHINE LEARNING FOR SIGNAL PROCESSING (MLSP) September 22-25, 2013 Southampton, United Kingdom http://mlsp2013.conwiz.dk/ This year the Latent Variable Analysis (LVA) Conference will take place as a two-day track within the MLSP Workshop: MLSP (September 22-25) and LVA Track (September 24-25) The 23rd MLSP workshop in the series of workshops organized by the IEEE Signal Processing Society MLSP Technical Committee will present the most recent and exciting advances in machine learning for signal processing through keynote talks, tutorials as well as special and regular single-track sessions. Prospective authors are invited to submit papers on relevant algorithms and applications including, but not limited to: - Learning theory and techniques - Graphical models and kernel methods - Data-driven adaptive systems and models - Pattern recognition and classification - Distributed, Bayesian, subspace/manifold and sparsity-aware learning - Multiset data analysis and multimodal data fusion - Perceptual signal processing in audio, image and video - Cognitive information processing - Multichannel adaptive and nonlinear signal processing - Applications, including: speech and audio, image and video, music, biomedical signals and images, communications, bioinformatics, biometrics, computational intelligence, genomic signals and sequences, social networks, games, smart grid Data Analysis and Signal Processing Competition is being organized in conjunction with the workshop. The goal of the competition is to advance the current state-of-the-art in theoretical and practical aspects of signal processing domains. The problems are selected to reflect current trends, evaluate existing approaches on common benchmarks, and identify critical new areas of research. Winners will be announced and awards given at the workshop. Paper Submission Procedure: Prospective authors are invited to submit a double column paper of up to six pages using the electronic submission procedure at http://mlsp2013.conwiz.dk. Accepted papers will be published on memory sticks to be distributed at the workshop. The presented papers will be published in and indexed by IEEE Xplore. Deadlines: Submission of full paper: May 24, 2013 Notification of acceptance: June 28, 2013 Advance registration before: July 26, 2013 Camera-ready paper: July 26, 2013 MLSP 2013 ORGANIZING COMMITTEE: General Chairs: Saeid Sanei Paris Smaragdis Program Chairs: Asoke Nandi Anthony Ho Special Session Chairs: Gustavo Camps-Valls Deniz Erdogmus Tutorial sessions Chairs: Clive Cheong Took Raviv Raich Publicity Chairs: Marc Van Hulle Fernando P?rez-Cruz Web and Publication Chair: Jan Larsen Local arrangements Chairs: Wenwu Wang Shujun Li From rogrady at ulb.ac.be Fri Apr 12 10:15:17 2013 From: rogrady at ulb.ac.be (Rehan O'Grady) Date: Fri, 12 Apr 2013 16:15:17 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: AAAI Video Competition 2013 - Submission Deadline Approaching Message-ID: Dear Colleague, AAAI is pleased to announce the continuation of the AAAI Video Competition, now entering its seventh year. The video competition will be held in conjunction with the AAAI-13 conference in Bellevue, Washington, July 14?18, 2013. At the award ceremony, authors of award-winning videos will be presented with "Shakeys", trophies named in honour of SRI's Shakey robot and its pioneering video. Award winning videos will be screened at this ceremony. The goal of the competition is to show the world how much fun AI is by documenting exciting artificial intelligence advances in research, education, and application. View previous entries and award winners at http://www.aaaivideos.org/past_competitions. The rules are simple: Compose a short video about an exciting AI project, and narrate it so that it is accessible to a broad online audience. We strongly encourage student participation. VIDEO FORMAT AND CONTENT Either 1 minute (max) short video or a 5 minute (max) long video, with English narration (or English subtitles). Consider combining screen shots, interviews, and video of a system in action. Make the video self-contained, so that newcomers to AI can understand and learn from it. We encourage a good sense of humor, but will only accept submissions with serious AI content. For example, we welcome submissions of videos that: * Highlight a research topic - contemporary or historic, your own or from another group * Introduce viewers to an exciting new AI-related technology * Provide a window into the research activities of a laboratory and/or senior researcher * Attract prospective students to the field of AI * Explain AI concepts - your video could be used in the classroom Please note that this list is not exhaustive. Novel ideas for AI-based videos, including those not necessarily based on a "system in action", are encouraged. No matter what your choice, creativity is encouraged! (Please note: The authors of previous, award-winning videos typically used humor, background music, and carefully selected movie clips to make their presentations come alive.) Please also note that videos should contain only material for which the authors have copyright. Clips from films or television and music for soundtrack should only be used if copyright permission has been granted by the copyright holders. SUBMISSION INSTRUCTIONS Submit your video by making it available for download on a (preferably password-protected) ftp or web site. Once you have done so, please fill out the submission form ( http://www.aaaivideos.org/aaaistatic/submission/aaai_video_comp_2013_submission_form.txt) and send it to us by email (submission at aaaivideos.org). All submissions are due no later than April 30, 2013. REVIEW AND AWARD PROCESS Submitted videos will be peer-reviewed by members of the programme committee according to the criteria below. Videos that receive positive reviews will be accepted for publication in the AAAI Video Competition proceedings, published on the dedicated website (http://www.aaaivideos.org). The best videos will be nominated for awards. Winners will be revealed at the award ceremony during AAAI-13. All authors of accepted videos will be asked to sign a distribution license form. Review criteria: 1. Relevance to AI (research or application) 2. Excitement generated by the technology presented 3. Educational content 4. Entertainment value 5. Presentation (cinematography, narration, soundtrack, production values) AWARD CATEGORIES Best Video, Best Short Video, Best Student Video, Most Jaw-Dropping Technology, Most Educational, Most Entertaining and Best Presentation. (Categories may be changed at the discretion of the chairs.) AWARDS Trophies ("Shakeys"). KEY DATES * Submission Deadline: April 30, 2013 * Reviewing Decision Notifications & Award Nominations: May 31, 2013 * Final Version Due: June 16, 2013 * Screening and Award Presentations: TBD FOR MORE INFORMATION Please contact us at info at aaaivideos.org We look forward to your participation in this exciting event! Marco Dorigo, Mauro Birattari and Rehan O'Grady Co-Chairs, AAAI Video Competition 2013 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From z.kourtzi at bham.ac.uk Fri Apr 12 08:10:41 2013 From: z.kourtzi at bham.ac.uk (Zoe Kourtzi) Date: Fri, 12 Apr 2013 13:10:41 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: Positions in computational neuroimaging Message-ID: PhD / early-Postdoc positions are available to work on computational approaches to neuroimaging. The work combines psychophysics, multimodal brain imaging (MRI, EEG, TMS), and advanced computational analyses to understand perceptual and learning-related processes. The work is complemented by collaborative projects on non-human primate neurophysiology. There are strong interdisciplinary links with Computer Science, Engineering and a number of international partners through a Marie Curie Initial Training Network (ABC: Adaptive Brain Computations) that brings together researchers from across Europe. This offers exciting opportunities for advanced training, collaboration with international centres of excellence, interdisciplinary exchange and industrial secondments. Candidates should have a background in Neuroscience, Cognitive Psychology, Computer Science, Engineering, Mathematics, Physics or a related field. Previous experience of brain imaging or neurophysiology is desirable. Evidence of strong programming skills and signal processing experience is essential. Above all candidates should be enthusiastic to learn new techniques and to contribute to new experiments. Informal enquiries should be addressed to z.kourtzi at bham.ac.uk Applications should include a CV, brief statement of research interests, and the names of 3 referees For more information on ABC, please check: http://www.adaptivebrain.eu Eligibility criteria: 1. You should have a background in subjects related to the research including neuroscience, cognitive psychology, computer science, engineering or physics. 2. You should be in the first 4 years of your research career and should not yet have been awarded a PhD. 3. You must not have lived in the same country as the institution to which you are applying for >12 months during the past 3 years. From connectionists-ml at nn7.de Fri Apr 12 17:35:56 2013 From: connectionists-ml at nn7.de (Soeren Sonnenburg) Date: Fri, 12 Apr 2013 23:35:56 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: CfP: Google Summer of Code - Shogun Machine Learning Toolbox (Deadline May 3, 19hrs UTC) Message-ID: <1365802556.29235.35.camel@no> Call for Participation ====================== We are looking for interested students to join us in improving the shogun machine learning toolbox (http://www.shogun-toolbox.org) in this year's google summer of code. Timeline ======== Application deadline is May 3, 19hrs UTC and the program will run from May to the end of September (cf. http://www.google-melange.com/gsoc/events/google/gsoc2013 ) About Google Summer of Code =========================== Google Summer of Code is a global program that offers students stipends ($5000 / per student) to write code for open source projects. http://www.google-melange.com/gsoc/homepage/google/gsoc2013 About the shogun machine learning toolbox ========================================= SHOGUN is a machine learning toolbox, which is designed for unified large-scale learning for a broad range of feature types and learning settings. It offers a considerable number of machine learning models such as support vector machines for classification and regression, hidden Markov models, multiple kernel learning, linear discriminant analysis, linear programming machines, and perceptrons. Most of the specific algorithms are able to deal with several different data classes, including dense and sparse vectors and sequences using floating point or discrete data types. We have used this toolbox in several applications from computational biology, some of them coming with no less than 10 million training examples and others with 7 billion test examples. With more than a thousand installations worldwide, SHOGUN is already widely adopted in the machine learning community and beyond. SHOGUN is implemented in C++ and interfaces to all important languages like MATLAB, R, Octave, Python, Lua, Java, C#, Ruby and has a stand-alone command line interface. The source code is freely available under the GNU General Public License, Version 3 at http://www.shogun-toolbox.org. During Summer of Code 2013 we intend to improve the accessibility of the library. Additionally we will be complementing it with promising (new) machine learning algorithms. How to Apply ============ - To apply for shogun, select one or multiple topics from our ideas list http://shogun-toolbox.org/page/Events/gsoc2013_ideas or propose topics you are highly interested in - we might be very interested too :) - Before applying, please ensure that you have your working environment set up, i.e. checkout shogun from git and successfully compiled its relevant parts (see instructions on http://www.shogun-toolbox.org) and indicate that you have done so. In addition, it is required to contribute at least a small patch to get you set up (e.g. by attacking one of the entry tasks from https://github.com/shogun-toolbox/shogun/issues?labels=entrance&state=open ) and to be considered. Please note that we have an application template that following will incredibly help us to process your application. It is at the bottom of the website (link follows below). This webpage also has the register for GSoC application link http://www.google-melange.com/gsoc/org/google/gsoc2013/shogun If you have further questions don't hesitate to ask on the shogun mailinglist (shogun-list at shogun-toolbox.org, please note that you have to be subscribed in order to post) or on irc.freenode.net channel #shogun. Additional Resources ===================== - In case you are unsure if you are good enough or have other questions check out the student FAQ. http://www.booki.cc/gsocstudentguide/am-i-good-enough/ - Some general guidelines how to make a good impression :) http://google-opensource.blogspot.com/2011/03/dos-and-donts-of-google-summer-of-code.html From aaron.courville at umontreal.ca Sat Apr 13 09:40:37 2013 From: aaron.courville at umontreal.ca (Aaron Courville) Date: Sat, 13 Apr 2013 09:40:37 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: CFP: ICML 2013 Workshop on Peer Reviewing and Publishing Models Message-ID: Call for Papers Peer Reviewing and Publishing Models: A workshop in conjunction with the 30th International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML 2013), June 20 or 21, 2013, in Atlanta, Georgia, USA. ________________________________ Important Dates: Submission Deadline: 7 May 2013 (11:59pm PDT) Author Notification: 14 May 2013 Workshop: June 20 or 21, 2013 Submission site: http://openreview.net/icml-peer2013 ________________________________ Topics * Emerging methods of peer review, including conference/journal mixtures, open peer review and the separation of publishing and evaluation. * Emerging methods of open access publishing, including public minimally-filtered archives, low-cost public web sites and paper publishing and distributed mechanisms. * Machine learning methods for aiding peer review, access, search, suggestions, and analysis. * New machine learning methods, and their evaluation. * Experiences of recent and established experiments in publishing. Overview Across a wide range of scientific communities, peer reviewing and publishing models are undergoing significant changes. These changes have been motivated by the coupled objectives of improving the quality of the reviewing process, reducing the workload on reviewers and ultimately promoting the rapid dissemination of knowledge. Outside machine learning, there are organizations such as VLDB, that have transitioned to a combined conference/journal reviewing model where journal papers accepted by a certain date are invited to be presented at the conference. There is also the example of NIH NLM?s Biology Direct that have taken significant steps toward increasing the transparency of the reviewing process by publishing reviews alongside accepted papers. Within the machine learning community, we are experimenting with a number of alternative reviewing models. ICML 2013 has moved to a three phase reviewing model aimed at transitioning to a mixed conference/journal model similar to VLDB. This year will also see the first International Conference on Learning Representations ( https://sites.google.com/site/representationlearning2013), a conference that embraces the open peer review model promoted by Yann LeCun ( http://yann.lecun.com/ex/pamphlets/publishing-models.html). The realization of this conference is critically dependent on the OpenReview.net system ( http://openreview.net), a open peer-review management system developed by Andrew McCallum's group. OpenReview.net is one example of the kinds of tools that have been developed to assist and improve peer review, access and analysis. By easing the organizational burden, these tools enable the democratization of the process of disseminating scientific knowledge. The goal of this workshop is to provide a venue to bring together researchers from within our community as well as from other scientific disciplines who share a common interest in improving peer reviewing and publishing models. We wish to use this venue to share ideas and experiences, both positive and negative, of open reviewing, open access publishing models and the tools that support them. As the organizers of the workshop we view it as essential that we provide an open atmosphere where dissenting opinions and concerns over the open reviewing model are freely expressed. ________________________________ Invited Speakers: Yann LeCun, NYU, General Co-Chair ICLR (confirmed) John Langford, Microsoft, ICML 2012 Program Co-Chair (confirmed) David McAllester, TTI, ICML 2013 Program Co-Chair (confirmed) Kevin Murphy, Google, JMLR Co-Editors-in-Chief H. V. Jagadish, PVLDB Founding Editor-in-Chief Rich Zemel, Laurent Charlin, U. Toronto, Toronto Matching System Hanna Wallach, U. Mass David Blei, Princeton ________________________________ Paper Topics We welcome the submission of papers on all of the above topics. For example: White-papers proposing methods of peer review. White-papers describing recent experience with a publishing model. System overview of existing open access infrastructure. Technical papers on machine learning for citation suggestion or reviewer assignment. Technical papers on machine learning for topical analysis, trend analysis or social network analysis related to supporting reviewing. Technical papers on for information extraction, information integration or knowledge base construction of bibliographic information. Author Guidelines White-papers may be 1-2 pages. Other technical papers should be 4-8 pages. Formatting should otherwise follow the ICML 2013 standards, however, since the review process is not double-blind, submissions need not be anonymized and author names should be included. Further submission instructions will be forthcoming. Previously published or currently in submission papers are also encouraged (we will confirm with authors before publishing the papers online). Open Review: Our workshop will be following the open reviewing system as introduced by the International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR). In particular, the submitted papers will be available for public comment after the submission deadline. Along with the public comments, we will also provide anonymous reviews by our program committee members. The decisions for acceptance will be based on a combination of review scores and insights from the public discourse. If you have any concerns or questions regarding the reviewing process, please email us at reviewing.workshop.icml2013 at gmail.com Submission site: http://openreview.net/icml-peer2013 ________________________________ Organizers: Andrew McCallum, University of Massachusetts, Amherst Aaron Courville, University of Montreal For inquiries please contact us at: reviewing.workshop.icml2013 at gmail.com -- Aaron C. Courville D?partement d?Informatique et de recherche op?rationnelle Universit? de Montr?al email: Aaron.Courville at umontreal.ca -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From getoor at cs.umd.edu Sat Apr 13 09:44:10 2013 From: getoor at cs.umd.edu (Lise Getoor) Date: Sat, 13 Apr 2013 09:44:10 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: (Deadline extended) CFP: ICML Workshop on Structured Learning: Inferring Graphs from Structured and Unstructured Inputs (SLG2013) Message-ID: Structured Learning: Inferring Graphs from Structured and Unstructured Inputs (SLG2013) ICML workshop, June 16, 2013 (day between ICML & NAACL) https://sites.google.com/site/slgworkshop2013/ **NEW** Submission Deadline: April 22, 2013 OVERVIEW Structured learning involves learning and making inferences from inputs that can be both unstructured (e.g., text) and structured (e.g., graphs and graph fragments), and making predictions about outputs that are also structured as graphs. Examples include the construction of knowledge bases from noisy extraction data, inferring temporal event graphs from newswire or social media, and inferring influence structure on social graphs from multiple sources. One of the challenges of this setting is that it often does not fit into the classic supervised or unsupervised learning paradigm. In essence, we have one large (potentially infinite) partially observed input graph, and we are trying to make inferences about the unknown aspects of this graph's structure. Often times there is side information available, which can be used for enrichment, but in order to use this information, we need to infer mappings for schema and ontologies that describe that side information, perform alignment and entity resolution, and reason about the added utility of the additional sources. The topic is extremely pressing, as many of the modern challenges in extracting usable knowledge from (big) data fall into this setting. Our focus in this workshop is on the machine learning and inference methods that are useful in such settings. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to: - Graph-based methods for entity resolutions and word sense disambiguation - Graph-based representations for ontology learning - Graph-based strategies for semantic relations identification - Making use of taxonomies and encoding semantic distances in graphs - Random walk methods in graphs - Spectral graph clustering and multi-relational clustering - Semi-supervised graph-based methods - Graph summarization Our goal is to bring together researchers in graphical models, structured prediction, latent variable relational models and statistical relational learning in order to (a) exchange experiences applying various methods to these graph learning domains, (b) share their successes, and (c) identify common challenges. The outcomes we expect are (1) a better understanding of the different existing methods across disparate communities, (2) an identification of common challenges, and (3) a venue for sharing resources, tools and datasets. The workshop will consist of a number of invited talks in each of these areas, a poster session where participants can present their work, and discussion. SUBMISSION INFORMATION We solicit short, poster-length submissions from 2 to 6 pages. All accepted submissions will be presented as posters, and a subset of them may be considered for oral presentation. Submissions reporting work in progress are acceptable, as we aim for the workshop to offer a venue for stimulating discussions. Submissions must be in PDF format, and should be made through Easychair at https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=slg-2013 Important dates - Submission deadline: April 22, 2013 - Notification of acceptance: May 7, 2013 - Final versions of accepted submissions due: May 15, 2013 - Workshop date: Sunday, June 16, 2013 (Note: Most of the ICML workshops are taking place AFTER the conference, while this workshop takes place before the main conference, on the same day as ICML tutorials, in order to make it easier for participants from NAACL HLT conference to attend). ORGANIZING COMMITTEE - Hal Daume III, University of Maryland - Evgeniy Gabrilovich, Google - Lise Getoor, University of Maryland - Kevin Murphy, Google INVITED SPEAKERS - Jonathan Chang, Facebook - William Cohen, CMU - John Frank, MIT - Andrew McCallum, UMass - Chris Re, University of Wisconsin - Madison - Dan Roth, UIUC - Stuart Russell, UC Berkeley PROGRAM COMMITTEE(confirmed to date) - Jeff Dalton, UMass - Laura Dietz, UMass - AnHai Doan, University of Wisconsin - Madison - Thorsten Joachims, Cornell - Daniel Lowd, University of Oregon - Mausam, University of Washington - Jennifer Neville, Purdue University - Stuart Russell, UC Berkeley - Ivan Titov, Saarland University - Daisy Zhe Wang, University of Florida - Jerry Zhu, University of Wisconsin - Madison FURTHER INFORMATION For further information, please contact the workshop organizers at slg-2013-chairs at googlegroups.