[ACT-R-users] iccm20: resources, ongoing conference

Fri Jun 26 17:32:02 EDT 2020

ICCM Newsletter - 26jun20

There are things going on despite the pandemic. Here are a few. One of 
them, the AGI conference, is
going on while I send this, and I have jumped into its coffee break, and 
that was interesting for the
discussion and the media.

ICCM will be held this summer, and you can come more cheaply than 
before. I hope to see you there,
literally and figuratively.

Edited by: David M. Schwartz
=================================INDEX==================================
CONFERENCES
   1)  Virtual International Symposium on Cognitive Architecture (VISCA 
2020) -- Videos uploaded
       https://visca.engin.umich.edu/

   2)  Cognitive Modeling and Computational Linguistics Workshop
       https://cmclorg.github.io/

   3)  ICMI 2020 Doctoral Consortium
       https://icmi.acm.org/2020/index.php?id=cfdc

   4)  BICA 2020 (& 2019 Proceedings available), 10-11oct20, due date 
ongoing
       https://bica2020.org/

   5)  AGI-20 Online Conference, going on now!
       https://underline.io/conferences/23-agi-20

RESOURCES
   6)  Special issue of Frontiers on Human Decision-Making in Combat
       Situations Involving Traditional and Immersive Visual Technologies
https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/12014/human-decision-making-in-combat-situations-involving-traditional-and-immersive-visual-technologies

   7)  Joscha Bach interviewed on a podcast about AI
       https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-2P3MSZrBM

   8)  I/ITSEC 2020 Scholarship, due 26jun20
https://www.iitsec.org/education/students-and-teachers/scholarships

   9)  Skills to Obstruct Pandemics Tutor
       https://stopthespread.health/

JOBS
  10) Tenure-track positions in Information Technology at Carleton U
https://carleton.ca/provost/2020/assistant-professor-data-science-information-technology/

OTHER
  11)  Obituary for Anders Ericsson
https://psy.fsu.edu/imagenews/imagenews.php?newsfile=imagenews6_19_20.php

==============================CONFERENCES===============================
1)  VISCA 2020 -- Videos uploaded
     https://visca.engin.umich.edu/

VISCA-2020 is a wrap! We had 375 registrants from around the world and
 >160 people online at once. Thanks to all of the speakers [and to John 
Laird]. Great
talks!!! Videos of talks are available on the symposiums' website.

************************************************************************
2)  Cognitive Modeling and Computational Linguistics Workshop
     https://cmclorg.github.io/

The Workshop on Cognitive Modeling and Computational Linguistics,
19 Nov 2020

Co-located with EMNLP 2020. Location has changed due to COVID-19.

EMNLP 2020 and all its workshops will now be held entirely online,
rather than in the Dominican Republic as previously announced, to avoid
the need for international travel and risk of further spread of
COVID-19. Refer to EMNLP 2020 website for details
(https://2020.emnlp.org/).

Invited Speakers

We are pleased to announce that Richard Futrell (U of
California Irvine) and Suzanne Stevenson (U of Toronto) are our
invited speakers for CMCL 2020.  Workshop Description

Cognitive Modeling and Computational Linguistics (CMCL) 2020 is a
one-day workshop held in conjunction with the Annual Conference on
Empirical Methods for Natural Language Processing (EMNLP), Punta Cana
(Dominican Republic), November 16-20 2020. The goal of CMCL is providing
a venue for computational research on cognitive theories of language
processing, representation and acquisition. The 2020 workshop follows in
the tradition of earlier meetings at ACL 2010, ACL 2011, NAACL-HLT 2012,
ACL 2013, ACL 2014, NAACL 2015, EACL 2017, LSA 2018 and NAACL 2019.

