From terry at salk.edu Thu Aug 1 18:22:15 2013 From: terry at salk.edu (Terry Sejnowski) Date: Thu, 01 Aug 2013 15:22:15 -0700 Subject: Connectionists: NEURAL COMPUTATION - September 1, 2013 In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Neural Computation - Contents -- Volume 25, Number 9 - September 1, 2013 Available online for download now: http://www.mitpressjournals.org/toc/neco/25/9 View Population Coding and the Labeling Problem: Extrinsic Versus Intrinsic Representations Anne B. Sereno, Sidney Lehky, and Margaret E. Sereno Letters Information Transfer Through Stochastic Transmission of a Linear Combination of Rates Stelios Smirnakis, Ioannis Smyrnakis Spike-Based Probabilistic Inference in Analog Graphical Models Using Interspike-Interval Coding Andreas Steimer, Rodney J. Douglas An Investigation of the Stochastic Hodgkin-Huxley Models Under Noisy Rate Functions Marifi Guler Dynamic Analysis of Naive Adaptive Brain-machine Interfaces Lakshminarayan Srinivasan, Kevin Cai Kowalski, and Bryan D. He A Bio-inspired, Computational Model Suggests Velocity Gradients of Optic Flow Locally Encode Ordinal Depth at Surface Borders and Globally They Encode Self-Motion Florian Raudies, Stefan Ringbauer, and Heiko Neumann Exploitation of Pairwise Class Distances for Ordinal Classification Javier Sanchez-Monedero, Peter Tino, P. A. Gutierrez, and C. Hevas-Martinez Spherical Mesh Adaptive Direct Search for Separating Quasi-uncorrelated Sources by Range-based Independent Component Analysis Pierre-Antoine Absil, Easter Selvan Suviseshamuthu, Pierre B. Borckmans, and Amit Chattopadhyay ------------ ON-LINE -- http://www.mitpressjournals.org/neuralcomp SUBSCRIPTIONS - 2013 - VOLUME 25 - 12 ISSUES USA Others Electronic Only Student/Retired $70 $193 $65 Individual $124 $187 $115 Institution $1,035 $1,098 $926 Canada: Add 5% GST MIT Press Journals, 238 Main Street, Suite 500, Cambridge, MA 02142-9902 Tel: (617) 253-2889 FAX: (617) 577-1545 journals-orders at mit.edu ------------ From tim.fawcett at cantab.net Fri Aug 2 11:30:18 2013 From: tim.fawcett at cantab.net (Tim Fawcett) Date: Fri, 2 Aug 2013 16:30:18 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: Conference: THE EVOLUTION OF BEHAVIOURAL MECHANISMS, abstract deadline 16 August Message-ID: There are just 2 weeks left to submit an abstract for this year's ASAB Winter Conference on 'The Evolution of Behavioural Mechanisms' (deadline: 16 August). The conference will be held on 5-6 December at the Zoological Society of London. For more information, please visit http://tinyurl.com/winterasab2013 or contact us at madorganiser at gmail.com. We look forward to seeing you in London! Tim Fawcett, Andy Higginson & Pete Trimmer Modelling Animal Decisions (MAD) group, University of Bristol -- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Dr Tim W. Fawcett Room B72 School of Biological Sciences University of Bristol Woodland Road Bristol BS8 1UG United Kingdom +44 117 9287478 (office) +44 7789 126382 (mobile) tim.fawcett at cantab.net www.timwfawcett.com From osporns at indiana.edu Fri Aug 2 12:37:15 2013 From: osporns at indiana.edu (Olaf Sporns) Date: Fri, 02 Aug 2013 12:37:15 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: Computational Neuroscience Faculty Position Message-ID: <51FBE03B.3050100@indiana.edu> COMPUTATIONAL NEUROSCIENCE FACULTY POSITION, INDIANA UNIVERSITY: The Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Indiana University ? Bloomington seeks to fill a faculty position at the level of Assistant Professor (tenure-track) to begin August 2014. Applicants for this position must have a doctorate, a strong record of publication, and the potential for research funding. The applicant's research should focus on theoretical and computational approaches to understand neurobiological processes at any one or several levels of organization, ranging from individual neurons to circuits to systems interactions. Problem areas include models of complex brain networks, neural coding, learning and plasticity, development, dynamic brain activity, or relations between brain and behavior. Candidates with an integrated research program combining computational modeling and empirical neuroscience research are strongly encouraged to apply. The department is highly integrative, and we would be especially interested in researchers whose interests complement existing strengths in cognitive neuroscience, social neuroscience, cellular and systems neuroscience, cognitive science, network science, developmental psychology, and clinical psychology. Teaching responsibilities will include courses at the graduate and undergraduate levels. Interested candidates should review the application requirements and submit their applications at: http://indiana.peopleadmin.com/postings/350. Questions regarding the position or application process can be directed to: Dr. William P. Hetrick, Ph.D., Professor and Chair, Department of Psychology and Brain Sciences, psychair at indiana.edu with ?Computational Neuroscience Search? in the subject line. Review of all applications will begin on November 1, 2013 and will continue until the position is filled. Indiana University is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity employer. The Department is committed to increasing faculty diversity and welcomes applications from women and underrepresented ethnic, racial, and cultural groups, sexual minorities, and from people with disabilities. Information about the department and the university is available at http://psych.indiana.edu/opportunities.php -- Olaf Sporns, PhD Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences Programs in Neuroscience and Cognitive Science Indiana University Bloomington, IN 47405 From calendarsites at insticc.org Fri Aug 2 11:44:54 2013 From: calendarsites at insticc.org (Carla Mota) Date: Fri, 02 Aug 2013 16:44:54 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: =?utf-8?q?CFP_4th_International_Conference_on_Clo?= =?utf-8?q?ud_Computing_and_Services_Science=E2=80=93_CLOSER_2014?= Message-ID: <> CALL FOR PAPERS 4th International Conference on Cloud Computing and Services Science? CLOSER 2014 Website: http://closer.scitevents.org April 3 - 5, 2014 Barcelona, Spain Regular Papers Regular Paper Submission: October 2, 2013 Regular Paper Authors Notification: January 16, 2014 Regular Paper Camera Ready and Registration: January 30, 2014 Sponsored by: INSTICC-Institute for Systems and Technologies of Information, Control and Communication INSTICC is Member of: WfMC - Workflow Management Coaliton OMG - Object Management Group Logistics Partner: SCITEVENTS ? Science and Technology Events Scope: The 4th International Conference on Cloud Computing and Services Science, CLOSER 2014, focuses on the emerging area of Cloud Computing, inspired by some latest advances that concern the infrastructure, operations, and available services through the global network. Further, the conference considers as essential the link to Services Science, acknowledging the service-orientation in most current IT-driven collaborations. The conference is nevertheless not about the union of these two (already broad) fields, but about Cloud Computing where we are also interested in how Services Science can provide theory, methods and techniques to design, analyze, manage, market etc. Cloud Computing. KEYNOTE SPEAKERS SMARTGREENS 2014 will have several invited keynote speakers, who are internationally recognized experts in their areas. Their names are not yet confirmed. PUBLICATIONS All accepted papers will be published in the conference proceedings, under an ISBN reference, on paper and on CD-ROM support. SCITEPRESS is member of CrossRef (http://www.crossref.org/). All papers presented at the conference venue will be available at the SCITEPRESS Digital Library. A short list of presented papers will be selected so that revised and extended versions of these papers will be published by Springer The proceedings will be submitted for indexation by Thomson Reuters Conference Proceedings Citation Index (ISI), INSPEC, DBLP, EI (Elsevier Index) and Scopus. AWARDS The awards will be announced and bestowed at the conference closing session. Please check the website for further information: http://closer.scitevents.org/BestPaperAward.aspx CONFERENCE CHAIR: Markus Helfert, Dublin City University, Ireland PROGRAM CO-CHAIRS Fr?d?ric Desprez, LIP / INRIA, France Donald Ferguson, Dell, United States Frank Leymann, University of Stuttgart, Germany V?ctor M?ndez Mu?oz, Port d'Informaci? Cient?fica, PIC, Spain CONFERENCE AREAS: Each of these topic areas is expanded below but the sub-topics list is not exhaustive. Papers may address one or more of the listed sub-topics, although authors should not feel limited by them. Unlisted but related sub-topics are also acceptable, provided they fit in one of the following main topic areas: 1. CLOUD COMPUTING FUNDAMENTALS 2. SERVICES SCIENCE FOUNDATION FOR CLOUD COMPUTING 3. CLOUD COMPUTING PLATFORMS AND APPLICATIONS 4. CLOUD COMPUTING ENABLING TECHNOLOGY 5. MOBILE CLOUD COMPUTING AND SERVICES AREA 1: CLOUD COMPUTING FUNDAMENTALS ? Cloud Computing Architecture ? Cloud Standards ? Cloud Application Portability ? Cloud Interoperability ? Cloud Delivery Models ? Cloud Deployment Models: Public/Private/Hybrid Cloud ? Cloud Risk, Challenges, and Governance ? Cloud Education ? QoS for applications on clouds AREA 2: SERVICES SCIENCE FOUNDATION FOR CLOUD COMPUTING ? Semantic Web Technologies ? Web Services ? Service-Oriented Architecture ? Internet of Services ? Service Modeling and Specification ? Service Discovery ? Service Monitoring and Control ? Business Services Realized by IT Services ? Service Innovation ? Service Strategy ? Service Marketing and Management ? Information and Service Economy ? Human Beings in Service Systems ? Enterprise Architectures and Services ? Services Security and Reliability ? Business Process Management and Web Services ? Model-Driven Web Service Engineering ? Industrial Applications of Services Science ? Service Composition and Mashups AREA 3: CLOUD COMPUTING PLATFORMS AND APPLICATIONS ? Cloud Middleware Frameworks ? Cloud Application Architectures ? Cloud Application Scalability and Availability ? COTS and Cloud ? Cloudsourcing ? Cloud Applications Performance and Monitoring ? Development Methods for Cloud Applications ? Outsourced Production Environments ? Collective Intelligence/Crowd Computing ? Context-aware Computing and Peer to Peer Computing ? XaaS ? Big Data Cloud Services ? Cloud Economics AREA 4: CLOUD COMPUTING ENABLING TECHNOLOGY ? Troubleshooting and Best Practices ? Monitoring of Services, Quality of Service, Service Level Agreements ? Performance Development and Management ? Cloud Ilities (Scalability, Availability,Reliability) ? Virtualization Technologies ? Disaster Recovery ? Cloud Optimization and Automation ? Cloud Abstraction of Composite IT Systems ? Metering, pricing, and software licensing ? Security, Privacy, and Compliance Management ? Cloud Workload Profiling and Deployment Control ? Cloud Composition, Federation, Bridging, and Bursting ? Cloud Resource Virtualization and Composition ? High Performance Cloud Computing ? Programming Models, Systems, and Fault-Tolerant Computing AREA 5: MOBILE CLOUD COMPUTING AND SERVICES ? Mobile cloud computing models, infrastructures, and approaches ? Mobile-aware networking and protocols ? Mobile multimedia content delivery, transferring, and migration ? Location-based mobile cloud applications and services ? Engineering Mobile Clouds and Mobile-Based Systems ? Smart mobile computing SaaS on clouds ? Quality of service on mobile clouds and applications ? Mobile Reliability, Availability, Scalability and Performance ? Pervasive Environments ? Cloud-based mobile media systems and social networks ? Security Issues in Mobile Systems Software and Hardware ? Mobile Clouds for E-Commerce Services PROGRAM COMMITTEE http://closer.scitevents.org/ProgramCommittee.aspx Please check further details at the conference website (http://closer.scitevents.org) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From K.Tsaneva-Atanasova at bristol.ac.uk Sun Aug 4 11:29:32 2013 From: K.Tsaneva-Atanasova at bristol.ac.uk (K Tsaneva-Atanasova) Date: Sun, 4 Aug 2013 16:29:32 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: Associate Research Fellow position - mathematical modelling and analysis of human social interactions Message-ID: *Associate Research Fellow position available immediately for 25 months.* Based in the College of Engineering, Mathematics and Physical Sciences at the University of Exeter, you will undertake research into mathematical modelling and analysis of human social interactions. This is an exciting opportunity to contribute to a joint venture between movement scientists from Montpellier 1 University in France, computer science experts from the DFKI centre (Germany), mathematicians from the University of Exeter and Bristol (UK), roboticists from the Ecole Polytechnique F?d?rale de Lausanne (CH), as well as clinicians, psychologists and psychiatrists from the Academic Hospital of Montpellier (CHRU, FR). This position is funded by European Union FP7 research project *AlterEgo: Enhancing social interactions using information technology*. The objective of AlterEgo is the creation of an interactive cognitive architecture (ICA), implementable in various artificial agents, allowing a continuous interaction with socially deficient humans. The final aim of the proposal is to produce a new robotic-based clinical method able to enhance social interaction of patients suffering from social disorders. You will have an excellent background in mathematics, physics and/or engineering, and should be committed to applying their research to make real artificial agents? systems interacting with people in challenging circumstances. You are expected to produce reliable mathematical models and numerical algorithms that i) allow real-time adaptation of the coupled human-artificial agent dynamics and ii) integrate all parts of the interactive cognitive architecture together. The successful applicant will be able to present information on research progress and outcomes, communicate complex information, orally, in writing and electronically and prepare proposals and applications to external bodies. Applicants will possess a relevant PhD and be able to demonstrate sufficient knowledge in the discipline and of research methods and techniques to work within established research programmes, including mathematical modelling and numerical bifurcation analysis. The closing date for applications is *29 August 2013*. *The salary range is ?24,766 up to ?26,476 per annum, depending on qualifications and experience**.* *HOW TO APPLY FOR THIS POSITION:** * *Please send your completed application and equal opportunities form along with your CV, covering letter and the details of three referees, to Dr Krasimira Tsaneva-Atanasova,** **email:** *K.Tsaneva-Atanasova at exeter.ac.uk*, tel:** **01392 723615** **quoting the reference number P45548 in any correspondence.* *To download the application and equal opportunities form please follow the below links:* *http://www.admin.ex.ac.uk/personnel/jobs/app_form.rtf* *http://www.admin.ex.ac.uk/personnel/jobs/EO_form.rtf* -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From shimon.whiteson at gmail.com Tue Aug 6 03:46:30 2013 From: shimon.whiteson at gmail.com (Shimon Whiteson) Date: Tue, 6 Aug 2013 09:46:30 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: Fully funded PhD position at the University of Amsterdam in reinforcement learning for telepresence robotics Message-ID: The Informatics Institute at the University of Amsterdam invites applications for a fully funded position for a PhD student in the area of reinforcement learning for telepresence robotics The position is within the Intelligent Systems Lab Amsterdam and will be supervised by dr. Shimon Whiteson and. dr. Maarten van Someren. Application closing date: 6 September 2013 Starting date: 1 December 2013 (later starting date is possible). Duration: 4 years. The research will focus on the development of new algorithms for discovering socially appropriate behavior for a semi-autonomous telepresence robot by integrating multiple sources of implicit feedback from the robot's environment. Doing so will require new reinforcement learning techniques, as well as other types of machine learning. The research will be conducted as part of a European project called "Telepresence Reinforcement Learning Social Robot (TERESA)", which the University of Amsterdam coordinates and collaborates on with several other European universities and companies. The project aims to develop a socially intelligent semi-autonomous telepresence robot and successfully demonstrate its application in an elderly day center. Applicants must have a master's degree in computer science or a closely related area. In addition, a successful candidate should have: * strong math skills. * good knowledge of modern machine learning methods (specific knowledge of reinforcement learning and/or decision-theoretic planning is a plus). * good knowledge of robotics. * experience programming in at least one of the following languages: C, C++, Java, Python, or Perl. * excellent oral and written communication skills. The successful candidate will be based in the Intelligent Systems Lab Amsterdam (ISLA) within the Informatics Institute at the University of Amsterdam. The institute was recently ranked among the top 50 computer science departments in the world by the QS World University IT Rankings. ISLA consists of 20 members of faculty, 20 post-doctoral researchers, and more than 50 PhD students. Members of the lab are actively pursuing a variety of research initiatives, including machine learning, decision-theoretic planning and learning, multiagent systems, human-computer-interaction, natural language processing, information retrieval, and computer vision. Some of the things we have to offer: * competitive pay and excellent benefits * extremely friendly working environment * high-level of interaction * location near the city center (10 minutes by bicycle) of one Europe's most beautiful and lively cities * international environment (10+ nationalities in the group) * access to high-end computing facilities (cluster with 4,000+ cores) * brand-new building Since Amsterdam is a very international city where almost everybody speaks and understands English, candidates need not be afraid of the language barrier. For further information, including instructions on submitting an application, see the official job ad at: http://www.uva.nl/en/about-the-uva/working-at-the-uva/phd-positions/item/13-245.html Informal inquiries can be made by email to Shimon Whiteson (s.a.whiteson at uva.nl). From vtrianni at ulb.ac.be Tue Aug 6 13:21:10 2013 From: vtrianni at ulb.ac.be (Vito Trianni) Date: Tue, 6 Aug 2013 19:21:10 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: Call for Participation: Workshop on Collective Behaviours and Social Dynamics @ECAL 2013, Taormina, Italy, September 2, 2013 References: <05D63F47-0AB9-4E63-B2B9-7D8A287E7DB0@istc.cnr.it> Message-ID: [apologies for multiple posting] Call for Participation: Workshop on Collective Behaviours and Social Dynamics Taormina, Italy, September 2, 2013 ECAL 2013, the 12th European Conference on Artificial Life http://laral.istc.cnr.it/collective-and-swarm-robotics.html === Contents=== ? About the Workshop ? Programme ? Invited Speakers ? Workshop Venue ? Registration ? Organisers ? Acknowledgments === About the Workshop === This workshop is at the intersection of several disciplines, from ethology to swarm intelligence, from collective robotics to evolutionary linguistics. Despite very heterogeneous, these disciplines share a common ground when they refer to the mechanisms and the dynamics of social interaction, both at the behavioural and evolutionary level. Despite the similar scientific questions, the study of collective behaviour and social dynamics is characterised by very different approaches, and few places for discussion and comparison are available. Therefore, the workshop represents a unique occasion in which such a juxtaposition of diverse disciplines can take place. The goal of the workshop is to confront the current trends and advancements in the study of collective behaviour and social dynamics, and to promote cross-fertilisation and contamination between disciplines and approaches that rarely meet together. The workshop is ideally divided in two parts, the first dedicated to collective behaviours in biological and artificial systems, and the second dedicated to social dynamics ranging from opinion sharing to language evolution, and to the evolutionary. Each part will feature a keynote speech and presentations selected among the submitted proposals. Selected presentations of unpublished work will be invited to submit a full-length paper to the Swarm Intelligence journal, and will benefit of a fast-track reviewing process. === Programme === The detailed workshop programme can be downloaded as PDF here: http://laral.istc.cnr.it/CBSD_Programme.pdf 8:55 welcome notes by the workshop organisers 9:00 keynote speech by Dr. Simon Garnier 09:45 session #1 on collective behaviours in natural and artificial systems 10:45 coffee break 11:15 session #2 on collective behaviours in natural and artificial systems 12:45 lunch break 14:30 keynote speech by Dr. Andrea Baronchelli 15:15 session on social dynamics: from opinion sharing to language evolution 16:15 coffee break 16:45 session on the evolution of collective behaviours and social dynamics 18:15 closing remarks === Invited Speakers === Keynotes will be given by Dr. Simon Garnier from the New Jersey Institute of Technology (Newark, NJ) and by Dr. Andrea Baronchelli from the Northeastern University (Boston, MA). Find below title and abstract of their talk: Dr. Simon Garnier, Ant wuz here! Following the trail of recent ant network research Everyday and all over the world, kitchens are the targets of formidable heists perpetrated by armies of tiny thieves, the ants. By the hundreds, they take sugar boxes and marmalade jars by storm, and carry their loot back to their nest following a complex network of routes visible only to them. Fifty years ago, the discovery of the chemical nature of these routes by E. O. Wilson opened a new way of understanding the incredibly efficient organization of ant colonies, based on simple behaviors and powerful scents. In this talk, I will show recent discoveries on how ants use their chemical trails as a form of externalized memory that can help them navigate, organize their traffic and make complex collective decisions. I will present results of field and experimental studies and give a broad overview of mathematical and computer models of trail formation and trail use by various species of ants. I will also discuss recent application of the ants' "chemical logic" in operation research and collective robotics. Finally, I will introduce future directions of research, with a particular focus on the flexibility of these trail systems and their ability to integrate and process multiple sources of information. Dr. Andrea Baronchelli, The role of social complexity in convention spreading Where does the agreement on the use of a given word, like "spam", come from? How does it get to be shared in a population? Which is the role of the topology, describing the individual interaction patterns, on the global dynamics? Here we address these questions, which are crucial for the general problem of social consensus, by means of a simple and tractable model able to account for the emergence of a shared convention, or the coexistence of multiple conventions, in a population of individuals. We describe the different behaviors of the model on diverse topologies, from the fully connected graph to low dimensional lattices and complex networks. Then, we discuss a local broadcasting scheme in which an agent speaks at the same time to all of her contacts in the social network. We show that the broadcasting protocol has profound consequences on the social influence of the different individuals, and we argue that this finding might be useful to better understand the propagation of information in web-based social networks. We also address the agreement process taking place on the time-varying evolving networks generated by the contacts of a population of mobile agents, identifying different regimes determined by the individuals' emission ranges and mobility rates. Finally, we show that human face-to-face interaction networks are characterized by a nontrivial bursty behavior, and introduce a simple model that captures the observed dynamics. === Workshop Venue === The Workshop will take place at the Villa Diodoro Hotel, Via Bagnoli Croci 75 98039 Taormina, Messina, Italy. The workshop is co-located with the 12th European Conference on Artificial Life (ECAL 2013), September 2-6 2013, Taormina, Italy. === Registration === The registration can be done via the ECAL 2013 web site. Early registration deadline is June 30, 2013. Late registration: July 1 - September 2, 2013 === Organizing Committee === ? Vito Trianni, CNR-ISTC, Italy. ? Stefano Nolfi, CNR-ISTC, Italy. ? Michael Spranger , Sony Computer Science Laboratory, Paris, France. ? Marco Dorigo, Universit? Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium. ? Francesco Mondada, EPFL, Switzerland ? Tom Wenseleers, University of Leuven, Belgium. ? Luc Steels, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium. === Acknowledgments === The workshop is supported by the European Science Foundation (ESF) under the EUROCORES program EuroBioSAS. ======================================================================== Vito Trianni, Ph.D. vito.trianni@(no_spam)istc.cnr.it ISTC-CNR http://www.istc.cnr.it - http://laral.istc.cnr.it/trianni currently visiting at: IRIDIA-CoDE, CP 194/6 vtrianni@(no_spam)ulb.ac.be Universit? Libre de Bruxelles Tel: +32 (0)2 650 2712 Avenue Franklin Roosevelt 50 Fax: +32 (0)2 650 2715 1050 Bruxelles Belgium ======================================================================== From A.Kaban at cs.bham.ac.uk Tue Aug 6 15:51:13 2013 From: A.Kaban at cs.bham.ac.uk (Ata Kaban) Date: Tue, 6 Aug 2013 20:51:13 +0100 (BST) Subject: Connectionists: Cfp: Workshop on High Dimensional Data Mining at ICDM Message-ID: [Apologies for cross-posting] The 1st International Workshop on High Dimensional Data Mining (HDM 2013) In conjunction with the IEEE International Conference on Data Mining (IEEE ICDM 2013 - 7-10 December, Dallas, Texas) DECEMBER 7, DALLAS, TEXAS http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~axk/HDM.htm ** NEW SUBMISSION DEADLINE: AUGUST 17, 2013 ** Call For Papers This workshop aims to promote new advances and research directions to address the curses, and to uncover and exploit the blessings of high dimensionality in data mining. Unprecedented technological advances lead to increasingly high dimensional data sets in all areas of science, engineering and businesses. These include genomics and proteomics, biomedical imaging, signal processing, astrophysics, finance, web and market basket analysis, among many others. The number of features in such data is often of the order of thousands or millions -- that is much larger than the available sample size. Geometric intuition breaks down, statistical estimation becomes problematic. Classical data analysis methods become inadequate, questionable, or inefficient at best, and this calls for new approaches. Topics of interest range from theoretical foundations, to algorithms and implementation, to applications and empirical studies, including (but not limited to) the following: o Systematic studies of how various aspects of the curse of dimensionality affect data mining methods o New data mining techniques that exploit some properties of high dimensional data spaces o Adaptive and non-adaptive dimensionality reduction for noisy high dimensional data sets o Methods of random projections, compressed sensing, and random matrix theory applied to high dimensional data mining o Models of low intrinsic dimension, such as sparse representation, manifold models, latent structure models o Classification, regression, clustering of high dimensional data o Functional data mining o Visualisation methods for very high dimensional data sets o Data mining applications in science, engineering or businesses where the data is high dimensional High quality original submissions are solicited. Papers should not exceed 8 pages, and follow the IEEE ICDM format requirements of the main conference. All submissions will be peer-reviewed, and the accepted papers will be published in the proceedings by the IEEE Computer Society Press. Submission Deadline: August 17, 2013. Notification to authors: September 24, 2013. Workshop: December 7, 2013. More information at: http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~axk/HDM.htm From yael at Princeton.EDU Tue Aug 6 16:52:35 2013 From: yael at Princeton.EDU (Yael Niv) Date: Tue, 6 Aug 2013 16:52:35 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: RLDM2013: registration is now open (early registration deadline: Aug 31st) In-Reply-To: <02AA476C-7FFE-4F4B-8B84-8B3909CA04E3@Princeton.EDU> References: <02AA476C-7FFE-4F4B-8B84-8B3909CA04E3@Princeton.EDU> Message-ID: <463D0549-2F58-4EE5-934A-34FDAB9B0652@Princeton.EDU> The 1st Multidisciplinary Conference on Reinforcement Learning and Decision Making (RLDM2013) www.rldm.org Oct 25-27, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey, USA ====================================================== Registration for RLDM2013 is now open at http://rldm.org/rldm2013/registration-information/ Early registration fees are $350 for regular registration and $150 for student/postdoc. Late registration: add $100 Registration fees include three light breakfasts and all coffee breaks, two lunches, and one banquet dinner. ** Early registration ends Aug 31st ** We are excited to announce that RLDM2013 attracted 159 submissions. Accept/reject notifications have now been sent --- if you are a corresponding author and did not get your notification, please check your spam folder. 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 julian.mcauley at gmail.com Tue Aug 6 22:49:24 2013 From: julian.mcauley at gmail.com (Julian McAuley) Date: Tue, 6 Aug 2013 19:49:24 -0700 Subject: Connectionists: Call for Participation: Eleventh Workshop on Mining and Learning with Graphs 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/ === About the workshop (http://snap.stanford.edu/mlg2013/index.html) === 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. === Speakers (http://snap.stanford.edu/mlg2013/invited.html) === Evimaria Terzi (Boston University): The Dynamics of Opinion Formation in Social Networks Sam Shah (LinkedIn): Large-Scale Graph Mining for Recommendations Tina Eliassi-Rad (Rutgers): Measuring Tie Strength in Implicit Social Networks Evgeniy Gabrilovich (Google): Understanding the Web using Big Knowledge David Gleich (Purdue): Personalized PageRank based Community Detection Jure Leskovec (Stanford): Analyzing and Influencing the Evolution of Online Communities === Schedule (http://snap.stanford.edu/mlg2013/schedule.html) === 09:00-09:35 : Evimaria Terzi (Boston University) 09:35-10:00 : Spotlights presentations 10:00-10:30 : Coffee Break 10:30-11:05 : Sam Shah (LinkedIn) 11:05-11:40 : Jure Leskovec (Stanford) 11:40-12:00 : Spotlights presentations 12:00-14:00 : Lunch Break 14:00-14:35 : Tina Eliassi-Rad (Rutgers) 14:35-15:10 : Evgeniy Gabrilovich (Google) 15:10-16:00 : Poster Session 16:25-17:00 : David Gleich (Purdue) 17:00 : Wrapup === Venue and registration === The workshop will take places as part of KDD 2013 on August 11 in Chicago. See http://www.kdd.org/kdd2013/registration for details on how to register for the conference and/or workshop. === Further details === 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, Tina Eliassi-Rad, 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, Thorsten Meinl, Prem Melville, Dunja Mladenic, Jennifer Neville, Srinivasan Parthasarathy, Jan Ramon, Bing Tian Dai, Hanghang Tong, Chris Volinsky, Stefan Wrobel, Xifeng Yan, Xintian Yang, Philip Yu, Mohammed Zaki, Liang Zhang, Mark Zhang (program committee) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From peter.ljunglof at heatherleaf.se Wed Aug 7 04:31:11 2013 From: peter.ljunglof at heatherleaf.se (=?utf-8?Q?peter_ljungl=C3=B6f?=) Date: Wed, 7 Aug 2013 10:31:11 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: 2nd Call for Papers: EACL 2014 Message-ID: <8386192B-D856-4CEF-B384-84C4919757BB@heatherleaf.se> SECOND CALL FOR PAPERS EACL 2014 The 14th Conference of the European Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics Gothenburg, Sweden 26?30 April 2014 http://eacl2014.org/ INVITATION FOR SUBMISSIONS The 14th Conference of the European Chapter of the Association for Computational Linguistics invites the submission of long and short papers on substantial, original, and unpublished research in all aspects of automated natural language processing, including but not limited to the following areas: - computational and cognitive models of language acquisition and language processing - information retrieval and question answering - generation and summarization - language resources and evaluation - machine learning methods and algorithms for natural language processing - machine translation and multilingual systems - phonetics, phonology, morphology, word segmentation, tagging, and chunking - pragmatics, discourse, and dialogue - semantics, textual entailment - social media, sentiment analysis and opinion mining - spoken language processing and language modeling - syntax, parsing, grammar formalisms, and grammar induction - text mining, information extraction, and natural language processing applications Papers accepted to TACL by 30 November 2013 will also be eligible for presentation at EACL 2014; please see the TACL website (http://www.transacl.org/) for details. INVITED SPEAKERS We are delighted to announce the invited speakers for EACL 2014: - Michael Collins (Vikram S. Pandit Professor of Computer Science, Columbia University) - Simon King (Professor of Speech Processing and Director of the Centre for Speech Technology Research, University of Edinburgh) - Ulrike von Luxburg (Professor for Computer Science, University of Hamburg) IMPORTANT DATES - Long paper submissions due: 18 October 2013 - Long paper reviews due: 19 November 2013 - Long paper author responses due: 29 November 2013 - Long paper notification to authors: 20 December 2013 - Long paper camera-ready due: 14 February 2014 - Short paper submissions due: 6 January 2014 - Short paper reviews due: 3 February 2014 - Short paper notification to authors: 24 February 2014 - Short paper camera-ready due: 3 March 2014 - EACL conference: 26-30 April 2014 SUBMISSION REQUIREMENTS Long paper submissions must describe substantial, original, completed and unpublished work. Wherever appropriate, concrete evaluation and analysis should be included. Submissions will be judged on appropriateness, clarity, originality/innovativeness, correctness/soundness, meaningful comparison, thoroughness, significance, contributions to research resources, and replicability. Each submission will be reviewed by at least three program committee members. Long papers must follow the two-column format of EACL 2014 (see below) and may consist of up to eight (8) pages of content, plus two extra pages for references; final versions should take into account reviewers' comments. Papers will be presented orally or as posters as determined by the program committee. Decisions on presentation format will be based on the nature rather than the quality of the work. There will be no distinction in the proceedings between long papers presented orally and as posters. The long paper submission deadline is: - Friday, 18 October 2013, 23:59 CET. For electronic submission of long papers, please use: - https://www.softconf.com/eacl2014/main/ Short paper submissions must describe original and unpublished work. Characteristics of short papers include a small, focused contribution; work in progress; a negative result; an opinion piece; an interesting application nugget. Short papers must follow the two-column format of EACL 2014 (see below). They will be presented in one or more oral or poster sessions and will be given four (4) pages plus 2 pages for references in the proceedings. While short papers will be distinguished from long papers in the proceedings, there will be no distinction in the proceedings between short papers presented orally and as posters. Each short paper submission will be reviewed by at least two program committee members. The deadline for submission of short papers is: - Monday, 6 January 2014, 23:59 CET. For electronic submission of short papers, please use: - https://www.softconf.com/eacl2014/shortpapers/ SUBMISSION FORMAT We strongly recommend the use of EACL LaTeX style files or Microsoft Word style files tailored for this year's conference. Submissions must conform to the official style guidelines, which are contained in the style files, and they must be in PDF. As the reviewing will be blind, papers must not include authors' names and affiliations. Furthermore, self-references that reveal the author's identity, e.g., "We previously showed (Smith, 1991) ..." must be avoided. Instead, use citations such as "Smith previously showed (Smith, 1991) ..." Papers that do not conform to these requirements will be rejected without review. In addition, please do not post your submissions on the web until after the review process is complete, and please ensure that no author information is encoded in the ?properties? of your PDF file. Style files: - http://www.eacl2014.org/files/eacl-2014-styles.zip MULTIPLE SUBMISSION POLICY EACL 2014 will not accept for publication or presentation work that will be (or has been) published at other meetings or in other publications. However, papers that have been or will be submitted elsewhere may be submitted to EACL 2014 provided that this fact is stated at the time of submission. If the paper is accepted by both EACL 2014 and another meeting or publication, it must be withdrawn from one of them; furthermore, its authors must notify the program chairs, within two days of receiving the EACL acceptance notification, indicating which meeting or publication they choose for presentation of their work. ORGANIZATION General Chair: - Shuly Wintner, University of Haifa, Israel Program Chairs: - Sharon Goldwater, University of Edinburgh, UK - Stefan Riezler, Heidelberg University, Germany Local Chairs: - Lars Borin, University of Gothenburg, Sweden - Aarne Ranta, University of Gothenburg and Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden - Yvonne Adesam, University of Gothenburg, Sweden - Martin Kas?, University of Gothenburg, Sweden Publication Chairs: - Gosse Bouma, University of Groningen, The Netherlands - Yannick Parmentier, University of Orl?ans, France Workshop Chairs: - Anja Belz, University of Brighton, UK - Reut Tsarfaty, University of Uppsala, Sweden Tutorial Chairs: - Afra Alishahi, Tilburg University, The Netherlands - Marco Baroni, University of Trento, Italy Demo Chair: - Marko Tadi?, University of Zagreb, Croatia Student Research Workshop Chairs: - Konstantina Garoufi, University of Potsdam, Germany - Coskun Mermer, Bo?azi?i University, Turkey - Ivan Vuli?, KU Leuven, Belgium SRW Faculty advisor: - Sebastian Pado, University of Stuttgart, Germany Sponsorship Chairs: - Jochen Leidner, Thomson Reuters, Switzerland - Alessandro Moschitti, University of Trento, Italy - Sofie Johansson Kokkinakis, University of Gothenburg, Sweden - Staffan Larsson, University of Gothenburg, Sweden Publicity Chair: - Peter Ljungl?f, University of Gothenburg and Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden _______________________________________________ NLP mailing list NLP at projects.haskell.org http://projects.haskell.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nlp From sala038 at aucklanduni.ac.nz Wed Aug 7 17:26:26 2013 From: sala038 at aucklanduni.ac.nz (shafiq burki) Date: Thu, 8 Aug 2013 09:26:26 +1200 Subject: Connectionists: Final call for chapters: Bio-inspired KDD techniques Message-ID: CALL FOR CHAPTER Full Chapter Submission Deadline: Aug 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. ***************************** Important Dates ***************************** 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 tomas.hromadka at gmail.com Mon Aug 12 03:36:38 2013 From: tomas.hromadka at gmail.com (Tomas Hromadka) Date: Mon, 12 Aug 2013 09:36:38 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: Cosyne 2014: Call for workshop proposals Message-ID: <52089086.6030905@gmail.com> ================================================================== Computational and Systems Neuroscience (Cosyne) MAIN MEETING WORKSHOPS Feb 27 - Mar 2, 2014 Mar 3 - Mar 4, 2014 Salt Lake City, Utah Snowbird Ski Resort, Utah http://www.cosyne.org ================================================================== -------------- CALL FOR WORKSHOP PROPOSALS -------------- PROPOSAL DEADLINE: November 15, 2013. PRE-PROPOSALS: In an effort to coordinate submissions, the organizers are encouraged to submit a pre-proposal by October 15, 2013. Pre-proposals will be shared among submitters. Pre-proposals are requested but not required. The organizers may submit the full proposal by its deadline. A series of workshops will be held after the main Cosyne meeting (http://cosyne.org/). The goal is to provide an informal forum for the discussion of important research questions and challenges. Controversial issues, open problems, comparisons of competing approaches, and alternative viewpoints are encouraged. The overarching goal of all workshops should be the integration of empirical and theoretical approaches, in an environment that fosters collegial discussion and debate. Preference will be given to proposals that differ substantially in content, scope, and/or approach from workshops of recent years (examples available at cosyne.org). Relevant topics include, but are not limited to: sensory processing; motor planning and control; functional neural circuits; motivation, reward and decision making; learning and memory; adaptation and plasticity; neural coding; neural circuitry and network models; and methods in computational or systems neuroscience. Please note that in an effort to reduce the overlap between workshops, speakers are strongly discouraged from presenting talks at more than one workshop. WORKSHOP DETAILS: -- There will be 4-8 workshops/day, running in parallel. -- Each workshop is expected to draw between 15 and 80 people. -- The workshops will be split into morning (8:00-11:00 AM) and afternoon (4:30-7:30 PM) sessions. -- Workshops will be held at Snowbird, a ski resort located 30 miles (typically less than an hour) from the Salt Lake City airport. Buses from the main conference will be provided. SUBMISSION INSTRUCTIONS: Deadline for pre-proposals: October 15, 2013 Deadline for proposals: November 15, 2013 Format: plain text only -- please no attachments email to: cosyne14workshops at googlegroups.com (Robert Froemke, Tatyana Sharpee) PRE-PROPOSALS should include: -- Name(s) and email address(es) of the organizers (1-2 organizers per session is preferred, please). A primary contact should be designated. -- A title. -- A brief (one paragraph) description of 1) what the workshop will address and accomplish, 2) why the topic is of interest, 3) who is the targeted group of participants. -- Names of potential invitees, with indication of confirmed speakers. Preference will be given to workshops with the most confirmed speakers. -- Proposed workshop length (1 or 2 days). Most workshops will be limited to a single day. If you think your workshop needs 2 days, please explain why. -- A *brief* resume of the workshop organizer along with a *brief* list of publications (about half a page total). PROPOSALS should include the list of confirmed speakers in addition to components required for a pre-proposal. WORKSHOP ORGANIZERS RESPONSIBILITIES: -- Coordinate workshop participation and content. -- Confirm all speaker attendance. -- Moderate the discussion. SUGGESTIONS: Experience has shown that the best discussions during a workshop are those that arise spontaneously. A good way to foster these is to have short talks and long question periods (e.g. 30+15 minutes), and have plenty of breaks. We strongly recommend fewer than 10 talks. WORKSHOP COSTS: Detailed registration costs, etc, will be available at cosyne.org Please note: Cosyne does NOT provide travel funding for workshop speakers. All workshop speakers are expected to pay for workshop registration fees. Participants are encouraged to register early, in order to qualify for discounted registration rates. One complementary (free) organizer registration is provided per workshop. For workshops with 2 organizers, the free registration can be given to one of the organizers or split evenly between them. COSYNE 2014 WORKSHOP CHAIRS: Robert Froemke (New York University) and Tatyana Sharpee (Salk Institute) QUESTIONS: email: cosyne14workshops at googlegroups.com From ASIM.ROY at asu.edu Mon Aug 12 15:22:28 2013 From: ASIM.ROY at asu.edu (Asim Roy) Date: Mon, 12 Aug 2013 19:22:28 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: Forming a group to discuss the possibility that the brain could be at a symbolic level Message-ID: <4AD8F84F0AA4E1448BD8131BA7E55EB40B15E968@exmbt02.asurite.ad.asu.edu> The considerable evidence from single cell studies - starting with the Nobel Prize winning work of Hubel and Wiesel on receptive fields in the sensory systems - suggests that single cells at different levels of processing encode information. For example, in the primary visual cortex, there are simple and complex cells that are tuned to visual characteristics such as orientation, color, motion, and shape. There are also single cells in later stages of processing that represent places (locations), faces, houses, emotions and so on. These kinds of cells are also found in animals. This suggests that we have a great capacity to generalize and create concepts and encode them in single cells. A good question is: Do these single cells represent symbols? If so, what does it mean? Lots of other questions can follow from this basic one. I am creating a separate group to discuss whether the brain is at a symbolic level and, if so, what evidence do we need to suggest that and what are the implications. Please email me if you want to participate in this discussion. I will start the discussion once we have a critical mass. It will be a private discussion and nothing will be published anywhere. This should allow for a fairly open discussion of the issues. With best regards, Asim Roy Arizona State University Tempe, Arizona www.lifeboat.com/ex/bios.asim.roy -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dglanzma at mail.nih.gov Thu Aug 8 11:13:03 2013 From: dglanzma at mail.nih.gov (Glanzman, Dennis (NIH/NIMH) [E]) Date: Thu, 8 Aug 2013 15:13:03 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: Request for Information (RFI): Input on Development of Analysis Methods and Software for Big Data Message-ID: Request for Information (RFI): Input on Development of Analysis Methods and Software for Big Data ________________________________ Notice Number: NOT-HG-13-014 Key Dates Release Date: August 8, 2013 Response Due Date: September 6, 2013 Issued by National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) Purpose This Request for Information (RFI) is to solicit comments and ideas for the development of analysis methods and software tools, as part of the overall Big Data to Knowledge (BD2K) Initiative. Specifically, this RFI solicits input on needs for software and analysis methods related to data compression/reduction, data visualization, data provenance, and data wrangling. Background Biomedical research is becoming more data-intensive as researchers are generating and using increasingly large, complex, and diverse datasets. This era of 'Big Data' in biomedical research taxes the ability of many researchers to release, locate, analyze, and interact with these data and associated software due to the lack of tools, accessibility, and training. In response to these new challenges in biomedical research, and in response to the recommendations of the Data and Informatics Working Group (DIWG) of the Advisory Committee to the NIH Director (http://acd.od.nih.gov/diwg.htm), NIH has launched the trans-NIH Big Data to Knowledge (BD2K) Initiative (www.bd2k.nih.gov). The long-term goal of the NIH BD2K Initiative is to support advances in data science, other quantitative sciences, policy, and training that are needed for the effective use of Big Data in biomedical research. (The term "biomedical" is used here in the broadest sense to include biological, biomedical, behavioral, social, environmental, and clinical studies that relate to understanding health and disease). The term 'Big Data' refers to datasets that are increasingly larger, more complex, and which exceed the abilities of currently used approaches to manage and analyze. "Big Data" is also meant to capture the opportunities and address the challenges facing all biomedical researchers in accessing, managing, analyzing and integrating large datasets of diverse data types. Such data types may include imaging, phenotypic, molecular (including -omics), clinical, environmental, behavioral, and many other types of biological and biomedical data. "Big Data" also includes data generated for other purposes (e.g. social media, search histories, cell phone data) when they are repurposed and applied to address health research questions. Biomedical Big Data primarily emanate from three sources: (1) a small number of groups that produce very large amounts of data, usually as part of projects specifically funded to produce important resources for use by the research community at large, or large collections of electronic health records; (2) individual investigators who produce large datasets for their own project, but which might be broadly useful to the research community at-large; (3) an even greater number of investigators who each produce small datasets whose value can be amplified by aggregating or integrating them with other data. One of the DIWG recommendations was to support the development, implementation, evaluation, maintenance and dissemination of informatics methods and applications. NIH supports a wide range of bioinformatics and computational science through efforts such as the Biomedical Science and Technology Initiative funding opportunities and through programs supported by individual NIH institutes and centers. NIH is now considering supporting the development of analytical methods and software tools and will focus initially on four targeted areas to begin to address critical current and emerging needs of the research community for using, managing, and analyzing more complex and larger data sets: data compression/reduction, visualization, provenance, and wrangling. An NIH BD2K Working Group charged with exploring the development of informatics methods and tools seeks input from the biomedical research communities on the four targeted areas listed above to ensure that research resources generated will have the highest impact and value to the research community. NIH has determined that guidance is needed from broad scientific community in the following areas: Data Compression/Reduction While data compression is important in BD2K since it helps reduce resource usage, most compression techniques involve trade-offs among various factors, including the degree of compression, the amount of