From danko.nikolic at googlemail.com Mon May 1 05:48:09 2017 From: danko.nikolic at googlemail.com (=?UTF-8?Q?Danko_Nikoli=c4=87?=) Date: Mon, 1 May 2017 11:48:09 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: practopoiesis, the movie Message-ID: Dear connectionists, Given that practopoiesis has turned out to be a theory not so easy to grasp, some of us thought it would be a good idea to create an animated video that explains the theory in a simple and intuitive way. Also, it would be advantageous if the video is entertaining. I am very excited to inform you that we have just created such a video, and you can watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIzsz03X8qc In only 8 minutes, the video explains the main implications of the theory, telling us what we presumably need to change if we want to understand the brain ... and also if want to successfully model it. I hope you find it inspiring and helpful in your own work in computational neuroscience and other brain problems. My thanks to everyone who worked on getting this video to be produced. It was a lot of work. From starting to write the script to posting a finished product on YouTube, it took about one year. I hope you enjoy it. Best, Danko P.S. As always, comments are welcome. ----------------------------------------- Prof. Dr. Danko Nikoli? Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Sciences Lead Data Scientist, BD&A, DXC Technology Web: http://www.danko-nikolic.com ----------------------------------------- --- Diese E-Mail wurde von Avast Antivirus-Software auf Viren gepr?ft. https://www.avast.com/antivirus From marcel.van.gerven at gmail.com Mon May 1 18:42:49 2017 From: marcel.van.gerven at gmail.com (Marcel van Gerven) Date: Mon, 1 May 2017 23:42:49 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: PhD position on neural networks for affective computing Message-ID: <957494CA-A147-4945-AB02-6015AB4A2021@gmail.com> PhD candidate: machine learning approaches for affective computing in humans and robots (1.0 FTE) The goal of this PhD project is to develop neural network architectures that implement abstract cognitive functions, such as predicting someone?s emotional state or personality. Recent research has shown that this can be achieved using deep neural networks that predict such states using audio-visual input (arxiv.org/abs/1609.05119). In this project, you will further develop this framework for understanding affective computing in humans and endowing humanoid robots with these capabilities. The first part of this project aims to develop new explainable neural networks that allow us to understand how humans make decisions in high-level affective states. The goal here is to implement existing approaches and develop new approaches that improve our understanding of how neural networks arrive at their conclusions. Outcomes will be compared with behavioural data obtained for humans that perform the same task. The second part of this project aims to develop efficient deep learning architectures that run on mobile devices in order to allow humanoid robots (www.ald.softbankrobotics.com/en/cool-robots/pepper) to interact more effectively with humans. The goal here is to develop and implement new approaches for creating models with low memory and low energy consumption that nevertheless perform optimally. Work environment The Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour focuses on state-of-the-art cognitive neuroscience using a multidisciplinary approach and offers excellent lab and neuroimaging facilities, PhD supervision, courses and technical support. The project will be embedded in the Donders research themes: Perception, Action and Control as well as Brain Networks and Neuronal Communication. The project will be embedded at the Centre for Cognition of the Donders Institute, which is also part of the Faculty of Social Sciences, one of the largest faculties at Radboud University in Nijmegen. As a PhD student you will be an active member of the research groups run by Dr Marcel van Gerven (www.ccnlab.net) and Dr Pim Haselager (www.socsci.ru.nl/haselag/). As a researcher you are expected to contribute to the neural networks and cognitive robotics lines within the Donders Institute?s AI department. What we expect from you We are looking for a technically skilled PhD candidate with a background in artificial intelligence, computer science, applied mathematics or a related field of research. You should be driven to push forward deep learning theories and be interested in cognitive psychology and robotics applications. You should have excellent mathematical skills, be a skilled Python programmer and have demonstrable experience with the development of deep learning algorithms. You should be aware of new developments in the deep learning field and be able to implement these developments. The ideal candidate is highly motivated, technically skilled, a team player and driven to push forward the development of the next generation of neural-network based AI systems. Your written and spoken English skills should be excellent. As a PhD student, you will devote a small part of your time to teaching in the AI department. Please note that all PhD students at the Donders Centre for Cognition have a 0.9 FTE research appointment and a 0.1 FTE teaching appointment. You will be part of the Donders Graduate School for Cognitive Neuroscience (www.ru.nl/donders/graduate-school/). For more information about this vacancy, please contact: Marcel van Gerven, Associate Professor, Principal investigator Telephone: +31 24 3655931 E-mail: m.vangerven at donders.ru.nl Pim Haselager Telephone: +31 24 3616148 E-mail: w.haselager at donders.ru.nl Are you interested? You should upload your application (attn. of Marcel van Gerven) exclusively using the button 'Apply? via the following link: http://www.ru.nl/werken/details/details_vacature_0/?recid=597320 Your application should include (and be limited to) the following attachment(s): ? application letter ? CV (including contact information for at least two references) ? example of written material (e.g. MSc thesis, project report) and proof of programming experience (if applicable) From michael.madden at nuigalway.ie Mon May 1 06:16:33 2017 From: michael.madden at nuigalway.ie (Madden, Michael) Date: Mon, 1 May 2017 10:16:33 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: Workshop at IJCAI about AI in Security - second CFP Message-ID: 1st International Workshop on A.I. in Security. An IJCAI Workshop, Melbourne, Australia, 20th August 2017 Details and submissions: http://iwaise.it.nuigalway.ie/ Deadline for submissions: 5 May 2017. Arti?cial intelligence has an important role to play in improving the resilience of society to both digital and physical threats, and in safeguarding the privacy of individuals, as the world becomes increasingly interconnected. Relevant AI techniques include: knowledge representation; probabilistic reasoning; machine learning; anomaly detection; image recognition; speech recognition; social network analysis; and many others. For example, anomaly detection and temporal data mining can enable the automated detection of physical and/or digital threats; while advances in AI for autonomous vehicles can allow robotic vehicles to be used to secure remote locations that are hazardous to humans, and for search and rescue. AI for physical security is also being successfully used in homeland security applications. To date the physical and digital security communities have limited opportunities to share their research ?ndings and to engage with the wider AI community. This workshop will to bring together academic researchers and industry practitioners in a single location, to present and discuss their new research. It will also provide an opportunity for attendees to highlight current challenges in AI for digital and physical security, propose multi-disciplinary solutions, and showcase the application of AI in this domain. This workshop seeks novel research, case studies and survey papers in topics that include, but are not limited to, the following: Security Analytics Machine Learning; Security Threat Detection and Visualization; Future Threat Inference; Situational Awareness Monitoring; Automated Message Monitoring; Security Decision Support; Network Event Detection Finance: Applications of AI to: Digital Currencies; Secure Payments; Detection of Tax Evasion or Money Laundering; etc Forensics: Automated Physical Evidence Gathering; Data and Network Analysis; Digital Forensic Tools; Decision Support for Rare Events Images, Text & Networks: Automated Crowd Scanning; Video Analytics; Damage Assessment; Automatic Detection of Hate Speech and Radicalisation on Social Media; Security Sentiment Analysis Physical Security: Automated Monitoring of Secure Locations; Automated Threat Detection; Crisis Management; Sensor Data Analytics; Spatio-Temporal Reasoning; Reasoning from Distributed, Dissimilar and Noisy Data Stream Digital Security: AI for Detection and Mitigation of Threats Such as: Spear Phishing; Social Engineering; Botnets; Intrusion, as well as AI methods for improving Penetration Testing Software Engineering: AI Applied to: Design for Security; Program Analysis; Fault Detection; Compiler and Language Design; Veri?cation of Privacy and Security Compliance; Adaptive Security/Privacy Robotics: Securing Remote or Restricted Locations; Operations in Remote or Dangerous locations; Roboguards; Search and Rescue Privacy and Identity Biometrics: Face Recognition; Innovative Cryptography; Anonymization and De-anonymization; Ethics of AI for Security Organizing Committee: * Michael Madden (National University of Ireland Galway, Ireland) * Barry O?Sullivan (University College Cork, Ireland) * Jo Ueyama (University of Sao Paulo, Brazil) * Brett Drury (National University of Ireland Galway, Ireland) -- Dr Michael Madden Head of Data Mining & Machine Learning Group National University of Ireland, Galway +353-91-493797 / +353-86-7952802 http://datamining.it.nuigalway.ie/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pkordjam at tulane.edu Mon May 1 19:03:26 2017 From: pkordjam at tulane.edu (Kordjamshidi, Parisa) Date: Mon, 1 May 2017 23:03:26 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: CFP: IJCAI-2017 Workshop on Declarative Learning Based Programming Message-ID: <4775ED60-5264-463E-A506-6B20A61A9AAC@tulane.edu> ---------------------------------------------------------------- CALL FOR PAPERS and PARTICIPANTS ---------------------------------------------------------------- 2nd International Workshop on Declarative Learning Based Programming (DeLBP 2017) In conjunction withTwenty- sixth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI-17), August 19?20, 2017, Melbourne, Australia. Website: http://delbp.github.io --------------------------------------------------------------- AIM AND SCOPE ????????????????????? The main goal of Declarative Learning Based Programming (DeLBP) workshop is to investigate the issues that arise when designing and using programming languages that support learning from data and knowledge. DeLBP aims at facilitating and simplifying the design and development of intelligent real world applications that use machine learning and reasoning by addressing the following commonly observed challenges: Interaction with messy, naturally occurring data; Specifying the requirements of the application at a high abstraction level; Dealing with uncertainty in data and knowledge in various layers of the application program; Using representations that support flexible relational feature engineering; Using representations that support flexible reasoning and structure learning; Integrating a range of learning and inference algorithms; and finally addressing the above mentioned issues in one unified programming environment. Conventional programming languages offer no help to application programmers that attempt to design and develop applications that make use of real world data, and reason about it in a way that involves learning interdependent concepts from data, incorporating and composing existing models, and reasoning about existing and trained models and their parametrization. Over the last few years the research community has tried to address these problems from multiple perspectives, most notably various approaches based on Probabilistic programming, Logical Programming and the integrated paradigms. The goal of this workshop is to present and discuss the current related research and the way various challenges have been addressed. We aim at motivating the need for further research toward a unified framework in this area based on the key existing paradigms: Probabilistic Programming (PP), Logic Programming (LP), Probabilistic Logical Programming (PLP), First-order query languages and database management systems (DBMS) and deductive databases (DDB), Statistical relational learning and related languages (SRL), and connect these to the ideas of Learning Based Programming. We aim to discuss and investigate the required type of languages and representations that facilitate modeling probabilistic or non-probabilistic complex learning models, deep architectures, and provide the ability to combine, chain and perform flexible inference with existing models and by exploiting domain knowledge. (Website: http://delbp.github.io) ---------------------------------------------------------------- TOPICS OF INTEREST ????????????????????? ? New abstractions and modularity levels towards a unified framework for learning and reasoning, ? Frameworks/Computational models to combine learning and reasoning paradigms and exploit accomplishments in AI from various perspectives. ? Flexible use of structured and relational data from heterogeneous resources in learning. ? Data modeling (relational/graph-based ) issues in such a new integrated framework for learning based on data and knowledge. ? Exploiting knowledge such as expert knowledge and common sense knowledge expressed via multiple formalisms, in learning. ? The ability of closing the loop to acquire knowledge from data and data from knowledge towards life-long learning, and reasoning. ? Using declarative domain knowledge to guide the design of learning models, ? Including feature extraction, model selection, dependency structure and deep learning architecture. ? Structure Learning and automation of hyper-parameter tuning. ? Design and representation of complex learning and inference models. ? The interface for learning-based programming, ? Either in the form of programming languages, declarations, frameworks, libraries or graphical user interfaces. ? Storage and retrieval of trained learning models in a flexible way to facilitate incremental learning. ? Related applications in Natural language processing, Computer vision, Bioinformatics, Computational biology, etc. ---------------------------------------------------------------- IMPORTANT DATES ---------------------------------------------------------------- ? Submission Deadline: May 8th, 2017 ? Notification: June 5th, 2017 ? Workshop Days: August 19th-20th, 2017 ---------------------------------------------------------------- SUBMISSION AND SELECTION PROCESS ---------------------------------------------------------------- We encourage contributions with either a technical paper (IJCAI style, 6 pages without references), a position statement (IJCAI style, 2 pages maximum) or an abstract of a published work. IJCAI Style files available here [http://ijcai-17.org/FormattingGuidelinesIJCAI-17.zip]. Please make submissions via EasyChair, here [https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=delbp2017]. ---------------------------------------------------------------- PROGRAM COMMITTEE ---------------------------------------------------------------- Guy Van den Broeck, University of California, Los Angeles Sameer Singh, University of California, Irvine Avi Pfeffer, Charles River Analytics Rodrigo de Salvo Braz, SRI International Tias Guns, Vrije University of Brussels Christos Christodoulopoulos, Amazon Cambridge, UK William Wang, University of California, Santa Barbara Kai-Wei Chang, University of Virginia Martin Mladenov, Technical University of Dortmund Sebastian Riedel, University College London ---------------------------------------------------------------- ORGANIZING COMMITTEE ---------------------------------------------------------------- Parisa Kordjamshidi, Tulane University, IHMC Dan Roth, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Jan-Willem Van den Meent, Northeastern University Dan Goldwasser, Purdue University Vibhav Gogate, University of Texas at Dallas Kristian Kersting, TU Dortmund University ---------------------------------------------------------------- CONTACT ---------------------------------------------------------------- delbp-2 at googlegroups.com (Organization Committee) pkordjam at tulane.edu Please circulate this CFP among your colleagues and students. ------------------------------------------- Kordjamshidi, Parisa Assistant Professor CS Department at Tulane University Research Scientist at IHMC Homepage -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "DeLBP_2" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to delbp_2+unsubscribe at googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to delbp_2 at googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/delbp_2/8B86D9DB-5797-47D5-B548-3EDB49F29171%40tulane.edu. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. ------------------------------------------- Kordjamshidi, Parisa Assistant Professor CS Department at Tulane University Research Scientist at IHMC Homepage -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From navlakha at salk.edu Mon May 1 11:55:15 2017 From: navlakha at salk.edu (Saket Navlakha) Date: Mon, 1 May 2017 08:55:15 -0700 Subject: Connectionists: Biological Distributed Algorithms 2017 (last CFP) Message-ID: <91F38A3D-E82E-4714-962F-A1D4571C05D8@salk.edu> LAST CFP, due Friday May 5th. Updated: invited speakers, Q&A panel with program officers, and travel fellowships for students/post-docs. ======================================================= The 5th Workshop on Biological Distributed Algorithms (BDA 2017) July 28, 2017 in Washington, DC, USA. Co-located with PODC 2017 http://www.snl.salk.edu/~navlakha/BDA2017/ ======================================================= We are excited to announce the 5th workshop on Biological Distributed Algorithms (BDA). The aim of the workshop is to foster collaborative research between biologists and distributed computing theory researchers, with the hope of producing better understanding of the behavior of distributed biological systems, as well as new ideas for design of algorithms for engineered or computational networks. BDA 2017 will include presentations on distributed algorithms related to a variety of biological systems, with special attention to communication and coordination in insect colonies (e.g. foraging, navigation, task allocation, construction) and networks in the brain (e.g. learning, decision-making, attention). This is a one-day workshop. =========== SUBMISSIONS =========== We solicit submissions of extended abstracts describing recent results relevant to biological distributed computing. We especially welcome extended abstracts describing new insights and / or case studies regarding the relationship between distributed computing and biological systems even if these are not fully formed. Since a major goal of the workshop is to explore new directions and approaches, we especially encourage the submission of ongoing work. Selected contributors would be asked to present, discuss and defend their work at the workshop. By default, the submissions will be evaluated for either oral or poster presentation, though authors may indicate in their submission if it should be only considered for one of the presentation types. Submissions should be in PDF and include title, author information, and a 4-page extended abstract. Shorter submissions are also welcome, particularly for poster presentation. Please use the following EasyChair submission link: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=bda17 Note: The workshop will not include published proceedings. In particular, we welcome submissions of extended abstracts describing work that has appeared or is expected to appear in other venues. ======================================== STUDENT AND POSTDOC TRAVEL FELLOWSHIPS ======================================== To encourage the participation of researchers at the early stages of their career, we will provide financial support for student and postdoc participants. Specifically, for each accepted (oral or poster) presentation, we will reimburse the registration fee and at least $100 of additional travel expenses (the exact amount will be determined later on but it is expected to be higher) of one student/postdoc author. =============== IMPORTANT DATES =============== May 5, 2017 ? Extended abstract submission deadline (23:59 Honolulu time) May 28, 2017 ? Decision notifications July 28, 2017 ? Workshop ========================= INVITED SPEAKERS [partial list] ========================= Timothy Horiuchi (University of Maryland) Srinivas Turaga (Janelia Research Campus) Zeeshan Rasheed/Khurram Hassan-Shafique (Novateur Research Solutions) In addition to the invited talks, the workshop will also include a Q&A panel with program officers from various granting agencies (including NSF and ONR) that will discuss funding opportunities for BDA related research. ================= PROGRAM COMMITTEE ================= Ziv Bar-Joseph - CMU Anna Dornhaus - University of Arizona Yuval Emek - Technion (co-chair) Amos Korman - CNRS and University of Paris Diderot Nancy Lynch - MIT Melanie Moses, University of New Mexico Saket Navlakha - Salk Institute (co-chair) Merav Parter, MIT Andrea Richa, Arizona State University Nir Shavit, MIT From m.lengyel at eng.cam.ac.uk Mon May 1 16:09:16 2017 From: m.lengyel at eng.cam.ac.uk (=?utf-8?B?TcOhdMOpIExlbmd5ZWw=?=) Date: Mon, 1 May 2017 22:09:16 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: postdoc in mind reading by machine learning Message-ID: <542F5411-BABF-488E-BF6D-E825C185C85D@eng.cam.ac.uk> Postdoctoral Fellow in Computational Cognitive Science Central European University, Budapest, Hungary We are seeking a highly creative and motivated postdoctoral fellow to work in the group of Mate Lengyel at the Department of Cognitive Science, Central European University, Budapest, Hungary (https://cognitivescience.ceu.edu/). The group is also twinned by the Lengyel group at the Computational and Biological Learning Lab, Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge (http://learning.eng.cam.ac.uk/Public/Lengyel/) where Dr Lengyel holds a permanent position. The group studies learning and memory from computational, algorithmic/representational and neurobiological viewpoints. Computationally and algorithmically, we use ideas from Bayesian approaches to statistical inference and reinforcement learning to characterise the goals and mechanisms of learning in terms of normative principles and behavioral results. Specifically, the project will characterise how human?s structured and high dimensional mental representations change in time due to forgetting, learning, interference, and other processes. For this, state-of-the-art machine learning techniques will be employed to analyse a diverse set of behavioural data sets collected by our experimental collaborators: Gergely Csibra (infant studies) and Jozsef Fiser (visual perception and learning) in Budapest, and Daniel Wolpert (sensorimotor control) in Cambridge. The project is funded by an ERC grant, providing internationally competitive salaries. The successful candidate will have - a strong quantitative background - demonstrable interest in the analysis of behavioural data - obtained (or be close to the completion of) a PhD or equivalent in computational neuroscience, physics, mathematics, computer science, machine learning or a related field Preference will be given to candidates with - previous experience in machine learning, computational and / or behavioural neuroscience - sufficient programming skills to run numerical simulations (eg. in C, Python, or MatLab) - expertise with advanced data analysis and Bayesian techniques Research environment: The Central European University is the highest-ranked university in Hungary. It is a privately funded and endowed, fully English-speaking, postgraduate-only university, accredited in both the USA and Hungary. The Department of Cognitive Science is one of the most highly regarded centres for cognitive science in Europe, with world-leading groups in infant cognition, visual cognition, and social cognitive science. It provides a vibrant research environment, by running two journal club events per week on selected topics in cognitive science, a monthly research club, a weekly series of guest seminars by invited speakers from around the globe, a visitors programme with about two-three leading researchers in the field spending several months at the Department every year, and various small-to-medium sized international workshops, conferences, and summer schools organised locally by members of the Department. More broadly, Budapest is an exciting city, with a rich history and busy cultural life, great cuisine, and a very affordable cost of living index. For informal queries, please contact M?t? Lengyel . Applications will be accepted until the post is filled. Mate Lengyel -- Department of Cognitive Science Central European University Oktober 6 street 7, Budapest H-1051, Hungary tel: +36 1 887 5142 , fax: +36 1 887 5010 Computational and Biological Learning Lab Cambridge University Engineering Department Trumpington Street, Cambridge CB2 1PZ, UK tel: +44 (0)1223 748 532, fax: +44 (0)1223 332 662 email: m.lengyel at eng.cam.ac.uk web: www.eng.cam.ac.uk/~m.lengyel From perfo897 at gmail.com Tue May 2 05:11:33 2017 From: perfo897 at gmail.com (Per-Erik Forssen) Date: Tue, 2 May 2017 11:11:33 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: First Swedish Symposium on Deep Learning (SSDL'17) Message-ID: On June 20-21 (the week before the midsummer celebrations) the First Swedish Symposium on Deep Learning (SSDL) takes place at KTH, in Stockholm. The program features four renowned international keynotes that cover different aspects of deep learning. We also have talks from local researchers, two poster sessions, and exhibitions from companies. If you are doing work related to deep learning, or want to get into the field, this is an excellent opportunity to network and to showcase your work. Submission and registration are now open. Abstract submission deadline is May 28 (Firm, no extensions) More details can be found on the conference web page: http://ssdl2017.se Welcome to Stockholm in June, Fredrik Kahl, CTH Atsuto Maki, KTH Anders Brun, UU Michael Felsberg, LiU Per-Erik Forss?n, LiU -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From angela.avera at gmail.com Tue May 2 04:06:21 2017 From: angela.avera at gmail.com (Angie Avera) Date: Tue, 2 May 2017 03:06:21 -0500 Subject: Connectionists: Deadline Extended: Games as Research Environments Workshop at FDG 2017 Message-ID: Hi everyone! The deadline for submissions for the* Workshop on Tracing the Boundaries of Games as Research Environments *has been *extended! *We are accepting 2-4 page position papers, written in extended abstract format. *Deadline for submissions: Now May 22, 2017!* *Details and submissions: gamesasresearchenvironments.wordpress.com/ * FDG 2017 , Cape Cod, Massachusetts, August 14-17, 2017 Games as research environments offer solutions to common problems facing empirical research such as providing opportunity for increased replicability, enhancing the ability to simulate complex environments, acting as reliable testbeds and generating expansive data on subject interactions. For these reasons, across disciplines, researchers are increasingly enlisting the use of games. This trend is not without challenges, however, and currently not enough is known about how games could be fully utilized in service as rigorous research environments and the cost, complexity and rigor needed to produce these types of games remains high. This workshop aims to facilitate a discussion surrounding the major challenges faced and lessons learned by those using games as research environments. Additionally, this workshop will provide an opportunity for researchers to gain a more complete understanding of the various applications of games as research environments across domains. For more information, please refer to the call for participation. The focus of the workshop will be to advance the collective understanding of a) the types of phenomena, problems and questions games are being used to study, b) the implications of extrapolating data from simulated environments to the the real-world, c) the theoretical, computational and design hurdles researchers consistently face and d) the potential value and concerns in employing games as research environments. Topics Include: ? What are games as research environments? ? Why would we use games to learn about the world? ? ?Serious games? for research. ? Reliability and validity of using games as research environments ? Game design approaches with specific research in mind ? Criteria for selecting existing games for specific purposes ? Games for psychology and behavioral research ? The design of stimuli that accounts for complex constructs such as social interaction and behaviors ? Studies of games used for a specific domain or discipline ? Games as research environments for the design of game components ? Games as a testbed to validate algorithms ? How do games impact your research environment? ? A priori problems: design, creating valid stimuli for independent variables, adaptation, hypotheses, decision to include or exclude fun elements for serious games ? A posteriori problems: data analysis, filtering, qualitative vs. quantitative, player telemetry, challenges with conclusions and takeaways We look forward to your submissions! Please let me know if you have any questions. Thank you, Angie Avera angela.avera at gmail.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From alessandro at idsia.ch Tue May 2 06:01:01 2017 From: alessandro at idsia.ch (Alessandro Antonucci) Date: Tue, 2 May 2017 12:01:01 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: =?utf-8?q?=5BISIPTA_=E2=80=9917_=26_ECSQARU_2017?= =?utf-8?q?=5D_Call_for_participation_-_Lugano_=28Switzerland=29_Ju?= =?utf-8?q?ly_10-14=2C_2017?= Message-ID: CALL FOR PARTICIPATION http://isipta.idsia.ch http://ecsqaru.idsia.ch [THE EVENT] The Tenth International Symposium on Imprecise Probability: Theories and Applications (ISIPTA ?17) and Fourteenth European Conference on Symbolic and Quantitative Approaches to Reasoning with Uncertainty (ECSQARU 2017) will be held jointly in Lugano (Switzerland), on July 10-14, 2017. Both the ISIPTA symposia and the ECSQARU conferences are biennial events to discuss theory and practice of reasoning under uncertainty. While ISIPTA is especially focused on the field of imprecise probabilities, the scope of ECSQARU covers more generic qualitative and numeric uncertainty paradigms. The co location of the two events is intended to favor cross-fertilization among researches active in both communities. [ACCEPTED PAPERS] The list of accepted papers is already available: http://isipta.idsia.ch/accepted-papers-isipta (ISIPTA) http://ecsqaru.idsia.ch/accepted-papers-ecsqaru (ECSQARU) All the papers will be presented during oral sessions. [INVITED TALKS] Besides the technical sessions, the following invited talks will be presented: - ?Evaluation methods of arguments: current trends and challenges? by Leila Amgoud - ?Bayes+Hilbert=quantum mechanics? by Alessio Benavoli - ?Encounters with imprecise probabilities? by Jim Berger - ?Symbolic and quantitative representations of uncertainty: an overview? by Didier Dubois - ?Learning from imprecise data? by Eyke H?llermeier [LUGANO] Lugano is the largest city in the Italian speaking canton of Ticino which shares borders with Italy. It is one of the popular tourist destinations of Switzerland. Both Lake Lugano and the surrounding mountains provide an excellent view and a wide variety of outdoor activities. Lugano is also home to a number of historic buildings and museums. More information available here: http://www.luganoturismo.ch/en [REGISTRATION] The registration page is already active: http://www2.idsia.ch/cms/isipta-ecsqaru/registration/ Please contact Alessandro Antonucci (alessandro at idsia.ch) for any additional information. _________________________________ Alessandro Antonucci IDSIA Dalle Molle Institute for Artificial Intelligence Via Cantonale (Galleria 2) CH-6928, Manno-Lugano, CH mail: alessandro at idsia.ch skype: alessandro.antonucci tel: +41 916108515 web: www.idsia.ch/~alessandro _________________________________ From srdjan.ostojic at ens.fr Tue May 2 07:51:26 2017 From: srdjan.ostojic at ens.fr (Srdjan Ostojic) Date: Tue, 2 May 2017 13:51:26 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: Neural Coding, Computation and Dynamics: second call for abstracts, registrations open In-Reply-To: <5bcabbe8-93bf-24a2-a077-598bcbdf345e@ens.fr> References: <5bcabbe8-93bf-24a2-a077-598bcbdf345e@ens.fr> Message-ID: Neural Coding, Computation and Dynamics (NCCD) September 17 - 20, 2017, Capbreton, France Abstract submission and registrations are now open on: https://nccd2017.sciencesconf.org/ *Towards a mechanistic interpretation of neural data* NCCD17 is the third in a series of meetings focusing on topics in theoretical and experimental neuroscience. Techniques for recording and manipulating large-scale neural activity in awake behaving animals are developing at an accelerating pace. Identifying the principles of neural processing requires a mechanistic interpretation of the large amounts of collected data. The aim of this workshop is to make progress in that direction by bringing together three different communities: (i) experimentalists performing large-scale recordings in behaving animals; (ii) modelers specialized in statistical data-analysis; (iii) theorists working with mechanistic network models. We are looking for talks that build bridges across these different approaches. As with previous workshops, our goal is to foster the strong interactions we believe are so important for this field. So the meeting will be small, and registrations will be capped at 70. So plan to register early! About 10 abstracts will be chosen for contributed talks. We'll let you know which ones shortly after the abstract deadline; definitely before the early registration deadline. * Venue* Casino de Capbreton , Capbreton , France. *Important dates* May 15: abstract submission deadline June 1*:* early registration deadline * Confirmed speakers *Mark Churchland (Columbia) Tatiana Engel (Stanford) Adrienne Fairhall (Seattle) Julijana Gjorgjieva (Frankfurt) Jakob Macke (Bonn) Alfonso Renart (Lisbon) Dmitry Rinberg (NYU) Ilana Witten (Princeton) Byron Yu (Pittsburgh) * Organizers* Peter Latham (UCL) Srdjan Ostojic (ENS Paris) Maneesh Sahani (UCL) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Max.Riesenhuber at georgetown.edu Tue May 2 11:42:56 2017 From: Max.Riesenhuber at georgetown.edu (Max Riesenhuber) Date: Tue, 2 May 2017 11:42:56 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: schedule posted for Barcelona workshop on Hierarchical Multisensory Integration // poster deadline is May 15 Message-ID: Dear colleagues, We've now posted the schedule for the workshop (https://goo.gl/yNyBHT). Deadline for posters is May 15! *Hierarchical Multisensory Integration: Theory and Experiments*Barcelona, Spain, June 18-19, 2017 The ability to map sensory inputs to meaningful semantic labels, i.e., to recognize objects, is foundational to cognition, and the human brain excels at object recognition tasks across sensory domains. Examples include perceiving spoken speech, reading written words, even recognizing tactile Braille patterns. In each sensory modality, processing appears to be realized by multi-stage processing hierarchies in which tuning complexity grows gradually from simple features in primary sensory areas to complex representations in higher-level areas that ultimately interface with task-related circuits in prefrontal/premotor cortices. Crucially, real world stimuli usually do not have sensory signatures in just one modality but activate representations in different sensory domains, and successfully integrating these different hierarchical representations appears to be of key importance for cognition. Prior theoretical work has mostly focused on tackling multisensory integration at isolated processing stages, and the computational functions and benefits of *hierarchical* multisensoryinteractions are still unclear. For instance, what characteristics of the input determine at which levels of two linked sensory processing hierarchies cross-sensory integration occurs? Can these connections form through unsupervised learning, just based on temporal coincidence? Which stages are connected: For instance, is there selective audio-visual integration just at a low level of the hierarchy, e.g., to enable letter-by-letter reading, or even earlier levels at the level of primary sensory cortices, with multisensory selectivity in higher hierarchical levels then resulting from feedforward processing within each hierarchy, or are there selective connections at multiple hierarchical levels? What are the computational advantages of different cross-sensory connection schemes? What are roles for ?top-down? vs. ?lateral? inputs in learning cross-hierarchical connections? What are computationally efficient ways to leverage prior learning from one modality in learning hierarchical representations in a new modality? The workshop will gather a small group of experts to informally exchange the latest ideas and findings, both experimental and theoretical, in the field of multisensory integration. It will consist of two days packed with talks by invited speakers as well as discussions. There will also be a poster session. Researchers, postdocs and graduate students interested in multisensory integration and hierarchical processing are all invited to apply. Click here (http://eventum.upf.edu/event_detail/8963/detail/ pire-workshop_summer-school-2017.html) for more information on the event and to register. This event is jointly organized by the Center for Brain and Cognition at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona and Georgetown University, with funding from the National Science Foundation and the Spanish Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness. -- Maximilian Riesenhuber Lab for Computational Cognitive Neuroscience Department of Neuroscience Georgetown University Medical Center Research Building Room WP-12 3970 Reservoir Rd., NW Washington, DC 20007 phone: 202-687-9198 * email: max.riesenhuber at georgetown.edu http://maxlab.neuro.georgetown.edu public key ID 0x8696063709CCE3BB -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From norbert.kopco at upjs.sk Tue May 2 15:07:09 2017 From: norbert.kopco at upjs.sk (Norbert Kopco) Date: Tue, 2 May 2017 15:07:09 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: Kosice Neuroscience Workshop and PhD position in Slovakia+US Message-ID: For the PhD position ad, scroll to the end of the message. (Sorry for cross-posting.) FINAL CALL *The 3rd Workshop on* Cognitive neuroscience of auditory and cross-modal perception 29 ? 31 May 2017, Ko?ice, Slovakia http://pcl.upjs.sk/workshop2017 Objectives * This workshop will include advanced research talks (and introductory lectures) on a range of topics related to the */neural processes of auditory, visual and cross-modal perception/*. * The main focus of this year?s workshop will be on /*adaptation, learning and training* /in hearing, vision and other perceptual and cognitive brain functions. * The talks will illustrate the */multidisciplinary character of cognitive neuroscience research/*, covering behavioral, neuroimaging, and modeling approaches, as well as applications of the research in auditory prosthetic devices. * The workshop is aimed at */early-stage and advanced students and young researchers/*, and it will provide ample opportunities for direct interactions between the lecturers and the attendees. The workshop will follow-up on previous two workshops organized in 2014 and 2015 . (A CD with lectures and assignments from the previous two workshops will be available here soon.) Format: 1/2-day sessions, including invited talks, contributed talks, and posters, focusing on the topics of *Adaptation*,* Learning and training*, *Auditory and cross-modal perception (general)*, and *Vision and other topics in computational and cognitive neuroscience*. (Also, non-scientific program ? outings to tourist destinations near Kosice ? will be organized on the day before and day after the workshop.) Invited talks and lectures: * *Lauren Calandruccio*, Case Western Reserve University : ?Informational masking for speech-on-speech recognition.? * *Lina Reiss*, Oregon Health & Science University : ?(Mal?) Adaptation of pitch and binaural integration to abnormal auditory experience.? * *Inyong Choi*, University of Iowa : ?Neurofeedback training of complex listening.? * *Mathieu Lavandier*, ?cole Nationale des Travaux Publics de l??tat ? Universit? de Lyon : ?A potential effect of vision on sound externalization and auditory distance perception?? (abstract ) * *Micheal Dent*, University at Buffalo : ?The perception of auditory scenes by birds.? (abstract ) * *?ubica Be?u?kov?*, Comenius University, Bratislava : ?Current concepts in modelling the long-term synaptic plasticity in the mammalian brain.? * *Anita Wagner,* University of Groningen : ?From hearing to understanding: automatic and effortful processes in speech perception.? * *Zbyn?k Bure?*, Czech Academy of Science, Prague : ?Learning to hear ? the effect of acoustic environment during ontogeny on audition and sound perception.? (abstract ) * *Petteri Hyv?rinen*, University of Helsinki: ?Online ILD training for tinnitus.? * *Virginia Best*, Boston University : ?Do listeners refine their spatial tuning over time in multitalker mixtures?? * *Istv?n Ulbert*, Hungarian Academy of Sciences : ?Neural responses evoked by auditory stimulation during the sleep-wakefulness cycle in the cat.? (abstract ) * *G?bor H?den*, Hungarian Academy of Sciences : ?Beat perception and temporal processing in infants.? * *Erick Gallun*, National Center for Rehabilitative Auditory Research, Portland and OHSU : ?Applying the state of the art in research and technology to train auditory processing with engaging computer games.? (abstract ) * *Bernhard Laback*, Austrian Academy of Sciences : ?Psychophysical and modeling approaches towards determining the cochlear phase based on interaural time differences.? * *Norbert Kop?o*, P. J. ?af?rik University in Ko?ice : ?Adaptive Processes in Distance Perception.? * *Petr Marsalek*, Charles University of Prague and Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems : ?Perception across sound and space modalities at the level of neural responses.? (abstract ) * *Carlos Trenado *, Duesseldorf University Hospital : ?Sensorimotor improvement by stochastic resonance.? * ***Piotr Majdak*, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna : ?The role of listener-specific factors in binaural sound reproduction.? Venue: Lecture hall 2.17T, Faculty of Science / Technicom building, P. J. ?af?rik University, Jesenn? 5, 04001 Ko?ice Slovakia . Organizers: Norbert Kopco, P. J. Safarik University in Ko?ice Erick Gallun, National Center for Rehabilitative Auditory Research, Portland and OHSU Piotr Majdak, Austrian Academy of Science, Vienna Aaron Seitz, University of California, Riverside Travel, accommodation, visitor information: see workshop webpage: https://pcl.upjs.sk/workshop2017/ Registration: The workshop is open to all interested students/scientists. Registration is free of charge but required. To register, please send an email to kogneuro at gmail.com stating your name and affiliation and the dates on which you are planning to attend. All accepted abstracts will be published on the workshop website and in the abstract book. No proceedings will be published. In case you would like to have a presentation please send us an abstract (up to 200 words; also indicate whether you prefer poster or oral presentation) no later than May 8 2017 (extended from May 1). This workshop is supported by the EU H2020-MSCA-RISE-2015 project #691229 . %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% PhD position in Slovakia and US A PhD position is available in Norbert Kopco's Perception and Cognition Lab in the Institute of Computer Science at Safarik University in Kosice, Slovakia, for a Marie Curie EU-funded project on adaptation and learning in spatial hearing (http://pcl.upjs.sk/grants/alt/). This is an international collaborative project, combining psychophysical, neuroimaging and computational methods. As part of this project, the student would have the opportunity to work on development of modules for an auditory training game and spend up to 12 months in the US with one or more of the collaborators on this grant (Aaron Seitz's Brain Game Center at UC Riverside, Erick Gallun's lab at the Portland VA / OHSU, Virginia Best or Barbara Shinn-Cunningham at the Boston University Hearing Research Center, or Jyrki Ahveninen at the Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging in Boston). Interested candidates please contact norbert.kopco at upjs.sk with a CV and a research statement. Information about PhD student application procedures is available at http://www.upjs.sk/en/faculty-of-science/foreign-students/ (deadline is June 1). -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From JAPlatt at northwell.edu Tue May 2 15:52:59 2017 From: JAPlatt at northwell.edu (Platt, Jo Ann) Date: Tue, 2 May 2017 15:52:59 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: Multiple Positions in Translational Neurophysiology Lab @ Feinstein's Center for Bioelectronic Medicine Message-ID: <786DD4B977A6024B9520062297C8A8DFFE4D64D028@SYKECHXVS10.nslijhs.net> We are seeking Post Docs, Research Assistants/Associates, Staff Scientist, and a Senior Staff Scientist for Stavros Zanos's Translational Neurophysiology Lab in the Center for Bioelectronic Medicine at the Feinstein Institute for Medical Research - Long Island, New York. We are seeking research assistants, post-doctoral researchers, staff scientists and senior staff scientists to work full-time in neurophysiology, cardiovascular physiology and bioelectronic medicine research projects. The lab utilizes a variety of techniques from neurophysiology and cardiovascular physiology, chronic implants, experimental surgical and interventional techniques and bioelectronic systems for closed-loop neural recording and stimulation, both in health and in disease models. Individuals applying for this position should have experience in porcine or nonhuman primate neurophysiology or cardiovascular physiology research, with awake or anesthetized animals. Experience with chronic implants, human neuro/cardiovascular physiology and analysis of physiological data is desired. RESEARCH ASSISTANT/ASSOCIATE: Translational Neurophysiology - Bioelectronic Medicine QUALIFICATIONS: Bachelor of Science Degree, required; Master of Science/Engineering desired Research experience with large animal models (porcine or nonhuman primate) desired Research experience in neurophysiology and/or cardiovascular physiology, desired Exposure to data analysis software (e.g. Matlab), desired RESPONSIBILITIES: The Translational Neurophysiology Laboratory at the Center for Bioelectronic Medicine, headed by Stavros Zanos MD PhD, focuses on the development and testing of novel devices and therapies in large animal models, in health and disease. The lab utilizes a variety of techniques from neurophysiology and cardiovascular physiology, chronic implants, experimental surgical and interventional techniques and bioelectronic systems for closed-loop neural recording and stimulation. The successful candidate: Performs a variety of independent activities involved in planning, organizing and conducting assigned portion(s) of specific research projects. Participates in the coordination of sharing information, lending assistance, and solving problems with other team members, as needed. Receives guidance and/or direction for assignments that are project-specific. Job Responsibilities Include: Performs experimental studies include physiology experiments in large animal (porcine) models Learns, researches and recommends new experimental procedures, as necessary Oversees care and servicing of Center related equipment, tools and instruments. Assists in coordinating repair and managing warranties/service contracts. Collaborates with investigator and other team members in developing plans, organization, implementation and monitoring for research projects. Participates in compilation/writing of integrated reports and preparation of presentations and manuscripts of scientific meetings and technical journals. Performs collection, verification and documentation of research data. POSTDOCTORAL RESEARCH TRAINEE - Translational Neurophysiology - Bioelectronic Medicine QUALIFICATIONS: Doctorate degree (Ph.D, M.D. or D.V.M.), required Authored/co-authored research papers and/or scientific abstracts, required Research experience with large animal models (porcine or nonhuman primate) desired Research experience in neurophysiology and/or cardiovascular physiology, desired Knowledge of data analysis software (e.g. Matlab), desired RESPONSIBILITIES: The successful candidate is expected to work full-time on physiology and neural engineering projects using stimulation of peripheral autonomic nerves to modulate the immune, cardiovascular and central nervous systems. The lab utilizes a variety of techniques from neurophysiology and cardiovascular physiology, chronic implants, experimental surgical and interventional techniques and bioelectronic systems for closed-loop neural recording and stimulation, in large animals, both in health and in disease models. The lab is part of and collaborates closely with other labs at Feinstein's CBEM: neural decoding and data analytics, bioelectronics and biosensing, microfabrication, neural bypass, electrochemistry, molecular targets, etc. The lab also participates in clinical research through collaborations with Northwell's clinical teams (neurosurgery, neurology, gastrointestinal medicine, cardiopulmonary medicine, psychiatry etc). The successful candidate will perform physiology experiments, collect, organize and analyze data, and publish and present data in a timely manner. They will also work collaboratively with other investigators to facilitate their scientific research and training. Furthermore, they will participate in various types of institute and community activities and may apply for grant funding and/or patents as appropriate. Responsibilities Include: Performs research projects as directed. Follows and adheres to experimental protocols in a proficient and meticulous manner. Responsible for the collection, analysis and interpretation of research data related to specific project. Submits manuscripts and abstracts for publication to peer review journals and presentations at local, national and international conferences. Performs a variety of tasks, including but not limited to, correspondence, attending meetings, database maintenance, maintaining records, charts, etc. Provides technical direction to research staff. STAFF SCIENTIST - Translational Neurophysiology - Bioelectronic Medicine QUALIFICATIONS: Doctorate degree (Ph.D, M.D. or D.V.M.), or Bachelor of Science and relevant research experience (>5 years) required Research experience with large animal models (porcine or nonhuman primate), required Research experience in neurophysiology and/or cardiovascular physiology, desired Authored/co-authored research papers and/or scientific abstracts, desired Knowledge of data analysis software (e.g. Matlab), desired RESPONSIBILITIES: The successful candidate is expected to work full-time on physiology and neural engineering projects using stimulation of peripheral autonomic nerves to modulate the immune, cardiovascular and central nervous systems. The lab utilizes a variety of techniques from neurophysiology and cardiovascular physiology, chronic implants, experimental surgical and interventional techniques and bioelectronic systems for closed-loop neural recording and stimulation, in large animals, both in health and in disease models. The lab is part of and collaborates closely with other labs at Feinstein's CBEM: neural decoding and data analytics, bioelectronics and biosensing, microfabrication, neural bypass, electrochemistry, molecular targets, etc. The lab also participates in clinical research through collaborations with Northwell's clinical teams (neurosurgery, neurology, gastrointestinal medicine, cardiopulmonary medicine, psychiatry etc). The successful candidate will perform physiology experiments, collect, organize and analyze data, and publish and present data in a timely manner. They will also work collaboratively with other investigators to facilitate their scientific research and training. Furthermore, they will participate in various types of institute and community activities and may apply for grant funding and/or patents as appropriate. Responsibilities Include: Performs research as directed and trains and provides technical and scientific direction to other research staff. Follows and adheres to experimental protocols in a proficient and meticulous manner. Responsible for the collection, analysis and interpretation of research data related to one or more projects. Keywords: neurophysiology, cardiovascular physiology, large animal models, neural engineering, bioelectronics, electrodes, recording, stimulation, peripheral nerves SENIOR STAFF SCIENTIST - Translational Neurophysiology - Bioelectronic Medicine QUALIFICATIONS: Doctorate degree (Ph.D, M.D. or D.V.M.) and relevant post-graduate academic or industry research experience (>5 years) required Research experience with large animal models (porcine or nonhuman primate), highly desired Research experience in neurophysiology and/or cardiovascular physiology, highly desired Authored/co-authored research papers and/or scientific abstracts, desired Knowledge of data analysis software (e.g. Matlab), desired RESPONSIBILITIES: The successful candidate is expected to work full-time on physiology and neural engineering projects using stimulation of peripheral autonomic nerves to modulate the immune, cardiovascular and central nervous systems. The lab utilizes a variety of techniques from neurophysiology and cardiovascular physiology, chronic implants, experimental surgical and interventional techniques and bioelectronic systems for closed-loop neural recording and stimulation, in large animals, both in health and in disease models. The lab is part of and collaborates closely with other labs at Feinstein's CBEM: neural decoding and data analytics, bioelectronics and biosensing, microfabrication, neural bypass, electrochemistry, molecular targets, etc. The lab also participates in clinical research through collaborations with Northwell's clinical teams (neurosurgery, neurology, gastrointestinal medicine, cardiopulmonary medicine, psychiatry etc). The successful candidate will lead and perform physiology experiments, collect, organize and analyze data, train research staff and publish and present data in a timely manner. They will also work collaboratively with other investigators to facilitate their scientific research and training. Furthermore, they will participate in various types of institute and community activities and may apply for grant funding and/or patents as appropriate. Responsibilities include: Leads and performs research. Trains and provides technical and scientific direction to research staff. Responsible for the planning, collection, organization, analysis and interpretation of research data related to one ore more projects. Keywords: neurophysiology, cardiovascular physiology, large animal models, neural engineering, bioelectronics, electrodes, recording, stimulation, peripheral nerves The information contained in this electronic e-mail transmission and any attachments are intended only for the use of the individual or entity to whom or to which it is addressed, and may contain information that is privileged, confidential and exempt from disclosure under applicable law. If the reader of this communication is not the intended recipient, or the employee or agent responsible for delivering this communication to the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution, copying or disclosure of this communication and any attachment is strictly prohibited. If you have received this transmission in error, please notify the sender immediately by telephone and electronic mail, and delete the original communication and any attachment from any computer, server or other electronic recording or storage device or medium. Receipt by anyone other than the intended recipient is not a waiver of any attorney-client, physician-patient or other privilege. From congress at incf.org Tue May 2 08:27:17 2017 From: congress at incf.org (congress) Date: Tue, 2 May 2017 14:27:17 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: Extended deadline for abstract submissions, Neuroinformatics 2017! Message-ID: Dear all, *Due to the many requests we received, we have extended the abstract submission deadline to May 30!* *Submit here: http://neuroinformatics2017.org/abstracts/ * The annual INCF Congress provides a meeting place for researchers in all fields related to neuroinformatics. Join us for keynotes from top neuroscientists, community sessions and poster- and demo sessions. This meeting is especially useful for anyone who is developing neuroscience tools and methods, working on better ways to handle neuroscience data, and looking for cross-disciplinary collaborations. *http://neuroinformatics2017.org/* *The International Neuroinformatics Coordinating Facility (INCF) is an international non-profit organization devoted to advancing the field of neuroinformatics and global collaborative brain research. Learn more about INCF www.incf.org * *We look forward to seeing you in Kuala Lumpur!* Best Regards INCF Secretariat -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From odmartin at gmx.de Wed May 3 03:12:32 2017 From: odmartin at gmx.de (martin biehl) Date: Wed, 03 May 2017 07:12:32 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: Call for Abstracts: Workshop on Agency In The Physical Sciences Message-ID: Dear connectionists, This is a call for abstracts for a workshop on ?Agency In The Physical Sciences,? which will be held at ECAL 2017. *DESCRIPTION*: Agency is a ubiquitous concept in biology but virtually non-existent in physics. Roughly, agency can be seen as an abstraction of living organisms that focuses more on action, perception, and goal-directedness (normativity) than on replication and growth. "Agent-like" structures can be found in simple simulation models (physics) such as cellular automata or reaction-diffusion systems, as well as in the protocells of synthetic biology. However, "agent-like" currently remains an intuitive classification. This workshop's purpose is to support research directed towards making such a classification in a formal or quantitative way. Relevant questions include: * What sorts of physical structures can be said to be agents? * What can be gained by understanding them as agents? * What sorts of agents are they? * And by virtue of what physical properties are they those sorts of agents? The workshop aims to explore questions relating to agency in its most primitive forms, both in simulation and in physical reality. To this end, we invite both theoretical and empirical contributions on primitive agency. * The emphasis for theoretical contributions is on clear definitions and quantification: we are most interested in concepts that lend themselves to a rigorous analysis. * Empirical contributions should describe apparently purposeful, or otherwise apparently agentive, behaviour in systems simpler than those previously known to display such behaviour. *ABSTRACTS*: We invite the submission of short one- or two-page abstracts. Successful submissions will be allocated either a 10-minute or 20-minute presentation slot; submissions should indicate which format the authors would prefer. Presented abstracts will be collected and published on a web page. Please send abstracts to: aips.workshop.2017 at gmail.com *DATES*: June 4th: Abstract submission deadline June 25th: Notification (+/- 3 days) *WEBSITE*: https://agencyscience.wordpress.com Best Regards, Eran Agmon Martin Biehl Christopher L Buckley Simon McGregor Nathaniel Virgo Olaf Witkowski ? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tarek.besold at googlemail.com Wed May 3 04:32:45 2017 From: tarek.besold at googlemail.com (Tarek R. Besold) Date: Wed, 3 May 2017 10:32:45 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: Neural-Symbolic Learning and Reasoning Workshop 2017 -- Extended submission deadline: May 10, 2017 Message-ID: <002701d2c3e7$d6e8d310$84ba7930$@gmail.com> === NeSy'17: 12th International Workshop on Neural-Symbolic Learning and Reasoning === Date: July 17 & 18, 2017. Venue: City, University of London, UK. *** SUBMISSION DEADLINE EXTENDED: MAY 10, 2017 *** = WEBSITE = http://www.neural-symbolic.org/NeSy17/ = KEYNOTE SPEAKERS = Mauro Ferreira, Trinity College Dublin. Zoubin Ghahramani, University of Cambridge & Uber AI Labs. Alex Graves, Google DeepMind. Pascal Hitzler, Wrights State University. Chris Percy, BetBuddy Ltd. Murray Shanahan, Imperial College London. = INDUSTRY PANEL = Simo Dragicevic, CEO, BetBuddy Ltd. (moderator). John McNamara, Senior Inventor, IBM. James Davidson, Software Engineer, Google Brain. Jamie Woodhouse, Managing Director and Head of Financial Services Management Consulting and Finance and Risk, Accenture. Lonnie Hamm, Head of Data Science, Kindred Group Plc. Amir Saffari, Director of Applied AI, BenevolentAI. = INDUSTRY TRACK ADDED = For the first time, the 2017 edition of NeSy will feature an industry track on the second day of the workshop, July 18, 2017. The track will cover industry applications of neural-symbolic methods (including knowledge extraction from statistical data, neural-symbolic methods integrating data and knowledge for the semantic web, etc.), with the program featuring contributions from industry and academia alike. Also, there will be time to mix and mingle, exchange experiences from practitioners on both sides, and develop joint ideas and projects for the future. = REGISTRATION = The registration for NeSy'17 is available from the City, University of London eStore: http://estore.city.ac.uk/product-catalogue/conference-events/school-specific -events/12th-international-workshop-on-neuralsymbolic-learning-and-reasoning -nesy17 = CALL FOR PAPERS = Artificial Intelligence researchers continue to face huge challenges in their quest to develop truly intelligent systems. The recent developments in the field of neural-symbolic integration bring an opportunity to integrate well-founded symbolic artificial intelligence with robust neural computing machinery to help tackle some of these challenges. The Workshop on Neural-Symbolic Learning and Reasoning is intended to create an atmosphere of exchange of ideas, providing a forum for the presentation and discussion of the key topics related to neural-symbolic integration. Topics of interest include but are not limited to: - The representation of symbolic knowledge by connectionist systems; - Neural Learning theory; - Integration of logic and probabilities, e.g., in neural networks, but also more generally; - Structured learning and relational learning in neural networks; - Logical reasoning carried out by neural networks; - Integrated neural-symbolic approaches; - Extraction of symbolic knowledge from trained neural networks; - Integrated neural-symbolic reasoning; - Neural-symbolic cognitive models; - Biologically-inspired neural-symbolic integration; - Applications in robotics, simulation, fraud prevention, natural language processing, semantic web, software engineering, fault diagnosis, bioinformatics, visual intelligence, etc. ** Submission ** Researchers and practitioners are invited to submit original papers that have not been submitted for review or published elsewhere: - Submitted papers must be written in English, must be formatted according to the Springer LNCS style (templates and sample files are available from https://www.springer.com/gp/computer-science/lncs/conference-proceedings-gui delines), and should not exceed 10 pages (excluding references/bibliography) in the case of research and experience papers, and 6 pages (excluding references/bibliography) in the case of position papers or technical notes. - All submitted papers will be judged based on their relevance, originality, significance, technical quality, and organisation. - Papers must be submitted through EasyChair at https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=nesy17. - Additionally, presentations based on extended abstracts will be considered. These shall allow to report on latest results which had not been available at the time of paper submission. Therefore, the abstract deadline is significantly closer to the workshop date. Extended abstracts may not exceed 3 pages (including references/bibliography) and should aim to give a good impression of the type of work conducted, the achieved results and their importance for the field. ** Presentation ** Selected papers will be presented during the workshop. The workshop will include extra time for discussion of the presentations allowing the group to have a better understanding of the issues, challenges, and ideas being presented. ** Publication ** Accepted papers will be published in official workshop proceedings within the CEUR-WS.org series. Accepted abstracts will also be included in the official workshop proceedings. = IMPORTANT DATES = Deadline for paper submission (EXTENDED): May 10, 2017 Notification of paper acceptance/rejection: June 4, 2017 Deadline for abstract submission: June 18, 2017 Notification of abstract acceptance/rejection: June 25, 2017 Camera-ready paper due: July 2, 2017 Workshop date: July 17-18, 2017 = WORKSHOP ORGANISERS = General Chairs: - Tarek R. Besold (University of Bremen, Germany) - Artur d'Avila Garcez (City, University of London, UK) - Isaac Noble (Playground Global, U.S.A.) Local Chair at City, University of London: Simon Odense = PROGRAMME COMMITTEE = - Raquel Alhama, University of Amsterdam - James Davidson, Google Brain - Richard Evans, Google DeepMind - Barbara Hammer, Bielefeld University - Thomas Icard, Stanford University - Kai-Uwe Kuehnberger, University of Osnabrueck - Luis Lamb, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul - Thomas Lukasiewicz, University of Oxford - Edjard Mota, Federal University of Amazonas - Terrence C. Stewart, University of Waterloo - Serge Thill, University of Skoevde - Son Tran, CSIRO Australia - Stefan Wermter, University of Hamburg -- Digital Media Lab Center for Computing and Communication Technologies (TZI) University of Bremen Email: Tarek.Besold at uni-bremen.de Web: http://www.cat-ai.org -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From annalisa.gentile at ibm.com Wed May 3 07:27:46 2017 From: annalisa.gentile at ibm.com (annalisa gentile) Date: Wed, 3 May 2017 04:27:46 -0700 Subject: Connectionists: [CfP] ISWC 2017 - final call for contributions Message-ID: 16th International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC 2017) Vienna, Austria, October 21-25, 2017 ******************************************* *** Deadlines reminder highlight - May 2017 *** Less than two weeks left for Research, In-Use, Resources tracks: *** Abstract May 8 *** Full paper May 15 *** Doctoral Consortium: May 25 ******************************************* Website: http://iswc2017.semanticweb.org Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/113652365383847 Twitter: @iswc2017 (https://twitter.com/ISWC2017) Overview calls: http://iswc2017.semanticweb.org/calls/ In this announcement: 1. Call for Papers 2. HTML Submission Guide 3. Accepted Workshops and Tutorials 4. Student Grants 5. Important dates 1. Call for Papers ========================================== -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Call for Research Track Papers -------------------------------------------------------------------------- The International Semantic Web Conference is the premier venue for presenting fundamental research, innovative technology, and applications concerning semantics, data, and the Web. In this track of ISWC 2017, we are looking for novel and significant research contributions addressing theoretical, analytical and empirical aspects of the Semantic Web. While we welcome work that relates to the W3C Semantic Web recommendations (e.g., RDF, OWL, SPARQL, etc.), we also encourage contributions to research at the intersection of Semantic Web and other scientific disciplines. Submissions to the research track should describe original, significant research on the Semantic Web, and are expected to provide some principled means of evaluation. Specifically, all papers should include evaluations of the approaches described in the paper. We strongly encourage evaluations that are repeatable. We also strongly encourage papers that provide links to: the data sets, source code, queries used to evaluate their approach, live deployment. All papers will be assessed by a program committee. Each paper will be reviewed by at least four committee members, including one senior member. The review criteria is specified in the call. Before submitting, authors are asked to consult the calls of the other tracks featured at ISWC 2017 and to choose the track that best suits their contribution. The submission of the same work to multiple tracks is not allowed and may result in a rejection of the work across all tracks without a review. Detailed info: http://iswc2017.semanticweb.org/calls/call-for-research-track-papers/ Program Chairs * Claudia d?Amato, University of Bari, Bari, Italy * Miriam Fernandez, KMi, The Open University, Milton Keynes, UK -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Call for In-Use Track Papers -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Semantic technologies are reaching maturity on and off the web, through ontology based data integration, the increase in their use to publish, structure, store and make sense of web data, whether they are in the form of linked data, through schema.org, or even with semantics included in other data formats than RDF (CSV, JSON, etc). The In-Use track at ISWC 2017 provides a forum for the community to explore the benefits and challenges of applying semantic technologies in concrete, practical applications, in contexts ranging from industry to government and science. We are especially interested in applications that use the emerging knowledge graphs or semantic annotations on the web together with data mining, machine learning, or natural language processing techniques to the benefit of concrete, real-life scenarios. We are also looking for descriptions of applied and validated industry solutions as software tools, systems or architecture that benefit from the adoption of semantic technologies. Importantly, papers presenting applications in use of semantic technologies should provide evidence that there is use of the proposed application or tool by the target user group, preferably outside the group that conducted the development. A main focus of the submission should be on the way semantics and semantic technologies are impacting this development, through benefiting the intended use case, as well as, if relevant, through the added challenges they introduce. Detailed info: http://iswc2017.semanticweb.org/calls/call-for-in-use-track-papers/ Program Chairs * Philippe Cudre-Maroux, University of Fribourg, Fribourg, Switzerland * Juan Sequeda, Capsenta, Austin, TX, USA -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Call for Resources Track Papers -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Many of the research efforts in in the areas of the Semantic Web and Linked Data focus on publishing scientific papers that prove a hypothesis. However, scientific advancement is often reliant good quality resources, that are the necessary scaffolding to support the scientific publications, even though these are not usually equally recognised. Sharing these resources and the best practices that have lead to their development with the research community is crucial to consolidate research material, ensure reproducibility of results and in general gain new scientific insights. The ISWC 2017 Resources Track aims to promote the sharing of resources including, but not restricted to, datasets, ontologies, vocabularies, workflows, evaluation benchmarks or methods, replication studies, services, APIs and software that have contributed to the generation of novel scientific work. In particular, we encourage the sharing of such resources following best and well established practices within the Semantic Web community. This track calls for contributions that provide a concise and clear description of a resource and its usage. We also encourage submissions that illustrate new types of resources such as ontology design patterns, crowdsourcing task designs, workflows, methodologies, protocols and measures, etc. Detailed info: http://iswc2017.semanticweb.org/calls/call-for-resources-track-papers/ Program Chairs * Valentina Tamma, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, UK * Freddy Lecue, Accenture/INRIA, Dublin, Ireland, Sophia Antipolis, France -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Call for Posters and Demos Papers -------------------------------------------------------------------------- The ISWC 2017 Posters and Demonstrations complement the paper tracks of the conference and offer an opportunity for presenting late-breaking research results, on-going research projects, and speculative or innovative work in progress. The informal setting of the Posters and Demonstrations encourages presenters and participants to engage in discussions about the work. Such discussions can be invaluable inputs for the future work of the presenters, while offering participants an effective way to broaden their knowledge of the emerging research trends and to network with other researchers. We invite submissions relevant to the area of the Semantic Web and which address, but are not limited to, the topics of the Research Track; the In-Use Track; and the Resources Track. Technical posters, reports on Semantic Web software systems (free or commercial), descriptions of completed work, and work in progress are all welcome. Demonstrations are intended to showcase innovative Semantic Web related implementations and technologies, both in academia and in industry. We explicitly welcome entries from the industry. However, submissions for posters and demos should go beyond pure advertisements of commercial software packages and convey a minimal scientific contribution. Authors of full papers accepted for the Research Track; the In-Use Track; and the Resources Track are explicitly invited to submit a demonstration. Detailed info: http://iswc2017.semanticweb.org/calls/call-for-posters-and-demos/ Program Chairs * Nadeschda Nikitina, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK * Dezhao Song, Thomson Reuters, Eagan, MN, USA -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Call for Industry Track Contributions -------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Industry Track seeks to present the state of adoption of semantic technologies in industrial applications. These technologies may be used in specific industries (e.g., media, financials, telecommunications, healthcare, life sciences, government, intelligence, etc.) or as a horizontal technology, and in different application areas (e.g., business intelligence, analytics, search, content management, knowledge management, recommendation systems, data integration, etc.). We welcome contributions about success stories as well as experiences and discussions of obstacles that stand in the way of large scale adoption of certain technologies. Particular emphasis should be put on the demonstration of business value created by using the semantic technologies. Come and join us at the ISWC 2017 industry track to share your experience! Detailed info: http://iswc2017.semanticweb.org/calls/call-for-contributions-industry-track-iswc-2017/ Program Chairs * Achille Fokoue, IBM Yorktown, NY, USA * Peter Haase, metaphacts, Walldorf, Germany -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Call for Doctoral Consortium papers -------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Consortium aims to broaden the perspectives and to improve the research and communication skills of these students. The Doctoral Consortium is intended for students who have a specific research proposal and some preliminary results, but who have sufficient time prior to completing their dissertation to benefit from the consortium experience. Generally, students at the end of their first year, in their second or at the beginning of their third year of PhD will benefit the most from the Doctoral Consortium. In the Consortium, the students will present their proposals, get specific feedback and advice on how to improve their research plan and discuss other students? proposals. All proposals submitted to the Doctoral Consortium will undergo a thorough reviewing process with a view to providing detailed and constructive feedback. The international program committee will select the best submissions for presentation at the Doctoral Consortium. We anticipate that students with accepted submissions at the Doctoral Consortium will receive travel fellowships to offset some of the travel costs but they will be asked to attend the whole day of the Doctoral Consortium. Detailed info: http://iswc2017.semanticweb.org/calls/doctoral-consortium/ Program Chairs * Lora Aroyo, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands * Fabien Gandon, INRIA Sophia-Antipolis, France 2. HTML Submission Guide ========================================== As for the previous ISWC edition, we allow for the submission of articles formatted using HTML. Authors choosing to submit using HTML still need to comply with the page limit and layout requirements of the conference. It?s the author?s responsibility to ensure that reviewers can easily access their submission. Detailed info on HTML submission and link to helpful tools can be found at: http://iswc2017.semanticweb.org/calls/html-submission-guide/ 3. Student Grants ========================================== If you are a student interested in attending ISWC 2017 you may be eligible to apply for a grant to support the costs of travel and lodging. This year, travel grants are funded by the Semantic Web Science Association (SWSA) and the US National Science Foundation (NSF). The deadline for applying for an ISWC 2017 travel award is August 31st, 2017. Further info on the application process at: https://iswc2017.semanticweb.org/attending/student-travel-grants/ Student Coordinators * Lalana Kagal, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston, MA, USA * Gianluca Demartini, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK 4. Accepted Workshops and Tutorials ========================================== Tutorials (https://iswc2017.semanticweb.org/program/tutorials/): [KGC] Constructing Domain-specific Knowledge Graphs [StreamApp] How to Build a Stream Reasoning Application [HDT] HDT: Queryable Compression Format for Linked Data [MT4OBDA] Methods and Tools for Developing Ontology-Based Data Access Solutions [SemDaPra] Semantic Data Management in Practice [SWoTIoT] Semantic Web meets Internet of Things (IoT) and Web of Things (WoT) [RegLGD] Representation and Querying for Linked Geospatial Data Workshops (https://iswc2017.semanticweb.org/program/workshops/): [HSSUE] Hybrid Statistical Semantic Understanding and Emerging Semantics [VOILA] Visualization and Interaction for Ontologies and Linked Data [WOP] Ontology Design and Patterns [S4BioDiv] Semantics for Biodiversity [OM] Ontology Matching [WHiSe] Humanities in the Semantic Web [SemSci] Enabling Open Semantic Science [SemStats] Semantic Statistics [PROFILES] Dataset PROFlLing and fEderated Search for Web Data [DeSemWeb] Decentralizing the Semantic Web [MaCSeW] Managing Changes in the Semantic Web [BlkMirror] Re-coding Black Mirror [PrivOn] Society, Privacy and the Semantic Web - Policy and Technology [SWIT] Semantic Web Technologies for the IoT [LD4IE] Linked Data for Information Extraction [WOMoCoE] Ontology Modularity, Contextuality, and Evolution [BLINK] Benchmarking Linked Data [NLIWOD] Natural Language Interfaces for the Web of Data [WSP] Web Stream Processing Workshops & Tutorials Chairs * Aidan Hogan, Universidad de Chile Santiago, Santiago, Chile * Valentina Presutti, Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies, CNR, Rome, Italy 5. Important Dates ========================================== Abstracts due (Research, In-Use, Resources tracks) May 8, 2017 Submissions due (Research, In-Use, Resources tracks) May 15, 2017 Doctoral Consortium submissions due May 25, 2017 Registration starts June 1, 2017 Doctoral Consortium notifications sent June 30, 2017 Author rebuttal period (Research, In-Use, Resources tracks) June 23-27, 2017 Submissions due (Industry track) July 10, 2017 Notifications sent (Research, In-Use, Resources tracks) July 14, 2017 Camera-ready papers for Doctoral Consortium due July 18, 2017 Workshop paper submissions due July 21, 2017 Poster & Demo submissions due July 27, 2017 Camera-ready papers due (Research, In-Use, Resources tracks) July 28, 2017 Notifications sent (Industry track) July 31, 3017 Workshop paper notifications sent August 24, 2017 Poster & Demo notifications sent August 24, 2017 Student activity applications due August 31, 2017 Final version industry track papers due August 31, 2017 Camera-ready copies for Poster & Demo due September 4, 2017 The last day for early registrations September 8, 2017 Workshops & Tutorials October 21 & 22, 2017 Conference October 23, 24 & 25, 2017 We thank our generous gold sponsors Siemens, Thomson Reuters and Semantic Web Company for their support. To learn more about ISWC 2017 sponsorship opportunities, please see https://iswc2017.semanticweb.org/sponsorship/ The ISWC Organising Committee ( http://iswc2017.semanticweb.org/organization/) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Eirini.Mavritsaki at bcu.ac.uk Wed May 3 09:36:22 2017 From: Eirini.Mavritsaki at bcu.ac.uk (Eirini Mavritsaki) Date: Wed, 3 May 2017 13:36:22 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: =?windows-1252?q?Funded_Phd_in_Computational_Neur?= =?windows-1252?q?oscience_=28Investigating_oscillatory_behaviour_in_Alzhe?= =?windows-1252?q?imer=92s_disease_to_establish_biomarkers=3A_an_EEG_and_c?= =?windows-1252?q?omputational_programme_of_PhD_study=29?= Message-ID: <3FCD70F47E1E99449079BAD1F20D729C01DDB2E1BC@EXMBXCS.staff.uce.ac.uk> Reminder funded PhD Please note the deadline of application is 10th of May 2017 Investigating oscillatory behaviour in Alzheimer?s disease to establish biomarkers: an EEG and computational programme of PhD study Applications are invited for a 3-year PhD studentship within the Department of Psychology, Faculty of Business Law and Social Sciences, Birmingham City University. Applicants need to demonstrate ability and commitment, including excellent communications skills in written and spoken English. Project Synopsis: This proposed PhD work follows high profile research by the University of Birmingham team (Prof. Kim Shapiro, Prof. Howard Bowman and Mr Ali Mazaheri). The project is collaborative work between Birmingham City University (Dr Eirini Mavritsaki and Prof. Maxine Lintern) and University of Birmingham (Prof. Kim Shapiro and Prof. Howard Bowman). The University of Birmingham team has access to ERP data of a semantic anomaly and word repetition task (Olichney et al, 2002). In the original analysis of the data by Olichney and colleagues, the N400 component was analysed, which is related to semantic manipulation. Olichney and colleagues found evidence of N400 abnormalities in mild cognitive impairment patients, which predicted later progression to Alzhemier?s. The University of Birmingham team have identified oscillatory changes that also predict progression to Alzheimer?s, opening up the possibility that an effective EEG-based early-stage biomarker of Alzheimer?s might be within reach. We plan to simulate this data and the changes observed in it using a computational model that is based on the sSoTS (Mavritsaki, Heinke, Humphreys and Deco, 2011) model. The successful applicant will join the Centre for Applied Psychological Research (CAPresearch) within the Department of Psychology at Birmingham City University. CAPresearch is part of a vibrant and rapidly expanding research community, which offers applicants with an excellent opportunity to develop their research career. The applicant has the opportunity to have teaching experience, to participate in research seminars and to co-supervise undergraduate projects. The successful candidate will also be expected to attend the weekly meetings of the University of Birmingham research team. For more information please contact Dr Eirini Mavritsaki (Eirini.mavritsaki at bcu.ac.uk) or Prof. Howard Bowman (H.Bowman at bham.ac.uk). For application please see below. Candidate Qualification and Specifications: Essential ? The applicant should hold a good undergraduate honours degree (First or 2:1) in related area. ? The applicant should have experience of computational models, evidenced by previous work or masters degree. ? A demonstrated understanding of research methods is essential (as evidenced by degree transcript grades for research methods and dissertation modules). ? Experience in C++ and Matlab. Desirable ? A Masters? degree in research methods, psychology or computational modelling Application Process (Deadline of application 10th of May) You can find further details on studying for a PhD and details of how to apply on the following link http://www.bcu.ac.uk/social-sciences/courses/research-degrees Please feel free to contact us if you have any questions for the application and to express interest. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Eirini Mavritsaki, PhD, CPsychol Senior Lecturer in Cognitive Psychology Director of Research in the School of Social Sciences Department of Psychology Faculty of Business Law and Social Sciences Birmingham City University The Curzon Building 4 Cardigan Street Birmingham B4 7BD eirini.mavritsaki at bcu.ac.uk 0121 331 6361 Office Hours Appointment only: Tuesdays 11:00-12:00 Drop-in: Fridays 09:00-10:00 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dwang at cse.ohio-state.edu Wed May 3 09:50:07 2017 From: dwang at cse.ohio-state.edu (DeLiang Wang) Date: Wed, 3 May 2017 09:50:07 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: NEURAL NETWORKS, May 2017 Message-ID: <89246201-e853-ce2a-0ea7-1094ac114b05@cse.ohio-state.edu> Neural Networks - Volume 89, May 2017 http://www.journals.elsevier.com/neural-networks Perceptual category learning and visual processing: An exercise in computational cognitive neuroscience George Cantwell, Maximilian Riesenhuber, Jessica L. Roeder, F. Gregory Ashby Two-stage sparse coding of region covariance via Log-Euclidean kernels to detect saliency Ying-Ying Zhang, Cai Yang, Ping Zhang A weighted information criterion for multiple minor components and its adaptive extraction algorithms Yingbin Gao, Xiangyu Kong, Huihui Zhang, Li'an Hou Fractional-order gradient descent learning of BP neural networks with Caputo derivative Jian Wang, Yanqing Wen, Yida Gou, Zhenyun Ye, Hua Chen Dynamics of complex-valued fractional-order neural networks Eva Kaslik, Ileana Rodica Radulescu Stability and instability of a neuron network with excitatory and inhibitory small-world connections Dongyuan Yu, Xu Xu, Jing Zhou, Eric Li H_infinity state estimation for discrete-time neural networks with distributed delays and randomly occurring uncertainties through Fading channels Nan Hou, Hongli Dong, Zidong Wang, Weijian Ren, Fuad E. Alsaadi Fixed-time stability of dynamical systems and fixed-time synchronization of coupled discontinuous neural networks Cheng Hu, Juan Yu, Zhanheng Chen, Haijun Jiang, Tingwen Huang Global dissipativity analysis for delayed quaternion-valued neural networks Zhengwen Tu, Jinde Cao, Ahmed Alsaedi, Tasawar Hayat A new neural network model for solving random interval linear programming problems Ziba Arjmandzadeh, Mohammadreza Safi, Alireza Nazemi From Donald.Adjeroh at mail.wvu.edu Tue May 2 13:33:40 2017 From: Donald.Adjeroh at mail.wvu.edu (Donald Adjeroh) Date: Tue, 2 May 2017 17:33:40 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: SBP-BRiMS'2017: Call for Tutorials, Doctoral Consortium In-Reply-To: References: , , , , , , , Message-ID: 2017 International Conference on Social Computing, Behavioral-Cultural Modeling & Prediction and Behavior Representation in Modeling and Simulation July 5-8, 2017, Lehman Auditorium, George Washington University, Washington DC, USA http://sbp-brims.org/2017/ Deadline extension for Call for Tutorials: The deadline has been extended for the Call for Tutorials (http://sbp-brims.org/2017/cft/). New deadline is May 12, 2017. Deadline extension for Call for entries for Doctoral Consortium: We have also extended the deadline for entries for participation in the first SBP-BRiMS Doctoral Consortium (http://sbp-brims.org/2017/doctoral_consortium/ ). The new deadline is also May 12, 2017. Please advice your PhD students or other PhD students working on related areas to participate. You can visit the conference website (http://sbp-brims.org/2017/) for more details about the SBP-BRiMS 2017 conference. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Eirini.Mavritsaki at bcu.ac.uk Thu May 4 09:08:29 2017 From: Eirini.Mavritsaki at bcu.ac.uk (Eirini Mavritsaki) Date: Thu, 4 May 2017 13:08:29 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: Funded PhD in Psychology (New insights into ADHD through behavioural and modelling studies) Message-ID: <3FCD70F47E1E99449079BAD1F20D729C01DDB303E1@EXMBXCS.staff.uce.ac.uk> Reminder funded PhD Please note the deadline of application is 10th of May 2017 New insights into ADHD through behavioural and modelling studies Applications are invited for a 3-year PhD studentship within the Department of Psychology, Faculty of Business Law and Social Sciences, Birmingham City University. Applicants need to demonstrate ability and commitment, including excellent communications skills in written and spoken English. Project Synopsis: There are many limitations on the behaviour of complex neural systems, but one primary constraint is to filter incoming input in order that actions can be programmed to behaviourally relevant stimuli. A major challenge for current-day researchers is to understand how (and why) these limitations arise, especially in conditions such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) where the attentional system is dysfunctional. The main aim of this project is to identify and understand the differences in visual attention between children diagnosed with ADHD and typically functioning children. In addition, to investigate the role of diet in ADHD. This Ph.D. thesis aims to do this by using a novel interdisciplinary approach, behavioural and computational modelling study. The student can choose to work in both or just one approach (either computational or behavioural work). The successful applicant will join the Centre for Applied Psychological Research (CAP Research) within the Department of Psychology at Birmingham City University. This centre is part of a vibrant and rapidly expanding research community, which offers applicants with an excellent opportunity to develop their research career. The applicant will have the opportunity to gain teaching experience, to participate in research seminars and to co-supervise undergraduate projects. For more information please contact Dr Eirini Mavritsaki (Eirini.mavritsaki at bcu.ac.uk). Candidate Qualification and Specifications: Essential ? The applicant should hold a good undergraduate honours degree (First or 2:1) in psychology or a related area to the topic. ? A demonstrated understanding of research methods is essential (as evidenced by degree transcript grades for research methods and dissertation modules). ? The applicant will be expected to undertake and pass Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) checks. ? The applicant should enjoy working with children. ? For applications that involve computational modelling the student needs to have experience in C++ and/or Matlab. Desirable ? A Masters' degree in research methods, psychology or a computational modelling. ? For applications that involve behavioural work, itis desirable to have experience (voluntary or paid) in schools or experience working with children. ? Access to a car and a valid driving licence. ? For applications that involve computational modelling, it is desirable to have Computational modelling experience. Application Process (Deadline of application 10th of May) You can find further details on studying for a PhD and details of how to apply by clicking on the following link http://www.bcu.ac.uk/social-sciences/courses/research-degrees. Please feel free to contact us if you have any questions about the application or to express an interest. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Eirini Mavritsaki, PhD, CPsychol Senior Lecturer in Cognitive Psychology Director of Research in the School of Social Sciences Department of Psychology Faculty of Business Law and Social Sciences Birmingham City University The Curzon Building 4 Cardigan Street Birmingham B4 7BD eirini.mavritsaki at bcu.ac.uk 0121 331 6361 Office Hours Appointment only: Tuesdays 11:00-12:00 Drop-in: Fridays 09:00-10:00 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From g.goodhill at uq.edu.au Thu May 4 19:59:38 2017 From: g.goodhill at uq.edu.au (Geoffrey Goodhill) Date: Thu, 4 May 2017 23:59:38 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: PhD positions at the Queensland Brain Institute Message-ID: <8dfb51bdc6264dc9979878e618951a61@uq-exmbx4.soe.uq.edu.au> The Queensland Brain Institute (QBI) at the University of Queensland invites expressions of interest from exceptional and highly motivated candidates to undertake full-time PhD research in neuroscience. QBI has 40 labs and ~100 PhD students and ~100 postdocs studying all aspects of neuroscience, including systems and computational. QBI is looking for students who can demonstrate: - excellent academic performance during tertiary study evidenced by a high Grade Point Average (GPA); - a high level of commitment to developing their skills as a researcher to conduct high quality neuroscience research; - possession of strong communication skills. The first stage of the application process is to identify the QBI Group Leader with whom you would like to work via https://qbi.uq.edu.au/groupleaders. Then email that Group Leader, including your detailed academic resume and links to any publications, and complete tertiary academic records (including GPA scores/grades, and grading scale details). If interested, the Group Leader will then work with you to develop your application for submission to QBI. For more information about QBI, PhD entry criteria, and UQ scholarships, please visit the QBI website https://qbi.uq.edu.au Expression of Interest closing date: 25 June 2017 (11:55 PM) E. Australia Standard Time. Professor Geoffrey J Goodhill Queensland Brain Institute and School of Mathematics & Physics University of Queensland St Lucia, QLD 4072, Australia Email: g.goodhill at uq.edu.au http://www.qbi.uq.edu.au/professor-geoffrey-goodhill -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From nicosia at dmi.unict.it Fri May 5 04:16:26 2017 From: nicosia at dmi.unict.it (Giuseppe Nicosia) Date: Fri, 5 May 2017 10:16:26 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: Don't Miss Early Registration Rates for SSBSS 2017 + New Keynote Speakers! Message-ID: *SSBSS - SYNTHETIC & SYSTEMS BIOLOGY SUMMER SCHOOL* *Bioengineering, Algorithmics & BioDesign Automation* *University of Cambridge, UK* *, July 17-21, 2017 * Early Registration Now Open! The Best Rates Expire on May 10, 2017 http://www.taosciences.it/ssbss/#application-form https://www.robinson.cam.ac.uk/conferences/dms/index.php?eid=54 For more info contact Alexis Moreau am2500 at cam.ac.uk *Keynote Speakers:* Antonino Cattaneo, *Scuola Normale Superiore Pisa, Italy* Jasmin Fisher, *Microsoft Research & Cambridge Systems Biology Centre, UK* Carole Goble, *University of Manchester, UK* Jim Haseloff, *University of Cambridge, UK* Jay Keasling, *University of California, Berkeley, USA* Edda Klipp, *Humboldt University, Germany* Natalio Krasnogor, *Newcastle University, UK* Markus Ralser, *University of Cambridge, UK & The Francis Crick Institute, UK* Uwe Sauer, *Institute of Molecular Systems Biology, ETH Zurich, Switzerland* Gill Stephens, *The University of Nottingham, UK * Mike Stubbington, *EMBL-EBI, Cambridge UK* Eriko Takano, *University of Manchester, UK* Sarah Teichmann, *Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute & EMBL, European Bioinformatics Inst., UK* Talks Talks Matteo Barberis, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands Other speakers will be announced soon. Industrial Panel Jonathan Chesnut, Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc., USA Other speakers will be announced soon. *Call for Talks and Posters:* *Call for Abstracts Deadline: June 17, 2017* Notification: Late Registration will be accepted until June 17, 2017, admission notification will start on May 11, 2017, according to the application time. Those who plan to present talk or a poster must submit the abstract via the EasyChair system *https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=ssbss2017 * no lather than June 17, 2017. LATE Registration: May 11 - July 21, 2017 For more information about SSBSS 2017 visit us here : http://www.taosciences.it/ssbss/ Organizer: University of Cambridge, UK FB: https://www.facebook.com/ssbss.school/ SSBSS - Synthetic & Systems Biology Summer School Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/238417586492061/ Computational Synthetic Biology Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1014624245288596/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From M.Gillies at gold.ac.uk Fri May 5 08:46:53 2017 From: M.Gillies at gold.ac.uk (Marco Gillies) Date: Fri, 5 May 2017 12:46:53 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: Fw: Call for papers: International Workshop on Social Activity Recognition (IWSAR 2017) In-Reply-To: <3a948ccd-f635-841d-a9d2-2f377f9d1d73@ucl.ac.uk> References: <3a948ccd-f635-841d-a9d2-2f377f9d1d73@ucl.ac.uk> Message-ID: Call For Papers ________________________________ The First International Workshop on Social Activity Recognition (IWSAR) Held as part of the 2017 ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing (UbiComp) September 12, 2017 Maui (USA) http://www.iwsar.net We invite you to take part in the first international Workshop on Social Activity Recognition (IWSAR). The workshop is being held as part of the 2017 ACM Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing (UbiComp), and will take place in Maui, Hawaii, on September 12th. Research on activity and context recognition has traditionally focused on a single user, but most real-world activities are social -- they are carried out by, and within, groups of two or more people. The aim of social activity recognition, as explored in this workshop, is to use ubiquitous and wearable sensing as a basis for research into activities that involve interactions between more than one person. Social interactions are varied and can include verbal or non-verbal communication, social signalling, physical collaboration, conflict, spontaneous role-taking, etc. Methods for, and applications of, sensing and modelling of physical interaction and joint activity is an exciting new cross-disciplinary research topic across the computing, cognitive, and behavioural sciences. The main objective of this workshop is to bring together researchers who are working on, or who are interested in, automatic sensing, recognition, and use of information about human activities in social or group settings. The workshop will provide a forum for participants to bring together ideas and to share work-in-progress on this topic. Topics of interest The workshop will be of interest to researchers across the spectrum of ubiquitous computing, the behavioural sciences, and beyond, who are interested in developing and using activity sensing and recognition in a social context. Potential topics include, but are not limited to: * Activity and context recognition in dyads or groups (multimodal, multi-person sensing) * Social sensing (crowd sourcing, opportunistic sensing, ad-hoc group formation, data sharing, privacy) * Virtual social interaction (AI, virtual reality, motion tracking, virtual agents and avatars) * Machine learning (modelling activities and actions across multiple people, dealing with uncertainty) * Experimental design (experiences with data collection, annotation, evaluation in-the-wild) * Social psychology (joint action, non-verbal interaction, group behaviour) Of particular interest are topics related to the applications of social activity recognition, for example: * Behavioural change * Computer-supported collaborative work (CSCW) * Wearables * Multi-player gaming * Tools for cognitive and behavioural science research Guide for authors We aim to encourage participation from researchers across a variety of fields. To reflect this submissions can vary from a 1 page psychology-style abstract, up to a 10-page technical paper (maximum). Concise, short papers are particularly encouraged. All submissions should use the SIGCHI Extended Abstract format (landscape, see templates for Word or LaTeX). Accepted papers will be peer reviewed, and will be published both in the ACM Digital Library and as part of the Ubicomp 2017 supplementary proceedings. Authors will be invited to present their work for discussion at the workshop in a series of short 10-15 minute presentations. Please email your paper directly to chair at iwsar.net with "IWSAR submission" as the subject line. Important Dates Deadline for submission: Friday, 9 June 2017. Notification of acceptance: Friday, 30 June 2017. Deadline for camera-ready submission: Wednesday, 12 July 2017. Organising committee: Jamie A. Ward, University College London (UCL), UK. Paul Lukowicz, German Research Centre for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI), Kaiserslautern, Germany. Kai Kunze, Keio Media Design, Japan. Koichi Kise, Osaka Prefecture University, Japan. For general enquiries, please contact: j.a.ward at ucl.ac.uk Technical Program Committee Daniel Gatica-Perez, EPFL Daniel Roggen, University of Sussex Kristof Van Laerhoven, University Siegen Philipp Scholl, University of Freiburg Jan-Ye, University of St. Andrews Ulf Blank, ETH Zurich Antonia Hamilton, UCL Marco Gillies, Goldsmiths We look forward to seeing you at IWSAR and UbiComp! -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From erzsebet at rice.edu Fri May 5 11:27:32 2017 From: erzsebet at rice.edu (=?UTF-8?B?RXJ6c8OpYmV0IE1lcsOpbnlp?=) Date: Fri, 5 May 2017 10:27:32 -0500 Subject: Connectionists: IEEE CIDM special session "Mining the SKy ...", Honolulu Nov 27-Dec 1, 2017, papers due July 2 Message-ID: <89ce78bb-a0ce-4791-070c-6ac36ee7679c@rice.edu> Dear All interested in advancing astronomy through computation: We are happy to invite your paper to our special session "Mining the sky: knowledge discovery in big and complex astronomical data sets and data streams" *Event: CIDM*(IEEE Symposium on Computational Intelligence and Data Mining ), Symposium Series of Computational Intelligence, SSCI 2017 Honolulu, Hawaii, Nov 27 ? Dec 1, 2017. Papers due July 2. Session URL (hosted by the Task Force of the IEEE CIS DMTC ?Mining Complex Astronomy Data ?) https://asaip.psu.edu/organizations/ieee-astrominer-task-force/ieee-cidm-special-session-Mining-the-Sky I am attaching the Call for Papers, which is also posted at the session URL above. Papers will have to be submitted through the SSCI 2017 conference web site at the above event URL. See you in Honolulu. Any question? Please ask us. Sincerely, Session Co-chairs -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: CIDM2017-SpecialSessionCFP_Mining-the-Sky.pdf Type: application/pdf Size: 263811 bytes Desc: not available URL: From nareg.khachatoorian.15 at ucl.ac.uk Fri May 5 10:33:13 2017 From: nareg.khachatoorian.15 at ucl.ac.uk (Nareg Khachatoorian) Date: Fri, 5 May 2017 15:33:13 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: PhD position the City, University of London Message-ID: *We are searching for a PhD candidate to work on a project entitled ?The neurodevelopmental model of early-onset schizophrenia: a longitudinal MRI and fMRI study? with **Dr Danai Dima* * at City, University of London.* Early-onset schizophrenia (EOS) represents a more severe and rare variant of adult-onset schizophrenia, with onset before 18 years old. In recent year, the ?neurodevelopmental? model has been gaining support and posits that the illness is the end stage of abnormal neurodevelopmental processes that began years before. Identifying potentially predictive factors related to a more favourable outcome can positively impact on long-term outcome, especially in young patients. In order to test this we will be utilizing longitudinal (5 year interval) magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and functional MRI (fMRI) already acquired from adolescents who were diagnosed with EOS. *What is offered:* A doctoral studentship will provide: ? An annual bursary (?16,000 in 2017/18). ? A full tuition fee for UK and EU students. Applications are welcome from overseas applicants but the applicant must make appropriate arrangements to cover the difference between the overseas and UK tuition fee. For part of your bursary, you will be required to engage in teaching activities including preparation, marking and invigilation for up to 150 hours per academic year. *Starting date: Late September 2017* *Duration: 3 years* *Person Specification:* ? Applicants must hold at least a 2.1 honours degree or merit level Masters degree in a relevant subject (or international equivalent) ? Applicants whose first language is not English must have achieved at least 6.5 in IELTS or a recognised equivalent. ? Applicants must not be currently registered as a doctoral student at City, University of London or any other academic institution. Additionally applicants should be able to: ? Analyze and interpret imaging data with standard packages (e.g. SPM, FSL) ? Use computational softwares such as Matlab, R *How to apply:* At the first instance please email Dr Danai Dima (danai.dima at city.ac.uk) with your CV and personal statement how you fit with the project (max 1 page). Successful applicants will then be invited to apply formally through the University. http://www.city.ac.uk/courses/research-degrees/psychology#course-detail=3 *Applications will be accepted until midnight on the 21st of May.* *Link to the advert:* https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bxgi_qkp77KkR2N0TExRZUw3eHhrNGc3Vkh 5aXIzRU44RjZn/view?usp=sharing *Contact: *danai.dima at city.ac.uk -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From zk240 at cam.ac.uk Sat May 6 07:52:35 2017 From: zk240 at cam.ac.uk (Zoe Kourtzi) Date: Sat, 6 May 2017 12:52:35 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: Post-doctoral position on Machine Learning in NeuroImaging Message-ID: Post-doctoral position on Machine Learning in NeuroImaging A Post-doctoral position is available to work on machine learning applications in neuroimaging at the Adaptive Brain Lab, University of Cambridge, UK (http://www.abg.psychol.cam.ac.uk ). The position will focus on advanced computational modeling of behavioral and multimodal brain imaging data including convolutional networks, and machine learning approaches. The goal of this work is to model the healthy brain and develop applications for earlier diagnosis and intervention in cases of disease and dysfunction. Research in the lab aims to understand how humans of all ages translate sensory experience into complex decisions and adaptive behaviors. We address this challenge using an interdisciplinary approach that combines behavioral paradigms, computational modeling and high-field brain imaging (MRI, EEG, MEG, TMS). The successful applicant will combine machine learning approaches and state-of-the-art high field brain imaging. They will receive multi-disciplinary research training at the interface between neuroscience, computer science, and engineering. Applicants should have or be close to obtaining a PhD, and have a strong academic track record, in a relevant area (e.g., Engineering, Computer Science, Mathemtatics, Neuroscience). Programming skills are essential and experience with computational modeling and/or brain imaging highly desirable. For informal enquiries please contact Prof. Zoe Kourtzi (zk240 at cam.ac.uk ). Please include CV and a brief statement of research background and interests. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From bcbt at upf.edu Sat May 6 04:24:05 2017 From: bcbt at upf.edu (=?UTF-8?Q?BCBT=2C_B=C3=BAstia_Compartida?=) Date: Sat, 6 May 2017 10:24:05 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: Fwd: [Comp-neuro] BCBT2017 Summer School. Registrations Open! In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: INFO CSNETWORK, B?stia Compartida Date: 2017-05-04 8:28 GMT+02:00 Subject: [Comp-neuro] BCBT2017 Summer School. Registrations Open! To: comp-neuro at neuroinformatics.be Apologies for crossposting! ---------------------------------------------------------- CALL FOR PARTICIPATION ---------------------------------------------------------- *Barcelona Cognition, Brain and Technology Summer School -BCBT2017* University Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain. 28 August - 8 September 2017 BCBT2017-Eventum UPF Join us for the 10th edition of *"Barcelona Cognition, Brain and Technology summer school - BCBT2017 *" be held 28 August-8 September 2017 in Barcelona, Spain. The BCBT summer school is positioned at the interface between biology and future and emerging technologies with an emphasis on the principles underlying brains and their translation to avant-garde technologies. BCBT promotes a shared systems-level understanding of the functional architecture of the brain and its possible emulation in artificial systems. The summer school has been part of a series of events organized by the European coordination action Convergent Science Network of Biomimetics and Neurotechnology (*http://csnetwork.eu/ *). This year the school is supported by the ERC project CDAC that investigates the role of consciousness in adaptive behavior combining empirical, computational and robot-based approach. BCBT is also supported by EPISENSE , a subproject of the Human Brain Project (HBP) that investigates brain mechanisms of perception and memory. This is the 10th year of BCBT, which has run with great success in previous years thanks to an excellent line-up of outstanding speakers (see bcbt.upf.edu for previous editions of the school). BCBT lectures are available online with the BCBT *Podcast interviews *with many of the BCBT speakers. BCBT caters to students and researchers involved in projects that are in the ambit of ?BIO-ICT convergence?, "Brain Inspired ICT", ?Cognitive systems-robotics?, ?Cognitive and neural systems?, ?Foundations of social cognition?. BCBT will offer up to 30 student slots for the practical workshops, while as many researchers can register to attend the presentations and discussion sessions as they are interested. The atmosphere of the BCBT summer school is informal with the goal to stimulate in-depth discussion. There are 1 or 2 presentations in the morning, with the afternoons reserved for tutorials and projects for student participants and road-mapping workshops or further discussion for senior scientists. For the 2017 edition we plan a *1st week* of the school addressing *Neural basis of Consciousness *while the *2nd week* will include presentations aimed at the investigation of *Evolutionary and Developmental aspects of nervous systems and behavior.* Friday 8 is reserved for the presentation of the student projects to which everybody is invited. *Application deadline: July 24, 2017* For more information on how to apply, please go to BCBT2017-Eventum UPF *BCBT is organized by* Paul Verschure, ICREA and University Pompeu Fabra Barcelona, ES, Tony Prescott, Sheffield University, UK Anna Mura, University Pompeu Fabra Barcelona, ES _______________________________________________ Comp-neuro mailing list Comp-neuro at neuroinformatics.be http://www.tnb.ua.ac.be/mailman/listinfo/comp-neuro -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From smart at neuralcorrelate.com Sat May 6 07:04:14 2017 From: smart at neuralcorrelate.com (Susana Martinez-Conde) Date: Sat, 6 May 2017 07:04:14 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: 2nd call for illusion submissions: the 13th Best Illusion of the Year Contest In-Reply-To: <03c701d2c658$681ba6b0$3852f410$@neuralcorrelate.com> References: <037401d2c657$6a43d350$3ecb79f0$@neuralcorrelate.com> <038b01d2c657$d32000b0$79600210$@neuralcorrelate.com> <03a901d2c658$420485a0$c60d90e0$@neuralcorrelate.com> <03c701d2c658$681ba6b0$3852f410$@neuralcorrelate.com> Message-ID: <03d601d2c658$82d84940$8888dbc0$@neuralcorrelate.com> ****2nd CALL FOR ILLUSION SUBMISSIONS: THE WORLD'S 13TH ANNUAL BEST ILLUSION OF THE YEARSM CONTEST**** http://illusionoftheyear.com We are happy to announce the 13th edition of world's Best Illusion of the YearSM Contest!! Submissions are now welcome! In 2015, the Best Illusion of the YearSM Contest became an annual online event, with the goal of bringing the creativity of the illusion creator community all around the world. Anybody with an internet connection can now participate! No matter where you live, you can be a contestant, and/or vote for the Top 3 winners! Contestants are invited to submit 1-minute YouTube videos featuring novel illusions (unpublished, or published no earlier than 2016) of all sensory modalities (visual, auditory, etc.) and/or cognitive nature. The content of the 1-minute video presenting your illusion is solely up to you, and the only requirement is that it wows all viewers! Some examples include, but are not limited to: * -A slide presentation, or succession of images, with a voice over (and/or written text, if you prefer) * -A video of yourself describing your illusion * -A video animation/enactment of your illusion An international panel of impartial judges will rate all the videos and narrow them down to the Top 10. Then, online voters around the world will choose their favorite illusions from the Top 10 finalists. All Top 10 finalists will receive a commemorative plaque. In addition, the Top 3 winners will receive cash prizes: $3,000 USD for first place; $2,000 USD for second place, and $1,000 USD for third place. The Judge Panel will rate illusions according to: * -Significance to our understanding of the human mind and brain * -Simplicity of the description * -Sheer beauty * -Counterintuitive quality * -Spectacularity Submissions will be held in strict confidence by the Judge Panel. Only the Top 10 illusions will be posted online, to allow worldwide voting. Participation in the Best Illusion of the YearSM Contest does not preclude you from also submitting your work for publication elsewhere. By participating in the Best Illusion of the YearSM Contest you agree to have your illusion posted on the Contest website, if selected among the Top 10, and included in press releases and other promotional materials/fundraising initiatives for the Contest. You (and your co-authors, if appropriate) will retain the full copyright of your illusion, and receive full credit as illusion creator(s). Illusions submitted to previous editions of the contest can be re-submitted to the 2017 Contest, as long as they meet the above requirements and were not among the Top 10 finalists in previous years. You can send your 1-minute video to Susana Martinez-Conde via email ( smart at neuralcorrelate.com) until May 26, 2017. On behalf of the Executive Board of the Neural Correlate Society: Jose-Manuel Alonso, Stephen Macknik, Susana Martinez-Conde, Luis Martinez, Xoana Troncoso, Peter Tse -------------------------------------- Susana Martinez-Conde, PhD Professor of Ophthalmology, Neurology, and Physiology & Pharmacology Empire Innovator Scholar Director, Laboratory of Integrative Neuroscience State University of New York (SUNY) Downstate Medical Center 450 Clarkson Ave, Brooklyn NY 11203, USA Email: smart at neuralcorrelate.com Phone: +1 718-270-4520 http://smc.neuralcorrelate.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From nicosia at dmi.unict.it Sat May 6 11:45:26 2017 From: nicosia at dmi.unict.it (Giuseppe Nicosia) Date: Sat, 6 May 2017 17:45:26 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: MOD2017: Paper submission deadline: May 15, 2017 Message-ID: *Our apologies if you receive multiple copies of this announcement.* MOD 2017: The 3rd International Conference on Machine learning, Optimization & big Data An Interdisciplinary Conference: Machine Learning, Optimization and Data Science without Borders ======================================================= September 14 - 17, 2017, Volterra (Pisa) Tuscany, Italy http://www.taosciences.it/mod/ Important dates =============== * Full Paper Submissions: May 15, 2017 * Full Paper Notifications: June 30, 2017 * Conference: September 14 - 17, 2017 Best Paper Awards =============== Springer sponsors the MOD 2017 Best Paper Award with a cash prize of EUR 1,000. The Award will be conferred at the conference on the authors of the best paper award. Keynote Speakers =============== + Yi-Ke Guo, Department of Computing, Faculty of Engineering, Imperial College London, UK Founding Director of Data Science Institute. + Ruslan Salakhutdinov, Machine Learning Department, School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University, USA. Director of AI Research at Apple. + Jun Pei, Hefei University of Technology, China + Georgios Giannakis, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Minnesota, Director of Digital Technology Center, USA (TBC) Special Sessions =============== + "Metaheuristics and Multi-Objective optimization for Big Data" Clarisse Dhaenens, University of Lille, France Laetitia Jourdan, University of Lille, France https://sites.google.com/view/mmo-bd2017/ + ?Industrial Session on Machine Learning, Optimization and Data Science for Real-World Applications? Ilaria Bordino, Marco Firrincieli, Fabio Fumarola, and Francesco Gullo, UniCredit R&D, Italy Tutorial =============== + ?Tutorial on Scalable Data Mining on Cloud Computing Systems? Domenico Talia, University of Calabria, Italy The International Conference on Machine learning, Optimization, and big Data (MOD) has established itself as a premier interdisciplinary conference in machine learning, computational optimization, knowledge discovery and data science. It provides an international forum for presentation of original multidisciplinary research results, as well as exchange and dissemination of innovative and practical development experiences. The conference will consist of four days of conference sessions. We invite submissions of papers on all topics related to Machine learning, Optimization, Knowledge Discovery and Data Science including real-world applications for the Conference Proceedings (Springer - Lecture Notes in Computer Science - LNCS). Topics of Interest The last five-year period has seen a impressive revolution in the theory and application of machine learning, optimization and big data. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to: * Foundations, algorithms, models and theory of data science, including big data mining. * Machine learning and statistical methods for big data. * Machine Learning algorithms and models. Neural Networks and Learning Systems. Convolutional neural networks. * Unsupervised, semi-supervised, and supervised Learning. * Knowledge Discovery. Learning Representations. Representation learning for planning and reinforcement learning. * Metric learning and kernel learning. Sparse coding and dimensionality expansion. Hierarchical models. Learning representations of outputs or states. * Multi-objective optimization. Optimization and Game Theory. Surrogate-assisted Optimization. Derivative-free Optimization. * Big data Mining from heterogeneous data sources, including text, semi-structured, spatio-temporal, streaming, graph, web, and multimedia data. * Big Data mining systems and platforms, and their efficiency, scalability, security and privacy. * Computational optimization. Optimization for representation learning. Optimization under Uncertainty * Optimization algorithms for Real World Applications. Optimization for Big Data. Optimization and Machine Learning. * Implementation issues, parallelization, software platforms, hardware * Big Data mining for modeling, visualization, personalization, and recommendation. * Big Data mining for cyber-physical systems and complex, time-evolving networks. * Applications in social sciences, physical sciences, engineering, life sciences, web, marketing, finance, precision medicine, health informatics, medicine and other domains. We particularly encourage submissions in emerging topics of high importance such as data quality, advanced deep learning, time-evolving networks, large multi-objective optimization, quantum discrete optimization, learning representations, big data mining and analytics, cyber-physical systems, heterogeneous data integration and mining, autonomous decision and adaptive control. Submission Guidelines =============== Paper submissions should be limited to a maximum of 12 pages, in the Springer LNCS format: http://www.springer.com/computer/lncs?SGWID=0-164-6-793341-0 including the bibliography and any possible appendices. All submissions will be 6-blind reviewed by the Program Committee on the basis of technical quality, significance, multidisciplinary, relevance to scope of the conference, originality and clarity. https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=mod2017 Types of Submissions =============== When submitting a paper to MOD 2017, authors are required to select one of the following four types of papers: + Long paper: original novel and unpublished work (max. 12 pages in Springer LNCS format); + Short paper: an extended abstract of novel work (max. 4 pages); + Work for oral presentation only (no page restriction; any format). For example, work already published elsewhere, which is relevant and which may solicit fruitful discussion at the conference; + Abstract for poster presentation only (max. 2 pages). The poster format for the presentation is A0 (118.9 cm high and 84.1 cm wide, respectively 46.8 x 33.1 inch). For research work which is relevant and which may solicit fruitful discussion at the conference. Post-Proceedings =============== All accepted long papers will be published in a volume of the series 'Lecture Notes in Computer Science' from Springer *after* the conference. Instructions for preparing and submitting the final versions (camera-ready papers) of all accepted papers will be available later on. All the other papers (short papers, abstracts of the oral presentations, abstracts for the poster presentations) will be published on the MOD 2017 web site. Presentation =============== MOD uses the single session formula of 30 minutes presentations for fruitful exchanges between authors and participants. Attendance =============== MOD is a premier forum for presenting and discussing current research in machine learning, optimization and big data. Therefore, at least one author of each accepted paper must complete the conference registration and present the paper at the conference, in order for the paper to be included in the proceedings and conference program. Organization =============== General Chair: Renato Umeton, Harvard University, USA Program Co-Chairs: Giovanni Giuffrida, University of Catania, Italy & Neodata Group Giuseppe Nicosia, University of Catania, Italy Panos Pardalos, University of Florida, USA Special Session Co-Chairs: Giuseppe Narzisi, New York University Tandon School of Engineering & New York Genome Center, New York, USA Workshop Co-Chair: Piero Conca, CNR, Italy Industrial Panel Chairs: Ilaria Bordino, Marco Firrincieli, Fabio Fumarola, and Francesco Gullo, UniCredit R&D W: http://www.taosciences.it/mod/ E: modworkshop2017 at gmail.com -- Giuseppe Nicosia, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Computer Science Dept. of Mathematics & Computer Science University of Catania Viale A. Doria, 6 - 95125 Catania, Italy P +39 095 7383048 nicosia at dmi.unict.it http://www.dmi.unict.it/nicosia ================================================================== 4th International Synthetic & Systems Biology Summer School - SSBSS 2017 * Biology meets Computer Science & Engineering * July 17-21, 2017 - University of Cambridge, Robinson College, UK http://www.taosciences.it/ssbss/ Contact Email: ssbss.school at gmail.com FB: https://www.facebook.com/ssbss.school/ SSBSS - Synthetic & Systems Biology Summer School Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/238417586492061/ Computational Synthetic Biology Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1014624245288596/ ================================================================== 3rd International Conference on Machine learning, Optimization & big Data - MOD 2017 An Interdisciplinary Conference: Machine Learning, Optimization and Data Science without Borders September 14-17, 2017 - Volterra (Pisa), Tuscany, Italy modworkshop2017 at gmail.com http://www.taosciences.it/mod/ ================================================================== -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From asdm at fi.upm.es Mon May 8 09:55:17 2017 From: asdm at fi.upm.es (asdm at fi.upm.es) Date: Mon, 8 May 2017 15:55:17 +0200 (CEST) Subject: Connectionists: Twelfth Madrid UPM Advanced Statistics and Data Mining Summer School (June 26th - July 7th, 2017) - Early registration deadline Message-ID: <2036958521.8.1494251717971.JavaMail.bmihaljevic@morelia> Dear colleagues, We would like to remind you that early registration for the Madrid UPM Advanced Statistics and Data Mining summer school finishes on June 5th. The summer school will be held in Boadilla del Monte, near Madrid, from June 26th to July 7th. This year's edition comprises 12 week-long courses (15 lecture hours each), given during two weeks (six courses each week). Attendees may register in each course independently. No restrictions, besides those imposed by timetables, apply on the number or choice of courses. For the second time in a row, INOMICS has selected our summer school as one of the world's top ten summer schools in mathematics and statistics. You can read more at http://bit.ly/1TweJjj Early registration is *OPEN*. Extended information on course programmes, price, venue, accommodation and transport is available at the school's website: http://www.dia.fi.upm.es/ASDM There is a 25% discount for members of Spanish AEPIA and SEIO societies. Please, forward this information to your colleagues, students, and whoever you think may find it interesting. Best regards, Pedro Larranaga, Concha Bielza, Bojan Mihaljevic and Alberto Ogbechie. -- School coordinators. *** List of courses and brief description *** * Week 1 (June 26th - June 30th, 2017) * 1st session: 9:45-12:45 Course 1: Bayesian Networks (15 h) Basics of Bayesian networks. Inference in Bayesian networks. Learning Bayesian networks from data. Real applications. Practical demonstration: GeNIe, Weka, Bayesia, R. Course 2: Time Series(15 h) Basic concepts in time series. Linear models for time series. Time series clustering. Practical demonstration: R. 2nd session: 13:45-16:45 Course 3: Supervised Pattern Recognition (15 h) Introduction. Assessing the performance of supervised classification algorithms. Preprocessing. Classification techniques. Combining multiple classifiers. Comparing supervised classification algorithms. Practical demonstration: Weka. Course 4: Bayesian Inference (15 h) Introduction: Bayesian basics. Conjugate models. MCMC and other simulation methods. Regression and Hierarchical models. Model selection. Practical demonstration: R and WinBugs. 3rd session: 17:00 - 20:00 Course 5: Neural Networks and Deep Learning (15 h) Introduction. Training algorithms. Learning and Optimization. MLPs in practice. Deep Networks. Practical session: Python with keras and Jupyter notebooks. Course 6: Unsupervised Pattern Recognition (15 h) Introduction to clustering. Data exploration and preparation. Prototype-based clustering. Density-based clustering. Graph-based clustering. Cluster evaluation. Miscellanea. Conclusions and final advise. Practical session: R. * Week 2 (July 3rd - July 7th, 2017) * 1st session: 9:45-12:45 Course 7: Statistical Inference (15 h) Introduction. Some basic statistical test. Multiple testing. Introduction to bootstrap methods. Introduction to Robust Statistics. Practical demonstration: R. Course 8: Big Data with Apache Spark (15 h) Introduction. Spark framework and APIs. Data processing with Spark. Spark streaming. Machine learning with Spark MLlib. 2nd session: 13:45-16:45 Course 9: Text Mining (15 h) Information Retrieval 101. Unsupervised Text Processing. Representation Learning. Information Extraction. Natural Language Understanding. Practical session: Python, with Jupyter notebooks. Course 10: Feature Subset Selection (15 h) Introduction. Filter approaches. Embedded methods. Wrapper methods. Additional topics. Practical session: R and Weka. 3rd session: 17:00-20:00 Course 11: Support Vector Machines and Regularized Learning (15 h) Introduction. SVM models. SVM learning algorithms. Regularized learning. Convex optimization for regularized learning. Practical session: Python with scikit-learn, Jupyter notebooks. Course 12: Hidden Markov Models (15 h) Introduction. Discrete Hidden Markov Models. Basic algorithms for Hidden Markov Models. Semicontinuous Hidden Markov Models. Continuous Hidden Markov Models. Unit selection and clustering. Speaker and Environment Adaptation for HMMs. Other applications of HMMs. Practical session: HTK. If you wish to stop receiving emails regarding the Madrid UPM Advanced Statistics and Data Mining summer school, please reply to this email with the title STOP. From asdm at fi.upm.es Mon May 8 09:55:17 2017 From: asdm at fi.upm.es (asdm at fi.upm.es) Date: Mon, 8 May 2017 15:55:17 +0200 (CEST) Subject: Connectionists: Twelfth Madrid UPM Advanced Statistics and Data Mining Summer School (June 26th - July 7th, 2017) - Early registration deadline Message-ID: <2036958521.8.1494251717971.JavaMail.bmihaljevic@morelia> Dear colleagues, We would like to remind you that early registration for the Madrid UPM Advanced Statistics and Data Mining summer school finishes on June 5th. The summer school will be held in Boadilla del Monte, near Madrid, from June 26th to July 7th. This year's edition comprises 12 week-long courses (15 lecture hours each), given during two weeks (six courses each week). Attendees may register in each course independently. No restrictions, besides those imposed by timetables, apply on the number or choice of courses. For the second time in a row, INOMICS has selected our summer school as one of the world's top ten summer schools in mathematics and statistics. You can read more at http://bit.ly/1TweJjj Early registration is *OPEN*. Extended information on course programmes, price, venue, accommodation and transport is available at the school's website: http://www.dia.fi.upm.es/ASDM There is a 25% discount for members of Spanish AEPIA and SEIO societies. Please, forward this information to your colleagues, students, and whoever you think may find it interesting. Best regards, Pedro Larranaga, Concha Bielza, Bojan Mihaljevic and Alberto Ogbechie. -- School coordinators. *** List of courses and brief description *** * Week 1 (June 26th - June 30th, 2017) * 1st session: 9:45-12:45 Course 1: Bayesian Networks (15 h) Basics of Bayesian networks. Inference in Bayesian networks. Learning Bayesian networks from data. Real applications. Practical demonstration: GeNIe, Weka, Bayesia, R. Course 2: Time Series(15 h) Basic concepts in time series. Linear models for time series. Time series clustering. Practical demonstration: R. 2nd session: 13:45-16:45 Course 3: Supervised Pattern Recognition (15 h) Introduction. Assessing the performance of supervised classification algorithms. Preprocessing. Classification techniques. Combining multiple classifiers. Comparing supervised classification algorithms. Practical demonstration: Weka. Course 4: Bayesian Inference (15 h) Introduction: Bayesian basics. Conjugate models. MCMC and other simulation methods. Regression and Hierarchical models. Model selection. Practical demonstration: R and WinBugs. 3rd session: 17:00 - 20:00 Course 5: Neural Networks and Deep Learning (15 h) Introduction. Training algorithms. Learning and Optimization. MLPs in practice. Deep Networks. Practical session: Python with keras and Jupyter notebooks. Course 6: Unsupervised Pattern Recognition (15 h) Introduction to clustering. Data exploration and preparation. Prototype-based clustering. Density-based clustering. Graph-based clustering. Cluster evaluation. Miscellanea. Conclusions and final advise. Practical session: R. * Week 2 (July 3rd - July 7th, 2017) * 1st session: 9:45-12:45 Course 7: Statistical Inference (15 h) Introduction. Some basic statistical test. Multiple testing. Introduction to bootstrap methods. Introduction to Robust Statistics. Practical demonstration: R. Course 8: Big Data with Apache Spark (15 h) Introduction. Spark framework and APIs. Data processing with Spark. Spark streaming. Machine learning with Spark MLlib. 2nd session: 13:45-16:45 Course 9: Text Mining (15 h) Information Retrieval 101. Unsupervised Text Processing. Representation Learning. Information Extraction. Natural Language Understanding. Practical session: Python, with Jupyter notebooks. Course 10: Feature Subset Selection (15 h) Introduction. Filter approaches. Embedded methods. Wrapper methods. Additional topics. Practical session: R and Weka. 3rd session: 17:00-20:00 Course 11: Support Vector Machines and Regularized Learning (15 h) Introduction. SVM models. SVM learning algorithms. Regularized learning. Convex optimization for regularized learning. Practical session: Python with scikit-learn, Jupyter notebooks. Course 12: Hidden Markov Models (15 h) Introduction. Discrete Hidden Markov Models. Basic algorithms for Hidden Markov Models. Semicontinuous Hidden Markov Models. Continuous Hidden Markov Models. Unit selection and clustering. Speaker and Environment Adaptation for HMMs. Other applications of HMMs. Practical session: HTK. If you wish to stop receiving emails regarding the Madrid UPM Advanced Statistics and Data Mining summer school, please reply to this email with the title STOP. From barrow at morganclaypool.com Mon May 8 17:52:05 2017 From: barrow at morganclaypool.com (Bebe Barrow) Date: Mon, 8 May 2017 14:52:05 -0700 Subject: Connectionists: Morgan & Claypool New Title: Neural Network Methods for Natural Language Processing Message-ID: <020201d2c845$55ce0770$016a1650$@morganclaypool.com> Dear Connectionists Listserv Member, I am pleased to announce a new title in Morgan & Claypool's series on Human Language Technologies: Neural Network Methods for Natural Language Processing Yoav Goldberg, Bar Ilan University Paperback ISBN: 9781627052986, $74.95 eBook ISBN: 9781627052955 April 2017, 309 pages http://dx.doi.org/10.2200/S00762ED1V01Y201703HLT037 Abstract: Neural networks are a family of powerful machine learning models. This book focuses on the application of neural network models to natural language data. The first half of the book (Parts I and II) covers the basics of supervised machine learning and feed-forward neural networks, the basics of working with machine learning over language data, and the use of vector-based rather than symbolic representations for words. It also covers the computation-graph abstraction, which allows to easily define and train arbitrary neural networks, and is the basis behind the design of contemporary neural network software libraries. The second part of the book (Parts III and IV) introduces more specialized neural network architectures, including 1D convolutional neural networks, recurrent neural networks, conditioned-generation models, and attention-based models. These architectures and techniques are the driving force behind state-of-the-art algorithms for machine translation, syntactic parsing, and many other applications. Finally, we also discuss tree shaped networks, structured prediction, and the prospects of multi-task learning. Table of Contents: Preface / Acknowledgments / Introduction / Learning Basics and Linear Models / From Linear Models to Multi-layer Perceptrons / Feed-forward Neural Networks / Neural Network Training / Features for Textual Data / Case Studies of NLP Features / From Textual Features to Inputs / Language Modeling / Pre-trained Word Representations / Using Word Embeddings / Case Study: A Feed-forward Architecture for Sentence Meaning Inference / Ngram Detectors: Convolutional Neural Networks / Recurrent Neural Networks: Modeling Sequences and Stacks / Concrete Recurrent Neural Network Architectures / Modeling with Recurrent Networks / Conditioned Generation / Modeling Trees with Recursive Neural Networks / Structured Output Prediction / Cascaded, Multi-task and Semi-supervised Learning / Conclusion / Bibliography / Author's Biography Visit this title's abstract page on our website: http://www.morganclaypool.com/doi/abs/10.2200/S00762ED1V01Y201703HLT037 Morgan & Claypool Bookstore Link: http://www.morganclaypoolpublishers.com/catalog_Orig/product_info.php?produc ts_id=1056 Series: Synthesis Lectures on Human Language Technologies Editor: Graeme Hirst, University of Toronto http://www.morganclaypool.com/toc/hlt/10/1 Please e-mail me if you have any questions. Thank you, Bebe Barrow -- Bebe Barrow Sales & Marketing Assistant Morgan & Claypool Publishers barrow at morganclaypool.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From ahu at cs.stir.ac.uk Mon May 8 23:54:06 2017 From: ahu at cs.stir.ac.uk (Dr Amir Hussain) Date: Tue, 9 May 2017 04:54:06 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: =?utf-8?q?Call_for_Papers=3A_IEEE_Transactions_on?= =?utf-8?q?_Systems=2C_Man=2C_and_Cybernetics_=28Systems=29_Special?= =?utf-8?q?_Issue_on_=E2=80=9CAutonomous_Cognitive_Robotics_and_Sys?= =?utf-8?b?dGVtc+KAnQ==?= Message-ID: Call for Papers: Special Issue on ?Autonomous Cognitive Robotics and Systems? (Deadline: May 31, 2017) IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics: Systems (For full details see: http://www.ieeesmc.org/images/ publications/smc-systems/2018-Special-Issue-Autonomous- Cognitive-Robotics-and-Systems.pdf ) Introduction: Cognitive systems are natural (i.e. animal and human) or artificial (such as software and robotic) Big Data processing systems that can perform ?cognitive-like? functions such as: perception, attention, action, socio-affective and cognitive learning, memory, decision-making and control, language processing and communication, reasoning, problem solving and consciousness. Autonomous Cognitive Systems is an emerging discipline, fusing ideas across several traditional fields and seeks to further our understanding in two problem domains. First, by instantiating brain models into a virtual, simulated or embodied form, it supplies a strong test of those models, thereby furthering our understanding of neurobiology and cognitive psychology. Second, by harnessing the insights we have about cognition, it is a potentially fruitful source of engineering data-driven solutions to problems in autonomous systems, including those in: robotics, autonomous vehicles, planetary rovers, artificial social companions and assistive technology. It therefore promises next-generation data-driven solutions in the design and study of autonomous cognitive robotics and systems, including those organized in teams, swarms or as individual robots or agents, and controlled through varying degrees of human interaction and autonomy. The aim of this exciting Special Issue is to bring together leading scientists, engineers and industry researchers, to submit original pioneering contributions in autonomous cognitive robotics and systems research. Articles will be solicited on theoretical, computational, experimental and integrative aspects of autonomous cognitive systems, or core modules of such systems. Application environments of interest include real-world industrial, indoor, outdoor, everyday life, emergency, hostile and outer space, where brain-inspired cognitive technologies are required for autonomous robots and systems to accomplish challenging real-time goals, to at least some degree of self-sufficiency. Timely review papers identifying future R&D challenges and opportunities will also be welcome. Topics of interest: Below is an indicative but not exhaustive list of topics/areas that would be of interest. All applied, theoretical, computational, experimental and integrative aspects of autonomous cognitive robotics and systems research, including (but not limited to): ? perception ? action ? socio-affective and cognitive learning and memory ? attention ? autonomous decision making and control ? social cognition ? natural language processing and communication, ? reasoning ? problem solving ? consciousness ? cognitive system architectures, implementations and real-world applications (e.g. for robotics, autonomous vehicles, healthcare and assistive technology, big data and social media analytics etc.) Manuscript Submission: Preparation of manuscripts should refer to the guidelines in the ?Information for Authors? on the IEEE Transaction on System, Man Cybernetics: System website: http://www.ieeesmc.org/ publications/transactions-on-smc-systems/information-for-authors Submission for the special issue goes through the normal process. Special Issue papers are designated in the submission process as ?Regular Paper - Special Issue? and ?Correspondence - Special Issue?. Manuscripts for the special issue should be submitted through the Manuscript Central web site: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/systems In the Cover Letter to Editor-in-Chief Section, authors should explicitly include the following statement: This manuscript is submitted for the Special Issue on ?Autonomous Cognitive Robotics and Systems (Guest Editor: Amir Hussain).? Further questions about the special issue may be directed to the Guest Editors below. Important Dates: Manuscript Submission Deadline: May 31, 2017 Notification of Paper Decision: August 15, 2017 Revised Paper Submission Deadline: October 15, 2017 Final Paper Submission Decision: December 15, 2017 Publication Date: ~March, 2018 Guest Editors Amir Hussain (University of Stirling, UK), ahu at cs.stir.ac.uk Kevin Gurney (University of Sheffield, UK), k.gurney at sheffield.ac.uk Xuelong Li (Chinese Academy of Sciences, China), xuelong_li at opt.ac.cn ------------------------------ The University achieved an overall 5 stars in the QS World University Rankings 2015 The University of Stirling is a charity registered in Scotland, number SC 011159. -- The University achieved an overall 5 stars in the QS World University Rankings 2016/17 The University of Stirling is a charity registered in Scotland, number SC 011159. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From O.Scharenborg at let.ru.nl Tue May 9 02:56:21 2017 From: O.Scharenborg at let.ru.nl (Odette Scharenborg) Date: Tue, 09 May 2017 08:56:21 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: Final call for abstract for the 2nd International Workshop for Young Female Researchers in Speech Science & Technology In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: (Apologies for cross-posting; please share) ---------------------------------- 2nd International Workshop for Young Female Researchers in Speech Science & Technology (YFRSW-2017) Special event of Interspeech 2017 Stockholm, August 20th 2017 https://sites.google.com/site/yfrsw2017/ ---------------------------------- Important Dates ========== - Abstract submission opens: 15 April 2017 - Abstract submission closes: 15 May 2017 - Notification of acceptance: 15 June 2017 - Registration deadline: 5 August 2017 - Workshop date: 20 August 2017 Overview ====== The aim of this workshop is to bring women undergraduate and masters students, who are currently working in speech science and technology, together at a special event co-located with Interspeech 2017, Stockholm, Sweden. The workshop will take place on 20 August 2017 from 10am to 5pm followed by a dinner with invited senior members of the Interspeech community. It will feature panel discussions with senior female researchers in the field, student poster presentations and a mentoring session. The workshop is the second of its kind, after a successful inaugural event (YFRSW 2016) at Interspeech 2016 in San Francisco. It is designed to foster interest in research in our field in women at the undergraduate or master level who have not yet committed to getting a PhD in speech science or technology areas, but who have had some research experience in their college and universities via individual or group projects. Call for Participation ============= Abstracts (maximum of 300 words) should be submitted by email to yfrs.workshop at gmail.com by May 15, 2017. Abstracts will be reviewed by the committee and applicants will be notified by June 15, 2017. Emphasis will be on inclusivity although all submissions should be in the core scientific domains covered by Interspeech. Preliminary Program ============= The workshop will include the following events: * A welcome breakfast with introductions (1h) * A panel of senior women talking about their own research and experiences as women in the speech community (1h) * A panel of senior students who work in the speech area to describe how they became interested in speech research (1h) * A poster session for the students to present their own research (2h) * A one-on- one coaching session between students and senior women mentor (1h) * A networking lunch for students and senior women (1h) Organising committee ============== Heidi Christensen, University of Sheffield, UK (heidi.christensen at sheffield.ac.uk) Abeer Alwan, University of California, Los Angeles, US Kay Berkling, DHBW, Karlsruhe, Germany Catia Cucchiarini, Radboud University, Nijmegen, Netherlands Milica Ga?i?, University of Cambridge, UK Dilek Hakkani-T?r Google Research, US Julia Hirschberg, Columbia University, New York, US Karen Livescu, TTIC, Chicago, US Catharine Oertel, KTH, Stockholm, Sweden Odette Scharenborg, Radboud University, Nijmegen, Netherlands Isabel Trancoso, INESC-ID, Lisbon, Portugal For further details, please see https://sites.google.com/site/yfrsw2017/ From michael.gaebler at gmail.com Tue May 9 04:19:39 2017 From: michael.gaebler at gmail.com (Michael Gaebler) Date: Tue, 09 May 2017 08:19:39 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: 2-year postdoc position: Measuring human cognition and the brain using virtual reality - MPI Leipzig/Berlin In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Overview: Job offer for a postdoctoral researcher: Measuring human cognition and the brain using virtual reality Full-time position for 2 years at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig (NB: your office will be in Berlin). Preferred starting date: August 1, 2017 Application deadline: May 31, 2017 Details at: http://www.cbs.mpg.de/vacancies/open-positions or below. --- Details: We are currently accepting applications for a two-year postdoctoral position in measuring human cognition and the brain using virtual reality (VR). The objective is the development of virtual worlds (i.e., computer-generated complex environments, presented via VR technology) to measure cognitive capacities and their neurophysiological correlates. While we focus on fundamental research in healthy participants, the aim is to improve impaired cognitive abilities in neurological patients (e.g., after stroke). This post offers the opportunity to work on projects compatible with the goals of the group while leaving space to provide your own input. We intend to develop "serious VR games" together with behavioral and neurophysiological indices for the feasibility of VR-based cognitive assessment and intervention. For these indices, we measure behaviour and subjective experience together with activity in the brain (e.g., EEG and NIRS) and the rest of the body (e.g., ECG and EDA). You will be employed by the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig and situated in Berlin at the MindBrainBody Institute (http://www.mindbrainbody.de). Your office will be located at the Berlin School of Mind and Brain, an international and interdisciplinary graduate research school, which offers Master's, doctoral, and postdoctoral programmes and hosts numerous events related to the investigation of the mind and brain. You will be integrated into a newly formed team investigating mind-brain-body interactions using VR. The candidate should have a doctoral degree in an empirical brain and mind science (e.g., neuroscience, psychology, or neuroimaging) and be highly motivated to conduct fundamental mind-brain-body research using state-of-the-art technology. We are looking for a creative and highly self-motivated candidate, able to design and conduct his/her own research without requiring extensive training or close supervision. The responsibilities of the candidate also include the supervision of two doctoral researchers and MSc students. The successful candidate will have a proven track record in designing, conducting, and analysing experiments, evidenced by published papers. Ideally, you already have experience measuring activity in the nervous systems (EEG, EDA, ECG, or NIRS) and/or experience with research in cognitive rehabilitation. Computational thinking and data analysis/ programming expertise (e.g., in R, Python, Matlab, or C#) are highly recommended. Advanced English language skills are required. Proficiency in German or the willingness to learn German is appreciated. The position is funded for two years. Remuneration depends on your experience and is based on funding guidelines of the Max Planck Society. The Max Planck Society is committed to increasing the number of individuals with disabilities in its workforce and therefore encourages applications from such qualified individuals. For more information, please contact Dr. Michael Gaebler (gaebler at cbs.mpg.de ). Please submit your application via our online system at http://www.cbs.mpg.de/vacancies (subject heading is "PD 11/17"). The deadline for application submission is May 31, 2017. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kashefy at ni.tu-berlin.de Tue May 9 06:47:19 2017 From: kashefy at ni.tu-berlin.de (Youssef Kashef) Date: Tue, 9 May 2017 12:47:19 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: POSTDOC POSITION @ TUB in Risk-Sensitive Reinforcement Learning on Partially Observable Markov Decision Processes Message-ID: Technische Universit?t Berlin, Fakult?t IV - Electrical Engineering and Computer Science POSTDOC POSITION 3 years, salary level: E-13 TV-L RISK-SENSITIVE REINFORCEMENT LEARNING ON PARTIALLY OBSERVABLE MARKOV DECISION PROCESSES The successful candidate will join a DFG funded project whose goal is to develop a mathematical framework for optimal sequential decision making in the face of economic and perceptual uncertainty. The project aims at the extension of Partially Observable Markov Decision Processes to incorporate risk, at an assessment of the existence and uniqueness of optimal risk-sensitive policies, and at the development of computationally tractable algorithms for solving the corresponding optimization problems. For previous work in the context of risk-sensitive Markov Decision Processes see: Shen, Stannat, Obermayer (2013), SIAM J. Control Optim. 51, 3652ff; Shen et al. (2014), Neural Comput. 26, 1298ff; Shen, Stannat, Obermayer (2014), ArXiv e-prints 1403.3321. Candidates should hold a recent PhD-degree in mathematics (stochastics), computer science (machine learning), or similar fields. Candidates with research experience in optimization and control will be preferred. Application material (CV, list of publications, abstract of the PhD thesis, copies of certificates and two letters of reference) should be sent to: Prof. Dr. Klaus Obermayer MAR 5-6, Technische Universit?t Berlin, Marchstrasse 23 10587 Berlin, Germany http://www.ni.tu-berlin.de/ email: klaus.obermayer at tu-berlin.de preferably by email. All applications received before June 30th, 2017, will be given full consideration, but applications will be accepted until the position is filled. TUB seeks to increase the proportion of women and particularly encourages women to apply. Women will be preferred given equal qualification. Disabled persons will be preferred given equal qualification. From pkordjam at tulane.edu Tue May 9 08:35:20 2017 From: pkordjam at tulane.edu (Kordjamshidi, Parisa) Date: Tue, 9 May 2017 12:35:20 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: Deadline Extended: IJCAI-2017 Workshop on Declarative Learning Based Programming Message-ID: Dear all, The deadline for submission for the Declarative Learning based Programming Workshop has been extended. Deadline: Now May 20, 2017. We accept technical papers (IJCAI style, 6 pages without references), a position statement (IJCAI style, 2 pages maximum) or an abstract of a published work. Please make submissions via EasyChair, here [https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=delbp2017]. For more details see the CFP below. Thanks, Parisa ---------------------------------------------------------------- CALL FOR PAPERS and PARTICIPANTS ---------------------------------------------------------------- 2nd International Workshop on Declarative Learning Based Programming (DeLBP 2017) In conjunction withTwenty- sixth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI-17), August 19?20, 2017, Melbourne, Australia. Website: http://delbp.github.io --------------------------------------------------------------- AIM AND SCOPE ????????????????????? The main goal of Declarative Learning Based Programming (DeLBP) workshop is to investigate the issues that arise when designing and using programming languages that support learning from data and knowledge. DeLBP aims at facilitating and simplifying the design and development of intelligent real world applications that use machine learning and reasoning by addressing the following commonly observed challenges: Interaction with messy, naturally occurring data; Specifying the requirements of the application at a high abstraction level; Dealing with uncertainty in data and knowledge in various layers of the application program; Using representations that support flexible relational feature engineering; Using representations that support flexible reasoning and structure learning; Integrating a range of learning and inference algorithms; and finally addressing the above mentioned issues in one unified programming environment. Conventional programming languages offer no help to application programmers that attempt to design and develop applications that make use of real world data, and reason about it in a way that involves learning interdependent concepts from data, incorporating and composing existing models, and reasoning about existing and trained models and their parametrization. Over the last few years the research community has tried to address these problems from multiple perspectives, most notably various approaches based on Probabilistic programming, Logical Programming and the integrated paradigms. The goal of this workshop is to present and discuss the current related research and the way various challenges have been addressed. We aim at motivating the need for further research toward a unified framework in this area based on the key existing paradigms: Probabilistic Programming (PP), Logic Programming (LP), Probabilistic Logical Programming (PLP), First-order query languages and database management systems (DBMS) and deductive databases (DDB), Statistical relational learning and related languages (SRL), and connect these to the ideas of Learning Based Programming. We aim to discuss and investigate the required type of languages and representations that facilitate modeling probabilistic or non-probabilistic complex learning models, deep architectures, and provide the ability to combine, chain and perform flexible inference with existing models and by exploiting domain knowledge. (Website: http://delbp.github.io) ---------------------------------------------------------------- TOPICS OF INTEREST ????????????????????? ? New abstractions and modularity levels towards a unified framework for learning and reasoning, ? Frameworks/Computational models to combine learning and reasoning paradigms and exploit accomplishments in AI from various perspectives. ? Flexible use of structured and relational data from heterogeneous resources in learning. ? Data modeling (relational/graph-based ) issues in such a new integrated framework for learning based on data and knowledge. ? Exploiting knowledge such as expert knowledge and common sense knowledge expressed via multiple formalisms, in learning. ? The ability of closing the loop to acquire knowledge from data and data from knowledge towards life-long learning, and reasoning. ? Using declarative domain knowledge to guide the design of learning models, ? Including feature extraction, model selection, dependency structure and deep learning architecture. ? Structure Learning and automation of hyper-parameter tuning. ? Design and representation of complex learning and inference models. ? The interface for learning-based programming, ? Either in the form of programming languages, declarations, frameworks, libraries or graphical user interfaces. ? Storage and retrieval of trained learning models in a flexible way to facilitate incremental learning. ? Related applications in Natural language processing, Computer vision, Bioinformatics, Computational biology, etc. ---------------------------------------------------------------- IMPORTANT DATES ---------------------------------------------------------------- ? Submission Deadline: May 8th, 2017 => May 20th, 2017 ? Notification: June 5th, 2017 ? Workshop Days: August 19th-20th, 2017 ---------------------------------------------------------------- SUBMISSION AND SELECTION PROCESS ---------------------------------------------------------------- We encourage contributions with either a technical paper (IJCAI style, 6 pages without references), a position statement (IJCAI style, 2 pages maximum) or an abstract of a published work. IJCAI Style files available here [http://ijcai-17.org/FormattingGuidelinesIJCAI-17.zip]. Please make submissions via EasyChair, here [https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=delbp2017]. ---------------------------------------------------------------- PROGRAM COMMITTEE ---------------------------------------------------------------- Guy Van den Broeck, University of California, Los Angeles Sameer Singh, University of California, Irvine Avi Pfeffer, Charles River Analytics Rodrigo de Salvo Braz, SRI International Tias Guns, Vrije University of Brussels Christos Christodoulopoulos, Amazon Cambridge, UK William Wang, University of California, Santa Barbara Kai-Wei Chang, University of Virginia Martin Mladenov, Technical University of Dortmund Sebastian Riedel, University College London ---------------------------------------------------------------- ORGANIZING COMMITTEE ---------------------------------------------------------------- Parisa Kordjamshidi, Tulane University, IHMC Dan Roth, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Jan-Willem Van den Meent, Northeastern University Dan Goldwasser, Purdue University Vibhav Gogate, University of Texas at Dallas Kristian Kersting, TU Dortmund University ---------------------------------------------------------------- CONTACT ---------------------------------------------------------------- delbp-2 at googlegroups.com (Organization Committee) pkordjam at tulane.edu Please circulate this CFP among your colleagues and students. ------------------------------------------- Kordjamshidi, Parisa Assistant Professor CS Department at Tulane University Research Scientist at IHMC Homepage -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From alex.fornito at monash.edu Tue May 9 21:55:00 2017 From: alex.fornito at monash.edu (Alex Fornito) Date: Wed, 10 May 2017 11:55:00 +1000 Subject: Connectionists: Post-doctoral Fellowship in modelling brain networks and dynamics Message-ID: <9F9B7B39-09C6-450B-8C5B-72BF596F8109@monash.edu> Post-doctoral Fellowship in modelling brain networks and dynamics We seek a talented post-doctoral researcher to work on developing and applying biophysical models of large-scale brain dynamics, particularly neural mass models and neural field models, with a focus on: - applying the models to understand empirical brain imaging data acquired with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), positron emission tomography (PET), electroencephaolography (EEG), magnetoencephalography (MEG) and/or transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS); - integrating the models with data derived from genetic and other molecular techniques; and - using the models to understand brain disturbances in psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia. The position is funded for three years and is offered at level A or B, depending on experience and track record. The Fellow will be based in team of A/Prof Fornito in the Brain and Mental Health Lab at Monash University, Melbourne, Australia. It involves close collaboration with Prof Gustavo Deco, and will require regular travel to Prof Deco?s lab at Pompeu Fabra University, Barcelona, Spain. For further details, please see: careers.pageuppeople.com/513/cw/en/job/561731/research-fellow-brain-and-mental-health-laboratory ___________________________________ Alex Fornito Associate Professor Brain & Mental Health Laboratory Monash Institute of Cognitive & Clinical Neurosciences A: ????????????????????????? 770 Blackburn Rd, Clayton, 3800, Vic, Australia P: ????????????????????????? +61 3 9902 9796 F: ????????????????????????? +61 3 9902 9817 E: ????????????????????????? alex.fornito at monash.edu W: ????????????????????????? http://www.med.monash.edu.au/psych/bmh/ T: ??????????????????????????? @AFornito Book:?????? http://bit.ly/1mz215S -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From alb.mazzoni at gmail.com Tue May 9 11:20:29 2017 From: alb.mazzoni at gmail.com (Alberto Mazzoni) Date: Tue, 9 May 2017 17:20:29 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: Call for 21 positions to the three-year Ph.D. Program in BioRobotics at The BioRobotics Institute, Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna, Italy Message-ID: Dear Colleagues, The Scuola Superiore Sant?Anna (SSSA), Pisa, Italy, announces 21 positions funded with fellowships and research grants for admission to the three-year Ph.D. Program in BioRobotics. The Program The Ph.D. Program in BioRobotics is a three-year course of advanced studies and supervised research; at the end of the Program, the Ph.D. degree is conferred to students who have fulfilled the didactic requirements and passed a final examination with thesis dissertation. The Ph.D. Program aims at educating highly competent researchers with the potential to be leaders in this area. The students will be educated in a stimulating and multidisciplinary environment, both through high-level courses and through demanding, creative and original research work. Doctoral research projects will be carried out in very well equipped, state-of-the-art laboratories (in such fields as bio-robotics, micro- and nanotechnology, biomimetics, prosthetics) and through individual and team work performed under the supervision of a committed full-time faculty. The students will investigate how biological systems work from an engineering viewpoint, and will make use of such knowledge to pursue challenging research projects aimed at modeling, designing and building novel components and systems for biomedical applications. At the end of the Ph.D. Program, students will possess solid scientific and engineering skills, the ability to conceive and carry out original research projects, and an autonomous entrepreneurship spirit. The Scuola Superiore Sant?Anna SSSA is a public university where merit and talent count. Excellence in training and research, internationalization, interaction with the job market are the objectives of SSSA. Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna offers training and postgraduate courses in Economics and Management, Law, Political Science, Agricultural Science and Biotechnology, Medicine, and Industrial and Information Engineering. SSSA is a scientific community where the academic staff and researchers interact with students through a continuous exchange of cultural, creative and intellectual ideas ( http://www.santannapisa.it/it). The Ph.D. Program is managed by the BioRobotics Institute. Its mission is to educate the Engineer of the 21st Century: a competent, interdisciplinary, and creative inventor and entrepreneur, able to handle new technological and scientific challenges ( http://www.santannapisa.it/it/istituto/biorobotica/biorobotics-institute). Admission Students are admitted to the Program following a successful entrance examination. Eligible applicants must hold a Master of Science (M.Sc.) degree or equivalent title. Undergraduate students may also apply if they graduate within Oct. 31st. The Program will start Oct 1st 2017. Instructions for applicants are reported here: https://www.santannapisa.it/en/admissions/call-admission-phd-biorobotics-0 The deadline for application is June 15, 2017 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sandhyaprabhakaran at gmail.com Tue May 9 15:38:14 2017 From: sandhyaprabhakaran at gmail.com (Sandhya Prabhakaran) Date: Tue, 9 May 2017 15:38:14 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: Call for Extended Abstracts: ICML2017 Workshop on Computational Biology Message-ID: Dear all, We invite submissions to the Workshop on Computational Biology ( https://sites.google.com/view/compbioworkshopicml2017) to be held in conjunction with ICML 2017 (https://2017.icml.cc/) conference in Sydney, Australia (Aug 6th - 11th, 2017). In Computational Biology, there have been credible developments in many high-throughput technologies that enable data generation from many interesting biological systems. The gamut of novel algorithms in Machine Learning makes it very attractive to apply these methods to the challenging biological questions. It therefore only seems befitting to bring together researchers engaged in applying ML in Computational Biology to discuss recent advances in this interdisciplinary field and ongoing developments. We have invited several distinguished speakers from the Computational Biology community to discuss and present their current research. We invite extended abstracts dealing with interesting applications of ML methods or bioinformatics approaches to biological and biomedical data arising from, but not limited to NGS technologies (ATAC-seq, ChIP-seq, Hi-C etc), CyToF, single-cell sequencing, electronic health records, and imaging technologies. In terms of methods, supervised and unsupervised ML, deep learning, multi-task learning, kernel methods, probabilistic graphical models would all be appropriate for the workshop. Important Dates --------------- Deadline for submissions : June 5th 2017 Notification of acceptance : June 16th, 2017 Workshop date : Aug 10th or 11th, 2017 Submission ---------- All novel Computational Biology approaches are of interest to the workshop. We welcome original extended abstracts that present recently published work as well as preliminary ideas. Extended abstracts should not exceed 4 pages in length (plus 1 optional page for references) and should be in pdf format (one column, font size 12). The submission need not be anonymized. If the abstract concerns previously published work, please cite the original paper in the workshop submission. All accepted contributions shall be presented at the poster session. There will be Travel Awards for Contributed Talks and Awards for Best Poster Presentations. Accepted abstracts will have the option of being published on the workshop website. For authors who do not wish their abstracts to be posted online or become citable, please mention this in the workshop submission. Submissions should be made through the EasyChair system : https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=wcb2017 Invited Speakers ---------------- Anshul Kundaje (https://profiles.stanford.edu/anshul-kundaje), Stanford University Suchi Saria (http://www.suchisaria.com/), Johns Hopkins University Cheng Soon Ong (http://www.ong-home.my/), Data61, Canberra Registration ------------ All participants must register for the ICML 2017 workshop ( https://2017.icml.cc/Register2). Contact ------- For workshop-related queries please contact: wcbicml at gmail.com We are looking forward to your submissions! Organizing Committee: Dana Pe'er (https://www.mskcc.org/research-areas/labs/dana-pe-er), MSKCC Christina Leslie (https://www.mskcc.org/research-areas/labs/christina-leslie), MSKCC Barbara Engelhardt (https://www.cs.princeton.edu/~bee/), Princeton University Elham Azizi (http://elhamazizi.info/), MSKCC Sandhya Prabhakaran (http://sandhyaprabhakaran.com/), MSKCC Meghana Kshirsagar (http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~mkshirsa/), MSKCC Ambrose Carr (http://ambrosejcarr.com/), MSKCC (MSKCC: Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, NYC) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From pkpilly at hrl.com Wed May 10 03:47:34 2017 From: pkpilly at hrl.com (Pilly, Praveen K) Date: Wed, 10 May 2017 07:47:34 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: full-time job openings at HRL Laboratories in Malibu, CA Message-ID: (1) POST DOC RESEARCH STAFF, Machine Learning and Brain-Inspired Computing EDUCATION DESIRED: Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics, Neuroscience, Machine Learning, or related fields. ESSENTIAL JOB FUNCTION: To develop, implement, and evaluate novel large-scale brain-inspired computational architectures, including spiking neuromorphic models, to solve complex problems such as resilient sensorimotor control; one-shot learning; visual scene segmentation, recognition, and tracking; spatiotemporal pattern discovery; big data prognostics and diagnostics; grammar learning; etc. Additional job functions include writing invention disclosures, publishing papers, making presentations, and assisting in marketing HRL expertise. KNOWLEDGE AND EXPERIENCE DESIRED: Programming proficiency in C++, Python, or Matlab is required. Knowledge and/or research experience in the development, implementation, and evaluation of various neural networks including spiking neuromorphic models, deep learning models, hierarchical temporal memory models, recurrent neural networks, long short-term memory models, deep reinforcement models. Knowledge of expectation maximization theory, Bayesian inference on graphical models, reinforcement learning theory, control systems, nonlinear optimization, and episodic, semantic, and procedural memory systems is preferred. Any experience with high-performance computing using clusters, GPUs, or FPGAs will be a plus. ESSENTIAL PHYSICAL/MENTAL REQUIREMENTS: Good communication (verbal and written) skills, and active participation in R&D team activities are required. Able and willing to occasionally travel. SPECIAL REQUIREMENTS: Should be U.S. citizen or permanent resident. If interested, please apply at the following link: https://www4.recruitingcenter.net/Clients/HRL/PublicJobs/controller.cfm?jbaction=JobProfile&Job_Id=10877&esid=az. Also, send your resume via email to Dr. Praveen Pilly (pkpilly at hrl.com) and put the pertinent Job Name in the subject heading. (2) POST DOC RESEARCH STAFF, Machine Learning and EEG Processing EDUCATION DESIRED: Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics, Neuroscience, Machine Learning, Bio-Statistics, or related fields ESSENTIAL JOB FUNCTION: To develop, implement, and validate real-time pattern recognition algorithms for decoding high-density EEG signals to predict future behavioral performance and inform non-invasive brain stimulation for behavioral enhancement in realistic tasks. Additional job functions include writing invention disclosures, publishing papers, making presentations, and assisting in marketing HRL expertise. EXPERIENCE DESIRED: Research experience in one or more of the following areas: high-density EEG decoding, pattern recognition applied to brain/body signals, machine learning with very limited training data, brain-machine interfaces, neural statistical modeling, closed-loop brain stimulation, and computational neuroscience. Deep understanding of machine learning algorithms applied to EEG is highly desirable. Experience developing innovative solutions based upon the application of relevant research results from a wide variety of sources. Individuals with a keen interest in translating basic neuroscience research into real-world applications are especially encouraged to apply. KNOWLEDGE AND EXPERIENCE DESIRED: Background in one or more of the following areas: machine learning, pattern recognition, statistical data analysis, neural statistical modeling, neurophysiology, peripheral physiology, neuroscience, and sleep/wake states. Programming proficiency in Matlab and/or C++ is required. ESSENTIAL PHYSICAL/MENTAL REQUIREMENTS: Good communication (verbal and written) skills and active participation in R&D team activities are required. Able and willing to occasionally travel. SPECIAL REQUIREMENTS: Should be U.S. citizen or permanent resident. If interested, please apply at the following link: https://www4.recruitingcenter.net/Clients/HRL/PublicJobs/controller.cfm?jbaction=JobProfile&Job_Id=10878&esid=az. Also, send your resume via email to Dr. Praveen Pilly (pkpilly at hrl.com) and put the pertinent Job Name in the subject heading. We are proud to be an EOE/Minorities/Females/Vet/Disability employer. We maintain a drug-free workplace and perform pre-employment substance abuse testing. The Information and Systems Sciences Laboratory (ISSL) at HRL Laboratories conducts groundbreaking research in three thrust areas: Complex Networks, Secure and Resilient Systems, Autonomy Computing, and Human-Machine Cognition. We create new and innovative capabilities for diverse applications such as cyber-security, unmanned autonomous systems, human performance augmentation, big data analytics, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, and electronic warfare. The goal of our research in Human-Machine Cognition is to understand how humans process information and effectively interact with the environment to develop smarter autonomous systems, enhance human performance, and develop novel processing systems. Our research starts with the development of large-scale, neurobiologically and behaviorally faithful brain region models. We apply these models along with real-time measurements of brain activity (EEG, fMRI, fNIRS) to create advanced brain-computer interfaces, human decision aids, and neurostimulation-based enhanced training systems. We also use our models to develop novel brain-inspired sensor exploitation, machine learning, and control algorithms, and to develop low size, weight and power brain-based processing hardware for resilient autonomous systems, dexterous robots, and threat warning applications. HRL offers a competitive salary and benefits package, a small company atmosphere, and an ideal work location overlooking the Pacific Ocean. We also provide a collaborative technical culture committed to producing the leading R&D in the world. -- Praveen K. Pilly, Ph.D. Research Staff Scientist Information and Systems Sciences Laboratory HRL Laboratories Address: 3011 Malibu Canyon Road, Malibu, CA 90265 Tel: (310) 317-5492 Email: pkpilly at hrl.