Scope and Topics

Topics of interest for the workshop include:

- Stochastic models of factors influencing a speaker?s production or
comprehension decisions
- Models of semantic interpretation, including psychologically realistic
notions of word and phrase meaning and composition
- Incremental parsers for diverse grammar formalisms and their
psychological plausibility
- Models of speaker-specific linguistic adaptation and/or generalization
- Models of first and second language acquisition and bilingual language
processing
- Behavioral tasks for better understanding neural models of linguistic
representation
- Models and empirical analysis of the relationship between mechanistic
psycholinguistic principles and pragmatics or semantics
- Models of lexical acquisition, including phonology, morphology, and
semantics
- Psychologically motivated models of grammar induction
- Psychologically plausible models of lexical or conceptual
representations
- Models of language disorders, such as aphasia, dyslexia, or dysgraphia
- Behavioral datasets or resources for modeling language processing or
production in languages other than English
- Models of language comprehension difficulty
- Models of language learning and generalization
- Models of linguistic information propagation and language evolution in
communities
- Network Science and Language Processing

Workshop Submissions

We accept three categories of papers: regular workshop papers, extended
abstracts and cross-submissions. Only regular workshop papers will be
included in the proceedings as archival publications. All submissions
should be in PDF format and made through the Softconf website:
https://www.softconf.com/emnlp2020/cmcl2020/

To facilitate double-blind reviewing, submitted manuscripts should not
include any identifying information about the authors. Submissions with
associated preprints (e.g.  arXiv) will be considered. Submissions must
be formatted using EMNLP 2020 templates, available at:
https://2020.emnlp.org/call-for-papers

Regular Workshop Papers can be either full (8 pages of content +
references) or short papers (4 pages + references) reporting original
and unpublished research that combines cognitive modeling and
computational linguistics. Accepted papers are expected to be presented
at the workshop (oral presentation or poster) and will be published in
the workshop proceedings. If a workshop paper has been submitted
elsewhere, the authors have to declare it at submission time. Papers to
be presented at CMCL 2020 must be withdrawn from other venues.

Extended Abstracts (from 2 to 4 pages + references) describe preliminary
work or results that have not been published before. Accepted abstracts
will be presented as posters, but will not be included in the workshop
proceedings.

We will also accept cross-submissions (from 2 to 4 pages + references)
for papers on related topics that have already appeared in a non-NLP
venue (e.g. CogSci). These papers will be presented as posters, but will
not be included in the proceedings. Interested authors are asked to add
a note on the original venue in the submission.  Dual Submission Policy
(only for Regular Workshop Papers)

If a workshop paper has been submitted elsewhere, the authors have to
declare it a submission time. Papers to be presented at CMCL 2020 must
be withdrawn from other venues.

Important Dates

- Submission deadline: 8jul20
- Notification of acceptance: 17aug20
- Camera-ready version due: 31aug20
- Workshop date: 19nov20

All deadlines are 11:59 PM (UTC-12:00)
Workshop Organizers

- Emmanuele Chersoni, The Hong Kong Polytechnic U
- Cassandra Jacobs, U of Wisconsin
- Yohei Oseki, U of Tokyo
- Laurent Prvot, Aix-Marseille U
- Enrico Santus, Bayer

Programme Committee:

Laura Aina (Pompeu Fabre U of Barcelona)
Raquel Garrido Alhama (Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics)
Afra Alishahi (Tilburg U)
Philippe Blache (Aix-Marseille U)
Christos Christodoulopoulos (Amazon)
Aniello De Santo (Stony Brook U)
Barry Devereux (Queens U Belfast)
Brian Dillon (U of Massachusetts Amherst)
Micha Elsner (Ohio State U)
Afsaneh Fazly (U of Toronto)
Raquel Fernandez (U of Amsterdam)
Thomas Francois (Catholic U of Louvain)
Robert Frank (Yale U)
John Hale (U of Georgia)
Anna Ivanova (MIT)
Yu-Yin Hsu (The Hong Kong Polytechnic U)
Tim Hunter (UCLA)
Samar Husain (IIT Delhi)
Carina Kauf (MIT)
Shalom Lappin (U of Gothenburg)
Gianluca Lebani (U Ca Foscari Venezia)
Pavel Logacev (Bogazici U)
Syrielle Montariol (U of Paris Sud LIMSI CNRS)
Karl Neergaard (U of Macau)
Stephen Politzer-Ahles (The Hong Kong Polytechnic U)
Vito Pirrelli (ILC-CNR Pisa)
Carlos Ramisch (Aix-Marseille U)
Giulia Rambelli (U of Pisa)
Roi Reichart (Technion Israel Institute of Technology)
Rachel A Ryskin (MIT)
William Schuler (Ohio State U)
Marina Sedinkina (U of Munich)
Olga Seminck (Catholic U of Louvain)
Marco Silvio Giuseppe Senaldi (Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa)
Cory Shain (Ohio State U)
Lonneke Van Der Plas (U of Malta)
Aline Villavicencio (U of Essex)
Leila Wehbe (Carnegie Mellon U)
Aaron Steven White (U of Rochester)
Victoria Yaneva (U of Wolverhampton)
Yao Yao (The Hong Kong Polytechnic U)
Frances Yung (Saarland U)

