NIPS*2001 Call For Papers

[Richard Zemel]

CALL FOR PAPERS -- NIPS*2001

==========================================
Neural Information Processing Systems
Natural and Synthetic
Monday,  Dec. 3 -- Saturday, Dec. 8, 2001
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
==========================================

This is the fifteenth meeting of an interdisciplinary conference which
brings together cognitive scientists, computer scientists, engineers,
neuroscientists, physicists, statisticians, and mathematicians
interested in all aspects of neural processing and computation.  The
conference will include invited talks as well as oral and poster
presentations of refereed papers.  The conference is single track and
is highly selective.  Preceding the main session, there will be one
day of tutorial presentations (Dec. 3), and following it there will be
two days of focused workshops on topical issues at a nearby ski area
(Dec. 7-8).  Invited speakers this year will be Barbara Finlay
(Departments of Psychology, and Neurobiology and Behavior, Cornell
University), Alison Gopnik (Department of Psychology, University of
California at Berkeley), Jon M. Kleinberg (Department of Computer
Science, Cornell University), Shihab Shamma (Department of Electrical
Engineering University of Maryland), Judea Pearl (Department of
Computer Science, UCLA), and Tom Knight (Artificial Intelligence
Laboratory, MIT).

Major categories for paper submission, with example subcategories
(by no means exhaustive), are listed below.  

Algorithms and Architectures: supervised and unsupervised learning
algorithms, feedforward and recurrent network architectures, kernel
methods, committee models, graphical models, support vector machines,
Gaussian processes, decision trees, factor analysis, independent
component analysis, model selection algorithms, combinatorial
optimization, hybrid symbolic-subsymbolic systems.

Applications: innovative applications of neural computation including
data mining, web and network applications, intrusion and fraud
detection, bio-informatics, medical diagnosis, handwriting
recognition, industrial monitoring and control, financial analysis,
time-series prediction, consumer products, music and video
applications, animation, virtual environments.

Cognitive Science/Artificial Intelligence: perception and
psychophysics, neuropsychology, cognitive neuroscience, development,
human learning and memory, conditioning, categorization, attention,
language, reasoning, spatial cognition, emotional cognition,
neurophilosophy, problem solving and planning.

Implementations: analog and digital VLSI, neuromorphic engineering,
microelectromechanical systems, optical systems, vision chips,
head-eye systems, cochlear implants, roving robots, computational 
sensors and actuators, molecular and quantum computing, novel
neurodevices, simulation tools.

Neuroscience: neural encoding, spiking neurons, synchronicity, sensory
processing, systems neurophysiology, neuronal development, synaptic
plasticity, neuromodulation, dendritic computation, channel dynamics,
population codes, temporal codes, spike train analysis, and
experimental data relevant to computational issues.

Reinforcement Learning and Control: exploration, planning, navigation,
computational models of classical and operant conditioning,
Q-learning, TD-learning, state estimation, dynamic programming,  
robotic motor control, process control, game-playing, Markov decision
processes, multi-agent cooperative algorithms.

Speech and Signal Processing: speech recognition, speech coding,
speech synthesis, speech signal enhancement, auditory scene analysis,
source separation, applications of hidden Markov models to signal
processing, models of human speech perception, auditory modeling and
psychoacoustics.

Theory: computational learning theory, statistical physics of
learning, information theory, Bayesian methods, prediction and
generalization, regularization, online learning (stochastic
approximation), dynamics of learning, approximation and estimation
theory, complexity theory.

Visual Processing: image processing, image coding, object recognition,
face recognition, visual feature detection, visual psychophysics,
stereopsis, optic flow algorithms, motion detection and tracking,
spatial representations, spatial attention, scene analysis, visual
search, visuo-spatial working memory. 

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Review Criteria: All submitted papers will be thoroughly refereed on
the basis of technical quality, significance, and clarity. Novelty of
the work is also a strong consideration in paper selection, but to
encourage interdisciplinary contributions, we will consider work which
has been submitted or presented in part elsewhere, if it is unlikely
to have been seen by the NIPS audience.  Authors new to NIPS are
strongly encouraged to submit their work, and will be given preference
for oral presentations.  Authors should not be dissuaded from
submitting recent work, as there will be an opportunity after the
meeting to revise accepted manuscripts before submitting a final
camera-ready copy for the proceedings.

Paper Format: Submitted papers may be up to seven pages in length,
including figures and references, using a font no smaller than 10
point. Text is to be confined within a 8.25in by 5in rectangle.
Submissions failing to follow these guidelines will not be considered.
Authors are required to use the NIPS LaTeX style files obtainable from
the web page listed below.  The style files are unchanged from
NIPS*2000.

Submission Instructions: NIPS accepts only electronic submissions.
Full submission instructions will be available at the web site given
below.  You will be asked to enter paper title, names of all authors,
category, oral/poster preference, and contact author data (name, full
address, telephone, fax, and email).  You will upload your manuscript from
the same page.  We will accept postscript and PDF documents, but
we prefer postscript.  The electronic submission page will be
available on June 6, 2001

Submission Deadline:

SUBMISSIONS MUST BE LOGGED BY MIDNIGHT JUNE 20, 2001
PACIFIC DAYLIGHT TIME (08:00 GMT JUNE 21, 2001).

The LaTeX style files for NIPS, the Electronic Submission Page, and
other conference information are available on the World Wide Web at

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/Web/Groups/NIPS

For general inquiries or requests for registration material, send
e-mail to

nipsinfo at salk.edu or fax to (619)587-0417.

NIPS*2001 Organizing Committee:
General Chair, Tom Dietterich, Oregon State University;
Program Chair, Sue Becker, McMaster University;
Publications Chair, Zoubin Ghahramani, University College London;
Tutorial Chair, Yoshua Bengio, University of Montreal;
Workshops Co-Chairs, Virginia de Sa, Sloan Center for Theoretical Neurobiology,
          Barak Pearlmutter, University of New Mexico;
Publicity Chair, Richard Zemel, University of Toronto;
Volunteer Coordinator, Sidney Fels, University of British Columbia;
Treasurer, Bartlett Mel, University of Southern California;
Web Masters, Alex Gray, Carnegie Mellon University, 
             Xin Wang, Oregon State University;
Government Liaison, Gary Blasdel, Harvard Medical School;
Contracts, Steve Hanson, Rutgers University,
Scott Kirkpatrick, IBM, Gerry Tesauro, IBM.

NIPS*2001 Program Committee:
Sue Becker, McMaster University (chair);
Gert Cauwenberghs, Johns Hopkins University;
Bill Freeman, Mitsubishi Electric Research Lab;
Thomas Hofmann, Brown University;
Dan Lee, Bell Laboratories, Lucent Technologies;
Sridhar Mahadevan, Michigan State University;
Marina Meila-Predoviciu, University of Washington;
Klaus Mueller, GMD First, Berlin;
Klaus Obermayer, TU Berlin;
Sam Roweis, Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit, UCL;
John Shawe-Taylor, Royal Holloway, University of London;
Josh Tenenbaum, Stanford University;
Volker Tresp, Siemens, Munich;
Richard Zemel, University of Toronto.
				       

PAPERS MUST BE SUBMITTED BY JUNE 20, 2001