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From diego.sona at gmail.com Wed May 10 04:01:36 2017 From: diego.sona at gmail.com (Diego Sona) Date: Wed, 10 May 2017 10:01:36 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: Fully funded PhD position on computational methods for brain connectivity analysis Message-ID: <5B0AC459-F94A-4090-A1CF-93BCD4403EC8@gmail.com> We are seeking candidates for a PhD position entitled ?Computational Methods for Brain Connectivity Analysis? which mainly concerns with the development of novel approaches (based on pattern recognition and machine learning methodologies) for the brain connectivity analysis of neuroimaging data (fMRI, rsMRI, DTI, MEG, EEG, etc.). The PhD grant is jointly supported by Fondazione Bruno Kessler (FBK) and Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT). The research activity will take place at the Neuroinformatics Laboratory (NILab, https://nilab.fbk.eu/ ) and the Pattern Analysis and Computer Vision Department (PAVIS, http://pavis.iit.it/ ). NILab is an interdisciplinary laboratory raised as joint initiative between the Centre for Information Technology of FBK and the Centre for Mind/Brain Sciences of University of Trento (CIMeC, http://www.cimec.unitn.it ). The applicant should have a strong background in machine learning and pattern recognition methodologies with a keen interest in neuroscience. The successful candidate will have the opportunity to work in an interdisciplinary environment. Interested candidates are invited to contact Paolo Avesani (avesani at fbk.eu ) and Diego Sona (diego.sona at iit.it ) by emailing their CV and a short statement of interest in this position. The candidates must in any case formally apply for the PhD grant following the instructions in the call published by Universit? degli studi di Trento (see the application webpage http://ict.unitn.it/application/ict_doctoral_school ) referring to position A3. Deadline for formal application is May 31, 2017, hrs. 04.00 PM (Italian time, GMT +2) For further information on the position and the application process refers to the following links http://ict.unitn.it http://ict.unitn.it/application/project_specific_grants -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From m.von.papen at fz-juelich.de Wed May 10 04:18:46 2017 From: m.von.papen at fz-juelich.de (Michael von Papen) Date: Wed, 10 May 2017 10:18:46 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: 2nd CfP: Coupling & Causality in Complex Systems, Sep 25-27, Cologne, Germany Message-ID: <3cbeb5bf-8a1d-3552-8d5b-031218b48d0f@fz-juelich.de> ============================================================== 2nd CALL FOR PAPERS (Deadline: June 01, 2017) http://c3s.uni-koeln.de ============================================================== INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE: *Coupling and Causality in Complex Systems* September 25-27, 2017, Cologne, Germany -------------------------------------------------------------- The interdisciplinary conference Coupling and Causality in Complex Systems (C3S) is hosted by the Competence Area 3: Quantitative Modeling of Complex Systems of the University of Cologne (UoC), Germany. It is organized by the Institute of Geophysics & Meteorology, UoC, the Institute of Clinical Neuroscience and Psychology, Heinrich-Heine University D?sseldorf and the Department of Cognitive Neuroscience at the Research Center Juelich. -------------------------------------------------- *Invited Speakers* J?rg Breitung - Macroeconomic Policy Institute, University of Cologne, Germany David Gross - Institute of Theoretical Physics, University of Cologne, Germany Philip Holmes - Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering / Princeton Neuroscience Institute, Princeton, USA Ankit Khambhati - Department of Bioengineering, University of Pennsylvania, USA Laura Marzetti - Department of Neuroscience, Universit? degli Studi "G. d'Annunzio" Chieti - Pescara Arkady Pikovsky - Institute of Physics and Astronomy, University Potsdam, Germany Michael Rosenblum - Institute of Physics and Astronomy, University Potsdam, Germany Jakob Runge - The Grantham Institute for Climate Change, Imperial College London -------------------------------------------------- *Preliminary Session Program* We will have different sessions with differing topics and each session will be opened by one of the invited speakers. Here is a preliminary version of our program: Session 1 Synchronization I Arkady Pikovsky Session 2 Synchronization II Silvia Daun Session 3 Coupled oscillators I Phil Holmes Session 4 Coupled oscillators II Michael Rosenblum Session 5 Phase coupling Laura Marzetti Session 6 Network structures Ankit Khambati Session 7 Bayesian networks David Gross Session 8 Granger causality I J?rg Breitung Session 9 Granger causality II Esther Florin Session 10 Causal network measures Jakob Runge Further topics of interest for the conference include, amongst others, research and methods development on: functional connectivity, (partial directed) coherence, network topology, graph-theoretic measures, directed graphs, nonlinear dynamics of complex systems, complex spatio-temporal systems, mutual information and transfer entropy. -------------------------------------------------------------- *Scientific Organizing Committee* Silvia Daun - Institute of Zoology, University of Cologne, Germany; Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine, Research Center J?lich, Germany Esther Florin - Institute of Clinical Neuroscience and Psychology, D?sseldorf, Germany Joachim Gross - Center for Cognitive Neuroimaging, Glasgow, UK Michael von Papen - Institute of Geophysics & Meteorology, Cologne, Germany; Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine, Research Center J?lich, Germany -------------------------------------------------------------- *Abstract* Complex systems such as the human brain, Earth?s climate and economy are characterized by a multitude of coupled processes on different spatial and temporal scales. In order to better understand the dynamics of the system at hand each scientific area has developed specific tools to identify, model and quantify these processes. The conference Coupling and Causality in Complex Systems (C3S) will present a collection of these approaches with the aim to provide scientists with new analysis strategies for their field. The conference focuses on how to characterize a complex system and on the methods for estimating and modeling of statistical coupling (e.g. network coherence, creation and modulation of small networks and local or long-range synchronization by cross frequency phase-phase and phase-amplitude coupling) and causality (e.g. Granger causality, transfer entropy). Therefore, data analysts from different study fields including neuroscience, mathematics, physics, biology, and economy will present their approaches with a particular focus on the methods they use. The aim of this conference is to foster discussions and the transdisciplinary exchange of advanced techniques, methods, and algorithms, thereby stimulating potential future collaborations. -------------------------------------------------------------- *PAPER SUBMISSION AND REGISTRATION* Authors are invited to submit conference abstracts with up to 400 words. Authors of exceptional abstracts will be given the opportunity to present their research in a talk. However, poster sessions will be provided with ample time for discussions. For your submission, please use the conference website c3s.uni-koeln.de. To register, please send an email with the subject "registration" to c3s-conference at uni-koeln.de. Please be sure to include your full name, your affiliation and whether you qualify as student (also PhD candidates) or not. The registration fee will cover snacks and refreshments during coffee breaks, lunch and a dinner with all participants. Early-bird registration is available until July 10 with a reduced fee of 100 EUR (50 EUR for students), after July 10 the registration fee will be 200 EUR (100 EUR for students). -------------------------------------------------------------- IMPORTANT DATES Paper Submission deadline: June 01, 2017 Author Notification: mid June, 2017 Early-bird registration: July 10, 2017 Conference: September 25-27, 2017 ============================================================== Please find the call for papers and more information at the conference website: http://c3s.uni-koeln.de. For questions regarding the conference feel free to contact us via c3s-conference at uni-koeln.de. -- ------------------------------------------ UNIVERSITY OF COLOGNE Institute of Geophysics & Meteorology Coordinator of Competence Area III: Quantitative Modeling of Complex Systems Dr. Michael von Papen Email: m.papen at uni-koeln.de http://www.uni-koeln.de/~vpapenm http://complexsystems.uni-koeln.de ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Forschungszentrum Juelich GmbH 52425 Juelich Sitz der Gesellschaft: Juelich Eingetragen im Handelsregister des Amtsgerichts Dueren Nr. HR B 3498 Vorsitzender des Aufsichtsrats: MinDir Dr. Karl Eugen Huthmacher Geschaeftsfuehrung: Prof. Dr.-Ing. Wolfgang Marquardt (Vorsitzender), Karsten Beneke (stellv. Vorsitzender), Prof. Dr.-Ing. Harald Bolt, Prof. Dr. Sebastian M. Schmidt ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ From secretary at e-nns.org Wed May 10 12:30:15 2017 From: secretary at e-nns.org (ENNS Secretary) Date: Wed, 10 May 2017 18:30:15 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: Full Professorship in Information Systems at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland Message-ID: <66D557FB-7B38-41A5-986D-2E13F9B2C5E3@e-nns.org> The Faculty of Business and Economics of the University of Lausanne, Switzerland (HEC Lausanne, www.unil.ch/hec) invites applications for a position in the field of ' Big Data & Analytics', starting on *February 1st, 2018* or on a mutually agreed date, as *Full Professor in Information Systems* Candidates must hold a PhD in Information Systems or a related discipline. They should have an excellent research and publication record in the field of Big Data & Analytics as well as teaching experience at university level. In order to create synergies, applicants should be interested in linking their research with other management disciplines. The successful candidate will be expected to be able to teach in French after two years. A job description is available at: http://www.hec.unil.ch/candidatures Applications must be submitted online by *June 9, 2017 (11:59 pm local time)* via the website of the Faculty : http://www.unil.ch/hec/jobs Please fill in the electronic application form, and upload curriculum vitae, cover letter, samples of scholarly work, and the names and addresses of maximum three references. Seeking to promote an equitable representation of men and women among its staff, the University encourages applications from women. -- European Neural Network Society Secretariat From aml at inesc-id.pt Wed May 10 11:04:03 2017 From: aml at inesc-id.pt (Arlindo Oliveira) Date: Wed, 10 May 2017 17:04:03 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: MIT Press new title: The Digital Mind Message-ID: <59132BE3.7020800@inesc-id.pt> Dear Connectionists Listserv Members, MIT Press recently published a general interest book that may be interesting for some members of this list: The Digital Mind: How Science Is Redefining Humanity Publisher: MIT Press Author: Arlindo Oliveira http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/digital-mind ISBN: 9780262338387 Overview: What do computers, cells, and brains have in common? Computers are electronic devices designed by humans; cells are biological entities crafted by evolution; brains are the containers and creators of our minds. But all are, in one way or another, information-processing devices. The power of the human brain is, so far, unequaled by any existing machine or known living being. Over eons of evolution, the brain has enabled us to develop tools and technology to make our lives easier. Our brains have even allowed us to develop computers that are almost as powerful as the human brain itself. This book describes how advances in science and technology could enable us to create digital minds. Exponential growth is a pattern built deep into the scheme of life, but technological change now promises to outstrip even evolutionary change. The book describes technological and scientific advances that range from the discovery of the laws that control the behavior of the electromagnetic fields to the development of computers. The book describes evolution as the ultimate algorithm, discusses genetics and the evolution of the central nervous system, and describes the role that computer imaging has played in understanding and modeling the brain. Having considered the behavior of the unique system that creates a mind, the book addresses an unavoidable question: Is the human brain the only system that can host a mind? If digital minds come into existence (and it is difficult to argue that they will not) what are the social, legal, and ethical implications? Will digital minds be our partners, or our rivals? -- Arlindo Oliveira Professor Computer Science and Engineering Dept. Instituto Superior T?cnico From y.demiris at imperial.ac.uk Wed May 10 09:40:22 2017 From: y.demiris at imperial.ac.uk (Demiris, Yiannis) Date: Wed, 10 May 2017 13:40:22 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: Researcher position on computational modelling of human attentional processes, Imperial College London Message-ID: <0AB4E220-8A18-4B04-A018-C31E4AA8FF0D@ic.ac.uk> Dear colleagues, a researcher position is available at my laboratory to work on computational modelling of human attentional processes and how are they affected by multimodal distractors and cognitive workload, with applications to adaptive brain-machine interfaces for assisted driving. The applicant will preferably be at a postdoctoral level, but other candidates will also be considered. The research will be part of a USA/UK MURI (Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative) project on ?Adaptive Closed-Loop Multisensory Brain-Computer Interfaces for Enhanced Decision Accuracy?. You will be part of the Personal Robotics Laboratory at the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering of Imperial College in London, a vibrant multidisciplinary research group interested in perceiving, modelling and assisting humans performing complex tasks. You will be collaborating closely with researchers from USC, CSHL, Harvard, NYU, UC Berkeley, UCL and Essex, and will collect multimodal (behavioural, physiological and performance) human data whilst the human is driving simulated cars in the presence of distractors and under additional workload induced through secondary and tertiary cognitive and sensorimotor tasks. Applicants with related background and strong mathematical and computational skills are encouraged to read more about the position by following the relevant links contained here: www.iis.ee.ic.ac.uk/yiannis/ Applications should be through the college?s recruitment portal: https://www.imperial.ac.uk/job-applicants/ (search for post reference EN20170111SA). Deadline: 23rd of May 2017. Wth best wishes, Yiannis ---- Professor Yiannis Demiris, FIET, FBCS, FRSS Personal Robotics Laboratory Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Rm 1014, Imperial College London, South Kensington Campus, Exhibition Road, London, SW7 2BT, UK Tel: +44-(0)2075946300, Fax: +44-(0)2075946274 Webpage: http://www.iis.ee.ic.ac.uk/yiannis Lab: http://www.imperial.ac.uk/PersonalRobotics From pkoenig at uos.de Thu May 11 03:31:57 2017 From: pkoenig at uos.de (=?UTF-8?Q?Peter_K=c3=b6nig?=) Date: Thu, 11 May 2017 09:31:57 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: Deadline extended to 21st May: Joint OCCAM / socSMC Workshop on "Mechanisms and models of social interaction" Message-ID: Deadline for abstract submission and registration extended to 21st May! ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ OCCAM / socSMC Workshop on "Mechanisms and models of social interaction" in Osnabr?ck from the 6th to 8th July 2017 (http://www.occam-os.de/occam.html) ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Tamil Asfour*, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology Verena Hafner*, Humboldt-Universit?t of Berlin Ivan Herreros*, UPF Barcelona Concetta Morrone*, University of Pisa Bernhard Hommel*, Leiden University Ivana Konvalinka*,Technical University of Denmark Simone Sch?tz-Bosbach*, LMU Munich Markus Siegel*, University T?bingen Luciano Fadiga*, University of Ferrara Tobias Heed*, University of Bielefeld Basil Wahn*, Osnabr?ck University Ophelia Deroy*, University of London Susan Brennan, Stony Brooks University Thomas Metzinger*, University Mainz Merle Faihurst*, University of London Hauke Heekeren*, Free University Berlin The OCCAM (Osnabr?ck Computational Cognition Alliance Meeting) is organized by Gordon Pipa, Frank J?kel and myself and brings together well established outstanding researchers as well as young promising scientists. This year, the 6th workshop of the series, jointly with the socSMCs project and coordinates with Andreas Engel (http://socsmcs.eu/), we focus on social interactions. The topic comprises theoretical, computational, physiological and robotics approaches. The program includes full length talks (see above), student presentations, a poster session, guided poster tours and a public talk to the general audience. We go to great length to actively involve all participants. Furthermore, there will also be time for informal discussions. Osnabr?ck is a charming town with a long history many places worth visiting (https://www.osnabrueck.de/english.html). It is conveniently located at the intersection of major train routes and has a local airport with good connections to major hubs (Frankfurt, Munich, London-City Airport) as well as a selection of further direct connections. More detailed travel information can be at http://www.occam-os.de/travel-info.html. We'd be happy if this meeting is of interest to you or your students and hope to welcome you in Osnabr?ck in summer 2017. Best, Peter, Gordon, Frank & Andreas -- Prof. Dr. Peter K?nig Institute of Cognitive Science University Osnabr?ck Wachsbleiche 27 49090 Osnabr?ck +49 541 969 2399 http://cogsci.uni-osnabrueck.de/~NBP/ -- Prof. Dr. Peter K?nig Institute of Cognitive Science University Osnabr?ck Wachsbleiche 27 49090 Osnabr?ck +49 541 969 2399 http://cogsci.uni-osnabrueck.de/~NBP/ -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 842 bytes Desc: OpenPGP digital signature URL: From samuel.kaski at aalto.fi Thu May 11 09:58:32 2017 From: samuel.kaski at aalto.fi (Kaski Samuel) Date: Thu, 11 May 2017 13:58:32 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: CFP: ICML Workshop on Private and Secure Machine Learning 2017 Message-ID: ********************************************************************** Call for Contributions Workshop on Private and Secure Machine Learning 2017 https://sites.google.com/view/psml/ at ICML 2017, Sydney, Australia 10th/11th August 2017 ********************************************************************** There are two complementary approaches to private and secure machine learning: differential privacy can guarantee privacy of the subjects of the training data with respect to the output of a differentially private learning algorithm, while cryptographic approaches can guarantee secure operation of the learning process in a potentially distributed environment. The aim of this workshop is to discuss the most recent results in this very rapidly progressing and exciting field, and to bring together researchers from both private and secure machine learning, to stimulate interactions to advance either perspective or to combine them. IMPORTANT DATES * Submission Date: 26 May 2017 * Notification of Acceptance: 19 June 2017 * Workshop date: 10 or 11 August 2017 CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS We invite submissions of abstracts for talks and posters at PSML2017 on all aspects of private and secure ML. The abstracts should be 300-600 words long. The program committee will select several submitted abstracts for 20-minute talks. PSML2017 will consider submissions of both previously published and unpublished work. Accepted abstracts will be published on the workshop website. We look forward for submissions that are novel, exciting and that appeal to the wider community. For more details see: https://sites.google.com/view/psml/ Please submit your contributions at https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=psml2017 ORGANIZERS: Antti Honkela (http://www.hiit.fi/u/ahonkela/) Kana Shimizu (https://iskana.github.io/web/) Samuel Kaski (https://users.ics.aalto.fi/sami/) From alessandra.sciutti at gmail.com Fri May 12 08:26:40 2017 From: alessandra.sciutti at gmail.com (Alessandra Sciutti) Date: Fri, 12 May 2017 14:26:40 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: [jobs] 2 Fully Funded PhD Positions at the Italian Institute of Technology in the Cognitive Robotics and Interaction Lab of the Robotics, Brain and Cognitive Sciences Department Message-ID: <00a501d2cb1b$021ee3a0$065caae0$@gmail.com> Apologies for cross-posting ================================================================== 2 PhD Openings at the Cognitive Robotics and Interaction Lab Robotics, Brain and Cognitive Sciences Department Italian Institute of Technology =========================================================== In the spirit of the doctoral School on Bioengineering and Robotics the PhD Program for the curriculum "Cognitive Robotics, Interaction and Rehabilitation Technologies" provides interdisciplinary training at the interface between technology and life-sciences. The general objective of the program is to form scientists and research technologists capable of working in multidisciplinary teams on projects where human factors play a crucial role in technological development and design. Robotics and neuroscience researchers in RBCS share, as a fundamental scientific objective, the study of physical and social interaction in humans and machines ( www.iit.it/rbcs ). Among the different research themes proposed I would like to advertise these two topics: . MAKE HUMANOIDS UNDERSTAND HUMAN GOALS . EMBODIED "SOCIAL" INTELLIGENCE FOR HUMAN-ROBOT INTERACTION The ideal candidates are students with a higher level university degree willing to invest extra time and effort in blending into a multidisciplinary team composed of neuroscientists, engineers, psychologists, physicists working together to investigate brain functions and realize intelligent machines, rehabilitation protocols and advanced prosthesis. International applications are encouraged and will receive logistic support with visa issues, relocation, etc. Below you can find more details related to the positions and the instructions on how to apply ======================================================================= Application deadline: *****13 June 2017, Noon, Italian time***** ======================================================================= =============== Themes =============== Make humanoids understand human goals Tutors: Dr. Alessandra Sciutti, Dr. Francesco Rea, Prof. Giulio Sandini Institute: IIT (Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia) Research Unit: Robotics, Brain and Cogntive Sciences ( https://iit.it/RBCS) Description: Although traditionally collaboration has been modeled as relying mainly on a planning process, it is nowadays acknowledged that what makes human interactions fast and efficient is emergent coordination, a subconscious mechanism based on a tight link between action execution and perception. Neurophysiological evidence indicate that action observation activates in the observer a motor representation of the same action learned through execution, which yields to a rapid and automatic understanding of the goals and intentions of others. Hence, visual action understanding requires a sensori-motor action representation, previously built by performing the action. This mechanism supports also phenomena like mutual adaptation, synchronization and anticipation, which cut drastically the delays and the need of complex verbal instructions in the interaction and result in the establishment of joint intentions. It is crucial to have a similar process working in humanoid robots, in order to make human-robot interaction intuitive and natural. The general aim of this project is to provide the humanoid robot iCub with visuo-motor matching skills, enabling it to build a multimodal, sensorimotor representation of its actions to be exploited to understand human goals. In particular the robot will have to learn the motor (efference copy) and sensory (visual, joint angles, forces) consequences of its own actions and find how to map these with the visual representation of human behaviors obtained through the observation of human actions. The work might take advantage of a computational system already available on the robot designed to localize the portion of the scene containing biological motion and extract some of its visual features . Requirements: degree in robotics, bioengineering, computer science, computer engineering, or related disciplines, attitude for problem solving, c++ programming. A background on machine learning is an asset. References: . Vignolo A., Rea. F.,Noceti N., Sciutti A., Odone F. & Sandini G. 2016, 'Biological movement detector enhances the attentive skills of humanoid robot iCub' in IEEE/RAS International Conference of Humanoids Robotics, Cancun, Mexico November 15-17 2016. . Sciutti A., Ansuini C., Becchio C. & Sandini G. 2015, 'Investigating the ability to read others' intentions using humanoid robots', Frontiers in Psychology - Cognitive Science, vol. 6,no. 1362 . L. Craighero, G. Metta, G. Sandini, and L. Fadiga, "The mirror-neurons system: data and models.," Prog. Brain Res., vol. 164, pp. 39-59, Jan. 2007 Contacts: Applicants are strongly encouraged to contact the perspective tutors before they submit their application: alessandra.sciutti at iit.it , francesco.rea at iit.it , giulio.sandini at iit.it =============== Embodied "social" intelligence for human robot interaction Tutors: Francesco Rea, PhD; Alessandra Sciutti, PhD; Prof. Giulio Sandini Institute: IIT (Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia) Research Unit: Robotics, Brain and Cogntive Sciences ( https://iit.it/RBCS) Description: Purposive behavior with anticipation of the consequences of one's actions and other's actions are critical desirable features if robots are to truly become companions in everyday tasks. It is one objective of the pilot study in Robocom++[1] to adopt a brain-guided approach to enable robotic companions to instantaneously simulate the perspective of the "other" (like humans), thereby engaging in cooperative behaviors. Presently, while emerging trends in neurosciences like the discovery of the default mode network [2,3], action observation network [4,5] are revolutionizing our understanding of the cortical basis of social intelligence, the underlying mechanistic/computational mechanisms remain challenging research topics. The aim of this project is to address the objectives of Robocom++ and to provide computational processes that allow us to "perceive, act and remember" and to recycle them in order to simulate the perspective of others. In other words we aim at developing mechanisms that allow us to reuse our own episodic experiences to adopt the viewpoint of the other by analogy. The PhD program will comprise at least one of the following research topics: . To represent and simulate other's actions in humanoid robots . To develop reciprocal recognition of agency in HRI . To enable perspective taking from episodic memory in humanoid robots . To integrate Embodied Social Intelligence in a framework of cognitive reasoning. . To validate Humanoid Social Behaviour in ecological context Requirements: degree in robotics, bioengineering, computer science, computer engineering, or related disciplines, attitude for problem solving, c++ programming. A background on machine learning is an asset. References 1. http://sssa.bioroboticsinstitute.it/news/robocomplusplus 2. Mohan V, Sandini G, Morasso P. (2014). A neural framework for organization and flexible utilization of episodic memory in "cumulatively" learning baby humanoids, Neural Computation 26(12), 2692-2734, MIT Press. 3. Schacter, D.L., Addis, D.R., Hassabis, D., Martin, V.C., Spreng, R.N., Szpunar, K.K. (2012). The Future of Memory: Remembering, Imagining, and the Brain. Neuron, 76, 677-694. 4. Gallese, V., Sinigaglia, C. (2011). What is so special with Embodied Simulation. Trends in Cognitive Sciences. 15(11):512-9. 5. Bressler, S,L., Menon, V. (2010). Large-scale brain networks in cognition: emerging methods and principles. Trends in cognitive sciences Volume 14, Issue 6, June 2010, Pages 277-290 Contacts: Applicants are strongly encouraged to contact the perspective tutors before they submit their application: francesco.rea at iit.it, alessandra.sciutti at iit.it, giulio.sandini at iit.it =============== How to apply =============== Please note that the positions are available through the PhD course of Bioengineering and Robotics, curriculum on Cognitive Robotics, Interaction and Rehabilitation Technologies, offered jointly by IIT and the University of Genoa. The official calls are available here: https://www.iit.it/phd-school under the Curriculum "Cognitive Robotics, interaction and rehabilitation technologies". Please have a look at the "tips and tricks" section, which contains detailed instructions on how to apply and a list of documents you have to present. The link to the on-line application page is: http://www.studenti.unige.it/postlaurea/dottorati/XXXIII/ In case of problems or questions related to the application procedure, please contact: anastasia.bruzzone at iit.it ============================================================ Application deadline: *****13 June 2017, Noon, Italian time****** ============================================================ ---------------------------------------- Alessandra Sciutti (PhD) Researcher, Robotics Brain and Cognitive Sciences Unit Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia Center for Human Technologies Via Enrico Melen 83, Building B 16152 Genova, Italy tel: +39 010 8172 210 email: alessandra.sciutti at iit.it website: https://www.iit.it/people/alessandra-sciutti From stefanos at cs.ntua.gr Fri May 12 09:26:47 2017 From: stefanos at cs.ntua.gr (Stefanos Kollias) Date: Fri, 12 May 2017 16:26:47 +0300 Subject: Connectionists: research fellow in machine learning: post announcement, university of lincoln uk In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: *Research Fellow in Machine Learning and Deep Neural Architectures for Signal Analysis and Prediction * *School of Computer Science, University of Lincoln, UK* ** *Salary: * From ?32,004 per annum This post is fixed term for 27 months *Closing Date: * Thursday 08 June 2017 *Interview Date: * Monday 19 June 2017 *Reference: *COS417 We seek to employ a highly motivated post-doctoral researcher that will be working on the EU-H2020 project "CORe monitoring Techniques and EXperimental validation and demonstration (CORTEX)". The project will give the opportunity to the post holder to engage with other partners of the project across Europe. You should hold a PhD (or equivalent) or be near to completion, and should be able to demonstrate a good track record in at least one of the following research fields: Machine Learning,Deep Learning,Signal Processing Applications,Pattern Analysis. The contract is fixed for 27 months (September 2017 ? December 2019). This position is funded by the EU-H2020 project CORe monitoring Techniques and EXperimental validation and demonstration. The CORTEX project aims at developing core monitoring techniques that can be used to detect and characterize operational problems, before they have any inadvertent effect on plant safety and availability. The project relies on using the fluctuations existing in any process parameter that can be measured at the plants in order to monitor their state, primarily the neutron flux. The postholder will work on applying machine learning and deep learning techniques for analysing the collected signals and produce effective and transparent predictions. You can apply on-line through the University of Lincoln web site. If you would like to know more about this opportunity, please contact *Professor Stefanos Kollias* (Founding Professor of Machine Learning, skollias at lincoln.ac.uk ). -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From salah at boun.edu.tr Fri May 12 10:17:18 2017 From: salah at boun.edu.tr (Albert Ali Salah) Date: Fri, 12 May 2017 17:17:18 +0300 Subject: Connectionists: Call for interest in an Advanced Workshop on Machine Learning For Network Security Message-ID: Hi, We are planning to organize a NATO Science for Peace and Security (SPS) Programme Advanced Workshop that brings together machine learning and network security experts to advance the state of the art in this area. Typically, network intrusion detection systems (IDS) and intrusion prevention systems (IPS) work by pattern matching, and maintain signatures of different attack types in a centralized and widely used database. Such databases are regularly updated with new attack patterns, as soon as they are known. There are several open source platforms that can handle large volumes of network traffic, and became industry standards. However, attackers constantly adapt their approaches. These platforms need to be extended or supplemented with flexible, adaptive machine learning solutions. The planned topics are for the workshop are: -Fast machine learning approaches for network anomaly detection -Deep learning systems for detection of network attacks -Approaches for integrating CRM and network data for network security -Algorithms for attack type classification -DDOS attacks generated by IoT devices -Machine learning for security on software defined networking and NFV -Data and analytics driven network security We are collecting expressions of interest at the moment, either to be a speaker or a participant in such an event. The workshop will be followed by focused sessions to discuss joint project collaborations for the NATO SPS program. We are hoping to make some travel funding available for the participants. If you are interested in machine learning and network security, please contact A.A. Salah (salah at boun.edu.tr, Bogazici University) or S. Kuran (sukru.kuran at agu.edu.tr, Abdullah Gul University) until 25 May, 2017. We will determine the time & location of the workshop based on the interest. -- Dr. Albert Ali Salah Bogazici University, Computer Engineering Dept. 34342 Bebek - Istanbul, Turkey Phone: +90 212 359 (7774) http://www.cmpe.boun.edu.tr/~salah/ Bogazici University, Cognitive Science MA Program http://www.cogsci.boun.edu.tr From srdjan.ostojic at ens.fr Fri May 12 17:08:22 2017 From: srdjan.ostojic at ens.fr (Srdjan Ostojic) Date: Fri, 12 May 2017 23:08:22 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: Neural Coding, Computation and Dynamics: abstract deadline extension Message-ID: <59162446.2060701@ens.fr> Due to the impending NIPS deadline, the deadline for abstract submission has bee n extended to May 26! Neural Coding, Computation and Dynamics (NCCD) September 17 - 20, 2017 Capbreton, France https://nccd2017.sciencesconf.org/ Towards a mechanistic interpretation of neural data NCCD17 is the third in a series of meetings focusing on topics in theoretical an d experimental neuroscience. Techniques for recording and manipulating large-scale neural activity in awake b ehaving animals are developing at an accelerating pace. Identifying the principl es of neural processing requires a mechanistic interpretation of the large amoun ts of collected data. The aim of this workshop is to make progress in that direc tion by bringing together three different communities: (i) experimentalists perf orming large-scale recordings in behaving animals; (ii) modelers specialized in statistical data-analysis; (iii) theorists working with mechanistic network mode ls. We are looking for talks that build bridges across these different approache s. As with previous workshops, our goal is to foster the strong interactions we bel ieve are so important for this field. So the meeting will be small (~70 people). Venue: Casino de Capbreton, Capbreton, France. Important dates: May 26: abstract submission deadline June 9: early registration deadline Confirmed speakers: Mark Churchland (Columbia) Tatiana Engel (Stanford) Adrienne Fairhall (Seattle) Julijana Gjorgjieva (Frankfurt) Jakob Macke (Bonn) Alfonso Renart (Lisbon) Dmitry Rinberg (NYU) Ilana Witten (Princeton) Byron Yu (Pittsburgh) Organizers: Peter Latham (UCL) Srdjan Ostojic (ENS Paris) Maneesh Sahani (UCL) Previous meetings: http://www.gatsby.ucl.ac.uk/nccd/ From tarek.besold at googlemail.com Fri May 12 16:47:21 2017 From: tarek.besold at googlemail.com (Tarek R. Besold) Date: Fri, 12 May 2017 22:47:21 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: FINAL EXTENSION: 12th Int. Workshop on Neural-Symbolic Learning and Reasoning (NeSy) -- Full paper submission: May 24, 2017 Message-ID: <003601d2cb60$f4a70090$ddf501b0$@gmail.com> === NeSy'17: 12th International Workshop on Neural-Symbolic Learning and Reasoning === Date: July 17 & 18, 2017. Venue: City, University of London, UK. *** SUBMISSION DEADLINE EXTENDED: MAY 24, 2017 *** = WEBSITE = http://www.neural-symbolic.org/NeSy17/ = KEYNOTE SPEAKERS = Mauro Ferreira, Trinity College Dublin. Zoubin Ghahramani, University of Cambridge & Uber AI Labs. Alex Graves, Google DeepMind. Pascal Hitzler, Wrights State University. Chris Percy, BetBuddy Ltd. Murray Shanahan, Imperial College London. = INDUSTRY PANEL = Simo Dragicevic, CEO, BetBuddy Ltd. (moderator). John McNamara, Senior Inventor, IBM. James Davidson, Software Engineer, Google Brain. Jamie Woodhouse, Managing Director and Head of Financial Services Management Consulting and Finance and Risk, Accenture. Lonnie Hamm, Head of Data Science, Kindred Group Plc. Amir Saffari, Director of Applied AI, BenevolentAI. = INDUSTRY TRACK ADDED = For the first time, the 2017 edition of NeSy will feature an industry track on the second day of the workshop, July 18, 2017. The track will cover industry applications of neural-symbolic methods (including knowledge extraction from statistical data, neural-symbolic methods integrating data and knowledge for the semantic web, etc.), with the program featuring contributions from industry and academia alike. Also, there will be time to mix and mingle, exchange experiences from practitioners on both sides, and develop joint ideas and projects for the future. = REGISTRATION = The registration for NeSy'17 has become available from the City, University of London eStore: http://estore.city.ac.uk/product-catalogue/conference-events/school-specific -events/12th-international-workshop-on-neuralsymbolic-learning-and-reasoning -nesy17 = CALL FOR PAPERS = Artificial Intelligence researchers continue to face huge challenges in their quest to develop truly intelligent systems. The recent developments in the field of neural-symbolic integration bring an opportunity to integrate well-founded symbolic artificial intelligence with robust neural computing machinery to help tackle some of these challenges. The Workshop on Neural-Symbolic Learning and Reasoning is intended to create an atmosphere of exchange of ideas, providing a forum for the presentation and discussion of the key topics related to neural-symbolic integration. Topics of interest include but are not limited to: - The representation of symbolic knowledge by connectionist systems; - Neural Learning theory; - Integration of logic and probabilities, e.g., in neural networks, but also more generally; - Structured learning and relational learning in neural networks; - Logical reasoning carried out by neural networks; - Integrated neural-symbolic approaches; - Extraction of symbolic knowledge from trained neural networks; - Integrated neural-symbolic reasoning; - Neural-symbolic cognitive models; - Biologically-inspired neural-symbolic integration; - Applications in robotics, simulation, fraud prevention, natural language processing, semantic web, software engineering, fault diagnosis, bioinformatics, visual intelligence, etc. ** Submission ** Researchers and practitioners are invited to submit original papers that have not been submitted for review or published elsewhere: - Submitted papers must be written in English, must be formatted according to the Springer LNCS style (templates and sample files are available from https://www.springer.com/gp/computer-science/lncs/conference-proceedings-gui delines), and should not exceed 10 pages (excluding references/bibliography) in the case of research and experience papers, and 6 pages (excluding references/bibliography) in the case of position papers or technical notes. - All submitted papers will be judged based on their relevance, originality, significance, technical quality, and organisation. - Papers must be submitted through EasyChair at https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=nesy17. - Additionally, presentations based on extended abstracts will be considered. These shall allow to report on latest results which had not been available at the time of paper submission. Therefore, the abstract deadline is significantly closer to the workshop date. Extended abstracts may not exceed 3 pages (including references/bibliography) and should aim to give a good impression of the type of work conducted, the achieved results and their importance for the field. ** Presentation ** Selected papers will be presented during the workshop. The workshop will include extra time for discussion of the presentations allowing the group to have a better understanding of the issues, challenges, and ideas being presented. ** Publication ** Accepted papers will be published in official workshop proceedings within the CEUR-WS.org series. Accepted abstracts will also be included in the official workshop proceedings. = IMPORTANT DATES = Deadline for paper submission (EXTENDED): May 24, 2017 Notification of paper acceptance/rejection: June 14, 2017 Deadline for abstract submission: June 18, 2017 Notification of abstract acceptance/rejection: June 25, 2017 Camera-ready paper due: July 2, 2017 Workshop date: July 17-18, 2017 = WORKSHOP ORGANISERS = General Chairs: - Tarek R. Besold (University of Bremen, Germany) - Artur d'Avila Garcez (City, University of London, UK) - Isaac Noble (Playground Global, U.S.A.) Local Chair at City, University of London: Simon Odense = PROGRAMME COMMITTEE = - Raquel Alhama, University of Amsterdam - James Davidson, Google Brain - Richard Evans, Google DeepMind - Barbara Hammer, Bielefeld University - Thomas Icard, Stanford University - Kai-Uwe Kuehnberger, University of Osnabrueck - Luis Lamb, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul - Thomas Lukasiewicz, University of Oxford - Edjard Mota, Federal University of Amazonas - Terrence C. Stewart, University of Waterloo - Serge Thill, University of Skoevde - Son Tran, CSIRO Australia - Stefan Wermter, University of Hamburg -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From fbln at ecomp.poli.br Sat May 13 08:25:17 2017 From: fbln at ecomp.poli.br (Prof. Fernando Buarque) Date: Sat, 13 May 2017 09:25:17 -0300 Subject: Connectionists: SECOND CFP: IEEE 2017 LA-CCI (4rd Latin-American Conference on Computational Intelligence), Peru - Arequipa (close to Machu Picchu) Message-ID: *** Sorry for cross-post *** *** Feel free to distribute *** *2017 IEEE LA-CCI - 4rd Latin-American Conference on Computational Intelligence* Arequipa, Peru (close to Machu Picchu). *November, 8-10th, 2017* [The 6-7th, prior, will be dedicated to the LA-School on CI] *WEBSITE => **http://la-cci.org/* *2nd CFP LINK =>* *http://la-cci.org/wp-content/uploads/LA-CCI2017/2nd-CFP-IEEE-LA-CCI-2017.pdf* *LA-CCI is supported by CI Societies/Groups from Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru(Host) and Venezuela.* *CONFERENCE OVERVIEW (4th Edition of LA-CCI):* The IEEE 2017 Latin American Conference on Computational Intelligence aims to (i) bring together the Soft Computing community to present the latest achievements and innovations in the multiple areas of Computational Intelligence and (ii) encourage participation by young researchers. Following the ethos of LA-CCI (check the Manifesto at http://la-cci.org/manifesto/), we are glad to put together a high-level international forum for scientists, researchers, engineers, professionals and educators to jointly disseminate latest research results and exchange views of the future research directions in the areas associated to Computational Intelligence. *MAIN-TRACKS:* * Evolutionary & Swarm Computation: Genetic Algorithms, Genetic Programming, Artificial Immune Systems, Swarm Intelligence, Collective Intelligence, Evolvable Hardware, Bio-inspired Methods. * Neural & Learning Systems: Neural Networks, Machine Learning, Complex Systems, Molecular and Quantum Computing, Complex Networks. * Fuzzy & Stochastic Modeling: Fuzzy Systems, Fuzzy Control & Decision Making, Uncertainty Analysis, Rough Sets, Fractals, Multiagent Systems, Reinforcement Learning, Game Theory. *KEY-SPEAKERS (CONFIRMED):* *1) Jos? Pr?ncipe * University of Florida (USA) * Talk: ?Information Theoretic Deep Learning?* *2) Giuseppe Zollo * Universit? degli Studi di Napoli Federico II (Italy) * Talk: ?The Aesthetics of Complexity: how the mind computes the beauty?* *3) Fernando Buarque de Lima Neto * Universidade de Pernambuco (Brazil) * Talk: ?Why Metaheuristics are so useful? * *4) Omar Florez * Intel Labs (USA) * Talk: ?From Machine Learning to Machine Understanding?* *5) Mike Preuss * University of M?nster (Germany) * Talk: ?Novel developments in CI and Games?* *6) Pablo Estevez * Universidad de Chile (Chile) * Talk: TBA* *SUBMISSIONS:* Papers should be no longer than 6 pages with original contributions, using the IEEE conference format, available at the event homepage along with other instructions. Papers can be submitted using the Easychair system (https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=2017ieeelacci ). *PUBLICATION (And Special Issues):* -Accepted and presented papers will be published in the IEEE LA-CCI 2016 Conference Proceedings and submitted to IEEE Xplore? -Top papers of IEEE LA-CCI 2017 will be published as extended versions in important journals related with CI (Including IEEE Latin America Transactions) *IMPORTANT DATES* -Submission of full papers (23:59, GMT -5) ** June** 12th, 2017* [and also MSc/PhD Theses Contest] -Notification of acceptance and Theses Contest Notification: July 23rd, 2017 . -Final (camera ready) paper due: by August 27th, 2017. -Author registration: by August 27th, 2017. -Early registration: August 1st, 2017. -Regular registration: September 10th, 2017 and onwards. -Conference Meeting: November 8-10th, 2017. *POST GRADUATE THESIS CONTEST * Students graded between January 1st 2016 and June 30th 2017 can send your summaries (2500 words) to Ph.D. Diego Peluffo at diegohpo at gmail.com *LA-CCI SCHOOL on COMPUTATIONAL INTELLIGENCE* Check instructions *VENUE* Arequipa, a pleasant colonial and touristic Peruvian city (18.C in November), is located 1,000 kilometers southeast of Peru?s capital, Lima. The town is next to three volcanoes and close to the world heritage of Machu Picchu. *ORGANIZERS* -General Chair LA-CCI 2017 Yv?n Jes?s T?pac Valdivia, Universidad Cat?lica San Pablo ? Peru -General Co-Chair & Director of LA-CCI Summer School Efren Gorrostieta, Universidad Aut?noma de Quer?taro ? Mexico -Program Chair Fernando Buarque de Lima Neto, Universidade de Pernambuco ? Brazil -Program Co-Chair Miguel N??ez del Prado, Universidad del Pac?fico ? Peru -Publications Chairs Nadia Nedjah, Universidade Estadual do Rio de Janeiro ? Brazil Carmelo Bastos Filho, Universidade de Pernambuco ? Brazil -Finance Chair and Treasurer Yessenia Deysiy Yari Ramos, Universidad Cat?lica San Pablo ? Peru -Publicity and Public Relations Chairs ARGENTINA: Cristian Rodriguez Rivero ? Universidad Nacional de C?rdoba BOLIVIA: Ren? V. Reynaga ? Universidad La Salle BRAZIL: Hugo Valadares ? Federal Technological University of Paran? COLOMBIA: ?lvaro Orjuela ? Universidad Antono Nari?o CHILE: Gloria Millaray Curilem Sald?as - Universidad de La Frontera ECUADOR: Diego Hern?n Peluffo-Ord??ez? Universidad T?cnica del Norte PERU: Ernesto Cuadros Vargas, Universidad de Ingenier?a y Tecnolog?a MEXICO: Alma Alanis ? University of Guadalajara VENEZUELA: Niriaska del Carmen Perozo ? Universidad Centroccidental ?Lisandro Alvarado? *Come & enjoy a nice conference as well as a very nice region of Peru * *Cultural visits will be organized to the world heritage of Machu Picchu)* Prof. Fernando Buarque , BSc MSc DIC PhD(UK) Hab(BR) AvH Fellow(DE), Senior Memb. IEEE(USA), Accred. Res. CNPq(BR) Associate Professor - Escola Polit?cnica/Universidade de Pernambuco (POLI /UPE ) Adjunct Professor - Electrical&Computer Engineering/Texas A&M University, USA (ECE at TAMU ) Graduate Faculty - Computer Science/Florida Institute of Technology, USA ( CS at FIT ) Visiting Professor - University of Johannesburg, South Africa (Kingsway Campus ) Head of the Computational Intelligence Research Group of UPE (CIRG at UPE ) Universidade de Pernambuco / Escola Polit?cnica de Pernambuco Rua Benfica, 455 (Bl. 'C' 2. andar) * Bairro: Madalena CEP 50720-001 * Recife, Pernambuco - Brasil Fone: +55(0)81 3184-7542 * Fax: +55(0)81 3184-7548 National => http://www.fbln.pro.br/ * International => http://www.fbln.net [image: LA-CCI 2017] *"Se voc? quiser educar um homem, comece pela av? dele" (Victor Hugo).* -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dhallabhinav at gmail.com Sun May 14 01:24:42 2017 From: dhallabhinav at gmail.com (abhinav dhall) Date: Sun, 14 May 2017 10:54:42 +0530 Subject: Connectionists: 2nd CFP: 5th EmotiW challenge @ ACM ICMI 2017 Message-ID: Apologies for cross-postings 2nd Call for challenge participation Train and Validation data is available now! Fifth Emotion Recognition in the Wild (EmotiW) Challenge 2017 https://sites.google.com/site/emotiwchallenge @ ACM International Conference on Multimodal Interaction 2017, Glasgow --------------------------------------------------------------------- The Fifth Emotion Recognition in the Wild 2017 Challenge consists of multimodal classification challenges, which mimics real-world conditions. Traditionally, emotion recognition has been performed on laboratory controlled data. While undoubtedly worthwhile at the time, such lab controlled data poorly represents the environment and conditions faced in real-world situations. With the increase in the number of video clips online, it is worthwhile to explore the performance of emotion recognition methods that work ?in the wild?. There are two sub-challenges: audio-video based emotion recognition in videos and group-level emotion recognition in the images (new). Timeline: Train and validate data - available now Test data available: 8 July 2017 Last date for uploading the results: 23 July 2017 Paper submission deadline: 10 August 2017 Notification: 1 September 2017 Camera-ready papers: 21 September 2017 Organisers Abhinav Dhall, Roland Goecke, Jyoti Joshi, Jesse Hoey and Tom Gedeon Contact emotiw2014 at gmail.com -- Abhinav Dhall, PhD Assistant Professor, Indian Institute of Technology Ropar -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From markmp at gmail.com Fri May 12 14:22:49 2017 From: markmp at gmail.com (Mark Palatucci) Date: Fri, 12 May 2017 11:22:49 -0700 Subject: Connectionists: [jobs] Robotics/AI engineer for Cloud AI team Message-ID: Job Title: Robotics/AI engineer for Cloud AI platform team Location: San Francisco, CA How to apply: https://boards.greenhouse.io/anki/jobs/690026 Anki's robotics team is searching for a senior platform services engineer for our Cloud AI team. This team is responsible for building cloud services that give our robots much stronger capabilities in voice, image and general pattern recognition, and allow connections to cloud-driven dynamic content. You will focus on designing microservices/APIs that give our robots cloud-connected features that significantly enhance their usefulness and value. You could be exploring new AI APIs from large cloud providers, or deploying our own deep-networks for voice/NLP or image recognition tasks. You will join a small, senior team of engineers tasked with deploying bleeding edge AI algorithms to power one of the most sophisticated uses of artificial intelligence and robotics in a mass-market application. As a Cloud AI engineer, you will bring a depth of knowledge on robotics, AI or pattern recognition systems, and team up with production engineers to deploy highly scalable, reliable, production quality AI services. Your passion for high quality code and architecture, for automation and testing, and for identifying and solving problems with code will help Anki create new kinds of AI and robotics in the cloud. *Duties and Responsibilities* - Design, implement, and expand mission critical and high-volume AI services running on a major cloud service - Evaluate existing AI services from major cloud providers involving voice, NLP, and image recognition, or deploy your own networks using tools like Tensorflow or Caffe. - Create and enhance robust test suites of your code, be passionate about the value of automated testing - Support robust automation of development, deployment, operation, and investigation of services - Participate in and lead security investigations, performance testing, and troubleshooting - Work with business and technology stakeholders to obtain requirements, define projects, and own the delivery of those projects - Work along with the platform team including DevOps engineers to maintain high reliability during peak use, have a passion for monitoring, logging, and systems *Must-Have Qualifications* - Experience in machine learning or pattern recognition as applied to voice/speech, NLP/NLU, or image recognition. - Strong experience with either C++, Go, or Python in a production environment - 5+ years of professional software engineering experience - Excellent developer familiarity with a major cloud platform such as Amazon AWS, Google Cloud, or Azure - Experience creating horizontally scalable services - Ability to prioritize and track multiple projects in parallel - Passion for robotics and artificial intelligence *Desired Qualifications* - MS/Ph.D in robotics or machine learning/NLP discipline - Experience with speech/NLP/image recognition systems provided by Amazon AWS, Google Cloud, Watson, or Azure/Bing. - Experience with voice assistant technology such as Amazon?s Alexa, or Google Home Assistant, or Microsoft Cortana. - Knowledge of deep-network tools such as TensorFlow or Caffe. - Experience with cloud tools such as Amazon EC2/ECS/S3/Redshift, DynamoDB, or MySQL. - Experience managing security, load testing, logging of cloud services - Experience with Docker/containers *Benefits* - Small and very experienced team focused on collaboration and shared success - Competitive salaries, stock options and great benefits (health, subsidized public transportation costs, generous vacation) - Great San Francisco office with lots of light and great views, convenient to every mode of mass transit ? on wheels, on rails and on water - Early stage start-up where you?ll help shape the culture and have a huge impact - Free catered lunches, snacks and drinks - You get to work on bleeding edge of AI/robotics products and challenging problems with some amazingly talented and fun people! -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From b.j.a.krose at uva.nl Sun May 14 12:19:26 2017 From: b.j.a.krose at uva.nl (B.J.A. Krose) Date: Sun, 14 May 2017 18:19:26 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: Postdoctoral research position in Data-driven Research on Sports & Healthy Living Message-ID: <9f70fa31-48c8-e2f8-7689-1cc076317746@uva.nl> Postdoctoral research position in Data-driven Research on Sports & Healthy Living =================================================================== The Amsterdam Machine Learning Laboratory (AMLAB) in the Faculty of Science at the University of Amsterdam seeks a highly qualified postdoctoral researcher with a strong background and interest in adaptive intelligent interactive systems for the project ?Playful Data-driven Active Urban Living?. We want to understand how physical activity of city dwellers can be increased by using app technology for coaching. The challenging project is an international collaboration between Dutch and Brazilian research groups from Sao Paulo. The team consists of a Ph.D. in game research (at Utrecht University), two researchers of the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences and researchers from the Federal University of S?o Paulo (UNIFESP). The postdoc will focus on the development of machine learning methods to obtain optimal motivational, coaching and feedback strategies. The position is funded for one year, with an expected renewal of another year. A successful candidate must have obtained a recent Ph.D. in artificial intelligence, computer engineering, mathematics or a similar discipline. Candidates with a Ph.D. in biomedical engineering, medicine, psychology, or other clinical sciences will be considered if they have a demonstrated ability for technical (e.g. mathematical or computational) research. The candidate must have experience in decision making/reinforcement learning, as well as machine learning. Publication of significant research in high quality venues will be a top priority for successful candidates. Start date for the position is July 2017. Successful candidates will receive a one-year contract, with expected extensions based on performance to (at least) current funding timelines of three years. Further information from prof. Ben Kr?se (b.j.a.krose at uva.nl) and at application page at the University of Amsterdam Job application ------------------- Applications must be submitted via application-science at uva.nl. Closing date: May 27, 2017 To process your application immediately, please quote vacancy number 17-203 and the title of the position you are applying for in the subject-line. Applications must include: a complete curriculum vitae (mention the months and years when referring to your education and work experience); a research statement (maximum two pages) explaining why you are the right candidate; a list of projects you have worked on with brief descriptions of your contributions; the names and contact addresses of three academic references from which information about the candidate can be obtained; country of citizenship; date of availability. All these should be grouped in one PDF attachment. NOTE: The Committee does not guarantee that late or incomplete applications will be considered. #LI-DNP -- --- prof. dr. ir. Ben J.A. Kr?se, Digital Life University of Amsterdam, www.uva.nl/profiel/b.j.a.krose Hogeschool van Amsterdam, www.digitallifecentre.nl benkrose.wordpress.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From cgf at isep.ipp.pt Sun May 14 17:47:54 2017 From: cgf at isep.ipp.pt (Carlos Ferreira) Date: Sun, 14 May 2017 22:47:54 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: CFP: DSAA2017 - IEEE International Conference on Data Science and Advanced Analytics Message-ID: ---------------------------------------- *CALL FOR PAPERS* *DSAA2017 - The 4th IEEE International Conference on Data Science and Advanced Analytics* http://www.dslab.it.aoyama.ac.jp/dsaa2017/ *Important Dates* * Paper Submission: May 25, 2017 * Notification of acceptance: July 25, 2017 * Camera-Ready: Aug 15, 2017 * Advanced Registration: Aug. 31, 2017 ----------------------------------------- Carlos Ferreira ISEP | Instituto Superior de Engenharia do Porto Rua Dr. Ant?nio Bernardino de Almeida, 431 4249-015 Porto - PORTUGAL tel. +351 228 340 500 | fax +351 228 321 159 mail at isep.ipp.pt | www.isep.ipp.pt From erishabh at gmail.com Mon May 15 10:22:12 2017 From: erishabh at gmail.com (Rishabh Mehrotra) Date: Mon, 15 May 2017 15:22:12 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: Call for Participation: TREC 2017 Tasks Track Message-ID: ----------------------------------- TREC 2017 Tasks Track ----------------------------------- Website: http://www.cs.ucl.ac.uk/tasks-track-2017/ Deadline for TREC Application: ***16th May 2017** *(register here ) *Track Background:* The primary goals of the track are to evaluate system's understanding of tasks users aim to achieve and system's performance in helping users complete their tasks. Research in Information Retrieval has traditionally focused on serving the best results for a single query, ignoring the reasons (or the task) that might have motivated the user to submit that query. Often times search engines are used to complete complex tasks (information needs); achieving these tasks with current search engines requires users to issue multiple queries. Standard evaluation mechanisms focus on evaluating the quality of a retrieval system in terms of the relevance of the results retrieved, completely ignoring the fact that user satisfaction mainly depends on the usefullness of the system in helping the user complete the actual task that led the user issue the query. The TREC Tasks Track is an attempt in devising mechanisms for evaluating quality of retrieval systems in terms of (1) how well they can understand the underlying task that led the user submit a query, and (2) how useful they are for helping users complete their tasks. *Potential Application Areas:* Researchers from varied different fields could use the Task track data to evaluate their models. Few application areas include: - Task based retrieval - Digital assistants tasks - Query suggestions - Session based retrieval - Exploratory search - Entity-based results To make evaluation and system development easier, we provide participants with API access to the Clueweb B indexed on Microsoft Azure. *Timeline:* We anticipate the following timeline: - 16th May 2017: TREC Participation closes - mid June 2017: Tasks available to participants - 24th August 2017: Submission deadline *Track Coordinators* Emine Yilmaz (University College London) Evangelos Kanoulas (University of Amsterdam) Nick Craswell (Microsoft) Peter Bailey (Microsoft) Ben Carterette (University of Delaware) Rishabh Mehrotra (University College London) *Application Details* Organizations wishing to participate in TREC 2017 Tasks Track should respond to this call for participation by submitting an application. Participants in previous TRECs who wish to participate in TREC 2017 must submit a new application. To apply, submit the online application at http://ir.nist.gov/trecsubmit.open/application.html *Contact:* Mailing list: tasks-track at googlegroups.com Subscribe: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/tasks-track -- Rishabh Mehrotra PhD candidate University College London Web: www.rishabhmehrotra.