distortion induced and the computational resources required to compress and decompress the data. Data reduction aims to more dramatically reduce the data volume, and in the meantime reduce the complexity/dimensionality of data for easier analysis. It usually involves processing and/or reorganization of data to minimize redundancy, eliminate noise, and preserve signal and data integrity. Data Visualization Data visualization permits researchers to communicate information through graphical and interactive means and enables them to explore and gain insight/knowledge from the data. The challenge in the Big Data era is on interpreting complex, high-throughput data, especially in the context of other relevant, but often orthogonal, data. Data Provenance Provenance of digital scientific data is useful for determining attribution, identifying relationships between objects, tracking back differences in similar results, guaranteeing the reliability of the data, and to allow researchers to determine whether a particular dataset can be used in their research (by providing lineage information about the data). Data Wrangling Data wrangling is a term that is applied to the conversion, formatting, and mapping of data that enables researchers to more easily submit data to a database, expose data to the internet, and allows data to be more easily accessible and shareable. Researchers who generate datasets that, in aggregate, become "Big Data" often find it difficult to submit data, even when standards are well-established. Specialized informatics skills are often needed, for example, to format data, apply metadata, fill gaps, use ontologies, capture provenance, annotate features, and apply other functions to reformat, manipulate, transform, or process data. Information Requested To maximize the impact of these valuable research resources and tools (informatics methods and tools) and facilitate its use by scientists with a broad range of expertise, we seek input from scientific and informatics research and user communities in identifying and prioritizing needs and gaps in the four focus areas outlined above. Submitting a Response All responses must be submitted via email to BD2KSoftware at mail.nih.gov by Friday, September 6, 2013. Please include the Notice number in the subject line. Response to this RFI is voluntary. Responders are free to address any or all of the categories listed above. The submitted information will be reviewed by the NIH staff. This request is for information and planning purposes only and should not be construed as a solicitation or as an obligation on the part of the Federal Government. The NIH does not intend to make any awards based on responses to this RFI or to otherwise pay for the preparation of any information submitted or for the Government's use of such information. The NIH will use the information submitted in response to this RFI at its discretion and will not provide comments to any responder's submission. However, responses to the RFI may be reflected in future funding opportunity announcements. The information provided will be analyzed and may appear in reports. Respondents are advised that the Government is under no obligation to acknowledge receipt of the information received or provide feedback to respondents with respect to any information submitted. No proprietary, classified, confidential, or sensitive information should be included in your response. The Government reserves the right to use any non-proprietary technical information in any resultant solicitation(s). Inquiries Please direct all inquiries to: Jennifer Couch, Ph.D National Cancer Institute Telephone: 240-276-6210 Email: Jennifer_Couch at nih.gov Website: http://bd2k.nih.gov/#sthash.i3bBBRHF.dpbs ________________________________ Weekly TOC for this Announcement NIH Funding Opportunities and Notices ________________________________ 0 15 0 0 15 [NIH Office of Extramural Research Logo] [Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) - Home Page] Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) [USA.gov - Government Made Easy] NIH... Turning Discovery Into Health(r) ________________________________ Note: For help accessing PDF, RTF, MS Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Audio or Video files, see Help Downloading Files. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image007.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 6100 bytes Desc: image007.jpg URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image008.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 1018 bytes Desc: image008.jpg URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image009.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 2424 bytes Desc: image009.jpg URL: From mdhamala at phy-astr.gsu.edu Tue Aug 13 09:31:15 2013 From: mdhamala at phy-astr.gsu.edu (Mukesh Dhamala) Date: Tue, 13 Aug 2013 09:31:15 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: Multiple Faculty Positions in Human Neuroimaging at GSU Message-ID: Dear Colleagues: Georgia State University in Atlanta has multiple faculty positions open in human neuroimaging. Review of applications will begin on November 1, 2013, but application materials will be accepted until the positions are filled. Please see below for details: Multiple Faculty Positions in Human Neuroimaging. As part of its Second Century Initiative (http://www.gsu.edu/secondcentury/) and pending budgetary approval, Georgia State University, Atlanta, GA anticipates hiring up to 3 tenure-track faculty members (open rank, applicants at Associate or Full Professor-levels preferred) with research programs in human behavior and expertise in neuroimaging, to begin Fall 2014. We seek established scientists who will join our growing cadre of researchers who are capitalizing on our state-of-the-art facilities at the GSU/GT Joint Center for Advanced Brain Imaging (CABI; http://www.cabiatl.com/CABI/), and help advance current GSU research initiatives that include Brains and Behavior (http://neuroscience.gsu.edu/3650.html) and Language and Literacy (http://www.researchlanglit.gsu.edu), and may build upon our current strengths in atypical development and learning (http://www2.gsu.edu/~wwwaty), clinical neuropsychology, and/or cognitive science (http://www2.gsu.edu/~wwwpsy/graduate_programs.html). A number of GSU units will support these individuals to drive a broad vision for interdisciplinary research. Ongoing activities at the CABI include functional and structural neuroimaging within the areas of working memory, cognitive control, reading and language, and emotion processing as well as with a wide range of clinical and developmental populations, including survivors of cancer, congenital heart disease, as well as children and adults with autism and other neurological, genetic, and psychiatric conditions. The candidate will be appointed in a relevant department (e.g., Psychology and/or Neuroscience, Physics) at Georgia State University. A Ph.D., M.D./Ph.D. or similar degree in psychology, neuroscience or a related research discipline is required. The successful candidate will have an outstanding record of research achievement, including a strong record of external research funding. The successful candidate will be expected to maintain a productive, funded research program in human neuroimaging, and will be expected to demonstrate graduate and undergraduate instructional effectiveness with a diverse student body. Interested individuals should send a curriculum vita, a cover letter stating research interests and experience, evidence of instructional effectiveness, and three letters of recommendation. Review of applications will begin on November 1, 2013, but application materials will be accepted until the positions are filled. Applications should be sent to: Human Neuroimaging Search Committee Department of Psychology Box 5010 Georgia State University Atlanta, GA 30302-5010 neuroimaging at gsu.edu An offer of employment will be conditional on background verification. Georgia State University, a Research University of the University System of Georgia, is an EEO/AA Employer and encourages applications from women and minority candidates. Sincerely, Mukesh Dhamala ------------------------------------------------ Mukesh Dhamala, Ph. D. Associate Professor of Physics and Neuroscience Department of Physics and Astronomy Georgia State, Atlanta, GA 30303, USA Phone: (404) 413-6043 Fax: (404) 413-6025 mdhamala at gsu.edu http://www.phy-astr.gsu.edu/dhamala/dhamala.html ------------------------------------------------ From silvio.sabatini at unige.it Tue Aug 13 04:01:08 2013 From: silvio.sabatini at unige.it (Silvio P. Sabatini) Date: Tue, 13 Aug 2013 10:01:08 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: PhD Studentships, 3D Active Perception, Genoa, Italy Message-ID: <5209E7C4.8000605@unige.it> Two PhD positions (with scholarships) are available at the PSPC-lab of the Department of Informatics, Bioengineering, Robotics, and System Engineering , University of Genoa, on the following themes: 1) _/Deep architectures for seeing in depth: Sensorimotor associations through bidirectional couplings between visual and motor primitives/_. [Curriculum "Bioengineering and Bioelectronics" - THEME 5 ] 2) _/Distributed neuromorphic representations of the visual-somatosensory peripersonal space/_. [ Curriculum "Cognitive Robotics, Interaction and Rehabilitation Technologies" - THEME 15 ] The proposed research projects, focused on "sensorimotor integration paradigms in the peripersonal space", will provide the opportunity to work on neural modeling, visual psychophysics, interaction technologies, robotics, or a combination of them. Experimental, modeling, and theoretical approaches might be pursued with a different accent according to personal attitude. The call has been issued under the joint UniGe-IIT PhD Course on "Bioengineering and Robotics". Full details on the call and the application procedure are available at: http://www.studenti.unige.it/postlaurea/dottorati/XXIX/bandoGeneraleEN The PSPC-lab is based at the Department of Informatics, Bioengineering, Robotics, and System Engineering of the University of Genoa, Italy. The newly established inter-school department (at the intersection between the School of Science and the Polytechnic School) offers an excellent multidisciplinary, interactive and collaborative research environment combining expertise in computer vision, computational neuroscience, neuromorphic computing, robotics and mechatronics. Successful applicants should have a good honors degree in computer science, engineering, physical sciences, cognitive science, or related disciplines. An open mind and enthusiasm for interdisciplinary research are required. *Online application available from August 5, 2013 at 12:00 to September 20, 2013 at 12:00 (italian time)* It is highly recommended that prospective students contact Silvio P. Sabatini (silvio.sabatini at unige.it) or Fabio Solari (fabio.solari at unige.it) _well ahead of the deadline_ in case of questions about the research themes, or doubts about the application procedure. -- --------------------------------------------------------------------- Silvio P. SABATINI, PhD [PSPC Research Group] Professor of Bioengineering DIBRIS - University of Genova | e_mail:silvio.sabatini at unige.it Via Opera Pia, 11A | phone: +39 010 3532092/3532794 I-16145 Genova (ITALY) | fax: +39 010 3532289/3536533 URL:http://pspc.unige.it --------------------------------------------------------------------- "Imagination is more important than knowledge..." [Albert Einstein] -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From K.Tsaneva-Atanasova at bristol.ac.uk Tue Aug 13 16:33:49 2013 From: K.Tsaneva-Atanasova at bristol.ac.uk (K Tsaneva-Atanasova) Date: Tue, 13 Aug 2013 21:33:49 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: Associate Research Fellow position - mathematical modelling and analysis of human social interactions Message-ID: Associate Research Fellow position available immediately for 25 months. Based in the College of Engineering, Mathematics and Physical Sciences at the University of Exeter, you will undertake research into mathematical modelling and analysis of human social interactions. This is an exciting opportunity to contribute to a joint venture between movement scientists from Montpellier 1 University in France, computer science experts from the DFKI centre (Germany), mathematicians from the University of Exeter and Bristol (UK), roboticists from the Ecole Polytechnique F?d?rale de Lausanne (CH), as well as clinicians, psychologists and psychiatrists from the Academic Hospital of Montpellier (CHRU, FR). This position is funded by European Union FP7 research project AlterEgo: Enhancing social interactions using information technology. The objective of AlterEgo is the creation of an interactive cognitive architecture (ICA), implementable in various artificial agents, allowing a continuous interaction with socially deficient humans. The final aim of the proposal is to produce a new robotic-based clinical method able to enhance social interaction of patients suffering from social disorders. You will have an excellent background in mathematics, physics and/or engineering, and should be committed to applying their research to make real artificial agents? systems interacting with people in challenging circumstances. You are expected to produce reliable mathematical models and numerical algorithms that i) allow real-time adaptation of the coupled human-artificial agent dynamics and ii) integrate all parts of the interactive cognitive architecture together. The successful applicant will be able to present information on research progress and outcomes, communicate complex information, orally, in writing and electronically and prepare proposals and applications to external bodies. Applicants will possess a relevant PhD and be able to demonstrate sufficient knowledge in the discipline and of research methods and techniques to work within established research programmes, including mathematical modelling and numerical bifurcation analysis. The closing date for applications is 29 August 2013. The salary range is ?24,766 up to ?26,476 per annum, depending on qualifications and experience. HOW TO APPLY FOR THIS POSITION: Please send your completed application and equal opportunities form along with your CV, covering letter and the details of three referees, to Dr Krasimira Tsaneva-Atanasova, email: K.Tsaneva-Atanasova at exeter.ac.uk, tel: 01392 723615 quoting the reference number P45548 in any correspondence. To download the application and equal opportunities form please follow the below links: http://www.admin.ex.ac.uk/personnel/jobs/app_form.rtf http://www.admin.ex.ac.uk/personnel/jobs/EO_form.rtf -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rsalakhu at cs.toronto.edu Wed Aug 14 10:17:20 2013 From: rsalakhu at cs.toronto.edu (Ruslan Salakhutdinov) Date: Wed, 14 Aug 2013 10:17:20 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Connectionists: Call for Demonstrations, NIPS 2013 Message-ID: The Neural Information Processing Systems Conference 2013 http://nips.cc/Conferences/2013/ has a Demonstration Track running in parallel with the evening Poster Sessions, December 5-7, 2013, in Lake Tahoe, Nevada, USA. Demonstration Proposal Deadline: Monday September 16, 2013, 11pm Universal Time (4pm Pacific Daylight Time). http://nips.cc/Conferences/2013/CallForDemonstrations Demonstrations offer a unique opportunity to showcase: ? Hardware technology ? Software systems ? Neuromorphic and biologically-inspired systems ? Robotics or other systems, which are relevant to the technical areas covered by NIPS (see Call for Papers http://nips.cc/Conferences/2013/CallForPapers). Demonstrations must show novel technology and must be run live, preferably with some interactive parts. Unlike poster presentations or slide shows, live action and interaction with the audience are critical elements. Submissions: Submission of demo proposals at the following URL: https://nips.cc/Demonstrators/ You will be asked to fill a questionnaire and describe clearly: ? the technology demonstrated ? the elements of novelty ? the live action part ? the interactive part ? the equipment brought by the demonstrator ? the equipment required at the place of the demo Evaluation Criteria: Submissions will be refereed on the basis of technical quality, novelty, live action, and potential for interaction. Demonstration chair: Russ Salakhutdinov http://nips.cc/Conferences/2013/CallForDemonstrations From secretary at bioinf.jku.at Fri Aug 16 03:25:07 2013 From: secretary at bioinf.jku.at (Secretary Institute of Bioinformatics) Date: Fri, 16 Aug 2013 09:25:07 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: Open position for an Experienced Researcher at Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria Message-ID: <520DD3D3.30404@bioinf.jku.at> Open position for an Experienced Researcher In February 2013 the Institute of Bioinformatics, Johannes Kepler University Linz, joined a European Project (Marie-Curie ITN) - Mr.SymBioMath (www.mrsymbiomath.eu) which is focused on the problem domain of Comparative Genomics. The contribution of the Institute of Bioinformatics in the context of this project is concentrated in the area of Bioinformatics, Machine Learning, and Genomics. In order to support this project we are looking for an Experienced Researcher. The Institute of Bioinformatics has a vacancy for an Experienced Researcher funded with full employee benefits for a period of 24 months. Applications will be accepted until Sep 09, 2013. Your field of work will be: Research in the domain of Machine Learning, Bioinformatics, Comparative Genomics, and Genetics You should have experience in the following areas: Machine learning, R, Latent variable models, I/NI calls, SNPs, and Genetic variants Marie Curie FP7-People ITN benefits: Marie Curie Fellows will enjoy benefits of full social security, health insurance, pension, parental leave etc. Competitive monthly living and mobility allowance, yearly travel allowance, a career exploratory allowance, and coverage of the expenses related to your participation in research and training activities (contribution to research-related costs, meetings, conference attendance, training actions, etc.). http://ec.europa.eu/research/mariecurieactions/careers_en.htm Eligibility: The applicant will be required to satisfy the eligibility criteria for Marie Curie Experienced Researchers: Experienced Researchers must, at the time of recruitment or be in possession of a doctoral degree, independently of the time taken to acquire it or have at least four years of full-time equivalent research experience, including the period of research training, after obtaining the degree which formally allowed them to embark on a doctorate in the country in which the degree was obtained or in the country of the host institution to which they are seconded or recruited (irrespective of whether a doctorate was envisaged or not). The researcher may not have resided or carried out his/her main activity in Austria for more than 12 months in the 3 years immediately prior to his/her appointment. Short stays such as holidays are not taken into account. Please submit your application with resume/C.V., certificates, reports and letters of recommendation to: secretary at bioinf.jku.at or by post to: Johannes Kepler University Linz Institute of Bioinformatics Prof. Dr. Sepp Hochreiter Altenbergerstr. 69 A-4040 Linz, Austria For further information please contact: Sepp Hochreiter Phone: +43 732 2468 4521 Email: hochreit at bioinf.jku.at From neumann at cbs.mpg.de Mon Aug 19 09:48:43 2013 From: neumann at cbs.mpg.de (Jane Neumann) Date: Mon, 19 Aug 2013 15:48:43 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: PhD position - computational modelling Message-ID: <5212223B.6060202@cbs.mpg.de> Dear colleagues, The *Collaborative Research Center* 1052 "Obesity mechanisms" at the Leipzig University Hospital is offering a*PhD* studentship in *computational modelling *under the supervision of Dr Jane Neumann and Dr Annette Horstmann. The project investigates decision-making and feedback-related processes in humans by combining computational modelling with functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and behavioral assessment. The PhD position will be based at the *Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences* in the beautiful city of *Leipzig*. Both Leipzig's long tradition in conducting neuroscientific research and the ultra-modern equipment at the Institute provide an environment that offers new perspectives in neuroimaging research. Applicants should hold a Master's degree in one of the following disciplines: computational or cognitive neuroscience, computer science, mathematics, physics, cognitive science or related. Prior experience in the field of computational neuroscience and/or neuroimaging are of advantage. Sound knowledge of statistics and excellent programming skills are essential. A good command of written and spoken English is requested of all applicants. Please send your application as a single pdf-file to neumann at cbs.mpg.de referring to "SFB 1052, modelling". Complete applications include cover letter, CV, letter(s) of recommendation, and copies of university degrees and additional certificates. Informal enquiries should be made to Dr Jane Neumann (neumann at cbs.mpg.de ) (+49 (0) 341 99 40 26 21). The salary is based on the German E 13 TV-L salary scale. In order to increase the proportion of female staff members, applications from female scientists are particularly encouraged. Disabled applicants are preferred if qualification is equal. Deadline for application: until position is filled -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From fbln at ecomp.poli.br Fri Aug 16 06:56:45 2013 From: fbln at ecomp.poli.br (Prof. Fernando Buarque) Date: Fri, 16 Aug 2013 07:56:45 -0300 Subject: Connectionists: BRICS-CCI & CBIC 2013 - Registration Reminder Message-ID: Dear All (***please spread the word and forgive cross-post***), This is a kind reminder and information that you can still register at BRICS-CCI & CBIC 2013 at reduced rates. The registration page (e-form) is at: http://brics-cci.org/registration-for-participants/ We hope to see you all next September in "Porto de Galinhas", Brazil. Today we will turn 30,000 hits on our website. http://brics-cci.