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From g.goodhill at uq.edu.au Sat Apr 13 05:41:26 2013 From: g.goodhill at uq.edu.au (Geoffrey Goodhill) Date: Sat, 13 Apr 2013 19:41:26 +1000 Subject: Connectionists: PhD opportunities at the Queensland Brain Institute Message-ID: The Queensland Brain Institute (QBI) is seeking exceptional and highly motivated PhD candidates to undertake high quality neuroscience research at its state-of-the-art facility located on The University of Queensland's (UQ) St Lucia campus, Brisbane, Australia. Candidates should have an exceptional undergraduate academic record. Applications close on 31 May, 2013. Selected candidates will be invited to the QBI for interview. QBI is one of UQ?s flagship research institutes, with 32 different labs and a total staff of over 300, including approximately 100 PhD students. Areas of particular interest include Computation and neuronal circuits Cognition and behaviour Sensory systems Synaptic function Neuronal development and connectivity Neurogenesis and neuronal survival Genetics and epigenetics More information about QBI can be found at http://www.qbi.uq.edu.au/index.html QBI offers PhD scholarships valued at AU$29,653 per annum (indexed annually, tax exempt, currently AU$29,653 = US$30,920) for 3 years with a possible 6 month extension. UQ has been approved to participate in the Australian Government?s new Streamlined Visa Processing (SVP) system by the Department of Immigration and Citizenship. The SVP will benefit international students by enabling simpler documentation requirements and much faster visa issuing times. If you are an international student, you must meet Immigration?s requirements under the SVP. Applicants should possess a bachelor?s degree with first class honours in science, or equivalent, and a determination to undertake significant research. Successful candidates can commence on 1 October, 2013 once all admission requirements have been met. For further information on the Basis of Admission to a UQ research higher degree, please visit http://www.uq.edu.au/grad-school/our-research-degrees. Successful applicants must accept and commence within 6 months of receiving the award. Please review the research interests of QBI Group Leaders at: http://www.qbi.uq.edu.au/group-leaders and make direct contact with a Group Leader working in an area of interest to you. The Group Leader will work with you to develop your application for submission to QBI. UQ is one of the top 3 universities in Australia, with 35,000 students. Brisbane is a cosmopolitan city with a population of 2 million. It has a subtropical climate and is close to world famous beaches and tropical rainsforests. Further information can be obtained by emailing Ms Janet Voight, Manager, Postgraduate Student Administration (qbistudents at uq.edu.au) at the QBI or visit the UQ Graduate School website for full terms and conditions http://www.uq.edu.au/grad-school. You may also direct informal enquiries to me. Professor Geoffrey J Goodhill Queensland Brain Institute and School of Mathematics & Physics University of Queensland St Lucia, QLD 4072, Australia Phone: +61 7 3346 6431 Fax: +61 7 3346 6301 Email: g.goodhill at uq.edu.au http://www.qbi.uq.edu.au/professor-geoffrey-goodhill -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From r.gross at sheffield.ac.uk Sun Apr 14 17:34:01 2013 From: r.gross at sheffield.ac.uk (Roderich Gross) Date: Sun, 14 Apr 2013 22:34:01 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: Post-Doc/RA position in Modular Reconfigurable/Evolutionary Robotics, The University of Sheffield In-Reply-To: <516B20B0.6000003@sheffield.ac.uk> References: <516B1FE5.9080101@sheffield.ac.uk> <516B20B0.6000003@sheffield.ac.uk> Message-ID: <516B20C9.6020700@sheffield.ac.uk> Post-Doc/RA position - Modular Reconfigurable and Evolutionary Robotic Systems Detailed information: http://naturalrobotics.group.shef.ac.uk/UOS006388.html The University of Sheffield, Department of Automatic Control and Systems Engineering We are seeking to appoint a Research Associate (postdoctoral researcher) to work on the EPSRC-sponsored project 'Evo-Bots - From Intelligent Building Blocks to Living Things': http://gow.epsrc.ac.uk/NGBOViewGrant.aspx?GrantRef=EP/K033948/1 This post offers an outstanding opportunity to work with a multidisciplinary team of researchers. Our long-term vision is to create the first non-biological living system through evolution in the natural world. The project takes arguably a radical approach: creating living systems by synthesising their building blocks from scratch. The research programme will study Evo-bots, which are energy-autonomous mobile robots / mechatronic modules. Evo-bots control when to move; however, their direction of motion is entirely dictated by the environment. By controlling how Evo-bots physically interact with each other (a process called self-assembly), the system can give rise to novel forms of life and its evolution. The post holder will be working in Dr Roderich Gross' Natural Robotics Lab (http://naturalrobotics.group.shef.ac.uk). The lab is part of the Sheffield Centre for Robotics (http://www.scentro.ac.uk), which offers a brand-new robotics laboratory of ca. 800 sq m. The position will incur a regular exchange with and visits of Dr Francesco Mondada's group at EPFL (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology), Lausanne, Switzerland. http://mobots.epfl.ch/ Applicants should have a good honours degree, hold, or be near completion of, a PhD (or equivalent research experience) in a related discipline such as robotics, mechatronics, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, or computer science, and have a track record of research and publications in peer-reviewed journals and conferences. The successful applicant will have knowledge in system design, rapid prototyping, embedded computing, sensors and their processing, actuators and their control and have good overall IT skills. Previous research experience in the design, implementation and study of miniature robotic/mechatronic systems is highly desirable. The post is fixed-term from 1 June 2013 to 1 August 2014. Salary in the range: ?28,685 to ?30,424 per annum Closing Date: 15th May 2013 The University of Sheffield is committed to achieving excellence through inclusion. We are an Athena Bronze SWAN Award winner, a Stonewall Diversity Champion and a Two Ticks Employer. To apply, visit https://www.shef.ac.uk/jobs (Job reference number: UOS006388). Please note that pop-up windows must not be blocked! -- Roderich GROSS, PhD SMIEEE Lecturer and Head of the Natural Robotics Lab Department of Automatic Control & Systems Engineering The University of Sheffield Mappin Street Sheffield S1 3JD, UK http://www.shef.ac.uk/acse/staff/roderich-gross -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From chengsoon.ong at unimelb.edu.au Sun Apr 14 04:03:05 2013 From: chengsoon.ong at unimelb.edu.au (Cheng Soon Ong) Date: Sun, 14 Apr 2013 08:03:05 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: Call for submissions: Asian Conference on Machine Learning Message-ID: Call for contributions The 5th Asian Conference on Machine Learning (ACML2013) will be held on 13-15 November 2013, at the Australian National University, Canberra, Australia. The conference aims at providing a leading international forum for researchers in machine learning and related fields to share their new ideas and achievements. To support this, a best paper award will be given, which apart from technical novelty also includes quality of the experimental work, for instance reproducibility. Submissions from other than the Asia-Pacific regions are also highly encouraged. The conference calls for research papers reporting original investigation results. The conference also solicits proposals for tutorials and workshops focusing on frontier research in all aspects of machine learning. http://acml2013.conference.nicta.com.au/ Organising Committee General Co-chairs: Wray Buntine (NICTA and ANU) and Bob Williamson (ANU and NICTA) PC Co-chairs: Tu Bao Ho (JAIST, Japan) and Cheng Soon Ong (NICTA) Tutorial and Workshop Chair: Lexing Xie (ANU) Publication Chair: Justin Domke (NICTA) Invited speakers Ralf Herbrich (Machine Learning Science at Amazon) Chih-Jen Lin (National Taiwan University) Geoff Holmes (University of Waikato) Important Dates Workshop proposals due 24 April 2013 Workshop acceptance notification 15 May 2013 Workshop paper submission Sept 2013 Tutorial proposals due 5 June 2013 Tutorial acceptance notific. 3 July 2013 Tutorial materials/website 16 Oct 2013 Early Paper Submission 15 May 2013 Early Notification 26 June 2013 Final Paper Submission 24 July 2013 Final Notification 25 Sept 2013 Conference ACML Tutorials and Workshops 13 Nov 2013 ACML Conference 14-15 Nov 2013 More Details http://acml2013.conference.nicta.com.au/call_for_papers For questions and suggestions, please write to: acml2013.program.chairs at gmail.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From lucy.davies4 at plymouth.ac.uk Mon Apr 15 06:46:57 2013 From: lucy.davies4 at plymouth.ac.uk (Lucy Davies) Date: Mon, 15 Apr 2013 11:46:57 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: Bilingual minds, bilingual machines: 2nd round applications now open Message-ID: APOLOGIES FOR CROSS-POSTING Dear All, The 2nd round for applications to the Bilingual minds, bilingual machines Summer School is now open: Please see below (and attached) for details of an exciting Summer School in Bilingualism, to take place in Plymouth, UK, in June. The event brings together leading psychologists, linguists and computer scientists. The application deadline is extended on 26 April 2013. Please circulate this to mailing lists to PhD and post-docs of your Institution. Many thanks and all the best Lucy Lucy Davies Cognition Institute Plymouth University Room A222, Portland Square Plymouth UK PL4 8AA Tel: 44+ (0)1752 584920 Website: http://www1.plymouth.ac.uk/research/cognition/Pages/default.aspx Like us on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/PlymCogInst Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/PlymCogInst YouTube Channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/PlymouthCognition?feature=watch ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Summer school: Bilingual minds, bilingual machines Cognition Institute, Plymouth University, 24th-28th June 2013 Final call for applications The young human brain copes remarkably well with two or more languages, with early bilingualism often resulting in perfect parallel proficiency. In contrast, automatic translation and language recognition systems remain suboptimal, despite powerful computing resources, large-scale corpora and increasingly sophisticated training algorithms. The summer school is a unique opportunity for postgraduate students and early-career researchers in psychology and computer science to engage over common issues informed by both disciplines. How can we model bilingual processing? How are two phonologies represented? How is meaning related to word forms? How far can meanings be shared between languages in the human mind and in machines? The school will feature interactive lectures from world-leading researchers: psychologists investigating early and late bilingualism; cognitive scientists modelling the bilingual mental lexicon, from phonology to semantics; computer scientists and roboticists designing automated translators and language recognition/learning systems. Participants will also gain hands-on experience in computational modelling, cutting-edge robotic technology and advanced techniques of experimental psychology. They will also have the opportunity to submit an abstract for poster session that will take place during the week, with two selected for a 20-minute conference-style presentation. The school is supported by EUCog (www.eucognition.org). Registration is open to a maximum of 30 participants (tinyurl.com/bilingualismsummerschool). Confirmed speakers Professor Tony Belpaeme, Plymouth University ? developmental robotics Professor Marc Brysbaert, Ghent University ? adult bilingualism Dr Bill Byrne, University of Cambridge ? automatic translation Professor Angelo Cangelosi, Plymouth University ? developmental robotics Professor Detmar Meurers, University of T?bingen ? learner corpora and computational linguistics Dr Katerina Pastra, Cognitive Systems Research Institute, Athens ? embodied machine translation Dr Patrick Rebuschat, Bangor University ? bilingual cognition Professor Majd Sakr, Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar ? bilingual robotics Professor Nuria Sebastian-Galles, Universitat Pompeu Fabra ? developmental bilingualism Dr Yinjang Wu, University of Sheffield ? developmental bilingualism ? Application and registration We are seeking applications from postgraduate students and early-career researchers (i.e., not more than three years post-PhD). Registration fees for the week are ?400, which includes accommodation, breakfasts, lunches, refreshments and a full social programme. To register your interest, please submit the following documents in PDF format. - Curriculum vitae (up to two pages), indicating level of English language attainment. - Description of research interests and potential benefits of participation (one page). Please submit your application by 26th April 2013. Selected applicants will be notified of acceptance on 3rd May. Applications should be emailed to: bilingualismsummerschool at gmail.com. There is no need to reapply if you have previously done so. Organising committee Allegra Cattani, School of Social Science and Social Work, Plymouth University Caroline Floccia, School of Psychology, Plymouth University Laurence White, School of Psychology, Plymouth University -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... 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Name: message-footer.txt URL: From julian at togelius.com Mon Apr 15 14:33:41 2013 From: julian at togelius.com (Julian Togelius) Date: Mon, 15 Apr 2013 20:33:41 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: AAAI Conference on Aritifical Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment Message-ID: AIIDE-13 The Ninth AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment October 14-18, 2013 Northeastern University, Boston, Massachusetts, USA Submission deadlines: Workshop proposals due Mar 15, 2013 Research papers due May 7, 2013 Practitioner track abstracts due May 7, 2013 Playable experience abstracts due May 7, 2013 Demonstration abstracts due May 7, 2013 Doctoral consortium applications due June 14, 2013 Paper acceptance notification: June 26, 2013 AIIDE-13 ? the Ninth Conference on Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment ? is intended to be the definitive point of interaction between entertainment software developers interested in AI and academic AI researchers. AIIDE-13 will include invited speakers, research and practitioner presentations, playable experiences, project demonstrations, interactive poster sessions, product exhibits, and a doctoral consortium. While traditionally emphasizing commercial computer and video games, we invite researchers and developers to share their insights and cutting-edge results on topics at the intersection of all forms of entertainment and artificial intelligence, including games for impact, entertainment robotics, art, and beyond. AIIDE-13 is sponsored by the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI). PAPERS Because AIIDE-13 crosses disciplinary boundaries, submissions will be evaluated based on their accessibility to both commercial game developers and researchers in addition to their technical merit. Research Track Research track papers describe AI research results that make advances towards solving known game AI problems, enable a new form of interactive digital entertainment, or use AI to improve the game design and development process. The novel technique should be validated in a game prototype or test-bed, but need not be tested in a commercial game. Research track papers are evaluated by the highest standards of academic rigor. The highest rated papers will be presented in short lecture format. The next highest rated group of papers will be presented in a poster session. Authors should submit a paper of no more than 7 pages in the AAAI format for double blind review (i.e., authors names and affiliations are omitted). The final page (page 7) must contain only references, and no other text whatsoever. All papers, whether poster or oral, will be allocated 7 pages in the proceedings. Practitioner Track AIIDE also solicits submissions from professional game developers and artists on the use of artificial intelligence in games and other cultural artifacts. While these practitioners are also invited to submit to the research track, we recognize that many will have neither the time nor the inclination to prepare full-length papers for archival academic publication. These authors may instead submit a 500 word extended abstract to the practitioner track. Practitioner track papers need not describe new technology, but must describe new ideas relevant to the AIIDE audience and must be based on experience creating deployed games or other cultural artifacts. These papers are exempt from the formatting and blind reviewing requirements for the research track. A general guideline is that results from academic projects are more appropriate for the research track, rather than the practitioner track. Example Topics (List is Suggestive Only) - *AI in Game Design* AI as a source of novel game mechanics and genres - *AI-Based Production and Authoring Tools* Behavior-building, design frameworks, telemetry-supported game design, content authoring support, scripting, sketch-based authoring, automated playtesting - *AI Techniques for Games* Planning, reinforcement learning, search, neural networks, Bayesian models, evolutionary algorithms, case-based reasoning, constraint programming, utility-based approaches, animation, camera control, tactical/strategic decision making, terrain analysis, opponent modeling, dynamic difficulty adjustment, spatial decompositions, path planning - *AI Storytelling* Interactive drama, story generation, character development - *Autonomous Characters, NPCs, and Virtual Humans* Personality, emotion, believability, natural language processing, cognitive modeling, crowd simulation, social robotics - *Procedural Content Generation* Level generation, progression design, behavior adaptation - *Commercial AI Implementations* Case studies, implementation analysis, comparative evaluations - *AI in Novel Entertainment Applications* Entertainment robotics, virtual/mixed reality, mobile device games, geo-location based games, games for human-computation - *Computational Creativity and Generative Art* Painting, poetry, story, humor, music - *AI in Games for Impact* Training, education, intelligent tutoring, games for health, gamification Submissions Author Registration: Authors must register at the AIIDE-13 paper submission site before they submit their papers. The submission site ( http://aiide.confmaster.net) will assign a password to be used for abstract and paper submission. Authors are encouraged to register as soon as possible, and well in advance of the submission deadline. Paper Submission: Electronic abstract and paper submission through the AIIDE-13 paper submission site is required on or (preferably) before May 7. We cannot accept submissions by e-mail or fax. All Research Track submissions must be in PDF format, no longer than 7 pages where page 7 must contain only references. Papers should be formatted in AAAI two-column, camera-ready style (see the author instructions page). All Research Track papers must be formatted for BLIND REVIEW with NO author or affiliation information listed. Practitioner Track extended abstracts must be submitted in PDF format and be approximately 500 words in length. Authors should also include short bios describing their game industry experience (not counted toward the document length). Papers should preferably be formatted in AAAI two-column, camera-ready style as above; however, Practitioner Track authors may submit their content in any reasonable format for review, and AIIDE will assign an editor to help meet publication formatting requirements for accepted work. Authors of accepted abstracts will be invited to submit a full length paper to be published as part of a AAAI technical report (a non-archival publication). Research Track papers and Practitioner Track extended abstracts must be submitted by May 7, 2013. All accepted papers will be published in the conference proceedings. At least one author must register for the conference by the deadline for camera-ready copy submission. As AIIDE is an academic conference, all attendees including presenters pay a registration fee. AIIDE-13 will not accept any paper that is under review for or has already been published or accepted for publication in another journal or conference. DEMONSTRATIONS We invite researchers and practitioners to share insights and cutting-edge results from a wide range of topics and encourage the demonstration of (a) research systems in the context of existing commercial games, (b) new games authored by researchers, (c) contributions demonstrating the adoption and/or extension of AI research results in published games, (d) completely new forms of interactive digital entertainment made possible by AI research, and (e) other relevant work. An electronic submission of a 2-page abstract and demonstration materials is required. Demonstration abstract review is not blind. Submissions should contain a link to the demonstration materials, which can take the form of a recorded demonstration session, an executable version of the demonstration with written instructions, or a detailed description of the demonstration heavily illustrated with screenshots. Please note that these materials are for review only and that all demonstrations will be conducted live at AIIDE-13. Demonstration authors should submit abstracts and materials by May 7, 2013. Submissions will be judged on technical merit, accessibility to developers and researchers, originality, presentation, and significance. Demonstration abstracts will be published in the conference proceedings. *PLAYABLE EXPERIENCES* Practitioners and researchers who are developing innovative AI-based games or other interactive media (?playable experiences?) are invited to submit their work to the playable experiences track. We welcome playable experiences that involve some articulable innovation in the use of AI that directly affects the user's experience. This includes novel game designs that leverage existing AI techniques, as well as innovations in the techniques themselves that lead to new kinds of playable experiences. Playable experience submissions should be sufficiently complete and polished enough for na?ve users to play them. Authors should submit a 500 word abstract describing the impetus behind the playable experience, how AI has motivated its design (or vice versa), and what they see as its primary innovation(s). The abstract should include a publicly accessible link to a website that contains a link to download the playable experience and instructions for how to play it; this link must remain live at least through the end of the conference. Playable experience review is not blind. The abstract will be published in the conference proceedings, and the authors will have the opportunity to show their playable experience during the evening poster/demo session of the AIIDE conference. An electronic submission of the abstract is required by May 7, 2013. If your work involves any specialized hardware or software that reviewers may not have access to, please contact the track chair Michael Mateas ( michaelm at cs.ucsc.edu) prior to submission. WORKSHOPS The AIIDE 2013 