From erik at oist.jp Mon Dec 1 00:42:32 2014 From: erik at oist.jp (Erik De Schutter) Date: Mon, 1 Dec 2014 14:42:32 +0900 Subject: Connectionists: Call for proposals to host the annual Computational Neuroscience (CNS) Meeting in 2017 Message-ID: <13E35F45-4ECE-4AA6-874F-A39AE5621C34@oist.jp> After the record breaking CNS meetings in Paris, France and Qu?bec City, Canada, OCNS (http://www.cnsorg.org) requests proposals from candidate local organizers to organize the CNS meeting in 2017 at a location in Europe. Groups or individuals interested in organizing the CNS*2017 meeting should submit a proposal with consideration of the extensive on-line information (http://www.cnsorg.org/cns-2017-local-organizer) and using the on-line templates provided as a guide. The OCNS board members will select/discuss the different proposals, contact the potential local organizers for more information if necessary and come to a timely agreement between OCNS and potential local organizers. Proposals should be emailed to the OCNS president at president at cnsorg.org no later than January 31, 2015. Decisions are expected to be conveyed to potential organizers about a month later. Erik De Schutter OCNS President From emmanuel.vincent at inria.fr Mon Dec 1 07:25:07 2014 From: emmanuel.vincent at inria.fr (Emmanuel Vincent) Date: Mon, 01 Dec 2014 13:25:07 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: 2nd Cfp: LVA 2015 (12th International Conference on Latent Variable Analysis and Signal Separation) Message-ID: <547C5E23.2090206@inria.fr> ---------------------------------------------- LVA 2015 - 12th International Conference on Latent Variable Analysis and Signal Separation August 24-26, 2015, Liberec, Czech Republic Paper submission deadline: March 27, 2015 http://amca.cz/lva2015/ ---------------------------------------------- *About LVA* LVA 2015 will be the 12th in a series of international conferences which attracted hundreds of researchers and practitioners over the years. Since its start in 1999 under the banner of Independent Component Analysis and Blind Source Separation (ICA), the conference has continuously broadened its horizons. It encompasses today a host of additional forms and models of general mixtures of latent variables. Theories and tools borrowing from the fields of signal processing, applied statistics, machine learning, linear and multilinear algebra, numerical analysis and optimization, and numerous application fields offer exciting interdisciplinary interactions. *Highlights* The conference will be preceded by a Summer School on Latent Variable Analysis and Signal Separation and it will feature the much-awaited results of the 5th Signal Separation Evaluation Campaign (SiSEC 2015). Keynote talks will be given by three leading researchers: - T?lay Adali (University of Maryland, Baltimore County, USA) - R?mi Gribonval (Inria, France) - DeLiang Wang (Ohio State University, USA) *Call for Papers* The proceedings will be published in Springer-Verlag's Lecture Notes in Computer Science Series (LNCS). Prospective authors are invited to submit original papers (up to 8 pages in LNCS format) in areas related to latent variable analysis and signal separation, including but not limited to: - Theory: sparse coding, dictionary learning; statistical and probabilistic modeling; detection, estimation and performance criteria and bounds; causality measures; learning theory; convex/nonconvex optimization tools - Models: general linear or nonlinear models of signals and data; discrete, continuous, flat, or hierarchical models; multilinear models; time-varying, instantaneous, convolutive, noiseless, noisy, over-complete, or under-complete mixtures - Algorithms: estimation, separation, identification, detection, blind and semi-blind methods, non-negative matrix factorization, tensor decomposition, adaptive and recursive estimation; feature selection; time-frequency and wavelet based analysis; complexity analysis - Applications: speech and audio separation, recognition, dereverberation and denoising; auditory scene analysis; image segmentation, separation, fusion, classification, texture analysis; biomedical signal analysis, imaging, genomic data analysis, brain-computer interface - Emerging related topics: sparse learning; deep learning; social networks; data mining; artificial intelligence; objective and subjective performance evaluation. *Special Sessions* The program will also feature special sessions on new or emerging topics of interest. Proposals for special sessions must include the session title, rationale, outline, and a list of 4 to 6 invited papers. To submit, see http://amca.cz/lva2015/. *Important Dates* Jan 16, 2015: Submission of special session proposals Jan 30, 2015: Special session decisions announced Mar 27, 2015: Paper submission deadline May 22, 2015: Notification of acceptance Jun 12, 2015: Submission of camera-ready papers Aug 26-28, 2015: Conference dates *Organizing Committee* General chairs: Zbynek Koldovsky (Technical University of Liberec, Czech Republic) Petr Tichavsky (Academy of Sciences, Czech Republic) Program chairs: Arie Yeredor (Tel-Aviv University, Israel) Emmanuel Vincent (Inria, France) Special sessions: Shoji Makino (University of Tsukuba, Japana) SiSEC chair: Nobutaka Ono (NII, Japan) Overseas liaison: Andrzej Cichocki (RIKEN, Japan) From ckiw at inf.ed.ac.uk Mon Dec 1 08:21:18 2014 From: ckiw at inf.ed.ac.uk (Chris Williams) Date: Mon, 1 Dec 2014 13:21:18 +0000 (GMT) Subject: Connectionists: 10 funded PhD places in Data Science, University of Edinburgh Message-ID: ============================================================================== EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Data Science, University of Edinburgh 10 funded PhD places in Data Science Web site: http://datascience.inf.ed.ac.uk/ Application deadline: 12 December (non-EU); 30 January (UK and EU) ============================================================================== The EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training (CDT) in Data Science is now inviting applications for 10 fully-funded PhD studentships at the University of Edinburgh, to start in September 2015. Students with a strong background in computer science, mathematics, physics, or engineering are particularly encouraged to apply. The CDT focuses on the computational principles, methods, and systems for extracting knowledge from data. Large data sets are now generated by almost every activity in science, society, and commerce --- ranging from molecular biology to social media, from sustainable energy to health care. Data science asks: How can we efficiently find patterns in these vast streams of data? Many research areas have tackled parts of this problem: * machine learning focuses on finding patterns and making predictions from data; * databases are needed for efficiently accessing data and ensuring its quality; * ideas from algorithms are required to build systems that scale to big data streams; * the mathematical fields of statistics and optimization provide foundational tools and theory; * natural language processing, computer vision, and speech processing consider the analysis of different types of unstructured data. Recently, these distinct disciplines have begun to converge into a single field called data science. The CDT is a 4-year programme: the first year provides Masters level training in the core areas of data science, along with a significant project. In years 2-4 students will carry out PhD research in Data Science, guided by PhD supervisors from within the centre. The CDT is funded by EPSRC and the University of Edinburgh. Edinburgh has a large, world-class research community in data science to support the work of the CDT student cohort. ??The city of Edinburgh has often been voted the 'best place to live in Britain', and has many exciting cultural and student activities. Because of constraints from funding agencies, there are different rules for funding depending on your fee status: * UK and EU students: Full funding (fees and stipend) is available. * Non-EU students: Funding is significantly more competitive; for details, please see http://datascience.inf.ed.ac.uk/apply/information-for-non-eu-students/ There are three deadlines for applications: * 12 December 2014 -- all overseas applicants should apply by this deadline for full consideration * 30 January 2015 -- all UK and EU applicants should apply by this deadline for full consideration * 13 March 2015 -- any remaining UK and EU studentships will be allocated in the third round See http://datascience.inf.ed.ac.uk/apply/ for further information and application forms. Enquiries can be sent to datascience at inf.ed.ac.uk -- The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in Scotland, with registration number SC005336. From marc.toussaint at informatik.uni-stuttgart.de Mon Dec 1 14:27:56 2014 From: marc.toussaint at informatik.uni-stuttgart.de (Marc Toussaint) Date: Mon, 01 Dec 2014 20:27:56 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: 2 postdoc positions in Machine Learning, Robotics & AI @ Univ. Stuttgart (and optionally MPI Tuebingen) Message-ID: <547CC13C.1020504@informatik.uni-stuttgart.de> *deadline: 15th Dec, 2014* 2 postdoc positions in Machine Learning, Robotics & AI at the Machine Learning & Robotics Lab, Univ. of Stuttgart Optional joint appointment at the Max-Planck-Institute for Intelligent Systems in Tuebingen The Machine Learning & Robotics Lab at University of Stuttgart is recruiting two highly-motivated postdoctoral researchers. The MLR lab strives to tackle problems that are both fundamental and real in the area of robotics and intelligent systems. This includes holistic approaches to learning, planning and inference on all levels from robotic control to higher-level geometric and symbolic reasoning. Applicants should have strong interest in this approach, esp. one of the following or related research topics: * (Constrained) Optimization methods for robotics, robotic control or learning in robotics in general * Combined task and motion planning in uncertain and probabilistic domains (bridging between symbolic/relational MDPs, belief planning and geometric planning) * Learning, planning and inference in the case of multi-agents or concurrent actions (including multi-agent extensions for invRL) * Active learning, experimental design and UCB/UCT type methods for autonomous robot exploration in relational domains Please relate clearly to these topic in your Research Statement. Researchers from the broader areas of modern AI (probabilistic reasoning, learning & planning), robotics and machine learning are welcome to apply. The candidates are expected to conduct independent research and at the same time contribute to ongoing projects in the areas listed above. Successful candidates can furthermore be given the opportunity to work with undergraduate, M.Sc. and Ph.D. students. The positions may jointly be appointed at Stefan Schaal's Autonomous Motion Department at the MPI Tuebingen, in this case focusing on learning and optimization methods for robotic control. See http://www-amd.is.tuebingen.mpg.de A successful Post-doc applicant should have a strong track record of top-tier research publications in our community (e.g., at UAI, ICML, IJCAI, AAAI, NIPS, AISTATS or RSS, ICRA, IROS and respective journals). A Ph.D. in Computer Science, Physics or Maths (or another field clearly related to the above topics) as well as strong organizational and coordination skills are a must. The positions are started with a 24 months contract and may be extendable up to 48 months. Payment will be according to the German TVL E-13 or E-14 payment scheme, depending on the candidate's experience and qualifications. All complete applications submitted through the online application system found at https://ipvs.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de/mlr/jobs/ will be considered. *Deadline for application is Dec 15h*. If you have good reasons for extension, please contact me directly. Applicants may contact Marc Toussaint at *NIPS 2014*. Please also feel free to contact me informally by email on any issue. -- Marc Toussaint, Prof. Dr. Uni Stuttgart Universit?tsstra?e 38 70569 Stuttgart, Germany +49 711 685 88376 http://ipvs.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de/mlr/marc/index.html From twaldron at Princeton.EDU Mon Dec 1 14:56:53 2014 From: twaldron at Princeton.EDU (Timothy P. Waldron) Date: Mon, 1 Dec 2014 19:56:53 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: CV Starr Fellowships/Postdoctoral Positions Message-ID: <565CB0B8EFE92946A689DC622A64ABE610A07CD3@CSGMBX201W.pu.win.princeton.edu> C V Starr Fellowships in Neuroscience The Princeton Neuroscience Institute aims to recruit several exceptional individuals for our CV Starr Fellowships in Neuroscience. These are individuals who are expecting or have recently obtained a PhD degree in neuroscience or areas relevant to neuroscience (molecular biology, psychology, computer science, engineering, physics, or mathematics). Please note that previous experience in neuroscience is not required. The PNI focuses on interdisciplinary research in neuroscience, spanning from molecular, cellular and genetic approaches to systems and human cognitive neuroscience. PNI houses state of the art facilities for experimental research in all of these areas, as well as advanced computational resources that support theoretical and quantitative approaches to neuroscience. The CV Starr Fellowship program provides a generous salary and a modest annual research budget. Fellows are encouraged to pursue independent research with the guidance and mentorship of one or more core faculty members in the Institute. We are particularly interested in projects that bridge the research programs of multiple laboratories. Fellows also have the opportunity to teach in our Institute programs. For more information about the Institute, see http://www.princeton.edu/pni/. Applications should be submitted online at https://jobs.princeton.edu/ (requisition # 1400754). Candidates must submit a CV, a list of publications, a statement of research interests and goals, and the contact information for three references. Finalists will be invited to Princeton to present a talk concerning their current research. This position is subject to the University's background check policy. Princeton University is an equal opportunity employer and all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, disability status, protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From A.GARCEZ at city.ac.uk Mon Dec 1 12:53:47 2014 From: A.GARCEZ at city.ac.uk (Garcez, Artur) Date: Mon, 1 Dec 2014 17:53:47 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: Invitation to join the Neural-Symbolic Learning and Reasoning association Message-ID: <0263bf82c56e46ee90ece1fd0330db5b@DB4PR03MB0960.eurprd03.prod.outlook.com> At Dagstuhl seminar 14381, it was decided that Neural-Symbolic Learning and Reasoning should become an Association, marking the tenth edition of the NeSy workshop series (c.f. www.neural-symbolic.org). You are cordially invited to join the NeSy Association. Currently, membership is free. To join, please complete and submit the application form at: http://staff.city.ac.uk/~aag/nesy With best regards, Artur d'Avila Garcez, Daniel Silver, Pascal Hitzler, Peter F?ldi?k, Kai-Uwe K?hnberger, Luis C. Lamb, Luc de Raedt (NeSy steering committee) --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dr Artur d'Avila Garcez, FBCS Reader in Neural-Symbolic Computing Department of Computer Science City University London, EC1V 0HB, UK Tel: + 44 (0)20 7040 8344 Email: a.garcez at city.ac.uk URL: http://www.staff.city.ac.uk/~aag/ --------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dorianaur at gmail.com Tue Dec 2 14:38:23 2014 From: dorianaur at gmail.com (Dorian Aur) Date: Tue, 2 Dec 2014 11:38:23 -0800 Subject: Connectionists: Can we build a conscious machine? Message-ID: Dear Colleagues, If something is physically realizable (e.g. consciousness) then *we should be able to reproduced it in one form or another*. However, it seems that solely using digital computers it can't be done. We do not have "the algorithm" and we might not find it. Consciousness d*oes not appear to be computable *- arXiv:1405.0126. We can wait another fifty years and search for "the algorithm" or we can do it fast using a hybrid system. Once Bill Gates said: ?If you invent a breakthrough in artificial intelligence, so machines can learn, that is worth 10 Microsofts?. Building intelligent (conscious) systems that can talk, move and solve problems like us will be the goal of many companies in the future. Such machine would be "laughing of the mechanic aspects of its being" http://dx.doi.org/10.13140/2.1.2286.5608 . *That?s the machine that is worth far more than 10 Microsofts *. I'm an optimist in the sense that I believe "humans are noble and honorable, and some of them are really smart" so I feel that such conscious (intelligent) machines can be built during our lifetime. Thank you, Dorian Aur PS I?m looking for reliable collaborators to reduce this general proposal to practice. We need a dish, some neurons, interface hardware, and a few computers. A very modest beginning . . . and we can change forever the world we live in. Please, also read Questions and Answers http://arxiv.org/abs/1411.5224 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From acoates at cs.stanford.edu Mon Dec 1 21:11:58 2014 From: acoates at cs.stanford.edu (Adam Coates) Date: Mon, 1 Dec 2014 18:11:58 -0800 Subject: Connectionists: Deep Learning and Representation Learning Workshop: NIPS 2014 Message-ID: Call for participation: Deep Learning and Representation Learning Workshop http://www.dlworkshop.org/ Friday, December 12, 2014 Palais des Congr?s de Montr?al/Convention and Exhibition Center, Montreal, Canada Held in conjunction with Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS) 2014. Please see the tentative schedule here: http://www.dlworkshop.org/schedule Scheduled location: Level 5; room 511 a,b, d,e ---- 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. The workshop aims at bringing together researchers in that field and discussing these challenges, brainstorming about new solutions. The workshop will present paper submissions in 2 poster sessions with several papers selected for oral presentation. Topics include: * deep learning algorithms and models (supervised or unsupervised, including about building blocks of deep nets, like RBMs and auto-encoders, etc.) * inference and optimization algorithms * semi-supervised, transfer learning, and multi-modal algorithms * theoretical foundations of deep learning (both supervised and unsupervised) * applications of deep learning (convolutional networks, word and sentence representation models, etc.) Through invited talks 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. INVITED SPEAKERS: Phil Blunsom (Oxford U.) Herbert Jaeger (Jacobs U. Bremen) Rich Schwartz (BBN) Vlad Mnih (Google DeepMind) Surya Ganguli (Stanford U.) Leon Bottou (Microsoft) ORGANIZING COMMITTEE: Yoshua Bengio Adam Coates Roland Memisevic Andrew Ng Daan Wierstra From dwang at cse.ohio-state.edu Tue Dec 2 16:09:01 2014 From: dwang at cse.ohio-state.edu (DeLiang Wang) Date: Tue, 2 Dec 2014 16:09:01 -0500 Subject: Connectionists: NEURAL NETWORKS, December 2014 Message-ID: <547E2A6D.2060000@cse.ohio-state.edu> Neural Networks - Volume 60, December 2014 http://www.journals.elsevier.com/neural-networks How active perception and attractor dynamics shape perceptual categorization: A computational model Nicola Catenacci Volpi, Jean Charles Quinton, Giovanni Pezzulo Connectionist interpretation of the association between cognitive dissonance and attention switching Takao Matsumoto Neurocomputational approaches to modelling multisensory integration in the brain: A review Mauro Ursino, Cristiano Cuppini, Elisa Magosso Person-by-person prediction of intuitive economic choice George Mengov Global exponential almost periodicity of a delayed memristor-based neural networks Jiejie Chen, Zhigang Zeng, Ping Jiang Global robust asymptotic stability of variable-time impulsive BAM neural networks Mustafa Sayli, Enes Yilmaz Noise cancellation of memristive neural networks Shiping Wen, Zhigang Zeng, Tingwen Huang, Xinghuo Yu Stability and bifurcation analysis of new coupled repressilators in genetic regulatory networks with delays Guang Ling, Zhi-Hong Guan, Ding-Xin He, Rui-Quan Liao, Xian-He Zhang Simple randomized algorithms for online learning with kernels Wenwu He, James T. Kwok New approximation method for smooth error backpropagation in a quantron network Simon de Montigny Unsupervised learnable neuron model with nonlinear interaction on dendrites Yuki Todo, Hiroki Tamura, Kazuya Yamashita, Zheng Tang A convolutional recursive modified Self Organizing Map for handwritten digits recognition Ehsan Mohebi, Adil Bagirov Logarithmic learning for generalized classifier neural network Buse Melis Ozyildirim, Mutlu Avci Design of hybrid radial basis function neural networks (HRBFNNs) realized with the aid of hybridization of fuzzy clustering method (FCM) and polynomial neural networks (PNNs) Wei Huang, Sung-Kwun Oh, Witold Pedrycz On extending the complex FastICA algorithms to noisy data Zongli Ruan, Liping Li, Guobing Qian Online computing of non-stationary distributions velocity fields by an accuracy controlled growing neural gas Herve Frezza-Buet Impulsive exponential synchronization of randomly coupled neural networks with Markovian jumping and mixed model-dependent time delays Xin Wang, Chuandong Li, Tingwen Huang, Ling Chen Continuous neural identifier for uncertain nonlinear systems with time delays in the input signal M. Alfaro-Ponce, A. Arguelles, I. Chairez Dynamic neural network-based robust observers for uncertain nonlinear systems H.T. Dinh, R. Kamalapurkar, S. Bhasin, W.E. Dixon A computer vision system for rapid search inspired by surface-based attention mechanisms from human perception Johannes Mohr, Jong-Han Park, Klaus Obermayer From cie.conference.series at gmail.com Tue Dec 2 16:41:08 2014 From: cie.conference.series at gmail.com (CiE Conference Series) Date: Tue, 2 Dec 2014 21:41:08 +0000 (GMT) Subject: Connectionists: Evolving Computability - 2nd CfP - Bucharest, 29/6-3/7/2015 Message-ID: 2nd CALL FOR PAPERS: COMPUTABILITY IN EUROPE 2015: Evolving Computability Bucharest, Romania June 29 - July 3 http://fmi.unibuc.ro/CiE2015/ IMPORTANT DATES: Submission Deadline for LNCS: 11 January 2015 Notification of authors: 9 March 2015 Deadline for final revisions: 6 April 2015 This 2nd call for papers contains news on FUNDING OPPORTUNITIES, the list of INVITED SPEAKERS and SPECIAL SESSIONS, as well as details on the SUBMISSION PROCEDURE and the PROCEEDINGS. CiE 2015 is the 11-th 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), Ponta Delgada (2010), Sofia (2011), Cambridge (2012), Milan (2013) and Budapest (2014) Evolution of the universe, and us within it, invite a parallel evolution in understanding. The CiE agenda - fundamental and engaged - targets the extracting and developing of computational models basic to current challenges. From the origins of life, to the understanding of human mentality, to the characterising of quantum randomness - computability theoretic questions arise in many guises. The CiE community, this coming year meeting for the first time in Bucharest, carries forward the search for coherence, depth and new thinking across this rich and vital field of research. In all cases we are looking for fundamental and theoretical submissions. In line with other conferences in this series, CiE 2015 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. For topics covered by the conference, please visit http://fmi.unibuc.ro/CiE2015/topics.html FUNDING OPPORTUNITIES: CiE 2015 has received funding from ASL (Association for Symbolic Logic) and EATCS (European Association for Theoretical Computer Science) that allows students who are members of ASL or EATCS and want to attend CiE 2015 to apply for travel funds or a reduction of the early registration fee. Preference will be given to presenters of accepted papers. Applications for ASL travel grants have to be addressed directly to ASL, with a strict deadline of March 28, 2015. Applications for EATCS travel grants have to be sent to cie2015 at fmi.unibuc.ro prior to the early registration deadline. TUTORIAL SPEAKERS * John Reif (Duke Unversity) * Steve Simpson (Pennsylvania State University) PLENARY SPEAKERS * Ann Copestake (University of Cambridge) * Mircea Dumitru (University of Bucharest, Public Lecture) * Pawel Gawrychowski (Max-Planck-Institut fuer Informatik) * Julia Knight (University of Notre Dame) * Anca Muscholl (Universite Bordeaux) * Gheorghe Paun (Romanian Academy) * Alexander Razborov (University of Chicago and Steklov Mathematical Institute) * Vlatko Vedral (University of Oxford) SPECIAL SESSIONS on * Representing streams (Organizers: Joerg Endrullis and Dimtri Hendriks) * Automata, logic and infinite games (Organizers: Dietmar Berwanger and Ioana Leustean) * Reverse mathematics (Organizers: Damir Dzhafarov and Alberto Marcone) * Classical computability theory (Organizers: Marat Arslanov and Steffen Lempp) * Bio-inspired computation (Organizers: Andrei Paun and Petr Sosik) * History and philosophy of computing (Organizers: Christine Proust and Marco Benini) The speakers of the special sessions may be find at http://fmi.unibuc.ro/CiE2015/sessions.html The PROGRAMME COMMITTEE consists of: * Marat Arslanov (Kazan) * Jeremy Avigad (Pittsburgh) * Veronica Becher (Buenos Aires) * Arnold Beckmann (Swansea) * Laurent Bienvenu (Paris) * Alessandra Carbone (Paris) * Gabriel Ciobanu (Iasi) * S Barry Cooper (Leeds) * Laura Crosilla (Leeds) * Liesbeth De Mol (Ghent) * Walter Dean (Warwick) * Volker Diekert (Stuttgart) * Damir Dzhafarov (Storrs, Connecticut) * Peter van Emde Boas (Amsterdam) * Rachel Epstein (Harvard) * Johanna Franklin (Hempstead, NY) * Neil Ghani (Glasgow) * Joel David Hamkins (New York) * Rosalie Iemhoff (Utrecht) * Emmanuel Jeandel (LORIA) * Natasha Jonoska (Tampa, FL) * Antonina Kolokolova (St.John's, NL) * Antonin Kucera (Prague) * Oliver Kutz (Magdeburg) * Benedikt Loewe (Hamburg & Amsterdam) * Jack Lutz (Ames, IA) * Florin Manea (Kiel) * Alberto Marcone (Udine) * Radu Mardare (Aalborg) * Joe Miller (Madison, WI) * Russell Miller (Flushing, NY) * Mia Minnes (La Jolla, CA) * Victor Mitrana (Bucharest, co-chair) * Ian Pratt-Hartmann (Manchester) * Dag Normann (Oslo) * Mehrnoosh Sadrzadeh (London) * Anne Smith (St Andrews) * Mariya Soskova (Sofia, co-chair) * Susan Stepney (York) * Paul Spirakis (Patras & Liverpool) * Jacobo Toran (Ulm) * Marius Zimand (Towson, MD) The PROGRAMME COMMITTEE cordially invites all researchers (European and non-European) in computability related areas to submit their papers (in PDF format, max 10 pages using the LNCS style) for presentation at CiE 2015. The submission site https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=cie2015 is open. For submission instructions consult http://fmi.unibuc.ro/CiE2015/submission.html The CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS will be published by LNCS, Springer Verlag. ____________________________________________________________________ CiE 2015 http://fmi.unibuc.ro/CiE2015/ ASSOCIATION COMPUTABILITY IN EUROPE http://www.computability.org.uk CiE Conference Series http://www.illc.uva.nl/CiE CiE Membership Application Form http://www.lix.polytechnique.fr/CIE 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 From sml at essex.ac.uk Tue Dec 2 16:52:34 2014 From: sml at essex.ac.uk (Lucas, Simon M) Date: Tue, 2 Dec 2014 21:52:34 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: Fully funded PhD Studentships Message-ID: <82179AE9-C93F-4E2D-9372-0531650F9E48@essex.ac.uk> 10 fully-funded studentships are available for 2015/16 entry (covering fees at Home/EU rate and a stipend for four years) in the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Intelligent Games and Game Intelligence (IGGI), to conduct cutting-edge research and train the next generation of researchers, designers, developers and entrepreneurs in digital games. IGGI is a collaboration between three UK Universities: the University of York, the University of Essex and Goldsmiths College, University of London. IGGI PhDs will be based at their principal supervisor?s University site with travel to the other sites for team and training activities. IGGI brings together 60 industrial partners from the UK games industry and related organisations (including Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, The Creative Assembly, Codemasters, Rebellion, TIGA, and many more ? see www.iggi.org.uk/our-industrial-partners/). IGGI PhDs will have the opportunity to engage in placements at these partner organisations, as well as international research labs, during their PhD research. In addition to conducting research with world-leading academics and industry partners, you will participate in global game jams, co-organise and participate in an annual games symposium, and engage with industry-led seminars. You will receive training from experts in Games Development, Games Design, Research Skills and a range of optional modules including AI, computer vision, human-computer interaction, storytelling, graphics, sound and robotics. You can contact potential supervisors directly (see http://www.iggi.org.uk/supervisors/ for a list), or we can help you to choose a principal supervisor from York, Essex or Goldsmiths based on your interests and background. We expect substantial competition for IGGI studentships, and we encourage good students to submit applications as early as possible. The deadline for applications is 5pm on Friday 30th January 2015. Shortlisting will take place on Tuesday 10th February and successful candidates will be contacted within 24 hours. Interviews will be held at the University of York on Friday 20th February, 2015. For further information and details of how to apply go to www.iggi.org.uk. Best wishes, Simon Professor Simon Lucas School of CS&EE University of Essex http://dces.essex.ac.uk/staff/lucas/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From nati at ttic.edu Tue Dec 2 17:53:19 2014 From: nati at ttic.edu (Nathan Srebro) Date: Tue, 2 Dec 2014 16:53:19 -0600 Subject: Connectionists: Post-Doc: Machine Learning Applied to the Social Sciences Message-ID: Post-Doc: Machine Learning Applied to the Social Sciences Applications are sought for an NSF-funded post-doctoral positions in machine learning applied to the social sciences with James Evans from the University of Chicago and Nathan Srebro from TTIC. Post-docs will be associated with Knowledge Lab (knowledgelab.org) in the Computation Institute (www.ci.uchicago.edu) at the University of Chicago (www.uchicago.edu), one of the leading research universities in the United States, and with the Toyota Technological Institute at Chicago (TTIC, www.ttic.edu), an elite computer science institute located on the University of Chicago campus, and supervised by Prof. James Evans of the University of Chicago and Prof. Nathan Srebro of TTIC and the Technion. Position are for 2-3 years, contingent on annual reappointment. The aim is to develop and apply machine learning methods, including active learning, matrix learning and collaborative learning, to information gathering methods in the social sciences. Applicants are expected to have strong qualifications in machine learning or related fields, and will be introduced to social science research. They will have the opertunity to work with other post-docs, researchers and students in the social sciences, while being part of the vibrant machine learning group at TTIC. Minimum qualifications for this position are a PhD or expected PhD (by Summer 2015) in computer science, applied mathematics, statistics or a related field, with background in machine learning. Women and members of underrepresented groups are encouraged to apply. Interested candidates must submit to knowledgelab at ci.uchicago.edu: 1) cover letter, describing your interest in and qualifications for pursuing interdisciplinary research; 2) curriculum vitae (including publications list); 3) contact information for three or more scholars who know your work and are willing to write letters of reference; Interested candidates may also contact Prof. Nathan Srebro directly for further information. Positions can begin immediately. Compensation includes a competitive salary and benefits plan and assistance with relocation to Chicago. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From zhong at maebashi-it.ac.jp Tue Dec 2 20:59:59 2014 From: zhong at maebashi-it.ac.jp (Ning Zhong) Date: Wed, 03 Dec 2014 10:59:59 +0900 Subject: Connectionists: Call for Papers - Brain Informatics and Health (BIH'15) Message-ID: <547E6E9F.2090508@maebashi-it.ac.jp> [Apologies if you receive this more than once] -------------------------------------------------------------------------- The 2015 International Conference on Brain Informatics and Health (BIH'15) August 30 - September 2, 2015, London, UK CALL FOR PAPERS Homepage: http://braininformatics.london (FULL PAPER SUBMISSION DEADLINE: April 5, 2015) *** KEYNOTE SPEAKERS (Confirmed) *** Allan Jones (Allen Institute for Brain Science, USA) Henry Markram (EPFL, Switzerland) David Van Essen (Washington University School of Medicine, USA) ***************** Brain research is rapidly advancing with the application of big data technology to neuroscience as can be seen in major international initiatives in the US, Europe and Asia. BIH'15 reflects that brain informatics has emerged as a distinct field and crosses the disciplines of neuroscience, cognitive science, computer science, signal processing, and neuroimaging technologies as well as data science. Following the success of past conferences in this series, BIH'15 will take place at Imperial College London, in UK, gathers the researchers from major international brain research projects, and plans an industrial exhibition. BIH'15 draws special attention to informatics for brain science, human behavior and brain health. BIH'15 will address big data approaches to both the brain and behaviour, with a strong emphasis on emerging trends of big data analysis and management technology for BI, active media technology in behavior learning, and real-world applications for brain and mental health. BIH'15 welcomes paper submissions (full paper and abstract submissions). Both research and application papers are solicited. All submitted papers will be reviewed on the basis of technical quality, relevance, significance and clarity. Accepted full papers will be included in the proceedings by Springer LNCS/LNAI. Tutorial, Satellite symposium and Special-Session proposals and Industry/Demo-Track papers are also welcome. IMPORTANT DATES: ================ Satellite symposium proposal submission: March 10, 2015 Notification of satellite symposium acceptance: March 30, 2015 Submission of full papers: April 5, 2015 Submission of abstracts: May 20, 2015 Submission of satellite symposium papers: May 20, 2015 Notification of full paper acceptance: May 25, 2015 Notification of abstract acceptance: June 10, 2015 Notification of satellite symposium paper acceptance: June 10, 2015 Tutorial proposal submission: May 15, 2015 Satellite symposiums: August 30, 2015 Main conference: August 31-September 2, 2015 PAPER SUBMISSIONS & PUBLICATIONS: ================================= TYPE-I (Full Paper Submissions; Submission Deadline: April 5, 2015): Papers need to have up to 10 pages in LNCS format: http://www.springer.com/computer/lncs?SGWID=0-164-6-793341-0. All full length papers accepted (and all special sessions' full length papers) will be published by Springer as a volume of the series of LNCS/LNAI. TYPE-II (Abstract Submissions; Submission Deadline: May 20, 2015): Abstracts have a word limit of 500 words. Experimental research is particularly welcome. Accepted abstract submissions will be included in the conference program, and will be published as a single, collective proceedings volume. Title: Include in the title of the abstract all words critical for a subject index. Write your title in sentence case (first letter is capitalized; remaining letters are lower case). Do not bold or italicize your full title. Author: List all authors who contributed to the work discussed in the abstract. The presenting author must be listed in the first author slot of the list. Be prepared to submit contact information as well as conflict of interest information for each author listed. Abstract: Enter the body of the abstract and attach any applicable graphic files or tables here. Do not re-enter the title, author, support, or other information that is collected in other steps of the submission form. Presentation Preference: Authors may select from three presentation formats when submitting an abstract: "poster only,?, ?talk preferred" or "no preference." The ?talk preferred" selection indicates that you would like to give a talk, but will accept a poster format if necessary. Marking "poster only" indicates that you would not like to be considered for an oral-presentation session. Selecting "no preference" indicates the author's willingness to be placed in the best format for the program. Each paper or abstract requires one sponsoring attendee (i.e. someone who registered and is attending the conference). A single attendee can not sponsor more than two abstracts or papers. Oral presentations will be selected from both full length papers and abstracts. *** Post-Conference Journal Publication *** The BIH conferences have the formal ties with Brain Informatics journal (Springer, http://www.springer.com/40708). Accepted papers from the conference, including their Best Paper Award papers, will be expended and revised for possible inclusion in the Brain Informatics journal each year. It is fully sponsored and no any article-processing fee charged for BIH authors. Selected submissions will be considered for publication in special issues of international journals after their papers are extended to a full-length paper and pass a review process. More information can be found at http://www.bih-amt.com/publications/ *** Topics and Areas *** Please find the topics and areas of interest of the 2015 International Conference on Brain Informatics and Health (BIH'15) at http://www.bih-amt.com/call-for-papers/topics/ *** AMT'15 Session *** The advance of wearable sensor technology makes the monitoring of human behavior and life style becomes feasible. This development gives the active media technology a new dimension which is more closely related to the healthcare and cognitive studies. Following the success of past conferences in this series, AMT'15 will be jointly held with BIH?15 as a special session. ORGANIZERS ========== General Chairs: Karl Friston, University College London, UK Yike Guo, Imperial College London, UK Program Chairs: Aldo Faisal, Imperial College London, UK Sean Hill, EPFL, Switzerland Hanchuan Peng, Allen Institute for Brain Science, US Workshop/Special-Session Chairs: Andreas Holzinger, Medical University Graz, Austria Zhisheng Huang, Vrije University of Amsterdam, Netherlands David Powers, Flinders University of South Australia, Australia Publicity Chairs: Jessica Turner, Georgia State University, US Juan D. Velasquez, University of Chile, Chile Yi Zeng, Institute of Automation, CAS, China Local Organizing Chairs: Thomas Henis, Imperial College London, UK Kai Sun, Imperial College London, UK Chao Wu, Imperial College London, UK Exhibition/Sponsorship Chair: Caroline Li, University Kent, UK Steering Committee Co-Chairs: Ning Zhong, Maebashi Institute of Technology, Japan Jiming Liu, Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong *** Contact Information *** Chao Wu, Imperial College London, UK Aldo Faisal, Imperial College London, UK ------------------------ From zhong at maebashi-it.ac.jp Tue Dec 2 21:44:46 2014 From: zhong at maebashi-it.ac.jp (Ning Zhong) Date: Wed, 03 Dec 2014 11:44:46 +0900 Subject: Connectionists: BIH'15: CALL FOR SYMPOSIUM/SPECIAL-SESSION PROPOSALS Message-ID: <547E791E.6050705@maebashi-it.ac.jp> [Apologies if you receive this more than once] ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ BIH'15 CALL FOR SATELLITE SYMPOSIUM/SPECIAL SESSION PROPOSALS 2015 International Conference on Brain Informatics and Health (BIH'15) August 30 - September 2, 2015, London, UK Homepage: http://braininformatics.london Proposal submission due: March 10, 2015 Notification of proposal acceptance: March 30, 2015 --------------------------------------------------- Brain research is rapidly advancing with the application of big data technology to neuroscience as can be seen in major international initiatives in the US, Europe and Asia. BIH'15 reflects that brain informatics has emerged as a distinct field and crosses the disciplines of neuroscience, cognitive science, computer science, signal processing, and neuroimaging technologies as well as data science. Following the success of past conferences in this series, BIH'15 will take place at Imperial College London, in UK, gathers the researchers from major international brain research projects, and plans an industrial exhibition. BIH'15 draws special attention to informatics for brain science, human behavior and brain health. BIH'15 will address big data approaches to both the brain and behaviour, with a strong emphasis on emerging trends of big data analysis and management technology for BI, active media technology in behavior learning, and real-world applications for brain and mental health. BIH'15 welcomes proposals to organize satellite symposiums (workshops) and high-end special sessions on related topics. *** Topics and Areas *** Please find the topics and areas of interest of the 2015 International Conference on Brain Informatics and Health (BIH'15) at http://www.bih-amt.com/call-for-papers/topics/ *** AMT'15 Session *** The advance of wearable sensor technology makes the monitoring of human behavior and life style becomes feasible. This development gives the active media technology a new dimension which is more closely related to the healthcare and cognitive studies. Following the success of past conferences in this series, AMT'15 will be jointly held with BIH?15 as a special session. ++++++++++++++++++ Submission Process ++++++++++++++++++ Symposium/Special-Session organizers should submit their proposals (PDF) directly to one of the Workshop Chairs via e-mail (see email addresses below). Symposium/Special-Session proposals should include the following elements: - Title of the symposium/special-session - Names of the symposium/special-session organizers, affiliation, mailing address, e-mail - A description of the topics of the symposium/special-session (approx. 250 words) - Type of the symposium/special-session (to accept full-papers or abstracts) - A description of how the symposium/special-session will contribute to the field - A short description on how the symposium/special-session will be advertised so as to ensure a sufficiently wide range of authors and high quality papers - A list of reviewers for the symposium/special-session contributions, and a short outline of how the review process will be conducted. +++++++++++ Publication +++++++++++ The organizers of approved symposiums/special sessions are required to announce the call for papers, assign papers to PC members for reviewing and decide upon the final program. As for the main conference, there are 2 types of Paper Submissions and Publication, which you can choose one of them: TYPE-I (Full Paper Submissions): Papers need to have up to 10 pages in LNCS format: http://www.springer.com/computer/lncs?SGWID=0-164-6-793341-0. All full length papers accepted (and all special sessions' full length papers) will be published by Springer as a volume of the series of LNCS/LNAI. TYPE-II (Abstract Submissions): Abstracts have a word limit of 500 words. Experimental research is particularly welcome. Accepted abstract submissions will be included in the conference program, and will be published as a single, collective proceedings volume. Title: Include in the title of the abstract all words critical for a subject index. Write your title in sentence case (first letter is capitalized; remaining letters are lower case). Do not bold or italicize your full title. Author: List all authors who contributed to the work discussed in the abstract. The presenting author must be listed in the first author slot of the list. Be prepared to submit contact information as well as conflict of interest information for each author listed. Abstract: Enter the body of the abstract and attach any applicable graphic files or tables here. Do not re-enter the title, author, support, or other information that is collected in other steps of the submission form. ** Post-Conference Journal Publication *** The BIH conferences have the formal ties with Brain Informatics journal (Springer, http://www.springer.com/40708). Accepted papers from the conference, including their Best Paper Award papers, will be expended and revised for possible inclusion in the Brain Informatics journal each year. It is fully sponsored and no any article-processing fee charged for BIH authors. Selected submissions will be considered for publication in special issues of international journals after their papers are extended to a full-length paper and pass a review process. More information can be found at http://www.bih-amt.com/publications/ +++++++++++++++ Important Dates +++++++++++++++ Proposal submission due: March 10, 2015 Notification of proposal acceptance: March 30, 2015 Submission of symposium/special-session papers: May 20, 2015 Notification of symposium/special-session paper acceptance: June 10, 2015 Satellite symposiums: August 30, 2015 Main conference (including special sessions): August 31-September 2, 2015 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Workshop Chairs & Contact Information +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Please send the proposal via email to one of the workshop chairs, and don't hesitate to contact in case of questions. Andreas Holzinger, Medical University Graz, Austria Zhisheng Huang, Vrije University of Amsterdam, Netherlands David Powers, Flinders University of South Australia, Australia ---------------------------- From h.glotin at gmail.com Wed Dec 3 02:11:43 2014 From: h.glotin at gmail.com (Herve Glotin) Date: Wed, 3 Dec 2014 08:11:43 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: Available Positions in Machine Learning for Soundscape Analysis Message-ID: (Apologies for cross-postings - Please forward to whom it may concern) Several positions are now available into the Scaled Acoustic Biodiversity Project (http://sabiod.org/jobs.html) : - PhD scholarships (with or without industrial collaboration), - Internships (master...), - Postdoc positions, - Engineer positions. The goal of these positions is to improve the current performance of soundscape / bioacoustic pattern detection and classification, at low signal to noise ratio, and/or into large data set (thousand of species, To of .wav). Thus, the objectives here are three-fold: (a) to make the signal representation more robust, (b) to develop classification model more efficient on complex bioacoustic patterns, with supervised but also unsupervised approaches, and (c) to manage and collect additional training data to better model the variability of object categories (within some terrestrial or submarine recording experiments). The frequent representations are either based on Fourier descriptors or MFCC. However we design mid-level or high-level features based on time-frequency segmentation, wavelet and discrete decomposition, compress sensing, non parametric bayesian representation, CNN / DNN. The validation of the models are conducted from cetaceans to birds songs, bats to dolphins biosonars, from frogs to insects calls. Biodiversity analysis and environmental care projects are some of the direct outcomes of this research. You'll develop high level research, and you may collaborate with some industry, which could afterward offer you a permanent position in addition to academic opportunities. * Your profile: - Machine learning / Data Science or Applied Mathematics / Computer Science, or Electrical Engineering / Signal Processing, - Solid mathematics knowledge (especially linear algebra and statistics), - Creative and highly motivated, good programming skill (Python, Matlab, C,...), - Fluent in English, both written and spoken, - Prior knowledge in the areas of pattern recognition is a plus. * Duration: Internship: 3-6-9 months, Phd: 3-4 years, Postdoc: 1-2 years, Engineer: 1-2 years. Start date: As soon as possible. Internship candidate would continue with a PhD. * Location: Some of the current positions are available on the French Riviera, university of Toulon - CNRS lab LSIS heading SABIOD, France. Your research will be conducted within collaborations, like National Parks (Port-Cros), international labs (in Italy, USA, Germany, Spain, Canada, Australia, UK...), and may include outdoors signal experiments on cetaceans, birds... Worldwide collaborations offers real opportunities to travel (Reunion, New Caledonia, USA, Canada). One of the position is related to La R?union bioacoustic survey in Indian Ocean, another one in Pacific Ocean. * Application: Please send your application via email to Pr Glotin, Sabiod PI, glotin (at) univ-tln.fr, in one single .pdf file, including: your complete CV + grades during education (and for postdoc two of the main publications) + at least on letter of reference. -- Herve' Glotin, Pr. http://glotin.univ-tln.fr glotin at univ-tln.fr -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: MachineLearningForBioacoustic_position.pdf Type: application/pdf Size: 35770 bytes Desc: not available URL: From naotsu at gmail.com Wed Dec 3 02:25:03 2014 From: naotsu at gmail.com (Naotsugu Tsuchiya) Date: Wed, 3 Dec 2014 18:25:03 +1100 Subject: Connectionists: Fwd: video recordings from the panpsychism workshop (20-21, July, 2014 at Byron Bay) available now! In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Dear list subscribers, Some of you may find the video recordings from the following conference interesting. Regars Nao --- https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCgw74V_os7QOANe8e78eFeA Video recordings from the panpsychism workshop (20-21, July, 2014 at Byron Bay) available now! Consciousness - here, there, everywhere? The prospects for panpsychism Sunday 20th and Monday 21st of July 2014 *Speakers:* - Naotsugu Tsuchiya (neuroscience, Monash University) - David Chalmers (philosophy, ANU, NYU) - Mandyam Srinivasan (neuroscience, U of Queensland) - Monica Gagliano (evolutionary biology, U of Western Australia) - Yasuo Kuniyoshi (robotics, U of Tokyo) - Janet Wiles (engineering, U of Queensland) - Larisa Albantakis (neuroscience, U of Wisconsin) - Giulio Tononi (neuroscience, U of Wisconsin) Panpsychism is a meta-theoretical framework, which assumes that the mind is a fundamental feature of our universe with some degree of consciousness present in all things. A theme that can be traced back to Western and Eastern philosophies from Ancient Greece to Mahayana Buddhism, panpsychism has seen a resurgence in contemporary philosophy and neuroscience as a potential framework for addressing the hard problem of consciousness. In late July 2014 the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness re-considered panpsychism at a satellite event complementing their 18th annual conference. http://www.theassc.org/consciousness_here_there_everywhere_the_prospects_for_panpsychism Famous for its sleepy beachside atmosphere on the easternmost tip of mainland Australia, Byron Bay instead became the epicentre for two days of heated discussion addressing panpsychism from historical, philosophical, and neuroscientific viewpoints. Topics of discussion varied from the perceptual capacity of the honeybee through Integrated Information Theory and the presence of consciousness in plants and artificial life. Recordings of several of the key lectures were taken and have been made available via the Tsuchiya Lab youtube account. Please join the discussion as we consider what a ?radical idea? like panpsychism may bring to our understanding of consciousness. Sponsored by Monash University -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Nao (Naotsugu) Tsuchiya, Ph.D. 1. Associate Professor School of Psychological Sciences Faculty of Biomedical and Psychological Sciences, Monash University 2. ARC Future Fellow homepage: http://users.monash.edu.au/~naotsugt/Tsuchiya_Labs_Homepage -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jose at psychology.rutgers.edu Wed Dec 3 10:50:46 2014 From: jose at psychology.rutgers.edu (Stephen =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Jos=E9?= Hanson) Date: Wed, 03 Dec 2014 10:50:46 -0500 Subject: Connectionists: Grad Ops, HansonLab Rutgers Message-ID: <1417621846.5884.155.camel@edison> We are looking for some Graduate Students who have interest in Brain & Computation. Please see attachment. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: hansonlab-gradopps.pdf Type: application/pdf Size: 128849 bytes Desc: not available URL: From zhong at maebashi-it.ac.jp Thu Dec 4 03:06:26 2014 From: zhong at maebashi-it.ac.jp (Ning Zhong) Date: Thu, 04 Dec 2014 17:06:26 +0900 Subject: Connectionists: Proud of Brain Informatics's first open access articles In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <54801602.5060200@maebashi-it.ac.jp> Brain Informatics publishes its first articles If this email is not displayed correctly, please click here to read this email online. SpringerOpen /Brain Informatics publishes its first articles/ Visit us on SpringerOpen Do you know *Brain Informatics * publishes its first articles? We are happy to tell you this *SpringerOpen * journal has now published its first articles and want to invite you to read them listed as follows. separating line What the journal is about *Brain Informatics* provides a unique platform for researchers and practitioners to disseminate original research on the latest applications of computing technology in the study of the human brain and cognition. separating line Read the first published articles * *Visual and auditory reaction time for air traffic controllers using quantitative electroencephalograph (QEEG) data* Hussein A. Abbass et al. * *Towards virtual training of emotion regulation* Tibor Bosse et al. * *Analysis of alcoholic EEG signals based on horizontal visibility graph entropy* Guohun Zhu et al. * *Linear Dynamic Sparse Modelling for functional MR imaging* Shulin Yan et al. * *Granular computing with multiple granular layers for brain big data processing* Guoyin Wang and Ji Xu *More articles* separating line Publish your open access article free of charge All publication costs in /Brain Informatics/ are fully sponsored. As an author, you do not need to pay an *article processing charge* (APC). So get involved by *submitting * your own paper and reap the advantages! separating line We look forward to reading your work! *Kind regards,* *Ning Zhong* and *Jiming Liu* Editors-in-Chief /Brain Informatics/ Share this newsletter: separating line About the journal *Aims and Scope* *Editorial Board* *Submission* *Contact us* separating line Connect with Us twitter bird Follow SpringerOpen on *Twitter * and *Google+ *to hear more about our latest news. Stay connected to the open access community! separating line Logo BMC Find more open access biology and medicine journals at *BioMed Central* *BioMed Central Journal list * separating line separating line This email has been sent to zhong at maebashi-it.ac.jp You are receiving this e-mail because you are registered with Springer Services or SpringerAlerts If you would not like to receive further information on Springer's publishing program in your interest field, please use this link: unsubscription For all enquiries, problems or suggestions regarding this service, please contact springeralerts at springer.com . Springer respects your privacy and does not disclose, sell or rent your personal information to any nonaffiliated third parties without your consent. Please visit our Springer Privacy Statement Springer-Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstrasse 17, 69121 Heidelberg, Germany, phone: +49 6221 487 0, fax: +49 6221 487 8366 ? Springer 2014, springer.com CON23625 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Eirini.Mavritsaki at bcu.ac.uk Tue Dec 2 17:19:35 2014 From: Eirini.Mavritsaki at bcu.ac.uk (Eirini Mavritsaki) Date: Tue, 2 Dec 2014 22:19:35 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: Call for Papers ( Frontiers in Computational Neuroscience): Special Issue on Neuropsychology through the lenses of Computational Modelling Message-ID: <3FCD70F47E1E99449079BAD1F20D729C43F44277@EXMBX1.staff.uce.ac.uk> Call for Papers Special Issue in Frontiers in Computational Neuroscience 'Neuropsychology through the lenses of Computational Modelling' Computational modelling may provide an increasingly important tool for furthering neuropsychology and understanding brain impairments ? but there remain many issues: how can different types of lesion be best modelled? What are the differences between damage to grey matter and to fibre tracts? What the effects of learning within damaged systems or systems where there is an imbalance in neurotransmitters? For this reason a special issue that brings together state-of-the-art papers on the computational modelling of neuropsychological disorders, with papers covering different levels of modelling (from spiking neurons to higher-level connectionist modelling), using imaging as well as behavioural data, and addressing a number of different disorders (attention, language, memory etc.) is expended to contribute significantly to the field of Neuropsychology and Computational Neuroscience. In collaboration with Frontiers in Computational Neuroscience, we are organizing a Research Topic titled "Neuropsychology through the lenses of computational modelling?, hosted by Eirini Mavritsaki, Glyn Humphreys. As host editor, I would like to encourage you to contribute to this topic. Frontiers, a Swiss open-access publisher, recently partnered with Nature Publishing Group to expand its researcher-driven Open Science platform. Frontiers articles are rigorously peer-reviewed, can be disseminated freely and are widely read by your colleagues and by the broader scientific and medical research communities. The idea behind a research topic is to create an organized, comprehensive collection of several contributions, as well as a forum for discussion and debate. Contributions can be articles describing original research, methods, hypothesis & theory, opinions, etc. We have created a homepage on the Frontiers website (Frontiers in Computational Neuroscience) where all articles will appear after peer-review and where participants in the topic will be able to hold relevant discussions: http://www.frontiersin.org/Computational_Neuroscience/researchtopics/Neuropsychology_through_the_le/3580. Frontiers will also compile an e-book, as soon as all contributing articles are published, that can be used in classes, be sent to foundations that fund your research, to journalists and press agencies, or to any number of other organizations. As such, a manuscript accepted for publication incurs a publishing fee, which varies depending on the article type. Research Topic manuscripts receive a significant discount on publishing fees. Please take a look at this fee table: http://www.frontiersin.org/about/PublishingFees. Once published, your articles will remain free to access for all readers, and will be indexed in PubMed and other academic archives. As an author in Frontiers, you retain the copyright to your own papers and figures. I would be delighted if you considered participating in this Research Topic. Should you choose to participate, please confirm by sending me a quick email and then your abstract no later than Feb 16, 2015 using the following link: http://www.frontiersin.org/Computational_Neuroscience/researchtopics/Neuropsychology_through_the_le/3580 Please note that the deadline for manuscript submission is on: Jun 30, 2015 Since I am using the Frontiers system to manage this topic, I would really appreciate if you could also please indicate your decision by clicking on one of the links below. <> With best regards, Eirini Mavritsaki Guest Associate Editor, Frontiers in Computational Neuroscience www.frontiersin.org ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Eirini Mavritsaki, Ph.D., CPsychol Co-Director of the Centre for Applied Psychological Research (CAP Research) Business Development Coordinator for Social Sciences Lecturer in Cognitive Psychology Faculty of Business Law and Social Sciences Birmingham City University D 3.17 Dawson Building City North Campus Perry Bar, Birmingham B42 2SU eirini.mavritsaki at bcu.ac.uk 0121 331 6361 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From irojas at ugr.es Wed Dec 3 06:39:07 2014 From: irojas at ugr.es (Ignacio Rojas) Date: Wed, 3 Dec 2014 12:39:07 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: IWANN 2015. International Work-Conference on Artificial Neural Networks.June 10-12, 2015 in Palma de Mallorca, Balearic Islands, (Spain). Call for Papers Message-ID: <605201d00eed$bf66ae80$3e340b80$@ugr.es> * Apologies if you received multiple copies of this CFP. * Please kindly forward to those who may be interested. * Please DO NOT reply to this email. To unsubscribe send us an email to: InfoIwann-request at ctima.uma.es. To obtain more information: iwann at ugr.es. CALL FOR PAPERS 13th International Work-Conference on Artificial Neural Networks (IWANN2015) June 10-12, 2015 Palma de Mallorca, Balearic Islands, (Spain). http://iwann.ugr.es/ Dear colleagues, On behalf of the Organizing Committee of the 13th International Work-Conference on Artificial Neural Networks (IWANN2015), we are pleased to invite you to participate in this event that will be held on June 10-12, 2015 in Palma de Mallorca, Balearic Islands, (Spain). This biennial meeting seeks to provide a discussion forum for scientists, engineers, educators and students about the latest discoveries and realizations in the foundations, theory, models and applications of systems inspired on nature, using computational intelligence methodologies, as well as in emerging areas related to the above items. We strongly emphasize the wide range of topics comprised under the umbrella of IWANN2015, covering all the fields that are usually referred to as "Computational Intelligence". In this edition we are particularly interested in submissions dealing with: Artificial Neural Networks, Fuzzy Systems, Evolutionary Computation, Machine Learning, Artificial Cognitive Systems and Multidisciplinary Approaches As in previous editions, IWANN aims to create a friendly environment that could lead to the establishment or to strengthen scientific collaborations and exchanges among attendees. To emphasize this interactive atmosphere we will propose a couple of trending research topics to be discussed in an expert round table focus group. The results and conclusions will be shared among all the IWANN2015 participants. Besides, in this edition we offer the possibility to carry out a limited number of virtual presentations for those who want to participate but they have serious difficulties on travelling. Moreover the presentation of demos and functional prototypes are encouraged. Appropriate spaces will be reserved. The proceedings will include all the presented communications to the conference. As in previous editions of IWANN, we are arranging the publication of the proceedings with Springer-Verlag as Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS) series, and the books will be available on-site. It is also foreseen the publication of an extended version of selected papers in a special issue on several specialized journals such as Neurocomputing (Elsevier), Soft Computing (Springer) and Neural Processing Letters (Springer). IWANN is included in the ranking of the best conferences established by the Computer Science Conference Ranking based on the "Estimated Impact of Conference (EIC)?, concretely in position 55 among 701 considered (in the Artificial Intelligence field), and in the rank B in Computing Research and Education Association (CORE). Also the IWANN papers are indexed by CiteSeer.IST, and by the organization Computing Research and Education Association (CORE). You can find extended information on IWANN web pages: http://iwann.ugr.es/2015/ We hope this conference will be of your interest. Best wishes Andreu Catal?, Gonzalo Joya, Ignacio Rojas Co-Chairmen IWANN 2015 ================================================ You have been included in this list because, to the best of our knowledge, you have once shown interest in IWANN. If this is not the case, please, accept our apologies and unsubscribe via e-mail: To: InfoIwann-request at ctima.uma.es Subject: unsubscribe ______________________________________________________________________ Ignacio Rojas Professor of Department of Computer Architecture and Computer Technology Higher Technical School of Information Technology and Telecommunications Engineering Director of the Information and Communications Technology Centre University of Granada, Spain. C\ Periodista Daniel Saucedo Aranda s/n, 18071 Granada (SPAIN). ______________________________________________________________________ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Nicoladie.Tam at unt.edu Wed Dec 3 19:18:03 2014 From: Nicoladie.Tam at unt.edu (Tam, Nicoladie) Date: Thu, 4 Dec 2014 00:18:03 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: Call for Papers: Behavioral Neuroscience. Deadline extended: Dec 20, 2014 Message-ID: <33D9F39C-C5CC-4CCB-A3DE-07903E660B39@unt.edu> Call for papers Special Issue in Behavioral Neuroscience to be published in the Psychology and Behavioral Science (an open access journal) Lead guest editor: Nicoladie Tam, Ph.D. Due date: Dec 20, 2014 http://www.sciencepublishinggroup.com/specialissue/201002 Aims and Scope: ? Molecular and cellular bases of behavior, including genetic and epigenetic mechanisms ? Human and non-human animal cognition and emotion ? Motivation, homeostasis and reward ? Sleep and circadian rhythms ? Sensory and motor processing ? Animal models of psychopathology, addiction and neurodegenerative