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/HotelArmacao_BRIEFING.pdf All the best, Fernando Buarque General Joint-Chair of BRICS-CCI & CBIC 2013 (brics-cci.org) [image: Imagem inline 1] -- Prof. Fernando Buarque , BSc MSc DIC PhD Hab., 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 ) Ponto focal Brasil 2014/15 - Fronteiras da Ci?ncia (Brasil-CAPES e Alemanha-Funda??o Humboldt) (BRAGFOST ) Visiting Professor - University of Johannesburg, South Africa (Kingsway Campus ) Graduate Faculty - Computer Science/Florida Institute of Technology, USA ( CS at FIT ) Pesquisador L?der do Grupo de Intelig?ncia Computacional da UPE (CIRG at UPE ) Chefe do Laborat?rio de Cibern?tica da POLI/UPE (CYBERLAB ) Assessor de Rela??es Internacionais da POLI (ARI at POLI ) Docente do Mestrado de Engenharia de Sistemas da UPE (PPG-ES ) Docente da Gradua??o de Engenharia de Computa??o da UPE (E-Comp ) Coordenador T?cnico do N?cleo de Telemedicina da UPE (NUTES at UPE ) 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: image.png Type: image/png Size: 313086 bytes Desc: not available URL: From lvdmaaten at gmail.com Fri Aug 16 07:09:39 2013 From: lvdmaaten at gmail.com (Laurens van der Maaten) Date: Fri, 16 Aug 2013 13:09:39 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: Call for Papers: Neurocomputing Special Issue on Visual Analytics using Multidimensional Projections Message-ID: We solicit submissions for submissions to a special issue of Neurocomputing on Visual Analytics using Multidimensional Projections (VAMP). Submissions are due November 1st, 2013 via the Neurocomputing submission system. Dimensionality reduction is an active area in machine learning. New techniques have been proposed for more than 50 years, for instance, principal component analysis, classical scaling, isomap, probabilistic latent trait models, stochastic neighbor embedding, and neighborhood retrieval visualization. These techniques facilitate the visualization of high-dimensional data by representing data instances as points in a two-dimensional space in such a way that similar instances are modeled by nearby points and dissimilar instances are modeled by distant points. Although many papers on these so-called ?embedding? techniques are published every year, which all aim to improve visual representations of high-dimensional data, it appears that these techniques have not gained popularity in the information-visualization community due to the inherent complexity of their interpretation. At the cross-section of information visualization, machine learning, and graph drawing, the special issue intends to focus on issues that embedding techniques should address to bridge the gap with the information-visualization community. A non-exhaustive list of such issues is given below: ? Stability: Nonlinear embedding techniques are more efficient at preserving similarities than linear ones. However, non-linearities generate local optima as a result of which different initializations lead to different representations of the same data. The differences between these embeddings of the same data create confusion for the analyst, who is unable to grasp the common facts across the different visualizations. How can we design efficient and stable nonlinear embeddings? ? Embedding of dynamic data: Embedding usually projects all the data at once; when new data arrive, how can we embed these data without modifying the current embedding too much? ? Multiple methods: Each embedding algorithm necessarily comes with its own set of built-in underlying assumptions, and knowledge of these assumptions is often helpful in making sense of the visual output. How can we design black-box visualization methods that demand less understanding of underlying assumptions from the side of the analyst? ? Evaluation and subjectivity: Visual interpretation is inherently subjective. How can we help analysts to verify whether an eye-catching pattern is real/essential or whether it just happens to be an artifact? ? Inference and interactions: Nonlinear embedding techniques produce points clouds in which the axes have no meaning and pairwise distances are approximations which may have many artifacts. What kinds of analytical tasks can be performed with such embeddings? How can we better convey the meaning of the embeddings to analysts? ? Feedback: The human eye is excellent at visual analysis, and can identify regularities and anomalous data even without having to define an algorithm. How can we make use of this ability to enhance the predictive performance of machine learning and embedding techniques? ? Input data: Currently, the input data in embedding techniques typically comprises high-dimensional feature vectors or pairwise distance between objects. However, this is not always the kind of data that analysts encounter in practice. How can embeddings be constructed based on partial similarity rankings, associations or co-occurences of objects, heterogeneous data, data with missing values, relations between objects, structured objects, etc.? ? Optimizing embeddings for visual analysis: nonlinear embeddings are found by optimizing mathematical goodness-of-fit measures. Instead of using off-the-shelf embedding methods, can the measures and methods be designed so that the optimized embeddings will be good for carrying out concrete low-level or high-level analysis tasks from the visualization? The special issue aims to attract contributions on these or related topics. In case of any questions about this special issue, please contact the guest editors: Laurens van der Maaten and Micha?l Aupetit . -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From michel.verleysen at uclouvain.be Tue Aug 20 02:49:50 2013 From: michel.verleysen at uclouvain.be (Michel Verleysen) Date: Tue, 20 Aug 2013 08:49:50 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: ESANN 2014: call for special sessions Message-ID: <002101ce9d71$780175f0$680461d0$@uclouvain.be> ESANN 2014: European Symposium on Artificial Neural Networks, Computational Intelligence and Machine Learning Bruges, Belgium, 23-24-25 April 2014 http://www.esann.org Call for special sessions ------------------------------- ESANN 2014 builds upon a successful series of conferences organized each year since 1993. ESANN has become a major scientific event in the machine learning, computational intelligence and artificial neural networks fields over the years. Each year, 5-6 special sessions on selected hot topics in the field are organized at ESANN. We are currently looking for proposals to organize special sessions. Candidate organizers are invited to read the call for special sessions at https://www.elen.ucl.ac.be/esann/index.php?pg=cfss (warning: this page is not linked nor referenced from the main ESANN web page). Candidates for the organization of special sessions should send an e-mail to esann at uclouvain.be as soon as possible and at the latest on September 6, 2013. Details on the information to be sent is available from https://www.elen.ucl.ac.be/esann/index.php?pg=cfss. The conference will be organized in Bruges, one of the most beautiful medieval towns in Europe. Designated as the "Venice of the North", the city has preserved all the charms of the medieval heritage. Its centre, which is inscribed on the Unesco World Heritage list, is in itself a real open air museum. We remain of course at your disposal for any information about ESANN 2014 and the organization of special sessions. Sincerely yours, Michel Verleysen ======================================================== ESANN - European Symposium on Artificial Neural Networks, Computational Intelligence and Machine Learning http://www.esann.org/ * For submissions of papers, reviews, registrations: Michel Verleysen Univ. Cath. de Louvain - Machine Learning Group 3, pl. du Levant - B-1348 Louvain-la-Neuve - Belgium tel: +32 10 47 25 51 - fax: + 32 10 47 25 98 mailto:esann at uclouvain.be * Conference secretariat d-side conference services 24 av. L. Mommaerts - B-1140 Evere - Belgium tel: + 32 2 730 06 11 - fax: + 32 2 730 06 00 mailto:esann at uclouvain.be ======================================================== -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tim.fawcett at cantab.net Sat Aug 17 10:55:28 2013 From: tim.fawcett at cantab.net (Tim Fawcett) Date: Sat, 17 Aug 2013 15:55:28 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: Conference: THE EVOLUTION OF BEHAVIOURAL MECHANISMS, abstract deadline 25 August Message-ID: The abstract deadline for this year's ASAB Winter Conference on 'The Evolution of Behavioural Mechanisms' has been extended to 25 August. This will be the final deadline, so if you wish to present your work at this meeting please make sure you submit your abstract as soon as possible using the form on the conference website (http://tinyurl.com/winterasab2013). The conference will be held on 5-6 December at the Zoological Society of London. For more information, please visit http://tinyurl.com/winterasab2013 or contact us at madorganiser at gmail.com. We look forward to seeing you in London! Tim Fawcett, Andy Higginson & Pete Trimmer Modelling Animal Decisions (MAD) group, University of Bristol -- ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Dr Tim W. Fawcett Room B72 School of Biological Sciences University of Bristol Woodland Road Bristol BS8 1UG United Kingdom +44 117 9287478 (office) +44 7789 126382 (mobile) tim.fawcett at cantab.net www.timwfawcett.com From Wael.El-deredy at manchester.ac.uk Thu Aug 15 06:13:44 2013 From: Wael.El-deredy at manchester.ac.uk (Wael El-deredy) Date: Thu, 15 Aug 2013 10:13:44 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: Research Associate position: modelling Judgement and decision making Message-ID: Research Associate Closing date :13/09/2013 Reference: M&HS-02906 Faculty: Medical & Human Sciences School: School of Psychological Sciences Division: Psychology Salary: ?29,541 to ?36,298 per annum according to relevant experience Employment type: Fixed Term Duration: tenable from 1 January 2014 to 28 February 2015 Hours per week: Full time Location: Oxford Road, Manchester Applications are invited for an 14-month position at the University of Manchester funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). The aim of the project is to develop causal models of human judgement and decision making behaviour subject to environmental and cognitive constraints. A dominant perspective in psychology and behavioural economics suggests that human judgement and decision making (JDM) is flawed. In contrast, in this project we aim to demonstrate that, contrary to the dominant perspective, human judgement and decision making are optimal if the constraints imposed by the environment and the limitations of the cognitive system are taken into account. In doing so, we aim to develop a novel, causal framework which can account for a wide range of behavioural phenomena as optimal under constraints. In addition, we aim to provide a proof of concept that this framework can facilitate the design and testing of interventions to bring about advantageous behavioural change. You should hold a PhD (or be working towards submission of a PhD) or have equivalent experience in a discipline involving a significant mathematical modelling component. Alternatively, candidates with an undergraduate degree in a numerical discipline (e.g. Mathematics, Physics, Engineering, Computer Science) and some relevant PhD or postdoctoral experience will also be considered. Applicants with primary expertise in the behavioural study of human judgement and decision making or in Economics will also be considered provided that they have appropriate skills and experience. Informal enquiries Informal enquiries can be made to Dr Paul Warren: Email: paul.warren at manchester.ac.uk Telephone: 0161 275 7699 To apply: please follow the link http://tinyurl.com/lqsz9ld The University of Manchester values a diverse workforce and welcomes applications from all sections of the community. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From grlmc at urv.cat Sat Aug 17 12:16:49 2013 From: grlmc at urv.cat (GRLMC) Date: Sat, 17 Aug 2013 18:16:49 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: LATA 2014: 2nd call for papers Message-ID: <5C82103480724F259C62E7960CCA63B3@Carlos1> *To be removed from our mailing list, please respond to this message with UNSUBSCRIBE in the subject line* ************************************************************************* 8th INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON LANGUAGE AND AUTOMATA THEORY AND APPLICATIONS LATA 2014 Madrid, Spain March 10-14, 2014 Organized by: Research Group on Implementation of Language-Driven Software and Applications (ILSA) Complutense University of Madrid Research Group on Mathematical Linguistics (GRLMC) Rovira i Virgili University http://grammars.grlmc.com/lata2014/ ********************************************************************* AIMS: LATA is a yearly conference on theoretical computer science and its applications. Following the tradition of the diverse PhD training events in the field developed at Rovira i Virgili University in Tarragona since 2002, LATA 2014 will reserve significant room for young scholars at the beginning of their career. It will aim at attracting contributions from both classical theory fields and application areas (bioinformatics, language technology, artificial intelligence, etc.). VENUE: LATA 2014 will take place in Madrid, the capital of Spain. The venue will be the School of Informatics of Complutense University. SCOPE: Topics of either theoretical or applied interest include, but are not limited to: algebraic language theory algorithms for semi-structured data mining algorithms on automata and words automata and logic automata for system analysis and programme verification automata, concurrency and Petri nets automatic structures cellular automata codes combinatorics on words compilers computability computational complexity data and image compression decidability issues on words and languages descriptional complexity DNA and other models of bio-inspired computing digital libraries and document engineering foundations of finite state technology foundations of XML fuzzy and rough languages grammars (Chomsky hierarchy, contextual, unification, categorial, etc.) grammatical inference and algorithmic learning graphs and graph transformation language varieties and semigroups language-based cryptography language-theoretic foundations of artificial intelligence and artificial life natural language and speech automatic processing parallel and regulated rewriting parsing patterns power series quantum, chemical and optical computing semantics string and combinatorial issues in computational biology and bioinformatics string processing algorithms symbolic dynamics symbolic neural networks term rewriting transducers trees, tree languages and tree automata weighted automata STRUCTURE: LATA 2014 will consist of: invited talks invited tutorials peer-reviewed contributions INVITED SPEAKERS: Javier Esparza (Munich Tech, DE) Leslie A. Goldberg (Oxford, UK) Oscar H. Ibarra (Santa Barbara, US) Sanjeev Khanna (Philadelphia, US) Helmut Seidl (Munich Tech, DE) PROGRAMME COMMITTEE: Dana Angluin (Yale, US) Eugene Asarin (Paris Diderot, FR) Jos Baeten (Amsterdam, NL) Christel Baier (Dresden, DE) Jan Bergstra (Amsterdam, NL) Jin-Yi Cai (Madison, US) Marek Chrobak (Riverside, US) Andrea Corradini (Pisa, IT) Mariangiola Dezani (Turin, IT) Ding-Zhu Du (Dallas, US) Michael R. Fellows (Darwin, AU) J?rg Flum (Freiburg, DE) Nissim Francez (Technion, IL) J?rgen Giesl (Aachen, DE) Annegret Habel (Oldenburg, DE) Kazuo Iwama (Kyoto, JP) Sampath Kannan (Philadelphia, US) Ming-Yang Kao (Northwestern, US) Deepak Kapur (Albuquerque, US) Joost-Pieter Katoen (Aachen, DE) S. Rao Kosaraju (Johns Hopkins, US) Evangelos Kranakis (Carleton, CA) Gad M. Landau (Haifa, IL) Andrzej Lingas (Lund, SE) Jack Lutz (Iowa State, US) Ian Mackie (?cole Polytechnique, FR) Carlos Mart?n-Vide (Tarragona, ES, chair) Giancarlo Mauri (Milan, IT) Faron G. Moller (Swansea, UK) Paliath Narendran (Albany, US) Enno Ohlebusch (Ulm, DE) Helmut Prodinger (Stellenbosch, ZA) Jean-Fran?ois Raskin (Brussels, BE) Wolfgang Reisig (Humboldt Berlin, DE) Marco Roveri (Bruno Kessler, Trento, IT) Micha?l Rusinowitch (LORIA, Nancy, FR) Yasubumi Sakakibara (Keio, JP) Davide Sangiorgi (Bologna, IT) Colin Stirling (Edinburgh, UK) Jianwen Su (Santa Barbara, US) Jean-Pierre Talpin (IRISA, Rennes, FR) Andrzej Tarlecki (Warsaw, PL) Rick Thomas (Leicester, UK) Sophie Tison (Lille, FR) Rob van Glabbeek (NICTA, Sydney, AU) Helmut Veith (Vienna Tech, AT) ORGANIZING COMMITTEE: Adrian Horia Dediu (Tarragona) Ana Fern?ndez-Pampill?n (Madrid) Carlos Mart?n-Vide (Tarragona, co-chair) Antonio Sarasa (Madrid) Jos?-Luis Sierra (Madrid, co-chair) Bianca Truthe (Magdeburg) Florentina Lilica Voicu (Tarragona) 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 standard format for 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=lata2014 PUBLICATIONS: A volume of proceedings published by Springer in the LNCS series will be available by the time of the conference. A special issue of a major journal 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 July 15, 2013 to March 10, 2014. The registration form can be found at: http://grammars.grlmc.com/lata2014/Registration.php DEADLINES: Paper submission: October 14, 2013 (23:59 CET) Notification of paper acceptance or rejection: November 25, 2013 Final version of the paper for the LNCS proceedings: December 2, 2013 Early registration: December 9, 2013 Late registration: February 24, 2014 Starting of the conference: March 10, 2014 End of the conference: March 14, 2014 Submission to the post-conference journal special issue: June 14, 2014 QUESTIONS AND FURTHER INFORMATION: florentinalilica.voicu at urv.cat POSTAL ADDRESS: LATA 2014 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: Departament d?Economia i Coneixement, Generalitat de Catalunya Universidad Complutense de Madrid Universitat Rovira i Virgili From thomas.wennekers at plymouth.ac.uk Sun Aug 18 08:26:54 2013 From: thomas.wennekers at plymouth.ac.uk (Thomas Wennekers) Date: Sun, 18 Aug 2013 13:26:54 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: Marie Curie Early Career Research Fellowships (PhD): 14 positions Message-ID: <201308181326.54698.thomas.wennekers@plymouth.ac.uk> Marie Curie Early Career Research Fellowships (PhD): 14 positions Cognition Institute | Plymouth University Fixed term 36 months, starting 1st April 2014 The CogNovo project is offering fourteen early career research fellowships. CogNovo is an Innovative Doctoral Programme funded by the EU Marie Curie initiative and Plymouth University to foster research in the emerging field of Cognitive Innovation. CogNovo offers transdisciplinary research training that combines scientific studies of the neural correlates and mechanisms of creativity, with investigations into the role of creativity in human cognition, and their application in sustainable technological and social innovation. Selected candidates will be registered for a comprehensive PhD programme that includes specialised research on specific topics, as well as training workshops covering experimental methods, cognitive neuroscience, computational modelling, humanities and human values, experimental psychology, creative arts, cognitive robotics and entrepreneurship. CogNovo also offers secondment opportunities to academic and commercial partners across the world. Candidates should apply for specific projects, indicating their top 3 choices. For further details of CogNovo and the research projects available, please see: www.cognovo.eu. Application forms are available for download from the website. Eligibility: Marie Curie funding is intended to promote mobility of early career researchers within the research community; candidates are only eligible for these posts if they have not been resident within the UK for more than 12 months within the 3 years prior to 1 April 2104. An excellent 1st degree, good verbal and written communication skills in English, and an interest in multi-disciplinary research are essential. Specific educational prerequisites vary and are indicated in the project web-pages. More information on individual projects can be found on the CogNovo Projects Page. Salary: from ?35,000, including living and mobility allowance. Applicants should send a completed application form along with a covering letter detailing their suitability for the studentship, C.V. and 2 academic references to Catherine Johnson, Faculty of Science and Technology Research Office, Room A425, Portland Square, Plymouth PL4 8AA or e-mail catherine.johnson at plymouth.ac.uk. Closing date for applications: 12 noon, 30 November 2013 Shortlisted candidates will be invited for interview in January/February 2014. We regret that we may not be able to respond to all applications. Applicants who have not received an offer of a place by March 2014 should consider their application has been unsuccessful on this occasion. ________________________________ This email and any files with it are confidential and intended solely for the use of the recipient to whom it is addressed. If you are not the intended recipient then copying, distribution or other use of the information contained is strictly prohibited and you should not rely on it. If you have received this email in error please let the sender know immediately and delete it from your system(s). Internet emails are not necessarily secure. While we take every care, Plymouth University accepts no responsibility for viruses and it is your responsibility to scan emails and their attachments. Plymouth University does not accept responsibility for any changes made after it was sent. Nothing in this email or its attachments constitutes an order for goods or services unless accompanied by an official order form. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From davrot at neuro.uni-bremen.de Mon Aug 19 08:26:30 2013 From: davrot at neuro.uni-bremen.de (David Rotermund) Date: Mon, 19 Aug 2013 14:26:30 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: Several open positions in monkey electrophysiology and theoretical neurosciences Message-ID: <52120EF6.8080406@neuro.uni-bremen.de> The Center for Cognitive Sciences of the University of Bremen invites applications for open Post-doc and Ph.D. student positions for three related projects: 1.) 'Interareal phase coherence as a mechanism for attention-dependent neuronal signal routing: A model-guided causal analysis using new, multi-contact floating silicon probes for intracortical chronic stimulation and recording in primates' (http://www.isee.uni-bremen.de for details) 2.) 'I-See The artificial eye: Chronic wireless interface to the visual cortex' (http://www.isee.uni-bremen.de for details) 3.) 'Bernstein Award Udo Ernst - Rapid Parallel Configuration of Visual Information Processing' (http://www.bernstein.uni-bremen.de/ for details) The Center aims at understanding neural information processing at the systems level using an interdisciplinary approach including experimental investigations in animals and humans in close combination with theoretical approaches. Taking advantage of the results of its basic research the center develops new approaches and applications in the field of neuro-technology and brain-computer interfaces. Its members come from the fields of neurobiology, theoretical neuroscience, neurology, ophthalmology, electrical engineering, microsystems technology, computer science, and philosophy. Interested candidates should send their application in German or English language, including the reference number of the position, a letter of motivation, CV, copies of school and university certificates (master/diploma or equivalent) until the 10th of September to: Agnes Jan?en Cognium Hochschulring 18 Universit?t Bremen D-28359 Bremen Germany Severely disabled applicants and women with essentially identical technical and personal suitability will be preferentially selected. The open positions: 1 Post-doc Position - Code: InAuKa-Kreiter (Project: InAuKa - Electrophysiology in the group of Andreas Kreiter) At the Center for Cognitive Sciences, Institute of Brain Research, a post-doc position is available in a DFG-funded project of the priority program "Resolving and Manipulating Neuronal Networks in the Mammalian Brain - from Correlative to Causal Analysis" (DFG SPP 1665). The projects objective is to investigate the causal role of synchronized gamma-band activity between different cortical areas for attention-dependent transmission of neuronal signals through cortical networks. Within the course of these electrophysiological experiments with macaque monkeys using advanced multi-electrode recording techniques, methods to selectively influence parts of the involved networks during attentive processing of visual stimuli by electrical stimulation will be established. The networks dynamic properties will be characterized and newly developed multi-contact microelectrodes be tested. The project will be performed in close co-operation with our partners in engineering science and theoretical neurosciences. Candidates should have a strong background in electrophysiology, a good understanding of theoretical concepts and advanced data analysis and the ability to communicate effectively in an interdisciplinary project team with theoreticians and engineers. Programming skills are of advantage. The position is available for a period of 3 years. Interested researchers are strongly encouraged to contact Prof. Kreiter (kreiter at brain.uni-bremen.de) to receive detailed information. 1 PhD Position - Code: InAuKa-Ernst (Project: InAuKa - Theoretical neuroscience in the group of Udo Ernst) One PhD student with background in physics or computational neuroscience is required for performing network simulations and formal analysis of information gating mechanisms. She/he will focus on oscillatory network activity and apply phase-response theory to determine how information gating is influenced by an external visual or electrical stimulus. To support the modeling studies, the student shall perform advanced data analysis and assist the group of Prof. Kreiter in establishing a closed-loop stimulation setup. The student will be supervised by Udo Ernst and is expected to closely collaborate with the group of Prof. Kreiter to link model simulations to the data gathered in the experiments. Basic knowledge in programming and in formal methods/Computational Neuroscience are required. 1 PhD Position - Code: Isee-Kreiter (Project: I-See - Electrophysiology in the group of Andreas Kreiter) At the Center for Cognitive Sciences, Institute of Brain Research, a PhD position is available in the University of Bremen's Creative Unit "I-See". The key objective of this research project is developing the basis for a cortical visual prosthesis. The PhD-student will perform electrophysiological experiments with multi-electrode arrays placed on primary visual cortex of macaque monkeys. The perception of phosphenes induced by electrical stimulation, the influence of electrical stimulation on neuronal activity in V1 and the interaction of visual and electrical stimulation will be investigated. The project will be performed in close co-operation with our partners in engineering science and theoretical neuroscience. The candidate should have a profound interest in neuroscience and its methodological and applied aspects and a strong background in neurophysiology. Programming skills are of advantage. The position is available immediately for a period of 3 years. Interested students are strongly encouraged to contact Prof. Kreiter (kreiter at brain.uni-bremen.de) to receive detailed information. 1 PhD Position - Code: Isee-Pawelzik (Project: I-See - Theoretical neuroscience in the group of Klaus Pawelzik) We are looking for a PhD student with a background in physics and/or computational neuroscience. She/he will work in close cooperation with experimentalists in the group of Andreas Kreiter. The student will analyse electro-physiological data with the goal to identify the underlying network structure/model which generates a specific neural response and visual percept to a particular electrical stimulation. She/he will then invert this model in order to determine the spatio-temporal stimulation pattern required for creating a desired visual percept. Basic knowledge in programming and in formal methods/Computational Neuroscience are required. 1 PhD Position - Code: Bernstein-Ernst (Project: Berstein Award Udo Ernst - Electrophysiology) Goal of this study is to investigate neural signatures and mechanisms of parallel functional configuration in multiple visual areas with massively parallel multielectrode recordings. The PhD student will conduct experiments on awake behaving macaque monkeys in collaboration with the group of Prof. Dr. Andreas Kreiter (kreiter at brain.uni-bremen.de), and analyze the collected data. This includes familiarization and training of the monkeys, preparation of the experimental setup and recordings, implantation of the electrode arrays, and recording of the data under different visual perception tasks. He/she should be familiar with standard methods of data analysis, as well as with elementary concepts from machine learning and information theory. He or she should have a degree (master/diploma or equivalent) in natural sciences (e.g. Biology) with focus on experimental work (preferably Animal Physiology). Basic programming skills and interest in formal methods from Computational Neuroscience are required. We expect a high motivation for communicating and collaborating with the other subprojects in the group. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From stephengmatthews at gmail.com Sat Aug 17 09:34:48 2013 From: stephengmatthews at gmail.com (Stephen G Matthews) Date: Sat, 17 Aug 2013 14:34:48 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: IEEE CIS Second Annual Video Competition Message-ID: IEEE CIS Second Annual Video Competition Following on from the first video competition, which produced two outstanding winning videos about fuzzy logic, we invite you to produce an introductory 3-minute video (sufficient length for about 300 spoken words) about one of the following Computational Intelligence fields of interest: ?Neural Networks ?Evolutionary Computation ?Hybrid Intelligent Systems Registration: 2nd September 2013 Video submission deadline: 14th October 2013 http://cis.ieee.org/videocomp -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From irodero at cac.rutgers.edu Fri Aug 16 07:29:06 2013 From: irodero at cac.rutgers.edu (Ivan Rodero) Date: Fri, 16 Aug 2013 07:29:06 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: TAAS - Call for Papers In-Reply-To: <0957F75F-5AB9-4144-B62D-87D225B34E42@rutgers.edu> References: <51EC7783-DCAD-4364-B1DC-576C726BAA31@rutgers.edu> <6F339279-23CD-4553-95DF-B1F906F948E3@rutgers.edu> <0957F75F-5AB9-4144-B62D-87D225B34E42@rutgers.edu> Message-ID: ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Please accept our apologies if you receive multiple copies of this CFP! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Call for Papers ACM Transactions on Autonomous and Adaptive Systems (TAAS) (http://taas.acm.org) Aim and Scope: The ACM Transactions on Autonomous and Adaptive Systems (TAAS) is a venue for high quality research contributions addressing foundational, engineering, and technological aspects related to all those complex ICT systems that have to serve ? in autonomy and with capabilities of autonomous adaptation ? in highly dynamic socio-technico-physical environments. TAAS addresses research on autonomous and adaptive systems being undertaken by an increasingly interdisciplinary research community -- and provide a common platform under which this work can be published and disseminated. TAAS encourages contributions aimed at supporting the understanding, development, and control of such systems and of their behaviors. Contributions are expected to be based on sound and innovative theoretical models, algorithms, engineering and programming techniques, infrastructures and systems, or technological and application experiences. Call for Papers: TAAS invites authors to submit original and unpublished articles that are written in English and on topics that are within the scope of the journal. Paper should have an introductory part that is comprehensible by a non-expert, and should reference up-to-date related literature. Papers can be up to 10000 words (20 printed pages) in length ? papers exceeding this limit will have to either be shortened, or have to move some of the material to an appendix that will only be published online. Additional information can be found at http://taas.acm.org/authors.html. Expected Turnaround Times: Currently, the average review turnaround time (the time from article submission to first notification) is approximately 2 months and the time from acceptance to publication is now typically less than 6 months for papers requiring revision. Additional statistics can be found at http://dl.acm.org/pub.cfm?id=J1010. Editorial Board: Editors-in-Chief Manish Parashar, Rutgers University, USA Franco Zambonelli, University of Modena e Reggio Emilia, Italy Associated Editors Tarek Abdelzaher, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, USA Ozalp Babaoglu, University of Bologna, Italy Luciano Baresi, Politecnico di Milano, Italy Jake Beal, BBN Technologies and MIT, USA Simon Dobson, St Andrews University, UK Marco Dorigo, Universite Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium Indy Gupta, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, USA Salima Hassas, University of Lyon, France Anthony Karageorgos, University of Thessaly, Greece Michael Luck, University of Southampton, UK Julie Mc Cann, Imperial College London, UK Andrea Omicini, University of Bologna, Italy Jeremy Pitt, Imperial College London, UK Omer F. Rana, University of Cardiff, UK Onn Shehory, IBM Haifa Research Lab and Bar Ilan University, Israel Roy Sterritt, University of Ulster, UK H. Van Dyke Parunak, Jacobs Technology Inc., USA Dongyan Xu, Purdue University, USA ============================================================= Ivan Rodero, Ph.D. Rutgers Discovery Informatics Institute (RDI2) NSF Center for Cloud and Autonomic Computing (CAC) Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey Office: CoRE Bldg, Rm 625 94 Brett Road, Piscataway, NJ 08854-8058 Phone: (732) 993-8837 Fax: (732) 445-0593 Email: irodero at rutgers dot edu WWW: http://nsfcac.rutgers.edu/people/irodero ============================================================= -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From bernabe at imse-cnm.csic.es Thu Aug 15 08:22:18 2013 From: bernabe at imse-cnm.csic.es (bernabe) Date: Thu, 15 Aug 2013 13:22:18 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: 4 year PhD Scholarship at the Sevilla Microelectronics Institute, Spain Message-ID: <520CC7FA.9010504@imse-cnm.csic.es> Call for applications for a 4 year PhD Scholarship. Please announce and distribute to potential interested candidates ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- (Flyer available from: https://www.dropbox.com/s/u9cd04ssguzyfou/PhD_scholarship_Sevilla.pdf) The Neuromorphic Group at the Sevilla Microelectronics Institute (IMSE-CNM-CSIC) has an opening for a 4-year PhD position, whose research is to be developed within the context of the following research project: BIOSENSE: EVENT BASED BIOINSPIRED SYSTEM FOR SENSORY FUSION AND NEOCORTICAL PROCESSING. HIGH SPEED AND LOW POWER APPLICATIONS FOR ROBOTICS AND AUTOMOTION Research line: Microchips and FPGAs designs for Event-Driven Visual Sensing and Processing Funding institution: Ministry of Economy and Competitivity of Spain Research Environment: University of Sevilla -- Sevilla Microelectronics Institute (IMSE-CNM-CSIC) (www.imse-cnm.csic.es) Official call: available from http://www.boe.es/boe/dias/2013/08/14/pdfs/BOE-A-2013-8984.pdf (in Spanish, please use Google to translate) Applications: should be presented on-line between Aug. 26 and Sep 10, 2013, 3pm (Spain time). Candidates need to pre-register at https://sede.micinn.gob.es/rus/editarRegistroPrevioUsuario.mec Preferred degrees: Electrical and Electronic Engineers, Physicists. Candidates should have finished a Master degree (or similar) NOT EARLIER than January 1st 2010. Interested candidates please contact Teresa Serrano-Gotarredona (terese at imse-cnm.csic.es) -- -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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 eilif.mueller at epfl.ch Mon Aug 19 05:08:01 2013 From: eilif.mueller at epfl.ch (emuller) Date: Mon, 19 Aug 2013 11:08:01 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: Postdoc position - in silico neuroscience - Blue Brain Project @ EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland Message-ID: <20130819110801.3b0c3da9@guargum> Dear colleagues, I would like to inform you of the following postdoc position available immediately at the Blue Brain Project @ EPFL in Lausanne, Switzerland. Thanks for forwarding to any qualified persons who might be interested. Best regards, Eilif ------------- Dr. Eilif Muller Section Manager - In Silico Neuroscience - Experimentation EPFL - Blue Brain Project QIJ 3?me ?tage CH-1015 Lausanne Switzerland Tel: ++41 21 693 0698 Fax: ++41 21 693 5350 www: http://bluebrain.epfl.ch/page-77926-en.html ************************************************************************ OPEN POSITION: Post-doctoral Researcher ? in silico neuroscience ************************************************************************ The Blue Brain Project, led by Prof. Henry Markram, seeks outstanding candidates for the position of "Post-doctoral Researcher ? in silico neuroscience" to strengthen its modeling team. This position has the following research focus: * Leverage the Blue Brain unifying model of the neocortical microcircuit to design, implement, analyze and explore novel in-silico experiments on network structure, dynamical state regimes, and coding principles in laminar cortical architectures and hierarchies. * Contribute to the on-going development, refinement and validation of data-driven unifying brain tissue models. * Interact with wet-lab experimentalists to design experiments to validate and confirm model predictions. Deadline for application: open until position is filled Location: EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland Further details, and instructions for how to apply can be found here: http://emploi.epfl.ch/page-97620-en.html ************************************************************************ From mwh30 at cam.ac.uk Thu Aug 22 07:04:38 2013 From: mwh30 at cam.ac.uk (Matt Hoffman) Date: Thu, 22 Aug 2013 12:04:38 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: CFP: NIPS 2013 Workshop on Bayesian Optimization in Theory and Practice Message-ID: [Apologies for cross-postings] ---------------------------------------------------------------- CALL FOR PAPERS NIPS 2013 Workshop: Bayesian Optimization in Theory and Practice Lake Tahoe, Nevada, USA, 10 December, 2013 Web: www.bayesianoptimization.org email: nips2013.bayesopt at gmail.com ---------------------------------------------------------------- Important Dates: - Submission deadline: 18 October, 2013 - Notification of acceptance: 1 November, 2013 ---------------------------------------------------------------- Workshop Overview: There have been many recent advances in the development of machine learning approaches for active decision making and optimization. These advances have occurred in seemingly disparate communities, each referring to the problem using different terminology: Bayesian optimization, experimental design, bandits, active sensing, automatic algorithm configuration, personalized recommender systems, etc. Recently, significant progress has been made in improving the methodologies used to solve high-dimensional problems and applying these techniques to challenging optimization tasks with limited and noisy feedback. This progress is particularly apparent in areas that seek to automate machine learning algorithms and website analytics. Applying these approaches to increasingly harder problems has also revealed new challenges and opened up many interesting research directions both in developing theory and in practical application. Following on last year?s NIPS workshop, ?Bayesian Optimization & Decision Making?, the goal of this workshop is to bring together researchers and practitioners from these diverse subject areas to facilitate cross-fertilization by discussing challenges, findings, and sharing data. This year we plan to focus on the intersection of ?Theory and Practice?. Specifically, we would like to carefully examine the types of problems where Bayesian optimization performs well and ask what theoretical guarantees can be made to explain this performance? Where is the theory lacking? What are the most pressing challenges? In what way can this empirical performance be used to guide the development of new theory? To this end, we welcome contributions on theoretical models, empirical studies, and applications of the above. We also welcome challenge papers on possible applications or datasets. Topics of interest (though not exhaustive) include: - Bayesian optimization - Sequential experimental design, bandits, Thompson sampling - Applications, e.g., automatic parameter tuning, active sensing, robotics - Related areas: active learning, reinforcement learning, etc. ---------------------------------------------------------------- We have a number of confirmed speakers including: - Ryan Adams, Harvard University - Sebastien Bubeck, Princeton University - Philipp Hennig, MPI T?bingen and the workshop will also host a panel discussion with additional panelists including: - James Bergstra, University of Waterloo - Andreas Krause, ETH Zurich - Remi Munos, INRIA Lille ---------------------------------------------------------------- Submission instructions: Submissions should be in the NIPS 2013 format, with a maximum of 4 pages (excluding references). Accepted papers will be made available online at the workshop website, but the workshop proceedings can be considered non-archival. Submissions need not be anonymous. For detailed submission instructions, please refer to the workshop website. ---------------------------------------------------------------- Organizers: - Matthew Hoffman, University of Cambridge - Jasper Snoek, University of Toronto, - Nando de Freitas, Oxford University - Michael Osborne, Oxford University -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gluck at pavlov.rutgers.edu Thu Aug 22 11:47:18 2013 From: gluck at pavlov.rutgers.edu (Mark Gluck) Date: Thu, 22 Aug 2013 11:47:18 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: Two Tenure-Track Junior Faculty Openings at Rutgers-Newark in Systems Neuroscience: Sensory-Motor Integration, Learning and Memory, & Emotional Regulation * Message-ID: Two Tenure-Track Junior Faculty Openings at Rutgers-Newark in Systems Neuroscience: Sensory-Motor Integration, Learning and Memory, & Emotional Regulation The Center for Molecular & Behavioral Neuroscience at Rutgers University-Newark has two openings for tenure-track Assistant Professors in SYSTEMS NEUROSCIENCE. Applicants should hold a Ph.D. degree in Neuroscience or a related field and have completed at least two years of post-doctoral training. Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, is a leading national public research university and the state's preeminent, comprehensive public institution of higher education. Rutgers is dedicated to conducting research that breaks new ground; to teaching that meets the highest standards of excellence; and to providing services, solutions, and clinical care that help individuals and the local, national, and global communities where they live. The Center for Molecular and Behavioral Neuroscience (CMBN) is located in Newark NJ, a short drive from New York City. CMBN is part of a large community of neuroscientists at Rutgers Newark, with additional researchers in the Departments of Biological Sciences and Psychology as well as in the Rutgers University New Jersey Medical School. Collectively, these researchers represent all levels of analysis in neuroscience (for more details, see http://www.neuroscience.newark.rutgers.edu ) The ideal candidates for these two assistant professor positions ask fundamental hypothesis-driven questions about brain structure and function and are open to establishing collaborative research efforts within the Rutgers neuroscience community. Research areas of particular interest are sensory-motor integration, learning and memory, and emotional regulation. We are especially interested in candidates who use a range of experimental methods, including in vitro and in vivo electrophysiology in rodents or non-human primates, optogenetics, tract tracing and immunohistochemistry. The successful applicants will be expected to maintain an active externally-funded research program, to teach undergraduate and graduate courses in neuroscience, and to mentor Ph.D. students in our Behavioral and Neural Sciences program. Applicants should apply as soon as possible, but no later than 10/15/2013. Rutgers is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer and has a strong commitment to diversity. Women and members of underrepresented minorities are especially encouraged to apply. Rutgers-Newark is noted for its exceptionally diverse student population. To receive detailed instructions on how to apply, please send an email to systems at cmbn.rutgers.edu with the subject line 'How to apply'. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From qliu1 at uci.edu Thu Aug 22 12:07:25 2013 From: qliu1 at uci.edu (Qiang Liu) Date: Thu, 22 Aug 2013 12:07:25 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: Call for Papers -- NIPS '13 Workshop on Crowdsourcing: Theory, Algorithms, and Applications Message-ID: NIPS '13 Workshop on Crowdsourcing: Theory, Algorithms, and Applications December 9, 2013 (Tentative) Lake Tahoe, Nevada, USA http://www.ics.uci.edu/~qliu1/nips13_workshop Submission Deadline: October 15, 2013 Author Notification: October 30, 2013 *************************************************************************** Machine learning systems involve an integration of data representing human or physical knowledge, and algorithms that discover patterns in this data and make predictions about new instances. While machine learning research usually focuses on developing more efficient learning algorithms, it is often the quality and amount of training data that predominately govern the performance of real-world systems. This is only amplified by the recent popularity of large scale and complicated learning systems such as deep networks, which can require millions to billions of training instances to perform well. Unfortunately, traditional methods of collecting data from specialized workers are usually expensive and slow. In recent years, however, a potential for change has emerged thanks to crowdsourcing, which enables huge amounts of labeled data to be collected from large groups of (usually online) workers for a low cost or no cost at all. Many machine learning tasks, such as computer vision and natural language processing, increasingly benefit from data gathered on crowdsourcing platforms such as Amazon Mechanical Turk and CrowdFlower. On the other hand, tools in machine learning, game theory, and mechanism design can help to address many challenging problems in crowdsourcing systems, such as making them more reliable, more efficient, and less expensive. In this workshop, we call attention to crowdsourcing as a source of data, discussing cheap and fast data collection methods based on crowdsourcing, and how these methods could impact subsequent stages of machine learning. Furthermore, we will emphasize how the data sourcing paradigm interacts with the most recent emerging trends in the NIPS community. Examples of topics of interest in the workshop include (but are not limited to): * Applications of crowdsourcing to machine learning * Reliable crowdsourcing, e.g., label aggregation, quality control * Optimal budget allocation or active learning in crowdsourcing * Pricing and incentives in crowdsourcing markets * Workflow design and answer aggregation for complex tasks (e.g., machine translation, proofreading) * Prediction markets / information markets and their connection to learning * Theoretical analyses of crowdsourcing algorithms, e.g., error rates and sample complexities for label aggregation and budget allocation algorithms Invited Speakers ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ TBD Submission Details ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Submissions should follow the NIPS format ( http://nips.cc/Conferences/2013/PaperInformation/AuthorSubmissionInstructions) and are encouraged to be up to eight pages, excluding references. Papers submitted for review do not need to be anonymized. There will be no official proceedings, but the accepted papers will be made available on the workshop website. Accepted papers will be either presented as a talk or poster. We welcome submissions both on novel research work as well as extended abstracts on work recently published or under review in another conference or journal (please state the venue of publication in the later case); we particularly encourage submission of visionary position papers on the emerging trends on the field. Please submit papers in PDF format at https://cmt.research.microsoft.com/CROWDNIPS2013/. Workshop Organizers: ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Dengyong Zhou, Jenn Wortman Vaughan, Nikhil R. Devanur. Microsoft Research Qiang Liu, Alexander Ihler. UC Irvine Xi Chen. UC Berkeley & NYU -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From k.wong-lin at ulster.ac.uk Fri Aug 23 06:33:09 2013 From: k.wong-lin at ulster.ac.uk (Wong-Lin, Kongfatt) Date: Fri, 23 Aug 2013 10:33:09 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: Lecturer in Computer Science post available at the University of Ulster Message-ID: There is a permanent Lecturer post (equivalent to Assistant Professorship in the US) in Computer Science currently available at the School of Computing and Intelligent Systems, University of Ulster, Magee campus, UK: http://www.jobs.ac.uk/job/AHD471/lecturer-in-computer-science/ As stated in the job advertisement, the applicant's research focus can be rather general. As we are currently establishing a functional brain mapping facility at the Intelligent Systems Research Centre (ISRC) at Magee campus (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-foyle-west-22871118), we highly welcome applicants who have demonstrated high quality research work in computational neuroimaging, especially on magnetoencephalography (MEG), and who can also teach computer science or electronics at the tertiary level. The multidisciplinary ISRC consists of research teams in areas such as Computational Neuroscience, Bio-Inspired and Neuro-Engineering, Brain-Computer Interfacing and Assistive Technologies, Cognitive Robotics, and Nanoelectronics. The ISRC is located in a large, purpose built research facility, with excellent, state-of-the-art resources, including a new high-performance computing facility, and has strong links with C-TRIC, the local translational medicine centre (http://www.c-tric.com/). The campus is situated in the city of Derry~Londonderry, which has received the City of Culture 2013 award. Note: Closing application date is on the 6th September 2013. ---------- Dr. KongFatt Wong-Lin Computational Neuroscience Research Team Intelligent Systems Research Centre University of Ulster ---------------------------------------------- http://www.jobs.ac.uk/job/AHD471/lecturer-in-computer-science/ Lecturer in Computer Science University of Ulster -School of Computing and Intelligent Systems Ref: 1358637 Salary: ?32,285 - ?45,967 Base: Magee Closing date: 6 September 2013 The School of Computing and Intelligent Systems (SCIS), which is based on the Magee campus, has an outstanding record for teaching and engaging in research of international excellence. A range of high quality taught programmes is offered at undergraduate and postgraduate levels in areas such as computer science, computer engineering, computer games development, information technologies, and games modelling and animation. These courses have been designed to meet the needs of industry and commerce, and graduates are extremely successful in gaining high-quality, well-paid employment. The postholder will deliver teaching at both undergraduate and postgraduate level in computer science and will contribute to the research, academic enterprise and administrative activities of the School. Whilst applicants with excellent programming and design skills with proven experience of using industry standard software are encouraged to apply for the post, preference will be given to applicants with experience in teaching modules in computer science or electronics at tertiary level. Applicants must also have an established record of research outputs eligible for inclusion in REF 2014. We prefer to issue and receive applications via the 'Apply' button below. http://www.jobs.ac.uk/job/AHD471/lecturer-in-computer-science/ Hard copy applications can be obtained by telephoning 028 7012 4072 The University is an equal opportunities employer and welcomes applicants from all sections of the community, particularly from those with disabilities. Appointment will be made on merit. ________________________________ This email and any attachments are confidential and intended solely for the use of the addressee and may contain information which is covered by legal, professional or other privilege. If you have received this email in error please notify the system manager at postmaster at ulster.ac.uk and delete this email immediately. Any views or opinions expressed are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of the University of Ulster. The University's computer systems may be monitored and communications carried out on them may be recorded to secure the effective operation of the system and for other lawful purposes. The University of Ulster does not guarantee that this email or any attachments are free from viruses or 100% secure. Unless expressly stated in the body of a separate attachment, the text of email is not intended to form a binding contract. Correspondence to and from the University may be subject to requests for disclosure by 3rd parties under relevant legislation. The University of Ulster was founded by Royal Charter in 1984 and is registered with company number RC000726 and VAT registered number GB672390524.The primary contact address for the University of Ulster in Northern Ireland is,Cromore Road, Coleraine, Co. Londonderry BT52 1SA -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From yevgeny.seldin at gmail.com Fri Aug 23 00:45:30 2013 From: yevgeny.seldin at gmail.com (Yevgeny Seldin) Date: Fri, 23 Aug 2013 14:45:30 +1000 Subject: Connectionists: Call for Contributions: Resource-Efficient Machine Learning, NIPS-2013 workshop Message-ID: <5216E8EA.8080304@gmail.com> CALL FOR ABSTRACTS AND OPEN PROBLEMS Resource-Efficient Machine Learning NIPS-2013 Workshop Tuesday, December 10, 2012 Lake Tahoe, Nevada, US https://sites.google.com/site/resefml2013 ---------------------------------------------- We invite submission of abstracts and open problems to Resource-Efficient Machine Learning NIPS-2013 workshop. IMPORTANT DATES *Submission Deadline:* October 9. *Notification of Acceptance:* October 23. More details are provided below. ----------------------------------------------- Abstract Resource efficiency is key for making ideas practical. It is crucial in many tasks, ranging from large-scale learning ("big data'') to small-scale mobile devices. Understanding resource efficiency is also important for understanding biological systems, from individual cells to complex learning systems, such as the human brain. The goal of this workshop is to improve our fundamental theoretical understanding and link between various applications of learning under constraints on the resources, such as computation, observations, communication, and memory. While the founding fathers of machine learning were mainly concerned with characterizing the sample complexity of learning (the observations resource) [VC74] it now gets realized that fundamental understanding of other resource requirements, such as computation, communication, and memory is equally important for further progress [BB11]. The problem of resource-efficient learning is multidimensional and we already see some parts of this puzzle being assembled. One question is the interplay between the requirements on different resources. Can we use more of one resource to save on a different resource? For example, the dependence between computation and observations requirements was studied in [SSS08,SSST12,SSB12]. Another question is online learning under various budget constraints [AKKS12,BKS13,CKS04,DSSS05,CBG06]. One example that Badanidiyuru et al. provide is dynamic pricing with limited supply, where we have a limited number of items to sell and on each successful sale transaction we lose one item. A related question of online learning under constraints on information acquisition was studied in [SBCA13], where the constraints could be computational or monetary. Yet another direction is adaptation of algorithms to the complexity of operation environment. Such adaptation can allow resource consumption to reflect the hardness of a situation being faced. An example of such adaptation in multiarmed bandits with side information was given in [SAL+11]. Another way of adaptation is interpolation between stochastic and adversarial environments. At the moment there are two prevailing formalisms for modeling the environment, stochastic and adversarial (also known as ``the average case'' and ``the worst case''). But in reality the environment is often neither stochastic, nor adversarial, but something in between. It is, therefore, crucial to understand the intermediate regime. First steps in this direction were done in [BS12]. And, of course, one of the flagman problems nowadays is ``big data'', where the constraint shifts from the number of observations to computation. We strongly believe that there are deep connections between problems at various scales and with various resource constraints and there are basic principles of learning under resource constraints that are yet to be discovered. We invite researchers to share their practical challenges and theoretical insights on this problem. Study of resource-efficient learning also require design of resource-dependent performance measures. In the past, algorithms were compared in terms of predictive accuracy (classification errors, AUC, F-measures, NDCG, etc.), yet there is a need to evaluate them with additional metrics related to resources, such as memory, CPU time, and even power. For example, reward per computational operation. This theme will also be discussed at the workshop. References: [AKKS12] Kareem Amin, Michael Kearns, Peter Key and Anton Schwaighofer. Budget Optimization for Sponsored Search: Censored Learning in MDPs. UAI 2012. [BB11] Leon Bottou and Olivier Bousquet. The trade-offs of large scale learning. In Suvrit Sra, Sebastian Nowozin, and Stephen J. Wright, editors, Optimization for Machine Learning. MIT Press, 2011. [BKS13] Ashwinkumar Badanidiyuru, Robert Kleinberg and Aleksandrs Slivkins. Bandits with Knapsacks. FOCS, 2013. [BS12] Sebastien Bubeck and Aleksandrs Slivkins. The best of both worlds: stochastic and adversarial bandits. COLT, 2012. [CBG06] Nicol? Cesa-Bianchi and Claudio Gentile. Tracking the best hyperplane with a simple budget perceptron. COLT 2006. [CKS04] Koby Crammer, Jaz Kandola and Yoram Singer. Online Classification on a Budget. NIPS 2003. [DSSS05] Ofer Dekel, Shai Shalev-shwartz and Yoram Singer. The Forgetron: A kernel-based perceptron on a fixed budget. NIPS 2004. [SAL+11] Yevgeny Seldin, Peter Auer, Fran?ois Laviolette, John Shawe-Taylor, and Ronald Ortner. PAC-Bayesian Analysis of Contextual Bandits. NIPS, 2011. [SBCA13] Yevgeny Seldin, Peter Bartlett, Koby Crammer, and Yasin Abbasi-Yadkori. Prediction with Limited Advice and Multiarmed Bandits with Paid Observations. 2013. [SSB12] Shai Shalev-Shwartz and Aharon Birnbaum. Learning halfspaces with the zero-one loss: Time-accuracy trade-offs. NIPS, 2012. [SSS08] Shai Shalev-Shwartz and Nathan Srebro. SVM Optimization: Inverse Dependence on Training Set Size. ICML, 2008. [SSST12] Shai Shalev-Shwartz, Ohad Shamir, and Eran Tromer. Using more data to speed-up training time. AISTATS, 2012. [VC74] Vladimir N. Vapnik and Alexey Ya. Chervonenkis. Theory of pattern recognition. Nauka, Moscow (in Russian), 1974. German translation: W.N.Wapnik, A.Ya.Tschervonenkis (1979), Theorie der Zeichenerkennug, Akademia, Berlin. Call for Sponsors Your logo could be here.... If you are interested to sponsor this event, please, contact yevgeny.seldin at gmail. Call for Contributions We invite submission of *abstracts and open problems* to the workshop. Abstracts and open problems should be at most 4 pages long in the NIPS format . Appendices are allowed, but the organizers reserve the right to evaluate the submissions based on the first 4 pages only. Submissions should be NOT anonymous. Selected abstracts and open problems will be presented as talks or posters during the workshop. Contributions should be emailed to yevgeny.seldin at gmail. IMPORTANT DATES *Submission Deadline:* October 9. *Notification of Acceptance:* October 23. EVALUATION CRITERIA * Theory and application-oriented contributions are equally welcome. * All submissions should emphasize relevance to the workshop subject. * Submission of previously published work or work under review is allowed, in particular NIPS-2013 submissions. However, for oral presentations preference will be given to novel work or work that was not yet presented elsewhere (for example, recent journal publications or NIPS posters). All double submissions must be clearly declared as such! Invited Speakers (tentative) Alexandrs Slivkins , Microsoft Research Michael Mahoney , Stanford Organizers Yevgeny Seldin , Queensland University of Technology and UC Berkeley Koby Crammer , The Technion Yasin Abbasi-Yadkori , Queensland University of Technology and UC Berkeley Ralf Herbrich , Amazon Peter Bartlett , UC Berkeley and Queensland University of Technology Schedule TBA -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From antonior at ffclrp.usp.br Fri Aug 23 07:39:28 2013 From: antonior at ffclrp.usp.br (Antonio C. Roque) Date: Fri, 23 Aug 2013 08:39:28 -0300 Subject: Connectionists: Job openings at NEUROMAT Project in Brazil Message-ID: Please announce this job opportunity in Brazil (apologies for cross-posting): IT Specialist positions in the NeuroMat Project (University of Sao Paulo - Brazil) The Center for Research, Innovation, and Dissemination NeuroMat is offering technical training scholarships for Computer Science/Engineering professionals interested in applying their Computing experience on world class scientific research. The recipient will interact with researchers from USP and other NeuroMat collaborating institutions in activities of development, customization, maintenance, and deployment of software to support the research activities of the center. The NeuroMat project aims to integrate modeling with basic and applied research at the frontier of neuroscience. The goal of the project is to develop a mathematical and computational framework leading to the theoretical understanding of neural systems, fully integrated with experimental research in neuroscience. New models, theories, and open source software will be developed to handle the huge quantity of data produced by current experimental research and to provide a conceptual framework for the multiscale aspects of neural phenomena. Neuromat is a "Research, Innovation and Dissemination Center" funded by FAPESP (Sao Paulo Research Foundation), an independent public foundation with the mission to foster research and the scientific and technological development of the State of S?o Paulo, in Brazil. http://www.numec.prp.usp.br/NeuroMat/Presentation?set_language=en-us - Number of available positions: 3 - Monthly Salary: BRL 5.908,80 (for 40 hours of work per week) - Requirements: applicants should be graduated in Computer Science/Engineering (or other related area) and must have a Ph.D. degree OR at least five years of proven experience in Information Technology. Candidates with less experience may still apply and an appropriate salary will be negotiated with FAPESP. - Duration: six to twenty-four months - Place of work: Institute of Mathematics and Statistics (IME) - University of S?o Paulo (USP) - S?o Paulo / Brazil - Planned activities include one or more of the following: database modeling, implementation and management; development of open source computational systems and tools to acquire, store and analyze data from neuroscience experiments such as the electrophysiological (EEG, TMS, EMG, etc.), neuroimaging (MRI, MEG, etc.) and behavioral experiments; creation and maintenance of the project Web portal. The software developed in NeuroMat will be both used internally by members of the project as a means to carry on the project-related research as well as released as Open Source Software on the Web portal of the project. The scholarships will be awarded to candidates capable of carrying out at least one of the following activities: 1) Software architecture and development 2) Software testing, packaging, and distribution 3) Dissemination of results in Web portal - Candidates with one or more of the following skills will be preferred: databases (preferable PostgreSQL or MySQL/MariaDB), object-oriented programming and Web programming (JavaScript, Java, PHP, Python, Ruby on Rails, or others), persistence frameworks (for example, Hibernate and ActiveRecord), agile software development, software testing, Matlab, processing of biological signals (such as EEG, EMG and fMRI). The trainees will not only offer support for the products to be developed by the research project but will also be trained by the USP FLOSS Competence Center (http://ccsl.ime.usp.br) in advanced techniques for the development and dissemination of open source software and digital media. To apply for one of these positions, please send your CV to Lourdes Netto ( lourdesv at ime.usp.br) until September 15th, 2013. -- Dr. Antonio C. Roque Professor Associado Departamento de Fisica FFCLRP, Universidade de Sao Paulo 14040-901 Ribeirao Preto-SP Brazil - Brasil E-mails: antonior at ffclrp.usp.br aroquesilva at gmail.com URL: www.sisne.org Tels: +55 16 3602-3768 (sala/office); +55 16 3602-3859 (lab) FAX: +55 16 3602-4887 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rsalakhu at cs.toronto.edu Fri Aug 23 13:15:54 2013 From: rsalakhu at cs.toronto.edu (Ruslan Salakhutdinov) Date: Fri, 23 Aug 2013 13:15:54 -0400 (EDT) Subject: Connectionists: CFP: NIPS 2013 Deep Learning Workshop Message-ID: ============================================================ CALL FOR PAPERS NIPS 2013 Deep Learning Workshop December 9th or 10th, 2013 Lake Tahoe, USA. https://sites.google.com/site/deeplearningworkshopnips2013/ Important dates: Submission deadline: October 9th, 2013 Acceptance notification: October 23rd, 2013 ============================================================ Overview: Deep Learning algorithms attempt to discover good representations, at multiple levels of abstraction. There has been rapid progress in this area in recent years, both in terms of algorithms and in terms of applications, but many challenges remain. In this workshop, we will bring together researchers interested in deep learning to review the recent technical progress, discuss the challenges, and identify promising future research directions. The workshop invites paper submissions that will be either presented as oral or in poster format. We encourage submissions on the following (non-exhaustive) list of topics: * deep learning algorithms and models (dropout, deep Boltzmann machines, recurrent neural network, etc.) * unsupervised feature learning models (restricted Boltzmann machines, autoencoders, sparse coding, etc.) * inference and optimization algorithms * semi-supervised and transfer learning algorithms * theoretical foundations of unsupervised / deep learning * applications of deep learning (convolutional networks, word and sentence representation models, etc.) Through invited talks, a panel discussion and presentations by the participants, this workshop will showcase the latest advances in deep learning and address questions that are at the center of current deep learning research (what roles do stochasticity/unsupervised learning/optimization play in deep learning, what are the desiderata for models of images/text/speech, etc.). Panel discussions will be led by the members of the organizing committee as well as by prominent representatives of the machine learning, computer vision and natural language processing communities. Submissions: We solicit submissions of unpublished research papers. Authors are encouraged to restrict themselves to 8 pages (plus 1 additional page containing references only) and must satisfy the formatting instructions of the NIPS 2013 call for papers. Style files are available at http://nips.cc/PaperInformation/StyleFiles. More details on the submission process will be posted shortly. The best papers will be awarded by an oral presentation, all other accepted papers will have a poster presentation. Workshop Organizers: Yoshua Bengio (Universite de Montreal) Hugo Larochele (Universite de Sherbrooke) Ruslan Salakhutdinov (University of Toronto) https://sites.google.com/site/deeplearningworkshopnips2013/ From antti.honkela at hiit.fi Mon Aug 26 08:08:05 2013 From: antti.honkela at hiit.fi (Antti Honkela) Date: Mon, 26 Aug 2013 15:08:05 +0300 Subject: Connectionists: CfP: NIPS 2013 Workshop on Machine Learning Open Source Software: Towards Open Workflows Message-ID: <521B4525.7010806@hiit.fi> ********************************************************************** Call for Contributions Workshop on Machine Learning Open Source Software 2013: Towards Open Workflows http://mloss.org/workshop/nips13/ at NIPS 2013, Lake Tahoe, Nevada, United States, 9th or 10th December, 2013 ********************************************************************** The NIPS Workshop on Machine Learning Open Source Software (MLOSS) will held in Lake Tahoe (NV) on the 9th or 10th of December, 2013. The workshop is aimed at all machine learning researchers who wish to have their algorithms and implementations included as a part of the greater open source machine learning environment. Continuing the tradition of well received workshops on MLOSS at NIPS 2006, NIPS 2008 and ICML 2010, we plan to have a workshop that is a mix of invited speakers, contributed talks and discussion sessions. For 2013, we focus on workflows and pipelines. Many algorithms and tools have reached a level of maturity which allows them to be reused and integrated into larger systems. Important Dates =============== * Submission Date: October 9th, 2013 * Notification of Acceptance: October 23rd, 2013 * Workshop date: December 9th or 10th, 2013 Call for Contributions ====================== The organizing committee is currently seeking abstracts for talks at MLOSS 2013. MLOSS is a great opportunity for you to tell the community about your use, development, philosophy, or other activities related to open source software in machine learning. The committee will select several submitted abstracts for 20-minute talks. Submission Types ================ 1. Software packages This includes (but is not limited to) numeric packages (as e.g. R, Octave, Python), machine learning toolboxes and implementations of ML-algorithms, similar to the MLOSS track at JMLR (http://jmlr.org/mloss/ ). Submission format: 1 page abstract which must contain a link to the project description on mloss.org. Any bells and whistles can be put on your own project page, and of course provide this link on mloss.org. Note: Projects must adhere to a recognized Open Source License (cf. http://www.opensource.org/licenses/ ) and the source code must have been released at the time of submission. Submissions will be reviewed based on the status of the project at the time of the submission deadline. If accepted, the presentation must include a software demo. 2. Other submissions This category is open for position papers, interesting projects and ideas that may not be new software themselves, but link to machine learning and open source software. Submission format: abstract with no page limit. Please note that there will be no proceedings, i.e. the abstracts will not be published. We look forward for submissions that are novel, exciting and that appeal to the wider community. For more details see: http://mloss.org/workshop/nips13/ Please submit your contributions at https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=mloss2013 Organizers ========== * Antti Honkela University of Helsinki, Helsinki Institute for Information Technology HIIT, Helsinki, Finland * Cheng Soon Ong NICTA, Victoria Research Laboratory, Melbourne, Australia From ahu at cs.stir.ac.uk Sat Aug 24 12:27:41 2013 From: ahu at cs.stir.ac.uk (Dr Amir Hussain) Date: Sat, 24 Aug 2013 17:27:41 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: Final CFP: Elsevier Neural Networks journal Special Issue on Affective and Cognitive Learning Systems for Big Social Data Analysis Message-ID: Final week to go - extended submission deadline: 30 Aug 2013! Special Issue details at: http://www.journals.elsevier.com/neural-networks/call-for-papers/special-issue-on-affective-and-cognitive-learning-systems/ Best wishes Amir E-mail: ahu at cs.stir.ac.uk http://www.cs.stir.ac.uk/~ahu/ -- The University of Stirling has been ranked in the top 12 of UK universities for graduate employment*. 94% of our 2012 graduates were in work and/or further study within six months of graduation. *The Telegraph The University of Stirling is a charity registered in Scotland, number SC 011159. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From wachtler at biologie.uni-muenchen.de Fri Aug 23 16:42:40 2013 From: wachtler at biologie.uni-muenchen.de (Thomas Wachtler) Date: Fri, 23 Aug 2013 22:42:40 +0200 (CEST) Subject: Connectionists: Open Position: Postdoc/Developer in Neuroinformatics at LMU Munich Message-ID: At the German INCF Node (G-Node), Ludwig-Maximilians-Universit?t M?nchen, a full-time position is available to join the G-Node team in developing neuroinformatics solutions for data management in neurophysiology. The amount, variety and complexity of data in this field brings the challenge of large-scale data access, consistent storage and efficient data analysis. G-Node is interacting closely with research labs to address these challenges with state of the art neuroinformatics methods. Current developments include a data sharing platform with an API for unified data access and client tools for integration with the scientist's data analysis environment (www.g-node.org/tools-and-services). G-Node is part of the Bernstein Network Computational Neuroscience (nncn.de), is collaborating with the INCF Secretariat (incf.org) and other INCF National Nodes, and is involved in teaching and training activities. The position involves working in a small team of developers within a lively neuroscience environment, with ample opportunities for bridging between neuroscience research and neuroinformatics. Tasks will include contributing to the development and enhancement of G-Node tools and services, working closely with neuroscience laboratories that use, or plan to use, neuroinformatics solutions, to identify needs, problems, and solutions, incorporating the acquired knowledge for architectural design decisions, software development and improvements, and interacting with all G-Node partners. Candidates should have excellent programming skills, preferably in Python, C/C++, and/or Java, knowledge about relational databases, the ability to work in a team, and a strong interest in the development of novel open-source solutions for neuroscience. Experience in further fields of relevance, such as web development (Javascript, HTML/CSS, web frameworks), semantic web technologies, scientific software and analysis, experimental or computational neuroscience, would be beneficial. The position is available immediately, salary level is according to German payscale TV-L, duration is two years with possibility of renewal. Applications should include CV, statement of experience and motivation, and names of referees. Informal inquiries prior to application are welcome. Applications should be submitted by September 30, 2013, but applications will be accepted until the position is filled. To apply, please send your application as pdf by email to wachtler at bio.lmu.de. -- Thomas Wachtler Department Biologie II Ludwig-Maximilians-Universit?t M?nchen Grosshaderner Str. 2 82152 Planegg-Martinsried Germany Tel: +49 [0]89/2180-74810 Fax: +49 [0]89/2180-74803 From florian.roehrbein at in.tum.de Mon Aug 26 11:31:41 2013 From: florian.roehrbein at in.tum.de (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Florian_R=F6hrbein?