Contact Email:
cmclorganizers2020 at gmail.com

************************************************************************
3)  ICMI 2020 Doctoral Consortium, due 5jun20
     https://icmi.acm.org/2020/index.php?id=cfdc

=== COVID-19 Announcement ===
Dear all,

We are investigating ways to hold ICMI2020 as a virtual conference or as
a partially virtual conference. In any case, the ICMI2020 proceedings
will be published as scheduled.

Best,
the organizing team of ICMI2020.
===============================

*** ICMI 2020 Doctoral Consortium - 2nd Call for Contributions ***

The goal of the ICMI Doctoral Consortium (DC) is to provide PhD students
with an opportunity to present their work to a group of mentors and
peers from a diverse set of academic and industrial institutions, to
receive feedback on their doctoral research plan and progress, and to
build a cohort of young researchers interested in designing and
developing multimodal interfaces and interaction. We invite students
from all PhD granting institutions who are in the process of forming or
carrying out a plan for their PhD research in the area of designing and
developing multimodal interfaces. We expect to provide economic support
to most attendees that will cover part of their costs (travel,
registration, meals etc.).

= Who should apply? =
While we encourage applications from students at any stage
of doctoral training, the doctoral consortium will benefit most the
students who are in the process of forming or developing
their doctoral research. These students will have passed their
qualifiers or have completed the majority of their coursework, will be
planning or developing their dissertation research, and will not be very
close to completing their dissertation research. Students from any PhD
granting institution whose research falls within designing and
developing multimodal interfaces and interaction are encouraged to apply.

= Why should you attend? =
The DC provides an opportunity to build a social network that includes
the cohort of DC students, senior students, recent graduates, and senior
mentors.  Not only is this an opportunity to get feedback on research
directions, it is also an opportunity to learn more about the process
and to understand what comes next. We aim to connect you with a mentor
who will give specific feedback on your research and whom you can talk
to during the lunch. We specifically aim to create an informal setting
where students feel supported in their professional development.

= Agenda =

   * 09:00 - 09:30: Invited talk
   * 09:30 - 11:00: DC talks 1
   * 11:00 - 11:30: Coffee break
   * 11:30 - 13:00: DC talks 2
   * 13:00 - 14:30: Lunch mentoring session
   * 14:30 - 15:15: Panel discussion (senior PhD students and recent
     graduates)
   * 15:15 - 15:45: Coffee break
   * 15:45 - 17:00: Table discussions (small group discussions about
     topics of interest)

= Submission Guidelines =
Graduate students pursuing a PhD degree in a field related to designing
multimodal interfaces should submit the following materials:

  1. Extended Abstract: A four-page description of your PhD research plan
     and progress in the ACM SigConf format. Your extended abstract
     should follow the same outline, details, and format of the ICMI
     short papers. The submissions will not be anonymous. In particular,
     it should cover:
       * The key research questions and motivation of your research;
       * Background and related work that informs your research;
       * A statement of hypotheses or a description of the scope of the
         technical problem;
       * Your research plan, outlining stages of system development or
         series of studies;
       * The research approach and methodology;
       * Your results to date (if any) and a description of remaining work;
       * A statement of research contributions to date (if any) and
         expected contributions of your PhD work;
  2. Advisor Letter: A one-page letter of nomination from the student's
     PhD advisor. This letter is not a letter of support. Instead, it
     should focus on the student's PhD plan and how
     the Doctoral Consortium event might contribute to the student's PhD
     training and research.
  3. CV: A two-page curriculum vitae of the student.

All materials should be prepared in PDF format and submitted through the
ICMI submission system.