disorders ? Developmental and lifespan analyses Subject areas in this Special Issue may include, but not limited to the following fields: ? Cognitive psychology ? Affective neuroscience ? Behavioral psychology ? Social psychology ? Psychophysiology ? Neuropsychology ? Neuropharmacology ? Psychopathology ? Emotions ? Cogntion ? Addiction ? Learning and memory ? Gender differences ? Psychiatric disorders ? Cognitive theory ? Brain imaging ? Experimental neuropsychology ? Neurobiological basis of behavior Nicoladie Tam, PhD Associate Professor Life Sciences Complex A246C Dept. of Biological Sciences University of North Texas 1155 Union Circle, #305220 Denton, TX 76203-5017 940-565-3261 nicoladie.tam at unt.edu http://www.biology.unt.edu/~tam/ From rjgsousa at gmail.com Wed Dec 3 10:36:01 2014 From: rjgsousa at gmail.com (Ricardo Gamelas Sousa) Date: Wed, 03 Dec 2014 15:36:01 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: [visum2015] Call for participation! Message-ID: <547F2DE1.7070400@gmail.com> Call for Participation 3^rd VISion Understanding and Machine intelligence summer school Porto, Portugal 2-9 July, 2015 http://www.fe.up.pt/visum/ ** We invite everyone with interests in computer vision to attend the 3rd *VISion Understanding and Machine intelligence summer school, *at**ATMOSFERA M in Porto, Portugal. At visum you can find an expert multicultural environment, aiming to foster junior researchers? awareness of computer vision topics, as well as to enhance all attendees? knowledge regarding the state of the art, provided by leading international experts on the field. Being an area of great potential in industrial applications with a strong increase in the number of researchers in these last years, *visum* summer school will be an incredible opportunity. Important Dates Application Deadline March 1, 2015 Decision March 8, 2015 Early Registration April 10, 2015 Late Registration May 8, 2015 Summer School July 2-9, 2015 Visum will comprise three main tracks 1.Fundamental subjects 2.Examples of computer vision applications 3.Industrial session Each one with extensive practical ?hands-on? sessions *Topics*** Machine Learning* Tae-Kyun Kim Imperial College London UK Local Features Extraction and Description Jiri Matas Czech Technical University CZ Document Image Analysis Alicia Fornes Universitat Aut?noma de Barcelona ES Scene Understanding Martial Hebert CMU USA Automatic Facial Expression Recognition Michel Valstar University of Nottingham UK RGB-D Cameras Thomas Whelan Imperial College London UK ** Applications Point Clouds 3D* Jo?o P. Costeira IST PT ** *Tentative titles Industry Track ASAP54 Daniel Heesch Enermeter Manuel Jo?o Ferreira Philips Jacek Kustra Location visum will take place at ATMOSFERA M, Rua J?lio Dinis, n? 158/160, Porto, Portugal. Venue visum will take place in Porto, Portugal?s second-largest city, European Best Destination 2012 and Lonely Planet?s top 10 for 2013. Here, you can find famous baroque style monuments, the worldwide known Port Wine cellars, always having the World Heritage Douro River as the background of this youthful, active and charming city. visum?s program includes social activities. Accommodation *Tattva Design Hostel* Students will have 10% of discount. The prices include: Buffet breakfast, Wi-Fi all over the building, 4 computers in Lounge area, free linen, free locks, free City Maps, free Luggage Storage, free Portuguese Lessons, free Walking Tours, Happy Hour (exclusive prices for TattvaBar for guests). *Hotel da M?sica* All accepted participants will have a special price included in visum?s fees. Hotel da M?sica is a luxurious 4-star property set in a prime location in the centre of Porto. Local tourist attractions such as Rotunda da Boavista, Casa da Musica and Hospital Militar are not far from the hotel. Hotel da M?sica is equipped with free wifi. For more details please follow the link: http://www.hoteldamusica.com/and do not forget to check the special conditions at http://www.fe.up.pt/visum/ Please visit our webpage for up to date information: http://www.fe.up.pt/visum/. We are looking forward for your participation! visum organising committee Tiago Esteves, INEB, Faculdade de Engenharia da Universidade do Porto Kelwin Fernandes, INESC TEC, Faculdade de Engenharia da Universidade do Porto Eduardo Marques, INESC TEC, Faculdade de Engenharia da Universidade do Porto Ana Rebelo, INESC TEC, Universidade do Porto Ricardo Sousa, INEB, Universidade do Porto Lu?s Teixeira, INESC TEC, Faculdade de Engenharia da Universidade do Porto Follow us on: Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/visum/402527539813446 Google+: https://plus.google.com/104076275960053201744/posts Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/visumschool -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From celiasmith at uwaterloo.ca Wed Dec 3 12:03:17 2014 From: celiasmith at uwaterloo.ca (Chris Eliasmith) Date: Wed, 3 Dec 2014 12:03:17 -0500 Subject: Connectionists: Postdoc Position in Large-scale Brain Modeling Message-ID: <547F4255.2090705@uwaterloo.ca> Centre for Theoretical Neuroscience, University of Waterloo We are recruiting for a theoretical neuroscientist interested in building large-scale functional brain models. The successful candidate will become an integral part of the team that has built the world's largest functional brain model, Spaun. This work was published in Science, and received coverage around the world on CNN, BBC, CBC, and hundreds of other outlets. We are building the next generation of computational platforms to run such models. This position will focus on using supercomputers (e.g., IBM BlueGene) to run models written in the Nengo environment (http://nengo.ca). Nengo is a general neural simulation environment that, in addition to Spaun, has been used to simulate adaptive arm controllers, state-of-the-art vision systems, natural language processors, reinforcement learners, and novel robotic controllers among many other projects. Postdocs will be encouraged to pursue their research program with these state-of-the-art tools. Qualifications: PhD in theoretical neuroscience or related field; experience with MPI, BlueGene, or other HPC environments desirable; python experience an asset. Start date: As soon as a suitable candidate is found Submit: CV, statement of research interests, three references Duration: 1 year renewable for a 2nd year Lab: CNRG http://compneuro.uwaterloo.ca/ Contact: celiasmith at uwaterloo.ca (Chris Eliasmith) Funding for the position will be provided by TalentEdge (http://www.oce-ontario.org/programs/industry-academic-collaboration/talentedge/fellowships) and a corporate sponsor. From p.monaghan at lancaster.ac.uk Thu Dec 4 08:34:03 2014 From: p.monaghan at lancaster.ac.uk (Monaghan, Padraic) Date: Thu, 4 Dec 2014 13:34:03 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: Postdoc positions - computational modelling of language Message-ID: <98AE5771CD20C44BA5FA57B86A6AF479238A0080@EX-1-MB1.lancs.local> 4 Research positions, ESRC LUCiD Centre in Manchester, UK The ESRC International Centre for Language and Communicative Development is currently advertising for the following research positions, to be based in Manchester, UK: (1) Postdoctoral Researcher with expertise in computational modelling of language acquisition, (2) Postdoctoral Researcher with expertise in information structure in language acquisition. (3) Postdoctoral Researcher with expertise in EEG in infant language acquisition, (4) Research Assistant, with native-level Polish (for experimental/corpus studies). Further details available via the links below. Research Associate position: computational modelling of language acquisition. Closing Date ? 5th January 2015 https://www.jobs.manchester.ac.uk/displayjob.aspx?jobid=8957 Research Associate position: information structure in language acquisition. Closing Date ? 7th January 2015 https://www.jobs.manchester.ac.uk/displayjob.aspx?jobid=8944 Research Associate position: EEG techniques in infant language acquisition. Closing Date ? 7th January 2015 https://www.jobs.manchester.ac.uk/displayjob.aspx?jobid=8945 Research Assistant position: Polish children?s acquisition of language. Closing Date ? 5th January 2015 https://www.jobs.manchester.ac.uk/displayjob.aspx?jobid=8943 From publicity at ecmlpkdd2015.org Wed Dec 3 14:03:16 2014 From: publicity at ecmlpkdd2015.org (ECMLPKDD 2015) Date: Wed, 3 Dec 2014 19:03:16 -0000 Subject: Connectionists: ECMLPKDD 2015: Call for Papers, Tutorials and Workshops Message-ID: <015c01d00f2b$cc2a29b0$647e7d10$@ecmlpkdd2015.org> The European Conference on Machine Learning and Principles and Practice of Knowledge Discovery in Databases (ECMLPKDD) will take place in Porto, Portugal, from September 7th to 11th, 2015 (http://www.ecmlpkdd2015.org). This event is the leading European scientific event on machine learning and data mining and builds upon a very successful series of 25 ECML and 18 PKDD conferences, which have been jointly organized for the past 14 years. ECMLPKDD 2015 will host three tracks, tutorials and a set of workshops. Therefore, we invite all researchers and practitioners from different communities to submit papers and/or present tutorial and workshop proposals. ************************* CALL FOR PAPERS * ************************* JOURNAL TRACK ********************* Articles for this track are submitted all year long directly to either Machine Learning or Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery, and are reviewed like regular journal articles. Accepted articles appear in full in the journal and the authors are given a presentation slot at the conference. Articles deemed insufficiently mature for journal publication may be accepted for inclusion in the proceedings. Submissions to the journal track will be managed by the Guest Editorial Board. Paper Submission: Cut-off dates for the bi-weekly batches are 14 Dec, 2014 and 4 Jan, 18 Jan, 1 Feb, 15 Fev, 1 Mar, 15 Mar, 29 Mar, 12 Apr, 26 Apr of 2015 Web Page: http://www.ecmlpkdd2015.org/submission/journal-track RESEARCH PROCEEDINGS TRACK ******************************************* The research proceedings track, which is organized in the traditional way. Accepted papers will be published in the Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence (LNCS/LNAI) of Springer, after reviewing by the program committee. Abstract submission deadline: March 26, 2015 Paper Submission deadline: April 2, 2015 Paper Acceptance Notification: June 1, 2015 Paper Camera Ready: June 15, 2015 Web Page: http://www.ecmlpkdd2015.org/submission/research-proceedings-track INDUSTRIAL, GOVERNAMENTAL & NON-GOVERNAMENTAL PROCEEDINGS TRACK ****************************************************************** The NEW industrial, governmental & non-governmental (NGO) proceedings track is independent and distinct from the Research Track. Submissions to this track should solve real-world problems and focus on engineering systems, applications, and challenges. Accepted papers will be published in the Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence (LNCS/LNAI) of Springer, after reviewing by the programme committee. Abstract submission deadline: March 26, 2015 Paper Submission deadline: April 2, 2015 Paper Acceptance Notification: June 1, 2015 Camera ready submission: June 15, 2015 Web Page: http://www.ecmlpkdd2015.org/submission/industrial-proceedings-track ***************************************************************** CALL FOR TUTORIAL AND WORKSHOP PROPOSALS * ***************************************************************** TUTORIALS ************** The tutorials are intended to provide a comprehensive introduction to established or emerging research topics of interest for the machine learning and the data mining community. These topics include related research fields or applications. The ideal tutorial should attract a wide audience. It should be broad enough to provide a basic introduction to the chosen research area, but it should also cover the most important topics in depth. We welcome half day workshop proposals. Proposal deadline: March 2, 2015 Proposal Acceptance Notification: March 23, 2015 Web Page: http://www.ecmlpkdd2015.org/submission/call-for-tutorials WORKSHOPS **************** The workshops will be on relevant and current topics in Machine Learning and Data Mining. The scope of the proposal should be consistent with the conference themes as described in the ECML PKDD 2015 Call for Papers (http://www.ecmlpkdd2015.org/submission). Interdisciplinary workshops that bring together researchers and practitioners from different communities are especially welcome. We encourage workshops that bridge the gap between theoretical advances and important and/or innovative applications of machine learning and data mining. We welcome both full and half day workshop proposals. Proposal deadline: March 2, 2015 Proposal Acceptance notification: March 23, 2015 Workshop websites and call for papers online: March 27, 2015 Workshop proceedings (camera-ready): August 3, 2015 Web Page: http://www.ecmlpkdd2015.org/submission/call-for-workshop-proposals Hope to see you all soon in Porto, Portugal!!! The publicity chairs of the ECML PKDD 2015, Carlos Abreu Ferreira Ricardo Campos --- Este e-mail foi verificado em termos de v?rus pelo software antiv?rus Avast. http://www.avast.com From triesch at fias.uni-frankfurt.de Thu Dec 4 10:38:34 2014 From: triesch at fias.uni-frankfurt.de (Jochen Triesch) Date: Thu, 4 Dec 2014 16:38:34 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: Open PhD positions at the International Max Planck Research School (IMPRS) for Neural Circuits Message-ID: Call for applications: International Max Planck Research School for Neural Circuits The International Max Planck Research School (IMPRS) for Neural Circuits was funded in 2011 by the Max Planck Society and offers ten positions every year for excellent students holding a relevant Master?s or Bachelor?s degree to perform research resulting in a PhD. The program is taught in English. All positions are completely funded (by the school and/or participating Labs), either by a contract or a fellowship. The common focus of the IMPRS for Neural Circuits will be the understanding of neural circuits (from the simple to the large and complex), at all scales required to achieve this understanding. This ambitious objective will require analyses at the molecular, cellular, multi-cellular, network and behavioral levels, with the full understanding that macroscopic phenomena (spatial patterns, dynamics) can be scale-dependent, and that reductionism is not always sufficient as a method. In the IMPRS for Neural Circuits we offer a multidisciplinary program to excellent doctoral students with backgrounds in neuroscience, mathematics, physics, computer science, (bio) chemistry, biology and medicine as well as research experience in the participating institutions of the Frankfurt Neuroscience community (see website for participating Faculty members). Students will participate in a tailor-made educational program including research rotations and neuroscience classes but also in trainings in transferable skills. We welcome excellent students to apply to the program. Till January 15, 2015, it will be possible to apply for a position starting in the Fall of 2015. You can apply via our electronic registration system. After the deadline, the Faculty members will select around 25 students to participate in the interview symposium in Frankfurt (March 2015). Shortly after the symposium, the students will receive a letter with an offer or rejection. More information can be found on our website www.imprs.brain.mpg.de. Please send an email to arjan.vink at brain.mpg.de if you have more specific questions. -- Prof. Dr. Jochen Triesch Johanna Quandt Research Professor Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies http://fias.uni-frankfurt.de/~triesch/ Tel: +49 (0)69 798-47531 Fax: +49 (0)69 798-47611 From cookie at ucsd.edu Thu Dec 4 16:21:05 2014 From: cookie at ucsd.edu (Santamaria, Cookie) Date: Thu, 4 Dec 2014 21:21:05 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: **Registration deadline THIS FRIDAY 12/07** MURI Winter School Jan. 2015 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: UCSD and the University of Chicago present: MURI WINTER SCHOOL 2015 Dynamics of Multifunction Brain Networks Organizers: Henry Abarbanel (UCSD), Timothy Gentner (UCSD), and Daniel Margoliash (Univ. of Chicago) 15th Floor, Building 1, Village West, UC San Diego January 7-9, 2015 Registration deadline: Friday, December 5, 2014 Abstract submission deadline: Friday, November 7, 2014 Lecturers: Tim Gardner (Boston University) - "High density neural recordings in singing birds: methods and observations" Michael Long (New York University) - "How does the brain generate behavioral sequences?" Gabriel Mindlin (University of Buenos Aires) - "The biomechanics of birdsong production" and "Low dimensional dynamics systems behind birdsong production" Richard Mooney (Duke University) - "Neurobiology of vocal learning" and "Forward mechanisms for hearing and learning" Marc Schmidt (University of Pennsylvania) - "Brainstem and forebrain contributions to the generation of learned motor" Ofer Tchernichovski (Hunter College) - "Vocal learning beyond imitation: from cultural evolution to brain dopamine" and "How a song is learned: mechanisms of template matching" ________________________________________________________________________________ This is the third annual Winter School sponsored by the U.S. Office of Naval Research as part of its UCSD/Chicago MURI program in Dynamics of Multifunction Brain Networks. This year's School presents a series of pedagogical and research oriented talks on the use of birdsong as a model system where theory and experiment can meet productively. It includes a series of pedagogical presentations and a poster session. The School is intended for all researchers, including advanced graduate students, interested in the general area of understanding functional nervous systems. Active participation during the School's lectures is strongly encouraged. All attendees are invited to submit abstracts for poster presentations. Selected contributed posters will be highlighted in an oral session. Registration is required for attendance, but there is no fee for attending. A limited number of travel awards are available for exceptionally qualified graduate students and postdocs, who should apply and have their supervisor send a letter of reference, via email, to muri.winter.school at gmail.com. Please visit us online to register and for details regarding the schedule and poster abstract submission: http://biocircuits.ucsd.edu/special/winterschool2015 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Vittorio.Murino at iit.it Fri Dec 5 08:25:14 2014 From: Vittorio.Murino at iit.it (Vittorio Murino) Date: Fri, 5 Dec 2014 14:25:14 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: ICIAP2015 - 2a call In-Reply-To: <2080919562.38384628.1417536679557.JavaMail.root@univr.it> References: <2080919562.38384628.1417536679557.JavaMail.root@univr.it> Message-ID: <5481B23A.8000008@iit.it> Apologize for multiple posting ================================================================= 18th International Conference on Image Analysis and Processing ICIAP 2015 ================================================================= Genova, Italy 7-11 September, 2015 http://www.iciap2015.eu Main Conference: 9-11 September, 2015 Workshop and Tutorials: 7-8 September, 2015 ======================================================= IMPORTANT DATES Full paper submission: March 16, 2015 Full paper evaluation notification: May 15, 2015 Camera ready submission: June 15, 2015 Author registration: June 22, 2015 Workshop, Tutorial and Special Session proposals: February 9, 2015 ======================================================= CALL FOR PAPERS ICIAP 2015 is the 18th edition of a series of conferences organized biennially by the Italian Member Society (GIRPR) of the International Association for Pattern Recognition (IAPR). The conference covers both classic and most recent trends in computer vision, pattern recognition and image processing, addressing both theoretical and applicative aspects, with particular emphasis (but not limited) to the following topics: * Video Analysis & Understanding * Multiview Geometry and 3D Computer Vision * Pattern Recognition and Machine Learning * Image Analysis, Detection and Recognition * Shape Analysis and Modeling * Multimedia * Biomedical Applications CALL FOR WORKSHOP/TUTORIAL ICIAP 2015 is soliciting proposals for new and recurring (either half/full day) workshops and tutorials, which will be held on 7-8 September 2015. We invite you to submit tutorial and workshop proposals on any topic related to the broad set of research and application areas covered the by ICIAP 2015 conference. Submission instructions and further info are available on http://www.iciap2015.eu CALL FOR SPECIAL SESSIONS ICIAP 2015 will host a small number of special sessions that will be focused either on novel methodological or application scenarios. Special session proposals should clearly point out the topic of the session, and the process used to select the papers. More info onhttp://www.iciap2015.eu INVITED SPEAKERS (to be completed) * Kristen Grauman, University of Texas at Austin * Michal Irani, Weizmann Institute of Science * Bernt Schiele, Max Planck Institute for Informatics ORGANIZATION General Chair: V. Murino (IIT and Univ. of Verona) Program Chairs: E. Puppo (Univ. of Genova), G. Vernazza (Univ. of Genova) Workshop Chairs: M. Cristani (Univ. of Verona), C. Sansone (Univ. of Napoli Federico II) Tutorial Chair: A. Del Bue (IIT) Special Sessions Chairs: G. Boccignone (Univ. of Milano), G. Giacinto (Univ. of Cagliari) US Liason Chair: S. Savarese (Stanford Univ.) Asia Liaison Chair: H. Saito (Keio Univ.) Web:http://www.iciap2015.eu Contacts:iciap2015 at iit.it -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Vittorio Murino ******************************************* Prof. Vittorio Murino, Ph.D. PAVIS - Pattern Analysis & Computer Vision IIT Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia Via Morego 30 16163 Genova, Italy Phone: +39 010 71781 504 Mobile: +39 329 6508554 Fax: +39 010 71781 236 E-mail: vittorio.murino at iit.it Secretary: Sara Curreli email: sara.curreli at iit.it Phone: +39 010 71781 917 http://www.iit.it/pavis ******************************************** From ASIM.ROY at asu.edu Thu Dec 4 16:21:19 2014 From: ASIM.ROY at asu.edu (Asim Roy) Date: Thu, 4 Dec 2014 21:21:19 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: Call for Papers - Neural Networks special issue on Big Data Message-ID: <4AD8F84F0AA4E1448BD8131BA7E55EB41E307D2A@exmbt02.asurite.ad.asu.edu> Apologies for cross posting. Special Issue on Neural Network Learning in Big Data [Special Issue on Neural Network Learning in Big Data] Neural Networks Special Issue: Neural Network Learning in Big Data Big data is much more than storage of and access to data. Analytics plays an important role in making sense of that data and exploiting its value. But learning from big data has become a significant challenge and requires development of new types of algorithms. Most machine learning algorithms encounter theoretical challenges in scaling up to big data. Plus there are challenges of high dimensionality, velocity and variety for all types of machine learning algorithms. The neural network field has historically focused on algorithms that learn in an online, incremental mode without requiring in-memory access to huge amounts of data. The brain is arguably the best and most elegant big data processor and is the inspiration for neural network learning methods. Neural network type of learning is not only ideal for streaming data (as in the Industrial Internet or the Internet of Things), but could also be used for stored big data. For stored big data, neural network algorithms can learn from all of the data instead of from samples of the data. And the same is true for streaming data where not all of the data is actually stored. In general, online, incremental learning algorithms are less vulnerable to size of the data. Neural network algorithms, in particular, can take advantage of massively parallel (brain-like) computations, which use very simple processors, that other machine learning technologies cannot. Specialized neuromorphic hardware, originally meant for large-scale brain simulations, is becoming available to implement these algorithms in a massively parallel fashion. Neural network algorithms, therefore, can deliver very fast and efficient real-time learning through the use of hardware and this could be particularly useful for streaming data in the Industrial Internet. Neural network technologies thus can become significant components of big data analytics platforms and this special issue will begin that journey with big data. For this special issue of Neural Networks, we invite papers that address many of the challenges of learning from big data. In particular, we are interested in papers on efficient and innovative algorithmic approaches to analyzing big data (e.g. deep networks, nature-inspired and brain-inspired algorithms), implementations on different computing platforms (e.g. neuromorphic, GPUs, clouds, clusters) and applications of online learning to solve real-world big data problems (e.g. health care, transportation, and electric power and energy management). RECOMMENDED TOPICS: Topics of interest include, but are not limited to: 1. Autonomous, online, incremental learning - theory, algorithms and applications in big data 2. High dimensional data, feature selection, feature transformation - theory, algorithms and applications for big data 3. Scalable neural network algorithms for big data 4. Neural network learning algorithms for high-velocity streaming data 5. Deep neural network learning 6. Neuromorphic hardware for scalable neural network learning 7. Big data analytics using neural networks in healthcare/medical applications 8. Big data analytics using neural networks in electric power and energy systems 9. Big data analytics using neural networks in large sensor networks 10.Big data and neural network learning in computational biology and bioinformatics SUBMISSION PROCEDURE: Prospective authors should visit http://ees.elsevier.com/neunet/ for information on paper submission. During the submission process, there will be steps to designate the submission to this special issue. However, please indicate on the first page of the manuscript that the manuscript is intended for the Special Issue: Neural Network Learning in Big Data. Manuscripts will be peer reviewed according to Neural Networks guidelines. Manuscript submission due: January 15, 2015 First review completed: April 1, 2015 Revised manuscript due: May 1, 2015 Second review completed, final decisions to authors: May 15, 2015 Final manuscript due: May 30, 2015 GUEST EDITORS: Asim Roy, Arizona State University, USA (asim.roy at asu.edu) (lead guest editor) Kumar Venayagamoorthy, Clemson University, USA (gkumar at ieee.org) Nikola Kasabov, Auckland University of Technology, New Zealand (nkasabov at aut.ac.nz) Irwin King, Chinese University of Hong Kong, China (irwinking at gmail.com) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: image001.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 5272 bytes Desc: image001.jpg URL: From edwinb at cse.unsw.edu.au Thu Dec 4 22:45:05 2014 From: edwinb at cse.unsw.edu.au (Edwin Bonilla) Date: Fri, 5 Dec 2014 14:45:05 +1100 Subject: Connectionists: Machine Learning Summer School 2015, Sydney, Australia In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: ========================================================== Call for Participation: MLSS Sydney 2015: Machine Learning Summer School 2015, Sydney, Australia February 16th to February 25th, 2015 http://www.nicta.com.au/mlss2015 Important dates (AEDT): Scholarship application deadline: December 15th, 2014 Early bird registration deadline: January 15th, 2015 Late registration: January 16th, 2015 to January 31st, 2015 ========================================================== Description ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Machine Learning is a foundational discipline that forms the basis of much modern statistical data analysis. As data science emerges to meet the challenges of "Big Data", understanding the theory and practice of machine learning becomes a crucial asset in academia and industry. The machine learning summer school provides graduate students, academics and industry professionals with an intense learning experience on the theory and applications of modern machine learning. Over the course of eight days, a panel of internationally renowned experts in the field will offer tutorials covering basic as well as advanced topics. In addition, MLSS Sydney 2015 will feature hands-on sessions aimed at reinforcing the learned concepts through practice. Themes ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The school will have a strong focus on probabilistic inference, large scale learning, Bayesian non-parametrics and applications to recommender systems, vision and document analysis. Confirmed Speakers and Topics ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ryan Adams (Harvard University) Bayesian Nonparametrics: Dirichlet Processes and Friends Wray Buntine (Monash University) Bayesian Non-parametric Methods for Unsupervised Models Bob Carpenter (Columbia University) Bayesian inference, MCMC and Stan Hands-on Justin Domke (NICTA) Probabilistic Graphical Models Stephen Gould (Australian National University) Structured Prediction for Computer Vision Alex Ihler (UCI Irvine) Approximate Inference Mark Johnson (Macquarie University) Natural Language Processing Alexandros Karatzoglou (Telefonica) ML for Recommender Systems Neil Lawrence (The University of Sheffield) Bayesian Nonparametrics: Gaussian Processes Frank Nielsen (Ecole Polytechnique) Computational Information Geometry and Machine Learning Richard Nock (NICTA) Boosting Lizhen Qu (NICTA ) Deep Learning Mark Reid (ANU and NICTA) Prediction Markets Mark Schmidt (University of British Columbia) Optimization Chris Webers (NICTA) Introduction to Machine Learning Organizers ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Edwin V. Bonilla, The University of New South Wales Fabio Ramos, The University of Sydney Yang Wang, NICTA From mccallum at cs.umass.edu Fri Dec 5 13:29:45 2014 From: mccallum at cs.umass.edu (Andrew McCallum) Date: Fri, 5 Dec 2014 13:29:45 -0500 Subject: Connectionists: Postdoc with McCallum at UMass: embeddings and KBs Message-ID: <3E4ACE7A-D1C0-4C41-A92C-670BC522E28D@cs.umass.edu> I will be at NIPS and happy to talk with interested candidates there. Send me email. -Andrew ================================================================= Postdoctoral Fellowship in Embedded Representations of Knowledge Bases Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing, Information Extraction, Information Integration & Data Mining Andrew McCallum is seeking one or two highly creative Postdoctoral Research Fellows to join his lab in the School of Computer Science, University of Massachusetts Amherst. We are especially interested in people with interest and expertise in some combination of: * deep learning * statistical machine learning * natural language processing * graphical models * approximate inference and learning * parallel & distributed machine learning * large-scale automated knowledge base construction Previous experience applying machine learning to problems in text data is not necessarily required. This is an opportunity to exercise your machine-learning know-how on real data and real problems. Project opportunities include: * Learning embedded representations of large knowledge bases. * Entity types & relations of "universal schema" by tensor factorization. * Reasoning and inference on embedding-based knowledge bases. * Joint embeddings of language and images. * Information extraction and integration of massive bibliographic databases of research papers, authors, institutions and venues; social network analysis and trend analysis in this data; reviewer- and expert-finding; community- and trend-discovery. * Automated knowledge base construction from the web; large-scale probabilistic databases and crowd-sourcing. * Multi-core & cluster-distributed machine learning; probabilistic programming in Scala. * Natural language understanding with joint inference, approximate inference, minimal supervision, and learning alignments to structured data. UMass offers an attractive environment for research at the intersection of machine learning and textual information---with significant strength in information retrieval, social network analysis, data mining, databases, and many areas of machine learning. We also have strong ties to our statistics department and other nearby universities. We have large staff and computing infrastructure to support significant projects. Ranked among the top AI groups in the U.S., UMass has a highly collaborative CS department. UMass is located in bucolic western New England, surrounded by five other colleges, and also within day-trip range of both Boston and New York. Prospective candidates should