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/erishabh -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From davrot at neuro.uni-bremen.de Tue May 16 05:51:10 2017 From: davrot at neuro.uni-bremen.de (David Rotermund) Date: Tue, 16 May 2017 11:51:10 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: One PhD Position in Computational Neuroscience at the University of Bremen, Germany Message-ID: The Computational Neuroscience lab at the University of Bremen headed by Dr. Udo Ernst offers a PhD position in the field of Neural Network Modelling and Data Analysis. Successful candidates will join an international research group dealing with Neural Dynamics, Criticality in Neural Systems, Information Processing and Feature Integration in the Visual System (www.bernstein.uni-bremen.de). The project in the SPP 1665 "Resolving and manipulating neuronal networks in the mammalian brain - from correlative to causal analysis" funded by the DFG is entitled: "Interareal phase coherence as a mechanism for attention-dependent neuronal signal routing" The visual system selectively processes information in dependence on the current behavioral task. However, the neural mechanisms underlying flexible computation in the brain are presently not known. In our troica project, engineers, neurobiologists and theoreticians collaborate to investigate this important topic for understanding brain function. Your task will be to build and to simulate selective information processing in neural models of the visual system, and to compare your results to data from electrophysiological recordings and intracortical microstimulation performed in rats and macaque monkeys. You will work in a highly interdisciplinary, exciting research environment which is embedded into the "Schwerpunktsprogramm 1665" funding twelve similar projects throughout Germany (http://www.spp1665.de). The position is funded with a salary comparable to a 65 % TVL13 position and comes with support for 3 years and direct supervision by the principal investigator. Ideal candidates have a MSc in Neuroscience, Physics, or Computer Sciences. They must have a strong background in physics and/or computational neuroscience and solid programming experience, ideally in Matlab or Python. Above all, they must have a strong motivation, a sense for responsibility, interest for detailed analysis, and a distinct desire to learn. Fluency in English is required (both written and spoken). If you are interested, please send your complete application at your earliest convenience by e-mail (see detailed instructions below) to ajanssen at neuro.uni-bremen.de. Severely disabled applicants and women with essentially identical and personal suitability will be preferentially selected. === Detailed instructions for applicants === Your application must comprise: == Motivation letter == Your 1-2 page essay should reply the following questions: * What is your background? In which fields have you worked before and how do you think this can be useful for the present job? * What attracts you to the field of neuroscience? * Which problem(s) in neuroscience are you most interested in? * Which kind of person are you (e.g. creative, analytic, communicative, pragmatic, etc.) and how do you approach a research problem? * What are your plans for your future career? == Curriculum Vitae == Send a classical tabular CV with your contact details, your date-of-birth, a current photograph, and all stages of education and employment. == List of skills, awards, publications == List your skills, especially proficiency in languages (including the level of proficiency), that you think might be useful for the job. Also list awards you might have got and peer-reviewed papers, in case there are some. == Contact details of two academic references == One of the references should be your MSc advisor. Please contact the references prior to listing their names so that they are not surprised if they get contacted. Your application can be in English or German, whatever language you are more familiar with. Please send your application to ajanssen at neuro.uni-bremen.de! All documents must be in PDF format and must not be compressed. Combine all documents to a single PDF file or at least name the separate files appropriately. If we find your application interesting, we will let you know within three to four weeks and potentially ask for more documents. From g.yang at imperial.ac.uk Tue May 16 07:21:26 2017 From: g.yang at imperial.ac.uk (Guang Yang) Date: Tue, 16 May 2017 12:21:26 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: 2nd CFP: MM-WHS 2017: Multi-Modality Whole Heart Segmentation Challenge in conjunction with STACOM and MICCAI 2017 Message-ID: ************************************************************ ************************************************** MM-WHS 2017: Multi-Modality Whole Heart Segmentation Challenge in conjunction with STACOM and MICCAI 2017 ************************************************************ ************************************************** *This is the 2nd CFP for MM-WHS 2017.* *!!! Important Deadline Changes and Prizes Info Updates !!! * ************************************************************ ************************************************** website: http://www.sdspeople.fudan.edu.cn/zhuangxiahai/0/mmwhs/index.html Together with the success of the STACOM workshop (held with MICCAI since 2011), we present the 1st Challenge on Multi-Modality Whole Heart Segmentation (to be held with MICCAI 2017, in Quebec City, Canada). The Challenge provides 120 images, including 60 cardiac CT and 60 cardiac MRI, all acquired in real clinical environment, for various research groups to test and validate their methods, particularly for multi-modality whole heart segmentation. The aim of the Workshop will not only be benchmarking various whole heart segmentation algorithms, but also to cover the topic of general cardiac image segmentation and registration and modeling. The best work will be awarded with prizes funded by Nvidia and Arterys, and the accepted manuscript will be included into the proceedings published with the STACOM workshop (Lecture Notes in Computer Science LNCS | Springer). In addition, the benchmarked algorithms will be summarised to form a full paper for potential publications in MedIA and IEEE TMI, and the participants will share the credit. Topics: * Whole heart segmentation (WHS), including - Atlas based WHS - Statistical shape model based WHS - Deep learning WHS - Other methods * General cardiac image segmentation * Registration and modeling for cardiac images Important Dates - Abstract Submission deadline (*New): 12th June, 2017 (for abstract and segmentation results) 19th June, 2017 (for abstract and segmentation results) - Full Paper Submission deadline (*New): 26th June, 2017 (please using STACOM website for submission) - Notification of acceptance (*New): 3rd July, 2017 31st July, 2017 - Camera Ready Paper Submission (*New): 17th July, 2017 11th August, 2017 - Workshop Date (Full day): 10th September, 2017, Quebec City, Canada Website - http://www.sdspeople.fudan.edu.cn/zhuangxiahai/0/mmwhs/ - http://stacom2017.cardiacatlas.org/ - http://stacom.cardiacatlas.org/ For Submissions: - Abstract and Results (Please send to the organisers via secure online file transfer) - Full Paper (https://ocs.springer.com/ocs/en/home/STACOM2017 Please indicate MM-WHS) - The MM-WHS will accept 8-page full papers (LNCS-Springer format) Updates for Data Usage and others: - We have agreed to open the data permanantly - The evaluation metrics will include the generalized Dice, Jaccard, and surface to surface distance Sponsors *- Nvidia (A state-of-the-art GPU for the best performed algorithm)* *- ARTERYS ($250 USD cheque for the best paper)* Organization - Xiahai Zhuang, School of Data Science, Fudan University, Shanghai China. - Guang Yang, National Heart and Lung Institute, Imperial College London, UK. - Lei Li, School of Biomedical engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China. Advisory and Program Committee - Elsa Angelini, Telecom ParisTech - Wenjia Bai, Imperial College London - John Camm, St George's Hospital - Alejandro Frangi, University of Sheffield - David Firmin, Imperial College London - Polina Golland, Massachusetts Institute of Technology(MIT) - Alberto Gomez, St Thomas hospital, Kings College London - Vicente Grau, University of Oxford - Jennifer Keegan, Imperial College London - Huafeng Liu, Zhejiang University - Raad Mohiaddin, Imperial College London - Alison Noble, Oxford University - Sebastien Ourselin, University College London - Dudley Pennell, Royal Brompton Hospital - Terry Peters, Robarts Research Institute, The University of Western Ontario - Tom Wong, Royal Brompton Hospital - Max A. Viergever, University Medical Center Utrecht - Jurgen Weese, Philips Research - Guang-Zhong Yang, Imperial College London - Songhua Zhan, Shanghai Shuguang Hosptial - Shaoting Zhang, University of North Carolina at Charlotte - Guoyan Zheng, University of Bern -- ------------------------------------------------------------ --------------------------------------------- In a world without fences and walls, why bother 'GATES' and 'WINDOWS'? ------------------------------------------------------------ --------------------------------------------- Guang YANG (Ph.D.) Research Fellow National Heart and Lung Institute, Imperial College London. ----------------------------------------------------- Honorary Lecturer Neurosciences Research Centre, St George's, University of London. ----------------------------------------------------- Internal 2169 Switchboard +44 (0)20 7352 8121 <+44%2020%207352%208121> Emails. g.yang at imperial.ac.uk and gyang at sgul.ac.uk Web. https://www.imperial.ac.uk/people/g.yang Cell. +44 (0)79 224 224 99 ------------------------------------------------------------ --------------------------------------------- -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mark.humphries at manchester.ac.uk Tue May 16 08:58:07 2017 From: mark.humphries at manchester.ac.uk (Mark Humphries) Date: Tue, 16 May 2017 12:58:07 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: Abstract submission and registration open for Integrated Systems Neuroscience 2017 meeting (September 7-8, Manchester, UK) Message-ID: We are excited to announce that registration and abstract submission is open for the second Integrated Systems Neuroscience meeting (7-8th September 2017, Manchester, UK) For registration and abstract submission information, please visit: https://www.bmh.manchester.ac.uk/conferences-meetings/isn2017/ Deadlines: Abstract submission: June 30th 2017 (Decision: July 28th) Registration: August 11th Meeting information: The goal of this meeting is to present the state-of-the-art in integrated systems and computational approaches to key neural circuits. A poster session with wine reception will be held on the first evening. Confirmed speakers: Rune Berg (Copenhagen University) Tiago Branco (Sainsbury Wellcome Centre for Neural Circuits) Neil Burgess (Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, UCL) Megan Carey (Champalimaud Institute, Lisbon) Claudia Clopath (Imperial College, London) Kate Jeffery (UCL) Christian Machens (Champalimaud Institute, Lisbon) Jonathan Pillow (Princeton) Simon Peron (New York University) Manuel Zimmer (IMP, Austria) Organisers: Mark Humphries & Rasmus Petersen (University of Manchester) Sponsors: we gratefully acknowledge the support of the Medical Research Council _____________________________________________________________________________ Dr Mark Humphries | MRC Senior non-Clinical Research Fellow | Faculty of Biology, Medicine & Health http://www.systemsneurophysiologylab.manchester.ac.uk/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From hendrikje.nienborg at cin.uni-tuebingen.de Tue May 16 10:05:05 2017 From: hendrikje.nienborg at cin.uni-tuebingen.de (Hendrikje Nienborg) Date: Tue, 16 May 2017 16:05:05 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: Abstract deadline (5/26) and keynote speakers for Cognitive Computational Neuroscience (CCN) Message-ID: <45f2b33c-0f2d-1211-54de-2152414fcc42@cin.uni-tuebingen.de> -- apologies for cross-posting -- The abstract deadline for the inaugural meeting of Cognitive Computational Neuroscience (CCN) has been extended until Friday, May 26th. Keynote speakers are: Yoshua Bengio Birte Forstmann Tom Griffiths Yann LeCun Yael Niv Nicole Rust Rebecca Saxe Michael Shadlen Josh Tenenbaum Daniel Wolpert The CCN meeting will take place in NYC on September 6-8, 2017. You can find more information about the conference here: http://ccneuro.org/about-us/about/ Visit http://ccneuro.org/submit-your-work/ to begin your submission. -- Dr. Hendrikje Nienborg Werner Reichardt Centre for Integrative Neuroscience University of T?bingen Otfried M?ller Str. 25 72076 T?bingen Tel: +49 (0) 7071- 29 88846 Fax: +49 (0) 7071- 29 25008 email: hendrikje.nienborg at cin.uni-tuebingen.de From salvador.sanchez at lsi.uji.es Tue May 16 12:23:34 2017 From: salvador.sanchez at lsi.uji.es (=?UTF-8?Q?Jos=C3=A9_Salvador_S=C3=A1nchez_Garreta?=) Date: Tue, 16 May 2017 18:23:34 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: INIT/AERFAI Summer School on Machine Learning 2017 Message-ID: Call for Participation (apologies for multiple copies) ____________________________________ *AERFAI/INIT Summer School on Machine Learning Benic?ssim, June 26-30, 2017URL: www.init.uji.es/school2017 E-mail: info-init at uji.es * *DESCRIPTION* The 3rd INIT/AERFAI Summer School on Machine Learning is organized by the Institute of New Imaging Technologies (INIT) of the University Jaume I of Castell?n, and co-sponsored by the Spanish Association of Pattern Recognition and Image Analysis (AERFAI). The focus of this Summer School is to study fundamental and advanced methods aimed at discovering new challenges and trends of Machine Learning, Data Analysis and Data Mining, from theory to practice. This event is open to graduate students, researchers and professionals who are interested in learning or refreshing their knowledge about this exciting field. The Summer School is organized as a five-days intensive course to be held June 26-30, 2017 in Benic?ssim (Spain). Leading experts in their respective areas shall give each tutorial, which may be accompanied with a practice session and/or demos in order for participants to gain a better understanding of the theory. There will also be a non-formal poster session in which the participants can present their current works and interact with their scientific peers. The best poster will be awarded with a prize. *LIST OF LECTURERS* Ensemble Learning: Dr. Gavin Brown ? University of Manchester (UK) Probabilistic Graphical Models: Dr. Guillaume Obozinski ? Ecole des Ponts ParisTech (France) Deep Learning: Dr. Roland Memisevic ? Twenty Billion Neurons GmbH (Germany) Adversarial Machine Learning: Prof. Fabio Roli ? University of Cagliari (Italy) Semi-Supervised Learning: Prof. Marco Loog ? Delft University of Technology (The Netherlands) and University of Copenhagen (Denmark) Learning Classifiers from Streaming Data.: Dr. Jerzy Stefanowski ? Poznan University of Technology (Poland) ROC Analysis and Performance Metrics in Machine Learning: Prof. Peter Flach ? University of Bristol (UK) Evolutionary Computing: Models, Scalability and Big Data Approaches: Dr. Salvador Garc?a ? University of Granada (Spain) *ORGANIZATION CO-CHAIRS* Prof. J. Salvador S?nchez, sanchez at uji.es Prof. Filiberto Pla, pla at uji.es *REGISTRATION* Fees for the AERFAI/INIT School 2017 are as follows: AERFAI members - Early registration (by May 20, 2017): Full ... 350 Euros / Student ... 300 Euros / One-day ... 100 Euros AERFAI members - Late registration (after May 20, 2017): Full ... 400 Euros / Student ... 350 Euros / One-day ... 125 Euros Non-members - Early registration (by May 20, 2017): Full ... 550 Euros / Student ... 450 Euros / One-day ... 150 Euros Non-members - Late registration (after May 20, 2017): Full ... 600 Euros / Student ... 500 Euros / One-day ... 175 Euros Regular and student registration fees cover attendance to all lectures, handling material, coffee breaks, five lunches, trip and gala dinner. The one-day registration allows access to the lecture(s) of the day chosen, handling material, coffee breaks and one lunch. Information about the process of payment will be announced at the web site. *VENUE* AERFAI/INIT School 2017 will be held at Hotel Intur Bonaire and Hotel Intur Orange in Benic?ssim. The hotels are located 200 meters from one of the best fine sandy beaches in Benic?ssim at the Mediterranean coast. It is 10 minutes from the city of Castell?n and the train station, while the Valencia airport is about 45 minutes by car. *ACCOMMODATION* Participants will have a special group rate at Hotel Intur Bonaire, Hotel Intur Orange and Hotel Intur Azor, as well as other hotels very close to the AERFAI/INIT School 2017 venue. More information about reservation is available at the web site. *CONTACT* AERFAI/INIT School 2017 Institute of New Imaging Technologies Universitat Jaume I Av. Vicent Sos Baynat, s/n 12071 Castell?n de la Plana (Spain) Tel. +34 964728348 / +34 964728350 / +34 964728727 Fax +34 964728730 E-mail: info-init at uji.es -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From zrinka at nld.ds.mpg.de Tue May 16 10:37:41 2017 From: zrinka at nld.ds.mpg.de (Zrinka Gattin) Date: Tue, 16 May 2017 16:37:41 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: Bernstein Conference 2017: Registration is open In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <36197299-417d-38b1-f884-7592036eb30c@nld.ds.mpg.de> *BERNSTEIN CONFERENCE 2017 in G?ttingen* *Registration is open! * *Early registration deadline ends July 09, 2017* Please register here: http://www.nncn.de/de/bernstein-conference/2017/registration **************************************************************************** Satellite Workshops http://www.nncn.de/de/bernstein-conference/2017/satellite-workshops Main Conference http://www.nncn.de/de/bernstein-conference/2017 **************************************************************************** The Bernstein Conference has become the largest annual Computational Neuroscience Conference in Europe and now regularly attracts more than 500 international participants. This year, the Conference is organized by the Bernstein Center G?ttingen and will take place in G?ttingen on September 13-15, 2017. In addition, there will be a series of pre-conference satellite workshops on September 12-13, 2017. The Bernstein Conference is a single-track conference, covering all aspects of Computational Neuroscience and Neurotechnology, and sessions for poster presentations are an integral part of the conference. The goal of the satellite workshops is to provide an informal forum for the discussion of timely research questions and challenges. For more information on the conference, please visit: www.bernstein-conference.de *CONFERENCE DATE AND VENUE: * Satellite Workshops: September 12-13, 2017 Main Conference: September 13-15, 2017 PHD Symposium: September 12 & 15, 2017 Venue: The Central Lecture Hall (ZHG), Platz der G?ttinger Sieben 5, 37073 G?ttingen, Germany *ACCOMMODATION AND HOTEL RESERVATION:* *We strongly recommend early room booking!* *The number of available accommodation is limited due to several concurrent events. And many Hotels in G?ttingen are already booked out for that week!* We arranged for room contingents in a variety of hotels that you may book by yourself by email or phone. Please follow the instructions at our Accommodations Website (http://www.nncn.de/de/bernstein-conference/2017/venue/accommodation). We would like to emphasize that these room contingents will be held open up to different expiration dates depending on the hotel (or until they are filled). Many expiration dates are already mid of June 2017. We strongly encourage participants to share rooms and to book rooms as a group. *We emphasize that it will be very difficult to book accommodation beyond the expiration dates. * Please find a list of the hotels at our Accommodations Website. ORGANIZING COMMITTEE: Matthias Bethge Laura Busse Claudia Clopath Julia Fischer Alexander Gail Richard Hahnloser Claus Hilgetag Peter Jonas Siegrid L?wel Michael Platt Viola Priesemann Nicole Rust Marion Silies Christian Tetzlaff Fred Wolf (Conference Chair) Florentin W?rg?tter (Workshop Chair) Bernstein Coordination Site: Alexandra Stein Kerstin Schwarzw?lder We look forward to seeing you in G?ttingen in September! -- Dr Zrinka Gattin Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience (BCCN) Goettingen Bernstein Focus Neurotechnology (BFNT) Goettingen PhD Program in Theoretical and Computational Neuroscience Am Fassberg 17 D-37077 Goettingen Phone: +49 (0)551 5176 418 Fax: +49 (0)551 5176 14418 E-Mail:zrinka at nld.ds.mpg.de -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From joseph.lizier at sydney.edu.au Tue May 16 20:46:06 2017 From: joseph.lizier at sydney.edu.au (Joseph Lizier) Date: Wed, 17 May 2017 10:46:06 +1000 Subject: Connectionists: Information theory workshop at CNS*2017 -- call for contributed talks Message-ID: <1494981966.2513.16.camel@scooby> Dear all, We are pleased to announce the Workshop on Methods of Information Theory in Computational Neuroscience, at CNS*2017, Antwerp, Belgium. The workshop will be held over the final two days of the main conference, July 19 and 20. Our confirmed invited speakers include the following (schedule available soon): * Selin Aviyente, Michigan State University -- "Directed Information: Application to EEG during cognitive control" * Lionel Barnett, University of Sussex -- "Information Transfer in Continuous and Discrete Time" * Karl Friston, University College London -- "Active inference and artificial curiosity" * Renaud Jolivet, University of Geneva -- "Energy-efficient information transfer at synapses" * Lubomir Kostal, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic -- "Reference frame independence as a constraint on the mutual information decomposition" * Joseph T. Lizier, The University of Sydney -- "Estimating information transfer between spike trains" * Daniele Marinazzo, University of Ghent -- "Synergetic and redundant information flow detected by unnormalized Granger causality: application to resting state fMRI" * Jil Meier, Delft University of Technology -- "The epidemic spreading model and the direction of information flow in brain networks" * Viola Priesemann, Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-organization, Goettingen -- TBA * Adri? Tauste, Universitat Pompeu Fabra -- TBA * Tatjana Tchumatchenko, Max Planck Institute for Brain Research, Frankfurt -- TBA * Taro Toyoizumi, RIKEN Brain Science Institute -- "A Local Learning Rule for Independent Component Analysis" * Raul Vicente, University of Tartu -- TBA Also, we would like to call for contributions of talks (25 min + 5 min Q&A). If you are interested in contributing such a talk, please send a title and abstract to Joseph Lizier (joseph.lizier at sydney.edu.au) by Friday June 2, 2017. Please see our website http://bit.ly/cns2017itw for more details. We hope you will join us there! Organising Committee: Joseph Lizier Viola Priesemann Justin Dauwels Taro Toyoizumi Alexander Dimitrov Lubomir Kostal Michael Wibral -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From shobeir at gmail.com Tue May 16 22:14:07 2017 From: shobeir at gmail.com (Shobeir Fakhraei) Date: Tue, 16 May 2017 19:14:07 -0700 Subject: Connectionists: [CFP] KDD MLG 2017 - 13th International Workshop on Mining and Learning with Graphs Message-ID: *13th International Workshop on Mining and Learning with Graphs (MLG 2017)* *August 14, 2017 - Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada (co-located with KDD 2017)* *http://www.mlgworkshop.org/2017 * *Submission Deadline: May 26, 2017* *Call for papers:* This workshop is a forum for exchanging ideas and methods for mining and learning with graphs, developing new common understandings of the problems at hand, sharing of data sets where applicable, and leveraging existing knowledge from different disciplines. The goal is to bring together researchers from academia, industry, and government, to create a forum for discussing recent advances graph analysis. In doing so, we aim to better understand the overarching principles and the limitations of our current methods and to inspire research on new algorithms and techniques for mining and learning with graphs. To reflect the broad scope of work on mining and learning with graphs, we encourage submissions that span the spectrum from theoretical analysis to algorithms and implementation, to applications and empirical studies. As an example, the growth of user-generated content on blogs, microblogs, discussion forums, product reviews, etc., has given rise to a host of new opportunities for graph mining in the analysis of social media. We encourage submissions on theory, methods, and applications focusing on a broad range of graph-based approaches in various domains. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to: Theoretical aspects: * Computational or statistical learning theory related to graphs * Theoretical analysis of graph algorithms or models * Sampling and evaluation issues in graph algorithms * Analysis of dynamic graphs * Relationships between MLG and statistical relational learning or inductive logic programming Algorithms and methods: * Graph mining * Kernel methods for structured data * Probabilistic and graphical models for structured data * (Multi-) Relational data mining * Methods for structured outputs * Statistical models of graph structure * Combinatorial graph methods * Spectral graph methods * Semi-supervised learning, active learning, transductive inference, and transfer learning in the context of graph Applications and analysis: * Analysis of social media * Social network analysis * Analysis of biological networks * Knowledge graph construction * Large-scale analysis and modeling We invite the submission of regular research papers (6-8 pages) as well as position papers (2-4 pages). We recommend papers be formatted according to the standard double-column ACM Proceedings Style. All papers will be peer-reviewed, single-blinded Authors whose papers are accepted to the workshop will have the opportunity to participate in a spotlight and poster session, and some set may also be chosen for oral presentation. *The accepted papers will be published online and will not be considered archival.* *Timeline:* Paper Submission Deadline: May 26, 2017 Author Notification: June 16, 2017 Final Version: June 25, 2017 Workshop: August 14, 2017 *Submission instructions can be found on* http://www.mlgworkshop.org/2017/ Please send enquiries to *chair at mlgworkshop.org * We look forward to seeing you at the workshop! *Organizers:* Michele Catasta (EPFL / Stanford), Shobeir Fakhraei (University of Maryland), Danai Koutra (University of Michigan), Silvio Lattanzi (Google Research), Julian McAuley (UC San Diego), Jennifer Neville (Purdue University) *Program Committee: * Nesreen Ahmed (Intel Labs), Leman Akoglu (Carnegie Mellon University), Aris Anagnostopoulos (Sapienza University of Rome), Miguel Araujo (Carnegie Mellon University), Stephen Bach (Stanford University), Christian Bauckhage (Fraunhofer IAIS), Aaron Clauset (University of Colorado Boulder), Bing Tian Dai (Singapore Management University), Alessandro Epasto (Google Research), Bailey Fosdick (Colorado State University), Brian Gallagher (Lawrence Livermore National Labs), Thomas G?rtner (University of Nottingham), Assefaw Gebremedhin (Washington State University), David Gleich (Purdue University), Larry Holder (Washington State University), Kristian Kersting (TU Dortmund University), Srijan Kumar (University of Maryland), Evangelos Papalexakis (University of California Riverside), Ali Pinar (Sandia National Laboratories), Bryan Perozzi (Google Research), Aditya Prakash (Virginia Tech), Jay Pujara (University of California, Santa Cruz), Jan Ramon (INRIA), C. Seshadhri (University of California, Santa Cruz), Neil Shah (Carnegie Mellon University), Sucheta Soundarajan (Syracuse University), Yizhou Sun (University of California, Los Angeles), Jiliang Tang (Michigan State University), Hanghang Tong (Arizona State University), Chris Volinsky (AT&T Labs-Research), Tim Weninger (University of Notre Dame), Jevin West (University of Washington), Stefan Wrobel (Fraunhofer IAIS & Univ. of Bonn), Mark Zhang (SUNY, Binghamton) To receive updates about the current and future workshops and the Graph Mining community, please join the mailing list: *https://groups.google.com/d/forum/mlg-list * or follow the twitter account: *https://twitter.com/mlgworkshop * Best Regards, -- MLG Organizers -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From eros.pasero at polito.it Wed May 17 03:33:13 2017 From: eros.pasero at polito.it (PASERO EROS GIAN ALESSANDRO) Date: Wed, 17 May 2017 09:33:13 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: WIRN2017: new deadlines Message-ID: <883c507ab181da46bb0f6844021011da@polito.it> WIRN 2017 - First Call for Papers 27th Italian Workshop on Neural Networks June 14-16, Vietri sul Mare, Salerno, Italy Deadline for paper submission extended to May 30!! General Chair: Eros Pasero Co-Chair: Francesco Carlo Morabito WIRN 2017 - CALL FOR PAPERS The Italian Workshop on Neural Networks (WIRN) is the annual conference of the Italian Society of Neural Networks (SIREN). The conference is organized, since 1989, in co-operation with the International Institute for Advanced Scientific Studies (IIASS) of Vietri S/M (Italy), and is a traditional event devoted to the discussion of novelties and innovations related to field of Artificial Neural Networks. In recent years, it also became a multidisciplinary forum on psychological and cognitive theories for modelling human behaviours. The 27th Edition of the Italian Workshop on Neural Networks (WIRN 2017) will be held at the IIASS of Vietri sul Mare, near Salerno, Italy. CALL FOR PAPERS Papers will be reviewed by the Program Committee, and may be accepted for oral or poster presentation. Selected contributions will be published in a special volume printed by Springer (series Smart Innovation, Systems and Technologies) and indexed by SCOPUS. Authors will be limited to one paper per registration. Please visit the Springer web site for the paper format: (http://www.springer.com/series/8767). Manuscripts should not exceed the limit of 8-10 pages. The submission procedure can be made through Easy Chair: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=wirn2017 Special sessions a) Dynamics of signal exchanges. Chairs: Anna Esposito, Antonietta M. Esposito, Nadia Mammone, Sara Invitto, Gennaro Cordasco, Mauro MaldonatoFrancesco Carlo Morabito b) Computational Intelligence in the context of Industry 4.0 . Chairs: Valentina Colla, Silvia Cateni c) Computational Intelligence and Related Techniques in Industrial and ICT Engineering. Chairs: Giovanni Angiulli, Mario Versaci. d) Neural Networks and Pattern Recognition; Chairs: G. Cirrincione and V. Bevilacqua e) Intelligent tools for decision making in economics and finance; Chair: Marco Corazza Key Note Speaker: Carlotta Domeniconi, George Mason University, Washington DC, USA Winnowing the Wheat from the Chaff in Complex and Large data TOPIC AREAS: Suggested topics include, but are not limited to the following research and application areas: General Topics of Interest about Computational Intelligence: Neural Networks, Fuzzy Systems, Evolutionary Computation and Swarm Intelligence, Support Vector Machines, Complex Networks, Bayesian and Kernel Networks, Consciousness and Models of Emotion Cognitive and Psychological Models of Human Behavior Algorithms & Architectures: Among others: Opportunist Networks, Metabolic Networks, ICA and BSS, Deep Neural Networks, Bio-inspired Neural Networks, Wavelet Neural Networks, Intelligent Algorithms for Signal (Speech, Faces, Gestures, Gaze, etc) Processing and Recognition Implementations: Among others: Hardware Implementations and Embedded Systems, Neuromorphic Circuits and Hardware, Spike-based VLSI NNs, Intelligent Interactive Dialogue Systems, Embodied Conversational Agents Applications: Among others: Finance and Economics, Big Data Analysis, Neuroinformatics and Bioinformatics, Brain-Computer Interface and Systems, Data Fusion, Time Series Modelling and Prediction, Intelligent Infrastructure and Transportation Systems, Sensors and Network of Sensors, Smart Grid, Process Monitoring and Diagnosis, Intelligent and Adaptive Systems for Human-Machine Interaction. PAPER SUBMISSION: Important New Dates Paper Submission deadline: May 30, 2017 Notification of acceptance: June 10, 2017 Camera-ready copy: on site, June 14, 2017 Conference Dates: June 14-16, 2017 More details are on: https://wirn2017.polito.it/; Prof. Eros Pasero SIREN President Laboratorio di Neuronica Dip. Elettronica e Telecomunicazioni - Politecnico di Torino c.so Duca d. Abruzzi 24 10129 Torino - Italy ______________________________________ ' Tel +39 011 0904043, +393316796014 6 Fax 0+39 011 0904216 *e-mail eros.pasero at polito.it WEB: www.neuronica.polito.it P THINK BEFORE YOU PRINT: before printing this e-mail think whether it is really necessary ______________________________________________ "The eternal mystery of the world is its comprehensibility" ______________________________________ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... 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Name: image003.gif Type: image/gif Size: 281 bytes Desc: not available URL: From zrinka at nld.ds.mpg.de Wed May 17 04:33:55 2017 From: zrinka at nld.ds.mpg.de (Zrinka Gattin) Date: Wed, 17 May 2017 10:33:55 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: Call for Abstracts: Bernstein Conference 2017 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <9418c07a-8500-d071-f92a-b1d53053752f@nld.ds.mpg.de> *Call for Abstracts: Bernstein Conference 201**7* *** **Deadline for abstract submission:* June 14, 2017 for abstracts aimed as contributed talks and posters July 31, 2017 abstracts aimed as posters only ************************************************************** Satellite Workshops September 12-13, 2017 Main Conference September 13-15, 2017 PhD Symposium September 12 & 15, 2017 ************************************************************** The Bernstein Conference started out as the annual meeting of the Bernstein Network Computational Neuroscience and has become the largest annual Computational Neuroscience conference in Europe with more than 500 international participants in recent years. This year the conference is organized by the Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience G?ttingen. The main conference (Sep 13-15, 2017) will be accompanied by satellite workshops (Sep 12-13, 2017) and a PhD symposium (Sep 12 & 15, 2017). An important part of the main conference will be the two poster sessions. We are now inviting the submission of abstracts from all relevant areas. Authors of most accepted abstracts will get the chance for a poster presentation, a small number of abstracts will be selected for contributed talks during the main conference. Please note the earlier submission deadline for authors applying for a talk. All accepted abstracts will be published online and will be citable via Digital Object Identifiers (DOI). *DETAILS FOR ABSTRACT SUBMISSION:* Please note that the submission of an abstract does not replace the conference registration (www.bernstein-conference.de/registration ). Poster space is limited and early submission is encouraged. For abstract submission visit: www.nncn.de/en/bernstein-conference/2017/abstracts *ABSTRACT SUBMISSION DEADLINES:* Posters to be considered as contributed talks: June 14, 2017 Other posters: July 31, 2017 *TRAVEL GRANTS* To support the participation of young researchers at the Bernstein Conference, the Bernstein Coordination Site offers 10 Travel Grants, each endowed with 500 ?. Please find further information under www.nncn.de/en/bernstein-conference/2017/travel-grant This year for the first time, the Bernstein Association offers Travel Grants for participation in the Bernstein Conference. Each of the 10 Travel Grants is endowed with 500 ?. Please find further information under the link:www.nncn.de/en/bernstein-conference/2017/travel-grant *CONFERENCE DETAILS:* Conference registration is *OPEN* Early registration deadline: July 09, 2017 *ACCOMMODATION AND HOTEL RESERVATION:* *We strongly recommend early room booking!* *The number of available accommodation is limited due to several concurrent events. And many Hotels in G?ttingen are already booked out for that week!* We arranged for room contingents in a variety of hotels that you may book by yourself by email or phone. Please follow the instructions at our Accommodations Website (http://www.nncn.de/de/bernstein-conference/2017/venue/accommodation). We would like to emphasize that these room contingents will be held open up to different expiration dates depending on the hotel (or until they are filled). Many expiration dates are already mid of June 2017. We strongly encourage participants to share rooms and to book rooms as a group. *We emphasize that it will be very difficult to book accommodation beyond the expiration dates. * Please find a list of the hotels at our Accommodations Website. VENUE Satellite Workshops, Main Conference and PhD Symposium: The Central Lecture Hall (ZHG), Platz der G?ttinger Sieben 5, 37073 G?ttingen, Germany VENUE Public Lecture: Alte Mensa, Wilhelmsplatz 1, 37073 G?ttingen, Germany, September 13, 2017, 8 pm For more information on the conference, please visit the websitehttp://www.bernstein-conference.de We are looking forward to welcoming you in G?ttingen! Program chair: Fred Wolf Koordinator: Zrinka Gattin Co-Organizers: Bernstein Coordination Site (BCOS): Alexandra Stein, Kerstin Schwarzwaelder -- Dr Zrinka Gattin Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience (BCCN) Goettingen Bernstein Focus Neurotechnology (BFNT) Goettingen PhD Program in Theoretical and Computational Neuroscience Am Fassberg 17 D-37077 Goettingen Phone: +49 (0)551 5176 418 Fax: +49 (0)551 5176 14418 E-Mail:zrinka at nld.ds.mpg.de -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From m.a.wiering at rug.nl Wed May 17 05:16:18 2017 From: m.a.wiering at rug.nl (Wiering, M.A.) Date: Wed, 17 May 2017 11:16:18 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: 10 PhD positions in data science and systems complexity at the University of Groningen Message-ID: ?Dear all, The data science and systems complexity (DSSC) center from the University of Groningen (NL) has 10 open fully paid 4-year PhD positions on the following topics: * Adaptive Models and Big Data * Complex Systems and Engineering * Advanced Instrumentation and Big Data For more information and eligibility criteria, please visit: http://www.rug.nl/research/fse/themes/dssc/cofund/application/ With kind regards, Dr. Marco Wiering Institute of Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Engineering University of Groningen ? - - -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From bart at ai.vub.ac.be Wed May 17 09:43:27 2017 From: bart at ai.vub.ac.be (Bart de Boer) Date: Wed, 17 May 2017 15:43:27 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: PhD positions available at Vrije Universiteit Brussel AI-lab Message-ID: <1ab61442-aa06-6175-a690-3fde0bfb1009@ai.vub.ac.be> Dear all, The Vrije Universiteit Brussel AI lab has two PhD positions available which might be interesting for MSc students of A-life related programmes. Please feel free to forward the following information, More infortmation can be found by following the links. Deadline for application is July 15, 2017 The AI lab at the Vrije Universiteit Brussels is looking fto fill a paid PhD position to model the acquisition of speech using spectrotemporal features and dynamic Bayesian networks. The project is part of a larger research group investigating the emergence and evolution of language and speech. Envisaged starting date is October 1st 2017 see: https://ai.vub.ac.be/PhD_Spectrotemporal_DBN The AI lab at the Vrije Universiteit Brussels is looking to fill a paid PhD position to model the cultural evolution of Kata Kolok, a village sign language using an agent-based model. The project is part of a larger research group investigating the emergence and evolution of language and speech. Envisaged starting date is October 1st 2017 see: https://ai.vub.ac.be/PhDKataKolok Best regards, Bart de Boer. From christos.dimitrakakis at gmail.com Wed May 17 10:17:33 2017 From: christos.dimitrakakis at gmail.com (Christos Dimitrakakis) Date: Wed, 17 May 2017 10:17:33 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: Two PhD positions in reinforcement learning Message-ID: <0ed7cf10-cc0e-f9e7-feac-b8be3ec2d086@gmail.com> Two PhD positions are available in reinforcement learning. The first ( https://www.chalmers.se/en/about-chalmers/vacancies/Pages/default.aspx?rmpage=job&rmjob=5034 ) is at Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, and focuses on links between approximate statistics, differential privacy, computational complexity and reinforcement learning. This position is available for 5 years, and includes approximately 1 year of teaching duties and 1 year of courses. The application deadline is on May 31st. The second ( https://sujets-these.lille.inria.fr/details.html?id=751c7271500a4ff19d08b69183ab9285 ) is at University of Lille, INRIA-Lille, France, and focuses on collaborative multi-agent reinforcement learning, when some of the agents are sub-optimal, i.e. humans. This position would be available for 3 years, and be 100% research. Both positions require candidates with mathematical maturity and a desire to work on theoretical aspects of reinforcement learning. -- Christos Dimitrakakis | Univ-Lille/INRIA-SequeL/Cristal | Chalmers/DIT/LAB | Harvard/SEAS | https://sites.google.com/site/christosdimitrakakis/ From christian at brackmann.com.br Wed May 17 10:36:10 2017 From: christian at brackmann.com.br (Christian Brackmann) Date: Wed, 17 May 2017 11:36:10 -0300 Subject: Connectionists: CFP: Latin American Workshop on Computational Neuroscience 2017 Message-ID: ------------------------------------------------------------ ----------------- CALL FOR PAPERS Paper Submission Deadline: June 30, 2017 LATIN AMERICAN WORKSHOP ON COMPUTATIONAL NEUROSCIENCE 2017 November 22-24, 2017 Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), Porto Alegre, Brazil. http://www.inf.ufrgs.br/lawcn/ Contact: lawcn2017 at easychair.org ------------------------------------------------------------ ----------------- Computational neuroscience is the study of brain function regarding the information processing properties of the structures that make up the nervous system. It is an interdisciplinary science that links the diverse fields of neuroscience, as cognitive science, medicine, psychology, electrical engineering, biomedical engineering, mechanical engineering, computer science, mathematics, physics and even philosophy. The Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), located in Porto Alegre, in the south of Brazil, has promoted a more restricted version of this Workshop in November 2012. Since then, participants and investigators in the interdisciplinary fields related to Computational Neuroscience are claiming to resume the realization of this event. In this sense, with a broader scope aiming to encourage young researchers and graduate master and doctorate students in all Latin America, this edition will have three main topics: a) neuroscience, b) neuroengineering and c) artificial intelligence and related techniques. The Workshop will consist mainly of the following activities: 1. presentation of up to 8 key renowned international and national researchers; 2. presentation of up to 50 oral presentations; 3. presentation of poster presentations; 4. presentation of practical applications in neuroscience, both from University and from companies active in the field; and 5. practical demonstration of the A2200 Enigma machine, which belongs to the Informatics Institute, as a special tribute to the 105th Birthday Anniversary of Alan Turing, considered one of the founding fathers of Computer Science. All participants who investigate and contribute to the understanding of the properties of the brain, such as Medicine, Physics, Computer Science, Engineering, Psychology, Philosophy and others are welcomed. Issues related to the support of Communication and Information Technology and High-Performance Computing in Neuroscience will receive particular attention. UFRGS is happy to welcome LATIN AMERICAN WORKSHOP ON COMPUTATIONAL NEUROSCIENCE (LAWCN) in Porto Alegre, Brazil. GENERAL INFORMATION IMPORTANT DATES * June 30, 2017: Submission deadline for papers * August 20, 2017: Notification of acceptance * September 10, 2017: Camera-ready papers and copyrights signatures * November 13, 2017: Digital Posters due, which will be digitally presented * November 22-24, 2017: Workshop, UFRGS - Porto Alegre, Brazil. SCOPE LAWCN 2017 covers all aspects of Computational Neuroscience. Although the interdisciplinary nature of the Conference and the stimulus to work at intersections and the frontiers of different disciplines, for the sake of clarifying the scope of the Workshop, topics will be presented on the three main axes. The interest topics include (but are not limited to): a) Neuroscience: * Sensory processing * Network dynamics * Reinforcement learning * Motivation and decision making * Statistical approaches in neuroscience * Systems Neuroscience * Learning and memory Attention * Arousal of Sensory-Motor Integration Learning in networks * Ethical and philosophical issues related to Neuroscience * Educational issues b) Neuroengineering: * Large-scale recordings * Neural signal processing * Neuromodulation * Neuroprosthetics * Robotics * Biomedical devices development * Humanoid robots * Robots for Elderly People * Sensing in Robotics * Fusion of Sensors * Hardware implementations in Neuroscience * Software implementations in Neuroscience * Brain-Computer Interfaces: design and applications * Ethical and philosophical issues related to Neuroengineering * Educational issues c) Artificial Intelligence and related techniques: * Artificial Intelligence Techniques in Neuroscience * Bioinformatics * Clustering and Applications * Computer Vision, Cognitive and Humanoid Vision * Databases, Data Mining, Intelligent Data Analysis, Knowledge-based Systems and Linguistic Tools * Data Visualization and Applications * Deep Learning * Statistical Pattern Recognition/Document Processing and Recognition * Fuzzy and Hybrid Techniques * Geometric Algebra Application in Perception-Action * High-Performance Computing for Pattern Recognition * Image Coding, Processing, and Analysis * Kernel Machines * Mathematical Theory of Computational Neuroscience * Neural Networks * Parallel and Distributed Applications for Computational Neuroscience * Robotics and Humanoids * Shape and Texture Analysis * Signal Processing and Analysis * Spatio-temporal Analysis * Ethical and philosophical issues related to Artificial Intelligence * Educational issues KEYNOTE SPEAKERS LAWCN Organizing Committee is proud to announce the confirmation of the following invited talks: Dr. Francisco Sotres Bay?n, Professor of Neurosciences at the National Autonomous University of M?xico(UNAM), M?xico Title of the talk: Understanding the Brain mechanisms of learned and innate motivational conflicts Dr. Laurence Devillers, Professor of Computer Science at Paris-Sorbonne University, Paris, France Title of the talk: Affective and Social Robotics: engagement, evaluation, and ethics Dr. Sen Cheng, Professor of Computational Neuroscience at the Ruhr University Bochum(RUB), Bochum, Germany Title of the talk: Intrinsic Sequences in the hippocampus for spatial navigation and memory storage Dr. Vinicius Rosa Cota, Professor of Electrical Engineering at the Federal University of S?o Jo?o del-Rei (UFSJ), S?o Jo?o del-Rei, Brazil Title of the talk: Toward a neural prosthesis to the epileptic brain by tackling neural hyper synchronism The confirmation of other invited speakers will be done soon. REGISTRATION FEES - Until 30/06/2017 Undergraduate Student: R$ 100,00 Graduate Student: R$ 150,00 Professionals: R$ 200,00 - Until 13/10/2017 Undergraduate Student: R$ 125,00 Graduate Student: R$ 175,00 Professionals: R$ 225,00 - After 14/10/2017 Undergraduate Student: R$ 150,00 Graduate Student: R$ 200,00 Professionals: R$ 250,00 Registrations can be done at http://www2.fundacaomedica. hcpa.ufrgs.br/siafnet/hinscricoesemcursosv3.aspx? 1598,I+LAWCN+-+LATIN+AMERICAN+WORKSHOP+ON+COM PAPER SUBMISSION AND PUBLICATIONS - Papers should be submitted exclusively through EasyChair website: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=lawcn2017 - Papers will be evaluated based on their originality, quality, and significance of the theoretical and practical contribution to Computational Neuroscience; - Only papers presented at the conference will be included in the proceedings; - All papers (Short and Full) and Digital Posters must be in PDF format and include abstract, figures, tables and references in the minimum/maximum amount of pages (according to the category desired); - Papers can be submitted in four categories (see image bellow): - Short paper not related directly to Computer Science: - Length: between 3 and 8 pages - Languages: English, Spanish and Portuguese - Short paper related to Computer Science: - Length: between 6 and 8 pages - Language: English - Full paper not related directly to Computer Science: - Length: between 10 and 15 pages - Languages: English, Spanish and Portuguese - Full paper related to Computer Science: - Length: between 10 and 15 pages - Language: English - Papers that are not related directly to Computer Science will be published in the Latin-American Workshop on Computational Neuroscience Proceedings and can be submitted in English, Portuguese or Spanish. Papers that are related to Computer Science will be published in Springer-Verlag Communications in Computer and Information Science (CCIS) Proceedings (ISSN 1865-0929), and the best papers will be indicated to be published in Education, Technology and Culture (ISSN 1808-0588) or IEEE-RITA (ISSN 1932-8540). - Papers (Short and Full) can be selected by the Program Committee for Oral or Poster presentations, regardless its length and category. - At least one author of each accepted paper for oral or poster presentation must register at the conference. If more than one paper per author is accepted, there is an extra registration fee; - Since LAWCN has goals to foster and encourage investigation careers of young and talented researchers, the Program Committee will select the best papers to be published in indexed journals. Contacts with editors have already been made and will continue until the realization of the Workshop to stimulate Science divulgation. - One of the authors must sign and attach a disclosure form if the paper is accepted; - More details about the papers submission process can be found on the Congress web page. LAWCN AWARDS The Program Committee will select the three best oral presentations (one for each main topic of the event) during the workshop. One of the authors of these papers will be entitled to a prize that will consist of amounts up to USD 300 for registration in scientific events in areas related to the Workshop and which occur in 2018, as well as free registration for the next edition of LAWCN. These awards will depend on the amount obtained by the registrations. ORGANIZERS General Chair: Prof. Dr. Dante Augusto Couto Barone, Informatics Institute, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), Porto Alegre, Brazil Deputy General Chair: Prof. Dr. Marino Bianchin, Medicine Faculty, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), Porto Alegre, Brazil Organizing Committee: Christian Puhlmann Brackmann IFFAR, Santa Maria, RS, Brazil Dante Augusto Couto Barone UFRGS, Porto Alegre, RS, Brazil Eduardo Oliveira Teles IFBA, Cama?ari, BA, Brazil Heron Pereira UFRGS, Porto Alegre, RS, Brazil Jaime Andres Riascos Salas UFRGS, Porto Alegre, RS, Brazil Marino Muxfeldt Bianchin UFRGS, Porto Alegre, RS, Brazil Paulo Rog?rio de Almeida Ribeiro UFMA, S?o Lu?s, MA, Brazil Pedro Schestatsky UFRGS, Porto Alegre, RS, Brazil Rodrigo Alejandro Sierra UFRGS, Porto Alegre, RS, Brazil Program Committee: Alexandre C?sar Muniz de Oliveira, Informatics Department, Federal University of Maranh?o (UFMA), S?o Lu?s, Brazil Ant?nio Carlos Roque, Physics and Mathematics Department, S?o Paulo University (USP), Ribeir?o Preto, Brazil Areolino de Almeida Neto, Informatics Department, Federal University of Maranh?o (UFMA), S?o Lu?s, Brazil Christian Haag Kristensen, Psychology Faculty, Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul (PUC-RS), Porto Alegre, Brazil Dante Augusto Couto Barone, Informatics Institute, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), Porto Alegre, Brazil Diana Adamatti, Center of Computational Sciences, Federal University of Rio Grande (FURG), Rio Grande, Brazil Edson Prestes e Silva Junior, Informatics Institute, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), Porto Alegre, Brazil Eduardo L?pez-Larraz, Institute of Medical Psychology and Behavioural Neurobiology, University of T?bingen, T?bingen, Germany Eduardo Vicentini de Medeiros, Experimental Philosophy and Cognitive Studies Laboratory, Vale do Rio dos Sinos University (UNISINOS), Porto Alegre, Brazil Fabr?cio Lima Brasil, Edmond and Lily Safra International Institute of Neurosciences, Santos Dumont Institute (ELS IINN), Natal, Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil Felipe Meneguzzi, Informatics Faculty, Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul (PUC-RS), Porto Alegre, Brazil Francisco Sotres Bay?n, Celular Physiology Institute, National Autonomous University of M?xico (UNAM), M?xico Frederico Augusto Casarsa de Azevedo, Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, T?bingen, Germany Gustavo Gauer, Psychology Institute, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), Porto Alegre, Brazil Hougelle Simpl?cio Gomes Pereira, Edmond and Lily Safra International Institute of Neurosciences, Santos Dumont Institute (ELS IINN), Natal, Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil J?s de Jesus Fiais Cerqueira, Electrical Engineer Department, Federal University of Bahia (UFBA), Salvador, Brazil Jim T?rresen, Department of Informatics, University of Oslo (UiO), Oslo, Norway Juan Verdejo-Rom?n, Brain and Behavior Research Center, University of Granada (UGR), Granada, Spain Luciana Porcher Nedel, Informatics Institute, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), Porto Alegre, Brazil Luis Fernando Cardenas Parra, Psychology Department, Los Andes University, Bogot?, Colombia Marco Rocha Curado, University Medical Center Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany Marcos Yuzuru de Oliveira Camada, Electrical Engineering Graduate Course, Federal University of Bahia (UFBA), Salvador, Brazil Marino Muxfeldt Bianchin, Medicine Faculty, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), Porto Alegre, Brazil Miguel Perez Garcia, Mind, Brain and Behavior Research Center, University of Granada (UGR), Granada, Spain Olavo Amaral, Biochemical Medicine Institute, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Patricio Donnelly Kehoe, Scientific and Technological Center of Rosario, National University of Rosario (UNR),Rosario, Argentina Paulo Rog?rio de Almeida Ribeiro, Computer Engineering Department, Federal University of Maranh?o (UFMA), S?o Lu?s, Brazil Pedro Schestatsky, Medicine Faculty, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), Porto Alegre, Brazil Reinhold Scherer, Institute of Neural Engineering, Graz University of Technology, Graz, Austria Renan Cipriano Moioli, Edmond and Lily Safra International Institute of Neurosciences, Santos Dumont Institute (ELS IINN), Natal, Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil Risto Ilmoniemi, Department of Neuroscience and Biomedical Engineering,Aalto University, Helsinki,Finland Rodrigo Alejandro Sierra, Biosciences Institute, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), Porto Alegre, Brazil Rukiye Uzun, Department of Electronics and Electrical Engineering,Bulent Ecevit University (BEU), Zonguldak, Turkey Sen Cheng, Computational Neuroscience Institute, Ruhr University Bochum (RUB), Bochum, Germany Silvio Cesar Cazella, Department of Exact and Applied Social Sciences,Federal University of Health Sciences of Porto Alegre (UFCSPA), Porto Alegre, RS, Brazil Victor Christian Paredes Cauna, Texas A&M University, Bryan/College Station, USA Vinicius Rosa Cota, Electrical Engineering Department, Federal University of S?o Jo?o del-Rei (UFSJ), S?o Jo?o del-Rei, Brazil -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From marc.toussaint at informatik.uni-stuttgart.de Wed May 17 12:28:47 2017 From: marc.toussaint at informatik.uni-stuttgart.de (Marc Toussaint) Date: Wed, 17 May 2017 18:28:47 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: Summer School on Robotics and Autonomous Learning (RALSS'17) -- Application Deadline May 31 Message-ID: Summer School (RALSS?17) *Foundations of Robotics and Autonomous Learning* Berlin, September 4-8, 2017 http://autonomous-learning.org/ralss-2017/ *Application Deadline: May 31, 2017* It is my great pleasure to announce the first Summer School on Foundations of Robotics and Autonomous Learning (RALSS?17), to take place September 4-8, 2017 at TU Berlin. The RALSS Summer School focuses on the foundations and intersections of Robotics, Machine Learning and AI. With this unique focus we aim to cover what is essential for understanding real-world intelligence, which includes understanding the problems specific to our physical world (robotics) as well as the foundations of machine learning and AI. This summer school is organized by the Autonomous Learning Priority Programme (http://autonomous-learning.org), sponsored by the German Research Foundation. International experts will teach the state-of-the-art in robotics and machine learning for robotics. The program will include prep material, foundational courses and focus lectures with exercises. We invite all interested post-graduate students, post-docs and young researchers to apply. *Application deadline is May 31.