= Review Process =
The Doctoral Consortium will follow a review process in which
submissions will be evaluated by a number of factors including (1) the
quality of the submission, (2) the expected benefits of
the consortium for the student's PhD research, and (3) the student's
contribution to the diversity of topics, backgrounds, and institutions,
in order of importance. More particularly, the quality of the submission
will be evaluated based on the potential contributions of the research
to the field of multimodal interfaces and its impact on the field and
beyond. Finally, we hope to achieve a diversity of research topics,
disciplinary backgrounds, methodological approaches, and home
institutions in this year's Doctoral Consortium cohort. We do not expect
more than two students to be invited from each institution to represent
a diverse sample. Women and other underrepresented groups are especially
encouraged to apply.

= Financial Support =
The conference is pleased to offer partial financial support
for doctoral students participating in the Doctoral Consortium and
attending the conference. Only students who apply and are accepted for
participation in the Doctoral Consortium can be considered for financial
support. The number and size of the offers of financial support are
contingent upon the number of invited student participants.

= Attendance =
All authors of accepted submissions are expected to attend
the Doctoral Consortium and the main conference poster session. The
attendees will present their PhD work as a short talk at
the Consortium and as a poster at the conference poster session. A
detailed program for the Consortium and the participation guidelines for
the poster session will be available after the camera-ready deadline.

= Process =
* Submission format: Four-page extended abstract using the ACM format
   https://www.acm.org/publications/proceedings-template#aL2
* Submission system:
     https://new.precisionconference.com/user/login?society=sigchi/
* Selection process: Peer-Reviewed
* Presentation format: Talk on consortium day and participation in the
conference poster session
* Proceedings: Included in conference proceedings and ACM Digital Library
* Doctoral Consortium Co-chairs: Juliet Haarman (U of Twente)
Emily Mower Provost (U of Michigan) and Catharine Oertel (TU
Delft).

= Important Dates =
*Submission deadline: 5jul20 (23:59PM, PST)*
Notifications: 10aug20
Camera-ready: 2sep20
Doctoral Consortium date: 25oct20

= Questions? =
For more information and updates on the ICMI 2020 Doctoral Consortium,
visit the Doctoral Consortium page of the main conference website:
https://icmi.acm.org/2020/index.php?id=cfdc

For further questions, contact the Doctoral Consortium co-chairs:

   * Emily Mower Provost (emilykmp at umich.edu)
   * Catharine Oertel (C.R.M.M.Oertel at tudelft.nl)
   * Juliet Haarman (j.a.m.haarman at utwente.nl)

************************************************************************
4)  BICA 2020 (& 2019 Proceedings), 10-11oct20, due date ongoing
     https://bica2020.org/

1. Open-access volume of BICA 2019 Postproceedings is now indexed by
    Scopus. 
https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/procedia-computer-science/vol/169/suppl/C

2. This year, BICA conference uses publication venues indexed by Web of
    Science:
      a) Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing - a Springer
          book series (https://www.springer.com/series/11156).
      b) Cognitive Systems Research - an Elsevier journal, IF=1.4, Q2 in
          AI in 2016, also indexed by Scopus
  (https://www.journals.elsevier.com/cognitive-systems-research).

3. Submission of abstracts and papers to BICA*AI 2020 is open. The
    current 3rd round of submissions ends on June 13, and there are more
    rounds to come. Paper submission is not required for participation.
    https://bica2020.org/

4. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, participation in BICA*AI 2020 JVRT is
    FREE OF CHARGE: that includes testing with the help of our team,
    attendance, presentations, virtual socials, and optional posting of
    your paper or other materials online. As a minimum, you need to enter
    either a tentative title of your contribution or your short bio at
    https://easychair.org/account/signin?l=d0F32peJ7o2X9Eg4FsCw3S#. Then
    we will guide you further.

5. Our great virtual venue for BICA*AI 2020, the VIRTUAL CONVENTION
    CENTER (https://www.dropbox.com/s/xj2vkwbttqpk9g7/VCC.m4v?dl=0) will
    be tested with BICA participants in June, and you can help us. Just
    let me know what dates suit you. Then we will be running real
    pre-conference sessions of JVRT.