committee invites proposals for one to two day workshops to be held on October 14-15. Workshop participants will have the opportunity to meet and discuss issues with a selected focus ? providing an informal setting for active exchange among researchers, developers, and users on topics of current interest. Members of all segments of the AI in Digital Entertainment community as well as industry researchers are encouraged to submit proposals. The format of workshops will be determined by their organizers. Organizers are highly encouraged to propose alternative formats beyond paper/poster presentations, and should encourage the submission and presentation of position papers that discuss new research ideas. Workshop papers will be published as technical reports and will be archived in the AAAI digital library. Proposals for workshops should be about two (2) to three (3) pages in length. Workshop chairs must submit their proposals via email to the workshop chair, Julian Togelius (julian at togelius.com), by Mar 15, 2013. DOCTORAL CONSORTIUM AIIDE-13 will feature a Doctoral Consortium in which Ph.D. students will be invited to discuss and explore their research interests and career objectives with a panel of established researchers in AIIDE related fields. The consortium is intended primarily for early-stage Ph.D. students who have either not yet proposed their thesis topic or have recently done so. Ph.D. students selected for the Doctoral Consortium will have the opportunity to present their research proposals at the DC session and/or at the poster session. Additionally, each student will be paired with a mentor, a senior member of the AIIDE community. Applications to attend the Doctoral Consortium will include a 4-page research summary, curriculum vita, a 1-page document stating what they hope to gain from attending the Doctoral Consortium, and a letter of recommendation from the dissertation advisor. Application packages are due on June 14, 2013; see here for further details. EXHIBITS AIIDE-13 will have exhibit space available. Companies, publishers and other groups are encouraged to consider purchasing either a tabletop display or an exhibit booth. Exhibit space is limited and will be allocated on a first come, first serve basis. Please contact AAAI at aiide13 at aaai.org for more information. IMPORTANT DATES - March 8 ? May 7, 2013: Authors register on the AIIDE web site - March 15, 2013: Workshop proposal submission - May 7, 2013: Electronic submission of Research/Practitioner Track papers/abstracts - May 7, 2013: Electronic submission of materials for a demonstration or playable experience - June 14, 2013: Doctoral consortium submission - June 26, 2013: Notification of acceptance decision GENERAL CHAIR Gita Sukthankar (University of Central Florida) PROGRAM CHAIR Ian Horswill (Northwestern University) *LOCAL ARRANGEMENTS CHAIR* Magy Seif El-Nasr (Northeastern University) *SPONSORSHIP CHAIR* Kevin Dill (Lockheed Martin) *WORKSHOPS CHAIR* Julian Togelius (IT University of Copenhagen) *DOCTORAL SYMPOSIUM CO-CHAIRS* Gillian Smith (Northeastern University) Adam Smith (University of Washington) *PLAYABLE EXPERIENCE CHAIR *Michael Mateas (UC Santa Cruz)* STARCRAFT COMPETITION* Michael Buro and David Churchill (U. Alberta) -- Julian Togelius Associate Professor IT University of Copenhagen Rued Langgaards Vej 7, 2300 Copenhagen, Denmark mail: julian at togelius.com, web: http://julian.togelius.com mobile: +46-705-192088, office: +45-7218-5277 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From nickel at dbs.ifi.lmu.de Mon Apr 15 07:45:20 2013 From: nickel at dbs.ifi.lmu.de (Maximilian Nickel) Date: Mon, 15 Apr 2013 13:45:20 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: CFP - ECML/PKDD Workshop: Tensor Methods for Machine Learning Message-ID: ECML/PKDD Workshop: Tensor Methods for Machine Learning Date: Friday, September 27th, 2013 Location: Prague, Czech Republic Website: http://www.cip.ifi.lmu.de/~nickel/tml2013/ ---------------------- Call for Papers ---------------------- Tensors, as generalizations of vectors and matrices, have become increasingly popular in different areas of machine learning and data mining, where they are employed to approach a diverse number of difficult learning and analysis tasks. Prominent examples include learning on multi-relational data and large-scale knowledge bases, recommendation systems, computer vision, mining boolean data, signal processing, neuroimaging or the analysis of time-varying networks. The success of tensors methods is strongly related to their ability to efficiently model, analyze and predict data with multiple modalities. To address specific challenges and problems, a variety of methods has been developed in different fields of application. This workshop should serve as a basis for an interdisciplinary exchange of methods, ideas and techniques, with the goal to develop a deeper understanding of tensor methods for machine learning, further advance existing approaches and enable new approaches to important problems. A particular focus of this workshop is to uncover underlying principles in tensor methods, their applications, and associated problems. The workshop is intended for researchers in the machine learning, data mining, and tensor communities to discuss novel methods and applications as well as theoretical advances. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to ? Statistical analysis and learning theory related to tensor methods, factorizations or analysis. ? Novel techniques and methods for tensor factorization or tensor completion. ? New factorization models, loss functions or regularization methods. ? Probabilistic/Bayesian approaches to tensor factorizations. ? Tensor methods for large-scale and distributed problems. ? Novel applications of tensor methods in machine learning and statistics. ? Empirical studies that provide new insight into tensor methods for machine learning. ? Related techniques and methods in machine learning such as matrix factorizations. More information about the workshop is available from the workshop's website at: http://www.cip.ifi.lmu.de/~nickel/tml2013/ Submission Instructions ------------------------------------ Submitted papers should be at most 4 (extended abstract) or 8 (full paper) pages long and formatted according to the Springer LNAI guidelines. All submitted papers will be subject to peer review. Accepted papers will be presented as a talk or poster at the workshop and will also be published on the workshop's website. For manuscript submission, please use the EasyChair site at: https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=tml2013 Important Dates ------------------------ For manuscript submission, please consider the following deadlines ? Paper Submission: Friday, June 28th, 2013 ? Acceptance Notification: Friday, July 19th, 2013 ? Camera-Ready Paper Submission: Friday, August 2nd, 2013 Invited Speakers ------------------------ To be announced Program Chairs ----------------------- ? Maximilian Nickel, Ludwig Maximilian University Munich, Germany ? Volker Tresp, Siemens AG, Germany Program Committee (confirmed to date) ---------------------------------------------------------- ? Alwin Stegeman, University of Groningen, Netherlands ? Evrim Acar Ataman, University of Copenhagen, Denmark ? Franz Kir?ly, TU Berlin, Germany ? Jaakko Hollm?n, Aalto University, Finland ? Morten M?rup, Technical University of Denmark, Denmark ? Pauli Miettinen, Max-Planck Institut f?r Informatik, Germany ? Rainer Gemulla, Max-Planck Institut f?r Informatik, Germany ? Ryota Tomioka, University of Tokyo, Japan ? Shipeng Yu, Siemens Medical Solutions USA, USA ? Steffen Rendle, Universit?t Konstanz, Germany ? Taylan Cemgil, Bogazici University Istanbul, Turkey -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From ahu at cs.stir.ac.uk Mon Apr 15 13:28:14 2013 From: ahu at cs.stir.ac.uk (Dr Amir Hussain) Date: Mon, 15 Apr 2013 18:28:14 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: International Summer School on Cognitive Computation, University of Stirling, 25-20 Aug, 2013 Message-ID: Dear all: Please see below a Call for the 1st International Summer School on Cognitive Computation, being organized and hosted by the University of Scotland in Scotland, UK, from 25-20 August 2013. http://www.cs.stir.ac.uk/events/COGCOMP2013 Limited places (some funding available for eligible students). Deadline: 29 Apri 2013. To apply/or for more information: please email: cogcomp2013 at cs.stir.ac.uk Please forward to interested colleagues/research students. Kind regards Amir Hussain http://cs.stir.ac.uk/~ahu/ *SICSA International Summer School on:* *Cognitive Computation* *25th-30th Aug 2013* *University of Stirling, Scotland, UK* *Overview* Cognitive computation is a new and challenging area, which promises to facilitate the development of novel brain-inspired cognitive technologies for engineering the intelligent systems of tomorrow. This Scottish Informatics and Computer Science Alliance (SICSA) sponsored International Summer School on Cognitive Computation is an innovative multidisciplinary event, aiming to unite young researchers coming from a variety of backgrounds. The stimulating and relaxed atmosphere will invite a close and productive interaction between both School participants and their mentors. The vision of this Summer School is to empower participants with an interdisciplinary understanding of some of the key underlying methodologies, concepts and techniques in cognitive computation, and their strengths and limitations (demonstrated by a range of case studies). Participants will also learn of future directions in this exciting multi-disciplinary field. Topics covered will include: perception, action, attention, learning and memory, decision making and control, language processing, communication, reasoning, pattern recognition, problem solving, and consciousness. The five-day programme will consist of a set of tutorial-style lectures, all delivered by experts of international standing combined with hands-on practical sessions for constructing and working with the techniques covered in the course material. The initial sessions will serve as advanced introduction to cognitive computation, including practical sessions and a comprehensive review of the underlying interdisciplinary fields, specifically: ? computational modelling in neuroscience: a workshop style introduction (Dr. *Bruce Graham, Stirling*), ? computational intelligence and machine learning: methods, theories and tools for solving key cognition tasks such as learning and pattern recognition (*Kevin Swingler, Incite Ltd., Stirling*) ? cognitive augmentations of swarm intelligence & agent-based simulation: theory & applications (Dr.*Jerry Swan* *Stirling*) ? social cognition & cognitive behavioural systems: theory to applications (Dr.*Alessandro Vinciarelli, Glasgow*) The subsequent sessions will cover more advanced approaches to cognitive systems research and development (including emerging theories, real-world application case studies and future challenges), including: ? informational models of 'mind' theory and practice: from computational models of consciousness to theories of information integration and intuitions about the mind and creation of mind-like state structures - case studies with an exploratory robot (*Keynote Lecturer*: Prof. *Igor Aleksander, Imperial College*) ? reverse engineering the brain for cognitive computation: multi-scale modelling from membranes, to circuits, systems and robots - a case study with action selection in the basal ganglia (Prof. *Kevin Gurney, Sheffield*) ? towards multi-modal cognitive systems: case studies on insect robotics (Prof. *Barbara Webb, Edinburgh*) ? novel bayesian approaches to perception, cognition and disease: case studies using theoretical models and psychophysical experiments (Dr. *Peggy Series, Edinburgh*) ? silicon/neuromorphic cognitive systems: building bridges to build brains (Prof. *Leslie Smith, Stirling*) ? towards neurobiologically inspired cognitive control of complex autonomous agents and their networked systems: case studies in next-generation intelligent transportation systems and planetary exploration rovers (Prof. *Amir Hussain *& Dr. *Erfu Yang, Stirling*) *Audience* The School is intended for PhD students and researchers working in all areas of cognitive computation, including its theoretical, applied, artificial and natural dimensions. More generally, it will appeal to researchers interested in biologically inspired computing techniques and applications, for example: machine learning, computational intelligence, cognitive and computational neuroscience, machine consciousness, neural hardware implementations and biologically inspired robotics and systems. Although the course will have substantial technical content, no prerequisites are required beyond a good background in computer science/informatics or a related subject. *Programme & Venue* The summer school will run from 10am to 5pm each day (9.30am-6pm on Tuesday, 27th, and Thursday, 29th Aug 2013). Springer?s Neuroscience Publishing Editor, Dr Martijn Roelandse, will also give a talk on ?publishing interdisciplinary research in scientific journals? on the first day, Monday, 26 August, from 4pm-5pm, which will be followed by a PhD Posters Session, and Exhibition organized by Springer, from 5pm-7pm (with prize awarded to the best poster). Authors of selected posters, judged by the Keynote Guest Lecturer: Professor Igor Aleksander, will be invited to submit extended/full papers to Springer?s Cognitive Computation journal ( http://www.springer.com/12559). The full (draft) School programme is available below. The summer school will be held in the Division of Computing Science, School of Natural Sciences at the University of Stirling. Activities will take place in the Cottrell Building. Travel directions and maps can be found at: http://www.stir.ac.uk/about/getting-here/ *Registration* ?250 (no accommodation) or ?450 for 4 nights accommodation (breakfast and dinner inclusive, with arrival on Mon, 26 Aug, departure on Fri, 30 Aug), ?500 for 5 nights accommodation (arrival: Sun, 25 Aug, departure: Fri, 30 Aug, or arrival: Mon, 26 Aug, departure: Sat, 31 Aug), ?550 for 6 nights (arrival: Sun, 25 Aug, departure: Sat, 31 Aug -no other options are available and only Sun-Fri nights are guaranteed - other options, e.g. Sat nights on 24 Aug and/or 31 Aug, only if available). Accommodation is on campus and will be in single en-suite rooms. The registration fee (without accommodation) covers the Workshop, the School dinner on Wednesday 28 Aug (at 7pm), along with lunches and teas/coffees each day. Students are responsible for their own travel arrangements and expenses to get to Stirling. SICSA students can access local support from their own Schools/Departments to support such travel SICSA will cover the ?500 registration fee for PhD students in computer science departments of SICSA member Scottish universities (for a full list of SICSA Universities, see: http://www.sicsa.ac.uk/about/SICSA_Universities). The number of SICSA students is limited and a decision on ranking will be taken if necessary. Up to two competitive places are also being sponsored by the IEEE UKRI Computational Intelligence Society (CIS) Chapter - please indicate if you wish to be considered for these in your application. *Application Procedure and Deadlines: Round 1: **April 29th, 2013*. If there are places remaining, the second round of applications will close on May 20th 2013. Please email your application consisting of the following to the Stirling Summer School Administration team cogcomp2013 at cs.stir.ac.uk and include the following details: - First Name and Last Name, Email & Website - Current degree, field of study and Institution (including country) - Accommodation needed, for how many nights (minimum 4), arrival and departure dates - Supervisor?s Name and full contact details - Your biography (maximum 250 words), including titles of up to 3 of your relevant publications (if any) - Description of your research activities and interests (250 words) - Your motivation & expectations of a summer school in Cognitive Computation (250 words) - Skills (experience with systems, languages, toolkits, research methods) (100 words) - Title and abstract of your Poster (maximum 500 words) - optional All applications will be used to screen potential attendees to ensure their suitability for the content of the summer school. If your application is successful, you will be contacted by email (within one week of the relevant deadline) to arrange the applicable payments. *Organisers* The summer school is organised by the Division of Computing Science at the University of Stirling. The School co-ordinator is Professor Amir Hussain, E-mail: ahu at cs.stir.ac.uk *Contact* For more information, please contact the Administration Team (E-mail: cogcomp2013 at cs.stir.ac.uk )** *This school is funded by the Scottish Informatics & Computer Science Alliance (SICSA: http://www.sicsa.ac.uk/), & technically co-sponsored by Springer and the IEEE UKRI IAS and CIS Chapters* * * -- The University of Stirling is ranked in the top 50 in the world in The Times Higher Education 100 Under 50 table, which ranks the world's best 100 universities under 50 years old. The University of Stirling is a charity registered in Scotland, number SC 011159. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rvegaru at usal.es Mon Apr 15 05:20:18 2013 From: rvegaru at usal.es (Roberto Vega Ruiz) Date: Mon, 15 Apr 2013 11:20:18 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: =?windows-1252?q?HAIS_2013=3A_5th_CFP_=96_Deadlin?= =?windows-1252?q?e_Extension_=283rd_of_May-2013=29?= Message-ID: <11EC1A9E-4424-47CF-8415-515D42AEAD46@usal.es> HAIS 2013: 5th CFP ? Deadline Extension (3rd of May-2013) * We apologize if you receive this CFP more than once. * PLEASE CIRCULATE this CFP among your colleagues and students. The 8th International Conference on Hybrid Artificial Intelligence Systems. September 11th-13th, 2013 Salamanca, Spain http://hais13.usal.es --------------------------------------------------------------- HAIS 2013 is organized in conjunction with: SOCO 2013 (http://soco13.usal.es) CISIS 2013 (http://gicap.ubu.es/cisis2013) and ICEUTE 2013 (http://gicap.ubu.es/iceute2013) ---------------------------------------------------------------- ***SUBMISSION SYSTEM IS OPEN **** Please, submit your contributions through the following link: https://www.easychair.org/account/signin.cgi?conf=hais13 ---------------------------------------------------------------- ***JOURNAL SPECIAL ISSUES AND FAST TRACK: Authors of the best papers presented at HAIS 2013 will be invited to submit an extended version to highly reputed international journals, Up to now: Confirmed special issues for the journals: 1. International Journal of Neural Systems (IJNS), World Scientific, I.F.: 4.284, Rank: 4th/111 2. Integrated Computer-Aided Engineering, IOS Press, I.F.: 3.451, Rank: 7th/111 3. Neurocomputing, ELSEVIER, I.F.: 1.580, Rank: 39th/111 Confirmed Fast Track for the journals: 1. Applied Soft Computing, ELSEVIER, I.F.: 2.612, Rank: 13th/111 ---------------------------------------------------------------- *** PLENARY SPEAKERS: Prof. Hojjat Adeli.-The Ohio State University, Columbus, USA. Prof. Hujun Yin.-The University of Manchester, UK. Prof. Manuel Gra?a.- University of the Basque Country, Spain Prof. Cesare Alipi.- Politecnico di Milano, Italy. ---------------------------------------------------------------- Technical Co-Sponsors by: WORLD FEDERATION ON SOFT COMPUTING http://www.wfsc.de IEEE.-Spain Section http://www.ieee.org/spain IEEE.-Systems, Man, and Cybernetics Spanish Chapter http://www.ieee-smc.es/main/index.shtml CITY COUNCIL OF SALAMANCA http://www.aytosalamanca.es AEPIA http://www.aepia.org Machine Intelligence Research Labs (MIR Labs) http://www.mirlabs.org/ The International Federation for Computational Logic http://www.ifcolog.net/ IT4Innovations Centre of Excellence http://www.it4i.eu/en/ INMOTIA http://www.inmotia.net REPLENTIA http://www.replentia.com HIDR?GENA http://www.hidrogena.com INFRANOR http://www.infranor.com ---------------------------------------------------------------- ***PROCEEDINGS: HAIS?13 proceedings will be published by Springer in its series of LNCS/LNAI- LNAI (Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence) as in the last previous editions. All accepted papers must be presented by one of the authors who must register for the conference and pay the fee. -------------------------------------------------------------------- *** The 8th International Conference on Hybrid Artificial Intelligence Systems(HAIS?13) combines symbolic and sub-symbolic techniques to construct more robust and reliable problem solving models. Hybrid intelligent systems are becoming popular due to their capabilities in handling many real world complex problems, involving imprecision, uncertainty and vagueness, high-dimensionality. They provide us with the opportunity to use both, our knowledge and row data to solve problems in a more interesting and promising way. HAIS Series of Conferences provides an interesting opportunity to present and discuss the latest theoretical advances and real-world applications in this multidisciplinary research field. -------------------------------------------------------------------- *** TOPICS Topics are encouraged, but not limited to, the combination of at least two of the following areas in the field of Hybrid Intelligent Systems: - Fusion of soft computing and hard computing - Evolutionary Computation - Visualization Techniques - Ensemble Techniques - Data mining and decision support systems - Intelligent agent-based systems (complex systems), cognitive and Reactive distributed AI systems - Internet modelling - Human interface - Case base reasoning - Chance discovery - Applications in security, prediction, control, robotics, image and speech signal processing, food industry, biology and medicine, business and management, knowledge management, artificial societies, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, geographic information systems, materials and environment engineering and so on. -------------------------------------------------------------------- *** PAPER SUBMISSION AND PROCEEEDINGS HAIS'13 proceedings will be published by Springer in its series of Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence - LNAI (part of its prestigious Lecture Notes in Computer Science - LNCS series). All submissions will be refereed by experts in the field based on originality, significance, quality and clarity. Every submitted paper to HAIS?13 will be reviewed by at least two members of the Program Committee. Papers must be prepared according to the LNCS-LNAI style template (http://www.springer.de/comp/lncs/authors.html) and must be no more than ten (10) pages long, including figures and bibliography. Additional pages (over 10 pages) will be charged at 150 Euro each. -------------------------------------------------------------------- *** COMMITTEES*** *General Chair* Prof. Marios M. Polycarpou - University of Cyprus, Cyprus. Prof. Jeng-Shyang Pan - National Kaohsiung University of Applied Sciences, Taiwan Prof. Micha? Wo?niak - Wroclaw University of Technology (Poland) Dr. Emilio Corchado - University of Salamanca, Spain. -------------------------------------------------------------------- *** IMPORTANT DATES *** Paper submission deadline (EXTENDED) 3rd May, 2013 Acceptance notification 20th May, 2013 Final version submission 10th June, 2013 Conference dates 11th - 13th September, 2013 Payment deadline 2nd June, 2013 -------------------------------------------------------------------- *** CONTACT *** Dr. Emilio Corchado - University of Salamanca (Spain) (Chair) BISITE Research Group http://bisite.usal.es/ GICAP Research Group http://gicap.ubu.es/ University of Salamanca Email: escorchado at usal.es Phone: +34 630736755 For more information about HAIS?13, please refer to the HAIS?13 website: http://hais13.usal.es * We apologize if you receive this CFP more than once. * PLEASE CIRCULATE this CFP among your colleagues and students. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pascal.fua at epfl.ch Mon Apr 15 16:52:44 2013 From: pascal.fua at epfl.ch (Pascal Fua) Date: Mon, 15 Apr 2013 22:52:44 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: Short Term Research Engineer Position at EPFL's Computer Vision Lab Message-ID: <516C689C.6020305@epfl.ch> EPFL's Computer Vision Laboratory ( http://cvlab.epfl.ch/ ) has a short-term opening for a Research Engineer to work on a collaborative project with EPFL's Electron Spectrometry and Microscopy Laboratory ( http://lsme.epfl.ch/ ). The position is initially offered for 6 months and can potentially be extended for up to 3 years total. Description: Dislocations are defects disturbing the perfect arrangement of atoms in crystals and play a key role in their mechanical properties. In the field of metallurgy, it is therefore very important to model them accurately. This can be done from Transmission Electron Microscopy images such as those that can be downloaded from http://lsme.epfl.ch/files/content/sites/lsme/files/Emad/g[01-1]_Expr.%2004.07.12_Mo155PR6_HAADF%20ordered%20and%20aligned%20(translation).gif in which they appear as white lines. The goal of this project will be to implement Computer Vision algorithms to delineate these semi-automatically in several images simultaneously and, by so doing, recover their 3D geometry. Profile: ? Master's degree in a field closely related to image processing. ? Some experience with Computer Vision Algorithms, especially those related to deformable models and stereography. ? Proven record of writing industrial/open-source code. Applying: Please send your CV with three references to Mrs. Josiane Gisclon (josiane.gisclon at epfl.ch). From bwyble at gmail.com Tue Apr 16 01:19:52 2013 From: bwyble at gmail.com (Brad Wyble) Date: Tue, 16 Apr 2013 01:19:52 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: Computational/Experimental Postdoc position at Penn State Message-ID: The laboratory of Brad Wyble at the Pennsylvania State University ( http://www.bradwyble.com/Labpage), invites applications for a new postdoctoral position. This laboratory uses a multi-disciplinary approach centered around computational neuroscience, with an aim to understand how visual input is converted into robust mental representations that can inform subsequent cognitive activity. The topics related to this aim include visual attention, attentional capture, encoding of working and visual short-term memory (VSTM), the attentional blink, and repetition blindness. The lab?s research program develops and tests neural simulations of vision and mental processes, using a variety of experimental techniques that includes psychophysics, eye tracking and EEG. The ideal applicant has a PhD in psychology, computer science, or a related field, a background that includes several years of computer programming experience (especially Matlab), a strong publication record, and an interest in understanding the mechanisms of vision, attention, and visual forms of memory. Applicants without specific expertise in vision science or modeling will be considered, but candidates are expected to make a commitment to gain expertise in these areas. The research will involve a combination of computational and empirical research, informed by data from psychophysics, EEG, eye tracking, and/or FMRI. Possibilities also exist for the development of artificial vision applications through an existing collaboration with partners in the Applied Research Lab here at Penn State. The initial appointment will be for one year, with a strong possibility of renewal for a second year. Salary and benefits follow NSF/NIH guidelines. The search is open to all eligible candidates regardless of citizenship. Applicants should submit an online application at http://www.la.psu.edu/facultysearch/ (PSU Job Number 39244) and should include a CV, several reprints, and a 1-2 page statement of research interests. This statement should describe the candidate's goals for research and training during a postdoctoral position, including previous experience. Applicants should arrange for three letters of recommendation to be sent separately to wyblepostdoc at gmail.com. If unable to submit electronically, please send application materials to Brad Wyble, 140 Moore Building, University Park, PA 16802. Review of applications will begin immediately. We will consider applications until the position is filled. We encourage applications from individuals of diverse backgrounds. Employment will require successful completion of background check(s) in accordance with University policies. Penn State is committed to affirmative action, equal opportunity, and diversity of its workplace. -- Brad Wyble Assistant Processor Psychology Department Penn State University -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From connectionists-ml at nn7.de Wed Apr 17 13:59:22 2013 From: connectionists-ml at nn7.de (Soeren Sonnenburg) Date: Wed, 17 Apr 2013 19:59:22 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: CfP: Shogun Machine Learning Workshop, July 12-14, Berlin, Germany Message-ID: <1366221562.16382.67.camel@no> ========================================================================= CALL FOR PARTICIPATION Shogun Machine Learning Workshop, Berlin, Germany July 12-14, 2013 http://shogun-toolbox.org/page/Events/workshop2013 ========================================================================= Data Science, Big-Data are omnipresent terms documenting the need for automated tools to analyze the ever growing wealth of data. To this end we invite practitioners, researchers and students to participate in the first Shogun machine learning workshop. While the workshop is centered around the development and use of the shogun machine learning toolbox, it will also feature general machine learning subjects. General Information =================== The workshop will include: * A general introduction to machine learning held by Gunnar Raetsch. * Introductory talks about e.g. Dimension reduction techniques, Kernel-statistical testing, Gaussian Processes, Structured Output learning * Contributed talks and a poster session, and a poster-spotlight. * A discussion panel * A hands on session on July 13-14 Do not miss the chance to familiarize yourself with the shogun machine learning toolbox for solving various data analysis tasks and to talk to their authors and contributors. The program of the workshop will cover from basic to advanced topics in machine learning and how to approach them using Shogun, which makes it suitable for anyone, no matter if you are a senior researcher or practitioner with many year's of experience, or a junior student willing to discover much more. Interested? A tentative schedule is available at http://shogun-toolbox.org/page/Events/workshop2013_program . Call for contributions ====================== The organizing committee is seeking workshop contributions. The committee will select several submitted contributions for 15-minute talks and poster presentations. The accepted contributions will also be published on the workshop web site. Amongst other topics, we encourage submission that * are applications / publications utilizing Shogun * are highly relevant to practitioners in the field * are of broad general interest * are extensions to Shogun Submission Guidelines ===================== Send an abstract of your talk/contribution to shogun-workshop2013 at shogun-toolbox.org before June 1. Notifications will be given on June 7. Registration ============ Workshop registration is free of charge. However, only a limited number of seats is available. First-come, first-served! Register by filling out the registration form http://shogun-toolbox.org/page/Events/registration . Location and Timeline ===================== The main workshop will take place at c-base Berlin (http://c-base.org/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C-base) on July 12. It is followed by additional 2-day hands-on sessions held at TU Berlin (http://www.ml.tu-berlin.de/) on July 13-14. About the Shogun machine learning toolbox ========================================= Shogun is designed for unified large-scale learning for a broad range of feature types and learning settings, like classification, regression, or explorative data analysis. Further information is available at http://www.shogun-toolbox.org. From thomas.wennekers at plymouth.ac.uk Wed Apr 17 11:17:59 2013 From: thomas.wennekers at plymouth.ac.uk (Thomas Wennekers) Date: Wed, 17 Apr 2013 16:17:59 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: Studentship at the Centre for Robotics and Neural Systems, Plymouth University UK Message-ID: <201304171617.59697.thomas.wennekers@plymouth.ac.uk> PhD Studentship at the Centre for Robotics and Neural Systems, Plymouth University Project Descriptions The CRNS, Centre for Robotics and Neural Systems at Plymouth University (UK) has one PhD Studentship available for the academic year starting on 1 October 2013. The studentship is available in any of the projects: ? Project A: Cooperative Control between Human and Robot ? Project B: Neuronal network dynamics ? Project C: Human sensorimotor control ? Project D: New artificial neural network algorithms for humanoid robot reinforcement learning ? Project E: A computer model of mental imagery ? Project F: Information visualisation ? Project G: Robot location and mapping In the application form, each applicant must specify one or two projects in which they are interested, and explain how their expertise fits the proposed research project. Eligibility Applicants should have, or expect to obtain, a high grade Bachelors or Masters Degree in Computer Science, Robotics, Computational Neuroscience, Psychology or related disciplines. The candidates must have good programming skills and a strong motivation for research. Funding The studentship is supported for 3 years and includes full Home/EU tuition fees plus a stipend of ?13,726 per annum. The studentship will only fully fund those applicants who are eligible for Home/EU fees with relevant qualifications. Applicants normally required to cover overseas fees will have to cover the difference between the Home/EU and the overseas tuition fee rates (approximately ?9,790 per annum). For further information on the project or for an informal discussion, please contact Professor Angelo Cangelosi at a.cangelosi at plymouth.ac.uk or directly one of the supervisors listed above. Details about Plymouth University can be found at www.plymouth.ac.uk. For an application form and full details on how to apply, please visit www.plymouth.ac.uk/postgraduate. Applicants should send a completed application form with copies of their qualifications and transcripts, two academic references, English Language qualification (if appropriate), a covering letter and a CV to Mrs Carole Watson, Room A425 Portland Square, Plymouth University, Drake Circus, Plymouth, PL4 8AA or via email to scitechresearch at plymouth.ac.uk. Closing date for applications: 12 noon, Friday 3rd May 2013. From yael at Princeton.EDU Wed Apr 17 16:42:09 2013 From: yael at Princeton.EDU (Yael Niv) Date: Wed, 17 Apr 2013 16:42:09 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: RLDM2013: Call for abstract submissions Message-ID: <49049F31-B969-4F47-804B-1126A68FDEE2@Princeton.EDU> ====================================================== Call for abstracts: deadline 16 June 2013, midnight UTC-11 The 1st Multidisciplinary Conference on Reinforcement Learning and Decision Making (RLDM2013) www.rldm.org Oct 25-27, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey, USA ====================================================== We solicit abstracts for the 1st Multidisciplinary Conference on Reinforcement Learning and Decision Making (RLDM2013). Over the last few decades, reinforcement learning and decision making have been the focus of an incredible wealth of research spanning a wide variety of fields including psychology, artificial intelligence, machine learning, operations research, control theory, animal and human neuroscience, economics and ethology. The aim of RLDM2013 is to inaugurate a recurring meeting at the intersection of these fields, characterized by the multidisciplinarity of the presenters and attendees, with cross-disciplinary conversations being central objectives along with the dissemination of novel theoretical and experimental results. The first meeting will be single-track, with 8 invited talk sessions and 2 contributed poster sessions. Registration fees are expected to be low, and we expect to be able to offer travel awards to a limited number of student attendees courtesy of generous sponsors. We invite extended abstracts for contributed poster presentations. We welcome submissions of original research related to "learning and decision making over time to achieve a goal", coming from any discipline or disciplines, describing empirical results from human, animal, robot or artificial agent experiments, and/or theoretical work, simulations and modeling. Contributions should be aimed at an interdisciplinary audience, but not at the expense of technical excellence. This is an abstract-based meeting, with no published conference proceedings. As such, work that is intended for, or has been submitted to, other conferences or journals is also welcome, provided that the intent of communication to other disciplines is clear. Submissions should consist of a summary (max 2000 characters; text only), and an extended abstract of between one and four pages (including figures and references). LaTeX and RTF templates, and sample submissions, are available from www.rldm.org/submit.html To submit your abstract please go to https://cmt.research.microsoft.com/RLDM2013 Submissions will be reviewed for relevance to the topic and for quality. Exceptional abstracts will be selected for poster spotlight presentations, and for a best poster talk. IMPORTANT DATES: Submissions open: 1 May 2013 Submissions close: 16 June 2013, midnight UTC-11 (American Samoa Time) Notification of acceptance: by early August, 2013 Early registration: 31 August 2013 Meeting: 25-27 October 2013, Princeton, NJ To ensure that you receive future announcements about RLDM2013 please join our mailing list at http://tinyurl.com/RLDMlist (you must log in to google to see the "join list" button, and choose 'all emails' in the options). RLDM2013 confirmed speakers: http://rldm.org/rldm2013/list-of-speakers/ RLDM2013 Programme Committee: http://rldm.org/rldm2013/committees/rldm2013-pc/ From sandayci at rub.de Thu Apr 18 06:01:21 2013 From: sandayci at rub.de (Yulia Sandamirskaya) Date: 18 Apr 2013 12:01:21 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: Summer School "Neuronal Dynamics for Cognitive Robotics" Message-ID: Hands-on Summer School Neural Dynamics for Cognitive Robotics 2013 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Summer School Neuronal Dynamics for Cognitive Robotics September 9-14, 2013 Ruhr-University Bochum Institute for Neural Computation http://robotics-school.org/ Neuronal dynamics provide a powerful theoretical language for the design and modelling of embodied and situated cognitive systems. The school is aimed at advanced undergraduate or graduate students, postdocs and faculty members in embodied cognition, cognitive science and robotics. A limited number of scholarships will be available from sponsoring by the EU COG III network (application pending). Scope This summer school gives a hands-on introduction to neuronal dynamics ideas and will enable participants to become pro- ductive within this framework. Participants will develop and implement small experimental projects on their own to establish a link to their research interest. Topics Neural attractor dynamics, Dynamic Field Theory, neuronal representations, navigation behavior, artificial perception, learning mechanisms, implementation issues To apply, please send a CV and a short cover letter with background and motivation to gregor.schoener at rub.de . Selection of participants will begin by June 3, 2013. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: poster.pdf Type: application/pdf Size: 164543 bytes Desc: not available URL: -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From nari at dexco.co.kr Thu Apr 18 21:38:09 2013 From: nari at dexco.co.kr (Nari Kim) Date: Fri, 19 Apr 2013 10:38:09 +0900 Subject: Connectionists: [ICONIP 2013] Request for posting the 2nd call for pepers of ICONIP 2013 In-Reply-To: <004401ce3c9e$558741f0$0095c5d0$@dexco.co.kr> References: <004401ce3c9e$558741f0$0095c5d0$@dexco.co.kr> Message-ID: <004d01ce3c9e$8c1ca570$a455f050$@dexco.co.kr> Dear manager of connectionist I would like to ask you to post the 2nd call for papers of ICONIP 2013 on your list and e-mailing to your members. Please find the 2nd call for paper in the attachment. If you have any request, please feel free to contact me. Thank you. Best regards, Nari Kim(Ms.) -------------------------- Nari KIM DEXCO Co., Ltd / MICE 1 Team 6F, Sunghwa Bldg., #1356-51 Manchon1-dong, Suseong-gu, Daegu 706-803, Korea Tel. +82-53-746-9965 / Fax. +82-53-742-9007 E-mail. nari at dexco.co.kr, nari.dexco at gmail.com 2ND CALL FOR PAPERS Download the 2nd call for papers: http://dexco.cafe24.com/ICONIP2013/ICONIP2013-2nd Call for Papers_Final_s.pdf The 20th International Conference on Neural Information Processing (ICONIP 2013), an annual conference of the Asia Pacific Neural Network Assembly (APNNA), will be held from 3 - 7 November 2013 at EXCO, Daegu, Republic of Korea. We hope that you will take advantage of this unique opportunity to interact and share your experience with your colleagues and peers, and have a memorable and rewarding experience during your time in Daegu, Republic of Korea. KEYNOTE / PLENARY SPEAKERS The organizing committee is pleased to announce that outstanding keynote speaker and plenary speakers will give great speeches on ICONIP 2013 as below. . Keynote Speaker Prof. Shun-Ichi Amari, Brain Science Institute, RIKEN, Japan "Dreaming of Mathematical Neuroscience for Half a Century" . Plenary Speakers Prof. Yoshua Bengio, University of Montreal, Canada "Deep Learning of Representations" Prof. Kunihiko Fukushima, Kansai University, Japan "How to design multi-layered neural networks for vision" Prof. Soo-Young Lee, KAIST, Korea "Artificial Cognitive Systems with Active Learning and Situation Awareness Abilities: From Cognitive Science to Real-World Applications" Prof. Naftali Tishby, The Hebrew University, Israel "Balanced information flow in perception and action - the key principle of computational intelligence?" Prof. Zongben Xu, Xi'an Jiaotong University, China "Nonlinear Sparsitiy: Examples, Modeling and Applications" CONFERENCE SCOPE AND THEMES Prospective authors are invited to contribute high-quality papers related to the topics listed below. The scope of the conference includes, but is not limited to, the following areas: Cognitive Science and Artificial Intelligence: Theoretical, computational, or experimental studies of perception, psychophysics, learning and memory, inference and reasoning, problem solving, natural language processing, and neuropsychology. Learning Theory, Algorithms, and Architectures: Stability and convergence analysis, statistical learning algorithms, neural network models, supervised learning, unsupervised learning, reinforcement learning, kernel methods, graphical models, dimensionality reduction and manifold learning, statistical and information-theoretic methods, generalization, regularization and model selection, Gaussian processes and mixture models, matrix/tensor analysis, statistical physics of learning, and evolutionary algorithms. Computational Neuroscience and Brain Imaging: Theoretical and experimental studies of processing and transmission of information in biological neurons and networks, spiking neurons, visual and auditory cortex, neural encoding and decoding, plasticity and adaptation, brain imaging, neuroimaging, brain mapping, and brain segmentation. Vision, Speech and Signal Processing: Biological and machine vision, image processing and coding, visual perception and modeling, visual selective attention, visual coding and representation, object detection and recognition, motion detection and tracking, natural scene analysis, image processing, auditory perception and modeling, source separation, speech recognition and speech synthesis, speaker identification, and audio & speech retrieval. Control, Robotics and Hardware Technologies: Decision and control, exploration, planning, navigation, Markov decision processes, game playing, multi-agent coordination, neuro-fuzzy system, cognitive robotics, developmental robotics, analog and digital VLSI, neuromorphic engineering, computational sensors and actuators, microrobotics, bioMEMS, neural prostheses, photonics, and molecular & quantum computing. Novel approaches and Applications: Innovative applications that use machine learning, including systems for time series prediction, bioinformatics, systems biology, text/web analysis, multimedia processing, adaptive intelligent systems, brain-computer interfaces, granular computing, hybrid intelligent systems, neuroinformatics and neuroengineering, bioinformatics, information retrieval, data mining, and knowledge discovery. PAPER SUBMISSION Authors are invited to submit full-length papers (8 pages maximum) by the submission deadline through the online submission system. It is also possible to submit extended abstracts which include the aim or rationale for the following specific topics: Neuroscience, Neuro-psychology, Industrial applications, Cognitive science, and Demonstration. The submission of a paper implies that the paper is original and has not been submitted under review, or copyright-protected elsewhere and will be presented by an author if accepted. All submitted papers will be reviewed by area experts based on the criteria of originality, significance, quality, and clarity. The authors of accepted papers will have an opportunity to revise their papers and take consideration of the reviewers' comments and suggestions. The proceedings of ICONIP 2013 will be published by Springer in its series of Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Selected papers will be included in special issues of the following international journals. . Neural Networks . Neurocomputing . Cognitive Computation . Cognitive Systems Research . Neural Processing Letters IMPORTANT DATES Deadline for Special session, Tutorials and Workshops proposals ------------------- 15 May 2013 Deadline for extended abstract, regular and special session paper ------------------- 15 June 2013 Notification of acceptance ---------------- 1 August 2013 Deadline for Camera-ready final paper submission -------------- 15 August 2013 CALL FOR SPECIAL SESSION / WORKSHOP PROPOSALS ICONIP2013 welcomes proposals for special sessions/workshop. Special session will be held during the conference. The aim of a special session is to provide the state-of-the-art and current research direction in specific fields of neural information processing. The special sessions devoted to emerging topics with growing attention are particularly encouraged. We also invite proposals for full-day or half-day workshops in relevant and current topics in neural information processing. Workshops will be held on 3 November 2013, the first day of the conference. A workshop should include an introductory talk on the topic and will have final discussions at the end of the workshop. Apart from the introductory talk and the discussion, workshop should preferably include six or more additional presentations. Researchers and prospective organizers are invited to submit a one-page proposal for a special session/workshop to the ICONIP 2013 secretariat or each chair via the following emails before 15 May 2013. . ICONIP 2013 