=) Date: Mon, 26 Aug 2013 17:31:41 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: [flagship] Software Architect HBP Neurorobotics Message-ID: <521B74DD.4010700@in.tum.de> The Neurorobotics Division of the Human Brain Project, led by Prof. A. Knoll (TUM), is looking for an experienced Software Architect / Engineer (C++) to build up its team. Specific responsibilities include: . Design, specification and development of a distributed and performance optimized C++ middleware to connect various neural simulators with physics based robotics and environment simulations and visualizations . Design and development of a high-fidelity HPC-based physics simulator for robotics . Refactoring of large C++ parallel tools and libraries targeting multiple platforms. . Close collaboration with scientific and software development teams at EPFL (Lausanne) as well as external collaborators Essential skills and experience required: . Expert knowledge in C++ software design/implementation . Extensive experience using UNIX/Linux operating systems . Experience in software development targeting multiple operating systems and architectures. . Very good familiarity with software development life-cycle management, such as versioning, debugging, workflows, testing, QA . Demonstrable expertise in distributed and/or parallel computing -- especially MPI . Good team player and fluent English in speech and writing . Willingness to travel Preferred: . Experience with real-time systems/robotics/simulation environments . Game engine development experience . Experience in Python, the scientific software stack (numpy, scipy, ...), and wrapping technologies (Boost.Python, Cython) Profile: . Bachelor's or Master's degree in computer science, physics or equivalent . Successful development track record making significant contributions to software projects . Experience with software design and maintenance of medium-scale projects What we offer: An internationally visible and rising project in simulation-based research in neurorobotics using supercomputers and neuromorphic hardware. A young, dynamic, inter-disciplinary, and international working environment Start date: 01.10.2013. Deadline for application: position open until filled Duration of contract: 1 year, renewable Activity rate: 100% Applicants should submit a cover letter and a detailed CV in PDF format only, with file name "_HBP-NR1_Coverletter" and "_HBP-NR1_CV" electronically toflorian.roehrbein at in.tum.de. Please use "Software Architect / Engineer (C++)" as subject of your email. http://www.humanbrainproject.eu/ http://www6.in.tum.de/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From alfredo.petrosino at uniparthenope.it Sun Aug 25 03:05:06 2013 From: alfredo.petrosino at uniparthenope.it (Alfredo Petrosino) Date: Sun, 25 Aug 2013 09:05:06 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: ICIAP 2013 in Naples, Italy - Call for Partecipation In-Reply-To: <51529CBF.8000209@uniparthenope.it> References: <51529CBF.8000209@uniparthenope.it> Message-ID: <5219ACA2.9030805@uniparthenope.it> Apologize for multiple posting **************************************************** The 17th International Conference on Image Analysis and Processing (ICIAP 2013) (www.iciap2013-naples.org), biennal international event promoted by the Italian Group of Researchers in Pattern Recognition (GIRPR) (www.girpr.org), member of the IAPR Society, is approaching and the highlights of the ICIAP 2013 program are summarized as below. We invite all of you to join us for this exciting event in Naples! ------- ICIAP 2013 will held in Naples, Italy from 9 to 13 Septemebr, 2013. It will have more than 160 high quality manuscripts, with an overall acceptance rate of 45.76%, in both oral and poster sessions, along with the 6 tutorials and 5 workshops listed below. The conference will also include demos and industrial spotlights. The detailed program is available at The deadline for advanced registration is September 2, 2013 offering discounts for IEEE TCPAMI and IAPR members. Full registration includes admission to all technical sessions, workshops and tutorials, in addition to daily refreshments, receptions and one copy of the proceedings. Visit to start your registration process. Details of the venues and accommodation can found at ***************************************************** ICIAP 2013 Invited Speakers Wednesday, September 11, 2013 Ching Y. Suen, Concordia University (Canada) Sankar K. Pal, Indian Statistical Institute (India) Thursday, September 12, 2013 Antonio Torralba, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (USA) Jiri Matas, Czech Technical University (Czech Republic), Friday, September 13, 2013 Fei-Fei Li, Stanford University (USA), **************************************************** ICIAP 2013 Tutorials and Short Courses Monday, September 9, 2013 Digital Camera Images: Captured Scene Information vs. Engineered Errors, Alessandro Rizzi, Italy and John McCann, USA Hands on Advanced Bag-of-Words Models for Visual Recognition, Lamberto Ballan and Lorenzo Seidenari, Italy Tuesday, September 10, 2013 Discrete Optimization in Computer Vision, Nikos Komodakis and Pawan Kumar, France Non-Rigid 3D Reconstruction from Images, Alessio Del Bue, Italy Bio-Inspired Attention Methods in Computer Vision: Theory, Models and Biological Realities, John Tsotsos, Canada Artificial Consciousness: Theoretical and Empirical issues, Riccardo Manzotti, Italy **************************************************** ICIAP 2013 Associated Workshops: Monday, September 9, 2013 Multimedia for Cultural Heritage (MM4CH) Organizers: Costantino Grana, Johan Oomen, Giuseppe Serra; Emerging Aspects on Handwritten Signature Processing (EAHSP) Organizers: Michael Fairhurst, Donato Impedovo, Giuseppe Pirlo; First International Workshop on Assistive Computer Vision and Robotics (ACVR) Organizers: Marco Leo and Danilo P. Mandic; Tuesday, September 10, 2013 Pattern Recognition in Proteomics, Structural Biology and Bioinformatics (PR PS BB) Organizers: Virginio Cantoni, Michele Ceccarelli, Robert Murphy; Social Behaviour Analysis (SBA) Organizers: Alberto del Bimbo, Pietro Pala, Maja Pantic. **************************************************** ICIAP2013 is endorsed by the International Association for Pattern Recognition, IEEE Computer Society PAMI TC, IEEE Computational Intelligence Society. Additional thanks to Google, ST-Microlectronics, Ansaldo ST, Selex ES,CIRA, Unlimited Software, GNCS, Campania Region, CNR and, Comune di Napoli for their financial support and other activities. Alfredo Petrosino - ICIAP 2013 General Chair _______________________________________________ visionlist mailing list visionlist at visionscience.com http://visionscience.com/mailman/listinfo/visionlist From cie.conference.series at gmail.com Mon Aug 26 10:57:01 2013 From: cie.conference.series at gmail.com (CiE Conference Series) Date: Mon, 26 Aug 2013 15:57:01 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: CIE 2014: Language, Life, Limits. June 23-27, 2014, Budapest. Preliminary Announcement. Message-ID: ---------------------------------------------------------------- P R E L I M I N A R Y A N N O U N C E M E N T COMPUTABILITY IN EUROPE 2014: Language, Life, Limits Budapest, Hungary June 23 - 27, 2014 http://www.illc.uva.nl/CiE/index.php?page=22_8 ---------------------------------------------------------------- CiE 2014 is the tenth conference organized by CiE (Computability in Europe), a European association of mathematicians, logicians, computer scientists, philosophers, physicists and others interested in new developments in computability and their underlying significance for the real world. Previous meetings have taken place in Amsterdam (2005), Swansea (2006), Siena (2007), Athens (2008), Heidelberg (2009), Ponte Dalgada (2010), Sofia (2011), Cambridge (2012), and Milan (2013). Please mark the conference dates in your agendas for 2014. CONFIRMED TUTORIAL SPEAKER Wolfgang Thomas (RWTH Aachen) CONFIRMED INVITED SPEAKERS Alessandra Carbone (Universite Pierre et Marie Curie and CNRS Paris) Maribel Fernandez (King's College London) Przemyslaw Prusinkiewicz (University of Calgary) Eva Tardos (Cornell University) Albert Visser (Utrecht University) SPECIAL SESSIONS on History and Philosophy of Computing organizers: Liesbeth de Mol, Giuseppe Primiero Computational Linguistics organizers: Maria Dolores Jimenez-Lopez, Gabor Proszeky Computability Theory organizers: Karen Lange, TBA Bio-inspired Computation organizers: Marian Gheorghe, Florin Manea Online Algorithms organizers: Joan Boyar, Csanad Imreh Complexity in Automata Theory organizers: Markus Lohrey, Giovanni Pighizzini The motto of CiE 2014 "Language, Life, Limits" intends to put a special focus on relations between computational linguistics, natural computing, and more traditional fields of computability theory. This is to be understood in its broadest sense including computational aspects of problems in linguistics, studying models of computation and algorithms inspired by physical and biological approaches as well as exhibiting limits (and non-limits) of computability when considering different models of computation arising from such approaches. As with previous CiE conferences, the allover glueing perspective is to strengthen the mutual benefits of analyzing traditional and new computational paradigms in their corresponding frameworks both with respect to practical applications and a deeper theoretical understanding. The conference will address these aspects besides the more established lines of research of Computational Complexity and the interplay between Proof Theory and Computation. Novel views that rely on physical and biological processes and models to find new ways of tackling computations and improving their efficiency are welcome. Also, massive data analysis and computations are a recent subject of attention, since the most recent technologies produce huge amounts of data, and managing such data requires some theoretical frameworks. In all cases we are looking for fundamental and theoretical submissions. In line with other conferences in this series, CiE 2014 has a broad scope and provides a forum for the discussion of theoretical and practical issues in Computability with an emphasis on new paradigms of computation and the development of their mathematical theory. We particularly invite papers that build bridges between different parts of the research community. The PROGRAMME COMMITTEE consists of: Gerard Alberts (Amsterdam) Sandra Alves (Porto) Hajnal Andreka (Budapest) Luis Antunes (Porto) Arnold Beckmann (Swansea) Laurent Bienvenu (Paris) Paola Bonizzoni (Milan) Olivier Bournez (Palaiseau) Vasco Brattka (Munich) Bruno Codenotti (Pisa) Barry Cooper (Leeds) Erzsebet Csuhaj-Varju (Budapest, co-chair) Michael J. Dineen (Auckland) Erich Graedel (Aachen) Marie Hicks (Chicago IL) Natasha Jonoska (Tampa FL) Jarkko Kari (Turku) Elham Kashefi (Edinburgh) Viv Kendon (Leeds) Satoshi Kobayashi (Tokyo) Andras Kornai (Budapest) Marcus Kracht (Bielefeld) Benedikt Loewe (Amsterdam & Hamburg) Klaus Meer (Cottbus, co-chair) Joseph R. Mileti (Grinnell IA) Georg Moser (Innsbruck) Benedek Nagy (Debrecen) Sara Negri (Helsinki) Thomas Schwentick (Dortmund) Neil Thapen (Prague) Peter van Emde Boas (Amsterdam) Xizhong Zheng (Glenside PA) In a Call for Papers to be sent out in October 2013, the PC will invite all researchers in the area of the conference to submit their papers for presentation at CiE 2014. The best of the accepted papers will be published in the conference proceedings within the Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS) series of Springer, which will be available at the conference. ____________________________________________________________________ ASSOCIATION COMPUTABILITY IN EUROPE http://www.computability.org.uk CiE Conference Series http://www.illc.uva.nl/CiE CiE 2014 http://www.illc.uva.nl/CiE/index.php?page=22_8 CiE Membership Application Form http://www.cs.swan.ac.uk/acie Computability (Journal of CiE) http://www.computability.de/journal/ CiE on FaceBook https://www.facebook.com/AssnCiE Association CiE on Twitter https://twitter.com/AssociationCiE ____________________________________________________________________ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From yael at Princeton.EDU Fri Aug 23 17:15:47 2013 From: yael at Princeton.EDU (Yael Niv) Date: Fri, 23 Aug 2013 17:15:47 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: RLDM2013: Early registration deadline fast approaching In-Reply-To: <02AA476C-7FFE-4F4B-8B84-8B3909CA04E3@Princeton.EDU> References: <02AA476C-7FFE-4F4B-8B84-8B3909CA04E3@Princeton.EDU> Message-ID: The 1st Multidisciplinary Conference on Reinforcement Learning and Decision Making (RLDM2013) www.rldm.org Oct 25-27, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey, USA ====================================================== Registration for RLDM2013 is now open at http://rldm.org/rldm2013/registration-information/ Early registration deadline: Aug 31st, 11:59PM EST Early registration fees are $350 for regular registration and $150 for student/postdoc. Late registration: add $100 Registration fees include three light breakfasts and all coffee breaks, two lunches, and one banquet dinner. We are excited to announce that RLDM2013 attracted 159 submissions. Accept/reject notifications and reviews have now been sent --- if you are a corresponding author and did not get your notification, please log in to CMT to view your abstracts, and notify us so we can resend your decision letter. 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 pfeiffer at ini.phys.ethz.ch Mon Aug 26 18:22:14 2013 From: pfeiffer at ini.phys.ethz.ch (Michael Pfeiffer) Date: Tue, 27 Aug 2013 00:22:14 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: MSc program in Neural Systems and Computation - University of Zurich and ETH Zurich Message-ID: <521BD516.9010402@ini.phys.ethz.ch> We are inviting applications for the MSc program in Neural Systems and Computation, an interdisciplinary program offered as a Joint Master Program by the University of Zurich and ETH Zurich, Switzerland. The program offers a theoretical and laboratory training in neural computation and systems neuroscience. It offers hands-on knowledge of data gathering, analysis and scientific presentation. Students join an international and interdisciplinary research community with expertise in neuroinformatics, advanced experimental techniques and neuromorphic engineering. Further information can be found on our homepage http://www.nsc.uzh.ch. We offer a specialized full-time Masters program open to students with a Bachelor's degree in the following disciplines: neurosciences, information technology, electrical engineering, biology, physics, computer sciences, chemistry, mathematics, and mechanical/chemical/control engineering. The core courses (all offered in English) provide a common foundation for students with different educational backgrounds, and cover the following: 1. Systems Neurosciences 2. Neural Computation and Theoretical Neuroscience 3. Neurotechnologies and Neuromorphic Engineering The application deadline for students starting in Spring Semester 2014 is *September 15th 2013*. Details about the application process and required documents can be found here: http://www.nsc.uzh.ch/?page_id=10 The program is affiliated with the Mathematics and Natural Sciences Faculty (MNF) at the University of Zurich (UZH) and the Information Technology and Electrical Engineering Department (D-ITET) of the ETH Zurich. All applications are handled by the University of Zurich. Application documents should be sent to nsc at ini.uzh.ch. Michael Pfeiffer -- ========================================= Dr. Michael Pfeiffer Postdoc, Director of Studies NSC Institute of Neuroinformatics University of Zurich and ETH Zurich Winterthurerstrasse 190 CH-8057 Zurich, Switzerland Tel. +41 44 635 30 45 Fax +41 44 635 30 53 pfeiffer (at) ini.phys.ethz.ch http://www.ini.uzh.ch/~pfeiffer/ ========================================= -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From thomas.wennekers at plymouth.ac.uk Mon Aug 26 14:58:39 2013 From: thomas.wennekers at plymouth.ac.uk (Thomas Wennekers) Date: Mon, 26 Aug 2013 19:58:39 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: Plymouth University Research Studentships (PhD): 12 positions Message-ID: <201308261958.39598.thomas.wennekers@plymouth.ac.uk> Dear All Please note that the studentships announced below are different from those advertised two weeks ago on this list. Regards Thomas http://www.cognovo.eu http://www1.plymouth.ac.uk/research/cognition/Pages/default.aspx Plymouth University Research Studentships (PhD): 12 positions Cognition Institute | Plymouth University Fixed term 36 months, starting 1st April 2014 Twelve University-funded PhD positions are available on the CogNovo project. CogNovo is an Innovative Doctoral Programme funded by the EU Marie Curie initiative and Plymouth University to foster research in the emerging field of Cognitive Innovation. CogNovo offers transdisciplinary research training that combines scientific studies of the neural correlates and mechanisms of creativity, with investigations into the role of creativity in human cognition, and their application in sustainable technological and social innovation. Selected candidates will be registered for a comprehensive PhD programme that includes specialised research on specific topics, as well as training workshops covering experimental methods, cognitive neuroscience, computational modelling, humanities and human values, experimental psychology, creative arts, cognitive robotics and entrepreneurship. CogNovo also offers secondment possibilities to academic and commercial partners across the world. Candidates should apply for specific projects, indicating their top 3 choices. For further details of CogNovo and the research projects available, please see: www.cognovo.eu. Application forms are available for download from the website. Eligibility: An excellent 1st degree, good verbal and written communication skills in English, and an interest in multi-disciplinary research are essential. Specific educational prerequisites vary and are indicated in the project web-pages. More information on individual projects can be found on the CogNovo Projects Page. These positions are open to all UK and EU citizens with appropriate qualifications. Applicants who are normally required to pay overseas fees may also apply, but will have to cover the difference between the Home/EU and the overseas tuition fee rates (approximately ?9,790 per annum). For more details on university studentships, please visit www.plymouth.ac.uk/postgraduate. University studentships include full Home/EU tuition fees plus a stipend of ?13,726 per annum. Submitting an application: Applicants should send a completed application form along with a covering letter detailing their suitability for the studentship, C.V. and 2 academic references to Catherine Johnson, Faculty of Science and Technology Research Office, Room A425, Portland Square, Plymouth PL4 8AA or e-mail catherine.johnson at plymouth.ac.uk. Closing date for applications: 12 noon, 30 November 2013 Shortlisted candidates will be invited for interview in January/February 2014. We regret that we may not be able to respond to all applications. Applicants who have not received an offer of a place by March 2014 should consider their application has been unsuccessful on this occasion. ________________________________ This email and any files with it are confidential and intended solely for the use of the recipient to whom it is addressed. If you are not the intended recipient then copying, distribution or other use of the information contained is strictly prohibited and you should not rely on it. If you have received this email in error please let the sender know immediately and delete it from your system(s). Internet emails are not necessarily secure. While we take every care, Plymouth University accepts no responsibility for viruses and it is your responsibility to scan emails and their attachments. Plymouth University does not accept responsibility for any changes made after it was sent. Nothing in this email or its attachments constitutes an order for goods or services unless accompanied by an official order form. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From s.gruen at fz-juelich.de Tue Aug 27 12:40:23 2013 From: s.gruen at fz-juelich.de (Prof Sonja Gruen) Date: Tue, 27 Aug 2013 18:40:23 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: Open position: Coordinator Software Technology, in Juelich Message-ID: <521CD677.8060605@fz-juelich.de> The Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine (INM) at the Juelich Research Center in Germany investigates the structure and function of the brain. The department INM-6 consists of 3 groups that conduct research in the field of computational and systems neuroscience. The group of Statistical Neuroscience headed by Prof. Sonja Gr?n aims to develop computational methods to analyze the joint activity of neuronal networks monitored by electrophysiological multi-channel recordings, and to apply these methods to data in the framework of international collaborations. The group is hiring a Coordinator Software Technology (m/f) to strengthen its international and interdisciplinary team. Your tasks: Coordination of the development of analysis tools, and making that software available via technology platforms. Implementation of statistical analysis tools for neuronal data processing. Establishment of professional workflows within the group and with experimental partners. Responsibility for documentation. Internet presentation of the software. Integration of installation routines for workstations and high performance computing clusters. Organization of storage and transfer of large data. You will represent the technology at scientific conferences, during educational courses, to the public, and within the framework of the Human Brain Project. Your profile: University degree in mathematics or natural sciences; you are convincing with your confident attitude as well as good communication skills, and are a team worker in an international and interdisciplinary environment; very good expertise in the programming languages Python, Matlab, and C/C++, and in the standard Linux tools for creating, distributing, and evolving software; experience in conceptualizing and programming scientific analysis methods; experience in creating documentation and course material; experience in creating parallel and distributed programs; solid knowledge of versioning and bug tracking systems; integration in the international Computational Neuroscience community; experience in web development, in particular WIKI technologies; fluent in spoken and written English. We offer: a position in a creative and international team that conducts research at the frontiers of science, themes ranging from computational neuroscience to simulation technology. The J?lich Research Center is one of the largest research centers in Europe, with excellent scientific equipment including the fastest supercomputer in Europe, is located on a green campus, and near the cultural centers Cologne, D?sseldorf, and Aachen/Aix-La-Chapelle. Applications, including a motivation letter, CV, and publication list, should be sent to: Prof. Dr. Sonja Gr?n Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine (INM-6) and Institute for Advanced Simulation (IAS-6) J?lich Research Centre and JARA 52425 J?lich, Germany s.gruen at fz-juelich.de www.csn.fz-juelich.de -- Prof. Dr. Sonja Gruen Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine (INM-6) Computational and Systems Neuroscience Institute for Advanced Simulation (IAS-6) Theoretical Neuroscience Juelich Research Centre and JARA Juelich, Germany and Theoretical Systems Neurobiology RWTH Aachen University Aachen, Germany tel. +49-(0)2461-61-4748 (secr), -9302, -9460 (fax) mob. +49-(0)175-2972436 s.gruen at fz-juelich.de www.csn.fz-juelich.de ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Forschungszentrum Juelich GmbH 52425 Juelich Sitz der Gesellschaft: Juelich Eingetragen im Handelsregister des Amtsgerichts Dueren Nr. HR B 3498 Vorsitzender des Aufsichtsrats: MinDir Dr. Karl Eugen Huthmacher Geschaeftsfuehrung: Prof. Dr. Achim Bachem (Vorsitzender), Karsten Beneke (stellv. Vorsitzender), Prof. Dr.-Ing. Harald Bolt, Prof. Dr. Sebastian M. Schmidt ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Das Forschungszentrum oeffnet seine Tueren am Sonntag, 29. September, von 10:00 bis 17:00 Uhr: http://www.tagderneugier.de -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From gaute.einevoll at umb.no Mon Aug 26 12:47:12 2013 From: gaute.einevoll at umb.no (Gaute Einevoll) Date: Mon, 26 Aug 2013 16:47:12 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: Postdoctoral position in Computational Neuroscience (cellular/molecular modeling) in Norway/San Diego Message-ID: <50AADEA29903F5469B8A51DA48B9D49630550408@A-EXCH-MBX2.ans.umb.no> There is an opening for a 3-year postdoctoral position in computational neuroscience (cellular/molecular modeling) in Norway/San Diego. The research area is cellular and molecular modeling, and in the project new genetic discoveries from large GWAS-studies (genome-wide association studies) of brain diseases will be investigated using neural modeling. In particular, biophysical neuron models will be used to study the effect of identified genes affecting neuronal transmission and excitability by manipulating individual receptors/channels/intracellular signaling system, and investigating how they interact. The positions are funded for three years, including some periods working at UC San Diego. The postdoc will work in a project funded by the Research Council of Norway - FriMedBio program. The fellow will together with two other already hired postdocs be key scientific personnel in the project. We can offer an exciting research environment with a multidisciplinary profile and large opportunities for academic development. The postdocs will work at the KG Jebsen Centre for Psychosis research (TOP Study Group), and in close collaboration with the Computational Neuroscience Group at the Norwegian University of Life Science at ?s (compneuro.umb.no) and the Multimodal Imaging Laboratory at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) (mmil.ucsd.edu). Application deadline: September 15th, 2013 For more information about the position (including how to apply), see http://uio.easycruit.com/vacancy/1024163/70331?iso=no . Contacts: Professor Ole Andreassen, phone + 47 99038893 (o.a.andreassen at medisin.uio.no), Professor Anders M. Dale (amdale at gmail.com), Professor Gaute T Einevoll (Gaute.Einevoll at umb.no). %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% Gaute T. Einevoll Department of Mathematical Sciences and Technology Norwegian University of Life Sciences, 1432 Aas, Norway ph. +47-64965433, mobile: +47-95124536 email: Gaute.Einevoll at umb.no, web: compneuro.umb.no, arken.umb.no/~gautei private address: Utsiktsveien 22A, 1369 Stabekk, Norway From pl219 at cam.ac.uk Mon Aug 26 03:45:23 2013 From: pl219 at cam.ac.uk (Pietro Lio') Date: 26 Aug 2013 08:45:23 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: PhD position in Epigenetic mechanisms Bioinformatics and Modeling- University of Cambridge In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Description: 3 year doctoral position available from 1 October 2013 in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Cambridge. It involves Bioinformatics, machine learning and modelling of Epigenetic mechanisms early in life and developmentally relevant metabolic signalling, which create biological variation and have a long term effect on the health of individuals across the lifespan. The position is funded by the EU Marie Curie EpiHealthnet. The candidate will collaborate with Epihealthnet members/labs in several European countries who will provide knowledge and high quality data on different model diseases. Good knowledge in Computer Science AND/OR Mathematics AND/OR Bioinformatics and good programming skills (R, C/C++, Java) are important. Marie Curie funding is intended to promote mobility of early career researchers within the research community; candidates are only eligible for this post if they have not been resident within the UK for more than 12 months within the 3 years prior to 1 October 2013. Please send enquiry and CV to Dr Pietro Lio', email: pl219 at cam.ac.uk From Johan.Suykens at esat.kuleuven.be Wed Aug 28 09:02:35 2013 From: Johan.Suykens at esat.kuleuven.be (Johan Suykens) Date: Wed, 28 Aug 2013 15:02:35 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: ROKS 2013 videos Message-ID: <521DF4EB.7040605@esat.kuleuven.be> The ROKS 2013 videos are now available on http://videolectures.net/roks2013_leuven/ http://www.esat.kuleuven.be/stadius/ROKS2013/ Invited talks: Francis Bach, INRIA "Large-scale Convex Optimization for Machine Learning" Stephen Boyd, Stanford University "Domain-Specific Languages for Large-Scale Convex Optimization" Martin Jaggi, Ecole Polytechnique Paris "Connections between the Lasso and Support Vector Machines" James Kwok, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology "Learning from Weakly Labeled Data" Yurii Nesterov, Catholic University of Louvain "Subgradient methods for huge-scale optimization problems" Massimiliano Pontil, University College London "Multi-task Learning" Justin Romberg, Georgia Tech "Dynamic L1 Reconstruction" Bernhard Schoelkopf, Max Planck