6. Dates for the main live JVRT event are 10-11oct20. This will be a
    joint online/VR event, involving other conferences and hosted in VCC
    in the new exciting format. And we have a great keynote for it, John
    Laird (confirmed):

      Title: Recent Research on the Soar Cognitive Architecture and
          Interactive Task Learning.
      Abstract: In this talk, I will present research extensions that
          have been made to Soar and how they support Interactive Task
          Learning.

7. If you want to participate in BICA*AI 2020 in Natal, Brazil
    (10-15nov20), you will need to register at the Robotica-2020 site
    http://www.robotica.org.br/ and contact Ricardo Gudwin
    (gudwin at unicamp.br) for details. No need to do this for JVRT-only
    participants.

Please circulate this message. I am looking forward to seeing most of
you at BICA*AI 2020 JVRT.

************************************************************************
5) AGI-20 Online Conference
    https://underline.io/conferences/23-agi-20

The conference is currently ongoing; livestreams are available on
their website.

If you would like to join the AGI 2020 Conference coffee discussions 
after our final
panel on Infusing AGI with Compassion, please join us via
https://gather.town/ZKgfshp6GS4YotoP/agi-20 
<https://agi-society.us16.list-manage.com/track/click?u=d74195510c25bf501caf3011d&id=9b718b5276&e=0cdfbb9219>. 
See you there!

13th Conference of Artificial General Intelligence. The AGI conference
series is the only major conference series devoted wholly and
specifically to the creation of AI systems possessing general
intelligence at the human level and ultimately beyond. By gathering
together active researchers in the field, for presentation of results
and discussion of ideas, we accelerate our progress toward our common
goal.

===============================RESOURCES================================

6) Special issue of Frontiers on Human Decision-Making in Combat
Situations Involving Traditional and Immersive Visual Technologies
due in a month or more, email editors

https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/12014/human-decision-making-in-combat-situations-involving-traditional-and-immersive-visual-technologies

Modern-day combat situations may require cognitive readiness as well as
the ability to make dynamic decisions against hostile adversaries in a
short time. One important aspect of improving decision-making in combat
situations is related to training personnel using traditional
(2-dimensional) and immersive (3-dimensional) visual technologies.
Traditional visual technologies (e.g., 2-dimensional displays) may help
support full-spectrum, 360 degree awareness operations both locally
and remotely. In contrast, 3-dimensional visual technologies like
virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) may provide a
high-fidelity immersive experience to people.

Although both traditional and immersive visual technologies have been
developed and used, an understanding of the cognitive, perceptual, and
neuro-physiological challenges in these technologies in combat
situations currently lacks in the literature. Also, less attention has
been paid to how these different visual technologies may enable better
tactical thinking, strategy formulation, and decision-making through
training in combat situations over time.

This Research Topic is meant to focus on the decision-making and
cognitive processes of people when they interact with different visual
technologies in combat situations. This Research Topic will publish
contributions containing state-of-the-art advances from major areas of
decision-making and cognition, focusing on sound empirical studies that
advance our understanding of cognitive mechanisms and processes of human
stakeholders in combat situations involving the use of different visual
technologies. This Research Topic will help the cognitive science
community to test theories, methods, and models in applied combat
situations while people learn task-related variables via two-dimensional
displays, virtual reality, or augmented reality. Furthermore, defense
forces may benefit from the integration of cognitive theories and
processes that explain how different stakeholders make decisions against
different visual technologies. This integration will help defense forces
to incorporate decision processes of stakeholders while relying on
visual technologies in real-world combats.

Areas include:
   - Empirical research involving human decision-making in 2-D/3-D
     displays involving combat situations
   - Effect of different training paradigms in 2-D / 3-D displays on
     decision-making in combat situations
   - Tracking technologies in 2-D/3-D displays involving combat
     situations
   - Analytics and visualization in combat situations
   - Evaluation and assessment methods in combat situations\
   - Human factors and Ergonomics challenges in combat situations while
     using 2-D /3-D displays
   - Social and ethical issues in 2-D/3-D displays in combat situations
   - Human-Machine collaboration studies involving 2-D / 3-D displays
     in combat situations
   - Navigation and kinesis in 2-D/3-D displays involving combat
     situations
   - Perception and attention in 2-D/3-D displays involving combat
     situations
   - Computational modeling and simulation in 2-D/3-D displays
     involving combat situations
   - Situational Awareness in 2-D/3-D displays involving combat
     situations
   - Physiological and neurophysiological issues in 2-D/3-D displays
     involving combat situations

*Keywords*: visual displays, 2-dimensional displays, virtual reality,
augmented reality, decision-making, cognition, perception, attention,
computation modeling, combat situations

Varun Dutt
Indian Institute of Technology Mandi

Sushil Chandra
Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO)
New Delhi, India

Daniel N Cassenti <daniel.n.cassenti.civ at mail.mil>
United States Army Research Laboratory

************************************************************************
7) Joscha Bach interviewed on a podcast about AI
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-2P3MSZrBM

Joscha Bach, author of "Principles of synthetic intelligence: Building
blocks for an architecture of motivated cognition" interviewed in a
popular (>100k views) podcast about AI. It is a long podcast, but
there edited sections on YouTube. It also was highly rated on Reddit.

************************************************************************
8) I/ITSEC 2020 Scholarship, due 26jun20
https://www.iitsec.org/education/students-and-teachers/scholarships

I/ITSEC is one of the largest and most respected conferences on
modeling, simulation, and educational technologies. This year we are
pleased to again offer scholarships at the Masters level in the amount
$5,000 and at a Doctoral level in the amount of $10,000.

The scholarships are offered to stimulate student interest and
university participation in preparing individuals for leadership in the
Modeling & Simulation, Training and Education communities. By investing
in our future workforce, these scholarships encourage expansion of the
I/ITSEC community and promote innovation through direct investment in
our community's future leaders. The scholarship recipient(s) will be
invited to attend I/ITSEC 20 (30nov20-4dec20) at the expense of the
I/ITSEC organization, where he or she will be recognized, view the
latest in simulation, training and education technologies and meet
leadersfrom Government, Industry and Academia associated with this
community.

Please help uspass theword to your student body, as we hopeto have a
diverse pool of candidates from which to choose. All pertinent
application information can be found at
http://www.iitsec.org/education/studentsandteachers/Pages/Scholarships.aspx.
The deadline for submitting application packages is 26jun20 and awardees
will be notified by 7aug20. Funds will be made available in time for
the Fall 2020 term.

************************************************************************
9) Skills to Obstruct Pandemics Tutor
    https://stopthespread.health/

A tutor developed by the Applied Cognitive Science Lab at Penn State about

how to reduce the transmission of diseases (particularly aimed at COVID-19).

=================================JOBS===================================
10) Tenure-track positions in Information Technology at Carleton U

The School of Information Technology at Carleton U currently
has three openings for Assistant Professors (tenure-track) in the
following areas:

* Digital Media
https://carleton.ca/provost/2020/assistant-professor-digital-media-information-technology/

* Digital Media Productions
https://carleton.ca/provost/2020/assistant-professor-digital-media-production-information-technology/

* Data Science
https://carleton.ca/provost/2020/assistant-professor-data-science-information-technology/

Further details for each posting are available at the links above. The
planned start date for all three is 1 jan 21, although this is
flexible. Application review will begin in late Aug, with
interviews in early Fall.

The School of Information Technology has 12 full time faculty and
offers PhD, Master's, and Bachelor's degrees in Information
Technology. The Bachelor of Information Technology degree covers four
distinct programs: Interactive Multimedia and Design, Network
Technology, Optical Systems and Sensors, and Information Resource
Management; providing an innovative mix of courses drawing on a
variety of disciplines and combine a strong foundation in academic
theory with hands-on training.  The graduate programs provide a
framework to study and research on all aspects of digital media,
networking, and data science. Further information on the programs and
the School of Information Technology can be obtained from the school's
website: https://www.csit.carleton.ca/

================================OTHER===================================
11)  Obituary for Anders Ericsson
https://psy.fsu.edu/imagenews/imagenews.php?newsfile=imagenews6_19_20.php

Anders Ericsson died last week. Anders was co-author with Herb Simon
of the book Verbal Protocol Analysis, 1983, revised in 1993, and of
the Psych Review article of the same title. An obituary by one of his
colleagues can be found at the link at the top of this entry.

==================================END===================================
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