Secretariat: iconip2013 at gmail.com . Special session Chairs: Prof. Sung-Bae Cho, Yonsei University, Korea / sbcho at cs.yonsei.ac.kr Prof. Seiichi Ozawa, Kobe University, Japan / ozawasei at kobe-u.ac.jp Prof. Liqing Zhang, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China / zhang-lq at cs.sjtu.edu.cn . Workshop Chairs: Prof. Seong-Whan Lee, Korea University, Korea / swlee at image.korea.ac.kr Prof. Daijin Kim, POSTECH, Korea / dkim at postech.ac.kr Mr. Kyunghwan Kim, NT Research, Korea / kimk at ntresearch.net Each proposal should include the following information: - The title of the special session or workshop - The organizers with their affiliations - A description of why the topic is of special interest and how it fits to the scope of ICONIP - A list of potential authors or contributors - The name(s) of the presenter(s) of the introductory talk (Only for workshop proposal) - A theme for the discussion (Only for workshop proposal) For more details for special session/workshop proposals, please visit the ICONIP 2013 website ( www.iconip2013.org). Conference Committee Honorary Chair Shun-ichi Amari, RIKEN, Japan Soo-Young Lee, KAIST, Korea General Chair Minho Lee, Kyungpook National University, Korea Program Chair Akira Hirose, The University of Tokyo, Japan Zeng-Guang Hou, The Chinese Academy of Sciences, China Rhee Man Kil, Sungkyunkwan University, Korea Advisory Committee Jonathan H. Chan, Thailand Wlodzislaw Duch, Poland Kunihiko Fukushima, Japan Tom Gedeon, Australia Aike Guo, China Akira Iwata, Japan Nik Kasabov, New Zealand Irwin King, Hong Kong Noboru Onishi, Japan Ron Son, USA Il Hong Suh, Korea Shiro Usui, Japan DeLiang Wang, USA Lipo Wang, Singapore Jun Wang, Hong Kong Lei Xu, Hong Kong Takeshi Yamakawa, Japan Byoung-Tak Zhang, Korea Li-Ming Zhang, China Organizing Chair Hyeyoung Park, Kyungpook National University, Korea Workshop Chair Daijin Kim, POSTECH, Korea Kyunghwan Kim, NT Research, Korea Seong-Whan Lee, Korea University, Korea Special Session Chair Sung-Bae Cho, Yonsei University, Korea Seiichi Ozawa, Kobe University, Japan Liqing Zhang, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China Tutorial Chair Seungjin Choi, POSTECH, Korea Publication Chair Yoonsuck Choe, Texas A&M University, USA Hyung-Min Park, Sogang University, Korea Seong-Bae Park, Kyungpook National University, Korea Publicity Chair Kazushi Ikeda, NAIST, Japan Chi-Sing Leung, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Shaoning Pang, Unitec Institute of Technology, New Zealand Registration Chair Min-Young Kim, Kyungpook National University, Korea Financial Chair Sang-Woo Ban, Dongguk University, Korea Local Arrangement Chair Doo-Hyun Choi, Kyungpook National University, Korea Jong-Seok Lee, Yonsei University, Korea Rammohan Mallipeddi, Kyungpook National University, Korea Secretariat iconip2013 at gmail.com DAEGU, KOREA Daegu Metropolitan City is the third largest city in Korea and is located in the southeastern part of the Korean peninsula. With an efficient transportation network linked in all directions, Daegu Metropolitan City is a gateway to numerous cultural heritages and tourist attractions, all proudly displaying the unique Korean culture. The organizing committee of ICONIP 2013 welcomes you to experience and enjoy the following tour programs. Historical/Cultural Tour - "UNESCO World Cultural Heritage sites" Andong Folk Village, Yangdong Folk Village, Seokguram Grotto, Bulguksa Temple and Tripitaka Koreana. Industrial Tour The hub of knowledge-based industry in northeast Asia : Daegu Metropolitan City is a place where industry thrives. Korean Waive Tour - Korean drama/movie Theme Which is your favorite Korean drama or movie? If you are not sure, come and join us in this tour that includes the filming locations of drama 'Love Rain', movie 'Dae Jang-Geum' and 'Queen Seon Deok'. ACCOMMODATION For all participants of ICONIP 2013, the organizing committee is pleased to offer sufficient rooms at hotels listed on ICONIP 2013 website with discount rates. To take advantage of these discounts, participants are kindly advised to make an on-line hotel reservation via the ICONIP 2013 website. TRANSPORTATION International Travel The major arrival points in Korea are the Incheon International Airport (Seoul), the Gimhae International Airport (Busan), and the Daegu International Airport (Daegu). For those who arrive at Incheon Airport, to take domestic airline or KTX (Korean train express) train is highly recommended. From Gimhae International Airport, you can also take KTX train as well as limousine buses heading to Daegu. Incheon International Airport (Seoul) 57 countries 174 cities Daegu International Airport (Daegu) 2 countries 5 cities / Beijing, Shanghai, Qingdao, Shenyang, Bangkok Gimhae International Airport (Busan) 11 countries 25 cities / USA, Germany, Japan, China, Philippines, Vietnam, Russia, Thailand, Taiwan Domestic Transportation >From Incheon Int'l Airport (Seoul) Domestic Flight: 50 minute, 2 flights/day KTX: 140 minute, every 30 minute Limousine bus: 4 hours, 33 times/day >From Gimhae Int'l Airport (Busan) Limousine bus: 70 minute, every 40 minute *For more details, please visit the ICONIP 2013 website (www.iconip2013.org) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: [ICONIP2013] 2ND CALL FOR PAPERS.DOCX Type: application/haansoftdocx Size: 27684 bytes Desc: not available URL: From c.hilgetag at gmail.com Fri Apr 19 10:51:04 2013 From: c.hilgetag at gmail.com (Claus C Hilgetag) Date: Fri, 19 Apr 2013 16:51:04 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: Postdoctoral Position for Research on Multi-Site Communication in the Brain, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Germany References: <01334D95-FEC0-4EFB-B4D0-A1E4D7803648@gmail.com> Message-ID: <1C33BAD2-055D-4928-A53D-DE585184857B@gmail.com> The Collaborative Research Centre SFB 936 "Multi-Site Communication in the Brain" is seeking a highly qualified and motivated candidate for a 2-year postdoctoral position conducting research on the computational analysis and modeling of structural and functional brain networks. The SFB 936 Research Center focusses on structural and functional coupling in brain networks at multiple levels, ranging from single-cell recordings to large-scale interactions across brain regions. The projects address network interactions underlying cognitive functions in the normal brain, changes during development and learning, as well as altered network functions in brain disorders. The SFB involves groups from the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf and the Universities of Hamburg, L?beck and Osnabr?ck. Further details are available on the website http://www.sfb936.net/. We are looking for a highly qualified and motivated candidate with a background in Computational Neuroscience, Neuroinformatics or Neuroscience as well as solid programming skills (e.g., Matlab/Python/C++). Successful candidates have substantial practical research experience in at least one of the following areas: computer simulations of neural systems or statistical analyses of complex systems. They also need to have an excellent command of written and spoken English as well as very good interpersonal skills. The postdoctoral researcher will be involved in the modeling efforts of the different SFB projects. In particular, s/he will perform network analyses and visualization, using established algorithms and tools as well as developing new indices for network characterization. Moreover, the researcher will adapt and apply dynamic models to explore the resting-state behavior of healthy and disordered brain networks. The position will be jointly supervised by Prof. Peter K?nig and Prof. Claus Hilgetag and will be closely collaborating with their groups as well as the experimental scientists at the Research Center. The position is available for two years and may start immediately. The position is remunerated at salary level E13 TV-KAH, 100%. Applicants should send their CV and publication list, a brief statement of research interests as well as the names of three referees to Prof. Claus Hilgetag (c.hilgetag at uke.de) or Prof. Peter K?nig (pkoenig at uos.de). Informal inquiries about the positions can also be made with P. K?nig or C. Hilgetag. We particularly welcome and encourage applications from women, disabled people and ethnic minority groups, recognizing they are underrepresented across the participating universities. The principles of fair and open competition apply and appointments will be made on merit. -- || Claus C. Hilgetag, PhD || Professor & Director | Dept. of Computational Neuroscience || University Medical Center Eppendorf | Hamburg University || www.uke.uni-hamburg.de/icns || Adjunct Associate Professor | Boston University ---- Hanlon's Razor: Never attribute to malice what is adequately explained by stupidity. From nicosia at dmi.unict.it Tue Apr 16 16:04:46 2013 From: nicosia at dmi.unict.it (Giuseppe Nicosia) Date: Tue, 16 Apr 2013 22:04:46 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: ECAL'13 Paper & Abstract Submission Deadline Extended - *Friday May 10* Message-ID: <522B4BA9-88F7-4C4D-9B15-80CC9D96793D@dmi.unict.it> [Please kindly help forward it to potentially interested attendees] ECAL'13 Paper & Abstract Submission Deadline Extended - *Friday May 10* ECAL 2013, European Conference on Artificial Life, an International Conference on the Designing, Programming, Evolving, Simulation and Synthesis of Natural and Artificial Living Systems 2-6 September 2013, Taormina, Italy - http://www.dmi.unict.it/ecal2013/ *Paper/Abstract Submission: May 10, 2013* https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=ecal2013 Proceedings by MIT Press. Best Papers in Artificial Life Journal (TBC). * 11 Tracks ECAL Manuscripts - Main Track Track on Adaptive Living Material Technologies Track on Artificial Organs and Tissues & Organ-on-a-Chip Track on Artificial Immune, Neural and Endocrine Systems Track on Astrobiology Track on Bioinspired Robotics Track on Biologically Inspired Engineering Track on Biomimetic Microsystems Track on Evolvable Hardware, Evolutionary Electronics & BioChips Track on Programmable Nanomaterials Track on Synthetic and Systems Biochemistry and Biological Control * 8 Plenary Speakers Roberto Cingolani, IIT, Italy (confirmed) Roberto Cipolla, University of Cambridge, UK (confirmed) Dario Floreano, EPFL, Swiss (confirmed) Martin Hanczyc, University of Southern Denmark, Denmark (confirmed) Henrik Hautop, Lund, Denmark (confirmed) Didier Keymeulen, Caltech - JPL NASA, USA (TBC) Steve Oliver - University of Cambridge, UK (confirmed) Rolf Pfeifer, ETH, Swiss (confirmed) http://www.dmi.unict.it/ecal2013/keynote.php * 12 Workshops A TRUCE workshop on Unconventional Computing in 2070 Artificial Life Based Models of Higher Cognition Artificial Consciousness Artificial Life in Massive Data Flow Collective and Swarm Robotics Evolution and Development of Networks, from Systems Biology to Computational Neuroscience 2nd International Workshop on the Evolution of Physical Systems ERLARS 2013 - 6th International Workshop on Evolutionary and Reinforcement Learning for Autonomous Robot Systems Fundamentals of Collective Adaptive Systems HSB - 2nd International Workshop on Hybrid Systems and Biology Protocells: Back to the Future What Synthetic Biology can offer to Artificial Intelligence? Perspectives in the Bio-Chem-ICT and other scenarios http://www.dmi.unict.it/ecal2013/workshops.php * 5 Tutorials Cell Pathway Design for Biotechnology and Synthetic Biology Exploring Prebiotic Chemistry Spaces Designing Adaptive Humanoid Robots Through the FARSA Open-Source Framework New Generation Sequencing Data Production, Analysis, and Archiving PyCX: A Python-Based Simulation Code Repository for Complex Systems Education http://www.dmi.unict.it/ecal2013/tutorials.php We look forward to seeing you in Sicily! W: http://www.dmi.unict.it/ecal2013/ E: ecal2013 at dmi.unict.it From marcus.hutter at gmx.net Fri Apr 19 05:27:52 2013 From: marcus.hutter at gmx.net (Marcus Hutter) Date: Fri, 19 Apr 2013 19:27:52 +1000 Subject: Connectionists: IJCAI 2013 Angry Birds AI Competition -- Call for Participation In-Reply-To: <024D5C6A-1D22-43B9-9667-ED3390C663EA@anu.edu.au> References: <024D5C6A-1D22-43B9-9667-ED3390C663EA@anu.edu.au> Message-ID: <51710E18.2030806@gmx.net> *************************************************************** Call for Participation IJCAI 2013 Angry Birds AI Competition http://www.aibirds.org Beijing, China, 6-9 August 2013 *************************************************************** Angry Birds is a popular video game where players shoot birds in order to destroy pigs protected by complicated structures. The task of this competition is to develop an intelligent Angry Birds playing agent that is able to successfully play the game autonomously and without human intervention. The long term goal is to build AI agents that can play new levels better than the best human players. In order to successfully solve this challenge, participants can benefit from combining different areas of AI such as computer vision, knowledge representation and reasoning, planning, heuristic search, and machine learning. Successfully integrating methods from these areas is one of the great challenges of AI. Game Playing Software ================== The organizers have provided a basic game playing software and a sample agent. Participants are free to adapt this software. The software can be downloaded at http://www.aibirds.org. On this website, we also offer a discussion forum for participants, benchmarks and other relevant information. Prizes ===== The teams of the three best agents will receive a prize as well as a certificate. * First prize: USD 1500 * Second prize: USD 1000 * Third prize: USD 500 All participants of the finals will also receive a certificate. Symposium on AI in Angry Birds ========================= During the competition, there will be an opportunity to present original scientific work related to the problems of developing an Angry Birds playing agent. Please refer to the Call for Papers at http://www.aibirds.org Man vs Machine Challenge ==================== On 9 August 2013, everyone is invited to compete against the best AI agents. The winner of this challenge, man or machine, will receive USD 500 and a certificate. Important Dates ============ * Early registration: 30 June 2013 * Agent submissions (qualification round): 5 August 2013 * Final agent submission: 8 August 2013 * Competition: 6-7 August (qualification), 8 August (finals) * Paper submissions: 30 June 2013 * Acceptance notification: 14 July 2013 * Camera ready deadline: 28 July 2013 Organizers ========= * Jochen Renz, Australian National University * Stephen Gould, Australian National University * XiaoYu (Gary) Ge, Australian National University All enquiries should be made by email to angrybirdscompetition at gmail.com. From e.vasilaki at gmail.com Fri Apr 19 08:54:22 2013 From: e.vasilaki at gmail.com (Eleni Vasilaki) Date: Fri, 19 Apr 2013 13:54:22 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: PhD Position opening Message-ID: *PhD Position * *The neuroeconomics of decision-making uncertainty:* brains, swarms and markets network. *University of Sheffield ? Department of Computer Science * *Supervisors:* Drs Eleni Vasilaki & Trevor Cohn, Machine Learning group, Department of Computer Science. External supervisor: Prof. Jane Binner, Chair of Finance, University of Birmingham. The ML group was founded in 1998. The scientific focus of the group is developing formalisms for data analysis, with a particular focus on probabilistic modelling. The engineering focus of the group is on algorithm development for modelling data in computational biology, language, neuroscience and large unstructured data sources. This project is part of a funded partnership with the departments of Automatic Control and Psychology under the theme of Neuroeconomics. It involves a close collaboration between Computer Science and Management departments. *Project description:* Reinforcement learning and the equity premium puzzle. Humans often make decisions based on their desire to maximize profit or reward. Such decisions take place within changing environments, where optimal choices in the past may differ from those in the present. For example, choosing a tracker-rate mortgage might have been at some time in the past a better option than a fixed-rate but today this may have changed. These choices are typically made under uncertain situations and involve a degree of risk. Though the specifics of decision-making mechanisms are still not fully understood, it is evident that fundamentally the human brain is able to identify information sequences that could also correlate with reward. This project aims to develop a data driven framework for understanding decision-making types of investors, and the key ingredients of making successful investment decisions. We ask the question whether the choices of successful investors have a higher component of sophisticated principles versus the unsuccessful investors, and whether different mixtures of models can account for different investor strategies. We anticipate that the results would be of immediate interest to finance institutions that may want to use our models to extract information about their clients' profiles in order to provide customized financial training or making decisions about investor loans. *Candidate's profile:* The ideal candidate should have degree in Computer Science, Mathematics, Physics, Engineering or similar, a very strong mathematical background, excellent programming skills and interest in financial problems. The PhD topic requires development and application of Artificial Intelligence techniques for financial data analysis. *Scholarship information:* The position covers tuition fees at UK/EU rate, provides annual maintenance at the standard RCUK rate (?13,726 for 2013-14), and a contribution towards research and travel expenses of ?1,000 p.a. Awards are open to UK, EU and international applicants. International applicants will be required to prove that they have sufficient funds to cover the difference between the UK/EU and Overseas tuition fees. For exceptional international candidates there might be opportunities for additional fee waivers. Preliminary enquiries should be addressed to Dr Eleni Vasilaki or Dr Trevor Cohn. Email: E.Vasilaki at sheffield.ac.uk or T.Cohn at sheffield.ac.uk*.* *Application Procedure: Please submit an application for a PhD at the department of Computer Science including a CV and a motivation letter. For more information and to apply: http://www.sheffield.ac.uk/postgraduate/research/apply .* ** -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Thomas_Wiecki at brown.edu Sat Apr 20 19:33:20 2013 From: Thomas_Wiecki at brown.edu (Thomas Wiecki) Date: Sat, 20 Apr 2013 16:33:20 -0700 Subject: Connectionists: [ANN] HDDM 0.5 released Message-ID: Hi, We are very happy to announce the release of HDDM 0.5 (hierarchical Bayesian estimation of the drift-diffusion model) which comes with a lot of new features and enhancements. The main reason to upgrade is the new default model that does very well in parameter recovery studies and has much faster convergence. Installation instructions can be found on our homepage: http://ski.clps.brown.edu/hddm_docs/ To upgrade from an existing installation, type: pip install -U --no-deps kabuki pip install -U --no-deps hddm Changes: HDDM 0.5 ======== * New and improved HDDM model with the following changes: * Priors: by default model will use informative priors (see http://ski.clps.brown.edu/hddm_docs/methods.html#hierarchical-drift-diffusion-models-used-in-hddm ) If you want uninformative priors, set ``informative=False``. * Sampling: This model uses slice sampling which leads to faster convergence while being slower to generate an individual sample. In our experiments, burnin of 20 is often good enough. * Inter-trial variablity parameters are only estimated at the group level, not for individual subjects. * The old model has been renamed to ``HDDMTransformed``. * HDDMRegression and HDDMStimCoding are also using this model. * HDDMRegression takes patsy model specification strings. See http://ski.clps.brown.edu/hddm_docs/howto.html#estimate-a-regression-model and http://ski.clps.brown.edu/hddm_docs/tutorial_regression_stimcoding.html#chap-tutorial-hddm-regression * Improved online documentation at http://ski.clps.brown.edu/hddm_docs * A new HDDM demo at http://ski.clps.brown.edu/hddm_docs/demo.html * Ratcliff's quantile optimization method for single subjects and groups using the ``.optimize()`` method * Maximum likelihood optimization. * Many bugfixes and better test coverage. * hddm_fit.py command line utility is depracated. Best, Thomas, Imri and Michael -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From a.bernacchia at gmail.com Mon Apr 22 04:51:44 2013 From: a.bernacchia at gmail.com (Alberto Bernacchia) Date: Mon, 22 Apr 2013 04:51:44 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: Postdoctoral Fellow in Computational Neuroscience Message-ID: The School of Engineering and Science at Jacobs University Bremen has an opening for a full time position as *Postdoctoral Fellow in Computational Neuroscience (f/m)* This is an exciting opportunity to join a multidisciplinary team addressing fundamental questions in Neuroscience. The research aims at designing a cortical circuit model for working-memory and decision-making based on existing experimental data. The methods will focus on mathematical and numerical analysis of neural circuit models, and data analysis of physiological recordings. The model will produce novel experimental predictions, guide further analysis, and ultimately provide a better understanding of the neural mechanisms of memory and decision-making. The ideal candidate has a background in Computational Neuroscience, Applied Mathematics or Physics and is highly motivated to have an interdisciplinary experience between Neuroscience and Applied Math. Jacobs University offers competitive salaries based on qualification and experience. The initial contract will be for two years. The prospective starting date is September 1st, 2013, but earlier dates may also be considered. Applicants should send a brief statement of research interests, a CV and the names of three references. *Only Electronic submissions in PDF-format to:* Alberto Bernacchia at a.bernacchia at jacobs-university.de Files will be destroyed once the search is completed. *Closing date: *Applications will be reviewed until the position is filled. Information on the School of Engineering and Science can be found on http://ses.jacobs-university.de/ses-research Jacobs University is an equal opportunity employer. Jacobs University Bremen is a private university offering degrees in engineering, natural sciences, humanities and social sciences at bachelor?s, master?s and doctoral levels. Jacobs University has more than 1,300 students from over 100 different countries. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From marley at ele.puc-rio.br Fri Apr 19 14:44:38 2013 From: marley at ele.puc-rio.br (Marley Vellasco) Date: Fri, 19 Apr 2013 15:44:38 -0300 Subject: Connectionists: CFP: 1st BRICS Countries Congress on Computational Intelligence (BRICS-CCI) Message-ID: <6F33CBA322534998A14D149621DD8543@ele.pucrio.br> 2nd Call For Papers: BRICS-CCI & CBIC2013 - Brazil (8-11th Sept,2013) *** Sorry for cross-posting & thanks for forwarding this to your network of collaborators; we greatly appreciate your help *** ====================================================================== *SECOND* Call FOR PAPERS 1st BRICS Countries Congress on Computational Intelligence (BRICS-CCI) 11th Brazilian Congress on Computational Intelligence (CBIC 2013) Recife (Porto de Galinhas beach), Brazil, September 8th-11th, 2013 Website: http://www.brics-cci.org .OR http://www.cbic2013.org ====================================================================== *** KEY DATES: Submission Deadline: *NEW* May 20th, 2013 Notification of Acceptance: July 12th, 2013 Final Papers Due: July 31th, 2013 *** MAIN TRACKS (of the sister conferences): 1) Neural and Learning Systems; 2) Fuzzy and Stochastic Modeling; and 3) Evolutionary and Swarm Computing. Topics of interest are neatly organized in three tracks and classified in Problems, Approaches and Technologies. For complete list => http://brics-cci.org/research-topics-brics-cci-cbic/ *** CO-LOCATED SYMPOSIA (alongside main tracks of the two conferences): (I) CI in Bioinformatics (CIBS) (II) Complex Systems (CompSysS) (III) Social Simulation (SocSimS) (IV) CI Applications in Defense Systems (CIDefS) (V) CI Applications in Industry (CIAppIndS) (VI) CI/AI Theses and Dissertations Competition (CI/AI TDC) (VII) CI Algorithms Competition (CIAC) (VIII) BRICS-CCI & CBIC Schools on CI (SCI & EBIC) *** INTERNATIONAL CONFIRMED DISTINGUISHED GUESTS: -Alan Kirman (d?Aix Marseille Universit?, EHESS ? France) ** Keynote -Andries Engelbrecht (U. Pretoria ? South Africa) -Boleslaw Szymanski (Rensselaer Polytechnic - USA) ** Keynote -Cristovam Buarque (UNB ? Brazil) *** Opening Speech -Derong Liu (University Illinois ? USA) -Ganesh Kumar Venayagamoorthy (Clemson University - USA) -Hani Hagras (University Essex ? England) -Hojjat Adeli (Ohio State University ? USA) * Keynote & Honorary Chair -Igor Aleksander (Imperial College ? England) * Keynote & Honorary Chair -Jaime Sichman (USP ? Brazil) ** Keynote speaker -Jos? Pr?ncipe (University of Florida ? USA) * Keynote & Honorary Chair -Marco Dorigo (U. Libre de Bruxelles ? Belgium) * Keynote & Honorary Chair -Ronald Yager (Iona College ? USA) -Russell Eberhart (Purdue University ? USA) * Keynote & Honorary Chair -Sanaz Mostaghim (KIT ? Germany) -Snehashish Chkraverty (NIT ? India) -Swagatam Das (ISI ? India) -Xin Yao (University of Birminham ? England) -Yaser Abu-Mostafa (Caltech ? USA) ** Keynote speaker -Yuhui Shi (U. Jiaotong-Liverpool ? China) *** PAPER PUBLICATION (in *10* special issues of international journals): - International Journal of Neural Systems(IJNS) - Integrated Computer-Aided Engineering(ICAE) - International Journal of Swarm Intelligence Research(IJSIR) - International Journal of Natural Computing Research(IJNCR) - International Journal of Machine Learning and Cybernetics(IJMLC) - International Journal of Computational Intelligence & Applications(IJCIA) - Learning & NonLinear Models(SBIC Journal) - Journal of the Brazilian Computer Society(JBCS) - Paladyn. Journal of Behavioral Robotics(Paladyn) - BRICS Journal of Computational Intelligence(BRICS-CI) *** PAPER SUBMISSION: - Paper type-O (on-going work): up to 2-page short-papers for presenting positions, on-going work and/or interesting ideas; - Paper type-R (Regular): up to 6-page full-papers for presenting original work. To be presented orally (15 min. each) or as poster; - Paper type-X (Extended): selected type-R papers up to 10-pages. Presented orally in special parallel sessions (20 min. each); - Paper type-H (Highlight): up to 12-page, invited only, for ground breaking or relevant surveys. * Paper format according to the IEEE A4 double column; *** OTHER HIGHLIGHTS: - 2 Conferences of three tracks each; - 4 Panels for discussions (Including "Trial of AI"); - 8 Symposia (2 Schools for: Ibero-American & International); - 16 Plenary talks; - Algorithms & Theses/Dissertations Competitions; - Awards for Outstanding people; - Awards for Best papers; - Many Thematic Meetings on CI & BRICS; - Busy Cultural Agenda; - Family & Environment friendly Congress; - Sports Activities (Soccer and Tennis competitions); - Touristic Activities (Sightseeing, Scuba classes etc); * 45 universities and 90 people contributing with this pioneering event! *** ORGANIZATION (GENERAL JOINT-CHAIRS of BRICS-CCI & CBIC ? 2013): (B) Prof. Fernando Buarque (University of Pernambuco ? Brazil) (R) Prof. Ildar Batyrshin (Moscow Power Energy Institute ? Russia) (I) Prof. Sankar Pal (Indian Statistical Institute ? India) (C) Prof. Ying Tan (Peking University ? China) (S) Prof. Tshilidzi Marwala (University of Johannesburg ? South Africa) Complete list of organizers, check: http://brics-cci.org/organizers/ ====================================================================== We are waiting for you in the stunning Porto de Galinhas beach! Website: http://www.brics-cci.org .OR http://www.cbic2013.org ====================================================================== -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From prashant.6388 at gmail.com Sun Apr 21 02:36:31 2013 From: prashant.6388 at gmail.com (Prashant Chavan) Date: Sun, 21 Apr 2013 12:06:31 +0530 Subject: Connectionists: Code example for back propagation through time with SNARLI. Message-ID: Hi, I just came across your SNARLI library. I want to implement Back propagation Time, but i am unable to find any help for coding it. I looked on internet found all methods with BPLayer but was unable to use them to in my implementation. I don't get which methods to be call and in what order for training and testing network. Please help to understand and if possible please provide any sample program from which i can get clear idea about implementation. -- Thanks & Regards, Prashant Chavan. * "Those who never made a mistake never made a Discovery"* -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From cgf at isep.ipp.pt Mon Apr 22 08:29:37 2013 From: cgf at isep.ipp.pt (Carlos Ferreira) Date: Mon, 22 Apr 2013 13:29:37 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: Extended deadline: Ubiquitous Data Mining (UDM) - IJCAI 2013 Workshop Message-ID: <51752D31.40506@isep.ipp.pt> ** Apologies for cross-posting ** Ubiquitous Data Mining (UDM) Workshop Beijing, China, August 3 - 9, 2013 http://www.liaad.up.pt/udm/ in conjunction with IJCAI 2013 23rd. International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence Beijing, China, August 3 - 9, 2013 http://ijcai13.org/ == Call for Papers == Ubiquitous Data Mining (UDM) uses Data Mining techniques to extract useful knowledge from data, namely when its characteristics reflect a World in Movement. The goal of this workshop is to convene researchers (from both academia and industry) who deal with techniques such as: decision rules, decision trees, association rules, clustering, filtering, learning classifier systems, neural networks, support vector machines, preprocessing, postprocessing, feature selection, visualization techniques, etc. for UDM of distributed and heterogeneous sources in the form of a continuous stream with mobile and/or embedded devices and related themes. Authors are invited to submit original papers in all topics related to Ubiquitous Data Mining. Selected papers will have to be presented during the workshop. The workshop will include extra time for audience discussion of the presentation allowing the group to have a better understanding of the issues, challenges, and ideas being presented. Authors of best workshop papers will be invited to submit extended versions of their work to Intelligent Data Analysis Journal. -- Important Dates -- Paper submission: 28 April, 2013 ** EXTENDED ** Author notification: 20 May, 2013 Camera-ready copy: 30 May, 2013 -- Topics -- Topics include but are not restricted to: - Adaptive Data Mining - Distributed Data Mining - Distributed Data Streams - Grid Data Mining - Learning in Ubiquitous environments - Learning from Sensor Networks - Learning from Social Networks - Visualization Techniques for UDM - Incremental On-line Learning Algorithms - Single-Pass and Scalable Algorithms - Learning in distributed neural network systems; - Real-Time and Real-World Applications - Resource-aware UDM - Theoretical frameworks for UDM -- Submission -- All papers should be submitted in IJCAI 2013 camera ready format for publication in the symposium proceedings. The maximum length of papers should not exceed 5 pages in the case of research and experience papers, and 2 pages in the case of position papers (including figures, bibliography and appendices). Submission guidelines must be strictly followed. Papers should be submitted in PDF using the EasyChair conference system available at https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=udm2013 All workshop participants are required to register for both the workshop and the main conference. IJCAI is the premier international gathering of leading AI researchers and practitioners from all over the world. Held biennially in odd-numbered years since 1969, IJCAI highlights the latest theoretical and applied results in all subfields of artificial intelligence. -- Workshop Chairs -- Jo?o Gama, Michael May, Nuno Marques, Paulo Cortez -- Organizing Chairs -- Manuel Filipe Santos, Pedro Pereira Rodrigues, Albert Bifet -- Publicity Chair -- Carlos Abreu Ferreira Looking forward to meeting you in Beijing! From camda at bioinf.jku.at Fri Apr 19 18:07:18 2013 From: camda at bioinf.jku.at (CAMDA 2013) Date: Sat, 20 Apr 2013 00:07:18 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: CfP: CAMDA 2013 - 12th International Conference on Critical Assessment of Massive Data Analysis Message-ID: <85C7BDC4-D4D3-4241-88B6-43C74EAC78F2@bioinf.jku.at> Critical Assessment of Massive Data Analysis (CAMDA2013) An ISMB/ECCB Satellite Meeting, July 19-20, 2013 http://www.camda.info CAMDA focuses on innovative methods to analyze massive data sets from life sciences. Over two days, researchers from bioinformatics, computer sciences, statistics, genetics, molecular biology, and other fields present novel approaches to analyze Big Data. Extracting usable knowledge from Big Data is an extremely pressing topic which requires advanced data mining, machine learning, statistical, and data management techniques that are presented at CAMDA. An essential part of CAMDA is its competitive challenge on big heterogeneous data sets. Academic and industrial researchers worldwide are invited to take the CAMDA challenge, to show their expertise analyzing Big Data. The challenge includes the analysis of a large toxicogenomic and genetic data obtained by Next Generation Sequencing (NGS). Relevant tasks for the toxicogenomics data include, but are not limited to, feature selection, classification, regression, and clustering. To facilitate the data handling, we provide the data set in several formats e.g., CSV and LIBSVM, which are ready to use e.g., for binary classification. Relevant tasks for the NGS data set, include, but are not limited to, variant detection, identical by descent detection, structural variants detection, and population genetics. We provide preprocessed NGS data in VCF format, even merged with data from other populations. The conference consists of keynotes, oral presentations, and a poster session where participants can present their work. As in last years, the prestigious CAMDA prize will be awarded for the best presentation. The contest presentations are complemented by high profile keynotes from: - Atul Butte, Stanford University School of Medicine, CA, USA - Nikolaus Rajewsky, Max-Delbr?ck-Center for Molecular Medicine, Berlin, Germany - Jun Wang, Beijing Genomics Institute (BGI), Shenzhen, China SUBMISSION INFORMATION We solicit submissions, which should include key results, figures, and tables. For original research papers the length of the extended abstract is limited to five pages (12pt Times Roman). Longer submissions cannot be considered. Abstracts must include the title, authors, affiliations, and contact email addresses. The name of the presenting author should be underlined. Abstracts should be submitted electronically as PDF or Microsoft Word online at: https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=camda2013 All accepted abstracts will be published in the conference abstract book. Submission selected for oral presentation will be peer-reviewed and published as full text manuscripts in the CAMDA Proceedings as an open access PubMed indexed special issue of Systems Biomedicine (ISSN:2162-8130). IMPORTANT DATES - Abstract submission deadline for oral presentation / 20 May 2013 - Abstract submission deadline for poster presentation / 25 May 2013 - Notification of accepted contributions / 30 May 2013 - Early registration closes / 1 June 2013 - CAMDA Conference / 19?20 July 2013 - ISMB/ECCB Conference / 21?23 July 2013 - Full paper submission / 25 August 2013 You find additional information about the challenge data sets, submissions, etc. at the conference website: http://www.camda.info We look forward to seeing you in Berlin! The organizers and chairs of CAMDA 2013 12th International Conference on Critical Assessment of Massive Data Analysis Berlin, Germany, July 19-20, 2013 http://www.camda.info camda at bioinf.jku.at -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From fbln at ecomp.poli.br Sun Apr 21 05:22:45 2013 From: fbln at ecomp.poli.br (Prof. Fernando Buarque) Date: Sun, 21 Apr 2013 06:22:45 -0300 Subject: Connectionists: 2nd CPF BRICS-CCI & CBIC2013 (New Deadline is 20th May). 'Porto de Galinhas' Beach - Brazil, 8-11th Sept. of 2013. Message-ID: * Sorry for cross-post & thanks for forwarding this to your collaboration network* ====================================================================== *SECOND* Call FOR PAPERS 1st BRICS Countries Congress on Computational Intelligence (BRICS-CCI) 11th Brazilian Congress on Computational Intelligence (CBIC 2013) Recife (Porto de Galinhas beach), Brazil, September 8th-11th, 2013 Website: http://www.brics-cci.org .OR http://www.cbic2013.org Poster ===>>> http://brics-cci.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Second_CFP_APR2013_PDF.pdf What is BRICS-CCI & CBIC 2013 ===>>> http://brics-cci.org/what-is-brics-cci-cbic2013/ ====================================================================== *** KEY DATES: Submission Deadline: *NEW* May 20th, 2013 Notification of Acceptance: July 12th, 2013 Final Papers Due: July 31th, 2013 *** MAIN TRACKS (of the sister conferences): 1) Neural and Learning Systems; 2) Fuzzy and Stochastic Modeling; and 3) Evolutionary and Swarm Computing. Topics of interest are neatly organized in three tracks and classified in Problems, Approaches and Technologies. For complete list => http://brics-cci.org/research-topics-brics-cci-cbic/ *** CO-LOCATED SYMPOSIA (alongside main tracks of the two conferences): (I) CI in Bioinformatics (CIBS) (II) Complex Systems (CompSysS) (III) Social Simulation (SocSimS) (IV) CI Applications in Defense Systems (CIDefS) (V) CI Applications in Industry (CIAppIndS) (VI) CI/AI Theses and Dissertations Competition (CI/AI TDC) (VII) CI Algorithms Competition (CIAC) (VIII) BRICS-CCI & CBIC Schools on CI (SCI & EBIC) *** INTERNATIONAL CONFIRMED DISTINGUISHED GUESTS: -Alan Kirman (d?Aix Marseille Universit?, EHESS ? France) ** Keynote -Andries Engelbrecht (U. Pretoria ? South Africa) -Boleslaw Szymanski (Rensselaer Polytechnic - USA) ** Keynote -Cristovam Buarque (UNB ? Brazil) *** Opening Speech -Derong Liu (University Illinois ? USA) -Feranndo vonZuben (Unicamp - Brazil) -Ganesh Kumar Venayagamoorthy (Clemson University - USA) -Hani Hagras (University Essex ? England) -Hojjat Adeli (Ohio State University ? USA) * Keynote & Honorary Chair -Igor Aleksander (Imperial College ? England) * Keynote & Honorary Chair -Jaime Sichman (USP ? Brazil) ** Keynote speaker -Jos? Pr?ncipe (University of Florida ? USA) * Keynote & Honorary Chair -Marco Dorigo (U. Libre de Bruxelles ? Belgium) * Keynote & Honorary Chair -Ronald Yager (Iona College ? USA) -Russell Eberhart (Purdue University ? USA) * Keynote & Honorary Chair -Sanaz Mostaghim (KIT ? Germany) -Snehashish Chkraverty (NIT ? India) -Swagatam Das (ISI ? India) -Xin Yao (University of Birminham ? England) -Yaser Abu-Mostafa (Caltech ? USA) ** Keynote speaker -Yuhui Shi (U. Jiaotong-Liverpool ? China) *** PAPER PUBLICATION (in *10* special issues of international journals): - International Journal of Neural Systems(IJNS) - Integrated Computer-Aided Engineering(ICAE) - International Journal of Swarm Intelligence Research(IJSIR) - International Journal of Natural Computing Research(IJNCR) - International Journal of Machine Learning and Cybernetics(IJMLC) - International Journal of Computational Intelligence & Applications(IJCIA) - Learning & NonLinear Models(SBIC Journal) - Journal of the Brazilian Computer Society(JBCS) - Paladyn. Journal of Behavioral Robotics(Paladyn) - BRICS Journal of Computational Intelligence(BRICS-CI) *** PAPER SUBMISSION: - Paper type-O (on-going work): up to 2-page short-papers for presenting positions, on-going work and/or interesting ideas; - Paper type-R (Regular): up to 6-page full-papers for presenting original work. To be presented orally (15 min. each) or as poster; - Paper type-X (Extended): selected type-R papers up to 10-pages. Presented orally in special parallel sessions (20 min. each); - Paper type-H (Highlight): up to 12-page, invited only, for ground breaking or relevant surveys. * Paper format according to the IEEE A4 double column; *** OTHER HIGHLIGHTS: - 2 Conferences of three tracks each; - 4 Panels for discussions (Including "Trial of AI"); - 8 Symposia (2 Schools for: Ibero-American & International); - 16 Plenary talks; - Algorithms & Theses/Dissertations Competitions; - Awards for Outstanding people; - Awards for Best papers; - Many Thematic Meetings on CI & BRICS; - Busy Cultural Agenda; - Family & Environment friendly Congress; - Sports Activities (Soccer and Tennis competitions); - Touristic Activities (Sightseeing, Scuba classes etc); * 45 universities and 90 people contributing with this pioneering event! *** ORGANIZATION (GENERAL JOINT-CHAIRS of BRICS-CCI & CBIC ? 2013): (B) Prof. Fernando Buarque (University of Pernambuco ? Brazil) (R) Prof. Ildar Batyrshin (Moscow Power Energy Institute ? Russia) (I) Prof. Sankar Pal (Indian Statistical Institute ? India) (C) Prof. Ying Tan (Peking University ? China) (S) Prof. Tshilidzi Marwala (University of Johannesburg ? South Africa) Complete list of organizers, check: http://brics-cci.org/organizers/ ====================================================================== We are waiting for you in the stunning Porto de Galinhas beach! Website: http://www.brics-cci.org .OR http://www.cbic2013.org Poster ===>>> http://brics-cci.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Second_CFP_APR2013_PDF.pdf What is BRICS-CCI & CBIC 2013 ===>>> http://brics-cci.org/what-is-brics-cci-cbic2013/ ====================================================================== -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: CPF_SECOND_BRICS-CCI_CBIC_LowDefGraphPDFVersion.pdf Type: application/pdf Size: 532432 bytes Desc: not available URL: From smart at neuralcorrelate.com Mon Apr 22 12:05:01 2013 From: smart at neuralcorrelate.com (Susana Martinez-Conde) Date: Mon, 22 Apr 2013 09:05:01 -0700 Subject: Connectionists: TOP TEN illusions of 2013 Message-ID: <009501ce3f73$2d1cbc90$875635b0$@com> The Best Illusion of the Year Contest is happy to announce the TOP TEN illusions of 2013! The 2013 Contest Gala will be on Monday, May 13th, in the Philharmonic Center of Arts (Naples Fl). The TOP TEN illusions will be shown for the first time at the Gala, and posted on the Best Illusion of the Year Contest's website immediately afterwards. Who will the TOP THREE winners be? That's up to you! The live audience will choose them from the current TOP TEN list. 2013 TOP TEN ILLUSION CONTESTANTS (alphabetical order): Through the Eyes of Giants, by Arash Afraz and Ken Nakayama (Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University, USA) Dynamic Size Contrast Illusion- or the incredibly shrinking/growing shape!, by Gideon Caplovitz (University of Nevada Reno, USA) Rotation or Deformation? A Surprising Consequence of the Kinetic Depth Effect, by Attila Frakas and Alen Hajnal (University of Southern Mississippi, USA) Non-trackable Moving Dots Look faster, by Alan Ho and Stuart Anstis (Ambrose University College, Canada, and UC San Diego, USA) Rotation Generated by Translation, by Jun Ono, Akiyasu Tomoeda and Kokichi Sugihara (Meiji University and CREST, Japan) Dancing Diamond, by Michael Pickard and Alessandro Soranzo (University of Sunderland and Sheffield Hallam University, United Kingdom) The Disappearing Smoke - Disappearing Pleasure!, by Sidney Pratt, Martha Sanchez and Karla Rovira (Sin Humo, Costa Rica) Tusi or not Tusi, by Arthur Shapiro and Alex Rose-Henig (American University, USA) The Knobby Sphere Illusion, by Peter Tse (Dartmouth College, USA) Three-fold cubes: Objects whose form can be interpreted in three different ways, by Guy Wallis and David Lloyd (University of Queensland, Australia) On behalf of the Neural Correlate Society, Susana Martinez-Conde (Executive Producer, Best Illusion of the Year Contest) Neural Correlate Society Executive Committee: Jose-Manuel Alonso, Stephen Macknik, Susana Martinez-Conde, Luis Martinez, Xoana Troncoso, Peter Tse The Neural Correlate Society is a tax-exempt 501(c)3 non-profit organization, whose mission is to promote the public awareness of neuroscience research. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Susana Martinez-Conde, PhD Director, Laboratory of Visual Neuroscience Barrow Neurological Institute 350 W. Thomas Rd. Phoenix AZ 85013 USA Phone: +1 602 406-3484 Fax: +1 602 406-4192 Email: smart at neuralcorrelate.com http://smc.neuralcorrelate.