email both Andrew McCallum , and Jean Joyce about your interest. The University of Massachusetts is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity employer. From grlmc at urv.cat Sun Dec 7 06:25:56 2014 From: grlmc at urv.cat (GRLMC) Date: Sun, 7 Dec 2014 12:25:56 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: InfoSec 2015: 1st announcement Message-ID: *To be removed from our mailing list, please respond to this message with UNSUBSCRIBE in the subject line* ********************************************************************** INTERNATIONAL SUMMER SCHOOL ON INFORMATION SECURITY InfoSec 2015 Tarragona, Spain July 6-10, 2015 Organized by Rovira i Virgili University http://grammars.grlmc.com/InfoSec2015/ ********************************************************************** --- Early registration deadline: January 3, 2015 --- ********************************************************************** AIM: InfoSec 2015 will be a major research training event addressed to graduates and postgraduates in the first steps of their academic career. With a global scope, it aims at updating them about the most recent advances in the critical and fast developing area of information security, which covers a large spectrum of current exciting academic research and industrial innovation. It refers to procedures to defend information from unauthorized access, use, modification, recording or destruction, with a critical role to play in order to avoid or minimize risks in the digital world. Renowned academics and industry pioneers will lecture and share their views with the audience. Most information security subareas will be displayed, namely: computer security, cryptography, privacy, cyber security, mobile security, network security, world wide web security, fraud prevention, data protection, etc. Main challenges of information security will be identified through 5 keynote lectures and 24 six-hour courses, which will tackle the most active and promising topics. The organizers believe outstanding speakers will attract the brightest and most motivated students. Interaction will be a main component of the event. ADDRESSED TO: Graduates and postgraduates from around the world. There are no formal pre-requisites in terms of academic degrees. However, since there will be differences in the course levels, specific background knowledge may be required for some of them. InfoSec 2015 is also appropriate for more senior people who want to keep themselves updated on recent developments and future trends. They will surely find it fruitful to listen and discuss with major researchers, industry leaders and innovators. REGIME: In addition to keynotes, 3 courses will run in parallel during the whole event. Participants will be able to freely choose the courses they will be willing to attend as well as to move from one to another. VENUE: InfoSec 2015 will take place in Tarragona, located 90 kms. to the south of Barcelona. The venue will be: Campus Catalunya Universitat Rovira i Virgili Av. Catalunya, 35 43002 Tarragona KEYNOTE SPEAKERS: tba PROFESSORS AND COURSES (to be completed): Jan Camenisch (IBM Research, Zurich), [introductory/intermediate] Privacy in a Digital World Hao Chen (University of California, Davis), [intermediate/advanced] Security of the Mobile App Ecosystem Joan Daemen (ST Microelectronics Belgium, Diegem), [introductory/intermediate] Sponge Functions, Keccak and SHA-3 Sajal K. Das (Missouri University of Science and Technology, Rolla), [intermediate/advanced] Securing Cyber-Physical Systems: Challenges and Opportunities David Evans (University of Virginia, Charlottesville), [introductory/intermediate] Secure Multiparty Computation: Techniques, Theory, and Tools for Building Privacy-Preserving Applications Markus Jakobsson (Qualcomm, Santa Clara), [introductory/intermediate] Frontiers in Fraud Prevention Somesh Jha (University of Wisconsin, Madison), [intermediate/advanced] Analysis Techniques in Information Security Songwu Lu (University of California, Los Angeles), [introductory/intermediate] Cellular Network Security: Issues and Defenses Catherine Meadows (Naval Research Laboratory, Washington DC), [introductory/intermediate] Formal Analysis of Cryptographic Protocols Nasir Memon (New York University), [introductory/intermediate] User Authentication Stefano Paraboschi (University of Bergamo), [introductory/intermediate] Data Protection in Network-enabled Systems Bart Preneel (KU Leuven), [introductory/intermediate] Cryptology: State of the Art and Research Challenges Jean-Jacques Quisquater (Catholic University of Louvain), [introductory/intermediate] The History of RSA: from Babylon to Smart Cards Stefan Saroiu (Microsoft Research, Redmond), [advanced] Dealing with Loss: Protecting Data on a Lost Mobile Device Milind Tambe (University of Southern California, Los Angeles), [introductory/intermediate] Introduction to the Emerging Science of Security Games Gene Tsudik (University of California, Irvine), [intermediate/advanced] Security and Privacy in Candidate Future Internet Architectures Yang Xiao (University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa), [introductory/advanced] Security in Smart Grids Wenyuan Xu (University of South Carolina, Columbia), [intermediate] Security and Privacy Analysis of Embedded Systems Yuliang Zheng (University of North Carolina, Charlotte), [introductory] Cryptography and the Future of Money ORGANIZING COMMITTEE: Adrian Horia Dediu (Tarragona) Carlos Mart?n-Vide (Tarragona, chair) Florentina Lilica Voicu (Tarragona) REGISTRATION: The registration form can be found at: http://grammars.grlmc.com/InfoSec2015/registration.php The selection of up to 8 courses requested in the registration template is only tentative and non-binding. For the sake of organization, it will be helpful to have an approximation of the respective demand for each course. Since the capacity of the venue is limited, registration requests will be processed on a first come first served basis. The registration period will be closed and the on-line registration facility disabled when the capacity of the venue will be complete. It is much recommended to register prior to the event. FEES: Fees are a flat rate covering the attendance to all courses during the week. There are several early registration deadlines. Fees depend on the registration deadline. ACCOMMODATION: Suggestions of accommodation will be provided in due time. CERTIFICATE: Participants will be delivered a certificate of attendance. QUESTIONS AND FURTHER INFORMATION: florentinalilica.voicu at urv.cat POSTAL ADDRESS: InfoSec 2015 Lilica Voicu Rovira i Virgili University Av. Catalunya, 35 43002 Tarragona, Spain Phone: +34 977 559 543 Fax: +34 977 558 386 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: Universitat Rovira i Virgili --- Este mensaje no contiene virus ni malware porque la protecci?n de avast! Antivirus est? activa. http://www.avast.com From tomas.hromadka at gmail.com Mon Dec 8 04:34:52 2014 From: tomas.hromadka at gmail.com (Tomas Hromadka) Date: Mon, 08 Dec 2014 10:34:52 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: [COSYNE2015] Travel grants, registration, and hotels Message-ID: <548570BC.9010506@gmail.com> ================================================= Computational and Systems Neuroscience (Cosyne) MAIN MEETING Mar 5 - Mar 8, 2015 Salt Lake City, Utah WORKSHOPS Mar 9 - Mar 10, 2015 Snowbird Ski Resort, Utah http://www.cosyne.org ================================================= REGISTRATION AND HOTELS: Travel grants submission is currently open. Online registration is currently open. Hotel booking is currently open. Travel grant application deadline: Dec 31, 2014, 11.59PM EST (Undergraduate Travel Grant) Jan 22, 2015, 11.59PM EST (Other travel grants) Early registration deadline: Jan 31, 2015, 11.59PM EST For deadlines on discounted hotel rates, as well as for more detailed information on Cosyne, please visit www.cosyne.org TRAVEL GRANTS Applications are now open for travel grants to attend the conference. Each awardee will receive at least $500 to help offset the costs of travel, registration, and accommodations. Larger grants may be available to those traveling from outside North America. Special consideration is given to scientists who have not previously attended the meeting, underrepresented minorities, students who are attending the meeting together with a mentor, undergraduate students, and authors of submitted Cosyne abstracts. We currently offer four travel grant programs for New Attendees, Presenters, Mentors, and Undergraduates. For details on applying, see http://www.cosyne.org/c/index.php?title=Travel_Grants . THE MEETING The annual Cosyne meeting provides an inclusive forum for the exchange of empirical and theoretical approaches to problems in systems neuroscience, in order to understand how neural systems function. The MAIN MEETING is single-track. A set of invited talks are selected by the Executive Committee, and additional talks and posters are selected by the Program Committee, based on submitted abstracts. The WORKSHOPS feature in-depth discussion of current topics of interest, in a small group setting. Cosyne topics include but are not limited to: neural coding, natural scene statistics, dendritic computation, neural basis of persistent activity, nonlinear receptive field mapping, representations of time and sequence, reward systems, decision-making, synaptic plasticity, map formation and plasticity, population coding, attention, and computation with spiking networks. CONFIRMED SPEAKERS Amy Bastian (Johns Hopkins) Matteo Carandini (UCL) Sophie Deneve (ENS) Florian Engert (Harvard) Marla Feller (UC Berkeley) Wulfram Gerstner (EPFL) Shawn Lockery (U Oregon) Liam Paninski (Columbia) Nicole Rust (U Penn) Tatyana Sharpee (Salk) Mariano Sigman (UBA) Emo Todorov (U Washington) ORGANIZING COMMITTEE General Chairs: Michael Long (NYU) and Stephanie Palmer (U Chicago) Program Chairs: Maria Geffen (U Penn) and Konrad Kording (Northwestern) Workshop Chairs: Robert Froemke (NYU) and Claudia Clopath (Imperial College) Publicity Chair: Xaq Pitkow (Rice) EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE Anne Churchland (CSHL) Zachary Mainen (Champalimaud) Alexandre Pouget (U Geneva) Anthony Zador (CSHL) From wangyi at ihpc.a-star.edu.sg Sun Dec 7 22:20:19 2014 From: wangyi at ihpc.a-star.edu.sg (Wang Yi (IHPC)) Date: Mon, 8 Dec 2014 03:20:19 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: Two Scientist Positions at Institute of High Performance Computing Message-ID: <1418008305571.41469@ihpc.a-star.edu.sg> == Position 1 == Institute of High Performance Computing (IHPC), A*STAR is looking for candidates with the talent and passion to pursue first class research in Big Data Analytics. You will be expected to conduct innovative research, design and develop cutting edge models and algorithms for analyzing large-scale textual data from science and engineering domains. You will also be expected to work closely with the researchers from IHPC to build up the in-house capability on context-based analytics. The successful candidates will have the opportunities to collaborate with researchers and practitioners from other A*STAR institutes as well as industry, to translate the developed solutions for tackling real world text analytics problems confronted today and in near future. Requirements: - PhD in Computer Science or other related subjects. - Strong expertise and research record on text analytics/text mining/natural language processing. - Experience in analyzing large-scale data using, e.g., Hadoop/Spark. - Broad knowledge in machine learning and data mining. - Programming experience in Python and Matlab/Octave. Experience in C++, Java, and R is a plus. - Able to work in a collaborative research environment & communicate well with colleagues and collaborators. == Position 2 == Institute of High Performance Computing (IHPC), A*STAR is looking for a postdoctoral Scientist with the talent and passion to pursue first class research in high content analytics through a joint project with Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology (IMCB). You will be expected to conduct innovative research, design and develop cutting edge models and algorithms for processing and analyzing large-scale high content screening data. You will also be expected to work closely with researchers from IHPC as well as reputed biologists from IMCB to establish novel approach to genome-wide cell phenotyping and gene interaction identification. The job is available immediately. Requirements: - PhD in Computer Science, Applied Statistics, or other related subjects. - Broad knowledge on machine learning/data mining/data analytics. - Strong expertise and research record in classification/clustering/network analytics. - Programming experience in Python and Matlab/Octave. - Experience in bioinformatics and big data analytics using, e.g., Hadoop/Spark would be a plus. - Capable of conducting research in a cross-disciplinary team. == How to Apply == Interested candidates please send your CV to ihpc at ihpc.a-star.edu.sg. We regret that only shortlisted candidates will be notified. ________________________________ This email is confidential and may be privileged. If you are not the intended recipient, please delete it and notify us immediately. Please do not copy or use it for any purpose, or disclose its contents to any other person. Thank you. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From jonathan.touboul at gmail.com Sun Dec 7 22:56:52 2014 From: jonathan.touboul at gmail.com (Jonathan Touboul) Date: Sun, 7 Dec 2014 22:56:52 -0500 Subject: Connectionists: Postdoctoral position: modelling of neuronal activity and connectivity from in-vivo calcium imaging Message-ID: Postdoctoral position in computational modelling of in-vivo calcium imaging at Inria: The Mycenae and Aramis Teams, at the Inria Research Institute in Paris, are recruiting a highly motivated postdoctoral associate to work on models of neuronal activity and connectivity from in-vivo calcium imaging. The focus of this research is on designing models of calcium activity and developing functional connectivity analysis methods in order to create models incorporating the spatial information of neurons to predict functional networks topology. A precise subject with references is available on this link: https://team.inria.fr/mycenae/files/2014/12/ARAMIS-MYCENAE_postdoc_offer_1.pdf Initial duration of the position is 12 months, and it is available immediately. Interested candidates shall get in touch with: Fabrizio De Vico Fallani (Amaris): fabrizio.devicofallani at gmail.com Fr?d?rique Cl?ment (Mycenae): Frederique.Clement at inria.fr Alexandre Vidal (U. Evry & Inria Mycenae) , Alexandre.Vidal at inria.fr -- Jonathan Touboul, PhD Mathematical Neuroscience Team (PI), Coll?ge de France, CIRB 11, Place Marcelin Berthelot, 75005 Paris Phone: (+33) 1 44 27 13 88 & INRIA Paris, MYCENAE Team [homepage] -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pradeep.ravikumar at gmail.com Sat Dec 6 12:00:50 2014 From: pradeep.ravikumar at gmail.com (Pradeep Ravikumar) Date: Sat, 06 Dec 2014 09:00:50 -0800 (PST) Subject: Connectionists: Machine Learning Summer School (MLSS) at Austin, from January 7 - January 16, 2015 Message-ID: <1417885249323.39b24383@Nodemailer> The University of Texas at Austin will be hosting the Machine Learning Summer School (MLSS) from January 7 - January 16, 2015, co-chaired by Pradeep Ravikumar and Peter Stone. The field of machine learning is at the intersection of computer science, statistics, mathematics, and optimization. The Machine Learning Summer School (MLSS) provides a premium venue for graduate students, researchers, and professionals to learn about fundamental machine learning and techniques at the forefront of research in the field (http://www.mlss.cc/). This is the first time MLSS will be held in Austin, Texas and will feature an exciting program with talks from leading experts in the field. For further details, including registration, list of speakers and the schedule, please visit http://www.cs.utexas.edu/mlss -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From brody at princeton.edu Mon Dec 8 11:20:24 2014 From: brody at princeton.edu (Carlos Brody) Date: Mon, 8 Dec 2014 11:20:24 -0500 Subject: Connectionists: Summer Course: Neurotechnologies for Analysis of Neural Dynamics References: Message-ID: <005B77E0-BDB5-40D8-A8FF-62B4EE3AB179@princeton.edu> New intensive summer course: Neurotechnologies for Analysis of Neural Dynamics Directors: David W. Tank and Michael Berry, Princeton University, Dates: June 15 ? July 12, 2014. Online Application Form and Course Schedule: NAND.princeton.edu Application Deadline: February 1, 2015. This course is designed to emphasize the major ways that scientists trained in the physical and information sciences contribute to the advance of neuroscience. It will introduce students with quantitative training in the physical sciences, mathematics or engineering to the concepts and research methodologies of modern neuroscience. Topics covered will range from cellular biophysics to systems neuroscience, including particularly imaging methods for the study of single neurons, networks of neurons and human brain dynamics during execution of behavioral computations. The course will be unique in its focus on neural dynamics at several scales of complexity ? cells, circuits, intact brains ? and the combination of didactic lectures and laboratory exercises, including cellular biophysics, synaptic interactions and plasticity in neuronal networks, and fMRI imaging of targeted brain regions in human subjects. The course includes substantive instruction in neurotechnologies, ranging from large-scale multi-electrode and optical recording, optogenetic stimulation and mathematical analysis of neural dynamics within the datasets produced by these methods. The capstone of this course will be one-week student-designed research projects integrating concepts and methodologies encountered during the initial formal lectures and laboratory exercises. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From marios.philiastides at gmail.com Mon Dec 8 09:33:06 2014 From: marios.philiastides at gmail.com (Marios Philiastides) Date: Mon, 8 Dec 2014 14:33:06 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: Postdoctoral position in neuroeconomics and decision making [deadline extended] Message-ID: Applications are invited for a full-time postdoctoral position to make a contribution to the ESRC funded project on the neurobiology of human decision making using multimodal neuroimaging (PI: Dr. Marios Philiastides). The post will be based at the Institute of Neuroscience and Psychology (INP) at the University of Glasgow, which benefits from on-site access to the Centre for Cognitive Neuroimaging (CCNi). The CCNi is a research-dedicated facility within the INP and it is equipped with state-of-the art brain imaging facilities comprising a 3T fMRI scanner (Siemens Trio), an MEG system, and several TMS and EEG systems, including MR-compatible recording options. Our group uses multimodal neuroimaging coupled with mathematical modelling to characterise the spatiotemporal dynamics and the computational principles of the brain networks underlying human decision making. Our analysis methods are heavily inspired by machine learning and statistical pattern recognition and are designed to exploit trial-to-trial variability in electrophysiologically-derived measures that can be used in conjunction with simultaneously acquired fMRI to tease apart the cascade of constituent cortical and subcortical processes involved in decision making. The primary focus of the project will be to unravel the neural correlates of learning and confidence during decision making. Candidates must have (or nearing completion of) a PhD degree in neuroscience, psychology, and cognitive science or in a related discipline. Candidates must have previous practical experience and working knowledge of human neuroimaging (M/EEG and/or fMRI). The post holder must also have working knowledge of experimental statistics, signal processing and excellent programming skills in Matlab. Previous experience in simultaneous EEG/fMRI experiments, advanced multivariate data analysis and computational modelling is desirable but not required. This post will be available in early 2015, for three years. Salary commensurate with experience and qualifications: Grade 6/7: ?27,057 - ?30,434 / ?33,242 - ?37,394 per annum. Informal enquiries may be addressed to Dr. Marios Philiastides at marios.philiastides at glasgow.ac.uk. Apply online at: www.gla.ac.uk/jobs (Ref: M00589) Closing date: 4 January 2015 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From l.s.smith at cs.stir.ac.uk Tue Dec 9 06:46:03 2014 From: l.s.smith at cs.stir.ac.uk (Prof Leslie Smith) Date: Tue, 9 Dec 2014 11:46:03 -0000 (GMT) Subject: Connectionists: IJCNN 2015: Special Session on Sound and speech interpretation in real environments Message-ID: <52683.109.149.61.7.1418125563.squirrel@www.cs.stir.ac.uk> IJCNN 2015: Special Session: Sound and speech interpretation in real environments http://www.cs.stir.ac.uk/~lss/IJCNN2015SessionProposal.html Killarney, Eire (Ireland), 12-17 July 2015. Scope & Motivation: Sounds in real environments arise from many concurrent sound sources, with reverberation induced smearing changing their spectrotemporal content. Eventually, sound (including speech) arrives at the ear or at the microphone as a time-varying signal, with the components of interest being between about 20 and 15,000 Hz. This is, of course, a mix of all the sound sources, all smeared by multiple reflections. How this signal should be processed to provide input to an interpreting system (which presumably would prefer to interpret only the signal of interest) is very much a matter of debate, particularly between those who use traditional MFCC techniques, and those who prefer something more neurally inspired, like a set of spike trains, and perhaps feature detectors as well. How should the sounds from a particular source of interest be segregated? How should interpretation be made invariant under listening conditions? Whatever techniques are used, the result is a time series of some type, and there are many neural techniques of possible interest for different aspects of this problem, from deep neural networks to learning-based spiking neural systems. This session builds on the IJCNN Special Session in 2011, organised by the late Harry Erwin. Topics Sound preprocessing for interpretation: creating suitable spectrotemporal representations for interpretation. Making spectrotemporal representations invariant under listening conditions; Interpretation techniques: what type of network might be used: e.g. purely trained, or using self-organisation as well. Can the network help with listening condition invariance? Implementation techniques: how to aim for real-time sound and speech interpretation for computer and robotic systems: hardware and hardware/software approaches. Auditory scene analysis using neural networks: separating out streams of sound in multi-source reverberant environments. Dates and submission Paper submission: January 15th, 2015 Paper Decision notification: March 15th, 2015 Camera-ready submission: April 15th, 2015 Conference Dates: July 12 - 17th, 2015 For further information contact Leslie Smith (l.s.smith at cs.stir.ac.uk) or Shih-Chii Liu (shih at ini.phys.ethz.ch) -- Prof Leslie Smith Computing Science and Mathematics University of Stirling, Stirling FK9 4LA Scotland, UK. Tel (44) 1786 467435 -- 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. From felix at pharmaticsltd.com Tue Dec 9 07:25:54 2014 From: felix at pharmaticsltd.com (Felix Agakov) Date: Tue, 09 Dec 2014 12:25:54 GMT Subject: Connectionists: Experienced researcher in machine learning for personalized medicine In-Reply-To: <1414094198851.70879.5052@webmail5> References: <1414094198851.70879.5052@webmail5> Message-ID: <1418127954344.104749.6@webmail6> Experienced Researcher in ?Machine Learning for Personalized Medicine? Project title: Development of methods for patient stratification and disease subtyping for tailored medical interventions Host Institution: Pharmatics Limited, Edinburgh BioQuarter, Edinburgh, UK. Applications are invited for an Experienced Researcher (ER) fellowship in the field of Machine Learning for Personalized Medicine (MLPM), to be funded by the Marie Curie Initial Training Network MLPM2012 of the 7th Framework Programme of the European Commission. MLPM (http://mlpm.eu) is a consortium of several universities, research institutions and companies located in Belgium, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland, UK, and in the USA. MLPM offers an excellent training environment in the research field at the intersection of Machine Learning and Medicine. It includes several academic labs with expertise in Statistical Genetics or Machine Learning, and private companies that are active in this field. Its goal is to educate interdisciplinary experts who will develop analytical methods for tailoring medical interventions to individual patients based on their genetic and molecular profiles, and who will spur scientific and commercial developments in precision medicine. The recruited ER will be based at award-winning start-up company Pharmatics Limited in Edinburgh, UK. The ER will visit other nodes and attend training events of the network, in particular the annual summer schools on Machine Learning for Personalized Medicine. The immediately available position is fully funded (100% employment) until 31/12/2016 according to the Marie Curie programme, which offers a highly competitive and attractive salary. Research project: The recruited ER will develop novel machine learning methods for disease subtyping and patient stratification based on heterogeneous high-dimensional molecular measurements and clinical/environmental variables. The methods may be extended to longitudinal (time series) phenotypes. Effects of possible shifts between training and test distributions will be considered. The methods will be investigated for several clinical datasets and build on the current understanding of targeted clinical indications. Specifically, the project will try to address the following questions: (*) How can predictions of diseases be improved in high-dimensional real-world clinical settings? (*) How should the methods be adapted to account for quantifiable differences between training and test datasets? (*) How should existing biological and clinical knowledge be exploited to improve predictions? (*) How can predictions of diseases and related complex traits be improved by stratifying patients into distinct groups based on heterogeneous molecular and clinical signatures? (*) Which minimal sets of variables are needed to identify patient groups and make accurate clinically actionable predictions within each group? If the new models outperform current clinical methods for stratification and prediction of diseases and related outcomes, they may be investigated further in a prospective clinical study. Eligibility: Experienced researchers will have a PhD or more than 4 full-time years of research experience in machine learning, bioinformatics, statistical genetics, computational biology, or molecular epidemiology at the time of recruitment. To be eligible under FP7 ITN rules, they must have no more than 5 years of research experience, and must not have resided, worked, or studied in the country of their host organization (UK) for more than 12 months in the 3 years prior to the time of recruitment. The years of experience are measured from the time when the candidates obtained a degree that would entitle them to formally embark on a doctorate. Proficiency with R, Matlab, and/or Python is required. The successful candidate will have strong familiarity with at least three of: sparse predictive methods, kernel methods, ensemble methods, transfer learning, network modelling, semi-supervised learning, patient stratification, in vitro diagnostics, statistical genetics, molecular biology, molecular pathology, clinical trials, epidemiology. Salary: The successful candidate will be paid at Marie Curie rates for experienced researchers (~?52,110 per anum, plus the mobility allowance of ?7,400 - ?10,495 per anum). Both allowances are in UK STERLINGs and subject to currency rate fluctuations. Supervisor: Dr. Felix Agakov, director of Pharmatics Limited. Pharmatics is an award-winning start-up company founded by scientists from the University of Edinburgh, aiming to change the way high-dimensional medical data is analysed in biomarker studies, diagnostics, drug development, and stratified/precision medicine. The company is developing machine learning-based software and services for preclinical and clinical studies, and has expertise in machine learning, statistical genetics, molecular epidemiology, clinical trials, and a range of diseases and indications. Pharmatics is actively involved in biomarker studies of rheumatoid arthritis, cardiovascular diseases, and complications of diabetes, and is the leading SME of the European MIMOmics consortium developing statistical methods for analysis of multiple omics data. Application process: Applicants should submit their applications material as a single PDF file to felix at pharmaticsltd.com with subject line ?ITN MLPM Application? and the following information: 1. a curriculum vitae, including a list of publications, qualifications, and completed scientific or commercial research projects; 2. a two?page statement of research interests; 3. names and e-mails of 2 referees; 4. a written statement by the applicant that the eligibility requirements are fulfilled. Please clarify in this statement in which countries you lived, worked and studied during the last 3 years. Further documents may be required from short?listed candidates. Job offers will be conditional on satisfying the eligibility criteria. Applications should be submitted until Dec 31, 2014, but the position will remain open until filled. Please direct specific enquiries about the project to Dr. Felix Agakov (felix at pharmaticsltd.com). General enquiries about the ITN should be sent to mlpm at tuebingen.mpg.de. > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From martaruizcostajussa at gmail.com Tue Dec 9 09:40:17 2014 From: martaruizcostajussa at gmail.com (Marta Ruiz) Date: Tue, 9 Dec 2014 08:40:17 -0600 Subject: Connectionists: 1st CFP: JAIR Special Track on Cross-language Algorithms and Applications Message-ID: JAIR Special Track on Cross-language Algorithms and Applications Track Editor Llu?s M?rquez, Qatar Computing Research Institute Associate Track Editors Marta R. Costa?juss?, Instituto Polit?cnico Nacional Srinivas Bangalore, AT&T Labs-Research Patrik Lambert, Universitat Pompeu Fabra Elena Montiel-Ponsoda, Universidad Polit?cnica de Madrid The Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research (JAIR) is pleased to announce the launch of the Special Track on Cross-language Algorithms and Applications. The core Artificial Intelligence technologies of speech and natural language processing need to address the challenges of processing multiple languages. While the first challenge of multilingualism is to bridge the nomenclature gap for the same concepts, the next significant challenge is to develop algorithms and applications that not only scale to multiple languages but also leverage cross-lingual similarities for improved natural language processing. The goal of this special track is to serve as a home for the publication of leading research on Cross-language Algorithms and Applications, focusing on developing unified themes leading to the development of the science of multi- and cross-lingualism. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to: efforts in the direction of multilingual transliteration; multilingual document summarization; rapid prototyping of cross language tools for low resource languages; and machine translation. Articles published in the Cross-language Algorithms and Applications track must meet the highest quality standards as measured by originality and significance of the contribution and clarity of presentation. Papers will be coordinated by the track editor and associate editors, and reviewed by peer reviewers drawn from the JAIR Editorial Board and the larger community. All articles should be submitted using the normal JAIR submission process. Please indicate that the submission is intended for the Special Track in the section "Special Information for editors". For more information and submission instructions, please see: http://www.jair.org/specialtrack-claa.html Timetable 1st March 2015 Deadline for Submissions 1st June 2015 Notification of Acceptance/Revision/Rejection 15th July 2015 Deadline for Re-submission of papers requiring revision 15th September 2015 Notification of Final Acceptance 1st November 2015 Final manuscript due Contact: martaruizcostajussa at gmail.com Submission Instructions: Use JAIR conventional submissions instructions available at http://www.jair.org/submission_info.html -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From antonior at ffclrp.usp.br Tue Dec 9 06:17:29 2014 From: antonior at ffclrp.usp.br (Antonio C. Roque) Date: Tue, 9 Dec 2014 09:17:29 -0200 Subject: Connectionists: CFP: Special issue on Recent Advances in Modeling Cells, Cellular Compartments and Signaling Networks as a Tool to Understand the Nervous System Message-ID: CALL FOR PAPERS EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF BIOPHYSICS SPECIAL ISSUE ON "RECENT ADVANCES IN MODELING CELLS, CELLULAR COMPARTMENTS AND SIGNALING NETWORKS AS A TOOL TO UNDERSTAND THE NERVOUS SYSTEM" AIMS AND SCOPE: In the last two decades, the progress in molecular biology and associated areas promoted a large accumulation of structural and molecular data about the nervous system. Almost simultaneously with that, fields such as Computational Neuroscience and Systems Biology have emerged with the aim to obtain a system-level understanding about the nervous systems through the development of computational models based on experimental data. Today, both fields are consolidated areas of research and have given valuable contributions to our knowledge of processes such as electrical integration, calcium dynamics, synaptic plasticity, sensory transduction, pathologies, among many others. In this special volume, we want to highlight some of the recent contributions of both computational neuroscience and systems biology to Neuroscience especially through the development and analysis of computational models of cells, cellular compartments and signaling networks. These types of models are powerful tools to investigate the physiological and molecular dynamics of neurons with a large range of spatial and temporal resolutions. Therefore, in this special volume, our intent is to select bleeding edge contributions focused on the gather works that will cover simulations of signaling networks and signal transduction solved deterministically or stochastically; the interaction between signaling networks and the regulation of ionic channels through covalent modifications such as phosphorylation; the impact of neuronal geometries on signaling networks and on cellular electrical integration. Thus, we have the expectation that this special volume will be of interest to both the people working in the fields on Computational Neuroscience and Systems Biology, and to experimental biophysicists that will have the opportunity to get an overall view of the main topics that have been investigated with computational models of cells and signaling networks. TOPICS OF INTEREST include (but are not limited to): ? Synaptic Plasticity ? Sensory Transduction ? Calcium Dynamics ? Electrical Integration ? Stochastic Processes ? Signaling pathways in 3D compartments ? Pathological Processes ? Software/Algorithms SUBMISSION PROCESS Enjoy a fast reviewing and publication process! All manuscripts should be submitted via SciencePG online system or through Lead Guest Editor that can help you to submit the manuscript. You have to create an account and login in the system at: http://www.sciencepublishinggroup.com/login.aspx Step 1) Submit to Special Issue. Choose Recent Advances in Modeling Cells, Cellular Compartments and Signaling Networks as a Tool to Understand the Nervous System. Journal Title: European Jounral of Biophysics. Step 2) Fill in Manuscript Information Step 3) Fill in Author(s) Information Step 4) Fill in Reviewer(s) Information Author guidelines can be found at: http://www.sciencepublishinggroup.com/journal/papersubmission.aspx?journalid=117 IMPORTANT DATES 30 May, 2015: Submission of Manuscripts July, 2015: Publication time LEAD GUEST EDITOR Prof. Dr. Fabio Marques Simoes de Souza, Federal University of ABC, Sao Bernardo do Campo, SP, Brazil Email: fabio.souza at ufabc.edu.br GUEST EDITORS Prof. Dr. Antonio C. Roque University of Sao Paulo, Ribeirao Preto, SP, Brazil Email: antonior at ffclrp.usp.br Dr. Gabriela Antunes University of Sao Paulo, Ribeirao Preto, SP, Brazil Email: gabrian at usp.br Dr. Rodrigo F. Oliveira Champalimaud Neuroscience Program, Lisbon, Portugal Email: rodrigo.oliveira at neuro.fchampalimaud.org ----- A PDF copy of the CFP is attached with this email for forwarding to interested colleagues. The CFP is also also available at: http://www.sciencepublishinggroup.com/specialissue/117002 For more information on Eur J Biophys, please see: http://www.sciencepublishinggroup.com/journal/archive.aspx?journalid=117&issueid=-1 -- 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 3315-3768 (office); +55 16 3315-3859 (lab) FAX: +55 16 3315-4887 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From ale at sissa.it Wed Dec 10 00:52:09 2014 From: ale at sissa.it (Alessandro Treves) Date: Wed, 10 Dec 2014 06:52:09 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: SYNTAGMA, Trieste, early July 2015 Message-ID: <20141210065209.Horde.dyO3Ax8V4mxUh9_JcqnF_nA@webmail.sissa.it> The celebration of the first Nobel Prize awarded to cognitive neuroscience prods us to reach out towards language, at the frontier of human cognition. SYNTAGMA, in Trieste, http://people.sissa.it/~ale/EU_infoday/syntagma.html is a self-organizing meeting, una piazza or a crossroad, where coming from different directions we shall discuss language acquisition and its neural mechanisms. Participants generate activities/talks/discussions, with no guest invited, and all pay their expenses (although SISSA will contribute to lodging expenses, on a first-come-first-served basis). Participation means at least a couple of days in Trieste, within the range July 1-12, 2014. The registration fee is a paper, one per participant, if possible orthogonal to all others, so adding an extra conceptual dimension to the meeting. Published papers are collected on the public repository http://people.sissa.it/~ale/EU_infoday/scovazze.html for all of us to see. First allocation of lodging contributions at the end of January. Please write to me, ale at sissa.it, with SYNTAGMA in the Subject field. -- Alessandro Treves http://people.sissa.it/~ale/limbo.html SISSA - Cognitive Neuroscience, via Bonomea 265, 34136 Trieste, Italy and Master in Complex Actions http://www.mca.sissa.it/ From mark.humphries at manchester.ac.uk Fri Dec 12 05:48:14 2014 From: mark.humphries at manchester.ac.uk (Mark Humphries) Date: Fri, 12 Dec 2014 10:48:14 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: Integrated Systems Neuroscience Workshop, March 23-24th, Manchester, UK Message-ID: <7E954275ED82B9468C2C731FB72522F5B66FEC5D@MBXP09.ds.man.ac.uk> Systems neuroscience has been thrust centre-stage by the extraordinary advances in technology for recording and manipulating neural circuits at single-cell resolution. Yet with this rapid increase in data yield has come formidable challenges in analysing and understanding experimental results. Consequently, a tight integration between experimental and computational neuroscience approaches is increasingly necessary for tackling these challenges. The goal of this workshop is to present the state-of-the-art in integrated systems and computational approaches to key neural circuits, to demonstrate their power and potential. Each session of the programme will comprise a pair of talks presenting complementary experimental and computational work on the same circuit theme. Breaks between each session will allow for plentiful discussion of the work just seen and how it may translate to other circuits and problems in systems neuroscience. A poster session with wine reception will be held on the first evening. Speakers include: Rafal Bogacz (Oxford) Matteo Carandini (UCL) Peter Dayan (Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit, UCL) Ken Harris (UCL) Peter Magill (MRC Anatomical Neuropharmacology Unit, Oxford) Daniel O'Connor (John Hopkins University) Michael Orger (Champalimaud Institute, Lisbon) Srdjan Ostojic (Ecole Normale Superieure, Paris) Alex Thiele (University of Newcastle) Gasper Tkacik (IST Austria) For more information, including the current programme, please visit the website: http://www.isn2015.ls.manchester.ac.uk/ Posters: We are accepting submission of abstracts for posters. A maximum of 30 posters will be accepted; the top 20 will have their registration fee waived. For details on submission see: http://www.isn2015.ls.manchester.ac.uk/abstracts/ Abstract submission deadline: January 30th 2015 Registration: http://www.isn2015.ls.manchester.ac.uk/registration/ Registration deadline: February 27th 2015 Sponsors: we gratefully acknowledge the support of the Medical Research Council and Company of Biologists. Dr Mark Humphries MRC Senior non-Clinical Research Fellow AV Hill Building Faculty of Life Sciences University of Manchester http://www.systemsneurophysiologylab.ls.manchester.ac.uk/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From vogt at cbio.mskcc.org Thu Dec 11 17:31:59 2014 From: vogt at cbio.mskcc.org (Julia Vogt) Date: Thu, 11 Dec 2014 17:31:59 -0500 Subject: Connectionists: NIPS 2014 Workshop on Machine Learning for Clinical Data, Healthcare and Genomics Message-ID: <0CDC8198-4801-40BE-AD42-CE2D430AD190@cbio.mskcc.org> Please join us for the NIPS 2014 Workshop on Machine Learning for Clinical Data, Healthcare and Genomics When: Dec. 12th 2014, 8am-6:30pm Where: Palais des congr?s de Montr?al, Level 5; room 511 f., Montreal, Quebec, Canada, Workshop Website: http://www.ml4chg.org/ Schedule: Morning theme: Specialized models for structure recovery from clinical datasets 08:00-08:25 AM Poster setup 08:25-08:35 AM Introduction 08:35-09:30 AM Opening talk: John Mattison, Kaiser Permanente 09:30-10:00 AM Invited talk: David Sontag, New York University 10:00-10:30 AM Coffee Break (and posters) 10:30-11:00 AM Round table discussions 11:00-11:30 AM Invited talk: Gilles Clermont, University of Pittsburgh 11:30-12:00 PM Invited talk: Chris Williams, University of Edinburgh 12:00-03:00 PM Lunch Break Afternoon theme: Clinical Genomics and Precision Medicine 3:00-3:30 PM Invited talk: Michal Rosen-Zvi, IBM Research 3:30-4:00 PM Invited talk: Michael Brudno, University of Toronto 4:00-4:30 PM Poster Session 4:30-5:00 PM Coffee Break (and posters) 5:00-5:30 PM Invited talk: Suchi Saria, Johns Hopkins University 5:30-6:30 PM Precision Medicine: How to make it work? (Discussion Panel) Abstract: Advances in medical information technology have resulted in enormous warehouses of data that are both overwhelming and sparse. A single patient visit may result in tens to thousands of measurements and structured information, including clinical factors, diagnostic imaging, lab tests, genomic and proteomic tests. Hospitals may see thousands of patients each year. However, each patient may have relatively few visits to any particular medical provider. The resulting data are a heterogeneous amalgam of patient demographics, vital signs, diagnoses, records of treatment and medication receipt and annotations made by nurses or doctors, each with its own idiosyncrasies. The objective of this workshop is to discuss how advanced machine learning techniques can derive clinical and scientific impact from these messy, incomplete, and partial data. We will bring together machine learning researchers and experts in medical informatics who are involved in the development of algorithms or intelligent systems designed to improve quality of healthcare. Relevant areas include health monitoring systems, clinical data labelling and clustering, clinical outcome prediction, efficient and scalable processing of medical records, feature selection or dimensionality reduction in clinical data, tools for personalized medicine, time-series analysis with medical applications and clinical genomics. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sylee at kaist.ac.kr Fri Dec 12 01:47:42 2014 From: sylee at kaist.ac.kr (=?UTF-8?B?U29vLVlvdW5nIExlZQ==?=) Date: Fri, 12 Dec 2014 15:47:42 +0900 (KST) Subject: Connectionists: =?utf-8?q?Mini-Symposium_on_Understanding_Interna?= =?utf-8?q?l_Brain_States_of_Mind?= Message-ID: <548a910e3feb_@_imoxion.com> Call for Papers for Mini-Symposium on Understanding Internal Brain States of Mind: Cognitive Experiments, Computational Models, and Applicaions at The 5th International Conference on Cognitive Neurodynamics (ICCN 2015) June 3-7, 2015 Sanya, China http://iccn2015.ecust.edu.cn/ This Mini-Symposium will deal with human intention, trustworthiness, emotion, and personality as internal brain states, of which temporal dynamics may be represented with different time constants. By understanding the users' internal brain states we will be able to make more accurate situation awareness, which will result in better human-computer intrface (HCI). For example, even though the users do not present their intention explicitly, the new HCI will understand human needs and intention, and respond accordngly. It will be a forum for in-depth discussion on all aspects of research includuing Cognitive Experiments, Computational Models, and Applicaions. If you are interested in joining this exciting forum, please show your interest and topic to present/discuss by sending an e-mail to sylee at kaist.ac.kr by December 19. Thanks in avnce. Best regards, Soo-Young Lee Dirctor, Brain Scence Researh Center Professor, Department of Electrical Enginering KAIST -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From grlmc at urv.cat Sat Dec 13 09:52:16 2014 From: grlmc at urv.cat (GRLMC) Date: Sat, 13 Dec 2014 15:52:16 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: BigDat 2015: registration deadline 23 December Message-ID: *To be removed from our mailing list, please respond to this message with UNSUBSCRIBE in the subject line* ***************************************************** INTERNATIONAL WINTER SCHOOL ON BIG DATA BigDat 2015 Tarragona, Spain January 26-30, 2015 Organized by Rovira i Virgili University http://grammars.grlmc.com/bigdat2015/ ***************************************************** --- 7th registration deadline: December 23, 2014 --- ***************************************************** AIM: BigDat 2015 is a research training event for graduates and postgraduates in the first steps of their academic career. It aims at updating them about the most recent developments in the fast developing area of big data, which covers a large spectrum of current exciting research, development and innovation with an extraordinary potential for a huge impact on scientific discoveries, medicine, engineering, business models, and society itself. Renowned academics and industry pioneers will lecture and share their views with the audience. All big data subareas will be displayed, namely: foundations, infrastructure, management, search and mining, security and privacy, and applications. Main challenges of analytics, management and storage of big data will be identified through 4 keynote lectures, 22 six-hour courses, and 1 round table, which will tackle the most lively and promising topics. The organizers believe outstanding speakers will attract the brightest and most motivated students. Interaction will be a main component of the event. ADDRESSED TO: Graduate and postgraduates from around the world. There are no formal pre-requisites in terms of academic degrees. However, since there will be differences in the course levels, specific knowledge background may be required for some of them. BigDat 2015 is also appropriate for more senior people who want to keep themselves updated on recent developments and future trends. They will surely find it fruitful to listen and discuss with major researchers, industry leaders and innovators. REGIME: In addition to keynotes, 3 courses will run in parallel during the whole event. Participants will be able to freely choose the courses they will be willing to attend as well as to move from one to another. VENUE: BigDat 2015 will take place in Tarragona, located 90 kms. to the south of Barcelona. The venue will be: Campus Catalunya Universitat Rovira i Virgili Av. Catalunya, 35 43002 Tarragona KEYNOTE SPEAKERS: Ian Foster (Argonne National Laboratory), Taming Big Data: Accelerating Discovery via Outsourcing and Automation Geoffrey C. Fox (Indiana University, Bloomington), Mapping Big Data Applications to Clouds and HPC C. Lee Giles (Pennsylvania State University, University Park), Scholarly Big Data: Information Extraction and Data Mining William D. Gropp (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign), tba COURSES AND PROFESSORS: Hendrik Blockeel (KU Leuven), [intermediate] Decision Trees for Big Data Analytics Diego Calvanese (Free University of Bozen-Bolzano), [introductory/intermediate] End-User Access to Big Data Using Ontologies Jiannong Cao (Hong Kong Polytechnic University), [introductory/intermediate] Programming with Big Data Edward Y. Chang (HTC Corporation, New Taipei City), [introductory/advanced] Big Data Analytics: Architectures, Algorithms, and Applications Ernesto Damiani (University of Milan), [introductory/intermediate] Process Discovery and Predictive Decision Making from Big Data Sets and Streams Gautam Das (University of Texas, Arlington), [intermediate/advanced] Mining Deep Web Repositories Maarten de Rijke (University of Amsterdam), tba Geoffrey C. Fox (Indiana University, Bloomington), [intermediate] Using Software Defined Systems to Address Big Data Problems Minos Garofalakis (Technical University of Crete, Chania) [intermediate/advanced], Querying Continuous Data Streams Vasant G. Honavar (Pennsylvania State University, University Park) [introductory/intermediate], Learning Predictive Models from Big Data Tao Li (Florida International University, Miami), [introductory/intermediate] Data Mining Techniques to Understand Textual Data Kwan-Liu Ma (University of California, Davis), [intermediate] Big Data Visualization Christoph Meinel (Hasso Plattner Institute, Potsdam), [introductory/intermediate] New Computing Power by In-Memory and Multicore to Tackle Big Data Manish Parashar (Rutgers University, Piscataway), [intermediate] Big Data Challenges in Simulation-based Science Srinivasan Parthasarathy (Ohio State University, Columbus), [intermediate] Scalable Data Analysis Evaggelia Pitoura (University of Ioannina), [introductory/intermediate] Online Social Networks Vijay V. Raghavan (University of Louisiana, Lafayette), [introductory/intermediate] Visual Analytics of Time-evolving Large-scale Graphs Pierangela Samarati (University of Milan), [intermediate], Data Security and Privacy in the Cloud Peter Sanders (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology), [introductory/intermediate] Algorithm Engineering for Large Data Sets Johan Suykens (KU Leuven), [introductory/intermediate] Fixed-size Kernel Models for Big Data Domenico Talia (University of Calabria, Rende), [intermediate] Scalable Data Mining on Parallel, Distributed and Cloud Computing Systems Jieping Ye (Arizona State University, Tempe), [introductory/advanced] Large-Scale Sparse Learning and Low Rank Modeling ORGANIZING COMMITTEE: Adrian Horia Dediu (Tarragona) Carlos Mart?n-Vide (Tarragona, chair) Florentina Lilica Voicu (Tarragona) REGISTRATION: It has to be done at http://grammars.grlmc.com/bigdat2015/registration.php The selection of up to 8 courses requested in the registration template is only tentative and non-binding. For the sake of organization, it will be helpful to have an approximation of the respective demand for each course. Since the capacity of the venue is limited, registration requests will be processed on a first come first served basis. The registration period will be closed and the on-line registration facility disabled when the capacity of the venue will be complete. It is much recommended to register prior to the event. FEES: As far as possible, participants are expected to stay full-time. Fees are a flat rate covering the attendance to all courses during the week. There are several early registration deadlines. Fees depend on the registration deadline. ACCOMMODATION: Suggestions of accommodation are available on the webpage. CERTIFICATE: Participants will be delivered a certificate of attendance. QUESTIONS AND FURTHER INFORMATION: florentinalilica.voicu at urv.cat POSTAL ADDRESS: BigDat 2015 Lilica Voicu Rovira i Virgili University Av. Catalunya, 35 43002 Tarragona, Spain Phone: +34 977 559 543 Fax: +34 977 558 386 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: Universitat Rovira i Virgili --- Este mensaje no contiene virus ni malware porque la protecci?n de avast! Antivirus est? activa. http://www.avast.com From m.butz at fz-juelich.de Sat Dec 13 04:37:18 2014 From: m.butz at fz-juelich.de (Dr. Markus Butz-Ostendorf) Date: Sat, 13 Dec 2014 10:37:18 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: Call for papers for research topic: Anatomy and plasticity in large-scale brain models Message-ID: <548C08CE.9050408@fz-juelich.de> Dear Colleagues, I would like to draw your attention to our research topic "Anatomy and plasticity in large-scale brain models" http://journal.frontiersin.org/ResearchTopic/3644 in Frontiers in Neuroanatomy (impact factor 4.2): (Deadline for abstracts: 27th, Feb. 2015; full paper submission: 28th, Aug. 2015). Kind regards, Markus Butz >From the research topic website: Anatomy and plasticity in large-scale brain models Supercomputing facilities are becoming increasingly available in neuroscience, predominantly for simulating the dynamics of electrical activity propagating through neuronal circuits. On today's most advanced supercomputers, large-scale models can be simulated with up to a billion of neurons. However, merely further increasing the number of neurons and synapses will not be sufficient to create biologically realistic full-scale brain models. The focus of this Research Topic is therefore on approaches that bring high-performance computing in neuroscience together with the latest experimental research in neuroanatomy. The first aspect of this Research Topic will focus on large-scale models, high-performance simulation tools, and novel hardware and data-base techniques that try or allow to capture the highest possible degree of anatomical detail. The second aspect will include approaches that introduce forms of anatomical plasticity that make detailed full-scale connectivity adaptable, e.g. to changes in experience or during learning and memory consolidation. A third aspect will capture novel concepts in the self-organization and self-repair of large-scale and full-scale brain networks, with potential applications for neural development and the diseased brain, respectively. With the aim to present work that goes beyond the current stage of high-performance computing in neuroscience, we welcome computational and technical contributions with strong emphasis on or applicability to neuroanatomical research, as well as experimental contributions that discuss important ways to improve large-scale brain models. We will consider all types of submission, from original research to more review-type articles. Especially, we encourage experimental neuroscientists to submit perspectives or opinions on new trends and discoveries relevant to large-scale brain models. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 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.-Ing. Wolfgang Marquardt (Vorsitzender), Karsten Beneke (stellv. Vorsitzender), Prof. Dr.-Ing. Harald Bolt, Prof. Dr. Sebastian M. Schmidt ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From juffi at ke.informatik.tu-darmstadt.de Sat Dec 13 10:15:21 2014 From: juffi at ke.informatik.tu-darmstadt.de (Johannes Fuernkranz) Date: Sat, 13 Dec 2014 16:15:21 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: 11 Ph.D. Positions in Darmstadt and Heidelberg Message-ID: The newly established Research Training Group ?Adaptive Information Preparation from Heterogeneous Sources? (AIPHES) [1] at the Technische Universit?t Darmstadt [2] and at the Ruprecht Karls University Heidelberg [3] is filling several positions for three years, starting on April 1st, 2015: PhD-level Researchers in Computer Science, Computational Linguistics, Information Management or related areas The positions are for three years, starting with April 1st, 2015. The group will be located in Darmstadt and Heidelberg. The funding follows the guidelines of the DFG, and the positions are paid according to the E13 public service pay scale. The goal of AIPHES is to conduct innovative research in knowledge acquisition on the Web in a cross-disciplinary context. To that end, methods in computational linguistics, natural language processing, machine learning, network analysis, and automated quality assessment will be developed. AIPHES will investigate a novel, complex scenario for information preparation from heterogeneous sources. It interacts closely with end users who prepare textual documents in an online editorial office, and who should therefore profit from the results of AIPHES. We are looking for exceptionally qualified candidates with a degree in Computer Science, Computational Linguistics, or a related study program. We expect ability to work independently, personal commitment, team and communication abilities, as well as the willingness to cooperate in a multi-disciplinary team. Desirable is experience in scientific work. Applicants should be willing to work with German-language texts, and, if necessary, to acquire German language skills during the training program. We specifically invite applications of women. Among those equally qualified, handicapped applicants will receive preferential consideration. International applications are particularly encouraged. Applications should include a motivational letter that refers to one or two of the planned research areas of AIPHES [1], a CV with information about the applicant?s scientific work, certifications of study and work experience, as well as a thesis or other publications in electronic form. They should be submitted until January 12th, 2015 to the spokesperson of the research training group, Prof. Dr. Iryna Gurevych (Fachbereich Informatik, Hochschulstr. 10, 64289 Darmstadt) using the e-mail address: apply-for-aiphes at ukp.informatik.tu-darmstadt.de More details on this training group, including the full version of this short call, can be found at the AIPHES Web-site [1]. [1] http://www.aiphes.tu-darmstadt.de/ [2] https://www.informatik.tu-darmstadt.de/ [3] http://www.cl.uni-heidelberg.de/ From tbesold at uni-osnabrueck.de Mon Dec 15 04:26:41 2014 From: tbesold at uni-osnabrueck.de (Tarek R. Besold) Date: Mon, 15 Dec 2014 10:26:41 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: Final CfP: Neural-Symbolic Networks and Cognitive Capacities @ IJCNN 2015 Message-ID: Call for Papers for the == IJCNN 2015 Special Session on Neural-Symbolic Networks and Cognitive Capacities == = WEBPAGE = https://sites.google.com/site/ijcnn2015nsncc/ = SCOPE = Researchers in artificial intelligence and cognitive systems modelling continue to face foundational challenges in their quest to develop plausible models and implementations of cognitive capacities and intelligence in artificial systems. One of the methodological core issues is the question of the integration between sub-symbolic and symbolic approaches to knowledge representation, learning and reasoning in cognitively-inspired models. Network-based approaches very often enable flexible tools which can discover and process the internal structure of (possibly large) data sets. They promise to give rise to efficient signal-processing models which are biologically plausible and optimally suited for a wide range of applications, whilst possibly also offering an explanation of cognitive phenomena of the human brain. Still, the extraction of high-level explicit (i.e. symbolic) knowledge from distributed low-level representations thus far has to be considered a mostly unsolved problem. In recent years, network-based models have seen significant advancement in the wake of the development of the new "deep learning" family of approaches to machine learning. Due to the hierarchically structured nature of the underlying models, these developments have also reinvigorated efforts in overcoming the neural-symbolic divide. The aim of the special session is to bring together recent work developed in the field of network-based information processing in a cognition-related context, which bridges the gap between different levels of description and paradigms and which sheds light onto canonical solutions or principled approaches occurring in the context of neural-symbolic integration to modelling or implementing cognitively-inspired capacities in artificial systems. Besides classical research work applying computational modelling methods to problems from cognitive psychology, computational neuroscience, artificial intelligence, and cognitive science, this session also explicitly addresses cognitively-inspired neural-symbolic approaches in more application-driven research as, e.g., technical cognitive systems, cognitive robotics, large knowledge bases and big data, etc. = TOPICS = We particularly encourage submissions related to the following non-exhaustive list of topics: - new learning paradigms of network-based models addressing different knowledge levels - biologically plausible methods and models - integration of network models and symbolic reasoning - cognitive systems using neural-symbolic paradigms - extraction of symbolic knowledge from network-based representations - applications and implementations of cognitively-inspired neural-symbolic approaches in technical systems and industry - cognitively-inspired neural-symbolic techniques for large knowledge bases and big data - challenging applications which have the potential to become benchmark problems - visionary papers concerning the future of network approaches to cognitive modelling or the future role of neural-symbolic systems in applications = DATES & SUBMISSIONS = The deadlines for submissions, author feedback, etc. are bound to the normal IJCNN 2015 deadlines (and, thus, are also subject to the same changes and extensions). The current schedule is: - Paper submission due: January 15, 2015 - Paper review feedback: March 15, 2015 - Final papers due: April 15, 2015 For details on the submission process, formats, etc., please refer to the IJCNN 2015 Call for Papers ( http://www.ijcnn.org/call-for-papers ) and the IJCNN 2015 submission guidelines ( http://www.ijcnn.org/paper-submission ). When submitting to the special session, please make sure to select the corresponding session topic during the submission process. = SESSION CO-CHAIRS = - Tarek R. Besold, Institute of Cognitive Science, University of Osnabr?ck, Germany - Artur D'Avila Garcez, Department of Computer Science, City University London, UK - Kai-Uwe K?hnberger, Institute of Cognitive Science, University of Osnabr?ck, Germany - Terrence C. Stewart, Centre for Theoretical Neuroscience, University of Waterloo, Canada -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From marcello.pelillo at gmail.com Mon Dec 15 11:22:09 2014 From: marcello.pelillo at gmail.com (Marcello Pelillo) Date: Mon, 15 Dec 2014 17:22:09 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: Call for Papers - SIMBAD 2015 (Copenhagen, Denmark, October 2015) Message-ID: CALL FOR PAPERS SIMBAD 2015 3rd International Workshop on Similarity-Based Pattern Analysis and Recognition October 12-14, 2015 Copenhagen, Denmark http://www.dsi.unive.it/~simbad/2015/ MOTIVATIONS AND OBJECTIVES Traditional pattern recognition and machine learning techniques are intimately linked to the notion of "feature space." Adopting this view, each object is described in terms of a vector of numerical attributes and is therefore mapped to a point in a Euclidean vector space so that the distances between the points reflect the observed (dis)similarities between the respective objects. This kind of representation is attractive because such spaces offer powerful analytical as well as computational tools that are simply not available in other representations. This approach, however, suffers from a major intrinsic limitation, which concerns the representational power of vectorial, feature-based descriptions. In fact, there are numerous application domains where either it is not possible to find satisfactory features or they are inefficient for learning purposes. In the last few years, interest around purely (dis)similarity-based techniques has grown considerably. For example, within the supervised learning paradigm the well-established kernel-based methods shift the focus from the choice of an appropriate set of features to the choice of a suitable kernel, which is related to object similarities. This shift in focus, however, is only partial, as the classical interpretation of the notion of a kernel is that it provides an implicit transformation of the feature space rather than a purely similarity-based representation. Similarly, in the unsupervised domain, there has been an increasing interest around pairwise or even multiway algorithms, such as spectral and graph-theoretic clustering methods, which avoid the use of features altogether. By departing from vector-space representations one is confronted with the challenging problem of dealing with (dis)similarities that do not necessarily possess the Euclidean behavior or do not even obey the requirements of a metric. The lack of such properties undermines the very foundations of traditional pattern recognition and machine learning theories and algorithms and poses totally new theoretical and computational questions and challenges. The aim of this workshop, following those held in Venice and York, is to consolidate research efforts in this area and to provide an informal discussion forum for researchers and practitioners interested in this important yet diverse subject. We aim at covering a wide range of problems and perspectives, from supervised to unsupervised learning, from generative to discriminative models, and from theoretical issues to real-world applications. Original, unpublished papers dealing with these issues are solicited. Topics of interest include (but are of course not limited to): - Embedding and embeddability - Graph spectra and spectral geometry - Indefinite and structural kernels - Game-theoretic models of pattern recognition - Characterization of nonmetric behavior - Foundational issues - Measures of metric violations - Learning and combining (dis)similarities - Multiple-instance learning and other set-based approaches - Applications PAPER and ABSTRACT SUBMISSION We allow three types of contributions. Regular papers (not exceeding 16 pages LNCS format) must be submitted electronically. The submission site can be found through http://www.dsi.unive.it/~simbad/2015/index.php/pages/submission. All submissions will be subject to a rigorous peer-review process. Accepted papers will be published in Springer's Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS) series. In addition to regular, original contributions, we also solicit presentation of papers (in any LaTeX format, no page restriction) that have been recently published elsewhere. These papers will undergo the same review process as regular ones. If accepted, they will be presented at the workshop, but only an abstract will be published. Submission of such contribution requires the additional submission of a two-page abstract in LNCS format with the original paper submitted as supplementary material. Finally, we encourage the submission of two-page abstracts in general. These could contain preliminary results, topics for discussion, appeals for novel research directions, or anything else that suits the aim of SIMBAD and underlines the workshop character. Upon acceptance, these submissions will be assigned a poster presentation and the abstract will be published. Submission implies the willingness of at least one of the authors to register and present the paper on acceptance. INVITED SPEAKERS TBA IMPORTANT DATES Submission of paper abstract: March 15, 2015 Submission of the final version of the paper: March 30, 2015 Submission of extended abstract only: April 15 Notifications: May 30, 2015 Camera-ready due: June 30, 2015 Conference: October 12-14, 2015 ORGANIZATION Program Chairs Aasa Feragen, University of Copenhagen, Denmark Marco Loog, Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands Marcello Pelillo, University of Venice, Italy Steering Committee Joachim Buhmann, ETH Zurich, Switzerland Robert Duin, Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands Mario Figueiredo, Technical University of Lisbon, Portugal Edwin Hancock, University of York, UK Vittorio Murino, Italian Institute of Technology, Italy Marcello Pelillo (chair), University of Venice, Italy Program Committee [provisional] Ethem Alpaydin, Bogazici University, Turkey Chlo?-Agathe Azencott, Mines Paris Tech, France Manuele Bicego, University of Verona, Italy Joachim Buhmann, ETH Zurich, Switzerland Tiberio Caetano, NICTA, Australia Umberto Castellani, University of Verona, Italy Veronika Cheplygina, Erasmus Medical Center, The Netherlands Aykut Erdem, Hacettepe University, Turkey Francisco Escolano, University of Alicante, Spain Mario Figueiredo, Technical University of Lisbon, Portugal Ana Fred, Technical University of Lisbon, Portugal Edwin Hancock, University of York, UK Soren Hauberg, Technical University of Denmark, Denmark Christian Igel, University of Copenhagen, Denmark Brijnesh Jain, Technical University of Berlin, Germany Robert Krauthgamer, The Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel Walter Kropatsch, Vienna University of Technology, Austria Xuelong Li, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China Yingyu Liang, Princeton University, USA Vittorio Murino, Italian Institute of Technology, Italy Antonio Robles-Kelly, NICTA, Australia Fabio Roli, University of Cagliari, Italy Luca Rossi, University of Birmingham, UK Samuel Rota Bulo', Bruno Kessler Foundation, Italy Volker Roth, University of Basel, Switzerland Anastasios Sidiropoulos, Ohio State University, USA Stefan Sommer, University of Copenhagen, Denmark David Tax, Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands Andrea Torsello, University of Venice, Italy Richard Wilson, University of York, UK --- Marcello Pelillo, FIEEE, FIAPR Professor of Computer Science Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Lab, Director Center for Knowledge, Interaction and Intelligent Systems (KIIS), Director DAIS Ca' Foscari University, Venice Via Torino 155, 30172 Venezia Mestre, Italy Tel: (39) 041 2348.440 Fax: (39) 041 2348.419 E-mail: marcello.pelillo at gmail.com URL: http://www.dsi.unive.it/~pelillo -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From robbie at bcs.rochester.edu Mon Dec 15 16:40:03 2014 From: robbie at bcs.rochester.edu (Robert Jacobs) Date: Mon, 15 Dec 2014 16:40:03 -0500 Subject: Connectionists: Graduate Training in Brain & Cognitive Sciences at the University of Rochester Message-ID: <548F5533.9040301@bcs.rochester.edu> *Graduate Training in Brain and Cognitive Sciences at the University of Rochester* The Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences (BCS) at the University of Rochester offers a doctoral degree in one the most exciting and challenging fields of modern science.This field embraces diverse approaches to understanding the brain and human intelligence with focused studies in neuroscience, psychology, cognitive modeling, and machine learning.Our department has particularly strong areas of research in visual processing and decision making, language, development and learning, concepts and categories, and perception and action.Students may also participate in affiliated programs at the Center for Visual Science and the Department of Neurobiology and Anatomy at the Medical School. Full details can be found at: http://www.bcs.rochester.edu/index.php. Candidates from a variety of backgrounds who seek a rigorous program of study will be considered for admission.All students admitted will receive dedicated mentoring in their home department and be offered graduate fellowships that provide a competitive stipend, including costs of tuition and single plan health insurance. The Department has hired a number of young faculty that are advancing cutting edge techniques in the study of cognitive neuroscience, development of language and cognition, language learning, theoretical and computational neuroscience, and visual neuroscience.Interested applicants can find details at http://www.bcs.rochester.edu/graduate/admission.html. The application deadline is January 1. -- Robert Jacobs Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences University of Rochester Rochester, NY 14627-0268 email: robbie at bcs.rochester.edu phone: 585-275-0753 web: http://www.bcs.rochester.edu/people/robbie/jacobslab/people.html -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hiro at brain.riken.jp Mon Dec 15 19:22:58 2014 From: hiro at brain.riken.jp (hiroyuki nakahara) Date: Tue, 16 Dec 2014 09:22:58 +0900 Subject: Connectionists: a faculty position at RIKEN Brain Science Institute, Japan Message-ID: <20141216092257.4623.25DAB7C8@brain.riken.jp> Dear colleagues, I would like to draw your attention to a recent opening of a faculty position at RIKEN Brain Science Institute, Japan. It is targeted very broadly for any fields, including computational neuroscience, human imaging etc. The formal advert on the web can be found at (which I appended below as well): http://www.brain.riken.go.jp/jp/careers/20141201.html Inquiry can be sent to search2015 at brain.riken.jp. Best wishes, Hiro Hiroyuki Nakahara, Ph.D Lab for Integrated Theoretical Neuroscience RIKEN Brain Science Institute http://www.itn.brain.riken.jp --------- a copy of the web description is append below ----- The RIKEN Brain Science Institute (BSI) is seeking outstanding neuroscientists for a tenure-track Team Leader (TL) position (equivalent to U.S. Assistant or Associate Professor). At RIKEN BSI, Team Leaders enjoy intellectual independence, generous internal funds and ample communal facilities. Administrative and teaching duties are minimal. We encourage applications from all disciplines of neuroscience, particularly from individuals studying brain function in normal and/or disease states at the molecular, cellular, circuit and/or systems levels using innovative experimental and/or theoretical approaches. Researchers studying model animals or humans are welcome. Candidates for the Team Leader position should have demonstrated the potential to develop an original, significant, and independent research program of excellence. RIKEN BSI is located just outside of the international metropolis of Tokyo. English is used in most activities at BSI, including seminars and administration. Institutional support is available to help non-Japanese speaking scientists, whom we particularly encourage to apply. RIKEN Brain Science Institute is an Equal Opportunity Employer. Women are strongly encouraged to apply. Review of applications will begin in January 2015 and continue until an ideal candidate is identified. Applicants should submit a cover letter briefly summarizing their research program and plan, curriculum vitae, a detailed summary of current and proposed research, and arrange for three letters of recommendation, to be sent to: Search Committee, RIKEN Brain Science Institute 2-1 Hirosawa, Wako, Saitama 351-0198, Japan Fax: +81-48-462-4914, Email: search2015 at brain.riken.jp http://www.brain.riken.jp/en/ -- hiroyuki nakahara http://www.itn.brain.riken.jp From aurel at ee.columbia.edu Tue Dec 16 16:48:37 2014 From: aurel at ee.columbia.edu (Aurel A. Lazar) Date: Tue, 16 Dec 2014 16:48:37 -0500 Subject: Connectionists: workshop on Brain Circuits, Memory and Computation Message-ID: <186691BA-0721-4B9A-8B2B-745E6DC342CC@ee.columbia.edu> Columbia Workshop on Brain Circuits, Memory and Computation BCMC 2015 Monday and Tuesday, March 16-17, 2015 Center for Neural Engineering and Computation Columbia University, New York, NY 10027 Overview The goal of the workshop is to bring together researchers interested in developing executable models of neural computation/processing of the brain of model organisms. Of interest are models of computation that consist of elementary units of processing using brain circuits and memory elements. Elementary units of computation/processing include population encoding/decoding circuits with biophysically-grounded neuron models, non-linear dendritic processors for motion detection/direction selectivity, spike processing and pattern recognition neural circuits, movement control and decision-making circuits, etc. Memory units include models of spatio-temporal memory circuits, circuit models for memory access and storage, etc. A major aim of the workshop is to explore the integration of various computational sensory and control models. Confirmed Invited Speakers Yoshi Aso , Janelia Research Campus, Ashburn, VA. Dmitri "Mitya" B. Chklovskii , Simons Center for Data Analysis, Simons Foundation. Damon A. Clark , Department of Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology, Yale University. Daniel Coca , Department of Automatic Control and Systems Engineering, University of Sheffield. Fabrizio Gabbiani , Dept. of Neuroscience, Baylor College of Medicine, and Computational and Applied Mathematics, Rice University. Charles Randy Gallistel , Rutgers Center for Cognitive Science, Rutgers University. Charles D. Gilbert , Laboratory of Neurobiology, Rockefeller University. Vivek Jayaraman , Janelia Research Campus, Ashburn, VA. Mikko I. Juusola , Department of Biomedical Science, University of Sheffield. Anthony Leonardo , Janelia Research Campus, Ashburn, VA. Wolfgang Maas , Institute for Theoretical Computer Science, Graz University of Technology, Graz, Austria. Gary F. Marcus , Department of Psychology, New York University. Stefan Mihalas , Allen Institute for Brain Science, Seattle, WA. Barbara Webb , School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh. Further details are available at BCMC 2015 . Aurel http://www.bionet.ee.columbia.edu -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From yael at Princeton.EDU Mon Dec 15 20:36:11 2014 From: yael at Princeton.EDU (Yael Niv) Date: Tue, 16 Dec 2014 01:36:11 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: RLDM2015: Call for abstract submissions (deadline: Feb 13) Message-ID: <877332D6-CAE9-4C8D-87FD-AB53CF005ED0@princeton.edu> The 2nd Multidisciplinary Conference on Reinforcement Learning and Decision Making (RLDM2015) www.rldm.org June 7-10, The University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada ====================================================== Submissions to RLDM2015 are now being accepted at https://cmt.research.microsoft.com/RLDM2015 Deadline: 13 February 2015, midnight EST We invite extended abstracts for contributed poster presentations and oral presentations. We welcome submissions of original research related to ?learning and decision making over time to achieve a goal?, coming from any discipline or disciplines, describing empirical results from human, animal or animat experiments, and/or theoretical work, simulations and modeling. Contributions should be aimed at an interdisciplinary audience, but not at the expense of technical excellence. This is an abstract-based meeting, with no published conference proceedings. As such, work that is intended for, or has been submitted to, other conferences or journals is also welcome, provided that the intent of communication to other disciplines is clear. Submissions should consist of a summary (max 2000 characters; text only), and an extended abstract of between one and four pages (including figures and references). LaTeX and RTF templates, and sample submissions, are available from http://rldm.org/rldm2015/submission-procedure/ Note: Only the summary will be made available in the (electronic) abstract booklets. The extended abstract will be used for reviewing, and will be available online only pending on authors? separate explicit permission. Online availability will have no bearing on the review process and authors are encouraged to include new, unpublished, findings which they do not want to make publicly available. To submit your abstract please go to https://cmt.research.microsoft.com/RLDM2015 Submissions will be reviewed for relevance to the topic and for quality. Exceptional abstracts will be selected for oral presentations and for poster spotlight presentations. IMPORTANT DATES: Submissions open: 13 Dec 2015 Submissions close: 13 Feb 2015, 11:59pm EST Notification of acceptance: by March 28, 2015 (expedited reviewing for those needing an international visa can be requested) Early registration: 21 April 2015 Meeting: 7-10 June 2015, Edmonton, Alberta (*NEW* this year: Tutorials on the 7th) RLDM2015 Invited speakers: http://rldm.org/rldm2015/invited-speakers2015/ RLDM2015 Programme Committee: http://rldm.org/rldm2015/committees/rldm2015-program-committee/ To ensure that you receive future announcements about RLDM2015 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 email? from the options at the bottom). -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From ASIM.ROY at asu.edu Tue Dec 16 16:45:48 2014 From: ASIM.ROY at asu.edu (Asim Roy) Date: Tue, 16 Dec 2014 21:45:48 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: INNS BigData 2015 San Francisco - New Conference! Calls for Papers, Special Sessions, Tutorials and Workshops! References: Message-ID: <4AD8F84F0AA4E1448BD8131BA7E55EB41E3162B4@exmbt02.asurite.ad.asu.edu> Apologies for cross-posting. [http://innsbigdata.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/banner.jpg] INNS Conference on Big Data 2015 New approaches to solving hard Big Data problems! 8 - 10 August 2015, San Francisco www.innsbigdata.org The aim of the INNS BigData conference is to promote new advances and research directions in efficient and innovative algorithmic approaches to analyzing big data (e.g. deep networks, nature-inspired and brain-inspired algorithms), implementations on different computing platforms (e.g. neuromorphic, GPUs, clouds, clusters) and applications of Big Data Analytics to solve real-world problems (e.g. weather prediction, transportation, energy management). Please refer to our website for a more detailed list of topics. Being INNS' inaugural conference on the theme of big data, we are especially motivated to synthesize ideas, promote activities and generate broad interest in areas where neural networks have many unique advantages. We also have Twitter, Facebook and Google+ pages! Call for Special Sessions Any proposal can be sent by e-mail to: INNSBigData2015SpecialSessions at gmail.com Deadline: January 22, 2015 Call for Tutorials Any questions can be sent to the Tutorials Chairs: Marley Vellasco (PUC-Rio. Rio de Janeiro. Brazil) and Trevor Martin (Univ. of Bristol, UK). Deadline: January 22, 2015 Call for Workshops For further details contact the Workshop Chairs: Marley Vellasco (PUC-Rio. Rio de Janeiro. Brazil) and Trevor Martin (Univ. of Bristol, UK). Deadline: January 22, 2015 [http://innsbigdata.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/new.gif]The Elsevier USD 2000 Big Data Best Paper Award: This award recognizes the best paper presented at the INNS Big Data conference. Both application and theoretical papers will be considered. It will be awarded by the Big Data Analytics Section of the International Neural Network Society and is sponsored by Elsevier. The Award consists of a plaque and a $2000 honorarium. ________________________________ [http://innsbigdata.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/new.gif]Dr. Fen Zhao Talk Dr. Fen Zhao, a Staff Associate at the Office of the Assistant Director (OAD) for Computer & Information Science & Engineering (CISE) at the National Science Foundation, will give a talk on national big data R&D initiative and on building public-private partnerships around CISE's Big Data, next generation internet, and cybersecurity R&D portfolios. ________________________________ Plenary Speakers: [http://innsbigdata.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Bin-Yu.jpg] Prof. Bin Yu, Chancellor?s Professor, University of California, Berkeley. Bin Yu is Chancellor?s Professor in the Departments of Statistics and of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science at the University of California at Berkeley. She held faculty positions at UW-Madison and Yale University and was a Member of Technical Staff at Lucent Bell Labs. She was Chair of Department of Statistics at Berkeley from 2009 to 2012, and is a founding co-director of the Microsoft Joint Lab on Statistics and Information Technology at Peking University where she is also Chair of the scientific advisory committee of the Center for Statistical Sciences. She has published over 80 scientific papers in premier journals in statistics, machine learning, information theory, signal processing, remote sensing, neuroscience, network analysis, and bioinformatics. [http://innsbigdata.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Raghu.jpg] Prof. Raghu Ramakrishnan, Head of Cloud and Information Services Lab (CISL) and big data team, Microsoft Raghu Ramakrishnan heads the Cloud and Information Services Lab (CISL) in the Data Platforms Group at Microsoft, and leads development for the Big Data team. From 1987 to 2006, he was a professor at University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he wrote the widely-used text ?Database Management Systems? and led a wide range of research projects in database systems (e.g., the CORAL deductive database, the DEVise data visualization tool, SQL extensions to handle sequence data) and data mining (scalable clustering, mining over data streams). In 1999, he founded QUIQ, a company that introduced a cloud-based question-answering service. He joined Yahoo! in 2006 as a Yahoo! Fellow, and over the next six years served as Chief Scientist for the Audience (portal), Cloud and Search divisions, driving content recommendation algorithms (CORE), cloud data stores (PNUTS), and semantic search (?Web of Things?). Ramakrishnan has received several awards, including the ACM SIGKDD Innovations Award, the SIGMOD 10-year Test-of-Time Award, the IIT Madras Distinguished Alumnus Award, and the Packard Fellowship in Science and Engineering. [http://innsbigdata.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/brenda.jpg] Prof. Brenda Dietrich, IBM Fellow and VP, Leads the Emerging Technologies Team for IBM Watson, IBM Brenda Dietrich is an IBM Fellow and Vice President. She joined IBM in 1984 and has worked in the area now called analytics for her entire career, applying data and computation to business decision processes throughout IBM. For over a decade she led the Mathematical Sciences function in the IBM Research division where she was responsible for both basic research on computational mathematics and for the development of novel applications of mathematics for both IBM and its clients. She has been the president of INFORMS, has served on the Board of Trustees of SIAM, and is a member of several university advisory boards. She holds more than a dozen patents, has co-authored numerous publications, and frequently speaks on analytics at conferences. She was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2014. She holds a BS in Mathematics from UNC and an MS and Ph.D. in OR/IE from Cornell. Her personal research includes manufacturing scheduling, services resource management, transportation logistics, integer programming, and combinatorial duality. She currently leads the emerging technologies team for IBM Watson, extending and applying IBM?s cognitive computing technology. ________________________________ Important Dates * Paper submission: March 22, 2015. * Paper Decision Notification: May 22, 2015. * Camera Ready Submission of papers: June 8, 2015. ________________________________ We have an enthusiastic team working hard on the conference program and events. Start thinking about your paper submissions. Our Chairs for the [Special Sessions, Tutorials, and Workshops] are expecting your proposals soon - email them to discuss your ideas. Come to San Francisco next summer to take part in the future of BigData, and to have fun!! Neural Networks Special Issue: Neural Network Learning in Big Data For this special issue of Neural Networks, we invite papers that address many of the challenges of learning from big data. In particular, we are interested in papers on efficient and innovative algorithmic approaches to analyzing big data (e.g. deep networks, nature-inspired and brain-inspired algorithms), implementations on different computing platforms (e.g. neuromorphic, GPUs, clouds, clusters) and applications of online learning to solve real-world big data problems (e.g. health care, transportation, and electric power and energy management). Manuscript submission due: January 15, 2015 Big Data Analytics Section @ INNS Considering the growing interest to process and analyse big data, the International Neural Network Society (INNS) has a new Section on Big Data Analytics (BDA) to help the neural network field position itself as a leading technology contributor to big data analytics. Anyone who is interested to know more is encouraged to visit the homepage of the INNS-BDA Section. General Chairs: Asim Roy (email) INNS BigData General Co-Chair Arizona State University, USA INNS Board of Governors Plamen Angelov (email) INNS BigData General Co-Chair Lancaster University, UK Chair in Intelligent Systems ________________________________ Many thanks to our Sponsors: [http://www.inns.org/assets/site/neural.png] [http://innsbigdata.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/elsevier-logo-300x300-150x150.jpg] To unsubscribe from this list, send an email to Jose Antonio Iglesias, INNS BigData 2015 Publicity Co-Chair, Carlos III Univ, Madrid, Spain with the phrase "Remove my email" in the Subject line. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From aida at cs.toronto.edu Tue Dec 16 23:20:58 2014 From: aida at cs.toronto.edu (Aida Nematzadeh) Date: Tue, 16 Dec 2014 23:20:58 -0500 Subject: Connectionists: Postdoctoral Fellowship in Computational Linguistics/Computational Cognitive Modeling of Language, Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto Message-ID: Applications are invited for one or more postdoctoral fellowships in computational linguistics at the University of Toronto, in a research group that works on computational cognitive models of language acquisition and language processing, and on statistical methods for learning lexical semantic information from large text corpora. We take a very multidisciplinary approach to building systems that learn about words, integrating machine learning approaches with theories and insights from the fields of linguistics and psycholinguistics. Successful candidates will contribute substantially to ongoing research activities in computational lexical semantics and/or cognitive modeling of language acquisition and processing, and participate in developing new research directions in these areas. In addition to pursuing independent and collaborative research activities, the position will involve engagement in undergraduate student supervision and co-supervision of graduate students, along with some administrative duties. The postdoc will work with Professor Suzanne Stevenson and her students in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Toronto (UofT), as well as with collaborators within and outside the department. See http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~suzanne/publications.html for examples of publications coming out of the research group. The precise research focus for the postdoctoral fellowship will be determined in consultation with the successful candidate to maximize the potential for innovative and collaborative research with the PI and her students/collaborators and for professional development of the postdoctoral fellow. Computer Science at UofT is a top-ten department that is well known for its strength in artificial intelligence, including a world-renowned computational linguistics group with 3 faculty members and over 20 graduate students and postdocs (http://www.cs.toronto.edu/compling). Our research group engages with an active psycholinguistics community at UofT that draws participants from Computer Science, Linguistics, Philosophy, Psychology, Speech-Language Pathology, and other departments across the campus. The university is consistently ranked in the top twenty in the world, and the St. George campus (the location of the postdoctoral fellowship) is situated in the vibrant mid-town area of the world?s most multicultural city ( http://www.sgs.utoronto.ca/postdoctoralfellows/Pages/Life-in-Toronto.aspx). We?re looking for candidates who are committed to the multidisciplinary study of language from a computational perspective, and who have a PhD in computational linguistics or in a related field with experience in computational modeling. Salary will be minimum $60,000/year, depending on the successful candidate?s qualifications and experience, plus $5,000/year in research funds. The term is for minimum 1 year, to start as soon as a successful candidate is identified. Course teaching is not required but opportunities to engage in teaching in computer science or cognitive science may be available. Any inquiries concerning further details of the position should be directed to the e-mail address below. Applications should contain: (1) a cover letter clearly indicating the candidate?s research goals for the postdoc and possible start dates,(2) a full CV, (3) a statement of research interests, (4) two or three example publications, and (5) the names and e-mail addresses of three referees. Application materials should be e-mailed as PDF files to Suzanne Stevenson, suzanne at cs.toronto.edu. Priority will be given to applications received by January 16, 2014. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From erik at oist.jp Wed Dec 17 03:58:15 2014 From: erik at oist.jp (Erik De Schutter) Date: Wed, 17 Dec 2014 17:58:15 +0900 Subject: Connectionists: Announcing Okinawa Computational Neuroscience Course 2015 Message-ID: OKINAWA COMPUTATIONAL NEUROSCIENCE COURSE 2015 Methods, Neurons, Networks and Behaviors June 8 - June 25, 2015 Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University, Japan https://groups.oist.jp/ocnc The aim of the Okinawa Computational Neuroscience Course is to provide opportunities for young researchers with theoretical backgrounds to learn the latest advances in neuroscience, and for those with experimental backgrounds to have hands-on experience in computational modeling. We invite graduate students and postgraduate researchers to participate in the course, held from June 8th through June 25th, 2015 at an oceanfront seminar house of the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University. Applications will open on January 5th and are through the course web page (https://groups.oist.jp/ocnc) only; they will close February 8th, 2015. Applicants will receive confirmation of acceptance in March. The course has a strong hands-on component based on student proposed modeling or data analysis projects, which are further refined with the help of a dedicated tutor. Applicants are required to propose their project at the time of application. Like in preceding years, OCNC will be a comprehensive three-week course covering single neurons, networks, and behaviors with ample time for student projects. The first week will focus exclusively on methods with hands-on tutorials during the afternoons, while the second and third weeks will have lectures by international experts. We invite those who are interested in integrating experimental and computational approaches at each level, as well as in bridging different levels of complexity. There is no tuition fee. The sponsor will provide lodging and meals during the course and may support travel for those without funding. We hope that this course will be a good opportunity for theoretical and experimental neuroscientists to meet each other and to explore the attractive nature and culture of Okinawa, the southernmost island prefecture of Japan. Invited faculty: ? Gordon Arbuthnott (OIST) ? Axel Borst (MPI, M?nich, Germany) ? Erik De Schutter (OIST) ? Kenji Doya (OIST) ? Eugene Izihikevich (Brain Corporation, USA) ? Bernd Kuhn (OIST) ? Peter Latham (Gatsby Unit, UCL, UK) ? Miguel Nicolelis (Duke University, USA) ? Steve Prescott (University of Toronto, Canada) ? John Rinzel (New York University, USA) ? Jackie Schiller (Technion, Israel) ? Greg Stephens (OIST) ? Jeff Wickens (OIST) ? Taro Toyoizumi (RIKEN BSI, Japan) ? Xiao-Jing Wang (New York University, USA) ? Wako Yoshida (ATR, Japan) From graduateprograms at bccn-berlin.de Fri Dec 19 11:48:52 2014 From: graduateprograms at bccn-berlin.de (Robert Martin) Date: Fri, 19 Dec 2014 17:48:52 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: [Call for applications] *Graduate Programs in Computational Neuroscience* in Berlin; MSc and PhD; 7 PhD scholarships; deadline March 15, 2015 Message-ID: <549456F4.3080209@bccn-berlin.de> [Apologies for cross-posting] *Doctoral* and *Master Program* "Computational Neuroscience" at the Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience Berlin in Berlin, Germany Application deadline: *March 15, 2015* Begin of courses: October 2015 Internet: www.computational-neuroscience-berlin.de _Doctoral Program_ The Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience Berlin and the TU Berlin invite applications for *7 fellowships* of the Research Training Group "Sensory Computation in Neural Systems" (GRK 1589/2, https://www.eecs.tu-berlin.de/grk_15891/menue/sensory_computation_in_neural_systems/). The *scientific program* of the research training group combines techniques and concepts from machine learning, computational neuroscience, and systems neurobiology in order to specifically address sensory computation. Doctoral candidates will work on interdisciplinary projects investigating the mechanisms of neural computation, address the processes underlying perception on different scales and different levels of abstraction, and develop new theories of computation hand in hand with well-controlled experiments in order to put functional hypotheses to the test. The training group offers structured supervision complemented by a teaching and training program. Each student will be supervised by two investigators with complementary expertise and will be associated with the Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience Berlin (https://www.bccn-berlin.de/) a leading research center dedicated to the theoretical study of neural processing. Candidates are expected to hold a Masters degree (or equivalent) in a relevant subject (e.g., neuroscience, cognitive science, computer science, physics, mathematics, etc.) and have the required advanced mathematical background. Candidates selected in the first application step will be invited for lab visits and an interview, expected to take place in June 2015. The *fellowships of 1468 ?/month* - with additional children allowances if applicable---will be granted for up to three years. _Master's Program_ The tuition-free Master program in Computational Neuroscience offers *15 places* per year, has a duration of 2 years and is fully taught in English. The *curriculum* is subdivided into ten modules, whose content includes theoretical neuroscience, programming, machine learning, cognitive neuroscience, acquisition, modelling, and computational analysis of neural data, with a strong focus on a complementary theoretical and experimental training. Three lab rotations and a Master's thesis are accomplished in the second year. The aim of the program is to provide the students with an interdisciplinary education and an early contact to the neurocomputational research environment. *Requirements* BSc or equivalent degree in a relevant subject (typically in the natural sciences, in an engineering discipline, in cognitive science, or in mathematics), certificate of English proficiency, proof of sufficient mathematical knowledge (at least 24 ECTS credit points). ~~~ _For more information_ ... ... come and visit us on our *information day* on January 14, 2015, at 3 PM (sharp) at the BCCN Berlin: https://www.bccn-berlin.de/Calendar/Events/event/?contentId=3667 ... or browse: www.computational-neuroscience-berlin.de ... or e-mail: graduateprograms at bccn-berlin.de . Best regards, Robert Martin -- Robert Martin, PhD Teaching Coordinator Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience Humboldt-Universitaet zu Berlin Philippstr. 13 House 6; 10115 Berlin; Germany Phone/Fax +49 (0)30 2093 6773/6771 http://www.computational-neuroscience-berlin.de GRK 1589/1, Sensory Computation in Neural Systems Technische Universitaet Berlin Sekretariat MAR 5-6; Marchstr. 23; 10587 Berlin Phone/Fax +49 (0)30 314 72006/73121 http://www.eecs.tu-berlin.de/grk_15891/ From bgholami at aretexeng.com Fri Dec 19 14:25:14 2014 From: bgholami at aretexeng.com (Behnood Gholami) Date: Fri, 19 Dec 2014 14:25:14 -0500 Subject: Connectionists: Computational Neural Scientist Position Message-ID: I am the Chief Technology Officer of a healthcare startup company located in the NYU Incubator in New York City. We are working on a number of new technologies for critical care funded by the DoD and NSF. We are looking for a strong candidate with expertise in machine learning and EEG data analysis to fill a Staff Scientist position in our company. The details of the position can be found at: http://www.aretexeng.com/jobs Best, Behnood Gholami -- Behnood Gholami, Ph.D. Chief Technology Officer AreteX Engineering 137 Varick St., 2nd Floor New York, NY 10013 Phone: (347) 774-1617 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rod.rinkus at gmail.com Fri Dec 19 16:51:30 2014 From: rod.rinkus at gmail.com (Rod Rinkus) Date: Fri, 19 Dec 2014 16:51:30 -0500 Subject: Connectionists: New paper on using deep sparse distributed representations for event learning and recognition Message-ID: Dear Connectionists, I have a new paper "Sparsey^TM: event recognition via deep hierarchical sparse distributed codes" in Frontiers in Computational Neuroscience, which I think will be of general interest to this group. Many existing hierarchical models propose localist representations in each sub-region of each hierarchical level. In contrast, in Sparsey, all sub-regions (macrocolumns) in all of internal levels use sparse distributed codes, which confers great computational efficiency, as we argue in the paper. This animation of a memory trace unfolding in a 6-level Sparsey model shows the proposed general correspondence to cortex (the levels of macs would correspond to V1, V2, etc.). I look forward to any questions/feedback from the community. Sincerely, Rod Rinkus -- Gerard (Rod) Rinkus, PhD President, rod at neurithmicsystems dot com Neurithmic Systems LLC 275 Grove Street, Suite 2-400 Newton, MA 02466 617-997-6272 Visiting Scientist, Lisman Lab Volen Center for Complex Systems Brandeis University, Waltham, MA grinkus at brandeis dot edu http://people.brandeis.edu/~grinkus/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sebastian.risi at gmail.com Sat Dec 20 15:54:58 2014 From: sebastian.risi at gmail.com (Sebastian Risi) Date: Sat, 20 Dec 2014 21:54:58 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: CFP: Generative and Developmental Systems (GDS) track at GECCO 2015 Message-ID: ************************************************************************** *** CALL FOR PAPERS *** 2015 GENETIC AND EVOLUTIONARY COMPUTATION CONFERENCE (GECCO-2015) *** Generative and Developmental Systems (GDS) Track *** July 11-15, 2015, Madrid, Spain *** Organized by ACM SIGEVO *** http://www.sigevo.org/gecco-2015/organizers-tracks.html ************************************************************************* As artificial systems continue to grow in size and complexity, the engineering traditions of rigid top-down design are reaching the limits of their applicability. In contrast, biological evolution is responsible for an apparently unbounded complexity and diversity of living organisms. The Generative and Developmental Systems (GDS) track seeks to unlock the full potential of in silico evolution as a design methodology that can scale up to systems of great complexity and meet our specifications with minimal manual programming effort. Major themes are genotype-phenotype maps, interactions between developmental processes and evolution, alternatives to the classic fitness function to drive the selection process, and success metrics that go beyond task-based benchmarks (e.g., generating/measuring complexity, evolvability, regularity, etc.). GECCO is the main conference in evolutionary computation. With a selection rate of about 35%, it is the premier place for high-quality contributions about artificial evolution. The GDS track at GECCO invites all papers addressing the challenges of scaling up evolution to life-like complexity, including, but not limited to the areas of: - artificial development, artificial embryogeny - neural development, neuroevolution - evo-devo robotics, morphogenetic robotics - evolution of evolvability - gene regulatory networks - grammar-based systems, generative systems, rewriting systems - indirect mappings, compact encodings, novel representations - morphogenetic engineering - diversity preservation, novelty search - competitive co-evolution (arms races) - measures of evolved complexity (theoretical or practical) - open-ended evolution IMPORTANT DATES: January 21, 2015 Abstract submission February 4, 2015 Full paper submission March 20, 2015 Notification of paper acceptance April 14, 2015 Camera ready submission July 11-15, 2015 GECCO 2015 Conference in Madrid, Spain Join the GDS Google Group, https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/gds-gecco, to see the latest updates. TRACK CHAIRS: JB Mouret, University Pierre and Marie Curie (France), mouret at isir.upmc.fr Sebastian Risi, IT University of Copenhagen (Denmark), sebr at itu.dk -- Dr. Sebastian Risi Assistant Professor IT University of Copenhagen, Room 5D08 Rued Langgaards Vej 7, 2300 Copenhagen, Denmark email: sebastian.risi at gmail.com, web: www.sebastianrisi.com mobile: +45-50250355, office: +45-7218-5127 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mikeforrest at hotmail.com Tue Dec 23 15:38:37 2014 From: mikeforrest at hotmail.com (MICHAEL FORREST) Date: Tue, 23 Dec 2014 20:38:37 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: New Paper In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: A new paper that some may find interesting: Forrest MD (2014) The sodium-potassium pump is an information processing element in brain computation. Frontiers in Physiology. FREELY available at: http://journal.frontiersin.org/Journal/10.3389/fphys.2014.00472/full > From: connectionists-request at mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu > Subject: Connectionists Digest, Vol 407, Issue 4 > To: connectionists at mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu > Date: Sun, 21 Dec 2014 12:00:28 -0500 > > Send Connectionists mailing list submissions to > connectionists at mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu > > To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit > https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/listinfo/connectionists > or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to > connectionists-request at mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu > > You can reach the person managing the list at > connectionists-owner at mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu > > When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific > than "Re: Contents of Connectionists digest..." > > > Today's Topics: > > 1. [Call for applications] *Graduate Programs in Computational > Neuroscience* in Berlin; MSc and PhD; 7 PhD scholarships; > deadline March 15, 2015 (Robert Martin) > 2. Computational Neural Scientist Position (Behnood Gholami) > 3. New paper on using deep sparse distributed representations > for event learning and recognition (Rod Rinkus) > 4. CFP: Generative and Developmental Systems (GDS) track at > GECCO 2015 (Sebastian Risi) > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > > Message: 1 > Date: Fri, 19 Dec 2014 17:48:52 +0100 > From: Robert Martin > To: connectionists at cs.cmu.edu > Subject: Connectionists: [Call for applications] *Graduate Programs in > Computational Neuroscience* in Berlin; MSc and PhD; 7 PhD > scholarships; deadline March 15, 2015 > Message-ID: <549456F4.3080209 at bccn-berlin.de> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed > > [Apologies for cross-posting] > > *Doctoral* and *Master Program* "Computational Neuroscience" > at the Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience Berlin > in Berlin, Germany > > Application deadline: *March 15, 2015* > Begin of courses: October 2015 > Internet: www.computational-neuroscience-berlin.de > > > _Doctoral Program_ > > The Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience Berlin and the TU > Berlin invite applications for *7 fellowships* of the Research Training > Group "Sensory Computation in Neural Systems" (GRK 1589/2, > https://www.eecs.tu-berlin.de/grk_15891/menue/sensory_computation_in_neural_systems/). > > The *scientific program* of the research training group combines > techniques and concepts from machine learning, computational > neuroscience, and systems neurobiology in order to specifically address > sensory computation. Doctoral candidates will work on interdisciplinary > projects investigating the mechanisms of neural computation, address the > processes underlying perception on different scales and different levels > of abstraction, and develop new theories of computation hand in hand > with well-controlled experiments in order to put functional hypotheses > to the test. > > The training group offers structured supervision complemented by a > teaching and training program. Each student will be supervised by two > investigators with complementary expertise and will be associated with > the Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience Berlin > (https://www.bccn-berlin.de/) a leading research center dedicated to the > theoretical study of neural processing. > > Candidates are expected to hold a Masters degree (or equivalent) in a > relevant subject (e.g., neuroscience, cognitive science, computer > science, physics, mathematics, etc.) and have the required advanced > mathematical background. > > Candidates selected in the first application step will be invited for > lab visits and an interview, expected to take place in June 2015. The > *fellowships of 1468 ?/month* - with additional children allowances if > applicable---will be granted for up to three years. > > > _Master's Program_ > > The tuition-free Master program in Computational Neuroscience offers *15 > places* per year, has a duration of 2 years and is fully taught in English. > > The *curriculum* is subdivided into ten modules, whose content includes > theoretical neuroscience, programming, machine learning, cognitive > neuroscience, acquisition, modelling, and computational analysis of > neural data, with a strong focus on a complementary theoretical and > experimental training. Three lab rotations and a Master's thesis are > accomplished in the second year. The aim of the program is to provide > the students with an interdisciplinary education and an early contact to > the neurocomputational research environment. > > *Requirements* BSc or equivalent degree in a relevant subject (typically > in the natural sciences, in an engineering discipline, in cognitive > science, or in mathematics), certificate of English proficiency, proof > of sufficient mathematical knowledge (at least 24 ECTS credit points). > > ~~~ > > _For more information_ ... > > ... come and visit us on our *information day* on January 14, 2015, at 3 > PM (sharp) at the BCCN Berlin: > https://www.bccn-berlin.de/Calendar/Events/event/?contentId=3667 > > ... or browse: > www.computational-neuroscience-berlin.de > > ... or e-mail: > graduateprograms at bccn-berlin.de . > > > Best regards, > > Robert Martin > > > -- > > Robert Martin, PhD > Teaching Coordinator > > Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience > Humboldt-Universitaet zu Berlin > Philippstr. 13 House 6; 10115 Berlin; Germany > Phone/Fax +49 (0)30 2093 6773/6771 > http://www.computational-neuroscience-berlin.de > > GRK 1589/1, Sensory Computation in Neural Systems > Technische Universitaet Berlin > Sekretariat MAR 5-6; Marchstr. 23; 10587 Berlin > Phone/Fax +49 (0)30 314 72006/73121 > http://www.eecs.tu-berlin.de/grk_15891/ > > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 2 > Date: Fri, 19 Dec 2014 14:25:14 -0500 > From: Behnood Gholami > To: connectionists at mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu > Subject: Connectionists: Computational Neural Scientist Position > Message-ID: > > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" > > I am the Chief Technology Officer of a healthcare startup company located > in the NYU Incubator in New York City. We are working on a number of new > technologies for critical care funded by the DoD and NSF. > > We are looking for a strong candidate with expertise in machine learning > and EEG data analysis to fill a Staff Scientist position in our company. > The details of the position can be found at: http://www.aretexeng.com/jobs > > Best, > Behnood Gholami > > -- > Behnood Gholami, Ph.D. > Chief Technology Officer > AreteX Engineering > 137 Varick St., 2nd Floor > New York, NY 10013 > Phone: (347) 774-1617 > -------------- next part -------------- > An HTML attachment was scrubbed... > URL: > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 3 > Date: Fri, 19 Dec 2014 16:51:30 -0500 > From: Rod Rinkus > To: connectionists at mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu > Subject: Connectionists: New paper on using deep sparse distributed > representations for event learning and recognition > Message-ID: > > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" > > Dear Connectionists, > > I have a new paper > > "Sparsey^TM: event recognition via deep hierarchical sparse distributed > codes" in Frontiers in Computational Neuroscience, which I think will be of > general interest to this group. Many existing hierarchical models propose > localist representations in each sub-region of each hierarchical level. In > contrast, in Sparsey, all sub-regions (macrocolumns) in all of internal > levels use sparse distributed codes, which confers great computational > efficiency, as we argue in the paper. This animation > of a memory trace unfolding in a > 6-level Sparsey model shows the proposed general correspondence to cortex > (the levels of macs would correspond to V1, V2, etc.). I look forward to > any questions/feedback from the community. > > Sincerely, > Rod Rinkus > > > -- > Gerard (Rod) Rinkus, PhD > President, > rod at neurithmicsystems dot com > Neurithmic Systems LLC > 275 Grove Street, Suite 2-400 > Newton, MA 02466 > 617-997-6272 > > Visiting Scientist, Lisman Lab > Volen Center for Complex Systems > Brandeis University, Waltham, MA > grinkus at brandeis dot edu > http://people.brandeis.edu/~grinkus/ > > -------------- next part -------------- > An HTML attachment was scrubbed... > URL: > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 4 > Date: Sat, 20 Dec 2014 21:54:58 +0100 > From: Sebastian Risi > Cc: Jean-Baptiste Mouret > Subject: Connectionists: CFP: Generative and Developmental Systems > (GDS) track at GECCO 2015 > Message-ID: > > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" > > ************************************************************************** > *** CALL FOR PAPERS > *** 2015 GENETIC AND EVOLUTIONARY COMPUTATION CONFERENCE (GECCO-2015) > *** Generative and Developmental Systems (GDS) Track > *** July 11-15, 2015, Madrid, Spain > *** Organized by ACM SIGEVO > *** http://www.sigevo.org/gecco-2015/organizers-tracks.html > ************************************************************************* > > As artificial systems continue to grow in size and complexity, the > engineering traditions of rigid top-down design are reaching the limits of > their applicability. In contrast, biological evolution is responsible for > an apparently unbounded complexity and diversity of living organisms. The > Generative and Developmental Systems (GDS) track seeks to unlock the full > potential of in silico evolution as a design methodology that can scale up > to systems of great complexity and meet our specifications with minimal > manual programming effort. Major themes are genotype-phenotype maps, > interactions between developmental processes and evolution, alternatives to > the classic fitness function to drive the selection process, and success > metrics that go beyond task-based benchmarks (e.g., generating/measuring > complexity, evolvability, regularity, etc.). > > GECCO is the main conference in evolutionary computation. With a selection > rate of about 35%, it is the premier place for high-quality contributions > about artificial evolution. The GDS track at GECCO invites all papers > addressing the challenges of scaling up evolution to life-like complexity, > including, but not limited to the areas of: > > - artificial development, artificial embryogeny > - neural development, neuroevolution > - evo-devo robotics, morphogenetic robotics > - evolution of evolvability > - gene regulatory networks > - grammar-based systems, generative systems, rewriting systems > - indirect mappings, compact encodings, novel representations > - morphogenetic engineering > - diversity preservation, novelty search > - competitive co-evolution (arms races) > - measures of evolved complexity (theoretical or practical) > - open-ended evolution > > IMPORTANT DATES: > > January 21, 2015 Abstract submission > February 4, 2015 Full paper submission > March 20, 2015 Notification of paper acceptance > April 14, 2015 Camera ready submission > July 11-15, 2015 GECCO 2015 Conference in Madrid, Spain > > Join the GDS Google Group, https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/gds-gecco, > to see the latest updates. > > TRACK CHAIRS: > > JB Mouret, University Pierre and Marie Curie (France), mouret at isir.upmc.fr > Sebastian Risi, IT University of Copenhagen (Denmark), sebr at itu.dk > > -- > Dr. Sebastian Risi > Assistant Professor > IT University of Copenhagen, Room 5D08 > Rued Langgaards Vej 7, 2300 Copenhagen, Denmark > email: sebastian.risi at gmail.com, web: www.sebastianrisi.com > mobile: +45-50250355, office: +45-7218-5127 > -------------- next part -------------- > An HTML attachment was scrubbed... > URL: > > ------------------------------ > > Subject: Digest Footer > > _______________________________________________ > Connectionists mailing list > Connectionists at mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu > https://mailman.srv.cs.cmu.edu/mailman/listinfo/connectionists > > ------------------------------ > > End of Connectionists Digest, Vol 407, Issue 4 > ********************************************** -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From grlmc at urv.cat Wed Dec 24 07:06:29 2014 From: grlmc at urv.cat (GRLMC) Date: Wed, 24 Dec 2014 13:06:29 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: AlCoB 2015: 2nd call for papers Message-ID: *To be removed from our mailing list, please respond to this message with UNSUBSCRIBE in the subject line* **************************************************************************** ****** 2nd INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON ALGORITHMS FOR COMPUTATIONAL BIOLOGY AlCoB 2015 Mexico City, Mexico August 4-6, 2015 Organized by: Centre for Complexity Sciences (C3) School of Sciences Institute for Research in Applied Mathematics and Systems (IIMAS) Graduate Program in Computing Science and Engineering National Autonomous University of Mexico Research Group on Mathematical Linguistics (GRLMC) Rovira i Virgili University http://grammars.grlmc.com/alcob2015/ **************************************************************************** ****** AIMS: AlCoB aims at promoting and displaying excellent research using string and graph algorithms and combinatorial optimization to deal with problems in biological sequence analysis, genome rearrangement, evolutionary trees, and structure prediction. The conference will address several of the current challenges in computational biology by investigating algorithms aimed at: 1) assembling sequence reads into a complete genome, 2) identifying gene structures in the genome, 3) recognizing regulatory motifs, 4) aligning nucleotides and comparing genomes, 5) reconstructing regulatory networks of genes, and 6) inferring the evolutionary phylogeny of species. Particular focus will be put on methodology and significant room will be reserved to young scholars at the beginning of their career. VENUE: AlCoB 2015 will take place in Mexico City, the oldest capital city in the Americas and the largest Spanish-speaking city in the world. The venue will be the main campus of the National Autonomous University of Mexico. SCOPE: Topics of either theoretical or applied interest include, but are not limited to: Exact sequence analysis Approximate sequence analysis Pairwise sequence alignment Multiple sequence alignment Sequence assembly Genome rearrangement Regulatory motif finding Phylogeny reconstruction Phylogeny comparison Structure prediction Compressive genomics Proteomics: molecular pathways, interaction networks ... Transcriptomics: splicing variants, isoform inference and quantification, differential analysis Next-generation sequencing: population genomics, metagenomics, metatranscriptomics ... Microbiome analysis Systems biology STRUCTURE: AlCoB 2015 will consist of: invited lectures peer-reviewed contributions INVITED SPEAKERS: Julio Collado-Vides (National Autonomous University of Mexico, Cuernavaca), >From Curation of Information to Knowledge Encoding Gaston Gonnet (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich), Human-Dog-Mouse, Probably and Provable Non-trivial Evolution Close to the Root of the Mammalian Clade Peter D. Karp (SRI International, Menlo Park), Algorithms for Metabolic Route Search and Determination of Reaction Atom Mappings PROGRAMME COMMITTEE: Stephen Altschul (National Center for Biotechnology Information, Bethesda, USA) Yurii Aulchenko (Russian Academy of Sciences, Novosibirsk, Russia) Pierre Baldi (University of California, Irvine, USA) Daniel G. Brown (University of Waterloo, Canada) Yuehui Chen (University of Jinan, China) Keith A. Crandall (George Washington University, Washington, USA) Joseph Felsenstein (University of Washington, Seattle, USA) Michael Galperin (National Center for Biotechnology Information, Bethesda, USA) Susumu Goto (Kyoto University, Japan) Igor Grigoriev (DOE Joint Genome Institute, Walnut Creek, USA) Martien Groenen (Wageningen University, The Netherlands) Yike Guo (Imperial College, London, UK) Javier Herrero (University College London, UK) Karsten Hokamp (Trinity College Dublin, Ireland) Hsuan-Cheng Huang (National Yang-Ming University, Taipei, Taiwan) Ian Korf (University of California, Davis, USA) Nikos Kyrpides (DOE Joint Genome Institute, Walnut Creek, USA) Mingyao Li (University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA) Yun Li (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, USA) Jun Liu (Harvard University, Cambridge, USA) Rodrigo L?pez (European Bioinformatics Institute, Hinxton, UK) Andrei N. Lupas (Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology, T?bingen, Germany) B.S. Manjunath (University of California, Santa Barbara, USA) Carlos Mart?n-Vide (chair, Rovira i Virgili University, Tarragona, Spain) Tarjei Mikkelsen (Broad Institute, Cambridge, USA) Henrik Nielsen (Technical University of Denmark, Lyngby, Denmark) Zemin Ning (Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, Hinxton, UK) Christine Orengo (University College London, UK) Modesto Orozco (Institute for Research in Biomedicine, Barcelona, Spain) Christos A. Ouzounis (Centre for Research & Technology Hellas, Thessaloniki, Greece) Manuel Peitsch (Philip Morris International R&D, Neuch?tel, Switzerland) David A. Rosenblueth (National Autonomous University of Mexico, Mexico City, Mexico) Julio Rozas (University of Barcelona, Spain) Alessandro Sette (La Jolla Institute for Allergy and Immunology, USA) Peter F. Stadler (University of Leipzig, Germany) Guy Theraulaz (Paul Sabatier University, Toulouse, France) Alfonso Valencia (Spanish National Cancer Research Centre, Madrid, Spain) Kai Wang (University of Southern California, Los Angeles, USA) Lusheng Wang (City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong) Zidong Wang (Brunel University, Uxbridge, UK) Harel Weinstein (Cornell University, New York, USA) Jennifer Wortman (Broad Institute, Cambridge, USA) Jun Yu (Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China) Mohammed J. Zaki (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, USA) Louxin Zhang (National University of Singapore, Singapore) Hongyu Zhao (Yale University, New Haven, USA) ORGANIZING COMMITTEE: Adrian Horia Dediu (Tarragona) Francisco Hern?ndez-Quiroz (Mexico City) Carlos Mart?n-Vide (Tarragona, co-chair) David A. Rosenblueth (Mexico City, co-chair) 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, references, proofs, etc.) and should be prepared 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=alcob2015 PUBLICATIONS: A volume of proceedings published by Springer in the LNCS/LNBI series will be available by the time of the conference. A special issue of a major journal will be later published containing peer-reviewed substantially extended versions of some of the papers contributed to the conference. Submissions to it will be by invitation. REGISTRATION: The registration form can be found at: http://grammars.grlmc.com/alcob2015/Registration.php DEADLINES: Paper submission: March 2, 2015 (23:59 CET) Notification of paper acceptance or rejection: April 10, 2015 Final version of the paper for the LNCS/LNBI proceedings: April 19, 2015 Early registration: April 19, 2015 Late registration: July 21, 2015 Submission to the journal special issue: November 6, 2015 QUESTIONS AND FURTHER INFORMATION: florentinalilica.voicu at urv.cat POSTAL ADDRESS: AlCoB 2015 Research Group on Mathematical Linguistics (GRLMC) Rovira i Virgili University Av. Catalunya, 35 43002 Tarragona, Spain Phone: +34 977 559 543 Fax: +34 977 558 386 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: National Autonomous University of Mexico Rovira i Virgili University --- Este mensaje no contiene virus ni malware porque la protecci?n de avast! Antivirus est? activa. http://www.avast.com From John.Hajda at psych.ucsb.edu Tue Dec 23 18:43:35 2014 From: John.Hajda at psych.ucsb.edu (John Hajda) Date: Tue, 23 Dec 2014 15:43:35 -0800 Subject: Connectionists: Postdoc job announcement at UC Santa Barbara Message-ID: <5499FE27.3000109@psych.ucsb.edu> *SAGE JUNIOR FELLOW PROGRAM, SAGE CENTER FOR THE STUDY OF MIND, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SANTA BARBARA* ** *Job number JPF00417* Four postdoctoral positions will be available beginning on September 1, 2015. This is a three-year fellowship, and the competition is open to all qualified candidates regardless of institutional affiliation. The SAGE Center Junior Fellowship Program, established in 2011, fosters interdisciplinary research in the study of brain-mind interaction at the postdoctoral level. We are seeking a group of highly collaborative, interacting fellows who are willing to take different approaches to shared conceptual challenges. Qualified applicants should be able and will be encouraged to utilize the UCSB Brain Imaging Center (http://www.bic.ucsb.edu/). The Center supports the new PRISMA (3T) Siemens magnet as well as MRI compatible high density electroencephalography hardware. Center funding will be available for imaging studies. In addition to developing research programs in close collaboration with individual faculty, Junior Fellows will enjoy special privileges, including access to visiting SAGE Scholars and attendance at regular group meetings to collaborate and share information about the role of psychology, cognitive neuroscience, economics, political science, anthropology, biology, physics, engineering, the arts, philosophy and other disciplines on the study of brain, mind and behavior. To be eligible for the Junior Fellows program, a candidate must have been awarded a doctoral degree or foreign equivalent within the past five years. Proposed research topics must be related to brain-mind interaction. Interdisciplinary approaches are encouraged. We will strive to create a team based on common interests of the top applicants. To apply, please submit: 1. A complete CV, published article and three letters of recommendation 2. A statement of your research interests and a description of how those interests complement the goals of the SAGE Center. For primary consideration, apply by February 1, 2015, although we will accept applications until the positions are filled. Please submit your application at https://recruit.ap.ucsb.edu/apply/JPF00417. Inquiries about your application may be directed to juniorfellows at sagecenter.ucsb.edu ; include your last name in the subject line of all correspondence. Michael S. Gazzaniga, Ph.D. Director, SAGE Center for the Study of Mind University of California, Santa Barbara http://www.sagecenter.ucsb.edu/ http://www.psych.ucsb.edu/~gazzanig/ The department is especially interested in candidates who can contribute to the diversity and excellence of the academic community through research, teaching and service. The University of California is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, national origin, or any other characteristic protected by law including protected Veterans and individuals with disabilities. -- John Hajda, Ph.D. Associate Director Sage Center for the Study of the Mind Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences University of California, Santa Barbara Santa Barbara, CA 93106-9660 Phone 805-893-4460 Fax 805-893-3228 hajda at sagecenter.ucsb.edu http://www.sagecenter.ucsb.edu/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mark.plumbley at qmul.ac.uk Wed Dec 24 09:48:22 2014 From: mark.plumbley at qmul.ac.uk (Mark Plumbley) Date: Wed, 24 Dec 2014 14:48:22 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: Marie Curie ESRs in Sparse Representations and Compressed Sensing Message-ID: Dear Connectionists, We are currently recruiting a number of "Early Stage Researcher" (ESR) positions for PhD study, as part of a new "SpaRTaN" EU-funded Marie Curie Initial Training Network in Sparse Representations and Compressed Sensing. These positions come with a very competitive salary compared to regular PhD scholarships, so might also be of interest to young researchers who had not otherwise thought of taking a PhD. (Apologies for cross-posting.) Best wishes, Mark Plumbley ---- Marie Curie Early Stage Researchers in Sparse Representations and Compressed Sensing EU FP7 Marie Curie Initial Training Network "SpaRTaN: Sparse Representations and Compressed Sensing Training Network" (FP7-PEOPLE-2013-ITN 607290) Project Website: http://spartan-itn.eu/ Applications are invited to a number of Marie Curie Early Stage Researcher (ESR) positions as part of the new EU-funded Marie Curie Initial Training Network (ITN) "SpaRTaN: Sparse Representations and Compressed Sensing Training Network". The SpaRTaN ITN (http://spartan-itn.eu/) brings together leading academic and industry groups to train a new generation of interdisciplinary researchers in sparse representations and compressed sensing, with applications in areas such as hyperspectral imaging, audio signal processing and video analytics. Early Stage Researcher (ESR) positions allow the researcher to work towards a PhD, for a duration of 36 months. ESRs should be within four years of the diploma granting them access to doctorate studies at the time of recruitment, and must not have spent more than 12 months in the host country in the 3 years prior to starting. Marie Curie ESRs are paid a competitive salary which is adjusted for their host country. Each of the ESR posts being recruited across SpaRTaN has its own application process and closing date in early 2015. The full list of Early Stage Researcher (ESR) Positions (recruiting early 2015) is as follows: * ESR1 : Sparse Time-Frequency methods for Audio Source Separation - CVSSP, University of Surrey, United Kingdom * ESR2 : Automatic Music Transcription using Structured Sparse Dictionary Learning - CVSSP, University of Surrey, United Kingdom * ESR3 : Sparse Representations and Compressed Sensing - University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom * ESR4 : Task Based Dictionary Learning for Audio-Visual Tagging - LTS2, EPFL,Switzerland * ESR5 : 1-bit Compressive Imaging - LTS2, EPFL,Switzerland * ESR6 : Analysis Dictionary Learning Beyond Gaussian Denoising - Instituto de Telecomunica??es, Portugal * ESR7 : Compressed Sensing for Hyperspectral Imaging - Instituto de Telecomunica??es, Portugal * ESR8 : Large-scale signal processing - INRIA, France For further details, see http://spartan-itn.eu/#1 The following experienced Researcher (ER) positions will also be recruiting later in 2015: * ER1 : Video Analytics for Large Camera Networks - VisioSafe, Switzerland * ER2 : Image and Video Restoration with Adaptive Transforms - Noiseless Imaging, Finland For more details of all ESR positions and future ER positions, and information on how to apply, see http://spartan-itn.eu/#1 -- Prof Mark D Plumbley Professor of Signal Processing Centre for Vision, Speech and Signal Processing (CVSSP) University of Surrey Guildford, Surrey, GU2 7XH, UK Email: m.plumbley at surrey.ac.uk From borisyuk at math.utah.edu Wed Dec 24 17:53:07 2014 From: borisyuk at math.utah.edu (Alla Borisyuk) Date: Wed, 24 Dec 2014 15:53:07 -0700 Subject: Connectionists: CNS-2015: First Announcement Message-ID: Organization for Computational Neurosciences (OCNS) 24th Annual Meeting Prague, Czech Republic July 18-23, 2015 The main meeting (July 19-21) will be preceded by a day of tutorials (July 18) and followed by two days of workshops (July 22-23). Invited Keynote Speakers: Jack Cowan, University of Chicago, USA Gustavo Deco, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Spain Adrienne Fairhall, University of Washington, USA Wulfram Gerstner, EPFL, Switzerland Registration will open on January 14, 2015. Abstract submission will open on January 15, 2015 and close on February 22. Workshop proposals are now being accepted. Note that one of the authors has to register as sponsoring author for the main meeting before abstract submission is possible. In case the abstract is not accepted for presentation, the registration fee will be refunded. For up-to-date conference information, please visit http://www.cnsorg.org/cns-2015-prague ---------------------------------------- OCNS is the international member-based society for computational neuroscientists. Become a member to be eligible for travel awards and more. Visit our website for more information: http://www.cnsorg.org -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From alessandra.sciutti at gmail.com Sat Dec 27 08:44:18 2014 From: alessandra.sciutti at gmail.com (Alessandra Sciutti) Date: Sat, 27 Dec 2014 22:44:18 +0900 Subject: Connectionists: =?iso-8859-1?q?Call_for_paper_-_HRI_2015_Workshop?