* Please see http://autonomous-learning.org/ralss-2017/ for further information and how to apply. Contact me or Alica Abberger if you have any further questions on the event. Best, Marc -- 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 Wilson_Truccolo at brown.edu Wed May 17 11:20:16 2017 From: Wilson_Truccolo at brown.edu (Wilson Truccolo) Date: Wed, 17 May 2017 11:20:16 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: POSTDOCTORAL POSITIONS IN COMPUTATIONAL NEUROSCIENCE, TRUCCOLO LAB, BROWN UNIVERSITY Message-ID: Applications for post-doctoral positions are invited for the Laboratory of Dr. Wilson Truccolo in the Department of Neuroscience at Brown University, Providence, RI, USA. The positions are for the development of data-driven stochastic models of multiscale neural dynamics. Neural data consist of recordings of ensembles of single-neurons and high-density local field potentials obtained via multiple intracortical microelectrode arrays implanted in human and non-human primates. Current research projects include: (1) Role of neuronal network intrinsic dynamics in encoding and decoding of sensorimotor information. (2) Multiscale neocortical dynamics in human focal epilepsy: seizure transition, propagation and termination. (3) Precursor signatures of focal seizure transitions, prediction and control. The ideal candidate will have a strong background in computational/theoretical neuroscience and modeling of stochastic neural dynamics. Related publications can be found on the Truccolo lab website ( http://www.truccololab.com/ ). Inquiries should be addressed to Dr. Truccolo (wilson_truccolo at brown.edu). Applications including a CV, statement of research interests, and the names and full contact details of three referees should be sent to wilson_truccolo at brown.edu. -- Wilson Truccolo, Ph.D. Pablo J. Salame '88 Goldman Sachs Assistant Professor of Computational Neuroscience Department of Neuroscience & Institute for Brain Science, Brown University Lab website: http://www.truccololab.com/ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From v.steuber at herts.ac.uk Thu May 18 12:27:29 2017 From: v.steuber at herts.ac.uk (Steuber, Volker) Date: Thu, 18 May 2017 16:27:29 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: Lecturer/Senior Lecturer in Computer Science (Machine Learning / Biocomputation) (Closing Date 18 June) In-Reply-To: <1475869344617.95858@herts.ac.uk> References: <1475869344617.95858@herts.ac.uk> Message-ID: <1495124850681.94906@herts.ac.uk> Lecturer/Senior Lecturer in Computer Science (Machine Learning / Biocomputation) School of Computer Science University of Hertfordshire, UK Salary ?32,004 to ?48,327 per annum depending on qualifications and experience Full time position working 37 hours per week (1.0 FTE) Closing date 18 June 2017 Applications are invited for a Lecturer or Senior Lecturer in the School of Computer Science, University of Hertfordshire. The successful candidate will be expected to contribute to the School's teaching and curriculum development activities, and to strengthen its research activities. We are looking to recruit specifically a computer scientist with background in machine learning or data science related to biocomputation (including computational neuroscience). By Data Science we broadly mean the extraction of meaning from large quantities of data. The successful candidate will also have the flexibility to teach across mainstream topics in computer science. The School has an international reputation for teaching and research, with 58 academic staff, 20 adjunct lecturer staff, and 65 research students and postdoctoral research staff. With a history going back to 1958, the School teaches one of the largest cohorts of undergraduate students in the UK, and also delivers a thriving online computer science degree programme. The person appointed will be expected to contribute to learning and teaching relevant to core computer science topics, participate in curriculum review and development, design and develop new modules, and supervise student projects at all levels. The appointee will strengthen the research culture in the School by pursuing research as part of a larger research team, seeking external funding, publishing papers, supervising research students, and participating in commercial activity as appropriate. Preference will be given to candidates who can contribute to teaching and research in databases as outlined above. Applicants must hold a PhD (or equivalent) in a relevant subject, possess excellent communication skills in English and the ability to teach at undergraduate and postgraduate level. It is desirable that candidates have a track record of publication, external research funding, collaboration across disciplines, experience of different types of assessment and higher education quality assurance. They should also have the ability to play a role in the routine running of the School of Computer Science. Applications should be made through http://www.herts.ac.uk/contact-us/jobs-and-vacancies/academic-vacancies (reference 014050). Informal enquiries may be addressed to Dr Volker Steuber (Head of the Biocomputation Research Group, v.steuber at herts.ac.uk) or Professor William Clocksin (Dean of School, w.clocksin at herts.ac.uk). Please note that applications sent directly to these email addresses will not be accepted. We are committed to providing a supportive environment. The University offers a range of benefits including a pension scheme, professional development, family friendly policies, child care vouchers, a fee waiver of 50% for all children of staff under the age of 21 at the start of the course, discounted memberships at the Hertfordshire Sports Village and generous annual leave.? ? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From angela.avera at gmail.com Thu May 18 17:35:32 2017 From: angela.avera at gmail.com (Angie Avera) Date: Thu, 18 May 2017 16:35:32 -0500 Subject: Connectionists: CFP: MAY 22nd DEADLINE: Games as Research Environments Workshop at FDG 2017 Message-ID: ************************************************************ ********************************** DEADLINE APPROACHING: Call for Participation Submission Deadline: May 22nd Workshop on Tracing the Boundaries of Games as Research Environments https://gamesasresearchenvironments.wordpress.com/call-for-participation-2/ at Foundations of Digital Games 2017, Cape Cod, Massachusetts August 14-17 2017 ************************************************************ *********************************** Across disciplines, games are being increasingly used as research environments for experimentation and empirical study. This includes enlisting the use of games to explore human behavior and decision making, validate algorithms, consistently improve AI, collect player data, inform game design and more. However, the cost, complexity and rigor needed to produce these types of games is high and not enough is known about how games could be fully utilized in service as rigorous research environments. This workshop aims to bring together the game design and research community who have used games as research environments or those interested in building or enlisting games for this purpose, for a discussion on this topic and to share lessons learned from their work. The focus of the workshop will be to advance the collective understanding of a) the types of phenomena, problems and questions games are being used to study, b) the implications of extrapolating data from simulated environments to the the real-world, c) the theoretical, computational and design hurdles researchers consistently face and d) the potential value and concerns in employing games as research environments. *IMPORTANT DATES* Submission Date: May 22, 2017 Notification of Acceptance: June 1, 2017 FDG 2017: August 14-17, 2017 (Workshop most likely on first day) *SUBMISSION STYLE AND TOPICS* We welcome 2-4 page position papers, written in extended abstract format, that either discuss experience using games for research environments and interesting problems faced or lessons learned, or cover a particular position on the following topics: ? What are games as research environments? ? Why would we use games to learn about the world? ? ?Serious games? for research. ? Reliability and validity of using games as research environments ? Game design approaches with specific research in mind ? Criteria for selecting existing games for specific purposes ? Games for psychology and behavioral research ? The design of stimuli that accounts for complex constructs such as social interaction and behaviors ? Studies of games used for a specific domain or discipline ? Games as research environments for the design of game components ? Games as a testbed to validate algorithms ? How do games impact your research environment? ? A priori problems: design, creating valid stimuli for independent variables, adaptation, hypotheses, decision to include or exclude fun elements for serious games ? A posteriori problems: data analysis, filtering, qualitative vs. quantitative, player telemetry, challenges with conclusions and takeaways *SUBMISSION DETAILS* we welcome 2-4 page position papers, written in extended abstract format. Submissions must be a PDF document and follow ACM SIG proceedings format. Accepted papers will be published as part of the FDG proceedings in the ACM DL. For more information, please visit: https://gamesasresearchenvironments.wordpress.com/ Please submit your contributions at: https://easychair.org/account/signin.cgi?key=53711432.ruBbkcFla9I2qtjk Thank you! -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From bhuang at vt.edu Thu May 18 23:37:38 2017 From: bhuang at vt.edu (Bert Huang) Date: Thu, 18 May 2017 23:37:38 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: CFP: Deep Structured Prediction Workshop at ICML Message-ID: <0451F2CB-9F1F-43AE-A970-14F828659484@vt.edu> All, Please consider submitting your research to our ICML 2017 workshop. See the CFP below. Bert -- Bert Huang, Ph.D. Assistant Professor Dept. of Computer Science, Virginia Tech http://berthuang.com === Call for papers: Deep Structured Prediction === Workshop of the International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML) 2017 Sydney, Australia 11 August 2017 Website: https://deepstruct.github.io/ICML17 TL;DR: 4 pages, in ICML format, submit by June 2nd PT. Deep learning has revolutionized machine learning for many domains and problems. Today, most successful applications of deep learning involve predicting single variables (like univariate regression or multi-class classification). However, many real problems involve highly dependent, structured variables. In such scenarios, it is desired or even necessary to model correlations and dependencies between the multiple input and output variables. Such problems arise in a wide range of domains, from natural language processing, computer vision, computational biology and others. Some approaches to these problems directly use deep learning concepts, such as those that generate sequences using recurrent neural networks or that output image segmentations through convolutions. Others adapt the concepts from structured output learning. These structured output prediction problems were traditionally handled using linear models and hand-crafted features, with a structured optimization such as inference. It has recently been proposed to combine the representational power of deep neural networks with modeling variable dependence in a structured prediction framework. There are numerous interesting research questions related to modeling and optimization that arise in this problem space. The workshop will bring together experts in machine learning and application domains whose research focuses on combining deep learning and structured models. Specifically, it will provide an overview of existing approaches from various domains to distill from their success principles that can be more generally applicable. We will also discuss the main challenges arising in this setting and outline potential directions for future progress. The target audience consists of researchers and practitioners in machine learning and application areas. We invite the submission of short papers no longer than four pages, including references, addressing machine learning research that intersects structured prediction and deep learning, including any of the following topics: Deep learning approaches for structured-output problems Integration of deep learning with structured-output learning End-to-end learning of probabilistic models with non-linear potentials Deep learning applications with dependent inputs or outputs Papers should be formatted according to the ICML template: (http://media.nips.cc/Conferences/ICML2017/icml2017.tgz ). Only papers using the above template will be considered. Word templates will not be provided. Papers should be submitted through easychair at the following address: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=1stdeepstructws Papers will be reviewed for relevance and quality. Accepted papers will be posted online. Authors of high-quality papers will be offered oral presentations at the workshop, and we will award a best-paper and runner-up prize. === Important Dates === ***Submission deadline: June 2, 2017 ***Notification of acceptance: June 18, 2017 ***Camera-ready deadline: August 1, 2017 === Program committee === David Belanger, University of Massachusetts Amherst Matthew Blaschko, KU Leuven Ryan Cotterell, Johns Hopkins University Ming-Wei Chang, Microsoft Research Raia Hadsell, Google DeepMind Hal Daum? III, University of Maryland Justin Domke, University of Massachusetts Amherst Andrew McCallum, University of Massachusetts Amherst Eliyahu Kiperwasser, Bar-Ilan University Jason Naradowsky, University of Cambridge Sebastian Nowozin, Microsoft Research, Cambridge, UK Nanyun Peng, Johns Hopkins University Amirmohammad Rooshenas, University of Oregon Dan Roth, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Alexander Rush, Harvard University Sameer Singh, University of California Irvine Uri Shalit, New York University Andreas Vlachos, University of Sheffield Yi Yang, Georgia Institute of Technology Scott Yih, Microsoft Research Yangfeng Ji, University of Washington Yisong Yue, California Institute of Technology Shuai Zheng, eBay === Workshop Organizers === Isabelle Augenstein, University College London Kai-Wei Chang, University of California Los Angeles Gal Chechik, Bar-Ilan University / Google Bert Huang, Virginia Tech Andr? Martins, Unbabel and Instituto de Telecomunicacoes Ofer Meshi, Google Alexander Schwing, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From geri at robot-learning.de Fri May 19 05:16:20 2017 From: geri at robot-learning.de (Gerhard Neumann) Date: Fri, 19 May 2017 10:16:20 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: [jobs] Post-Doc Position in Deep Learning for Autonomous Driving, 2nd call, University of Lincoln, UK Message-ID: *Deadline approaching: 21st of May*Research Fellow in Deep Learning for Autonomous DrivingSchool of Computer Science*Location: *Brayford *Salary: * From ?32,004 per annum Fixed Term for approximately 1 year *Closing Date: * Sunday 21 May 2017 *Interview Date: * Tuesday 30 May 2017 *Reference: *COS413B We seek to employ a highly motivated post-doctoral researcher that will be working on a joint project with Toyota on the topic "Hierarchical Deep Learning for Autonomous Driving". You should hold a PhD or be near to completion, and should be able to demonstrate a good track record in at least one of the following research fields: - Deep Learning - Reinforcement Learning - Imitation Learning - Movement Primitives and Movement Representations - Variational Bayes and Hierarchical Bayesian Models The contract is for one year. If the project is successful it is likely to be extended by Toyota for several years. Once in post, you will be working with Professor Gerhard Neumann on the aforementioned research topics. The successful candidate will be a member of the Lincoln Centre for Autonomous Systems (L-CAS). The L-CAS is part of the School of Computer Science at the University of Lincoln and specialises in the integration of perception, learning, decision-making, control and interaction capabilities in autonomous systems and the application of this research in fields such as personal robotics, agri-food, healthcare, security, and intelligent transportation. The L-CAS is one of the fastest growing robotics groups in the UK. We provide a highly-dynamic inter-disciplinary research environment with a broad range of collaboration opportunities and a large variety of robots to work with. In this project, you will have access to sophisticated car simulators and real autonomous cars provided by Toyota Europe. The University of Lincoln is a forward-thinking, ambitious institution and you will be working in the heart of a thriving, beautiful, safe and friendly city. The School provides a stimulating environment for academic research, and is located on the picturesque waterfront campus in the historic and vibrant city of Lincoln. The University has just announced a ?130M investment programme, a significant part of which is being invested in new, purpose-built facilities for the School of Computer Science. Lincoln itself is a small but fast growing city in the east-midlands. It offers a fantastic life quality given by moderate living costs, a medivial city centre including a famous cathedral and a beautiful ancient canal system that is still in use by many house boats nowadays. If you would like to know more about this opportunity, please contact Professor Gerhard Neumann (Professor of Computational Learning for Autonomous Systems, gneumann at lincoln.ac.uk). Please apply at https://jobs.lincoln.ac.uk/Vacancy.aspx?id=1997&forced=1 . -- -- --------------------------------------------- Prof. Gerhard Neumann Chair of Computational Learning for Autonomous Systems School of Computer Science University of Lincoln Brayford Pool Lincoln, LN6 7TS -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From lpulina at uniss.it Fri May 19 07:09:17 2017 From: lpulina at uniss.it (Luca Pulina) Date: Fri, 19 May 2017 13:09:17 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: CPS Summer School 2017 - Call for participation Message-ID: <12c845b8-2bf7-bbf2-2ba5-2fa084ca42f3@uniss.it> [apologies for any cross-posting] ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ CPS Summer School 2017 "Designing Cyber-Physical Systems ? From concepts to implementation" Multi-objective Methodologies and Tools for Self-healing and Adaptive Systems Porto Conte Ricerche, Alghero (Italy) September 25-30, 2017 http://www.cpsschool.eu ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Cyber-physical systems (CPS) are complex and autonomous ensembles of different components that interact to offer smart and adaptive functionalities. These systems are increasingly used in a variety of applications with a growing market, potentially bringing about significant social benefits. However, there is no such thing as a free lunch, and there area several new challenges and trade-offs to face when designing CPS, especially since they should be able to adapt to the changing environments, or heal themselves. Uncertain operation environments and interactions with humans as users and/or as operators complicate the scenarios of these ever increasingly pervasive systems. The CPS summer school is targeted at students, research scientists, and R&D experts from academia and industry, who want to learn about CPS engineering and applications. The program is composed of both lectures and practical sessions, covering all the design phases of CPS (i.e., from concept to the definition of the final system and the discussion of the key challenges). * Topics Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following: - Market trends for CPS - Applications of CPS, including wearable, biomedical, Industry 4.0, cognitive, and automotive systems - Hardware/software co-design, adaptivity, and multi-view modeling - Low power design of heterogeneous systems - Tools for dataflow design, high-level synthesis, hardware/software co-design, and coarse/fine reconfiguration - Security in adaptive and interconnected systems For applications and details on the registration fees, please visit: http://www.cpsschool.eu/application/ * Confirmed Speakers (http://www.cpsschool.eu/confirmed-speakers/): -Alberto Sangiovanni-Vincentelli, University of California, Berkeley (USA) -Armando Tacchella, Universit? degli Studi di Genova (ITA) -Christian Pilato, University of Lugano (CH) -Eduardo de la Torre, Universidad Polit?cnica de Madrid (ES) -Francesca Palumbo, Universit? degli Studi di Sassari (ITA) -Francesco Regazzoni, University of Lugano (CH) -Hironori Kasahara, Waseda University and IEEE Computer Society (JP) -Jocelyn Serot, Institut Pascal (FR) -Julio De Oliveira Filho, TNO (NL) -Karol Desnos, INSA de Rennes (FR) -Michael Masin, IBM Research - Haifa (IL) -Muhammad Shafique, Vienna University of Technology (AT) -Ugo della Croce, Universit? degli Studi di Sassari (ITA) and Embassy of Italy Washington DC (USA) * Organization --School Director Francesca Palumbo, Universit? degli Studi di Sassari (ITA), fpalumbo at uniss.it --Organizing Committee Luca Pulina, Universit? degli Studi di Sassari (ITA) Andrea Cereatti, Universit? degli Studi di Sassari (ITA) Michael Masin, IBM Research Haifa (IL) Christian Pilato, University of Lugano (CH) Francesco Regazzoni, University of Lugano (CH) -- Luca Pulina, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Computer Science POLCOMING - Department of Political Science, Communication, Engineering and Information Technologies University of Sassari e-mail lpulina at uniss.it http://sites.google.com/site/lpulina From mcallester at ttic.edu Fri May 19 12:28:41 2017 From: mcallester at ttic.edu (David McAllester) Date: Fri, 19 May 2017 11:28:41 -0500 Subject: Connectionists: Program for SNL 2017 (Nagoya) July 7-8 Message-ID: The program is now available for the conference on Symbolic-Neural Learning (SNL) to be held in Nagoya Japan July 7-8. Registration deadline: Friday, June 9, 2017 Program: First International Workshop on Symbolic-Neural Learning (July 7-8) Nagoya Congress Center, Japan (Friday, July 7, 2017) 13:00-13:10 Opening 13:10-14:10 Keynote talk I (invited): Yoshua Bengio 14:10-14:30 Coffee break 14:30-15:30 Keynote talk II: Masashi Sugiyama 15:30-15:40 Break 15:40-17:20 Session 1: Computer Vision Weihua Hu, Takeru Miyato, Seiya Tokui, Eiichi Matsumoto and Masashi Sugiyama, Learning Discrete Representations via Information Maximizing Self-Augmented Training Ruotian Luo and Gregory Shakhnarovich, Comprehension-guided referring expressions Tristan Hascoet, Yasuo Ariki and Tetsuya Takiguchi, Semantic Web and Zero-Shot Learning of Large Scale Visual Classes. Bowen Shi, Taehwan Kim, Jonathan Keane, Weiran Wang, Hao Tang, Gregory Shakhnarovich, Diane Brentari and Karen Livescu, Neural Models for Fingerspelling Recognition from Video 18:00-20:00 Banquet (Saturday, July 8, 2017) 9:00-10:00 Keynote talk III (invited): William Cohen 10:00-10:20 Coffee break 10:20-12:00 Session 2: Speech & Language Andrea F. Daniele, Mohit Bansal and Matthew Walter, Navigational Instruction Generation as Inverse Reinforcement Learning with Neural Machine Translation Kurt Junshean Espinosa, Riza Batista-Navarro and Sophia Ananiadou, 5Ws: What Went Wrong with Word embeddings Shubham Toshniwal, Hao Tang, Liang Lu and Karen Livescu, Multitask Learning with Low-Level Auxiliary Tasks for Encoder-Decoder Based Speech Recognition ohn Wieting, Mohit Bansal, Kevin Gimpel and Karen Livescu, Neural Architectures for Modeling Compositionality in Natural Language 12:00-13:30 Lunch break 13:30-14:30 Keynote talk IV: Jun-ichi Tsujii 14:30-15:30 Poster Session Matthew Holland and Kazushi Ikeda, Variance reduction using biased gradient estimates Zhenghang Cui, Issei Sato and Masashi Sugiyama, Stochastic Divergence Minimization for Biterm Topic Model Yin Jun Phua, Sophie Tourret and Katsumi Inoue, Learning Logic Program Representation from Delayed Interpretation Transition Using Recurrent Neural Networks Haiping Huang, Alireza Goudarzi and Taro Toyoizumi, Combining DropConnect and Feedback Alignment for Efficient Regularization in Deep Networks Jen-Tzung Chien and Ching-Wei Huang, Variational and Adversarial Domain Adaptation Miki Ueno, Comic Book Interpretation based on Deep Neural Networks Nicholas Altieri, Sherdil Niyaz, Samee Ibraheem and John Denero, Improved Word and Symbol Embedding for Part-of-Speech Tagging Marc Evrard, Makoto Miwa and Yutaka Sasaki, TTI's Approaches to Symbolic-Neural Learning* 15:30-17:35 Session 3: New Learning Approach Tomoya Sakai, Marthinus Christoffel Du Plessis, Gang Niu and Masashi Sugiyama, Semi-Supervised Classification based on Positive-Unlabeled Classification Han Bao, Masashi Sugiyama and Issei Sato, Multiple Instance Learning from Positive and Unlabeled Data Tetsuya Hada, Akifumi Okuno and Hidetoshi Shimodaira, Deep Multi-view Representation Learning Based on Adaptive Weighted Similarity Makoto Yamada, Koh Takeuchi, Tomoharu Iwata, John Shawe-Taylor and Samuel Kaski, Localized Lasso for High-Dimensional Regression Tim Rocktaschel and Sebastian Riedel, End-to-end Differentiable Proving 17:40-17:50 Closing --------------------------------------------------------- -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From ijcci at insticc.info Fri May 19 10:36:48 2017 From: ijcci at insticc.info (ijcci at insticc.info) Date: 19 May 2017 15:36:48 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: CFP IJCCI 2017 - 9th Int.l Joint Conf. on Computational Intelligence (Funchal, Madeira/Portugal) Message-ID: <20170519143658.39214.51876C4D735FFCAA@insticc.info> SUBMISSION DEADLINE 9th International Joint Conference on Computational Intelligence Submission Deadline: May 22, 2017 http://www.ijcci.org/ November 1 - 3, 2017 Funchal, Madeira, Portugal. IJCCI is organized in 4 major tracks: - Evolutionary Computation - Fuzzy Computation - Neural Computation - Cognitive and Hybrid Systems In Cooperation with AIXIA, AAAI, EUSFLAT. With the presence of internationally distinguished keynote speakers: Ant?nio Dourado, University of Coimbra, Portugal Emma Hart, Edinburgh Napier University, United Kingdom Paulo Novais, Universidade do Minho, Portugal Jonathan Garibaldi, University of Nottingham, United Kingdom A short list of presented papers will be selected so that revised and extended versions of these papers will be published by Springer. All papers presented at the congress venue will also be available at the SCITEPRESS Digital Library (http://www.scitepress.org/DigitalLibrary/). Should you have any question please don?t hesitate contacting me. Kind regards, IJCCI Secretariat Address: Av. D. Manuel I, 27A, 2? esq. 2910-595 Setubal, Portugal Tel: +351 265 100 033 Fax: +351 265 520 186 Web: http://www.ijcci.org/ e-mail: ijcci.secretariat at insticc.org From neurotechnix at insticc.info Fri May 19 10:36:59 2017 From: neurotechnix at insticc.info (neurotechnix at insticc.info) Date: 19 May 2017 15:36:59 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: CFP NEUROTECHNIX 2017 - 5th Int.l Congress on Neurotechnology, Electronics and Informatics (Funchal, Madeira/Portugal) Message-ID: <20170519143709.39214.0044832B9D7FDFCC@insticc.info> SUBMISSION DEADLINE 5th International Congress on Neurotechnology, Electronics and Informatics Submission Deadline: May 22, 2017 http://www.neurotechnix.org/ October 30 - 31, 2017 Funchal, Madeira, Portugal. NEUROTECHNIX is organized in 4 major tracks: - Neural Rehabilitation and Neuroprosthetics - Neuroinformatics and Neurocomputing - Neuromodulation and Neural Engineering - Neuroimaging and Neurosensing In Cooperation with Neurotech Network, IFCN, SPN. With the presence of internationally distinguished keynote speakers: Moritz Grosse-Wentrup, Max Planck Institute for Inteligent Systems, Germany Eugenio Guglielmelli, Universit? Campus Bio-Medico, Italy Sergi Bermudez i Badia, Madeira Interactive Technologies Institute/Universidade da Madeira, Portugal M?nica Cameir?o, Universidade da Madeira, Portugal A short list of presented papers will be selected so that revised and extended versions of these papers will be published by Springer. All papers presented at the congress venue will also be available at the SCITEPRESS Digital Library (http://www.scitepress.org/DigitalLibrary/). Should you have any question please don?t hesitate contacting me. Kind regards, NEUROTECHNIX Secretariat Address: Av. D. Manuel I, 27A, 2? esq. 2910-595 Setubal, Portugal Tel: +351 265 100 033 Fax: +351 265 520 186 Web: http://www.neurotechnix.org/ e-mail: neurotechnix.secretariat at insticc.org From thilo.womelsdorf at vanderbilt.edu Fri May 19 22:06:39 2017 From: thilo.womelsdorf at vanderbilt.edu (Womelsdorf, Thilo) Date: Sat, 20 May 2017 02:06:39 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: Postdoc position: Vanderbilt Non-human Primate Systems Neuroscience Message-ID: <04E6E319-4B85-4FD9-824C-5D9A119B1198@vanderbilt.edu> Non-human Primate Systems Neuroscience - Postdoctoral Research Position Vanderbilt University, Dr. Thilo Womelsdorf's Attention-Circuits-Control Laboratory: www.attention-circuits-control.org We search for an applicant to conduct learning and attention experiments in NHP's using large-scale multi-area recordings with laminar probes. The job is for 3 years + options to extend. Starting Date: 2017 or early 2018. We offer: ? TEAM: Working in a team with members having advanced computational skills and running innovative high-density recording set ups ? TECHNIQUES: State-of-the-art facilities at Vanderbilt University in a laboratory Dr. Womelsdorf newly establishes. ? CONCEPTS: A rigid network approach to understand attention and learning phenomena with recordings of spiking activity in prefrontal cortex, hippocampus and the basal ganglia, ? SIGNIFICANCE: The research allows causal testing of mechanistic circuit hypotheses using various forms of neuromodulation (pharmacology, diff. stimulation techniques). The job requires these skills: ? Experience with NHP?s ? Progamming skills ? Understanding of behavioral and electrophysiological analysis approaches in systems neuroscience. To apply: Please send an email with a brief outline of your major research interests and a CV to: thilo.womelsdorf at vanderbilt.edu Vanderbilt University is a vibrant private Research University with rich opportunities for interactions across Departments and Research Centers, located within Nashville, TN, ?music city ? and people very convincingly convey it is one of the most exciting cities in the US ! Thilo Womelsdorf | www.attention-circuits-control.org -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From kari.hoffman at vanderbilt.edu Fri May 19 17:45:34 2017 From: kari.hoffman at vanderbilt.edu (Hoffman, Kari) Date: Fri, 19 May 2017 21:45:34 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: Postdoctoral Position in Primate Circuits/Systems Neuroscience, Hoffman Lab Message-ID: <6AC1038BABDA3A478CFDBC6F375F80869E0CC3@ITS-HCWNEM107.ds.vanderbilt.edu> Postdoctoral Research Position in Neural Circuits of Learning and Memory in Non-human Primates Vanderbilt University, Dr. Kari Hoffman The Perception and Plasticity lab (PI: Kari Hoffman) at Vanderbilt University is recruiting a postdoctoral researcher to investigate the neural circuit dynamics underlying memory formation and flexible learning in macaques. Approaches include 1) multi-site electrode array recordings and closed-loop stimulation during visual exploration and 2) high-density wireless recordings during freely-moving tasks and in sleep to identify neural correlates of learning. See http://wp.me/P5TndN-m. Successful candidates will have a PhD in a relevant field (e.g., Neuroscience, Computer Science, Biomedical Engineering, Psychology) and be able to work both independently and as part of a team. Applicants should have experience with macaque behavior or neural ensemble analysis, proficiency in programming/scripting and statistical modeling, and a record of published work related to the areas of interest. The candidate will join a vibrant research community of systems and integrative neuroscience and vision science at Vanderbilt University, including the Vanderbilt Brain Institute and the Vanderbilt Vision Research Center. Vanderbilt University is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer. The start date is flexible. Funding is available for at least three years. The initial appointment will be for one year, with the opportunity for renewal. Applicants should email kari.hoffman at vanderbilt.edu with a research statement summarizing area of interest, previous accomplishments, and long-term research goals; a CV; and contact information for three references. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From RE at law.ucla.edu Sat May 20 14:38:28 2017 From: RE at law.ucla.edu (Re, Richard) Date: Sat, 20 May 2017 18:38:28 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: Fellowship in AI Law/Policy at UCLA Message-ID: UCLA Fellowship in Artificial Intelligence, Law, and Policy UCLA School of Law?s Program on Understanding Law, Science, and Evidence, or PULSE, is now accepting applications for the PULSE Fellowship in Artificial Intelligence, Law, and Policy for the academic years 2017-2019. This fellowship is a full-time, two-year faculty position beginning in the fall of 2017. The position primarily involves sustained research and writing on the social, economic, and legal implications of artificial intelligence and machine learning. The position will also involve teaching and assisting with PULSE projects, such as conferences and workshops. Progress in artificial intelligence and machine learning has advanced rapidly in recent years, and additional advances may proceed at an accelerating pace. Large recent progress in automated translation, face and voice recognition, anticipating criminal sentencing consequences, and automated radiological diagnosis are just a few among many salient examples. Similar technologies will alter many aspects of human life, yielding societal disruption and a need for governance. Rather than focusing on colorful fictional treatments or relatively immediate consequences, the PULSE fellow will engage in careful, critical advance thinking about large-scale potential impacts. The fellow will evaluate methods for assessment and prediction, as well as legal, economic, institutional, regulatory, and other forms of preparation and response. The fellow?s research will culminate in the authorship of papers suitable for publication in law journals or other respected legal, scholarly, and policy outlets. Throughout, the fellow will work in collaboration with Professor of Law Edward A. Parson and PULSE Co-Director Richard M. Re, among other UCLA faculty. PULSE explores the complex connections between law, evidence, science, and technology. PULSE engages in cutting-edge and interdisciplinary research and programming to examine how basic ?facts? about our world, provided through science and credited as evidence, influence venues of law and policy making. PULSE is co-directed by UCLA School of Law Dean Jennifer L. Mnookin and Assistant Professor of Law Richard M. Re. Candidates for the PULSE fellowship should possess a J.D. or other advanced degree, a strong academic record, excellent analytical and writing skills, and demonstrated interest or background in the fields of law and science, artificial intelligence, or social risk assessment. Candidates with previous academic, research, or professional experience in artificial intelligence, machine learning, computer science, or related fields of science and technology are especially encouraged to apply. The salary is anticipated to be approximately $90,000 per year plus a competitive benefits package. UCLA School of Law has a special interest in enriching its intellectual environment through further diversifying the range of perspectives represented within the faculty. Applicants should apply online at https://recruit.apo.ucla.edu/apply/JPF02981. Please submit a letter discussing your qualifications, scholarly and professional aims, and the interests you would wish to pursue while holding the fellowship; a resume; a transcript of studies in law school or graduate school; a writing sample of no more than ten pages; and contact information for three references. To ensure full consideration, applications should be received by Monday, June 12, 2017 but will be considered thereafter until the position is filled. Visit our website at http://www.law.ucla.edu/pulse for more information about our program. 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, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, age or protected veteran status. For the complete University of California nondiscrimination and affirmative action policy see: UC Nondiscrimination & Affirmative Action Policy (http://policy.ucop.edu/doc/4000376/NondiscrimAffirmAct). -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From weng at cse.msu.edu Sat May 20 12:19:13 2017 From: weng at cse.msu.edu (Juyang Weng) Date: Sat, 20 May 2017 12:19:13 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: Result of AIML Contest 2016 Message-ID: <48f29f76-39b4-e221-bf76-fec53e42a2d3@cse.msu.edu> The AMIL Contest Panel was successfully held May 16, 2017, Anchorage, AL, USA. The following contest result was announced for the AIML Contest 2016! The announcement, photos, and video will be available from the AIML Contest web soon! We would like to thank the financial supports from GENISAMA and INNS! AIML Contest 2017: the deadline for the advance registration is May 22, 2017, two days from now! The late application for BMI admission is still available! http://www.brain-mind-institute.org/program-registration.html *AIML Contest 2016* *1st place*: Team ICT-BISTU-BJUT Yu Song (leader and chief programmer, ICT) En Qing (chief programmer, BJUT) Cui Song (team member, BJUT) Jun Miao (advisor, ICT) Lijuan Duan (advisor, BJUT) $10,000 from GENISAMA LLC The 1st place trophy Five 1st-place medals $1000 travel support to the leader for IJCNN 2017 plus registration fee waiver for four from IJCNN 2017 Five BMI named-bags *2nd place*: Team LQF Qingfan Leng (leader and programmer, NJUST) Yuming Bo (advisor, NJUST) 2 AIML Contest medals from BMI Two 2nd-place medals $400 travel support offered to the leader for IJCNN 2017 plus registration fee waiver from IJCNN 2017 to present and participate in the AIML Contest Panel. Two BMI named-bags *3rd place*: Team QiuPanWang Liming Qiu (leader, chief programmer, Xiamen University) Geqiang pan (programmer, Xiamen University) Minmin Wang (programmer, Xiamen University) Min Jiang (advisor, Xiamen University) Four 3rd-place medals Registration fee waiver from IJCNN 2017 Four BMI named-bags Juyang Weng, General Chair Juan Castro-Garcia, Program Chair -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From dmochowski at gmail.com Sun May 21 21:14:52 2017 From: dmochowski at gmail.com (Jacek Dmochowski) Date: Sun, 21 May 2017 21:14:52 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: Neural Engineering Post-Doc in New York City Message-ID: A Postdoctoral Position in the area of Neural Engineering is available in the lab of Jacek Dmochowski at the City College of New York (CCNY). Research in the lab is directed towards the development of non-invasive techniques for stimulating the human brain and decoding its activity. For this we employ a variety of tools including electroencephalography (EEG), functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), and transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS). The Department of Biomedical Engineering at CCNY has a core strength in human neuroscience and is home to three neural engineering labs that closely collaborate. Candidates should have a Ph.D. in engineering, physics, computational neuroscience, or a closely-related field. Experience with computer programming in Matlab or Python is strongly preferred. The successful candidate will be given the opportunity to lead one or more projects that involve both experimental (human subjects research) and computational (machine learning, biophysical modeling) components. The candidate will be involved in all facets of the research including experimental design, data collection, analysis, and preparation of manuscripts. The position is for two years and has a flexible start date. Salary is competitive and based on years of experience. Interested candidates should submit a C.V., a short statement of research experience and interests, as well as contact information for at least two references to jdmochowski at ccny.cuny.edu. For more details about the lab, please visit the website . -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From annalisa.gentile at ibm.com Mon May 22 04:20:24 2017 From: annalisa.gentile at ibm.com (annalisa gentile) Date: Mon, 22 May 2017 01:20:24 -0700 Subject: Connectionists: [CfP] ISWC 2017 - keynote speakers and next deadlines Message-ID: 16th International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC 2017) Vienna, Austria, October 21-25, 2017 ******************************************* *** Deadlines reminder highlight - Doctoral Consortium: 25th May 2017 ******************************************* Website: http://iswc2017.semanticweb.org Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/113652365383847 Twitter: @iswc2017 (https://twitter.com/ISWC2017) Overview calls: http://iswc2017.semanticweb.org/calls/ In this announcement: 1. Keynote speakers 2. Call for contributions: Doctoral Consortium, Poster&Demo, Industry Track 3. Student Grants 4. Accepted Workshops and Tutorials 5. Important dates 1. Keynote speakers ========================================== We are delighted to announce the keynote speakers for this year edition of ISWC. Deborah McGuinness (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute) https://tw.rpi.edu/web/person/Deborah_L_McGuinness Prof. McGuinness is a leading authority on the semantic web and has been working in knowledge representation and reasoning environments for over 25 years. Deborah's primary research thrusts include work on explanation, trust, ontologies, escience, open data, and semantically-enabled schema and data integration. Nada Lavrac (Jozef Stefan Institute) http://kt.ijs.si/nada_lavrac/ Prof. Lavrac is Head of the Department of Knowledge Technologies at Jozef Stefan Institute (JSI). She is an expert on machine learning and data mining, in particular inductive logic programming and intelligent data analysis in medicine. Jamie Taylor (Google) https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamie-taylor-853953/ Dr. Taylor has been deeply involved with Google's knowledge graph efforts. Prior to Google, he worked on Freebase at Metaweb. Details about the talks will be announced soon at https://iswc2017.semanticweb.org/ 2. Call for Contributions ========================================== -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Call for Doctoral Consortium papers -------------------------------------------------------------------------- **deadline** May 25, 2017 The Consortium aims to broaden the perspectives and to improve the research and communication skills of these students. The Doctoral Consortium is intended for students who have a specific research proposal and some preliminary results, but who have sufficient time prior to completing their dissertation to benefit from the consortium experience. Generally, students at the end of their first year, in their second or at the beginning of their third year of PhD will benefit the most from the Doctoral Consortium. In the Consortium, the students will present their proposals, get specific feedback and advice on how to improve their research plan and discuss other students? proposals. All proposals submitted to the Doctoral Consortium will undergo a thorough reviewing process with a view to providing detailed and constructive feedback. The international program committee will select the best submissions for presentation at the Doctoral Consortium. We anticipate that students with accepted submissions at the Doctoral Consortium will receive travel fellowships to offset some of the travel costs but they will be asked to attend the whole day of the Doctoral Consortium. Detailed info: http://iswc2017.semanticweb.org/calls/doctoral-consortium/ Program Chairs * Lora Aroyo, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands * Fabien Gandon, INRIA Sophia-Antipolis, France -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Call for Posters and Demos -------------------------------------------------------------------------- **deadline** July 27, 2017 The ISWC 2017 Posters and Demonstrations complement the paper tracks of the conference and offer an opportunity for presenting late-breaking research results, on-going research projects, and speculative or innovative work in progress. The informal setting of the Posters and Demonstrations encourages presenters and participants to engage in discussions about the work. Such discussions can be invaluable inputs for the future work of the presenters, while offering participants an effective way to broaden their knowledge of the emerging research trends and to network with other researchers. We invite submissions relevant to the area of the Semantic Web and which address, but are not limited to, the topics of the Research Track; the In-Use Track; and the Resources Track. Technical posters, reports on Semantic Web software systems (free or commercial), descriptions of completed work, and work in progress are all welcome. Demonstrations are intended to showcase innovative Semantic Web related implementations and technologies, both in academia and in industry. We explicitly welcome entries from the industry. However, submissions for posters and demos should go beyond pure advertisements of commercial software packages and convey a minimal scientific contribution. Authors of full papers accepted for the Research Track; the In-Use Track; and the Resources Track are explicitly invited to submit a demonstration. Detailed info: http://iswc2017.semanticweb.org/calls/call-for-posters-and-demos/ Program Chairs * Nadeschda Nikitina, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK * Dezhao Song, Thomson Reuters, Eagan, MN, USA -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Call for Industry Track Contributions -------------------------------------------------------------------------- **deadline** July 10, 2017 The Industry Track seeks to present the state of adoption of semantic technologies in industrial applications. These technologies may be used in specific industries (e.g., media, financials, telecommunications, healthcare, life sciences, government, intelligence, etc.) or as a horizontal technology, and in different application areas (e.g., business intelligence, analytics, search, content management, knowledge management, recommendation systems, data integration, etc.). We welcome contributions about success stories as well as experiences and discussions of obstacles that stand in the way of large scale adoption of certain technologies. Particular emphasis should be put on the demonstration of business value created by using the semantic technologies. We encourage the following two categories of submissions: - Success stories of business-relevant, industrial deployments of Semantic Web technologies - Position statements that outline potential strategic applications and use cases of semantic technologies Come and join us at the ISWC 2017 industry track to share your experience! Detailed info: http://iswc2017.semanticweb.org/calls/call-for-contributions-industry-track-iswc-2017/ Program Chairs * Achille Fokoue, IBM Yorktown, NY, USA * Peter Haase, metaphacts, Walldorf, Germany 3. Student Grants ========================================== If you are a student interested in attending ISWC 2017 you may be eligible to apply for a grant to support the costs of travel and lodging. This year, travel grants are funded by the Semantic Web Science Association (SWSA) and the US National Science Foundation (NSF). The deadline for applying for an ISWC 2017 travel award is August 31st, 2017. Further info on the application process at: https://iswc2017.semanticweb.org/attending/student-travel-grants/ Student Coordinators * Lalana Kagal, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston, MA, USA * Gianluca Demartini, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK 4. Accepted Workshops and Tutorials ========================================== Tutorials (https://iswc2017.semanticweb.org/program/tutorials/): [KGC] Constructing Domain-specific Knowledge Graphs [StreamApp] How to Build a Stream Reasoning Application [HDT] HDT: Queryable Compression Format for Linked Data [MT4OBDA] Methods and Tools for Developing Ontology-Based Data Access Solutions [SemDaPra] Semantic Data Management in Practice [SWoTIoT] Semantic Web meets Internet of Things (IoT) and Web of Things (WoT) [RegLGD] Representation and Querying for Linked Geospatial Data Workshops (https://iswc2017.semanticweb.org/program/workshops/): [HSSUE] Hybrid Statistical Semantic Understanding and Emerging Semantics [VOILA] Visualization and Interaction for Ontologies and Linked Data [WOP] Ontology Design and Patterns [S4BioDiv] Semantics for Biodiversity [OM] Ontology Matching [WHiSe] Humanities in the Semantic Web [SemSci] Enabling Open Semantic Science [SemStats] Semantic Statistics [PROFILES] Dataset PROFlLing and fEderated Search for Web Data [DeSemWeb] Decentralizing the Semantic Web [MaCSeW] Managing Changes in the Semantic Web [BlkMirror] Re-coding Black Mirror [PrivOn] Society, Privacy and the Semantic Web - Policy and Technology [SWIT] Semantic Web Technologies for the IoT [LD4IE] Linked Data for Information Extraction [WOMoCoE] Ontology Modularity, Contextuality, and Evolution [BLINK] Benchmarking Linked Data [NLIWOD] Natural Language Interfaces for the Web of Data [WSP] Web Stream Processing Workshops & Tutorials Chairs * Aidan Hogan, Universidad de Chile Santiago, Santiago, Chile * Valentina Presutti, Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies, CNR, Rome, Italy 5. Important Dates ========================================== Doctoral Consortium submissions due May 25, 2017 Registration starts June 1, 2017 Doctoral Consortium notifications sent June 30, 2017 Author rebuttal period (Research, In-Use, Resources tracks) June 23-27, 2017 Submissions due (Industry track) July 10, 2017 Notifications sent (Research, In-Use, Resources tracks) July 14, 2017 Camera-ready papers for Doctoral Consortium due July 18, 2017 Workshop paper submissions due July 21, 2017 Poster & Demo submissions due July 27, 2017 Camera-ready papers due (Research, In-Use, Resources tracks) July 28, 2017 Notifications sent (Industry track) July 31, 3017 Workshop paper notifications sent August 24, 2017 Poster & Demo notifications sent August 24, 2017 Student activity applications due August 31, 2017 Final version industry track papers due August 31, 2017 Camera-ready copies for Poster & Demo due September 4, 2017 The last day for early registrations September 8, 2017 Workshops & Tutorials October 21 & 22, 2017 Conference October 23, 24 & 25, 2017 We thank our generous gold sponsors Siemens, Thomson Reuters, Semantic Web Company and data.world for their support. To learn more about ISWC 2017 sponsorship opportunities, please see https://iswc2017.semanticweb.org/sponsorship/ The ISWC Organising Committee ( http://iswc2017.semanticweb.org/organization/) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From asdm at fi.upm.es Mon May 22 06:07:01 2017 From: asdm at fi.upm.es (asdm at fi.upm.es) Date: Mon, 22 May 2017 12:07:01 +0200 (CEST) Subject: Connectionists: Twelfth Madrid UPM Advanced Statistics and Data Mining Summer School (June 26th - July 7th, 2017) - Early registration deadline Message-ID: <2036958521.8.1495447621816.JavaMail.bmihaljevic@morelia> Dear colleagues, We would like to remind you that early registration for the Madrid UPM Advanced Statistics and Data Mining summer school finishes on June 5th. The summer school will be held in Boadilla del Monte, near Madrid, from June 26th to July 7th. This year's edition comprises 12 week-long courses (15 lecture hours each), given during two weeks (six courses each week). Attendees may register in each course independently. No restrictions, besides those imposed by timetables, apply on the number or choice of courses. For the third time in a row, INOMICS has selected our summer school as one of the world's top ten summer schools in mathematics and statistics. You can read more at http://bit.ly/2oR00GI Early registration is *OPEN*. Extended information on course programmes, price, venue, accommodation and transport is available at the school's website: http://www.dia.fi.upm.es/ASDM There is a 25% discount for members of Spanish AEPIA and SEIO societies. Please, forward this information to your colleagues, students, and whoever you think may find it interesting. Best regards, Pedro Larranaga, Concha Bielza, Bojan Mihaljevic and Alberto Ogbechie. -- School coordinators. *** List of courses and brief description *** * Week 1 (June 26th - June 30th, 2017) * 1st session: 9:45-12:45 Course 1: Bayesian Networks (15 h) Basics of Bayesian networks. Inference in Bayesian networks. Learning Bayesian networks from data. Real applications. Practical demonstration: GeNIe, Weka, Bayesia, R. Course 2: Time Series(15 h) Basic concepts in time series. Linear models for time series. Time series clustering. Practical demonstration: R. 2nd session: 13:45-16:45 Course 3: Supervised Pattern Recognition (15 h) Introduction. Assessing the performance of supervised classification algorithms. Preprocessing. Classification techniques. Combining multiple classifiers. Comparing supervised classification algorithms. Practical demonstration: Weka. Course 4: Bayesian Inference (15 h) Introduction: Bayesian basics. Conjugate models. MCMC and other simulation methods. Regression and Hierarchical models. Model selection. Practical demonstration: R and WinBugs. 3rd session: 17:00 - 20:00 Course 5: Neural Networks and Deep Learning (15 h) Introduction. Training algorithms. Learning and Optimization. MLPs in practice. Deep Networks. Practical session: Python with keras and Jupyter notebooks. Course 6: Unsupervised Pattern Recognition (15 h) Introduction to clustering. Data exploration and preparation. Prototype-based clustering. Density-based clustering. Graph-based clustering. Cluster evaluation. Miscellanea. Conclusions and final advise. Practical session: R. * Week 2 (July 3rd - July 7th, 2017) * 1st session: 9:45-12:45 Course 7: Statistical Inference (15 h) Introduction. Some basic statistical test. Multiple testing. Introduction to bootstrap methods. Introduction to Robust Statistics. Practical demonstration: R. Course 8: Big Data with Apache Spark (15 h) Introduction. Spark framework and APIs. Data processing with Spark. Spark streaming. Machine learning with Spark MLlib. 2nd session: 13:45-16:45 Course 9: Text Mining (15 h) Information Retrieval 101. Unsupervised Text Processing. Representation Learning. Information Extraction. Natural Language Understanding. Practical session: Python, with Jupyter notebooks. Course 10: Feature Subset Selection (15 h) Introduction. Filter approaches. Embedded methods. Wrapper methods. Additional topics. Practical session: R and Weka. 3rd session: 17:00-20:00 Course 11: Support Vector Machines and Regularized Learning (15 h) Introduction. SVM models. SVM learning algorithms. Regularized learning. Convex optimization for regularized learning. Practical session: Python with scikit-learn, Jupyter notebooks. Course 12: Hidden Markov Models (15 h) Introduction. Discrete Hidden Markov Models. Basic algorithms for Hidden Markov Models. Semicontinuous Hidden Markov Models. Continuous Hidden Markov Models. Unit selection and clustering. Speaker and Environment Adaptation for HMMs. Other applications of HMMs. Practical session: HTK. If you wish to stop receiving emails regarding the Madrid UPM Advanced Statistics and Data Mining summer school, please reply to this email with the title STOP. From csutton at inf.ed.ac.uk Mon May 22 15:34:04 2017 From: csutton at inf.ed.ac.uk (Charles Sutton) Date: Mon, 22 May 2017 20:34:04 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: Postdoctoral positions in machine learning at the Alan Turing Institute Message-ID: <9C2E4808-4C41-4710-96C7-7F02C359297B@inf.ed.ac.uk> ====================================================== 3 POSTDOCTORAL RESEARCH ASSOCIATE POSITIONS: ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE ASSISTANTS FOR DATA SCIENTISTS ====================================================== The majority of effort and cost in many data science projects is not in developing advanced new statistical or machine learning methods, but rather in collecting, integrating, cleaning, exploring, and preparing data for analysis, and interpreting, debugging, and presenting the results. This cost slows the adoption of data-driven techniques across a wide range of applications. Modern methods for artificial intelligence and machine learning have the promise to dramatically reduce the effort required for these tasks. To exploit this opportunity, the Alan Turing Institute is launching a major research project to develop new automatic assistants based on artificial intelligence and machine learning to support applied data science. This project, called Artificial Intelligence for Data Analytics (AIDA), will be led by Turing Faculty Fellows Prof Chris Williams (University of Edinburgh), Prof Zoubin Ghahramani FRS (University of Cambridge), Prof Ian Horrocks FRS (University of Oxford), and Dr Charles Sutton (University of Edinburgh). We are seeking talented postdoctoral researchers in machine learning and semantic technologies. As many as three positions are available. These positions will be located at The Alan Turing Institute, the UK National Research Institute for Data Science, at the British Library in London. For full consideration, please apply by 15 JUNE 2017 following the instructions here: https://www.turing.ac.uk/jobs/3-research-associates-artificial-intelligence-data-analytics/ -- Charles Sutton * Reader in Machine Learning * University of Edinburgh Director, EPSRC CDT in Data Science * http://datascience.inf.ed.ac.uk/ Faculty Fellow, Alan Turing Institute * http://turing.ac.uk/ Please excuse brevity: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/email_monster The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in Scotland, with registration number SC005336. From svijayan9 at gmail.com Mon May 22 16:58:49 2017 From: svijayan9 at gmail.com (sujith vijayan) Date: Mon, 22 May 2017 16:58:49 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: Post-doctoral Position in Computational Neuroscience Message-ID: The Neural Dynamics and Neural Engineering Lab at Virginia Tech has an opening for a post-doctoral position in computational neuroscience. This position is for three years and is being funded by the Army Research Office (ARO). The research project will involve employing biophysically based computational models to examine the role of rhythmic activity in the expression of emotional memories during behavior and their consolidation during sleep. An additional aim is to employ the models developed to gain insights into the pathophysiology of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Candidates should have a Ph.D. in applied mathematics, computer science, engineering, computational neuroscience, or a related field. Strong programming skills and/or prior experience in modeling would be an asset. Interested candidates should send a CV, a statement of research interests, and the contact information for three references to svijayan9 at gmail.com. Arrangements can be made to meet with candidates at the Sleep conference in Boston (June 3-7) or at the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM) conference in Pittsburgh (July 10-14). Best, Sujith -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From rosemary.nan.ke at gmail.com Mon May 22 16:52:54 2017 From: rosemary.nan.ke at gmail.com (Rosemary Ke) Date: Mon, 22 May 2017 16:52:54 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: Reproducibility in Machine Learning Workshop ICML 2017 Message-ID: Hello, We (*Anirudh Goyal, Alex Lamb, Nan Rosemary Ke, Joelle Pineau, Sammy Bengio, Yoshua Bengio* ) are organizing the "Reproducility in Machine Learning" workshop at ICML 2017. Our website is here. https://2017.icml.cc/Conferences/2017/Schedule?showEvent=16 https://sites.google.com/view/icml-reproducibility-workshop/home Here are the list of invited speakers. The *call for papers will soon be open*, and we welcome everyone to attend and participate. Please feel free to reach out to us for any questions. - John Langford,* Microsoft Research* - *Hugo Larochelle, Google Brain* - Oriol Vinyals, *Google Deepmind* - Jason Weston*, Facebook AI Research* - Damjan Vukcevic*, Murdoch Childrens Research Institute* - Joaquin Vanschoren, *Eindhoven University of Technology* - Robert Williamson, *Australian National University* - Francois Chollet, *Google / Keras* Best regards, Nan Rosemary Ke -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From sarathcse2008 at gmail.com Mon May 22 22:03:07 2017 From: sarathcse2008 at gmail.com (Sarath Chandar) Date: Mon, 22 May 2017 22:03:07 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: CfP: Workshop on Lifelong Learning: A Reinforcement Learning Approach @ICML 2017 Message-ID: Dear Colleagues, We would like to invite you to submit extended abstracts of between 4-6 pages to our 'Lifelong Learning: A Reinforcement Learning Approach' ICML 2017 Workshop which will be held in Sydney, Australia on August 10, 2017. IMPORTANT INFORMATION ************************************************ Website: http://rlabstraction2016.wix.com/icml-2017 Date: 10 August 2017 Location: Sydney, Australia Submission deadline: 6th June 2017, 11:59 PM (GMT+2) OVERVIEW ************************************************ One of the most challenging and open problems in Artificial Intelligence (AI) is that of Lifelong Learning: ?Lifelong Learning is the continued learning of tasks, from one or more domains, over the course of a lifetime, by a lifelong learning system. A lifelong learning system efficiently and effectively (1) retains the knowledge it has learned; (2) selectively transfers knowledge to learn new tasks; and (3) ensures the effective and efficient interaction between (1) and (2).? Lifelong learning is still in its infancy. Many issues currently exist such as learning general representations, catastrophic forgetting , efficient knowledge retention mechanisms and hierarchical abstractions . Much work has been done in the Reinforcement Learning (RL) community to tackle different elements of lifelong learning. Active research topics include hierarchical abstractions, transfer learning, multi-task learning and curriculum learning. With the emergence of powerful function approximators such as in Deep Learning, we feel that now is a perfect time to provide a forum to discuss ways to move forward and provide a truly general lifelong learning framework, using RL-based algorithms, with more rigour than ever before. This workshop will endeavour to promote interaction between researchers working on the different elements of lifelong learning to try and find a synergy between the various techniques. SUBMISSION ************************************************ The submitted work should be an extended abstract of between 4-6 pages (including references). The submission should be in pdf format and should follow the style guidelines for ICML 2017. The review process is double-blind and the work should be submitted by the latest 6th June 2017, 11:59 PM(GMT+2). Submissions must be made through easychair: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=llicml2017 AREAS OF INTEREST ************************************************ - Using Hierarchical Abstractions to perform lifelong learning (e.g., skills/options and state space representations) - Transfer Learning - Multi-task Learning - Curriculum Learning - Deep Learning as a tool for performing lifelong learning - Determine new, challenging benchmark domains For more info see our website . WORKSHOP ORGANIZERS ************************************************ Sarath Chandar - University of Montreal Balaraman Ravindran - Indian Institute of Technology Daniel J. Mankowitz - Technion Israel Institute of Technology Tom Zahavy - Technion Israel Institute of Technology Shie Mannor - Technion Israel Institute of Technology We look forward to reviewing your submissions and hope to see you in Sydney! Kind regards, Sarath, Ravi, Daniel, Tom and Shie Lifelong Learning: A Reinforcement Learning Approach Workshop organizers -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From antonior at ffclrp.usp.br Mon May 22 21:43:57 2017 From: antonior at ffclrp.usp.br (Antonio C. Roque) Date: Mon, 22 May 2017 22:43:57 -0300 Subject: Connectionists: LASCON 2018 - VII Latin American School on Computational Neuroscience (Call for applications) Message-ID: **** Apologies for cross-posting **** VII Latin American School on Computational Neuroscience - LASCON 2018 January 7 - February 2, 2018, University of S?o Paulo, Sao Paulo, Brazil www.sisne.org/lascon APPLICATION DEADLINE: September 10, 2017 Dear Colleagues, Following the success of the previous editions of LASCON (Latin American School on Computational Neuroscience), I am pleased to announce the 7th LASCON, which will take place between January 7 and February 2 2018 at the NeuroMat Center in the University of Sao Paulo, Sao Paulo, Brazil. LASCON aims at introducing young researchers and graduate and advanced undergraduate students to the use of computational and mathematical methods for modeling neurons and neural networks. The following topics will be covered: biophysically detailed single neuron models; stochastic modeling of ion channels; reduced and simplified single neuron models; networks of biophysical and simplified neuron models; synaptic plasticity and learning; active inference and predictive coding; spike train analysis; dynamics of neuronal functional connectivity; variable length memory chains and applications in neuroscience; computational psychiatry. These subjects will be illustrated with the use of programs NEURON, neuroConstruct, XPP-AUTO, Matlab, NEST, Brian and the Virtual Brain. Students will have to work on small research projects (to be done in groups of two), which they will present orally at the end of the school. The following lecturers will be in charge of theoretical classes and tutorials: Adriano Tort, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte, Natal, RN, Brazil Aline Duarte, Universidade de S?o Paulo, S?o Paulo, SP, Brazil Andre Bastos, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA Antonio Galves, Universidade de S?o Paulo, S?o Paulo, SP, Brazil Arnd Roth, University College, London, UK Boris Marin, Universidade de S?o Paulo, Ribeir?o Preto, SP, Brazil Christophe Pouzat, Universite Paris Descartes, Paris, France Daniel Takahashi, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, USA Demian Battaglia, Aix-Marseille Universite, Marseille, France German Mato, Centro Atomico Bariloche, San Carlos de Bariloche, RN, Argentina Guilherme Ost, Universidade de S?o Paulo, S?o Paulo, SP, Brazil John Murray, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA Mauro Copelli, Universidade Federal de Pernambuco, Recife, PE, Brazil Maximilian Schmidt, RIKEN Brain Science Institute, Wako-shi, Japan Patr?cio Orio, Universidad de Valpara?so, Valpara?so, Chile Pedro Maldonado, Universidad de Chile, Santiago, Chile Sacha van Albada, Forschungszentrum Ju?lich, Ju?lich, Germany Salvador Dur?