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From grlmc at urv.cat Sun Apr 21 04:02:55 2013 From: grlmc at urv.cat (GRLMC) Date: Sun, 21 Apr 2013 10:02:55 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: TPNC 2013: 1st call for papers Message-ID: <28C347ED8EF448ABBB846CD2D9C8560F@Carlos1> *To be removed from our mailing list, please respond to this message with UNSUBSCRIBE in the subject* ************************************************************************* 2nd INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF NATURAL COMPUTING TPNC 2013 C?ceres, Spain December 3-5, 2013 Organized by: Computer Architecture and Logic Design Group (ARCO) University of Extremadura Research Group on Mathematical Linguistics (GRLMC) Rovira i Virgili University http://grammars.grlmc.com/tpnc2013/ ********************************************************************* AIMS: TPNC is a conference series intending to cover the wide spectrum of computational principles, models and techniques inspired by information processing in nature. TPNC 2013 will reserve significant room for young scholars at the beginning of their career. It aims at attracting contributions to nature-inspired models of computation, synthesizing nature by means of computation, nature-inspired materials, and information processing in nature. VENUE: TPNC 2013 will take place in C?ceres, in Western Spain, 300 kms. to the southwest of Madrid and 100 kms. to the Portuguese border. The old city is a UNESCO World Heritage site. SCOPE: Topics of either theoretical, experimental, or applied interest include, but are not limited to: * Nature-inspired models of computation: - amorphous computing - cellular automata - chaos and dynamical systems based computing - evolutionary computing - membrane computing - neural computing - optical computing - swarm intelligence * Synthesizing nature by means of computation: - artificial chemistry - artificial immune systems - artificial life * Nature-inspired materials: - computing with DNA - nanocomputing - physarum computing - quantum computing and quantum information - reaction-diffusion computing * Information processing in nature: - developmental systems - fractal geometry - gene assembly in unicellular organisms - rough/fuzzy computing in nature - synthetic biology - systems biology * Applications of natural computing to: algorithms, bioinformatics, control, cryptography, design, economics, graphics, hardware, learning, logistics, optimization, pattern recognition, programming, robotics, telecommunications etc. A flexible "theory to/from practice" approach would be the perfect focus for the expected contributions. STRUCTURE: TPNC 2013 will consist of: ? invited talks ? invited tutorials ? peer-reviewed contributions INVITED SPEAKERS: to be announced PROGRAMME COMMITTEE: Selim G. Akl (Kingston, CA) Thomas B?ck (Leiden, NL) Peter J. Bentley (London, UK) Jinde Cao (Nanjing, CN) Vladimir Cherkassky (Minneapolis, US) Sung-Bae Cho (Seoul, KR) Carlos A. Coello Coello (Mexico DF, MX) David W. Corne (Edinburgh, UK) Peter Dayan (London, UK) Andries P. Engelbrecht (Pretoria, ZA) Enrique Herrera-Viedma (Granada, ES) Nikola Kasabov (Auckland, NZ) Vladik Kreinovich (El Paso, US) Kwong-Sak Leung (Hong Kong, CN) Xiaohui Liu (London, UK) Manuel Lozano (Granada, ES) Carlos Mart?n-Vide (Tarragona, ES, chair) Frank Neumann (Adelaide, AU) Leandro Nunes de Castro (S?o Paulo, BR) Nikhil R. Pal (Kolkata, IN) Jos? Carlos Pr?ncipe (Gainesville, US) Helge Ritter (Bielefeld, DE) Conor Ryan (Limerick, IE) Moshe Sipper (Beer-Sheva, IL) Thomas St?tzle (Brussels, BE) Ponnuthurai N. Suganthan (Singapore, SG) Johan Suykens (Leuven, BE) Jon Timmis (York, UK) Michael N. Vrahatis (Patras, GR) Harald Weinfurter (Munich, DE) ORGANIZING COMMITTEE: Adrian Horia Dediu (Tarragona) Carlos Mart?n-Vide (Tarragona, co-chair) Bianca Truthe (Magdeburg) Miguel A. Vega-Rodr?guez (C?ceres, co-chair) Florentina Lilica Voicu (Tarragona) LOCAL COMMITTEE: V?ctor Berrocal-Plaza Jos? M. Chaves-Gonz?lez Juan A. G?mez-Pulido David L. Gonz?lez-?lvarez Jos? M. Granado-Criado Alejandro Hidalgo-Paniagua Jos? M. Lanza-Guti?rrez ?lvaro Rubio-Largo Sergio Santander-Jim?nez Miguel A. Vega-Rodr?guez (chair) SUBMISSIONS: Authors are invited to submit non-anonymized papers in English presenting original and unpublished research. Papers should not exceed 12 single-spaced pages (including eventual appendices) and should be formatted according to the standards of the Springer Verlag's LNCS series (see http://www.springer.com/computer/lncs?SGWID=0-164-6-793341-0). Submissions have to be uploaded to: https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=tpnc2013 PUBLICATIONS: A volume of proceedings expectedly published by Springer in the LNCS series will be available by the time of the conference. A special issue of the journal Soft Computing (Springer, 2011 impact factor: 1.880) will be later published containing peer-reviewed extended versions of some of the papers contributed to the conference. Submissions to it will be by invitation. REGISTRATION: The period for registration is open from April 17 to December 3, 2013. The registration form can be found at: http://grammars.grlmc.com/tpnc2013/Registration DEADLINES: Paper submission: July 16, 2013 (23:59h, CET) Notification of paper acceptance or rejection: August 27, 2013 Final version of the paper for the proceedings: September 3, 2013 Early registration: September 10, 2013 Late registration: November 19, 2013 Starting of the conference: December 3, 2013 End of the conference: December 5, 2013 Submission to the post-conference special issue: March 5, 2014 QUESTIONS AND FURTHER INFORMATION: florentinalilica.voicu at urv.cat POSTAL ADDRESS: TPNC 2013 Research Group on Mathematical Linguistics (GRLMC) Rovira i Virgili University Av. Catalunya, 35 43002 Tarragona, Spain Phone: +34-977-559543 Fax: +34-977-558386 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: Diputaci? de Tarragona Universidad de Extremadura Universitat Rovira i Virgili From sala038 at aucklanduni.ac.nz Fri Apr 19 23:00:16 2013 From: sala038 at aucklanduni.ac.nz (shafiq burki) Date: Sat, 20 Apr 2013 15:00:16 +1200 Subject: Connectionists: CALL FOR CHAPTERS: Biologically-Inspired KDD techniques Message-ID: CALL FOR CHAPTER PROPOSALS: Proposal Submission Deadline: April 30, 2013 Biologically-Inspired Techniques for Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining Advances in Data Mining and Database Management (ADMDM) Book Series A book edited by Dr. Shafiq Alam, Dr. Yun Sing Koh, and Prof. Gillian Dobbie University of Auckland, New Zealand Website: https://conference.fos.auckland.ac.nz/bdm/biokdd/index.html To be published by IGI Global: http://bit.ly/13tKOjc *********************** Introduction *********************** Biological inspired data mining techniques have been intensively used in different data mining applications such as data clustering, classification, association rule mining, sequential pattern mining, outlier detection, feature selection and information extraction in many application areas, such as healthcare and bioinformatics. The techniques include Neural Networks, Fuzzy Systems, Genetic Algorithms, Ant Colony Optimization, Particle Swarm Optimization, Artificial Immune Systems, Culture Algorithms, Social evolution, and Artificial Bee Colony Optimization. A huge increase in the number of papers and citations in the area has been observed in the past decade, which is clear evidence of the popularity of these techniques. *********************** Objective of the Book *********************** The aim of this book is to highlight the contemporary research in the area of Biologically-Inspired techniques in different data mining domains, and the implementation of these techniques in real life data mining problems. The book will publish some of the state of the art work in this area and share the good practices that have enabled this area grow and flourish. The book will also contribute to extending the knowledge by providing quality work from established researchers that can be used by new researchers in the area. The book calls for high quality chapters outlining current research, literature surveys, theoretical and empirical studies, and other relevant work including but not limited to the following areas: 1. Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) - PSO based clustering - PSO based classification - PSO based outlier detection - PSO based feature selection 2. Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) - ACO based clustering - ACO based classification - ACO based feature selection - ACO based association rules mining - ACO based sequential patterns mining 3. Artificial Immune Systems (AIS) - Intrusion detection using AIS - Clustering using AIS - Decision support system using AIS 4. Bee Colony Optimization (BCO) - BCO for pattern matching - Clustering using BCO 5. Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) - ANN based pattern matching and discover - Classification rules discovery using ANN - Forecasting using ANN 6. Genetic Algorithms (GA?s) - Clustering, classification and parameter tuning using GA?s - GA?s based feature extraction and selection 7. Fuzzy systems (FS) - Fuzzy clustering - Fuzzy classification - Fuzzy Association rules discovery ********************** Target Audience ********************** The primary target of this book is the research community in the area of computational intelligence, machine learning, and data mining. However, the book is equally of interest for other KDD areas such as data analysis and preprocessing, big data management, web mining, optimization based data mining, and recommender systems. Specifically, it will be very useful for researchers from computational intelligence and evolutionary computation to update their knowledge about different application areas of their research, experimentation, and evaluation methods in the area of KDD. ***************************** Submission Procedure ***************************** Researchers and practitioners are invited to submit on or before April 30, 2013, a 2-3 page chapter proposal clearly explaining the mission and concerns of his or her proposed chapter. Authors of accepted proposals will be notified by May 15, 2013 about the status of their proposals and sent chapter guidelines. Full chapters are expected to be submitted by August 30, 2013. All submitted chapters will be reviewed on a double-blind review basis. Contributors may also be requested to serve as reviewers for this project. Publisher This book is scheduled to be published by IGI Global (formerly Idea Group Inc.), publisher of the ?Information Science Reference? (formerly Idea Group Reference), ?Medical Information Science Reference,? ?Business Science Reference,? and ?Engineering Science Reference? imprints. For additional information regarding the publisher, please visit www.igi-global.com. This publication is anticipated to be released in 2014. Important Dates April 30, 2013: Proposal Submission Deadline May 15, 2013: Notification of Acceptance August 30, 2013: Full Chapter Submission October 30, 2013: Review Results Returned November 30, 2013: Final Chapter Submission February 15, 2014: Final Deadline ******************************************* Inquiries and submissions can be forwarded electronically (Word document) or by mail to: Dr. Shafiq Alam Department of Computer Science UNIVERSITY OF AUCKLAND Tel.: +6493737599 ext. 82128 ? Fax: +6493737453 E-mail: sala038 at aucklanduni.ac.nz ************************************ ----------------------------------------- Kind Regards, Shafiq Alam Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Department of Computer Science, University of Auckland, New Zealand. *http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/research/groups/kmg/shafiq.html* -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rao at cs.washington.edu Sat Apr 20 00:51:55 2013 From: rao at cs.washington.edu (Rajesh Rao) Date: Fri, 19 Apr 2013 21:51:55 -0700 Subject: Connectionists: "Massively open" online course (MOOC) on Computational Neuroscience Message-ID: Dear Colleagues, We are pleased to announce the launch of the first Computational Neuroscience MOOC ("massively open" online course) on Coursera: https://class.coursera.org/compneuro-001/ Registration is free, requires only an email address, and is open to all. The number currently registered is nearing 40,000 worldwide, so we expect this to be both an interesting and challenging experiment in spreading the gospel of Comp Neurosci! with best regards, Rajesh Rao & Adrienne Fairhall -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From a.bernacchia at gmail.com Mon Apr 22 04:50:44 2013 From: a.bernacchia at gmail.com (Alberto Bernacchia) Date: Mon, 22 Apr 2013 04:50:44 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: 2 PhD positions in Computational Neuroscience Message-ID: The School of Engineering and Science at Jacobs University Bremen has an opening for two full time *PhD positions in Computational Neuroscience (f/m)* The PhD candidate will work on a research project focusing on the effects of memory and past experience on decision-making, and the biophysical constraints that neural circuits impose on behavioral performance. The candidate will be involved in the analysis and computer simulation of neural circuit models based on existing experimental data. The ultimate goal of the project is to design a cortical circuit model able to match both the physiology of cortical neurons and the performance of subjects in decision-making tasks. The model will produce novel experimental predictions, guide further analysis, and ultimately provide a better understanding of the neural mechanisms of memory and decision-making. The ideal candidate has a Master (or equivalent degree) in Neuroscience, Applied Mathematics or Physics and has previous experience in network analysis and computer programming. The ideal candidate is also highly motivated to contribute to the interdisciplinary field of Computational Neuroscience and to improve our understanding of the functioning of brain circuits. Jacobs University offers competitive salaries based on qualification and experience. The initial contract will be for two years. The prospective starting date is September 1st, 2013, but earlier dates may also be considered. Applicants should send a brief statement of research interests, CV, references, degree certificates and samples of academic work. *Only Electronic submissions in PDF-format to:* Alberto Bernacchia at a.bernacchia at jacobs-university.de Files will be destroyed once the search is completed. *Closing date: *Applications will be reviewed until the position is filled. Information on the School of Engineering and Science can be found on http://ses.jacobs-university.de/ses-research Jacobs University is an equal opportunity employer. Jacobs University Bremen is a private university offering degrees in engineering, natural sciences, humanities and social sciences at bachelor?s, master?s and doctoral levels. Jacobs University has more than 1,300 students from over 100 different countries. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From cardoso at bcos.uni-freiburg.de Mon Apr 22 04:59:01 2013 From: cardoso at bcos.uni-freiburg.de (Simone Cardoso de Oliveira) Date: Mon, 22 Apr 2013 10:59:01 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: Reminder: Call for applications: Brains for Brains Awards 2013 Message-ID: <5174FBD5.5050308@bcos.uni-freiburg.de> Dear colleagues, please let me remind you that, for the fourth time, the Bernstein Association for Computational Neuroscience is announcing the "Brains for Brains Young Researchers' Computational Neuroscience Award". The call is open for researchers of any nationality who have contributed to a peer reviewed publication (as coauthor) or peer reviewed conference abstract (as first author) that was submitted before starting their doctoral studies, is written in English and was accepted or published in 2012 or 2013. The award comprises 500 ? prize money, plus a travel grant of up to 2.000 ? to cover a trip to Germany, including participation in the Bernstein Conference 2013 in T?bingen (www.bernstein-conference.de), and an individually planned visit to up to two German research institutions in Computational Neuroscience. Deadline for application is April 26, 2013. Detailed information about the application procedure can be found under: www.nncn.de/verein-en/brains4brains2013 Best regards, Simone Cardoso -- Dr. Simone Cardoso de Oliveira Bernstein Network Computational Neuroscience Head of the Bernstein Coordination Site (BCOS) University of Freiburg Hansastr. 9A 79104 Freiburg, Germany phone: +49-761-203-9583 fax: +49-761-203-9585 cardoso at bcos.uni-freiburg.de www.nncn.de Twitter: NNCN_Germany YouTube: Bernstein TV Facebook: Bernstein Network Computational Neuroscience, Germany LinkedIn: Bernstein Network Computational Neuroscience, Germany -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sebastian.risi at cornell.edu Tue Apr 23 19:38:47 2013 From: sebastian.risi at cornell.edu (Sebastian Risi) Date: Tue, 23 Apr 2013 19:38:47 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: 2nd CFP: AAAI 2013 Fall Symposium on How Should Intelligence be Abstracted in AI Research: MDPs, Symbolic Representations, Artificial Neural Networks, or _____? (Deadline May 24th) Message-ID: Call for papers Dear colleagues, We invite contributions to our AAAI 2013 Fall Symposium titled ?How Should Intelligence be Abstracted in AI Research: MDPs, Symbolic Representations, Artificial Neural Networks, or _____??. Each subfield of AI has a different perspective on intelligence and unspoken assumptions about what is critical to recreate it computationally. To better understand such differences, we aim to bring together a diverse group of AI researchers interested in discussing and comparing how intelligence and processes that might create it are abstracted in various subfields. For example, such discussion may include honest examination of the strengths and weaknesses of different approaches, and what features of biological intelligence are crucial or unnecessary to include in algorithms. We hope to encourage cross-pollination of ideas between researchers viewing intelligence in different ways (e.g. through the lens of MDPs or symbolic manipulation) and at different levels of abstraction (e.g. biologically-plausible neural simulations or restricted Boltzmann machines). One goal is to facilitate revising or creating new abstractions of intelligence and intelligence-generating processes. More information can be found here: http://www.cs.ucf.edu/~risi/AAAISymposium2013/ Contributions related to how intelligence can or should be abstracted algorithmically in artificial intelligence research are invited. Extended abstracts that summarize the results of a research program along these lines are most welcome, as are personal position papers or contributions describing speculative work or work in progress. Works bridging traditionally separate AI paradigms are encouraged. Participants should be open to inspiration from work and ideas in other subfields, and be willing to step outside their intellectual comfort zones. Interested participants are encouraged to submit extended abstracts (no more than 2 pages), or full-length papers (up to 6 pages in AAAI format) in PDF format to sebastian.risi at cornell.edu. Accepted submissions will be published as citable, peer-reviewed papers in the AAAI technical report. Areas of interest include but are not limited to: - Different levels and types of knowledge representation and reasoning - Abstractions of the following: - Neural networks (e.g. deep learning networks, spiking ANNs, and plastic ANNs) - Learning (e.g. machine learning and reinforcement learning) - Biological development (e.g. generative and developmental systems, and developmental robotics) - Evolutionary search (e.g. digital evolution and evolutionary algorithms) - Biologically-inspired computation - Evolutionary robotics - Swarm intelligence - Artificial life - Philosophical arguments on characteristics of appropriate abstractions for AI The symposium will be held Friday - Sunday, November 15-17 at the Westin Arlington Gateway in Arlington, Virginia (adjacent to Washington, DC). ** Invited Speakers ** Andrew Ng (Stanford University, USA) Georg Striedter (University of California, Irvine, USA) Randall O'Reilly (University of Colorado, Boulder, USA) More TBD ** Schedule ** Full Paper/Extended Abstract Submission: May 24, 2013 Noti?cation: June 21, 2013 Final Camera-ready Paper/Extended Abstract: September 12, 2013 We look forward to hearing from you. Thank you! -- Sebastian Risi, Joel Lehman, Jeff Clune -- Dr. Sebastian Risi Postdoctoral Fellow Creative Machines Laboratory Cornell University Email: sebastian.risi at cornell.edu Tel: (407) 929-5113 Web: http://www.cs.ucf.edu/~risi/ From lewis.chuang at tuebingen.mpg.de Thu Apr 25 12:48:00 2013 From: lewis.chuang at tuebingen.mpg.de (Lewis Chuang) Date: Thu, 25 Apr 2013 18:48:00 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: Open PhD position Message-ID: <1827D2D7-1B54-45DE-9346-99C0DCA85D9F@tuebingen.mpg.de> Max Planck Society PhD Studentship (International) Project Title: How is visual attention influenced by closed-loop control? Supervisor: Dr. Lewis Chuang & Prof. Dr. Heinrich B?lthoff Institute: Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics Application Deadline: Open until filled Project Description: The goal of this project is to identify the limitations of visual attention during steering control tasks. Planned experiments will investigate how changes in the joint control characteristics (e.g., time delays, disturbances) of the human operator and machine impact the operator's ability to detect peripheral visual targets. The student will have the opportunity to perform non-invasive electrophysiological measurements (i.e., ECG, EEG) and eyetracking, as well as have access to high-fidelity driving/flight simulators. The student will research aspects of the visual system and identification of closed-loop man-machine systems. The successful applicant will be working in a multi-disciplinary team of psychologists, neuroscientists, computer scientists, physicists and aerospace engineers. Affiliated projects and external collaborators include myCopter (www.mycopter.eu). The student will be supervised by Dr. Lewis Chuang and Prof. Dr. Heinrich B?lthoff. The studentship is expected to begin in August 2013. About the Institute: The MPI for Biological Cybernetics is a member of Max Planck Society. It strives to investigate and formally describe behavioral processes by employing methods from various disciplines (e.g., neuroscience, psychology, systems engineering). It is located in T?bingen, which hosts the DFG Cluster of Excellence for Integrative Neuroscience. It enjoys strong collaborations with partners such as the University of T?bingen, the Bernstein Centre for Computational Neuroscience and the Werner Reichardt Centre for Integrative Neuroscience. Eligibility: Applicants should hold an accredited Master?s Degree in the natural or engineering sciences. Relevant disciplines include (but are not restricted to): Cognitive Science, Psychology, Computer Science, Physics and Engineering. This studentship is open to international applicants. Some programming skills are necessary. Previous experience in the visual sciences, psychophysiological methods, and signal processing are highly desired. Salary and duration: The monthly stipend will be for 1365 Euros net, with additional coverage for health insurance. There are no obligatory teaching duties. How to apply: To apply for this studentship please submit an application by email to Dr. Lewis Chuang. Your application should include a covering letter, a brief statement of research interest, a resume of relevant education and experience, the contact details of two referees, academic transcripts and the expected date of availability Further Enquiries: Please contact: Dr. Lewis Chuang lewis.chuang at tuebingen.mpg.de http://www.kyb.mpg.de/~chuang ~~~ MPI for Biological Cybernetics Spemannstra?e 41, 72076, Tuebingen Tel: +49-(0)7071-601-608 Fax: +49-(0)7071-601-611 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From morgado at uma.pt Mon Apr 22 10:02:10 2013 From: morgado at uma.pt (Morgado Dias) Date: Mon, 22 Apr 2013 15:02:10 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: IEEE WISP 2013 - Special Session on Signal Processing and Artificial Intelligence Message-ID: <517542E2.4080003@uma.pt> Dear Researcher, We are organizing a Special Session on Signal Processing and Artificial Intelligence at the 8th IEEE International Symposium on Intelligent Signal Processing to be held in Funchal, Madeira Island, Portugal from 16 to 18 of September 2013. The aim of the special session is to bring together researchers using Artificial Intelligence Tools that can be applied to Signal Processing, with the hope to function as a support for the improvement of current technologies and the growth of new integrated methodologies for the use of Artificial Intelligence Tools and solutions to Signal Processing. The session scope includes but is not limited to the following topics: Applications of Artificial Neural Networks, Fuzzy-Logic and other Artificial Intelligence Tools to Signal Processing Training algorithms Architecture of Artificial Intelligence Tools Hardware implementation of Artificial Intelligence Tools Processing of biological signals Industrial applications of Artificial Intelligence Dates and deadlines for the Call for Papers: Paper submission - May 2, 2013 Acceptance notification - June 9, 2013 Full paper submission and early payment - July 15, 2013 Best regards, Morgado Dias General Co-Chair WISP 2013 -- Com os melhores cumprimentos, Com os melhores cumprimentos, Morgado Dias *Universidade da Madeira * *Morgado Dias * Electr?nica e Telecomunica??es Pr?-Reitor da Universidade da Madeira Presidente da APCA www.apca.pt *morgado at uma.pt* Tel.: 291-705307 *International Symposium on Intelligent Signal Processing - WISP 2013* *http://www.trivent.hu/WISP2013/* ** -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kirsch at bcf.uni-freiburg.de Mon Apr 22 11:41:48 2013 From: kirsch at bcf.uni-freiburg.de (Janina Kirsch) Date: Mon, 22 Apr 2013 17:41:48 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: Two PhD positions on computational models of motor control in the basal ganglia, University of Freiburg, Germany Message-ID: <009701ce3f6f$e76ea170$b64be450$@bcf.uni-freiburg.de> Two PhD positions on computational models of motor control in the basal ganglia Two PhD positions are available in the new junior research group of Robert Schmidt in the excellence cluster BrainLinks-BrainTools in Freiburg. We currently assemble a young, ambitious research team to study neural foundations of action selection, initiation and execution at the intersection of computational and experimental neuroscience. One of our major goals is to develop a new generation of computational models of the basal ganglia that provide novel treatment strategies for neurological disorders like Parkinson's disease. To develop these models we make use of large existing data sets of electrophysiological recordings from rats performing behavioral tasks. The projects include collaborations with computational and experimental groups in Freiburg (e.g. Bernstein Center), but also internationally (e.g. University of Michigan, USA; CNRS Bordeaux, France).? The ideal candidate has profound neurobiological knowledge, programming skills (e.g. Matlab or Python), and mathematical expertise. High motivation and interest in neuroscientific research is mandatory. Applicants with degrees from interdisciplinary programs such as computational neuroscience or cognitive science are highly welcome, but applicants from other disciplines such as biology or physics are also strongly encouraged to apply. The positions are for three years each (65% TV-L E13) and are starting in August 2013 (or later). Please send your CV together with a brief research statement (max. 2 pages) as PDF files to basal-ganglia at brainlinks-braintools.uni-freiburg.de. The application deadline is the 31st May, 2013. From lindal at incf.org Tue Apr 23 15:46:03 2013 From: lindal at incf.org (Linda Lanyon) Date: Tue, 23 Apr 2013 21:46:03 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: Neuroinformatics Scientist position at the International Neuroinformatics Coordinating Facility Message-ID: The International Neuroinformatics Coordinating Facility is recruiting a Neuroinformatics Scientist to complement its Secretariat team, based at Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden. The ideal candidate will provide critical oversight and management of the development and deployment of large scale cloud-based infrastructure for neuroscience data management, analysis and integration. Further details and online application are available via this link: http://incf.org/about/positions-available/neuroinformatics-scientist Best regards Linda Lanyon ------------------------------ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Linda Lanyon* *PhD CEng CITP MBCS* *Acting Deputy Director & Head of Programs International Neuroinformatics Coordinating Facility Secretariat Karolinska Institutet Nobels v?g 15A SE-171 77 Stockholm, Sweden Email: linda.lanyon at incf.org Phone: +46 8 524 86919 Fax: +46 8 524 87094 web: www.incf.org Personal Research Program: http://linda.incf.org -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From julian.mcauley at gmail.com Tue Apr 23 22:05:59 2013 From: julian.mcauley at gmail.com (Julian McAuley) Date: Tue, 23 Apr 2013 19:05:59 -0700 Subject: Connectionists: CFP: Eleventh Workshop on Mining and Learning with Graphs (MLG2013) Message-ID: Eleventh Workshop on Mining and Learning with Graphs (MLG 2013) August 11, 2013 - Chicago, IL (co-located with KDD 2013) http://snap.stanford.edu/mlg2013/ Submission Deadline: June 6, 2013 This workshop is a forum for exchanging ideas and methods for mining and learning with graphs, developing new common understandings of the problems at hand, sharing of data sets where applicable, and leveraging existing knowledge from different disciplines. The goal is to bring together researchers from academia, industry, and government, to create a forum for discussing recent advances graph analysis. In doing so we aim to better understand the overarching principles and the limitations of our current methods, and to inspire research on new algorithms and techniques for mining and learning with graphs. To reflect the broad scope of work on mining and learning with graphs, we encourage submissions that span the spectrum from theoretical analysis, to algorithms and implementation, to applications and empirical studies. In terms of application areas, the growth of user-generated content on blogs, microblogs, discussion forums, product reviews, etc., has given rise to a host of new opportunities for graph mining in the analysis of social media. Social media analytics is a fertile ground for research at the intersection of mining graphs and text. As such, this year we especially encourage submissions on theory, methods, and applications focusing on the analysis of social media. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to: Theoretical aspects: * Computational or statistical learning theory related to graphs * Theoretical analysis of graph algorithms or models * Sampling and evaluation issues in graph algorithms * Analysis of dynamic graphs * Relationships between MLG and statistical relational learning or inductive logic programming Algorithms and methods: * Graph mining * Kernel methods for structured data * Probabilistic and graphical models for structured data * (Multi-) Relational data mining * Methods for structured outputs * Statistical models of graph structure * Combinatorial graph methods * Spectral graph methods * Semi-supervised learning, active learning, transductive inference, and transfer learning in the context of graph Applications and analysis: * Analysis of social media * Social network analysis * Analysis of biological networks * Knowledge graph construction * Large-scale analysis and modeling We invite the submission of regular research papers (6-8 pages) as well as position papers (2-4 pages). Authors whose papers are accepted to the workshop will have the opportunity to participate in a poster session, and some set may also be chosen for oral presentation. Timeline: Submission Deadline: June 6 Notification: June 25 Final Version: July 6 Workshop: August 11 Submission instructions can be found on http://snap.stanford.edu/mlg2013/instructions.html Please send enquires to jmcauley at cs.stanford.edu We look forward to seeing you at the workshop! Lada Adamic, Lise Getoor, Bert Huang, Jure Leskovec, Julian McAuley (chairs) Edoardo Airoldi, Leman Akoglu, Aris Anagnostopoulos, Arindam Banerjee, Christian Bauckhage, Francesco Bonchi, Ulf Brefeld, Thomas Gaerner, Brian Gallagher, David Gleich, Marco Gori, Mohammad Hasan, Jake Hofman, Jiawei Han, Larry Holder, Manfred Jaeger, Tamara Kolda, U Kang, Kristian Kersting, Kristina Lerman, Bo Long, Sofus Macskassy, Prem Melville, Dunja Mladenic, Jennifer Neville, Srinivasan Parthasarathy, Jan Ramon, Bing Tian Dai, Hanghang Tong, Chris Volinsky, Xifeng Yan, Mohammed Zaki, Liang Zhang, Mark Zhang (program committee) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From weng at cse.msu.edu Sat Apr 27 00:56:54 2013 From: weng at cse.msu.edu (Juyang Weng) Date: Sat, 27 Apr 2013 00:56:54 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: Reminder: deadline for 2013 application for BMI summer school: this Sunday April 25, 2013 In-Reply-To: <517B5A5F.5020903@cse.msu.edu> References: <517B5A5F.5020903@cse.msu.edu> Message-ID: <517B5A96.8080800@cse.msu.edu> Dear Colleagues: I encourage you to send your students to BMI summer school 2013 for taking its two summer courses: BMI 871: Computational Brain-Mind, a distance learning course for three weeks: June 17 - July 5, 2013. It will use the new textbook: Juyang Weng. Natural and Artificial Intelligence: Computational Introduction to Computational Brain-Mind, BMI Press, 2012. BMI 831: Cognitive Science (developmental psychology and animal learning models), on site at Michigan State University for three weeks: July 15, 2013 - August 2, 2013. The audition option for BMI sources is available (e.g., for professors and senior researchers, enrolled to follow the course but do not take exams). One needs to get admitted into BMI first before he can take BMI courses. There is no application fee. Those who were admitted to BMI 2012 do not need to apply for BMI admission again. He is already in! Since BMI is meant to be multidisciplinary, you students should be able to get admitted. The deadline for 2013 application for BMI admission is this Sunday, April 27, 2013. The deadline for advance registration of the BMI courses is about one week from now: Sunday, May 5, 2013. The BMI summer school 2013 web: http://www.brain-mind-institute.org/program-summer-2013.html If you have questions, please let me know. Best regards, -John -- -- Juyang (John) Weng, Professor Department of Computer Science and Engineering MSU Cognitive Science Program and MSU Neuroscience Program 428 S Shaw Ln Rm 3115 Michigan State University East Lansing, MI 48824 USA Tel: 517-353-4388 Fax: 517-432-1061 Email:weng at cse.msu.edu URL:http://www.cse.msu.edu/~weng/ ---------------------------------------------- -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Dominique.Martinez at loria.fr Thu Apr 25 02:04:56 2013 From: Dominique.Martinez at loria.fr (Martinez Dominique) Date: Thu, 25 Apr 2013 08:04:56 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: Call for Application for a three year Doctoral Fellowship (2013-2016) Message-ID: <5178C788.2070203@loria.fr> Call for Application for a three year Doctoral Fellowship (2013-2016) Research Unit / Team : UMR 1272 Insect Physiology: Signalling and Communication. INRA - Versailles http://www-physiologie-insecte.versailles.inra.fr/indexenglish.php Team ? Coding, Behaviour, Modulation ? (http://www-physiologie-insecte.versailles.inra.fr/team2.php) Title : Role of intrinsic properties of projection neurons of the antennal lobe in the moth olfactory coding: experiments and modelling. Contacts : Supervisor: Philippe LUCAS (philippe.lucas at versailles.inra.fr - Tel: +33 1 30 83 37 37) http://www-physiologie-insecte.versailles.inra.fr/pagePL.php Co-supervisor: Dominique MARTINEZ (dominique.martinez at loria.fr - Tel: +33 3 83 59 30 71) http://www.neuronal-engineering.com/dmartine/ Summary : One of the major goals of neuroscience is to elucidate the mechanisms allowing the transformation of sensory information in appropriate motor responses. Our project aims at better understanding how the insect central nervous system encodes the olfactory information. Indeed, the integration of the signal delivered by olfactory receptor neurons by the neuronal network of the antennal lobe, the primary olfactory brain centre, remains poorly understood. If the role of local neurons in the transformation of response patterns between olfactory receptor neurons and projection neurons (PNs) is well documented, the contribution of intrinsic properties of PNs in this process has been largely neglected. By a combination of electrophysiology, molecular biology and modelling, we will analyse the electrophysiological properties of PNs and their contribution to the transformation of the representation of the olfactory stimulus on the model of the sex pheromone perception in male moths. The electrophysiological properties of PNs will be analysed by in situ patch-clamp, with a special focus on Ca2+-dependent conductances (INRA, Versailles). Experimental data will allow developing a biophysical model of PN (LORIA, Nancy). Finally, we will investigate whether a K+ channel of the SK type that we recently cloned and which is expressed in antennal lobes contributes to the olfactory coding. For this purpose, single cell RT-PCR will be developed to localize this channel within the antennal lobe and its role will be analyzed by an RNAi approach (UPMC, Paris). Selection : The application files and selection procedure are available on the website of the doctoral school "Brain, Cognition, Behaviour": http://ed3c.snv.jussieu.fr/. English speaking students are welcome to apply as the application file and the selection can be done in English. Candidates are invited to contact Philippe LUCAS and/or Dominique MARTINEZ rapidly as applications files must be sent no later than June 5 2013. From fbln at ecomp.poli.br Fri Apr 26 07:15:05 2013 From: fbln at ecomp.poli.br (Prof. Fernando Buarque) Date: Fri, 26 Apr 2013 08:15:05 -0300 Subject: Connectionists: Post-Grad Theses & Dissertations Competition (within BRICS-CCI & CBIC 2013) Message-ID: Dear Colleagues (sorry for cross-post), Some of you may not know but during BRICS-CCI & CBIC 2013 next September in Brazil, we will hold a *Theses & Dissertations Competition * on all AI / CI Topics. That is why I am writing now, to ask for you to encourage your best students (who have completed their PG work between *1st June of 2010 * *until 20th May of 2013)* to take part in this very exciting competition. All details are at: http://brics-cci.org/theses-and-dissertations-competition/ The pre-selection phase of the competition needs almost no work. Finalists will have to travel for "vivas" that will be held during the Congress at the not-so-ugly beach Village of 'Porto de Galinhas' (top beach of Brazil for 10 years), more at http://brics-cci.org/location-2/. It would be really nice if the supervisors of the contestants could be present as well. Notice that it is our plan to promote lively discussion on all topics presented-defended during competition (and congress) in one of the four panels of specialists (including in an unusual one: "the trial of AI" http://brics-cci.org/the-trial-of-a-i-team/). Next week we will be informing you about *another competition*that will be held during our Congress: *AI/CI Algorithms Competition*. -Please, spread the word and "let the games begin"! (Attached you have the 2nd CFP) All the best, Fernando Buarque - General Join-Chair of BRICS-CCI & CBIC2013 (on the behalf of Profs. Ildar Batyrshin and Emilio Hernandez - Competition Chairs) BRICS-CCI => brics-cci.org .OR. CBIC => cbic2013.org PS: ...and still for the ones who are not faint-hearted, please check the out-doors and sports page of the congress http://brics-cci.org/social-sport-familyprogram/ -- Prof. Fernando Buarque , BSc MSc DIC PhD, Senior Member IEEE, PQ-2 CNPq Professor Associado - Escola Polit?cnica/Universidade de Pernambuco (POLI /UPE ) Coordenador do Mestrado de Engenharia de Computa??o da UPE (PPG-EC ) Docente do Mestrado de Engenharia de Sistemas da UPE (PPG-ES ) Docente da Gradua??o de Engenharia de Computa??o da UPE (E-Comp ) Pesquisador L?der do Grupo de Intelig?ncia Computacional da UPE (CIRG at UPE ) Coordenador T?cnico do N?cleo de Telemedicina da UPE (NUTES at UPE ) Visiting Professor - University of Johannesburg, South Africa (Kingsway Campus ) Graduate Faculty - Computer Science/Florida Institute of Technology, USA ( CS at FIT ) Universidade de Pernambuco / Escola Polit?cnica de Pernambuco Rua Benfica, 455 (Bl. 'C' 2. andar) * Bairro: Madalena CEP 50720-001 * Recife, Pernambuco - Brasil Fone: +55(0)81 3184-7542 * Fax: +55(0)81 3184-7581 WEB -> http://www.fbln.pro.br/ * WAP -> http://www.fbln.pro.br/wap.htm *"Se voc? quiser educar um homem, comece pela av? dele" (Victor Hugo).* -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: CPF_SECOND_BRICS-CCI_CBIC_LowDefGraphPDFVersion.pdf Type: application/pdf Size: 532432 bytes Desc: not available URL: From mpavone at dmi.unict.it Mon Apr 29 14:06:41 2013 From: mpavone at dmi.unict.it (Mario Pavone) Date: Mon, 29 Apr 2013 20:06:41 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: CFP ICARIS 2013 - NEWS: extended deadline 18 May; Keynotes; special issue in NACO; student bursaries Message-ID: <20130429200641.Horde.5NySHuph4B9Rfrax08CnqFA@mbox.dmi.unict.it> CALL FOR PAPERS, ORAL PRESENTATIONS & POSTERS **Apologies for cross-posting** 12th International Conference on Artificial Immune Systems - ICARIS 2013 August 27-29, 2013 - University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK icaris2013 at dmi.unict.it http://www.artificial-immune-systems.org/icaris2013/ https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=icaris2013 ********************************************* NEWS ********************************************* * EXTENDED DEADLINE: 18th May 2013 * Proceedings in LNCS, Springer (only for regular papers of 2nd track) * Special issue in NATURAL COMPUTING * STUDENT BURSARIES for the most competitive students from any country * KEYNOTE SPEAKERS: - Pietro Lio', University of Cambridge, UK - Natalio Krasnogor, University of Nottingham, UK - Benedict Seddon, National Institute for Medical Research, UK - Alan Winfield, University of the West of England, UK ********************************************* ********************************************* * Important Dates: - Extended paper submission: 18th May 2013 - Author notification: 18th June 2013 - Camera Ready submission: 28th June 2013 * Keynote Speakers: - Pietro Lio', University of Cambridge, UK - Natalio Krasnogor, University of Nottingham, UK - Benedict Seddon, National Institute for Medical Research, UK - Alan Winfield, University of the West of England, UK * Student Bursaries: ICARIS 2013 Organizing Committee is pleased to announce that it is making available a limited number of student bursaries, which will be awarded on a competitive basis to PhD students from any country. Details will be published shortly in ICARIS 2013 website. http://www.artificial-immune-systems.org/icaris2013/ * Special Session in NATURAL COMPUTING: We are pleased to announce a special issue in Natural Computing by Springer. All accepted papers, and best abstracts are invited to submit the extended versions of their works to this special issue. The special issue will begin in December 2013 to conclude all processes around June/July 2014. * Submission Guidelines: As the previous editions, ICARIS 2013 is divided into two main tracks http://www.artificial-immune-systems.org/icaris2013/submit.html Please submit your manuscript for any tracks using the following link: https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=icaris2013 - Track on Computational Immunology (Oral & Posters submission) This track aims is to attract researchers from computer science, information science, engineering, biomathematics, biomedicine, bioinformatics, systems biology, and immunology to share and exchange their knowledge of state-of-the-art research issues, methodologies, ideas, and challenges. Authors are requested to submit an abstract up to 500 words in length, one figure and references. All abstracts will undergo a quick review process for relevance to the conference and technical accuracy. All accepted abstracts will be published in a book of abstracts. - Track on Immune-inspired Engineering (Regular Paper - Oral & Posters submission) This track is for research into the development and application of artificial immune systems. Authors may submit their manuscripts as EITHER an abstract paper or regular paper, both of which may qualify for an oral or poster presentations. All papers and abstracts will undergo a double blind peer-review process. Authors are requested to submit a PDF file following the LNCS formatting instructions: https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=icaris2013 Regular Papers should be a maximum of fourteen (14) pages. All accepted papers will be published in Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Springer. Abstracts should be no longer than 500 words, include no more than one figure and include appropriate references. All accepted abstracts will be published in a book of abstracts. If you wish to present a poster and do not wish to be considered for oral presentation, then please indicate this when you submit the abstract. We reserve the right to allocate poster presentation slots to submissions that have requested oral presentation. During the submission authors must make clear which track the paper should to be considered for. * Conference Location: This conference is hosted by the University of Nottingham, and will be held at the East Midlands Conference Centre, situated on the University Park Campus. New for 2013, onsite hotel accommodation will be available at a competitive delegate rate. The University of Nottingham is easily accessible by public transport, 15 minutes from Nottingham City Centre. Nottingham is located in central England, 25 minutes taxi from Nottingham East Midlands Airport, and 1 hr 45 mins from London St Pancras on the Midland Mainline. For further details please refer to the conference website. We look forward to welcoming you to Nottingham in August 2013 !! Uwe Aickelin, Julie Greensmith, Mario Pavone and Jon Timmis. From mpavone at dmi.unict.it Mon Apr 29 10:17:48 2013 From: mpavone at dmi.unict.it (Mario Pavone) Date: Mon, 29 Apr 2013 16:17:48 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: ECAL'13 Paper & Abstract Submission Deadline Extended - Friday May 10 Message-ID: <20130429161748.Horde.WKVBOeph4B9RfoEMDYLDu9A@mbox.dmi.unict.it> [Apologies if you receive multiple copies of this announcement] [Please kindly help forward it to potentially interested attendees] ECAL'13 Paper & Abstract Submission Deadline Extended - *Friday May 10* ECAL 2013, European Conference on Artificial Life, an International Conference on the Designing, Programming, Evolving, Simulation and Synthesis of Natural and Artificial Living Systems 2-6 September 2013, Taormina, Italy - http://www.dmi.unict.it/ecal2013/ *Paper/Abstract Submission: May 10, 2013* https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=ecal2013 Proceedings by MIT Press. Best Papers in Artificial Life Journal (confirmed). * 17 Tracks ECAL Manuscripts - General Track Track on Adaptive Hardware & Systems and Bioelectronics Track on Adaptive Living Material Technologies and Biomimetic Microsystems Track on Artificial Immune, Neural and Endocrine Systems Track on Artificial Organs and Tissues & Organ-on-a-Chip Track on Astrobiology Track on Bioinspired Learning and Optimization Track on Bioinspired Robotics Track on Biologically Inspired Engineering Track on Evolvable Hardware, Evolutionary Electronics & BioChips Track on Foundations of Complex Systems and Biological Complexity Track on Immunoinformatics, Systems and Synthetic Immunology Track on Music and the Origins and Evolution of Language Track on Mathematical Models for Life Sciences Track on Programmable Nanomaterials Track on Synthetic and Systems Biochemistry and Biological Control Track on The Sciences of the Artificial for Economics, Finance and Market Design * 8 Plenary Speakers Roberto Cingolani, IIT, Italy Roberto Cipolla, University of Cambridge, UK Dario Floreano, EPFL, Swiss Martin Hanczyc, University of Southern Denmark, Denmark Henrik Hautop, Lund, Denmark Didier Keymeulen, Caltech, USA Steve Oliver - University of Cambridge, UK Rolf Pfeifer, ETH, Swiss http://www.dmi.unict.it/ecal2013/keynote.php * 12 Workshops A TRUCE workshop on Unconventional Computing in 2070 Artificial Life Based Models of Higher Cognition Artificial Consciousness Artificial Life in Massive Data Flow Collective and Swarm Robotics Evolution and Development of Networks, from Systems Biology to Computational Neuroscience 2nd International Workshop on the Evolution of Physical Systems ERLARS 2013 - 6th International Workshop on Evolutionary and Reinforcement Learning for Autonomous Robot Systems Fundamentals of Collective Adaptive Systems HSB - 2nd International Workshop on Hybrid Systems and Biology Protocells: Back to the Future What Synthetic Biology can offer to Artificial Intelligence? Perspectives in the Bio-Chem-ICT and other scenarios http://www.dmi.unict.it/ecal2013/workshops.php * 5 Tutorials Cell Pathway Design for Biotechnology and Synthetic Biology Exploring Prebiotic Chemistry Spaces Designing Adaptive Humanoid Robots Through the FARSA Open-Source Framework New Generation Sequencing Data Production, Analysis, and Archiving PyCX: A Python-Based Simulation Code Repository for Complex Systems Education http://www.dmi.unict.it/ecal2013/tutorials.php We look forward to seeing you in Sicily! W: http://www.dmi.unict.it/ecal2013/ E: ecal2013 at dmi.unict.it *To be removed from the mailing list, please respond to this message with UNSUBSCRIBE in the subject*