= =?iso-8859-1?q?_=22Cognition=3A_A_Bridge_between_Robotics_and_Inte?= =?iso-8859-1?q?raction=22?= Message-ID: <001401d021db$389cf7f0$a9d6e7d0$@gmail.com> ========================================================================= Workshop ?Cognition: A Bridge between Robotics and Interaction?, at HRI 2015, Portland (OR) USA ========================================================================= March 2, 2015 Submission deadline: January 20, 2015 Notification of acceptance: January 30, 2015 website: http://http://www.macs.hw.ac.uk/~kl360/HRI2015W/ ========================================================================= INVITED SPEAKERS: - Prof. David Vernon, Sk?vde University - Prof. Andrew Meltzoff, University of Washington INVITED PANELISTS: - Prof. Giulio Sandini, Italian Institute of Technology - Prof. Minoru Asada, Osaka University A key feature of humans is the ability to anticipate what other agents are going to do and to plan accordingly a collaborative action. This skill, derived from being able to entertain models of other agents, allows for the compensation for intrinsic delays of human motor control and is a primary support to allow for efficient and fluid interaction. Moreover, the awareness that other humans are cognitive agents who combine sensory perception with internal models of the environment and others, enables easier mutual understanding and coordination. Cognition represents therefore an ideal link between different disciplines, as the field of Robotics and that of Interaction studies, performed by neuroscientists and psychologists. From a robotics perspective, the study of cognition is aimed at implementing cognitive architectures leading to efficient interaction with the environment and other agents. From the perspective of the human disciplines, robots could represent an ideal stimulus to study which are the fundamental robot properties necessary to make it perceived as a cognitive agent, enabling natural human-robot interaction. Ideally, the implementation of cognitive architectures may raise new interesting questions for psychologists, and the behavioral and neuroscientific results of the human-robot interaction studies could validate or give new inputs for robotics engineers. The aim of this workshop will be to provide a venue for researchers of different disciplines to discuss the possible points of contact and to highlight the issues and the advantages of bridging different fields for the study of cognition for interaction. This workshop will represent an ideal continuation of the discussion began at HRI 2014, in the workshop ?HRI: a bridge between Robotics and Neuroscience? (http://www.macs.hw.ac.uk/~kl360/HRI2014W/index.html ). LIST OF TOPICS ----------------- - Cognitive Architecture - Development of Social Cognition - Interaction - Prediction - Embodiment - Self and Other FORMAT AND SUBMISSIONS --------------------- The workshop will consist of invited keynotes, time for discussions and will also feature a poster session. Prospective participants are invited to submit full papers (up to 8 pages) or short papers (2 pages). Submissions will be accepted in PDF format only, using the HRI formatting guidelines (http://www.macs.hw.ac.uk/~kl360/HRI2015W/papers.html) and including author names. Authors should send their papers to hri2015workshop at gmail.com . All submissions will be peer-reviewed. Upon available time, selected contributions may have the opportunity to be presented in the oral session. The other selected contributions will be presented as posters during a dedicated session. The submission must include 1 answer to one of the following questions: - How should cognitive research be structured to yield results useful for robotics and HRI? - How can robotics have a direct influence on neuroscience and cognitive psychology aimed at interaction studies? - Which is the minimal level of cognition needed in a robot to be able to interact with a human? - Does a robot really need cognition to be perceived as a cognitive agent by a human? - Does inserting a cognitive agent into an interaction pose a risk to the human partners? - How important is the embodiment of a robot for the development of its cognitive architecture and its social cognition? Upon available time, those questions/answers will be used to "drive" a final discussion. IMPORTANT DATES ------------- Submission deadline: January 20, 2014 Notification of acceptance: January 30, 2014 March 2, 2014, Workshop at HRI 2015 ORGANIZERS ---------- - Alessandra Sciutti Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia - Katrin Solveig Lohan Heriot-Watt University - Yukie Nagai Osaka University -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From ahu at cs.stir.ac.uk Sun Dec 28 06:19:19 2014 From: ahu at cs.stir.ac.uk (Dr Amir Hussain) Date: Sun, 28 Dec 2014 11:19:19 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: Call for Papers: IEEE IJCNN'2015 Special Session on: "Emerging Methodologies for Big Data Integration" Message-ID: CALL FOR PAPERS IEEE IJCNN 2015 Special Session on *"*Emerging Methodologies for Big Data Integration*"* July 12 - 17, 2015, Killarney, Ireland ( http://www.ijcnn.org/ ) ********************************************************** IMPORTANT DATES Paper submission: January 15th, 2015 Paper Decision notification: March 15th, 2015 Camera-ready submission: April 15th, 2015 Conference Dates: July 12 - 17th, 2015 *********************************************************** Over the years, huge quantities of data have been generated by large-scale scientific experiments (biomedical, ?omic?, imaging, astronomical, etc.), big industrial companies and on the web. One of the main characteristics of such Big Data is that they are multi-view, i.e. there are multiple sources (in the ?omics? sciences, experiments related to mRNA, miRNA etc.), relate the same patterns (in this case patients) or multi-domain (in biomedical applications for examples, ?omics, imaging and clinical data). As a consequence, new methodologies based on neural networks, machine and statistical learning, computation Intelligence and others, have been proposed to integrate these kinds of big data and to elicit relevant information to infer novel models and correlations. The aim of the special session is to solicit new approaches to real world scientific and industrial big data integration, as well as applications of above mentioned Big Data methodologies. *Topics** Papers must present original work or review the state-of-the-art in the following non-exhaustive list of topics: Multi-view learning Multi-view clustering data fusion data integration multi-view data applications multi domain data applications THE DEADLINE FOR THE PAPER SUBMISSION TO THE SPECIAL SESSION IS THE SAME OF IJCNN 2015, January 15th 2015. All the submissions will be peer-reviewed with the same criteria used for other contributed papers. Perspective authors will submit their papers through the IJCNN2015 conference submission system at http://www.ijcnn.org/ Please make sure to select the Special Session "Emerging Methodologies for Big Data Integration " from the "S. SPECIAL SESSION TOPICS" name in the "Main Research topic" dropdown list; Templates and instructions for authors will be provided on the IJCNN webpage http://www.ijcnn.org/ All papers submitted to the special sessions will be subject to the same peer-review procedure as regular papers, accepted papers will be published in the conference proceedings. Further information about IJCNN 2015 can be fond at http://www.ijcnn.org/ and about the special session at http://neuronelab.unisa.it/emerging-methodologies-for-big-data-integration/ *********************************************************** **Organizers** - Amir Hussain Professor of Computing Science and founding Director of the Cognitive Signal-Image Processing and Control Systems Research (COSIPRA) Laboratory, University of Stirling, UK (E-mail: ahu at cs.stir.ac.uk http://cs.stir.ac.uk/~ahu) - Giovanni Montana Professor and Chair in Biostatistics and Bioinformatics, Biomedical Engineering Department, King?s College, London, UK - Francesco Carlo Morabito Professor and Chair of the Neurolab, Dipartimento DICEAM, Universit? Mediterranea di Reggio Calabria, Italy - Roberto TAGLIAFERRI Professor and Chair of the Neuronelab, Dipartimento di Informatica, Universit? di Salerno, Italy **Technical Program Committee (being continuously updated)** Elia Mario Biganzoli, Universit? di Milano, Italy Erik Cambria, NTU, Singapore Ciro Donalek, Caltech, CA, USA Anna Esposito, Seconda Universit? di Napoli, Italy Marcos Faundez-Zanuy, Escola Universitaria Politecnica de Mataro (Tecnocampus), Spain Alexander Gelbukh, National Polytechnic Institute, Mexico Dario Greco, FIOH, Finland Newton Howard, MIT Media Lab, USA Pietro Li?, University of Cambridge, UK Bin Luo, Anhui University, China Mufti Mahmud, Antwerp University, Belgium Riccardo Rizzo, CNR, Italy Jingpeng Li, University of Stirling, UK Domenico Ursino, Universit? Mediterranea di Reggio Calabria, Italy Alfredo Vellido, Universidad Polit?cnica de Catalu?a, Spain Pierangelo Veltri, Universit? "Magna Graecia" di Catanzaro, Italy Jonathan Wu, University of Windsor, Canada Yunqing Xia, Tsinghua University, China Kang Li, Queen's University, Belfast, UK Dongbing Gu, Essex University, UK Vincent C. M?ller, Anatolia College/ACT, Greece & Oxford University, UK Dongbin Zhao, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China *********************************************************** -- 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 behnke at cs.uni-bonn.de Mon Dec 29 08:40:43 2014 From: behnke at cs.uni-bonn.de (Sven Behnke) Date: Mon, 29 Dec 2014 14:40:43 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: Postdoc and PhD Positions at University of Bonn, Autonomous Intelligent Systems Group Message-ID: <54A159DB.6070000@cs.uni-bonn.de> The Autonomous Intelligent Systems Group of University of Bonn invites applications for several Postdoctoral and fully funded PhD positions. Candidates should have a background in one of the following research areas: * Autonomous micro aerial vehicles, * Service robots, * Humanoid robots, * Search and rescue robots, * Simultaneous localization and mapping, * Environment perception, * Manipulation and locomotion planning, or * Machine learning for robotics. Candidates for Postdoctoral positions must hold a PhD in robotics or a related field, such as computer science or electrical engineering. Top-level publications and good organizational skills are important. Successful candidates will have the opportunity conduct independent research and at the same time contribute to the ongoing projects listed below, guiding PhD students and master students. Payment will be according to TV-L-E14 54,500-65,000 Euros per annum, depending on experience. Candidates for PhD positions must hold a university Master's degree in computer science, mathematics, electrical engineering, or a related field. A strong mathematical background and programming skills are important. Successful candidates will conduct focused research towards a PhD in Computer Science and contribute to one of the ongoing projects listed below, guiding master and bachelor students. Payment will be according to TV-L-E13 46,000-50,500 Euros per annum, depending on experience. Applications in PDF format should be sent by email to behnke at ais.uni-bonn.de with the subject line "Postdoc Application" or "PhD Application". Please indicate in your cover letter your main achievements, the research area or project where you want to contribute, and your availability date. A list of publications and transcripts must be included. There is no application deadline. Positions will be filled as soon as possible. Autonomous Intelligent Systems Group: ===================================== The University of Bonn has a long tradition in robotics research and multiple outstanding groups in robotics. The Autonomous Intelligent Systems Group, headed by Sven Behnke, has developed award-winning cognitive robot systems, including domestic service robots, autonomous micro aerial vehicles, humanoid soccer robots, robots for mobile manipulation in rough terrain, and robots for intuitive human-robot interaction. Contributions include efficient methods for RGB-D and laser-based SLAM, semantic environment perception, robot navigation, object manipulation and tool use, bipedal walking, multimodal human-robot interaction, and learning from demonstrations and own experience. Further information: http://www.ais.uni-bonn.de/research.html Ongoing projects in the Autonomous Intelligent Systems Group: ============================================================= * H2020: CENTAURO - Robust Mobility and Dexterous Manipulation in Disaster Response by Fullbody Telepresence in a Centaur-like Robot (Coordinator) http://www.centauro-project.eu * FP7: STAMINA - Sustainable and Reliable Robotics for Part Handling in Manufacturing Automation http://www.ais.uni-bonn.de/STAMINA * DFG Research Unit "Mapping on Demand": - Local Perception for the Autonomous Navigation of Multicopters - Autonomous Navigation for Object Capture with Multicopters http://www.ais.uni-bonn.de/MoD * DFG Priority Programme "Autonomous Learning": - Autonomous Learning of Bipedal Walking Stabilization http://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/269319994 - ALROMA: Autonomous Active Object Learning Through Robot Manipulation http://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/260307391 * BMWi: InventAIRy - Identification with Autonomous Flying Robots: Autonomous Flight Control http://www.inventairy.de * DFG: Development of an Open Humanoid Soccer Robot http://www.ais.uni-bonn.de/nimbro/OP * German Aerospace Center (DLR): Cooperative Exploration and Mobile Manipulation in Rough Terrain (DLR SpaceBot Cup) http://www.ais.uni-bonn.de/nimbro/Explorer University of Bonn has an international Master in Computer Science Programme where you can specialize in Robotics. All lectures are in English. Excellent students can be supported by research or teaching assistant jobs. Further information: http://master.cs.uni-bonn.de More information on the Federal City of Bonn: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonn From erdi.peter at wigner.mta.hu Sat Dec 27 22:07:41 2014 From: erdi.peter at wigner.mta.hu (=?ISO-8859-2?Q?=C9rdi_P=E9ter?=) Date: Sun, 28 Dec 2014 04:07:41 +0100 (CET) Subject: Connectionists: Teaching Computational Neuroscience Message-ID: A multiple book review: http://arxiv.org/abs/1412.5909 P?ter ?rdi http://people.kzoo.edu/~perdi/ From terry at salk.edu Tue Dec 30 13:56:33 2014 From: terry at salk.edu (Terry Sejnowski) Date: Tue, 30 Dec 2014 10:56:33 -0800 Subject: Connectionists: NEURAL COMPUTATION - January 1, 2015 In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Editorial Neural Computation was founded with the goal of providing a home for the best research in computational approaches to understanding brain function. With this issue Neural Computation is now all electronic (color illustrations are free) and also has a broader scope. The goal of the BRAIN Initiative, announced by President Obama on April 2, 2013, is to accelerate progress in understanding basic principles of brain function by developing innovative neurotechnologies. The BRAIN 2025 report on the BRAIN Initiative highlighted Theory, Modeling, Computation and Statistics (TMCS) as essential to this goal (http://www.braininitiative.nih.gov/2025/index.htm). The neurotechniques developed by the BRAIN Initiative will scale up the acquisition of data by three orders of magnitude in the next decade. Every area of neuroscience, from molecular to systems, can benefit from advanced computational techniques to analyze, model, and interpret these data, serving as the foundation for conceptual advances in brain theories. Neural Computation is uniquely positioned at the crossroads between Neuroscience and TMCS and welcomes the submission of original papers from all areas of TMCS, including: * Advanced experimental design * Analysis of chemical sensor data * Connectomic reconstructions * Analysis of multielectrode and optical recordings * Genetic data for cell identity * Analysis of behavioral data * Multiscale models * Analysis of molecular mechanisms * Neuroinformatics * Analysis of brain imaging data * Neuromorphic engineering * Principles of neural coding, computation, circuit dynamics, and plasticity * Theories of brain function An expanded editorial board will guide Neural Computation in this broader arena: http://www.mitpressjournals.org/page/editorial/neco As the US BRAIN Initiative and the European Human Brain Project continue to expand, and as other countries launch new brain programs, Neural Computation will be central in integrating these international efforts. Terry Sejnowski ----- Neural Computation - Volume 27, Number 1 - January 1, 2015 Available online for download now: http://www.mitpressjournals.org/toc/neco/27/1 ----- Article Spike Train SIMilarity Space (SSIMS): A Framework for Single Neuron and Ensemble Data Analysis Carlos E. Vargas-Irwin, David M. Brandman, Jonas B. Zimmermann, John P. Donoghue, Michael J. Black Note Optimizing the Representation of Orientation Preference Maps in Visual Cortex Nicholas J. Hughes, Geoffrey J. Goodhill Letters Topological Sparse Learning of Dynamic Form Patterns T. Guthier, V. Willert, J. Eggert Dynamics of Gamma Bursts in Local Field Potentials Priscilla E. Greenwood, Mark D. McDonnell, Lawrence M. Ward Spatiotemporal Conditional Inference and Hypothesis Tests for Neural Ensemble Spiking Precision Matthew T. Harrison, Asohan Amarasingham, Wilson Truccolo Toward a Multisubject Analysis of Neural Connectivity C. J. Oates, L. Costa, T. E. Nichols Using Multilayer Perceptron Computation to Discover Ideal Insect Olfactory Receptor Combinations in the Mosquito and Fruit Fly for an Efficient Electronic Nose Luqman R. Bachtiar, Charles P. Unsworth, Richard D. Newcomb Graph Degree Sequence Solely Determines the Expected Hopfield Network Pattern Stability Daniel Berend, Shlomi Dolev, Ariel Hanemann Efficient Training of Convolutional Deep Belief Networks in the Frequency Domain for Application to High-Resolution 2D and 3D Images Tom Brosch, Roger Tam Conditional Density Estimation with Dimensionality Reduction via Squared-Loss Conditional Entropy Minimization Voot Tangkaratt, Ning Xie, Masashi Sugiyama ------------ ON-LINE -- http://www.mitpressjournals.org/neuralcomp SUBSCRIPTIONS - 2015 - VOLUME 27 - 12 ISSUES Student/Retired $75 Individual $134 Institution $1,075 MIT Press Journals, One Rogers Street, Cambridge, MA 02142-1209 Tel: (617) 253-2889 FAX: (617) 577-1545 journals-cs at mit.edu ------------ From lchen at udc.edu Tue Dec 30 11:18:32 2014 From: lchen at udc.edu (Chen, Li) Date: Tue, 30 Dec 2014 11:18:32 -0500 Subject: Connectionists: New Book Information on Digital Geometry Message-ID: <32596A4A154B2442BF6312975C518D0003DDFE9F2ADC@UDCMSGSTAFF-M.firebirds.udc.edu> Please share with Connectionists: ------------------------ L. Chen, Digital and Discrete Geometry: Theory and algorithms, Springer, 2014, (322 pages) (http://www.springer.com/computer/image+processing/book/978-3-319-12098-0)) This book is specifically written for CS colleagues as a math book. It is also a CS book to Math colleagues. Hope you will like it and give some comments. ---------------------------- Digital and Discrete Geometry:Theory and algorithms Explains profound theorems such as Minkowski?s Theorem and solid applications such as persistent analysis Provides natural links to profound topics including differential discrete geometry Includes case studies and more Abstract: This book provides comprehensive coverage of the modern methods for geometric problems in the computing sciences. It also covers concurrent topics in data sciences including geometric processing, manifold learning, Google search, cloud data, and R-tree for wireless networks and BigData. The author investigates digital geometry and its related constructive methods in discrete geometry, offering detailed methods and algorithms. The book is divided into five sections: basic geometry; digital curves, surfaces and manifolds; discretely represented objects; geometric computation and processing; and advanced topics. Chapters especially focus on the applications of these methods to other types of geometry, algebraic topology, image processing, computer vision and computer graphics. Digital and Discrete Geometry: Theory and Algorithms targets researchers and professionals working in digital image processing analysis, medical imaging (such as CT and MRI) and informatics, computer graphics, computer vision, biometrics, and information theory. Advanced-level students in electrical engineering, mathematics, and computer science will also find this book useful as a secondary text book or reference. Li Chen www.udc.edu/prof/chen From grlmc at urv.cat Wed Dec 31 06:49:12 2014 From: grlmc at urv.cat (GRLMC) Date: Wed, 31 Dec 2014 12:49:12 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: InfoSec 2015: registration deadline 3 January Message-ID: *To be removed from our mailing list, please respond to this message with UNSUBSCRIBE in the subject line* ********************************************************************** INTERNATIONAL SUMMER SCHOOL ON INFORMATION SECURITY InfoSec 2015 Tarragona, Spain July 6-10, 2015 Organized by Rovira i Virgili University http://grammars.grlmc.com/InfoSec2015/ ********************************************************************** --- Early registration deadline: January 3, 2015 --- ********************************************************************** AIM: InfoSec 2015 will be a major research training event addressed to graduates and postgraduates in the first steps of their academic career. With a global scope, it aims at updating them about the most recent advances in the critical and fast developing area of information security, which covers a large spectrum of current exciting academic research and industrial innovation. It refers to procedures to defend information from unauthorized access, use, modification, recording or destruction, with a critical role to play in order to avoid or minimize risks in the digital world. Renowned academics and industry pioneers will lecture and share their views with the audience. Most information security subareas will be displayed, namely: computer security, cryptography, privacy, cyber security, mobile security, network security, world wide web security, fraud prevention, data protection, etc. Main challenges of information security will be identified through 4 keynote lectures, 33 six-hour courses, and 1 round table, which will tackle the most active and promising topics. The organizers believe outstanding speakers will attract the brightest and most motivated students. Interaction will be a main component of the event. ADDRESSED TO: Graduates and postgraduates from around the world. There are no formal pre-requisites in terms of academic degrees. However, since there will be differences in the course levels, specific background knowledge may be required for some of them. InfoSec 2015 is also appropriate for more senior people who want to keep themselves updated on recent developments and future trends. They will surely find it fruitful to listen and discuss with major researchers, industry leaders and innovators. REGIME: In addition to keynotes, 4 courses will run in parallel during the whole event. Participants will be able to freely choose the courses they will be willing to attend as well as to move from one to another. VENUE: InfoSec 2015 will take place in Tarragona, located 90 kms. to the south of Barcelona. The venue will be: Campus Catalunya Universitat Rovira i Virgili Av. Catalunya, 35 43002 Tarragona KEYNOTE SPEAKERS: Jan Camenisch (IBM Research, Zurich), Privacy in a Digital World: a Lost Cause? Hao Chen (University of California, Davis), (In)security of Mobile Apps in Untrusted Networks Jennifer Seberry (University of Wollongong), The Global Village: the Beginning of the Need for Computer Security [via videoconference] Gene Tsudik (University of California, Irvine), Off-line Proximity-based Social Networking PROFESSORS AND COURSES: N. Asokan (Aalto University), [intermediate] Mobile Security: Overview of Hardware Platform Security and Considerations of Usability Jan Camenisch (IBM Research, Zurich), [introductory/intermediate] Technologies to Protect Online Privacy Hao Chen (University of California, Davis), [intermediate/advanced] Security of the Mobile App Ecosystem Nicolas T. Courtois (University College London), [introductory/intermediate] Security of ECDSA in Bitcoin and Crypto Currency Claude Cr?peau (McGill University, Montr?al), [introductory/intermediate] Quantum Computation, Cryptography and Cryptanalysis Joan Daemen (ST Microelectronics Belgium, Diegem), [introductory/intermediate] Sponge Functions, Keccak and SHA-3 Sajal K. Das (Missouri University of Science and Technology, Rolla), [intermediate/advanced] Securing Cyber-Physical Systems: Challenges and Opportunities Herv? Debar (T?l?com SudParis), [introductory/intermediate] Detection and Reaction to Attacks: from Intrusion Detection to Cyber-Defense Yevgeniy Dodis (New York University), [intermediate/advanced] Randomness in Cryptography David Evans (University of Virginia, Charlottesville), [introductory/intermediate] Secure Multiparty Computation: Techniques, Theory, and Tools for Building Privacy-Preserving Applications Rosario Gennaro (City University of New York), [intermediate/advanced] A Survey of Verifiable Delegation of Computation Trent Jaeger (Pennsylvania State University, University Park), [intermediate/advanced] How to Add Security Enforcement to Legacy Programs Markus Jakobsson (Qualcomm, Santa Clara), [introductory/intermediate] Frontiers in Fraud Prevention Antoine Joux (Pierre et Marie Curie University, Paris), [introductory/intermediate] Discrete Logarithms in Finite Fields Marc Joye (Technicolor R&I, Los Altos), [introductory/intermediate] Secure Public-Key Cryptosystems Somesh Jha (University of Wisconsin, Madison), [intermediate/advanced] Analysis Techniques in Information Security Lars R. Knudsen (Technical University of Denmark, Lyngby), [introductory/intermediate] Block Ciphers: the Workhorses in Cryptography Songwu Lu (University of California, Los Angeles), [introductory/intermediate] Cellular Network Security: Issues and Defenses Catherine Meadows (Naval Research Laboratory, Washington DC), [introductory/intermediate] Formal Analysis of Cryptographic Protocols Nasir Memon (New York University), [introductory/intermediate] User Authentication Ethan L. Miller (University of California, Santa Cruz), [intermediate/advanced] Securing Stored Data in a Connected World Stefano Paraboschi (University of Bergamo), [introductory/intermediate] Data Protection in Network-enabled Systems Bart Preneel (KU Leuven), [introductory/intermediate] Cryptology: State of the Art and Research Challenges Jean-Jacques Quisquater (Catholic University of Louvain), [introductory/intermediate] The History of RSA: from Babylon to Smart Cards Shantanu Rane (Palo Alto Research Center), [introductory/intermediate] Privacy-preserving Data Analytics: Problems, Solutions and Challenges Mark Ryan (University of Birmingham), [introductory/intermediate] Designing Security Protocols: Electronic Voting, and Electronic Mail Rei Safavi-Naini (University of Calgary), [introductory] Information-theoretic Security Stefan Saroiu (Microsoft Research, Redmond), [advanced] Dealing with Loss: Protecting Data on a Lost Mobile Device Milind Tambe (University of Southern California, Los Angeles), [introductory/intermediate] Introduction to the Emerging Science of Security Games Gene Tsudik (University of California, Irvine), [intermediate/advanced] Security and Privacy in Candidate Future Internet Architectures Yang Xiao (University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa), [introductory/advanced] Security in Smart Grids Wenyuan Xu (University of South Carolina, Columbia), [intermediate] Security and Privacy Analysis of Embedded Systems Yuliang Zheng (University of North Carolina, Charlotte), [introductory] Cryptography and the Future of Money ORGANIZING COMMITTEE: Adrian Horia Dediu (Tarragona) Carlos Mart?n-Vide (Tarragona, chair) Florentina Lilica Voicu (Tarragona) REGISTRATION: The registration form can be found at: http://grammars.grlmc.com/InfoSec2015/registration.php The selection of up to 8 courses requested in the registration template is only tentative and non-binding. For the sake of organization, it will be helpful to have an approximation of the respective demand for each course. Since the capacity of the venue is limited, registration requests will be processed on a first come first served basis. The registration period will be closed and the on-line registration facility disabled when the capacity of the venue will be complete. It is much recommended to register prior to the event. FEES: Fees are a flat rate covering the attendance to all courses during the week. There are several early registration deadlines. Fees depend on the registration deadline. ACCOMMODATION: Suggestions of accommodation will be provided in due time. CERTIFICATE: Participants will be delivered a certificate of attendance. QUESTIONS AND FURTHER INFORMATION: florentinalilica.voicu at urv.cat POSTAL ADDRESS: InfoSec 2015 Lilica Voicu Rovira i Virgili University Av. Catalunya, 35 43002 Tarragona, Spain Phone: +34 977 559 543 Fax: +34 977 558 386 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: Universitat Rovira i Virgili --- Este mensaje no contiene virus ni malware porque la protecci?n de avast! Antivirus est? activa. http://www.avast.com