-Bernal, State University of New York, New York, NY, USA Volker Steuber, University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield, UK William Lytton, State University of New York, New York, NY, USA The number of students is limited to 20 and applications should be made electronically via the application form in the school's web page ( www.sisne.org/lascon). Applicants are also requested to submit a detailed CV (in English) and to provide two letters of recommendation. The application deadline is September 10 2017 (until midnight, US Pacific time). There is no registration fee for the school. Costs for accommodation will be covered by the school organization. Travel costs have to be covered by the students. Sao Paulo is the major transportation hub in South America, so it is possible to fly from basically anywhere in the world to it. In the selection procedure, priority will be given to Latin-American students, but students from other parts of the world are encouraged to apply as well. LASCON 2018 is an activity of the FAPESP Center for Neuromathematics (NeuroMat -*http://neuromat.numec.prp.usp.br/ *). I am looking forward to see you in Sao Paulo. Best regards, A. Roque LASCON Director -- 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 (sala/office); +55 16 3315-3859 (lab) FAX: +55 16 3315-4887 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From yang at maebashi-it.org Tue May 23 21:50:29 2017 From: yang at maebashi-it.org (Yang) Date: Wed, 24 May 2017 10:50:29 +0900 Subject: Connectionists: [Brain Informatics 2017] - Call for Abstracts Message-ID: [Apologies if you receive this more than once] CALL FOR ABSTRACTS The 2017 International Conference on Brain Informatics (BI'17) THE 10TH ANNIVERSARY OF BRAIN INFORMATICS November 16-18, 2017, Beijing, China Homepage: http://bii.ia.ac.cn/bi-2017/ --------------------------------------- SUBMISSION DEADLINE: June 20, 2017 One-line submission: https://wi-lab.com/cyberchair/2017/bi17/scripts/submit.php?subarea=B --------------------------------------- *** KEYNOTE SPEAKERS *** Alan Evans (McGill University, Canada) Tom Mitchell (Carnegie Mellon University, US) Yanchao Bi (Beijing Normal University, China) Adam Ferguson (University of California San Francisco, US) Bin Hu (Lanzhou University, China) Michael Hawrylycz (Allen Institute for Brain Science, US) Dinggang Shen (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, US) ================================================== Brain Informatics (BI) conference series provides a premier forum to bring together researchers and practitioners in the fields of neuroscience, cognitive science, computer science, data science, artificial intelligence, information communication technologies, and neuroimaging technologies. BI'17 addresses the computational, cognitive, physiological, biological, physical, ecological and social perspectives of brain informatics, as well as topics relating to mental health and well-being. It also welcomes emerging information technologies, including but not limited to Internet/Web of Things (IoT/WoT), cloud computing, big data analytics and interactive knowledge discovery related to brain research. BI'17 also encourages submissions that explore how advanced computing technologies are applied to and make a difference in various large-scale brain studies and their applications. BI'17 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. Workshop, Special-Session and Tutorial proposals, and Industry/Demo-Track papers are also welcome. The organizers of Workshops and Special-Sessions are invited to prepare a book proposal based on the topics of the workshop/special session for possible book publication in the Springer-Nature Brain Informatics & Health book series (http://www.springer.com/series/15148). *** Topics and Areas *** Track 1: Cognitive and Computational Foundations of Brain Science Track 2: Investigations of Human Information Processing Systems Track 3: Brain Big Data Analytics, Curation and Management Track 4: Informatics Paradigms for Brain and Mental Health Track 5: Brain-Inspired Intelligence and Computing IMPORTANT DATES : =========================== May 1, 2017: Submission deadline for full papers May 30, 2017: Submission deadline for workshop/special-session papers June 20, 2017: Notification of full paper acceptance June 20, 2017: Notification of workshop/special-session paper acceptance June 20, 2017: Submission deadline for abstracts July 10, 2017: Notification of abstract acceptance November 16, 2017: Tutorials, workshops and special-sessions November 17-18, 2017: Main conference ABSTRACT (TYPE-II) SUBMISSIONS : ================================= (Submission Deadline: June 20, 2017): 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. ----------------------------------------------- One-line submission: https://wi-lab.com/cyberchair/2017/bi17/scripts/submit.php?subarea=B ----------------------------------------------- *** Post-Conference Journal Publication *** The Brain Informatics conferences have the formal ties with Brain Informatics journal (Springer-Nature, http://www.springer.com/40708). Accepted abstracts from the conference will be expanded and revised for possible inclusion in the Brain Informatics journal each year. It is fully sponsored and no any article-processing fee charged for authors of Brain Informatics conference. ORGANIZERS ========== General Chairs Bo Xu (Chinese Academy of Sciences, China) Hanchuan Peng (Allen Institute for Brain Sciences, USA) Qingming Luo (Huazhong University of Science and Technology, China) Program Committee Chairs Yi Zeng (Chinese Academy of Sciences, China) Yong He (Beijing Normal University, China) Jeanette Kotaleski (Karolinska Institute, Sweden) Maryann Martone (University of California, San Diego, USA) Organizing Chairs Ning Zhong (Maebashi Institute of Technology, Japan, and Beijing Advanced Innovation Center for Future Internet Technology, Beijing University of Technology, China Jianzhou Yan (Beijing Advanced Innovation Center for Future Internet Technology, Beijing University of Technology, China) Shengfu Lu (Beijing Advanced Innovation Center for Future Internet Technology, Beijing University of Technology, China) Workshop/Special-Session Chairs An'an Li (Huazhong University of Science and Technology, China) Sen Song (Tsinghua University, China) Tutorial Chair Wenming Zheng (South East University, China) Publicity Chairs Tielin Zhang (Chinese Academy of Sciences, China) Shouyi Wang (University of Texas at Arlington, USA) Yang Yang (Maebashi Institute of Technology, Japan, and Beijing Advanced Innovation Center for Future Internet Technology, Beijing University of Technology, China) Steering Committee Chairs Ning Zhong (Maebashi Institute of Technology, Japan) Hanchuan Peng (Allen Institute for Brain Science, USA) *** Contact Information *** tielin.zhang at ia.ac.cn shouyiw at uta.edu yang at maebashi-it.org -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From tarek.besold at googlemail.com Wed May 24 05:20:22 2017 From: tarek.besold at googlemail.com (Tarek R. Besold) Date: Wed, 24 May 2017 11:20:22 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: 1st Call for Papers: Comprehensibility and Explanation in AI and ML (CEx) @ AI*IA 2017 Message-ID: <000001d2d46e$f9390380$ebab0a80$@gmail.com> === Comprehensibility and Explanation in AI and ML (CEx) @ AI*IA 2017 === Location: University of Bari (Bari, Italy). Date: Nov. 14 & 15 XOR Nov. 16 & 17, 2017. Hosted at: AI*IA 2017, the 16th International Conference of the Italian Association for Artificial Intelligence (http://aiia2017.di.uniba.it/). == WORKSHOP WEBSITE == http://cex.inf.unibz.it == INVITED SPEAKERS == Barbara Hammer, University of Bielefeld ...more to come... == REGISTRATION == Registration for the workshop is handled via the main conference website. Please consult http://aiia2017.di.uniba.it/ for details. == CALL FOR PAPERS == ** Mission Statement ** CEx addresses fundamental questions for the nature of "comprehensibility" and "explanation" in an AI and ML context from a theoretical and an applied perspective. Research into philosophical approximations to what an explanation in AI and ML is (or can be) or how the comprehensibility of an intelligent system can formally be defined will be presented next to work addressing practical questions of how to assess a systems comprehensibility from a psychological perspective, or how to design and build better explainable AI and ML systems. ** Fields of Interest ** The workshop brings together a diverse audience, including... - ...participants from core areas of AI and ML,... - ...ontologists,... - ...cognitive scientists,... - ...psychologists,... - ...HCI researchers,... - ...and practitioners from industry and business contexts. ** Accepted Submission Formats ** Researchers and practitioners are invited to submit original papers that have not been submitted for review or published elsewhere: - Submitted papers must be written in English, must be formatted according to the Springer LNCS style (templates and sample files are available from https://www.springer.com/gp/computer-science/lncs/conference-proceedings-gui delines). - FULL PAPERS: Research and experience papers should not exceed 10 pages (excluding references/bibliography). - SHORT PAPERS: Position papers or technical notes should not exceed 6 pages (excluding references/bibliography). - All submitted papers will be judged based on their relevance, originality, significance, technical quality, and organization. ** Submission Website ** Submissions to CEx @ AI*IA 2017 should be made via EasyChair: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=cexaiia2017 ** Presentation ** Selected papers will be presented during the workshop. The workshop will include extra time for discussion of the presentations allowing the group to have a better understanding of the issues, challenges, and ideas being presented. ** Publication ** Accepted papers will be published in official workshop proceedings within the CEUR-WS.org series. Depending on the number and quality of accepted papers, the organizers will consider organizing a special issue of a journal as follow-up publication. == IMPORTANT DATES == Deadline for paper submission: July 27, 2017 (anywhere on this planet) Notification of paper acceptance/rejection: September 10, 2017 Camera-ready paper due: September 30, 2017 Workshop date: Nov. 14 & 15 XOR Nov. 16 & 17, 2017 == WORKSHOP ORGANISERS == - Tarek R. Besold (University of Bremen, Germany) - Oliver Kutz (Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Italy) == PROGRAMME COMMITTEE == - John Bateman, University of Bremen - Joanna Bryson, University of Bath - Derek Doran, Wright State University - Artur Garcez, City, University of London - Barbara Hammer, University of Bielefeld - Caroline Jay, University of Manchester - Kristian Kersting, Technical University Darmstadt - Antonio Lieto, University of Turin - Rafael Penaloza, Free University of Bozen-Bolzano - Sarah Schulz, University of Stuttgart - Gem Stapleton, University of Brighton - Serge Thill, University of Sk?vde - Leon van der Torre, University of Luxembourg - Rebekah Wegener, RWTH Aachen University - Christina Zeller, University of Bamberg ...more to come... -- Digital Media Lab Center for Computing and Communication Technologies (TZI) University of Bremen Email: Tarek.Besold at uni-bremen.de Web: http://www.cat-ai.org -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From cgf at isep.ipp.pt Wed May 24 05:52:31 2017 From: cgf at isep.ipp.pt (Carlos Ferreira) Date: Wed, 24 May 2017 10:52:31 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: CFP: IoT- Large Scale Learning from Data Streams (ECMLPKDD 2017) Message-ID: <2fd062d5-1f8f-0142-6f37-bc9c0df716fb@isep.ipp.pt> ======================================== IoT- Large Scale Learning from Data Streams Workshop+Tutorial https://abifet.wixsite.com/iotstreaming2017 ECMLPKDD 2017 18 September 2017, Skopje, Maced?nia Important dates Paper submission deadline: Monday, July 3rd, 2017 Paper acceptance notification: Monday, July 24, 2017 Paper camera-ready submission: Monday, August 7, 2017 ================================== Carlos Ferreira ISEP | Instituto Superior de Engenharia do Porto Rua Dr. Ant?nio Bernardino de Almeida, 431 4249-015 Porto - PORTUGAL tel. +351 228 340 500 | fax +351 228 321 159 mail at isep.ipp.pt | www.isep.ipp.pt From angela.avera at gmail.com Wed May 24 15:57:34 2017 From: angela.avera at gmail.com (Angie Avera) Date: Wed, 24 May 2017 14:57:34 -0500 Subject: Connectionists: Deadline Extension: Games as Research Environments Workshop at FDG Message-ID: ************************************************************ ********************************** *FINAL DEADLINE EXTENSION: Call for Participation* Submission Deadline: May 31st *Workshop on Tracing the Boundaries of Games as Research Environments* https://gamesasresearchenvironments.wordpress.com/call-for- participation-2/ at Foundations of Digital Games 2017, Cape Cod, Massachusetts August 14-17 2017 ************************************************************ *********************************** Across disciplines, games are being increasingly used as research environments for experimentation and empirical study. This includes enlisting the use of games to explore human behavior and decision making, validate algorithms, consistently improve AI, collect player data, inform game design and more. However, the cost, complexity and rigor needed to produce these types of games is high and not enough is known about how games could be fully utilized in service as rigorous research environments. This workshop aims to bring together the game design and research community who have used games as research environments or those interested in building or enlisting games for this purpose, for a discussion on this topic and to share lessons learned from their work. The focus of the workshop will be to advance the collective understanding of a) the types of phenomena, problems and questions games are being used to study, b) the implications of extrapolating data from simulated environments to the the real-world, c) the theoretical, computational and design hurdles researchers consistently face and d) the potential value and concerns in employing games as research environments. *IMPORTANT DATES* *Submission Date: May 31, 2017* Notification of Acceptance: June 1, 2017 FDG 2017: August 14-17, 2017 (Workshop most likely on first day) *SUBMISSION STYLE AND TOPICS* We welcome 2-4 page position papers, written in extended abstract format, that either discuss experience using games for research environments and interesting problems faced or lessons learned, or cover a particular position on the following topics: ? What are games as research environments? ? Why would we use games to learn about the world? ? ?Serious games? for research. ? Reliability and validity of using games as research environments ? Game design approaches with specific research in mind ? Criteria for selecting existing games for specific purposes ? Games for psychology and behavioral research ? The design of stimuli that accounts for complex constructs such as social interaction and behaviors ? Studies of games used for a specific domain or discipline ? Games as research environments for the design of game components ? Games as a testbed to validate algorithms ? How do games impact your research environment? ? A priori problems: design, creating valid stimuli for independent variables, adaptation, hypotheses, decision to include or exclude fun elements for serious games ? A posteriori problems: data analysis, filtering, qualitative vs. quantitative, player telemetry, challenges with conclusions and takeaways *SUBMISSION DETAILS* We welcome 2-4 page position papers, written in extended abstract format. Submissions must be a PDF document and follow ACM SIG proceedings format. Accepted papers will be published as part of the FDG proceedings in the ACM DL. For more information, please visit: https://gamesasresearchenvironments. wordpress.com/ Please submit your contributions at: https://easychair.org/ account/signin.cgi?key=53711432.ruBbkcFla9I2qtjk Thank you! -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From smart at neuralcorrelate.com Wed May 24 20:19:52 2017 From: smart at neuralcorrelate.com (Susana Martinez-Conde) Date: Wed, 24 May 2017 20:19:52 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: illusion submission deadline EXTENDED until June 16th: the Best Illusion of the Year Contest In-Reply-To: <008601d2d4ec$2677ee10$7367ca30$@neuralcorrelate.com> References: <008601d2d4ec$2677ee10$7367ca30$@neuralcorrelate.com> Message-ID: <00d301d2d4ec$a4d8fce0$ee8af6a0$@neuralcorrelate.com> ***DUE TO POPULAR DEMAND*** The deadline for the 13th annual Best Illusion of the Year ContestSM has been extended. The FINAL (no exceptions) submission date is now *June 16*! http://illusionoftheyear.com We are happy to announce the 13th edition of world's Best Illusion of the YearSM Contest!! Submissions are now welcome! In 2015, the Best Illusion of the YearSM Contest became an annual online event, with the goal of bringing the creativity of the illusion creator community all around the world. Anybody with an internet connection can now participate! No matter where you live, you can be a contestant, and/or vote for the Top 3 winners! Contestants are invited to submit 1-minute YouTube videos featuring novel illusions (unpublished, or published no earlier than 2016) of all sensory modalities (visual, auditory, etc.) and/or cognitive nature. The content of the 1-minute video presenting your illusion is solely up to you, and the only requirement is that it wows all viewers! Some examples include, but are not limited to: * -A slide presentation, or succession of images, with a voice over (and/or written text, if you prefer) * -A video of yourself describing your illusion * -A video animation/enactment of your illusion An international panel of impartial judges will rate all the videos and narrow them down to the Top 10. Then, online voters around the world will choose their favorite illusions from the Top 10 finalists. All Top 10 finalists will receive a commemorative plaque. In addition, the Top 3 winners will receive cash prizes: $3,000 USD for first place; $2,000 USD for second place, and $1,000 USD for third place. The Judge Panel will rate illusions according to: * -Significance to our understanding of the human mind and brain * -Simplicity of the description * -Sheer beauty * -Counterintuitive quality * -Spectacularity Submissions will be held in strict confidence by the Judge Panel. Only the Top 10 illusions will be posted online, to allow worldwide voting. Participation in the Best Illusion of the YearSM Contest does not preclude you from also submitting your work for publication elsewhere. By participating in the Best Illusion of the YearSM Contest you agree to have your illusion posted on the Contest website, if selected among the Top 10, and included in press releases and other promotional materials/fundraising initiatives for the Contest. You (and your co-authors, if appropriate) will retain the full copyright of your illusion, and receive full credit as illusion creator(s). Illusions submitted to previous editions of the contest can be re-submitted to the 2017 Contest, as long as they meet the above requirements and were not among the Top 10 finalists in previous years. You can send your 1-minute video to Susana Martinez-Conde via email ( smart at neuralcorrelate.com) until June 16, 2017. On behalf of the Executive Board of the Neural Correlate Society: Jose-Manuel Alonso, Stephen Macknik, Susana Martinez-Conde, Luis Martinez, Xoana Troncoso, Peter Tse -------------------------------------- Susana Martinez-Conde, PhD Professor of Ophthalmology, Neurology, and Physiology & Pharmacology Empire Innovator Scholar Director, Laboratory of Integrative Neuroscience State University of New York (SUNY) Downstate Medical Center 450 Clarkson Ave, Brooklyn NY 11203, USA Email: smart at neuralcorrelate.com Phone: +1 718-270-4520 http://smc.neuralcorrelate.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From J.Bowers at bristol.ac.uk Thu May 25 04:51:36 2017 From: J.Bowers at bristol.ac.uk (J Bowers) Date: Thu, 25 May 2017 09:51:36 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: Three postdoctoral positions Message-ID: *Three postdoctoral positions in the School of Experimental Psychology at the University of Bristol, UK.* A 5-year ERC-funded project entitled ?Generalisation in Mind and Machine? explores how well humans and artificial neural networks generalize across a range of tasks. Over the course of the grant there will be 4 postdoctoral researchers involved in modelling, 1 postdoctoral researcher involved in empirical work, and two PhD students. I am currently looking to hire two persons (one quite senior) with experience working with ?deep? neural networks, and one person with extensive experience carrying out cognitive psychology experiments. In contrast with the large community of modelers in machine learning focused on improving the performance of deep networks for applied reasons, the goal of this project is to explore what neural networks tell us about how the brain works. More specifically, the team will be working on questions of generalization in the domains of object identification, word identification, short-term memory, and games, amongst other areas. One key issue that we will explore is the extent to which symbolic computations are required to support some forms of generalization. This research is related to previous and ongoing research in my lab that explores why and when artificial neural networks learn localist "grandmother cell" representations with the goal to better understand why some neurons respond to high-level information in a highly selective manner. The project will start in September 2017 (or shortly thereafter). For further information about the project and information about applying, please go the following links. Research Associate focused on behavioural research: https://goo.gl/8cl6Vm Senior Research Associate focused on modelling: https://goo.gl/u2rjk4 Research Fellow focused on modelling (most senior post): https://goo.gl/XjRKzS Closing Date for applications: June 22, 2017. If you have any questions, please get in touch with me at: j.bowers at bristol.ac.uk Jeff Bowers -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mathis.richter at ini.rub.de Fri May 26 08:16:21 2017 From: mathis.richter at ini.rub.de (Mathis Richter) Date: Fri, 26 May 2017 12:16:21 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: Summer school: Neural dynamics for cognitive robotics, Bochum, Germany Message-ID: Please forward this advertisement to whoever you think might be interested. The deadline for applications is June 15, 2017! Thanks, Mathis Richter --- Summer School on: NEURONAL DYNAMICS FOR COGNITIVE ROBOTICS held August 28 - September 1, 2017 at the Institute for Neural Computation, Ruhr-University Bochum in Germany, coordinated by Prof. Dr. Gregor Sch?ner. Neuronal dynamics provide a powerful theoretical language for the design and modeling of embodied and situated cognitive systems. This school provides a hands-on and down-to-earth introduction to neuronal dynamics ideas and enables participants to become productive within this framework. The school is aimed at advanced undergraduate or graduate students, postdocs and faculty members in embodied cognition, cognitive science and robotics. The school combines tutorial lectures in the mornings with hands-on projects working with robotic systems. Participants will develop their own modeling project, which will connect to their ongoing doctoral or postdoctoral research. Topics addressed include: neural dynamics, attractor dynamics and instabilities, dynamic field theory, neuronal representations, artificial perception, simple forms of cognition including detection and selection decisions, memory formation, learning, and grounding relational concepts. For more information see: https://www.dynamicfieldtheory.org/summerschool To apply, please send a CV and a short cover letter with background and motivation to mathis.richter at ini.rub.de Selection of participants will begin by June 15, 2017. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: summer_school_bochum_2017.pdf Type: application/pdf Size: 6803875 bytes Desc: not available URL: From nicosia at dmi.unict.it Fri May 26 11:07:23 2017 From: nicosia at dmi.unict.it (Giuseppe Nicosia) Date: Fri, 26 May 2017 16:07:23 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: MOD2017: 5 Keynote Speakers + 7 Special Sessions + 2 Tutorials + 1 Best Paper Award - Paper submission deadline: May 31, 2017 Message-ID: *Our apologies if you receive multiple copies of this announcement.* MOD 2017: The 3rd International Conference on Machine learning, Optimization & big Data An Interdisciplinary Conference: Machine Learning, Optimization and Data Science without Borders 5 Keynote Speakers + 7 Special Sessions + 2 Tutorials + 1 Best Paper Award September 14 - 17, 2017 Volterra (Pisa) Tuscany, Italy http://www.taosciences.it/mod/ Important dates =============== * Full Paper Submissions: May 31, 2017 * Full Paper Notifications: July 1, 2017 * Conference: September 14 - 17, 2017 Best Paper Award =============== Springer sponsors the MOD 2017 Best Paper Award with a cash prize of EUR 1,000. The Award will be conferred at the conference on the authors of the best paper award. Keynote Speakers =============== + Georgios Giannakis, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Minnesota, Director of Digital Technology Center, USA (TBC) + Yi-Ke Guo, Department of Computing, Faculty of Engineering, Imperial College London, UK Founding Director of Data Science Institute. + Panos Pardalos, Department of Systems Engineering, University of Florida, USA. Director of the Center for Applied Optimization. + Ruslan Salakhutdinov, Machine Learning Department, School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University, USA. Director of AI Research at Apple. + Jun Pei, Hefei University of Technology, China Special Sessions =============== + "Metaheuristics and Multi-Objective optimization for Big Data" Clarisse Dhaenens, University of Lille, France Laetitia Jourdan, University of Lille, France https://sites.google.com/view/mmo-bd2017/ + ?Industrial Session on Machine Learning, Optimization and Data Science for Real-World Applications? Ilaria Bordino, Marco Firrincieli, Fabio Fumarola, and Francesco Gullo, UniCredit R&D, Italy + ?Deep Learning: Theory, Architectures, Algorithms and Applications? Learning multi-level representations of data and learning from very large amounts of data. + ?Data-driven Algorithmics? ? Data for informed decisions Data-driven algorithmics is an emerging topic that requires synthesis of prediction tools from machine learning with algorithms from theoretical computer science. Topics: information theory in algorithm design, deep learning paradigms for data-driven optimization, convex optimization, generative models, barriers to implementation of algorithms in practice, new paradigms for balancing online and batch learning, space and precision tradeoffs, large-scale machine learning tasks. + ?Multi-Objective Optimization Algorithms? + ?Data Science for Smart Cities, Communities, Energy & Building? + ?Algorithmics for Biology and Medicine? Tutorials =============== + ?Tutorial on Scalable Data Mining on Cloud Computing Systems? Domenico Talia, University of Calabria, Italy + ?Tutorial on Mathematical Analysis of Nature-Inspired Algorithms? Xin?She Yang, School of Science and Technology, Middlesex University London, United Kingdom The International Conference on Machine learning, Optimization, and big Data (MOD) has established itself as a premier interdisciplinary conference in machine learning, computational optimization, knowledge discovery and data science. It provides an international forum for presentation of original multidisciplinary research results, as well as exchange and dissemination of innovative and practical development experiences. The conference will consist of four days of conference sessions. We invite submissions of papers on all topics related to Machine learning, Optimization, Knowledge Discovery and Data Science including real-world applications for the Conference Proceedings (Springer - Lecture Notes in Computer Science - LNCS). Topics of Interest The last five-year period has seen a impressive revolution in the theory and application of machine learning, optimization and big data. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to: * Foundations, algorithms, models and theory of data science, including big data mining. * Machine learning and statistical methods for big data. * Machine Learning algorithms and models. Neural Networks and Learning Systems. Convolutional neural networks. * Unsupervised, semi-supervised, and supervised Learning. * Knowledge Discovery. Learning Representations. Representation learning for planning and reinforcement learning. * Metric learning and kernel learning. Sparse coding and dimensionality expansion. Hierarchical models. Learning representations of outputs or states. * Multi-objective optimization. Optimization and Game Theory. Surrogate-assisted Optimization. Derivative-free Optimization. * Big data Mining from heterogeneous data sources, including text, semi-structured, spatio-temporal, streaming, graph, web, and multimedia data. * Big Data mining systems and platforms, and their efficiency, scalability, security and privacy. * Computational optimization. Optimization for representation learning. Optimization under Uncertainty * Optimization algorithms for Real World Applications. Optimization for Big Data. Optimization and Machine Learning. * Implementation issues, parallelization, software platforms, hardware * Big Data mining for modeling, visualization, personalization, and recommendation. * Big Data mining for cyber-physical systems and complex, time-evolving networks. * Applications in social sciences, physical sciences, engineering, life sciences, web, marketing, finance, precision medicine, health informatics, medicine and other domains. We particularly encourage submissions in emerging topics of high importance such as data quality, advanced deep learning, time-evolving networks, large multi-objective optimization, quantum discrete optimization, learning representations, big data mining and analytics, cyber-physical systems, heterogeneous data integration and mining, autonomous decision and adaptive control. Submission Guidelines =============== Paper submissions should be limited to a maximum of 12 pages, in the Springer LNCS format: http://www.springer.com/computer/lncs?SGWID=0-164-6-793341-0 including the bibliography and any possible appendices. All submissions will be 6-blind reviewed by the Program Committee on the basis of technical quality, significance, multidisciplinary, relevance to scope of the conference, originality and clarity. https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=mod2017 Types of Submissions =============== When submitting a paper to MOD 2017, authors are required to select one of the following four types of papers: + Long paper: original novel and unpublished work (max. 12 pages in Springer LNCS format); + Short paper: an extended abstract of novel work (max. 4 pages); + Work for oral presentation only (no page restriction; any format). For example, work already published elsewhere, which is relevant and which may solicit fruitful discussion at the conference; + Abstract for poster presentation only (max. 2 pages). The poster format for the presentation is A0 (118.9 cm high and 84.1 cm wide, respectively 46.8 x 33.1 inch). For research work which is relevant and which may solicit fruitful discussion at the conference. Post-Proceedings =============== All accepted long papers will be published in a volume of the series 'Lecture Notes in Computer Science' from Springer *after* the conference. Instructions for preparing and submitting the final versions (camera-ready papers) of all accepted papers will be available later on. All the other papers (short papers, abstracts of the oral presentations, abstracts for the poster presentations) will be published on the MOD 2017 web site. Presentation =============== MOD uses the single session formula of 30 minutes presentations for fruitful exchanges between authors and participants. Attendance =============== MOD is a premier forum for presenting and discussing current research in machine learning, optimization and big data. Therefore, at least one author of each accepted paper must complete the conference registration and present the paper at the conference, in order for the paper to be included in the proceedings and conference program. Organization =============== General Chair: Renato Umeton, Harvard University, USA Program Co-Chairs: Giovanni Giuffrida, University of Catania, Italy & Neodata Group Giuseppe Nicosia, University of Catania, Italy Panos Pardalos, University of Florida, USA Special Session Chair: Giuseppe Narzisi, New York University Tandon School of Engineering & New York Genome Center, New York, USA Industrial Panel Chairs: Ilaria Bordino, Marco Firrincieli, Fabio Fumarola, and Francesco Gullo, UniCredit R&D W: http://www.taosciences.it/mod/ E: modworkshop2017 at gmail.com -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From climate.informatics.workshop at gmail.com Fri May 26 11:47:18 2017 From: climate.informatics.workshop at gmail.com (Climate Informatics) Date: Fri, 26 May 2017 08:47:18 -0700 Subject: Connectionists: Call for Papers: Climate Informatics 2017 Message-ID: *Call for Papers: The 7th International Workshop on Climate Informatics* *When: *Thursday, September 21, 2017 to Friday, September 22, 2017 Plus optional Hackathon: Wednesday, September 20, 2017 *Where:* Mesa Lab, National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, CO *Website:* https://www2.cisl.ucar.edu/events/workshops/climate-informatics/2017/climate-informatics-workshop *Twitter:* @Climformatics Workshop Overview: Climate informatics broadly refers to any research combining climate science with approaches from statistics, machine learning and data mining. The Climate Informatics workshop series, now in its seventh year, seeks to bring together researchers from all of these areas. We aim to stimulate the discussion of new ideas, foster new collaborations, grow the climate informatics community, and thus accelerate discovery across disciplinary boundaries. The format of the workshop seeks to overcome cross disciplinary language barriers and to emphasize communication between participants by featuring a hackathon, invited talks, panel discussions, posters and breakout sessions. Short Papers:Submission Deadline: July 22nd, 2017 We encourage conference paper submissions up to four pages on topics anywhere at the interface of climate science and machine learning, statistics, data mining, or related fields. Reviews, position papers, and works in progress, are also encouraged. The papers will be peer reviewed and published in an NCAR OpenSky repository. Topics include but are not limited to: - Machine learning, statistics, or data mining, applied to climate science - Management and processing of large climate datasets - Long and short term climate prediction - Ensemble characterization of climate model projections - Paleoclimate reconstruction - Uncertainty quantification - Spatiotemporal methods applied to climate data - Time series methods applied to climate data - Methods for modeling, detecting and predicting climate extremes - Climate change attribution - Dependence and causality among climate variables - Detection and characterization of climate teleconnections - Data assimilation - Climate model parameterizations - Hybrid methods - Other data science approaches at the nexus of climate and earth system sciences Keynote Speakers: Alexis Hannart - Franco-Argentine Institute on Climate Studies and their Impacts (IFAECI) and the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) Dr. Hannart is a researcher at the Franco-Argentine Institute for Climate Studies and Impacts (IFAECI), an international laboratory of the CNRS based in Buenos Aires. Its main research topic concerns the detection and attribution of climate change, the purpose of which is to highlight possible causal links between the observed climatic responses (long-term trends or punctual events) and external (natural forcings or anthropogenic) for which it develops statistical methods. Robert Lund - Clemson University Dr. Lund received his Ph.D. degree in Statistics from The University of North Carolina in 1993. He is currently a Professor in the Department of Mathematical Sciences at Clemson University. He is a Fellow of the American Statistical Association and was the 2005-2007 Editor of the Journal of the American Statistical Association, Reviews Section. He has published over 70 refereed papers and has graduated 15 doctoral students. His interests are in time series, applied probability, statistical climatology, and veterinary disease mapping. Elisabeth Moyer - University of Chicago Dr. Moyer?s research interests fall in two main threads. The first includes the use of the isotopic composition of atmospheric water vapor as a tracer of convective processes, cirrus formation, and stratosphere-troposphere exchange; and the design of spectroscopic techniques for in-situ trace gas measurements. The second includes climate (and human) response to greenhouse-gas forcing; development of tools for impacts assessment; statistical emulation of climate model output; and climate and energy policy evaluation. Prabhat - National Energy Research Computing Center, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Prabhat leads the Data and Analytics Services team at NERSC. His current research interests include scientific data management, parallel I/O, high performance computing and scientific visualization. He is also interested in applied statistics, machine learning, computer graphics and computer vision. Prabhat received an ScM in Computer Science from Brown University (2001) and a B.Tech in Computer Science and Engineering from IIT-Delhi (1999). He is currently pursuing a PhD in the Earth and Planetary Sciences Department at U.C. Berkeley. Sai Ravela - Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Within the broader arena of estimation, control and information theories, and topics in statistical pattern recognition and statistical inference and learning, Dr. Ravela's focus is on the design of numerical methods for succinctly representing stochastic signals and systems. Research in his group develops new algorithms to overcome the "curses" of nonlinearity, dimensionality and uncertainty inference problems, such as estimation, planning and control and key characteristics of data-driven applications and cyber-physical systems with applications including tracking, autonomous sampling and mapping, data assimilation and uncertainty quantification. Spread the Word:Please help us to advertise CI2017 by telling colleagues, and by posting this workshop flyer in your department. Organizing Committee: Workshop Co-Chairs: Andy Rhines, University of Washington Slava Lyubchich, University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science Program Committee Co-Chairs: Nikunj C. Oza, NASA Eniko Szekely, New York University Publicity and Publications Chair: Erich Seamon, University of Idaho Travel and Budget Chair: Mohammad Gorji, Syntelli Solutions Inc. Steering Committee: Imme Ebert-Uphoff, Colorado State University Claire Monteleoni, George Washington University Doug Nychka, National Center for Atmospheric Research Local Administrative Support: Michelle Patton, NCAR Cecilia Banner, NCAR -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mfasli at essex.ac.uk Sun May 28 12:45:10 2017 From: mfasli at essex.ac.uk (Fasli, Maria) Date: Sun, 28 May 2017 16:45:10 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: Postdoctoral Research Fellow post, Institute for Analytics and Data Science, University of Essex, UK Message-ID: Apologies for cross postings The University of Essex (UK) is currently advertising a Postdoctoral Research Fellow post in the Institute for Analytics and Data Science (IADS) to support the Institute?s work in analytics, data science and big data. The post is for an initial 3-year period within IADS during which the post-holder will be on probation. On successful completion of the Fellowship and the probation period, the post-holder will be offered a permanent appointment as a Lecturer in the School of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering at the University of Essex. The duties of the Postdoctoral Research Fellow include undertaking high quality independent and collaborative research that meets REF standards, applying for grants, contributing to public engagement and impact, developing interdisciplinary collaborations within IADS, supporting the research culture of the Institute, supervising students, and supporting IADS administratively. The Fellow will also undertake a limited amount of teaching, as appropriate to a research-based post, to enable them to meet the requirements of probation, and to provide a good foundation in higher education practice for the Fellow's ongoing career. The person appointed will work closely with the Director of the Institute and UNESCO Chair in Analytics and Data Science, Prof Maria Fasli. Applicants should hold a PhD in Computer Science or related area and have excellent knowledge of computer science, artificial intelligence, machine learning or advanced text analytics. Particular research areas of interest include but are not limited to: - machine learning; - reinforcement learning, neural networks, deep learning; - data mining; - predictive analytics; - natural language processing and advanced text analytics; - semantic information extraction and the Semantic Web; - social media analysis; - handling of data in motion (multi-stream processing and reasoning, complex event processing and reasoning); - decision support tools and systems. For more information and to make an application, please see here: https://vacancies.essex.ac.uk/tlive_webrecruitment/wrd/run/ETREC107GF.open?VACANCY_ID=918566DShc&WVID=9918109NEm&LANG=USA The job specification can be found here: http://www.essex.ac.uk/hr-jobpacks/science_health-csee/REQ00650_Jobpack.pdf Informal enquiries can be directed to Prof Maria Fasli (mfasli at essex.ac.uk). Professor Maria Fasli PhD, NTF, FHEA UNESCO Chair in Analytics and Data Science Director, Institute for Analytics and Data Science University of Essex T +44 (0)1206 872327 E mfasli at essex.ac.uk Follow us on Twitter @EssexIADS PA Emma McClelland T +44 (0)1206 873496 E ejmccl at essex.ac.uk ? http://www.essex.ac.uk/iads/ Join us for the Essex Big Data and Analytics Summer School 24 July to 4 August 2017 http://www.essex.ac.uk/iads/events/summer-school.aspx WE ARE ESSEX TOP 20 FOR RESEARCH EXCELLENCE TOP 10 FOR STUDENT SATISFACTION -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From n.lepora at bristol.ac.uk Sun May 28 03:20:42 2017 From: n.lepora at bristol.ac.uk (Nathan Lepora) Date: Sun, 28 May 2017 08:20:42 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: [jobs] Research Associate in Tactile Robot Hands (Bristol Robotics Laboratory/University of Bristol) Message-ID: *** Please note - I will be at ICRA, and anyone interested in the position can contact me to discuss it informally. The Tactile Robotics Group at Bristol Robotics Laboratory is looking for an outstanding candidate to grow an important research strand within the group on tactile robotic hands. This will complement our strengths in developing novel 3d-printed tactile sensors and artificial intelligence methods for robot touch. Although a relatively new group, we have a strong track record in publishing in the major robotics/AI journals and conferences, including RSS, NIPS, IEEE Trans Robotics and regularly in ICRA/IROS, and also computational neuroscience journals such as PLOS Computational Biology. We recently won a competition in Soft Robotics, and our 3d-printed tactile sensors and a tactile hand are on display in the Science Museum, London. The research group has expanded rapidly over the last few years from attracting a large number of PhD candidates and interns, and is currently expanding in Research Associate staff due to a major investment from the Leverhulme Trust and the University of Bristol of over ?2M. The project has funding until April 2022, making this an ideal position to develop a leading academic career in this important research area. Post details: The successful candidate will be part of a multi-disciplinary team on the new Leverhulme-funded Leadership Award ?A biomimetic forebrain for robot touch?. ?1M has been awarded by the Leverhume Trust, with a similar contribution covered by the University of Bristol. These funds will enable a 5-year project that will apply leading robotics, artificial intelligence, neuroscience and psychology to develop a biomimetic forebrain embodied on a 3D-printed tactile robot hand to enable human-like tactile dexterity. The ambition of this project is to create a biomimetic forebrain based on computer modelling of the mammalian neural system that implements active touch in animals, and use this to perform general tactile perception, exploration and manipulation tasks in robots. The development of a biomimetic forebrain with these functional capabilities will give new insight into human/animal embodied intelligence, of broad relevance to science and the public interest. Applicant qualities: This application is for a Research Associate in Tactile Robot Hands. The post-holder will complement and support three other postdoctoral researchers and a technician, who will collectively develop artificial intelligence methods for active touch embodied on state-of-the-art tactile robot hands and link the progress to a model of the mammalian forebrain involved in active touch in animals. You will hold (or will be expected to obtain soon) a strong PhD in a discipline relevant to the project. In addition to an excellent research track record in a related area to this project, you will also have excellent communication and presentation skills, and a drive to make impact with your research. Institution The project will be based at the Bristol Robotics Laboratory (www.brl.ac.uk) the largest center for multi-disciplinary robotics research in the UK with state-of-the-art workshops and robotic hardware. The post holder will be employed by the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Bristol, ranked 3rd for general Engineering in the UK (just after Oxford and Cambridge). The city of Bristol is consistently ranked as the 'best place to live' in the UK, e.g. as reported by the BBC (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-39320118). Further details: It is anticipated that interviews will take place in August 2017, and the anticipated start as soon as possible thereafter. This post is full time for 2 years initially, with funds in place to extend the position until April 2022. Further information about the Leverhulme Award (http://www.lepora.com/leverhulme.htm) and the activities of the research group (www.lepora.com) can be found via these links. Informal enquiries can be made to: Dr. Nathan Lepora (N.Lepora at bristol.ac.uk) Closing date for applications: 31 July 2017 best wishes Nathan -- Dr Nathan Lepora Senior Lecturer in Engineering Maths & BRL Theme Leader in Tactile Robotics Dept of Engineering Maths, Merchant Venturers Building, University of Bristol Office (MVB2.50): 0117 3315169 Lab (BRL bays 3-5): 0117 3286171 @nathanlepora lepora.com bristol.ac.uk/engineering/people/nathan-f-lepora @tactilerobot brl.ac.uk/research/researchthemes/tactilerobotics.aspx From sophon at sugano.mech.waseda.ac.jp Sat May 27 21:38:04 2017 From: sophon at sugano.mech.waseda.ac.jp (Sophon SOMLOR) Date: Sun, 28 May 2017 10:38:04 +0900 Subject: Connectionists: [meetings] CALL FOR PARTICIPATION: ICRA'17 Full-Day Workshop on The Robotic Sense of Touch: From Sensing to Understanding Message-ID: Dear Colleagues, We are calling for participation on our ICRA 2017 workshop on "*The Robotic Sense of Touch: From Sensing to Understanding*" When: ***May 29, 8:30 ? 