Institute Tuebingen "From Kernels to Causality" John Shawe-Taylor, University College London "Deep-er Kernels" Joel Tropp, California Institute of Technology "Living on the edge: A geometric theory of phase transitions in convex optimization" Ding-Xuan Zhou, City University of Hong Kong "Minimum error entropy principle for learning" From sturaga at gatsby.ucl.ac.uk Wed Aug 28 11:52:52 2013 From: sturaga at gatsby.ucl.ac.uk (Srini Turaga) Date: Wed, 28 Aug 2013 16:52:52 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: CFP: NIPS 2013 Workshop on "Acquiring and analyzing the activity of large neural ensembles" Message-ID: <62619A9C-B701-4C25-8176-956D5C33CB78@gatsby.ucl.ac.uk> ******************************************************************** NIPS 2013 Workshop Announcement "Acquiring and analyzing the activity of large neural ensembles" http://www.bccn-tuebingen.de/events/nips-workshop-2013.html Lake Tahoe, Nevada, United States 9th or 10th December, 2013 with partial support from Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience, T?bingen, Germany ******************************************************************** For many years, measurements of neural activity have either been restricted to recordings from single neurons or a very small number of neurons, and anatomical reconstructions to very sparse and incomplete neural circuits. Major advances in optical imaging (e.g. 2-photon and light-sheet microscopic imaging of calcium signals) and new electrode array technologies are now beginning to provide measurements of neural activity at an unprecedented scale. High-profile initiatives such as BRAIN (Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies) will fuel the development of ever more powerful techniques for mapping the structure and activity of neural circuits. Computational tools will be important to both the high-throughput acquisition of these large-scale datasets and in the analysis. Acquiring, analyzing and integrating these sources of data raises major challenges and opportunities for computational neuroscience and machine learning: ? What kind of data will be generated by large-scale functional measurements in the next decade? How will it be quantitatively or qualitatively different to the kind of data we have had previously? ? Algorithmic methods have played an important role in data acquisition, e.g. spike-sorting algorithms or spike-inference algorithms from calcium traces. In the future, what role will computational tools play in the process of high-throughput data acquistion? ? One of the key-challenges is to link anatomical with functional data -- what computational analysis tools will help in providing a link between these two disparate source of data? What can we learn by measuring ?functional connectivity?? ? What have we really learned from high-dimensional recordings that is new? What will we learn? What theories could we test, if only we had access to recordings from more neurons at the same time? We have invited scientists whose research addresses these questions including prominent technologists, experimental neuroscientists, theorists and computational neuroscientists. We foresee active discussions amongst this multi-disciplinary group of scientists to catalyze exciting new research and collaborations. Confirmed speakers include: ? Terry Sejnowski, Salk Institute (Keynote) ? Misha Ahrens, HHMI Janelia Farm Research Campus ? Mitya Chklovskii, HHMI Janelia Farm Research Campus ? Konrad Koerding, Northwestern University ? Jonathan Pillow, University of Texas at Austin ? Andreas Tolias, Baylor College of Medicine ? Joshua Vogelstein, Duke University Submission details: We invite abstract submissions for poster presentation at the workshop. Please submit abstracts (1 page max in pdf format) by email to neuralensembles at gmail.com. Important deadlines: Abstract submission deadline (for poster presentations): October 9th, 2013 Acceptance for poster presentation will be announced by October 23th, 2013 Organizing Committee: ? Srini Turaga (Gatsby Unit & WIBR, University College London) ? Lars B?sing (Gatsby Unit, University College London) ? Maneesh Sahani (Gatsby Unit, University College London) ? Jakob Macke (Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics and Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience, T?bingen, Germany) From pablo.varona at uam.es Thu Aug 29 04:59:49 2013 From: pablo.varona at uam.es (Pablo Varona) Date: Thu, 29 Aug 2013 10:59:49 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: PhD position in Closed-loop technologies for neuroscience research Message-ID: <521F0D85.1040009@uam.es> Dear colleagues, A four year doctoral position is available at the Biological Neurocomputation Group, Autonomous University of Madrid, Spain. This position is related to the project "Stimulus-response closed-loops for multiscale and bidirectional interaction with the nervous system" (MINECO TIN2012-30883). The research will focus on assessing information processing in neural transient dynamics with closed-loop technologies. See references below. The PhD position is funded by Spanish MINECO. Applicants should hold a Master's degree at the time of the formalization of the contract in one of the following (or related) disciplines: computer science, physics, biology, engineering (graduation date not earlier than January 1st 2010). Prior experience in the fields of electrophysiological recordings, EEG, neuroimaging, or computational neuroscience will be valuable. Enthusiasm for interdisciplinary research is required. Interested candidates, please send CV to Dr Pablo Varona: pablo.varona at uam.es Deadline for applications: September 9th, 2013. Related references: * P. Chamorro, C. Mu?iz, R. Levi, D. Arroyo. F.B. Rodriguez, P. Varona. 2012. Generalization of the dynamic clamp concept in neurophysiology and behavior. PLoS ONE 7(7): e40887. * R. Latorre, R. Levi, P. Varona. 2013. Transformation of Context-dependent Sensory Dynamics into Motor Behavior. PLoS Computational Biology 9(2): e1002908. * J. Fernandez-Vargas, H.U. Pfaff, F.B. Rodriguez, P. Varona. 2013. Assisted closed-loop optimization of SSVEP-BCI efficiency. Frontiers in Neural Circuits 7: 27. * D. Arroyo, P. Chamorro, J.M. Amig?, F.B. Rodr?guez, P. Varona. 2013. Event detection, multimodality and non-stationarity: Ordinal patterns, a tool to rule them all? The European Physical Journal Special Topics 222(2): 457-472. http://www.ii.uam.es/~pvarona http://www.ii.uam.es/~gnb -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From bhammer at techfak.uni-bielefeld.de Thu Aug 29 03:52:45 2013 From: bhammer at techfak.uni-bielefeld.de (Barbara Hammer) Date: Thu, 29 Aug 2013 09:52:45 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: open positions at CITEC centre of excellence Message-ID: <521EFDCD.3040102@techfak.uni-bielefeld.de> Apologies for cross-postings ------------------------ The CITEC centre of excellence at Bielefeld University, one of the leading institutes as concerns interactive intelligent systems, is offering up to 16 open positions for PhD candidates or postdocs in the frame of its graduate school. Applications should be submitted until October, 15th. Please see the site https://www.cit-ec.de/GraduateSchool/Call2013 for the call and the site https://www.cit-ec.de/GraduateSchool/Application2013 for the submission of applications. -- Prof. Dr. Barbara Hammer CITEC centre of excellence Bielefeld University D-33594 Bielefeld Phone: +49 521 / 106 12115 Fax: +49 521 / 106 12181 From wsenn at cns.unibe.ch Thu Aug 29 04:38:31 2013 From: wsenn at cns.unibe.ch (Walter Senn) Date: Thu, 29 Aug 2013 10:38:31 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: Postdoc and PhD position in Computational Neuroscience in Bern, Switzerland Message-ID: <521F0887.4070506@cns.unibe.ch> There is an opening for a 3-year postdoc position and a PhD position in computational neuroscience in the Senn lab at the University of Bern, Switzerland. The positions are part of a collaborative project with the Herzog and Gerstner labs at EPFL on "Learning from delayed and sparse feedback", supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNFS). We aim at understanding how perceptual learning and decision making may jointly improve based on a delayed feedback. Our group studies the combination of unsupervised and reinforcement learning in cortical networks of spiking neurons. We are interested in biologically realistic reinforcement learning algorithms that are both amenable to a theoretical understanding and consistent with data on human learning recorded in the Herzog lab. The work extends previous models of reinforcement learning and decision making in populations of spiking neurons in our lab (see http://www.physio.unibe.ch/~senn/neuroscience.aspx ) Ideal candidates for the PhD position have a Master in Theoretical Physics or a related area, and for the postdoc position a PhD in Computational Neuroscience with a strong theoretical background. Send your CV with scientific record and a statement of research interests (maximally 1 page), and arrange for 2 letters of recommendations to be sent to senn at pyl.unibe.ch . Please apply before September 15th, 2013, although later applications may still be considered. We offer a dynamic working environment at the Department of Physiology, close interactions with the in-house experimental labs and the partners at EPFL, an exciting surrounding close to the Alps and close to Bern's old city as UNESCO World Heritage, and last not least, Swiss salaries according to the SNFS guidelines. Regards, Walter Senn -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From b.kasap at donders.ru.nl Thu Aug 29 08:49:36 2013 From: b.kasap at donders.ru.nl (Bahadir Kasap) Date: Thu, 29 Aug 2013 14:49:36 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: Donders Discussions 2013 Registration closes soon! Message-ID: Dear PhD student, Time flies, and there are only two weeks left to register for the Donders Discussions 2013! This two-day conference for PhD students in all fields of (cognitive) neuroscience will take place on October 31st and November 1stin Nijmegen, The Netherlands. Registration and poster abstract submission close September 16. The aim of the Donders Discussions is to bring PhD students together in an informal, interdisciplinary atmosphere. Last year we welcomed over 150 participants from all over Europe. We invite you to join us and make this year?s edition an even bigger success! Our exciting program features brains of many kinds, including baby brains, sleeping, stressed and disordered brains, linguistic, attentive and aging brains, and of course investigated brains (where we review methodological innovations). We also offer interactive workshops on science communication and career management. For more information and registration please visit www.ru.nl/dondersdiscussions. We warmly invite all participants to submit a poster abstract. The deadline is September 16, but registration may close earlier if the maximum number of participants has been reached. The registration fee is ?45. If you have any questions, don?t hesitate to e-mail us at discussions2013 at donders.ru.nl. For the latest updates and special offers, join us on facebook (facebook.com/dondersdiscussions2013) or twitter (@discussions2013). We look forward to seeing you in Nijmegen! The Donders Discussions committee 2013 http://www.ru.nl/dondersdiscussions discussions2013 at donders.ru.nl -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pedro.ortega at gmail.com Thu Aug 29 00:46:35 2013 From: pedro.ortega at gmail.com (Pedro Ortega) Date: Thu, 29 Aug 2013 00:46:35 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: NIPS 2013 Workshop on Planning with Information Constraints Message-ID: Call for Papers: NIPS 2013 Workshop on Planning with Information Constraints December 9 or 10, Lake Tahoe (NV), USA Website: http://www.seas.upenn.edu/~ope/workshop ** Call for Papers ** The NIPS 2013 Workshop on Planning with Information Constraints for Control, Reinforcement Learning, Computational Neuroscience, Robotics and Games invites authors to submit contributions. Authors are encouraged to submit their related work to the workshop by 9th of October 11:59 PM PDT (UTC -7 hours) in NIPS format. Submissions should be 4-8 pages long with an extra page for references. Full submission instructions will be posted soon. Authors of the selected papers will be notified to present their work through short presentations or posters. ** About ** How do you make decisions when there are way more possibilities than you can analyze? How do you decide under such information constraints? Planning and decision-making with information constraints is at the heart of adaptive control, reinforcement learning, robotic path planning, experimental design, active learning, computational neuroscience and games. In most real-world problems, perfect planning is either impossible (computational intractability, lack of information, diminished control) or sometimes even undesirable (distrust, risk sensitivity, level of cooperation of the others). Recent developments have shown that a single method, based on the free energy functional borrowed from thermodynamics, provides a principled way of designing systems with information constraints that parallels Bayesian inference. This single method -known in the literature under various labels such as KL-control, path integral control, linearly-solvable stochastic control, information-theoretic bounded rationality- is proving itself very general and powerful as a foundation for a novel class of probabilistic planning problems. ** Organizers ** Bert J. Kappen Naftali Tishby Jan Peters David H. Wolpert Evangelos Theodorou Pedro A. Ortega For more information, please visit: http://www.seas.upenn.edu/~ope/workshop From fred.hamker at informatik.tu-chemnitz.de Thu Aug 29 09:10:33 2013 From: fred.hamker at informatik.tu-chemnitz.de (Fred Hamker) Date: Thu, 29 Aug 2013 15:10:33 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: Lecturer and research Position (Akademische/r Assistent/in) in Neuro-Robotics Message-ID: <09704538-613B-4DDB-B2C6-DE515E9DF797@informatik.tu-chemnitz.de> Lecturer and research Position (Akademische/r Assistent/in) in Neuro-Robotics The position is available at Chemnitz University of Technology in the Department of Computer Science within the Professorship of Artificial Intelligence. It requires teaching and research. Teaching is required about 4 hours per week within the semester and involves lectures and exercises in robotics and neuro-robotics as well as exercises in artificial intelligence. The candidate is expected to contribute to research in neuro-robotics, e.g. to develop brain inspired models of motor or cognitive processes run on robotic platforms. He or she should have a PhD in computer science or related fields, e.g. electrical engineering. Prior experience in robotics or neuro-computational modeling is advantageous. Good English language skills are necessary. Good German is initially not required, but the candidate should have an interest to learn the German language. We offer a stimulating international and interdisciplinary environment. Available and recently ordered robotic platforms include an iCub head, two Nao, a Koala with stereo pan-tilt vision and several K-Junior V2 robots. The salary is according to German standards (E 13 TV-L or A 13). The position is initially for 4 years, but can be extended. The starting date is April 2014 or earlier. Chemnitz is the third-largest city of the state of Saxony and close to scenic mountains. Major cities nearby are Leipzig and Dresden with a rich tradition of music and culture. Further details (in german) can be found here: http://www.tu-chemnitz.de/verwaltung/personal/stellen/257030_AA_Rab.php Applications should be sent by email (preferably in PDF format) to (fred.hamker at informatik.tu-chemnitz.de) until 30.09.2013. In addition to a CV the candidate should provide an overview of his planned research for the next 4 years. Applications will be considered until the position is filled. -------------------- Prof. Dr. Fred H Hamker Artificial Intelligence & Neuro Cognitive Systems Department of Computer Science Chemnitz University of Technology Strasse der Nationen 62 D - 09107 Chemnitz Germany Tel: +49 (0)371 531-37875 Fax: +49 (0)371 531-25739 email: fred.hamker at informatik.tu-chemnitz.de www: http://www.tu-chemnitz.de/informatik/KI/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From wimmer.klaus at googlemail.com Thu Aug 29 16:37:46 2013 From: wimmer.klaus at googlemail.com (Klaus Wimmer) Date: Thu, 29 Aug 2013 22:37:46 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: Online talks from workshop "Noise in decision making" Message-ID: Talks from the ESF workshop on "Noise in decision making: theory meets experiment" (May 2013, Sant Fruit?s de Bages, Catalonia, Spain) are available online at: https://www.youtube.com/user/CRMatematica Speakers include: Matthias Bethge, Anne Churchland, Albert Compte, Bruce Cumming, Gustavo Deco, Sophie Dev?ve, Ralf Haefner, Christian Machens, Encarni Marcos, Ruben Moreno-Bote, Hendrikje Nienborg, Satu Palva, Alexandre Pouget, Alfonso Renart, Petra Ritter, Douglas Ruff, Michael Shadlen, Alex Thiele, and Klaus Wimmer. The two driving questions of the meeting were: 1. What is the origin of variability in brain activity (contributions from external inputs, synaptic and neural mechanisms, micro-circuit dynamics, global brain states, etc.)? 2. What is the role, if any, of neuronal variability in decision making / perception / behavior? More information about the workshop can be found at: http://www.crm.cat/2013/DecisionMaking/ From sumitb at microsoft.com Fri Aug 30 17:34:44 2013 From: sumitb at microsoft.com (Sumit Basu) Date: Fri, 30 Aug 2013 21:34:44 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: Call for Papers: NIPS 2013 Workshop on Data-Driven Education Message-ID: It is our pleasure to invite contributions to: The NIPS 2013 Workshop on Data-Driven Education December 9 (or) 10, 2013 Lake Tahoe, Nevada, USA http://lytics.stanford.edu/datadriveneducation IMPORTANT DATES: + Paper submission --- October 9th, 2013 (see submission details below) + Author notification --- October 23rd, 2013 + Camera ready deadline for accepted submissions --- October 28th, 2013 + Finalized workshop schedule out --- October 30th, 2013 + Workshop --- December 9th or 10th, 2013 (TBA) WORKSHOP DESCRIPTION: Given the incredible technological leaps that have changed so many aspects of our lives in the last hundred years, it's surprising that our approach to education today is much the same as it was a century ago. While successful educational technologies have been developed and deployed in some areas, we have yet to see a widespread disruption in teaching methods at the primary, secondary, or post-secondary levels. However, as more and more people gain access to broadband internet, and new technology-based learning opportunities are introduced, we may be witnessing the beginnings of a revolution in educational methods. In the realm of higher education, rising college tuition accompanied with cuts in funding to schools and an ever increasing world population that desires high-quality education at low cost has spurred the need to use technology to transform how we deliver education. With these technology-based learning opportunities, the rate at which educational data is being collected has also exploded in recent years as an increasing number of students have turned to online resources, both at traditional universities as well as massively open-access online courses (MOOCs) for formal or informal learning. This change raises exciting challenges and possibilities particularly for the machine learning and data sciences communities. These trends and changes are the inspiration for this workshop, and our first goal is to highlight some of the exciting and impactful ways that our community can bring tools from machine learning to bear on educational technology. Some examples include (but are not limited to) the following: + Adaptive and personalized education + Assessment: automated, semi-automated, and peer grading + Gamification and crowdsourcing in learning + Large scale analytics of MOOC data + Multimodal sensing + Optimization of pedagogical strategies and curriculum design + Content recommendation for learners + Interactive Tutoring Systems + Intervention evaluations and causality modeling + Supporting collaborative and social learning + Data-driven models of human learning + Analysis of social networks of students and teachers + Automated, semi-automated, and crowdsourced methods for formative and summative assessment. The second goal of the workshop is to accelerate the progress of research in these areas by addressing the challenges of data availability. At the moment, there are several barriers to entry including the lack of open and accessible datasets as well as unstandardized formats for such datasets. We hope that by (1) surveying a number of the publicly available datasets, and (2) proposing ways to distribute other datasets such as MOOC data in a spirited panel discussion we can make real progress on this issue as a community, thus lowering the barrier for researchers aspiring to make a big impact in this important area. TARGET AUDIENCE + Researchers interested in analyzing and modeling educational data, + Researchers interested in improving or developing new data-driven educational technologies, + Others from the NIPS community curious about the trends in online education and the opportunities for machine learning research in this rapidly-developing area. CONFIRMED SPEAKERS + Ken Koedinger, CMU + Andrew Ng, Coursera + Peter Norvig, Google + Zoran Popovic, UW + Jascha Sohl-Dickstein, Stanford/Khan Academy + Daniel Seaton, MIT/EdX CONFIRMED PANELISTS + Eliana Feasley, Khan Academy, + Una-May O'Reilly, MIT, + and well as the invited speakers. ORGANIZERS + Jonathan Huang, Stanford (jhuang11 at stanford.edu) + Sumit Basu, Microsoft Research (sumitb at microsoft.com) + Kalyan Veeramachaneni, CSAIL, MIT (kalyan at csail.mit.edu) SUBMISSION DETAILS Submissions should follow the NIPS format and are encouraged to be up to six pages. Papers submitted for review do not need to be anonymized. There will be no official proceedings, but the accepted papers will be made available on the workshop website. Accepted papers will be either presented (both) as a poster and a short spotlight presentation. We welcome submissions on novel research work as well as extended abstracts on work recently published or under review in another conference or journal (please state the venue of publication in the latter case); we also encourage submission of visionary position papers on the emerging trends in data driven education. Please submit papers in PDF format to nipsdde2013 at gmail.com. For more information, please visit http://lytics.stanford.edu/datadriveneducation or contact us at nipsdde2013 at gmail.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From randy.oreilly at colorado.edu Sat Aug 31 23:48:49 2013 From: randy.oreilly at colorado.edu (Randall O'Reilly) Date: Sat, 31 Aug 2013 21:48:49 -0600 Subject: Connectionists: Faculty Position at University of Colorado Boulder Message-ID: The Institute of Cognitive Science at the University of Colorado Boulder invites applications for a full-time tenure-track position in computational approaches to cognitive and/or affective neuroscience at the assistant or associate professor level with a starting date of Spring 2014 or Fall 2014. The Institute is a multidisciplinary unit with representation from the departments of Psychology & Neuroscience,Computer Science, Education, Philosophy, Linguistics, Architecture & Planning, and Speech, Language & Hearing Sciences. We seek applicants with a strong research program in human computational neuroscience and neuroimaging that interfaces with one or more of the main research themes of the Institute: Higher Level Cognition; Language Processing; Training and Education (seeics.colorado.edu). The following attributes will be prioritized, and the strongest applicants will show all three: 1) research incorporating human neuroimaging, 2) the use of state-of-the-art computational approaches to address issues in cognitive science, 3) a strong capacity for and commitment to interdisciplinary research. The ideal candidate will be able to teach courses both in his or her speciality as well as courses in Cognitive Science more generally. Successful applicants will join the faculty of both the Institute for Cognitive Science and the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience, and are expected to be able to fulfill teaching and research requirements for tenure in Psychology and Neuroscience. Responsibilities include research, research supervision, service, and graduate and undergraduate teaching. For fullest consideration, please apply by September 30, 2013. Applications will continue to be accepted after this date until the position is filled. Applications (consisting of resume/vitae, cover letter, three letters of recommendation, statement of teaching philosophy, statement of research philosophy and minimum of one publication) are not complete until all letters of recommendation are attached to the posting. To apply, please see Jobs at CU Posting #F00710 Quick Link: http://www.jobsatcu.com/postings/71460 Email inquiries may be sent to Donna.Caccamise at colorado.edu. Thanks, Donna Donna Caccamise, Ph.D Assoc. Director, Institute of Cognitive Science Director of ICS Academic Programs UCB 344 University of Colorado, Boulder 80309 303-735-3602 donna.caccamise at colorado.edu - Randy ---- Dr. Randall C. O'Reilly Professor, Department of Psychology and Neuroscience University of Colorado Boulder 345 UCB, Boulder, CO 80309-0345 303-492-0054 Fax: 303-492-2967 http://psych.colorado.edu/~oreilly