17:00*** Where: ***Room 4613/4713***, Level 4, Sands Expo and Convention Centre Program: https://roboticsenseoftouchws.wordpress.com/program/ This workshop aims to bring together experts in the fields of tactile sensor design, tactile data analysis, machine learning and cognitive modeling to share their knowledge, through a mix of oral presentations, round-table discussions, poster sessions and live demonstrations. Abstract: This workshop (https://roboticsenseoftouchws.wordpress.com) focuses on the development of novel tactile sensors (i.e. the bodyware) and how they can contribute to robot intelligence (i.e. the mindware). Robots need touch to interact with the surroundings (humans and/or objects) safely and effectively, to learn about the outside world and to develop self-awareness. To achieve these goals, the artificial skin of the next generation should measure temperature, vibration, proximity and the complete force vectors on multiple contact points; also, it should be both soft and robust to facilitate long-term interactions. Still, major challenges are posed by the need to analyze and interpret massive amounts of data in a fast and accurate way, and to combine such sensing information with other cognitive and perceptual processes to achieve real understanding. While advanced computational techniques (e.g. deep learning, Bayesian inference) can critically improve data representations, bio-inspired strategies for multimodal integration, prediction and reasoning seem to be necessary as well to revolutionize the robotic sense of touch. Therefore, the goal of this workshop is to discuss if and how the recent advancements in tactile technology and data analysis have been accompanied by an increased understanding of the ways in which tactile perception can support robot autonomy and cognition. Content: Part of human intelligence comes from using the sense of touch to explore the own-body and learn about the world. Similarly, a humanoid robot can use tactile sensing to learn about itself and its surroundings, and to improve its ability in interacting with humans and objects. Indeed, there has been a remarkable progress in tactile sensors for robotics. Several robotic platforms and hands are equipped with sensors which allow measuring pressure, proximity and temperature; also, novel technologies (soft, small, distributed, stretchable sensors) can be used to cover the entire body of a humanoid. These sensors can allow robots to actively explore objects and extract information which is hidden or difficult to extract from vision, like texture, material and weight; however, this requires the development of appropriate learning strategies which incorporate explorative behaviors, signal processing and machine learning. ***Invited Speakers***: Gordon Cheng, Technical University of Munich, Germany Jurgen Kosel, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Saudi Arabia Katherine J. Kuchenbecker, Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, Germany, and University of Pennsylvania, USA Helge Wurdemunn, University College London, United Kingdom Kaiyu Hang, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong Lorenzo Natale, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Italy Lorenzo Jamone, Queen Mary University of London, United Kingdom Alexander Schmitz and Sophon Somlor, Waseda University, Japan Organizers: Sophon Somlor (contact person), Waseda University Alexander Schmitz, Waseda University Lorenzo Jamone, The Queen Mary University of London Lorenzo Natale, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia Gordon Cheng, Technical University of Munich ***URL*** https://roboticsenseoftouchws.wordpress.com/ Looking forward to see you in Singapore! ================================================ Dr. Sophon Somlor Junior Researcher Top Global University Project Unit for Frontier of Embodiment Informatics?ICT and Robotics Faculty of Science and Engineering Waseda University ????? ????? ??????????????? ICT????????? ????? ???? ???? ================================================ -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mfasli at essex.ac.uk Sun May 28 12:45:35 2017 From: mfasli at essex.ac.uk (Fasli, Maria) Date: Sun, 28 May 2017 16:45:35 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: Senior Lecturer and Assistant Director post, University of Essex, UK Message-ID: Apologies for cross postings The University of Essex (UK) is currently advertising a Senior Lecturer post in the School of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering in the area of artificial intelligence. This is a permanent appointment with a three year secondment as Assistant Director to the Institute for Analytics and Data Science (IADS). The person appointed will work closely with the Director of the Institute and UNESCO Chair in Analytics and Data Science, Prof Maria Fasli, and provide senior academic leadership in promoting and supporting a range of research activities in analytics and data science. Applicants should hold a PhD in Computer Science or related area and have excellent knowledge of computer science, artificial intelligence, machine learning or advanced text analytics. Particular research areas of interest include but are not limited to: - machine learning; - reinforcement learning, neural networks, deep learning; - data mining; - predictive analytics; - natural language processing and advanced text analytics; - semantic information extraction and the Semantic Web; - social media analysis; - handling of data in motion (multi-stream processing and reasoning, complex event processing and reasoning); - decision support tools and systems. For more information and to make an application, please see here: https://vacancies.essex.ac.uk/tlive_webrecruitment/wrd/run/ETREC107GF.open?VACANCY_ID=477364DRYF&WVID=9918109NEm&LANG=USA The job specification can be found here: http://www.essex.ac.uk/hr-jobpacks/science_health-csee/REQ00649_Jobpack.pdf Informal enquiries can be directed to Prof Maria Fasli (mfasli at essex.ac.uk). Professor Maria Fasli PhD, NTF, FHEA UNESCO Chair in Analytics and Data Science Director, Institute for Analytics and Data Science University of Essex T +44 (0)1206 872327 E mfasli at essex.ac.uk Follow us on Twitter @EssexIADS PA Emma McClelland T +44 (0)1206 873496 E ejmccl at essex.ac.uk ? http://www.essex.ac.uk/iads/ Join us for the Essex Big Data and Analytics Summer School 24 July to 4 August 2017 http://www.essex.ac.uk/iads/events/summer-school.aspx WE ARE ESSEX TOP 20 FOR RESEARCH EXCELLENCE TOP 10 FOR STUDENT SATISFACTION -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From mfasli at essex.ac.uk Sun May 28 12:44:25 2017 From: mfasli at essex.ac.uk (Fasli, Maria) Date: Sun, 28 May 2017 16:44:25 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: Big Data And Analytics Summer School; Early registration and scholarships deadline Message-ID: ESSEX BIG DATA AND ANALYTICS SUMMER SCHOOL INSTITUTE FOR ANALYTICS AND DATA SCIENCE 24th July - 4th August 2017 http://www.essex.ac.uk/iads/events/summer-school.aspx University of Essex, Wivenhoe Park, Colchester, United Kingdom The Essex Big Data and Analytics Summer School is a multidisciplinary research training event and forum for knowledge exchange and networking for graduates, postgraduates, researchers and professionals in the emerging fields of data science, analytics and big data who would like to find out more or be updated on the current trends and developments in this exciting and fast-developing field. The Summer School is organized by the Institute for Analytics and Data Science (IADS) at the University of Essex, UK. Courses This is the third year that the Big Data and Analytics Summer School is running and following the successful events in previous years, the programme covers a range of topics from the curation and management of big data, advanced techniques and methods including artificial intelligence and statistical methods, and applications of big data in fields ranging from business and finance to bioinformatics. Courses are offered for participants with a science, social science or humanities background at different levels (Beginners, Intermediate or Advanced). Courses range from theoretical to lab-based or a mixture of theory and lab-based instruction and practice. Thirty five courses will be delivered by academic and industry experts in parallel sessions over the two week period. Participants can attend either one week or both and can choose the courses of most interest to them to create their own programme of study. For more detailed information on the range and content of courses visit: http://www.essex.ac.uk/iads/events/summer-school.aspx. Other information The Summer School includes keynote lectures from academic and industry experts delivered over the two weeks. Social events will be organised each week to enable participants to network and share ideas and experience of data analytics, data science and big data. Registration and further information For further information and registration please visit http://www.essex.ac.uk/iads/events/summer-school.aspx. A number of scholarships (for 2-week attendance) are available for participants coming from developing and transitioning countries, for more information see website. Spaces in the various courses are allocated on a first come first served basis and are limited, so early registration is advised to avoid disappointment and take advantage of the early registration discount. For enquiries or specific queries, please email the Emma McClelland, Summer School Administrator, at: iadssum at essex.ac.uk. Professor Maria Fasli PhD, NTF, FHEA UNESCO Chair in Analytics and Data Science Director, Institute for Analytics and Data Science University of Essex T +44 (0)1206 872327 E mfasli at essex.ac.uk Follow us on Twitter @EssexIADS PA Emma McClelland T +44 (0)1206 873496 E ejmccl at essex.ac.uk ? http://www.essex.ac.uk/iads/ Join us for the Essex Big Data and Analytics Summer School 24 July to 4 August 2017 http://www.essex.ac.uk/iads/events/summer-school.aspx WE ARE ESSEX TOP 20 FOR RESEARCH EXCELLENCE TOP 10 FOR STUDENT SATISFACTION [cid:CDBDCAAE-6AF0-4FED-B7EA-3380CDE21282][cid:8D49A627-175E-4574-BD70-E0B7068D035F] [cid:E956F191-8F7D-4FDA-943A-3F1A38D43E36] -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: CDBDCAAE-6AF0-4FED-B7EA-3380CDE21282.png Type: image/png Size: 1532 bytes Desc: CDBDCAAE-6AF0-4FED-B7EA-3380CDE21282.png URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: 8D49A627-175E-4574-BD70-E0B7068D035F.png Type: image/png Size: 1695 bytes Desc: 8D49A627-175E-4574-BD70-E0B7068D035F.png URL: -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: E956F191-8F7D-4FDA-943A-3F1A38D43E36.png Type: image/png Size: 1714 bytes Desc: E956F191-8F7D-4FDA-943A-3F1A38D43E36.png URL: From Nicolas.Rougier at inria.fr Mon May 29 03:42:14 2017 From: Nicolas.Rougier at inria.fr (Nicolas P. Rougier) Date: Mon, 29 May 2017 09:42:14 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: New replication (10.1126/science.278.5345.1950) Message-ID: Dear all, It's my great pleasure to announce that the following article: * Spike Synchronization and Rate Modulation Differentially Involved in Motor Cortical Function, Alexa Riehle, Sonja Gr?n, Markus Diesmann, Ad Aertsen, Science 1997, Vol. 278, Issue 5345, pp. 1950-1953, DOI: 10.1126/science.278.5345.1950 has been successfully replicated in ReScience (using Python): * [Re] Spike Synchronization and Rate Modulation Differentially Involved in Motor Cortical Function - Vahid Rostami, Junji Ito, Michael Denker, and Sonja Gru?n, ReScience, volume 3, issue 1, article number 3 2017. You can read more at http://rescience.github.io/read. Article and code are available from https://github.com/ReScience-Archives/Rostami-Ito-Denker-Gruen-2017 Nicolas P. Rougier From mlsp at neuro.kuleuven.be Mon May 29 05:51:48 2017 From: mlsp at neuro.kuleuven.be (2017 IEEE International Workshop on Machine Learning fo Signal Processing) Date: Mon, 29 May 2017 11:51:48 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: 2017 IEEE International Workshop on Machine Learning - submission deadline extended In-Reply-To: <58D523D8.2000001@neuro.kuleuven.be> References: <58D523D8.2000001@neuro.kuleuven.be> Message-ID: <592BEF34.7030307@neuro.kuleuven.be> Submission deadline extended - 2017 IEEE International Workshop on Machine Learning for Signal Processing (MLSP) September 25-28, Roppongi, Tokyo, Japan http://mlsp2017.conwiz.dk New Schedule: Paper submission June 11, 2017 Paper update deadline June 14, 2017 Review notification July 22, 2017 Author rebuttal period July 22-27, 2017 Reviewer discussion period July 28-August 2, 2017 Decision notifications August 7, 2017 Camera-ready paper deadline August 28, 2017 Author advance registration August 28, 2017 The 27th MLSP workshop in the series of workshops organized by the IEEE Signal Processing Society MLSP Technical Committee will present the most recent and exciting advances in machine learning for signal processing through keynote talks, tutorials, as well as special and regular single-track sessions. Prospective authors are invited to submit papers on relevant algorithms and applications including, but not limited to: - Bayesian learning and signal processing - Cognitive information processing - Deep learning techniques - Dictionary learning - Graphical and kernel methods - Independent component analysis - Information-theoretic learning - Learning theory and algorithms - Pattern recognition and classification - Bounds on performance - Subspace and manifold learning - Sequential learning and decision methods - Source separation - Tensor and structured matrix methods - Machine learning from big data - Scalable learning algorithms - Applications including: speech, audio & music, image & video, biomedical signals & images, communications, bioinformatics, biometrics, systems biology, computational intelligence, genomic signals & sequences, social networks, games, smart grid, security & privacy DATA ANALYSIS AND SIGNAL PROCESSING COMPETITION The competition is organized in conjunction with the workshop. The goal of the competition is to advance the current state-of-the-art in theoretical and practical aspects of signal processing domains. SPECIAL SESSIONS MLSP 2017 will include Special Sessions that address research in emerging or interdisciplinary areas of particular interest, not covered already by traditional MLSP sessions. BEST STUDENT PAPER AWARD The MLSP Best Student Paper Award will be granted to the best paper for which a student is the principal author and presenter. PAPER SUBMISSION Prospective authors are invited to submit a double column paper of up to six pages using the electronic submission procedure at http://mlsp2017.conwiz.dk. Accepted papers will be published on a password-protected website that will be available during the workshop. The presented papers will be published in and indexed by IEEE Xplore. IMPORTANT DATES AND DEADLINES: Paper submission June 11, 2017 Decision notifications August 7, 2017 Camera-ready paper deadline August 28, 2017 Author advance registration August 28, 2017 ORGANIZING COMMITTEE: General Chairs: Tomoko Matsui, The Institute of Statistical Mathematics, Japan Jen-Tzung Chien, National Chiao Tung University, Taiwan Program Chairs: Naonori Ueda, NTT Communication Science Laboratories, Japan Shinji Watanabe, Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories, USA Finance Chair: Motoi Okamoto, The Institute of Statistical Mathematics, Japan Data Competition Chairs: Karim Seghouane, University of Melbourne, Australia Yuejie Chi, Ohio State University, USA Publicity Chair: Marc Van Hulle, KU Leuven, Belgium Publication Chair: Jan Larsen, Technical University of Denmark, Denmark Program Advisory Committee: Shigeru Katagiri, Doshisha University, Japan Tulay Adali, University of Maryland, USA Vince Calhoun, University of New Mexico, USA Raviv Raich, Oregon State University, USA From alessandra.sciutti at gmail.com Mon May 29 05:32:06 2017 From: alessandra.sciutti at gmail.com (Alessandra Sciutti) Date: Mon, 29 May 2017 11:32:06 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: Final CFP: International Conference on Human-Agent Interaction (HAI 2017) Message-ID: <002a01d2d85e$70b56ff0$52204fd0$@gmail.com> [We apologize if you receive multiple copies of this message] ========================================================================== *** HAI 2017 Call for Papers *** The Fifth International Conference on Human-Agent Interaction (HAI 2017) Bielefeld, Germany ~ 17 - 20 October 2017 http://hai-conference.net/hai2017/ Submission Site: http://precisionconference.com/~hai/ ========================================================================== HAI 2017 is the 5th annual International Conference on Human-Agent Interaction. It aims to be the premier interdisciplinary venue for discussing and disseminating state-of-the-art research and results that have implications across conventional interaction boundaries including robots, software agents and digitally-mediated human-human communication. The theme for HAI 2017 is "How autonomy shapes interaction". During the last decade a large body of research has been devoted on increasing the interaction quality with artificial agents. This has now reached a quite convincing level for focused application scenarios. However, with robots and agents entering our everyday lives such scenarios will require more initiative and flexibility from the agent, i.e. more autonomy. Such autonomous behavior means, on the other hand, that the interaction will become less predictable. This may become problematic given the strong research focus on statistical behavior models that focus on observable behavior based on rather shallow structures. These models may not be able to capture the underlying interaction structure in less restricted scenarios. We thus need a better understanding and model of the underlying interaction principles that not only takes situational and task aspects into account but also includes detailed user models. Therefore, a stronger research focus is needed to better understand the underlying principles of interaction between autonomous agents, leading to better and deeper models of interaction. We thus encourage contributions that try to tackle this question by focusing on more realistic and life-like scenarios. The conference seeks contributions from a broad range of fields spanning engineering, computer science, psychology and sociology, and will cover diverse topics, including: human-robot interaction, affective computing, computer-supported collaborative work, gaming and serious games, artificial intelligence, and more. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, - designs and studies of Human-Agent Interaction, including quantitative and qualitative results - theoretical models of Human-Agent Interaction - technological advances in Human-Agent Interaction - impacts of embodiment (e.g., physical vs digital, human vs animal-like) - experimental methods for Human-Agent Interaction - character and avatar design in video games - agents in social network This includes more targeted results that have implications to the broader human-agent interaction community: - human-robot interaction - human-virtual agent interaction - interaction with smart homes and smart cars - distributed groupware where people have remote embodiments and representations - and more! Full papers, posters, late-breaking results, tutorial/workshop overviews will be archived in the ACM Digital Library. *** Important Dates *** ----------------------- * Full Paper Submission * (4-8 pages) 05 June 2017: Deadline for submission of full papers (Deadline Extended) 08 July 2017: Notification of acceptance of full papers 04 August 2017: Final camera-ready papers due * Tutorial/Workshop Proposal Submission * 05 June 2017: Deadline for submission of proposals (Deadline Extended) 08 June 2017: Notification of acceptance of proposals 04 August 2017: Final camera-ready Workshop papers due * Poster and Late-breaking Submission * (2-4 pages) 25 July 2017: Deadline for submission of posters (Deadline Extended) 15 August 2017: Notification of acceptance of posters 18 August 2017: Final camera-ready papers due *** Submission and Reviewing *** -------------------------------- HAI 2017 will accept ONLY online submission of PDF files in the ACM SIGCHI format (http://www.sigchi.org/publications/chipubform). ACM copyright area should be left blank. Please visit the submission page http://hai-conference.net/hai2017/submission for more details on preparations for paper submission. All submitted paper will be reviewed by at least three reviewers and will receive a meta review for quality assurance. Papers will be evaluated on the basis of research originality, excellence, significance and relevance to HAI. We also invite position papers, preliminary (but high impact) studies, and concept papers. *** Organising Committee *** ---------------------------- * Honorary Chair: Gerhard Sagerer, Bielefeld University, Germany * General Co-Chairs: Britta Wrede, Bielefeld University, Germany Yukie Nagai Osaka University, Japan * Local Chairs Lars Schillingmann, Bielefeld University, Germany * Financial Chair Franz Kummert, Bielefeld University, Germany * Program Chairs Takanori Komatsu, Meiji University, Japan Marc Hanheide, University of Lincoln, United Kingdom Lorenzo Natale, Italian Institute of Technology, Italy * Publication Chair Patrick Holthaus, Bielefeld University, Germany * Poster Chair Anna-Lisa Vollmer, Bielefeld University, Germany * Publicity Chairs Kazunori Terada, Gifu University, Japan Alessandra Sciutti, Italian Institute of Technology, Italy * Workshop Chair Kirsten Bergmann, Bielefeld University, Germany * Sponsorship Chair Sebastian Wrede, Bielefeld University, Germany * Registration Chair Birte Carlmeyer, Bielefeld University, Germany * Web Chair Lars Schillingmann, Bielefeld University, Germany ========================================================================== ----------------------------------------- Alessandra Sciutti (PhD) Researcher, Robotics Brain and Cognitive Sciences Unit Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia Center for Human Technologies Via Enrico Melen 83, Building B 16152 Genova, Italy tel: +39 010 8172 210 email: alessandra.sciutti at iit.it website: https://www.iit.it/people/alessandra-sciutti -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From Pavis at iit.it Mon May 29 09:50:50 2017 From: Pavis at iit.it (Pavis) Date: Mon, 29 May 2017 13:50:50 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: Open PhD call 2017 - Italian Institute of Technology (Pattern Analysis & Computer Vision, PAVIS) and University of Genova In-Reply-To: <0E09F354EB71FC40A4D51EE54D8A9C8878BFE46E@IITMXWGE015.iit.local> References: <0E09F354EB71FC40A4D51EE54D8A9C8878BFE46E@IITMXWGE015.iit.local> Message-ID: <0E09F354EB71FC40A4D51EE54D8A9C8878BFE483@IITMXWGE015.iit.local> Open PhD call 2017 -- Italian Institute of Technology (Pattern Analysis & Computer Vision, PAVIS) and University of Genova PhD Course on SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY FOR ELECTRONICS AND TELECOMMUNICATION ENGINEERING, curriculum in "COMPUTATIONAL VISION, AUTOMATIC RECOGNITION AND LEARNING (CODE 6654)" Fondazione Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT - www.iit.it) together with the University of Genova opened the call for the 2017 Doctoral Course on Sciences & Technologies For Electronics & Telecommunication - Curriculum in Computer Vision, Pattern Recognition and Machine Learning (www.iit.it/phd-school). 7 PhD positions are available at the Pattern Analysis and Computer Vision (PAVIS) Dept. and at the Visual Geometry and Modeling Lab (VGM Lab) to work in Computer Vision, Pattern Recognition and Machine Learning, and more specifically on the following themes (for details see https://pavisdata.iit.it/data/phd2017/ResearchTopics_IIT-PAVIS.pdf): Theme A - Computer vision for behavioral analysis and activity recognition Theme B - Computer vision for the prediction of human intentions and activities Theme C - Part-based human body modeling for Socially-Aware Computer Vision Theme D - Crowd behavioral analysis and event recognition Theme E - Re-identification Theme F - Time-lapse Computer Vision for long-term 3D learning Theme G - 3D scene understanding and spatial reasoning for autonomous systems Theme H ? Biomedical Imaging Theme I ? Connectomics Theme L - Animal behavior analysis More info on the above research topics can be found at https://pavisdata.iit.it/data/phd2017/ResearchTopics_IIT-PAVIS.pdf or directly asked to Prof. V. Murino or Dr. Alessio Del Bue (pavis at iit.it), or any other tutor indicated in the list of themes. The PhD program on the listed themes will take place at the PAVIS department of Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT) located in Genova (www.iit.it). The department focuses on activities related to the analysis and understanding of images, videos and patterns in general, even multidisciplinary, in collaboration with other research groups in IIT. The PAVIS and VGM Lab staff has a wide expertise on computer vision and pattern recognition, machine learning, image processing, and related applications (mainly related to surveillance/security and biomedical tasks). For more information, you can also browse the PAVIS and VGM Lab webpages to see our activities and research at: http://pavis.iit.it/ and http://vgm.iit.it/ To apply, follow the instructions indicated at this link: https://www.studenti.unige.it/postlaurea/dottorati/XXXIII/ In short, the documentation to be submitted is: a detailed CV, a research proposal under one or more themes chosen among those above indicated (please, see also a project proposal template at the link indicated below), reference letters, and any other formal document concerning the degrees earned. Notice that these documents are mandatory in order to consider valid the application. IMPORTANT: In order to apply, candidates must prepare a research proposal based on the research topics above mentioned. Please, follow these indications to prepare it: https://pavisdata.iit.it/data/phd2017/ResearchProjectTemplate.pdf ONLINE APPLICATION DEADLINE is June 13th, 2017 at 12:00 p.m. (noon, Italian time/CET) ? STRICT DEADLINE, no extension. APPLICATIONS are possible through University of Genoa ONLINE PROCEDURE ONLY - https://www.studenti.unige.it/postlaurea/dottorati/XXXIII/ FURTHER INFO: http://www.studenti.unige.it/postlaurea/dottorati/ From biostec at insticc.info Mon May 29 13:18:51 2017 From: biostec at insticc.info (biostec at insticc.info) Date: 29 May 2017 18:18:51 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: CFP BIOSTEC 2018 - 11th Int.l Joint Conf. on Biomedical Engineering Systems and Technologies (Funchal, Madeira/Portugal) Message-ID: <20170529171853.53804.1B8172EF6FA1F822@insticc.info> SUBMISSION DEADLINE 11th International Joint Conference on Biomedical Engineering Systems and Technologies Submission Deadline: July 31, 2017 http://www.biostec.org/ January 19 - 21, 2018 Funchal, Madeira, Portugal. In Cooperation with EUROMICRO, EAMBES, ISCB, BMES, AAAI. With the presence of internationally distinguished keynote speakers: Anatole L?cuyer, Inria Rennes/IRISA, Hybrid Research Team, France Corina Sas, Lancaster University, United Kingdom Dinesh Kumar, RMIT University, Australia A short list of presented papers will be selected so that revised and extended versions of these papers will be published by Springer. All papers presented at the congress venue will also be available at the SCITEPRESS Digital Library (http://www.scitepress.org/DigitalLibrary/). Should you have any question please don?t hesitate contacting me. Kind regards, BIOSTEC Secretariat Address: Av. D. Manuel I, 27A, 2? esq. 2910-595 Setubal, Portugal Tel: +351 265 100 033 Fax: +351 265 520 186 Web: http://www.biostec.org/ e-mail: biostec.secretariat at insticc.org From icpram at insticc.info Mon May 29 13:19:18 2017 From: icpram at insticc.info (icpram at insticc.info) Date: 29 May 2017 18:19:18 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: CFP ICPRAM 2018 - 7th Int.l Conf. on Pattern Recognition Applications and Methods (Funchal, Madeira/Portugal) Message-ID: <20170529171920.53804.6627BC9144D97540@insticc.info> SUBMISSION DEADLINE 7th International Conference on Pattern Recognition Applications and Methods Submission Deadline: July 31, 2017 http://www.icpram.org/ January 16 - 18, 2018 Funchal, Madeira, Portugal. ICPRAM is organized in 2 major tracks: - Theory and Methods - Applications In Cooperation with AIXIA, APRP, INNS, AAAI. With the presence of internationally distinguished keynote speakers: Rita Cucchiara, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Italy Edwin Hancock, York University, United Kingdom Xiaoyi Jiang, University of M?nster, Germany Alfred Bruckstein, Technion, Israel A short list of presented papers will be selected so that revised and extended versions of these papers will be published by Springer. All papers presented at the congress venue will also be available at the SCITEPRESS Digital Library (http://www.scitepress.org/DigitalLibrary/). Should you have any question please don?t hesitate contacting me. Kind regards, ICPRAM Secretariat Address: Av. D. Manuel I, 27A, 2? esq. 2910-595 Setubal, Portugal Tel: +351 265 520 185 Fax: +351 265 520 186 Web: http://www.icpram.org/ e-mail: icpram.secretariat at insticc.org From icaart at insticc.info Mon May 29 13:19:08 2017 From: icaart at insticc.info (icaart at insticc.info) Date: 29 May 2017 18:19:08 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: CFP ICAART 2018 - 10th Int.l Conf. on Agents and Artificial Intelligence (Funchal, Madeira/Portugal) Message-ID: <20170529171910.53804.03C06D9F0B33CFB6@insticc.info> SUBMISSION DEADLINE 10th International Conference on Agents and Artificial Intelligence Submission Deadline: July 31, 2017 http://www.icaart.org/ January 16 - 18, 2018 Funchal, Madeira, Portugal. ICAART is organized in 2 major tracks: - Agents - Artificial Intelligence In Cooperation with APPIA, AEPIA, AIXIA, Iberamia, EUSFLAT, APRP, EurAI, IFSA, AAAI. Technically Co-sponsored by IEEE CIS. With the presence of internationally distinguished keynote speakers: Luc Steels, ICREA, Institute of Evolutionary Biology (UPF-CSIC) Barcelona, Spain Virginia Dignum, Delft University of Technology, Netherlands Eduard Hovy, Carnegie Mellon University, United States Lu?s Antunes, Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal A short list of presented papers will be selected so that revised and extended versions of these papers will be published by Springer. All papers presented at the congress venue will also be available at the SCITEPRESS Digital Library (http://www.scitepress.org/DigitalLibrary/). Should you have any question please don?t hesitate contacting me. Kind regards, ICAART Secretariat Address: Av. D. Manuel I, 27A, 2? esq. 2910-595 Setubal, Portugal Tel: +351 265 520 185 Fax: +351 265 520 186 Web: http://www.icaart.org/ e-mail: icaart.secretariat at insticc.org From visigrapp at insticc.info Mon May 29 14:12:48 2017 From: visigrapp at insticc.info (visigrapp at insticc.info) Date: 29 May 2017 19:12:48 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: CFP VISAPP 2018 - Int.l Conf. on Computer Vision Theory and Applications (Funchal, Madeira/Portugal) Message-ID: <20170529181251.18984.6BCA3C93A0D532B2@insticc.info> SUBMISSION DEADLINE International Conference on Computer Vision Theory and Applications Submission Deadline: July 31, 2017 http://www.visapp.visigrapp.org/ January 27 - 29, 2018 Funchal, Madeira, Portugal. VISAPP is organized in 5 major tracks: - Image Formation and Preprocessing - Image and Video Analysis - Image and Video Understanding - Applications and Services - Motion, Tracking and Stereo Vision In Cooperation with AFIG. With the presence of internationally distinguished keynote speakers: Carol O'Sullivan, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland Alexander Bronshtein, Israel Institute of Technology,Tel Aviv University and Intel Corporation, Israel Falk Schreiber, University of Konstanz, Germany and Monash University Melbourne, Australia, Germany A short list of presented papers will be selected so that revised and extended versions of these papers will be published by Springer. All papers presented at the congress venue will also be available at the SCITEPRESS Digital Library (http://www.scitepress.org/DigitalLibrary/). Should you have any question please don?t hesitate contacting me. Kind regards, VISAPP Secretariat Address: Av. D. Manuel I, 27A, 2? esq. 2910-595 Setubal, Portugal Tel: +351 265 520 184 Fax: +351 265 520 186 Web: http://www.visapp.visigrapp.org/ e-mail: visapp.secretariat at insticc.org From d.polani at herts.ac.uk Mon May 29 15:55:22 2017 From: d.polani at herts.ac.uk (Daniel Polani) Date: Mon, 29 May 2017 20:55:22 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: PhD Studentships on Information Theory in Artificial Intelligence and Artificial Life Message-ID: <22828.31914.168044.746673@gargle.gargle.HOWL> ///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// PhD Studentships Available on INFORMATION THEORY IN ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND ARTIFICIAL LIFE Adaptive Systems Research Group School of Computer Science University of Hertfordshire, UK ///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// We invite applications for PhD studentships in the Adaptive Systems Research Group at the University of Hertfordshire: specifically, studying principled methods (with focus on information theory) in fundamental questions of Artificial Intelligence and Artificial Life, including principles of cognition, and emergence (origin) of life and intelligence from first principles. Questions also include information processing in adaptive, complex and self-organizing systems in general, a research area which has witnessed a dramatic increase of interest in the last years. At the same time, our goal is to adapt these principles for AI applications and robotic devices. We use mathematical methods, with particular emphasis on Shannon's information theory, to describe, understand or construct systems in the context of AI/robotics and biology. Potential research directions could be: - information and its flow through the perception-action loop - the role of information in the self-organization in complex systems - origin of life and cognition - principled Artificial Intelligence methods for embodied autonomous robotics - intrinsic motivation and artificial creativity - informational principles of biological computation (with opportunities to collaborate with the Biocomputation Research Group) The prospective candidates should have a very strong first degree, a keen interest in delving into and contributing to a new, and quickly expanding research area and an outstanding background in Computer Science, Physics, Mathematics, Statistics or another relevant computational/quantitative discipline. In particular, they should demonstrate excellent programming skills in at least one major computer language. A mathematical/numerical background would be highly desirable. Knowledge in at least one of the following fields would be a plus: probability theory, information theory, differential geometry, control, dynamical systems, control, data modelling/neural network techniques. The envisaged research will take place in the vibrant, enthusiastic and enterprising research environment of the Adaptive Systems Research Group in the School of Computer Science at the University of Hertfordshire; there will also be the chance to collaborate with the socSMCs (Socializing Sensorimotor Contingencies, FET Open) and WiMUST (Widely Scalable Mobile Underwater Sonar Technology) EU Horizon 2020 projects, as well as the School's successful humanoid robot RoboCup team, the Bold Hearts and other projects at the School. The school offers a large number of specialized and interdisciplinary seminars as well as general training opportunities. Research in Computer Science at the University of Hertfordshire has been recognized as excellent by the latest Research Assessment Exercise, with 50% of the research submitted being rated as internationally excellent or world leading. The University of Hertfordshire is located in Hatfield, Hertfordshire UK which is considered the "northern green belt" of London. Hatfield is close to London (less than 25 minutes by direct train to Kings Cross), has convenient access to Stansted, Luton and Heathrow airports, and, via the nearby historic town of St. Albans, also to Gatwick airport. Successful candidates are eligible for a research studentship award from the University (which includes approximately GBP 14,550.00 per annum bursary from 1 October 2017 and the payment of the standard UK/EU student fees). Applicants from outside the UK or EU are eligible, but will have to pay half of the overseas fees out of their bursary. Closing date for application is the 16. June 2017, though excellent applications may be considered after that date. For informal inquiries on the research topic please contact: Dr. Daniel Polani (E-mail: d.polani at herts.ac.uk) Application forms are available from Lorraine Nicholls (l.nicholls at herts.ac.uk) or under the following link: http://www.herts.ac.uk/apply/schools-of-study/computer-science/our-research/the-phd-programme-in-computer-science (see also the link under "Information Theory in Artificial Intelligence and Artificial Life") and should be returned to: Mrs Lorraine Nicholls Research Student Administrator, STRI University of Hertfordshire College Lane Hatfield, AL10 9AB Herts Hertfordshire UK Tel: +44 1707 286083 Email: l.nicholls at herts.ac.uk Applications should also include two references and transcripts of previous academic degrees. -- Daniel Polani | School of Computer Science | Tel. +44/1707/28 4380 | | University of Hertfordshire | Fax: +44/1707/28 4303 | | Hatfield, Herts AL10 9AB | | | United Kingdom | | ------------------------------------------------------------------- | Web: http://homepages.herts.ac.uk/~comqdp1/ | From m.von.papen at fz-juelich.de Tue May 30 03:32:09 2017 From: m.von.papen at fz-juelich.de (Michael von Papen) Date: Tue, 30 May 2017 09:32:09 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: Extended Deadline: Coupling & Causality in Complex Systems, Sep 25-27, Cologne, Germany Message-ID: <734457e9-7f2e-43ba-0f77-f478666bee06@fz-juelich.de> ============================================================== CALL FOR PAPERS (*Extended Deadline June 15*, 2017) http://c3s.uni-koeln.de ============================================================== INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE: *Coupling and Causality in Complex Systems* September 25-27, 2017, Cologne, Germany -------------------------------------------------------------- The interdisciplinary conference Coupling and Causality in Complex Systems (C3S) is hosted by the Competence Area 3: Quantitative Modeling of Complex Systems of the University of Cologne (UoC), Germany. It is organized by the Institute of Geophysics & Meteorology, UoC, the Institute of Clinical Neuroscience and Psychology, Heinrich-Heine University D?sseldorf and the Department of Cognitive Neuroscience at the Research Center Juelich. -------------------------------------------------- *Invited Speakers* J?rg Breitung - Macroeconomic Policy Institute, University of Cologne, Germany David Gross - Institute of Theoretical Physics, University of Cologne, Germany Philip Holmes - Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering / Princeton Neuroscience Institute, Princeton, USA Ankit Khambhati - Department of Bioengineering, University of Pennsylvania, USA Laura Marzetti - Department of Neuroscience, Universit? degli Studi "G. d'Annunzio" Chieti - Pescara Arkady Pikovsky - Institute of Physics and Astronomy, University Potsdam, Germany Michael Rosenblum - Institute of Physics and Astronomy, University Potsdam, Germany Jakob Runge - The Grantham Institute for Climate Change, Imperial College London -------------------------------------------------- *Preliminary Session Program* We will have different sessions with differing topics and each session will be opened by one of the invited speakers. Here is a preliminary version of our program: Session 1 Synchronization I Arkady Pikovsky Session 2 Synchronization II Silvia Daun Session 3 Coupled oscillators I Phil Holmes Session 4 Coupled oscillators II Michael Rosenblum Session 5 Phase coupling Laura Marzetti Session 6 Network structures Ankit Khambati Session 7 Bayesian networks David Gross Session 8 Granger causality I J?rg Breitung Session 9 Granger causality II Esther Florin Session 10 Causal network measures Jakob Runge Further topics of interest for the conference include, amongst others, research and methods development on: functional connectivity, (partial directed) coherence, network topology, graph-theoretic measures, directed graphs, nonlinear dynamics of complex systems, complex spatio-temporal systems, mutual information and transfer entropy. -------------------------------------------------------------- *Scientific Organizing Committee* Silvia Daun - Institute of Zoology, University of Cologne, Germany; Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine, Research Center J?lich, Germany Esther Florin - Institute of Clinical Neuroscience and Psychology, D?sseldorf, Germany Joachim Gross - Center for Cognitive Neuroimaging, Glasgow, UK Michael von Papen - Institute of Geophysics & Meteorology, Cologne, Germany; Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine, Research Center J?lich, Germany -------------------------------------------------------------- *Abstract* Complex systems such as the human brain, Earth?s climate and economy are characterized by a multitude of coupled processes on different spatial and temporal scales. In order to better understand the dynamics of the system at hand each scientific area has developed specific tools to identify, model and quantify these processes. The conference Coupling and Causality in Complex Systems (C3S) will present a collection of these approaches with the aim to provide scientists with new analysis strategies for their field. The conference focuses on how to characterize a complex system and on the methods for estimating and modeling of statistical coupling (e.g. network coherence, creation and modulation of small networks and local or long-range synchronization by cross frequency phase-phase and phase-amplitude coupling) and causality (e.g. Granger causality, transfer entropy). Therefore, data analysts from different study fields including neuroscience, mathematics, physics, biology, and economy will present their approaches with a particular focus on the methods they use. The aim of this conference is to foster discussions and the transdisciplinary exchange of advanced techniques, methods, and algorithms, thereby stimulating potential future collaborations. -------------------------------------------------------------- *PAPER SUBMISSION AND REGISTRATION* Authors are invited to submit conference abstracts with up to 400 words. Authors of exceptional abstracts will be given the opportunity to present their research in a talk. However, poster sessions will be provided with ample time for discussions. For your submission, please use the conference website c3s.uni-koeln.de. To register, please send an email with the subject "registration" to c3s-conference at uni-koeln.de. Please be sure to include your full name, your affiliation and whether you qualify as student (also PhD candidates) or not. The registration fee will cover snacks and refreshments during coffee breaks, lunch and a dinner with all participants. Early-bird registration is available until July 10 with a reduced fee of 100 EUR (50 EUR for students), after July 10 the registration fee will be 200 EUR (100 EUR for students). -------------------------------------------------------------- IMPORTANT DATES Paper Submission deadline: June 15, 2017 Author Notification: end June, 2017 Early-bird registration: July 10, 2017 Conference: September 25-27, 2017 ============================================================== Please find the call for papers and more information at the conference website: http://c3s.uni-koeln.de. For questions regarding the conference feel free to contact us via c3s-conference at uni-koeln.de. -- ------------------------------------------ UNIVERSITY OF COLOGNE Institute of Geophysics & Meteorology Coordinator of Competence Area III: Quantitative Modeling of Complex Systems Dr. Michael von Papen Email: m.papen at uni-koeln.de http://www.uni-koeln.de/~vpapenm http://complexsystems.uni-koeln.de ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Forschungszentrum Juelich GmbH 52425 Juelich Sitz der Gesellschaft: Juelich Eingetragen im Handelsregister des Amtsgerichts Dueren Nr. HR B 3498 Vorsitzender des Aufsichtsrats: MinDir Dr. Karl Eugen Huthmacher Geschaeftsfuehrung: Prof. Dr.-Ing. Wolfgang Marquardt (Vorsitzender), Karsten Beneke (stellv. Vorsitzender), Prof. Dr.-Ing. Harald Bolt, Prof. Dr. Sebastian M. Schmidt ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ From b.graham at cs.stir.ac.uk Tue May 30 09:52:51 2017 From: b.graham at cs.stir.ac.uk (Bruce Graham) Date: Tue, 30 May 2017 14:52:51 +0100 Subject: Connectionists: PhD studentship on context-based machine learning for financial applications Message-ID: PhD Studentship at University of Stirling, Scotland, U.K. Context-based machine learning for financial applications Cross-Faculty Research Programme: ?CONTEXT: Contextual learning and processing? Faculty of Natural Sciences ? Computing Science and Mathematics Stirling Management School ? Accounting and Finance Division Applications are invited for a PhD studentship in an interdisciplinary project on context-based machine learning with a specific emphasis on financial applications. The PhD will be undertaken under the joint supervision of the University of Stirling?s Computing Science and Mathematics Division and its Accounting and Finance Division. The PhD studentship is part of a new cross-faculty, interdisciplinary research programme (RP) called ?CONTEXT: Contextual learning and processing? which concerns understanding and applying principles of contextual guidance in learning and processing of data. It combines research into the role of context in the human neocortex with computational and machine learning. This RP studies context-sensitive learning and processing from three perspectives: neuronal architecture and physiology; health and pathology; the development of new, robust algorithms for machine learning for real-world applications. This studentship will investigate the development of such algorithms specifically in financial applications. The PhD thus offers a unique opportunity to work with researchers from computing science and mathematics, the cognitive and neurosciences, and finance, all of whom are committed to the development and deployment of new approaches in machine learning. As the PhD scholarship is co-funded by a B2B Robo Advisor firm based in Singapore, researchers have the opportunity to directly impact the use of machine learning in real-world financial applications, and there is also the possibility to gain direct experience working with a leading financial-technology company. The student will enjoy the benefit of supervision from two faculty members spanning two academic disciplines as well as access to the research environment in these two disciplines. The candidate will also have access to facilities and support offered by Stirling University?s Graduate School and the Centre for Graduate Research in Management. Further details can be provided by Professor Bruce Graham from Computing Science (b.graham at cs.stir.ac.uk) or Dr Patrick Herbst from Accounting and Finance (patrick.herbst at stir.ac.uk). Financial Support: The studentship is available for three years, and includes a tax?free stipend of approximately ?14,553 p.a. Tuition fees will be met by the University at the home/EU rate. Overseas applicants are required to confirm they can meet the difference between home/EU and overseas tuition fees from their own resources, for the duration of study (Information on tuition fees is available on http://www.stir.ac.uk/postgraduate/financial-information/tuition-fees/.) Subject to a satisfactory progress review at the end of the first year, the studentship will be renewed for a second year and thereafter for a third year. Application requirements: Candidates are expected to have a good upper second class honours degree or equivalent in a subject relevant to the field of study and/or a distinction or near distinction in a Master?s degree. An MRes or equivalent degree with a high level of research training content would be an advantage. Applicants should have: - A strong background in computing and mathematics (an understanding of machine learning is highly desirable) - An ability to programme in a high-level computing language (such as Python, C or Java) and/or experience with Matlab (or similar) - An interest in financial applications and research (a background in finance is desirable, but not essential) - Good numerical and verbal communication skills English language requirements are IELTS 6.5 (with a minimum of 6 in each skill), TOEFL 577/233, or equivalent. Application process: In the first instance students should make a preliminary application by e-mail to accountingandfinance at stir.ac.uk with the subject line: "PhD Studentship in Context-based Machine Learning ". The application must include - a full CV, documenting qualifications and any relevant previous experience and existing skill sets as well as containing contact details for two academic referees; - a covering letter of max 500 words referring in detail to the relevant research area and demonstrating a strong interest in the proposed research, as well as the candidate?s aptitude/skills that make her or him particularly suitable for conducting this research; - copies of your academic transcripts. The CV and covering letter or research proposal will be used to shortlist candidates for interview. The successful candidate must subsequently apply for a place on the university?s PhD programme; the scholarship offer is conditional on the student being accepted for this. Closing date: 16 June 2017 Proposed start: 1 October 2017 -- Prof. Bruce Graham (b.graham at cs.stir.ac.uk) Professor of Computing Science and Research Director Computing Science and Mathematics Faculty of Natural Sciences University of Stirling Stirling FK9 4LA phone: +44 1786 467 432 fax: +44 1786 464 551 Coauthor of "Principles of Computational Modelling in Neuroscience", CUP 2011. Editorial Board of Journal of Biological Dynamics. From rpa at seas.harvard.edu Tue May 30 14:01:49 2017 From: rpa at seas.harvard.edu (Adams, Ryan Prescott) Date: Tue, 30 May 2017 18:01:49 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: Travel Awards Available for ICML 2017 in Sydney Message-ID: <10AD8471-4C44-47FF-8710-E4CB8C5E9C7B@seas.harvard.edu> The 34th International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML) will be held this summer in Sydney, Australia on August 6-11. Thanks to the generosity of our sponsors, we are pleased to be able to fund a number of travel scholarships for students and postdoctoral fellows. These scholarships are intended to offset the cost of travel to the conference and allow a broad set of young researchers to attend and participate in ICML. Please apply online at https://2017.icml.cc/TravelApplication The deadline is June 12, 2017. Preference will be given to authors of accepted papers. From marcello.pelillo at gmail.com Wed May 31 03:38:24 2017 From: marcello.pelillo at gmail.com (Marcello Pelillo) Date: Wed, 31 May 2017 09:38:24 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: 2nd Call for Papers - EMMCVPR 2017 (Venice, Italy) (co-located with ICCV 2017) Message-ID: Call for Papers ? *EMMCVPR 2017* *11th International Conference on Energy Minimization Methods inComputer Vision and Pattern Recognition* 30 October ? 1 November 2017 Venice, Italy (Co-located with ICCV 2017 ) http://www.dsi.unive.it/emmcvpr17 *?>>> Submission deadline: 24 July 2017? <<<* Energy minimization methods have become an established computational paradigm in computer vision and pattern recognition. EMMCVPR is a regular bi-annual conference dedicated to advancing the state of the art in this field. This year marks the 20th anniversary of the foundation of the workshop series, with the inaugural meeting having taken place in Venice in 1997 , and we will celebrate it by bringing it back to Venice. The conference will be co-located with ICCV 2017 , the International Conference on Computer Vision. The scientific program will include the presentation of invited plenary talks and contributed research papers. Topics of interest include but are not limited to: - Discrete and continuous optimization - Convex programming and relaxations - PDE and variational methods - Stochastic optimization - Spectral methods - Graphical models and markov random fields - Statistical methods and learning - Graph-theoretic ? ? and network-based ? ? methods - Analysis of deep architectures - Adversarial and game-theoretic models Application areas include but are not limited to: - Object recognition and detection - Scene understanding - Segmentation and grouping - Restoration and inpainting - Color and texture - Computational photography - Photo and video editing - Motion and tracking - Matching and registration - Medical image analysis - Pose estimation - Action and event recognition - Shape analysis - Shape-from-X - Stereo and 3D reconstruction - Multiview geometry - Vision for graphics *?Paper submission* All papers (not exceeding 14 pages) must be submitted electronically at the conference website . All submissions will be subject to a rigorous peer-review process. Accepted papers will appear in the workshop proceedings, which will be published in Springer?s Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS) series ?after the conference.? ? *Important dates* - ? ? Paper submission: 24 July 2017 - ? ? Notifications: 15 September 2017 - ? ? Conference: 30 October ? 1 November 2017 - ? ? Camera-ready due: 1 December 2017 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From v.steuber at herts.ac.uk Wed May 31 07:20:09 2017 From: v.steuber at herts.ac.uk (Steuber, Volker) Date: Wed, 31 May 2017 11:20:09 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: PhD Studentships in Computational Neuroscience Message-ID: <1496229607391.68206@herts.ac.uk> PhD Positions in Computational Neuroscience Biocomputation Research Group Centre for Computer Science and Informatics Research University of Hertfordshire UK Applications are invited for PhD positions in the Biocomputation Research Group at the University of Hertfordshire. Projects involve the development and simulation of models of neurons and neuronal networks to study information processing in the cerebellum or olfactory system and /or the application of machine learning techniques for the analysis of neural data. A description of our research interests and a list of publications can be found on our webpage (http://biocomputation.herts.ac.uk/).? Applicants should have excellent computational and numerical skills and a very good first degree in computer science, biology, maths, physics, neuroscience, or a related discipline. Successful candidates are eligible for a research studentship award from the University (GBP 14,553 per annum bursary plus payment of the student fees). Applicants from outside the UK or EU are eligible. Research in Computer Science at the University of Hertfordshire has been recognised as excellent in the latest Research Excellence Framework Assessment, with 50% of the research submitted rated as internationally excellent or world leading. The Centre for Computer Science and Informatics Research provides a very stimulating environment, offering a large number of specialised and interdisciplinary seminars as well as general training and researcher development opportunities. The University is situated in Hatfield, in the green belt just north of London.? Please contact Dr Volker Steuber for informal enquiries. Application forms are available under http://www.herts.ac.uk/apply/schools-of-study/computer-science/our-research/the-phd-programme-in-computer-science and should be returned to Mrs Lorraine Nicholls, Research Student Administrator, University of Hertfordshire, College Lane, Hatfield, Herts, AL10 9AB, Tel: 01707 286083. The short-listing process will begin on 16 June 2017. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From olbrich at mis.mpg.de Wed May 31 10:20:12 2017 From: olbrich at mis.mpg.de (Eckehard Olbrich) Date: Wed, 31 May 2017 16:20:12 +0200 Subject: Connectionists: CCS17 Satellite: Information Processing in Complex Systems Message-ID: Call for Abstracts The Information Processing in Complex Systems (IPCS'17 https://ipcs.computationalscience.nl/) satellite meeting is organized during the Conference on Complex Systems. Our objective is to provide a forum for researchers who follow an information-theoretic approach to complex systems. Here they can present recent achievements and discuss promising hypotheses and further research directions. It will be a one-day event in September 20, 2017, as part of the Conference on Complex Systems (CCS'17 ). This conference is the official annual conference of the Complex Systems Society and is scheduled to convene in September 17-22, 2017. Background All systems in nature can be considered from the perspective that they process information. Information is registered in the state of a system and its elements, implicitly and invisibly. As elements interact, information is transferred. Indeed, bits of information about the state of one element will travel ? imperfectly ? to the state of the other element, forming its new state. This storage and transfer of information, possibly between levels of a multi level system, is imperfect due to randomness or noise. From this viewpoint, a system can be formalized as a collection of bits that is organized according to its rules of dynamics and its topology of interactions. Mapping out exactly how these bits of information percolate through the system reveals fundamental insights in how the parts orchestrate to produce the properties of the system. A theory of information processing would be capable of defining a set of universal properties of dynamical multi level complex systems, which describe and compare the dynamics of diverse complex systems ranging from social interaction to brain networks, from financial markets to biomedicine. Each possible combination of rules of dynamics and topology of interactions, with disparate semantics could be translated into the language of information processing which in turn will provide a lingua franca for complex systems. Based on the success of the previous year, IPCS?17 will again combine classical and quantum information approaches. If you would like to attend this scientific discourse then you only need to register for CCS?17. Note that the deadline for early registration is June 15. Abstract Submission We invite abstracts for oral presentations of work where information theory is used to tackle a complex systems problem. Our submission page (https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=ipcs17) is open until June 30, 2017. Please keep the word count for the abstract to max. 300. There is the possibility to upload an extended anstract (single page pdf, one figure). Organizing committee Rick Quax (University of Amsterdam) Eckehard Olbrich (MPI Leipzig) Mile Gu (Nanyang Institute of Technology) Manlio de Domenico (Universitat Rovira i Virgili) For further informations or questions please contact ipcs17 at easychair.org -- Dr. Eckehard Olbrich Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences Inselstrasse 22 D-04103 Leipzig Germany Tel.: +49 341 9959 568 Fax: +49 341 9959 658 E-mail: olbrich at mis.mpg.de From Margherita.Mauri at unige.ch Wed May 31 12:38:33 2017 From: Margherita.Mauri at unige.ch (Margherita Mauri) Date: Wed, 31 May 2017 16:38:33 +0000 Subject: Connectionists: We're hiring! New open position at LANVIE - University of Geneva Message-ID: Dear All, We are recruiting a research assistant/postdoc for a full time position at the LANVIE https://www.unige.ch/medecine/psyat/en/research-groups/935frisoni/ Please find the job description below: * Field: Alzheimer's disease (AD) and cognitive disorders 1. Study of AD biomarkers 2. Study of the biological basis of cognitive impairment due to Suspected Non-Alzheimer Pathology (SNAP) and of the interplay between amyloidosis and tau-related Neurodegeneration * Projects: 1. Epinettes database - A clinical database for diagnosis and prognosis of patients consulting at the Memory Clinics of the HUG 2. SNAP - Study of the biological basis of cognitive impairment due to Suspected Non- Alzheimer Pathology 3. Human Brain Project (HBP) - Medical Informatics Platform * Tasks: 1. Image analysis: Analysis of MRI and PET images of the brain finalised to the extraction and study of AD imaging biomarkers and cognitive pathologies (Freesurfer, FSL, Matlab, SPM) 2. Didactics: didactic activities management; MSc student supervision 3. Project management: Clinical ethical submissions; Work and data management; Communication and team management 4. Research tasks: Identification of new research opportunities and submission of project funding applications; presentation of research results according to need, participation in international and local conferences and publication in scientific journals; Identification, development and maintenance of collaborative relationships with current and future KOLs, scientific experts, scientific groups and study sites; Participation in working groups, boards, commission representing a project or the Team ; 5. To be customized basing on CV. Should you are interested in this position, please send your CV, cover letter and list of publication to margherita.mauri at unige.ch. Best regards, Margherita Margherita MAURI Assistante de Recherche H?pitaux Universitaires de Gen?ve et Universit? de Gen?ve LANVIE - Laboratoire de Neuroimagerie du Vieillissement, Chemin du Petit Bel-Air 2 (B?timent Voirons) CH 1225 - Ch?ne Bourg -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: From bhuang at vt.edu Wed May 31 21:56:32 2017 From: bhuang at vt.edu (Bert Huang) Date: Wed, 31 May 2017 21:56:32 -0400 Subject: Connectionists: Second CFP: Deep Structured Prediction Workshop at ICML2017 Message-ID: All, This is a reminder that the submission deadline for the Deep Structured Prediction Workshop is this Friday, June 2nd. Best wishes, Bert -- Bert Huang, Ph.D. Assistant Professor Dept. of Computer Science, Virginia Tech http://berthuang.com === Call for papers: Deep Structured Prediction === Workshop of the International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML) 2017 Sydney, Australia 11 August 2017 Website: https://deepstruct.github.io/ICML17 TL;DR: 4 pages, in ICML format, submit by June 2nd PT. Deep learning has revolutionized machine learning for many domains and problems. Today, most successful applications of deep learning involve predicting single variables (like univariate regression or multi-class classification). However, many real problems involve highly dependent, structured variables. In such scenarios, it is desired or even necessary to model correlations and dependencies between the multiple input and output variables. Such problems arise in a wide range of domains, from natural language processing, computer vision, computational biology and others. Some approaches to these problems directly use deep learning concepts, such as those that generate sequences using recurrent neural networks or that output image segmentations through convolutions. Others adapt the concepts from structured output learning. These structured output prediction problems were traditionally handled using linear models and hand-crafted features, with a structured optimization such as inference. It has recently been proposed to combine the representational power of deep neural networks with modeling variable dependence in a structured prediction framework. There are numerous interesting research questions related to modeling and optimization that arise in this problem space. The workshop will bring together experts in machine learning and application domains whose research focuses on combining deep learning and structured models. Specifically, it will provide an overview of existing approaches from various domains to distill from their success principles that can be more generally applicable. We will also discuss the main challenges arising in this setting and outline potential directions for future progress. The target audience consists of researchers and practitioners in machine learning and application areas. We invite the submission of short papers no longer than four pages, including references, addressing machine learning research that intersects structured prediction and deep learning, including any of the following topics: Deep learning approaches for structured-output problems Integration of deep learning with structured-output learning End-to-end learning of probabilistic models with non-linear potentials Deep learning applications with dependent inputs or outputs Papers should be formatted according to the ICML template: (http://media.nips.cc/Conferences/ICML2017/icml2017.tgz ). Only papers using the above template will be considered. Word templates will not be provided. Papers should be submitted through easychair at the following address: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=1stdeepstructws Papers will be reviewed for relevance and quality. Accepted papers will be posted online. Authors of high-quality papers will be offered oral presentations at the workshop, and we will award a best-paper and runner-up prize. === Important Dates === ***Submission deadline: June 2, 2017 ***Notification of acceptance: June 18, 2017 ***Camera-ready deadline: August 1, 2017 === Program committee === David Belanger, University of Massachusetts Amherst Matthew Blaschko, KU Leuven Ryan Cotterell, Johns Hopkins University Ming-Wei Chang, Microsoft Research Raia Hadsell, Google DeepMind Hal Daum? III, University of Maryland Justin Domke, University of Massachusetts Amherst Andrew McCallum, University of Massachusetts Amherst Eliyahu Kiperwasser, Bar-Ilan University Jason Naradowsky, University of Cambridge Sebastian Nowozin, Microsoft Research, Cambridge, UK Nanyun Peng, Johns Hopkins University Amirmohammad Rooshenas, University of Oregon Dan Roth, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Alexander Rush, Harvard University Sameer Singh, University of California Irvine Uri Shalit, New York University Andreas Vlachos, University of Sheffield Yi Yang, Georgia Institute of Technology Scott Yih, Microsoft Research Yangfeng Ji, University of Washington Yisong Yue, California Institute of Technology Shuai Zheng, eBay === Workshop Organizers === Isabelle Augenstein, University College London Kai-Wei Chang, University of California Los Angeles Gal Chechik, Bar-Ilan University / Google Bert Huang, Virginia Tech Andr? Martins, Unbabel and Instituto de Telecomunicacoes Ofer Meshi, Google Alexander Schwing, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: